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Category: Ukraine

  • Kremlin Responds to Zelensky’s “Unhinged” Christmas address

    Spokesman Dmitry Peskov has questioned the Ukrainian leader’s capacity to make any reasonable decisions regarding peace negotiations.

    Kremlin responds to Zelensky’s ‘unhinged’ Christmas addressFILE PHOTO. Kremlin. © Getty Images / Iuliia Leonteva

    Vladimir Zelensky’s “strange” Christmas address raises concerns over the Ukrainian leader’s ability to make any rational decisions, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

    Zelensky published a video on his Telegram channel on Wednesday in which he wished Ukrainians a happy upcoming Christmas. However, in the same video, he also wished for a certain unnamed person – presumably Russian President Vladimir Putin – “to perish” before urging everyone to pray for peace.

    Commenting on the video, Peskov said it appeared “uncultured, embittered, and coming from a seemingly unhinged person.”

    “One wonders if he’s capable of making any rational decisions towards a political and diplomatic settlement,” the Kremlin spokesman added, referring to the ongoing Russia-US efforts to end the Ukraine conflict. Moscow has accused Kiev and its European backers of repeatedly undermining peace talks by making unacceptable demands.

    Earlier this week, Zelensky unveiled Kiev’s 20-point version of the peace plan initially proposed by the US. In it, he largely ignored Russia’s concerns, demanding territorial concessions from Moscow despite its ongoing military gains. He also insisted on maintaining an 800,000-strong army, NATO-style security guarantees, expedited EU membership, and hundreds of billions in Western investments.

    The plan also removed provisions linked to Russian language rights and the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, replacing them with loosely worded commitments to develop educational programs to promote tolerance and anti-racism.

    Moscow has declined to comment on the proposal, but noted that it is being analyzed. Putin has repeatedly stated that Russia is open to negotiations but insists that any settlement must address the root causes of the conflict and reflect the territorial reality on the ground.

    The post Kremlin Responds to Zelensky’s “Unhinged” Christmas address first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Long Overdue Legal Initiative: Charges of Genocide against Ukraine

    Good for Russia! And cautiously, good for international law!

    The International Criminal Court (ICJ), an institution with scant juridical credibility, which was founded under the auspices of the collective West and remains effectively under its control, has agreed to consider Russia’s submission wherein the neo-Nazi Ukrainian regime is charged with committing genocide against Ukrainian citizens, present and former, perceived by the regime and/or identifying themselves as Russians.

    That extraordinary development comes in the wake of ICJ’s indictment in March 2023 of the President of Russia and a top government official responsible for child protection for “kidnapping” Ukrainian children from the war zone and “forcibly transporting” them to the territory of Russia proper.

    The accusation against the Russian officials that ICJ had previously accepted was clearly frivolous and inspired by the propaganda needs of the Kiev regime rather than being grounded in juridical theory or facts. By contrast, the Russian submission against Ukraine, which on 5 December 2025 the ICJ found “admissible as such” and has agreed to take under consideration, is of an exceedingly serious nature.

    Ukrainian charges in the matter of the allegedly kidnapped children were characterised from the beginning by wild and inconsistent claims that gave away their propagandistic character. At one point the Kiev regime claimed that more than a million children had been abducted. As scrutiny intensified, the figure fell to 20,000, and eventually was whittled down to a few hundred. When pressed, Ukrainian authorities managed to scrape together about 350 names, most of which turned out to be adults and located not in Russia but in various European countries.

    These glaring manipulations of the “evidence” however did not deter the International Criminal Court from issuing indictments against Russian officials, thus giving in the eyes of the untutored a modicum of credence to these prima facie baseless allegations. Nor did the Court pause to reflect that transporting to safety civilians trapped in a zone of armed conflict under international law is not a war crime but a strict and non-negotiable duty. That is a well-established principle that Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan and the judges are presumed to be familiar with.

    The Russian submission filed earlier this month, by contrast to Kiev regime’s nebulous allegations, is fully consonant with international legal principles which imperatively require, in military operations theatres, “to take all feasible precautions to protect the civilian population and civilian objects against the effects of attacks.” It meticulously details the devastating and deliberately indiscriminate artillery and drone attacks against civilians in the Donbass region from 2014 to the present day and the mayhem it has caused.

    The Russian Foreign Ministry on 5 December 2025 issued a statement that outlines the gist of the Russian position:

    On November 18, 2024, the Russian side submitted to the Court [ICJ] a substantial body of evidence, exceeding 10,000 pages, which substantiates the criminal Kiev regime’s perpetration of genocide against the Russian and Russian-speaking population of Donbass. The evidentiary materials included documentation of over 140 incidents of deliberate targeting of civilians in Donbass, corroborated by testimonies from more than 300 witnesses and victims, as well as expert analyses and investigations.

    The West-backed Ukrainian government, driven by genocidal intent, employed a broad arsenal of war crimes and other violations of international law against civilians: mass murders, torture, indiscriminate bombardments, and shelling. Across Ukraine, a policy of forcibly erasing Russian ethnic identity has been implemented – banning the Russian language and culture, persecuting the Russian-speaking Orthodox Church, while simultaneously glorifying collaborators of the Third Reich and obliterating the memory of the Victory over Nazism.

    The Russian submission substantiates violations by Ukraine of the provisions of Article II of the Genocide Convention. The evidence needs to be sifted and closely examined, of course, but there is little doubt that there is a prima facie case that the Kiev regime needs to answer.

    Whether or not the Russian evidence and legal arguments can receive fair consideration in a forum as corrupt and susceptible to political pressure and blackmail as the International Criminal Court, only time will tell. But an important first step in the right direction has been taken. Whatever the ultimate outcome of the proceedings, a modest levelling of the playing field has now occurred by making it possible for Russia to also present its case, something that would have been inconceivable a short time ago.

    ICJ’s unanticipated openness to letting both sides be heard in its chambers is undoubtedly to some extent virtue signalling using a procedural mechanism which ultimately does not obligate the court to anything in particular. But even that much would not have been possible outside the context of great power negotiations to settle the conflict in Ukraine that are currently in progress. The procedural, and theoretical, admission of Russia’s case at the place and time when it occurred emits a double message. Its message to the world is that the collective West is retreating from the arrogant Ukraine-can-do-no-wrong posture that it steadfastly maintained for the last three years. The message to the illegitimate cabal that rules Ukraine is not to be overly obstructive and to better take its cash and pay heed to the demands of its sponsors.

    • Published at Global Research.

     

    The post A Long Overdue Legal Initiative: Charges of Genocide against Ukraine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Security Is Indivisible — and History Matters

    Chancellor Merz,

    You have spoken repeatedly of Germany’s responsibility for European security. That responsibility cannot be discharged through slogans, selective memory, or the steady normalization of war talk. Security guarantees are not one-way instruments. They go in both directions. This is not a Russian argument, nor an American one; it is a foundational principle of European security, explicitly embedded in the Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE framework, and decades of postwar diplomacy.

    Germany has a duty to approach this moment with historical seriousness and honesty. On that score, recent rhetoric and policy choices fall dangerously short.

    Since 1990, Russia’s core security concerns have been repeatedly dismissed, diluted, or directly violated — often with Germany’s active participation or acquiescence. This record cannot be erased if the war in Ukraine is to end, and it cannot be ignored if Europe is to avoid a permanent state of confrontation.

    At the end of the Cold War, Germany gave Soviet and then Russian leaders repeated and explicit assurances that NATO would not expand eastward. These assurances were given in the context of German reunification. Germany benefited enormously from them. The rapid unification of your country — within NATO — would not have occurred without Soviet consent grounded in those commitments. To later pretend that these assurances never mattered, or that they were merely casual remarks, is not realism. It is historical revisionism.

    In 1999, Germany participated in NATO’s bombing of Serbia, the first major war conducted by NATO without authorization from the UN Security Council. This was not a defensive action. It was a precedent-setting intervention that fundamentally altered the post–Cold War security order. For Russia, Serbia was not an abstraction. The message was unmistakable: NATO would use force beyond its territory, without UN approval, and without regard for Russian objections.

    In 2002, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of strategic stability for three decades. Germany raised no serious objection. Yet the erosion of the arms-control architecture did not occur in a vacuum. Missile-defense systems deployed closer to Russia’s borders were rightly perceived by Russia as destabilizing. Dismissing those perceptions as paranoia was political propaganda, not sound diplomacy.

    In 2008, Germany recognized Kosovo’s independence, despite explicit warnings that this would undermine the principle of territorial integrity and set a precedent that would reverberate elsewhere. Once again, Russia’s objections were brushed aside as bad faith rather than engaged as serious strategic concerns.

    The steady push to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia — formally declared at the 2008 Bucharest Summit — crossed the brightest of red lines, despite vociferous, clear, consistent, and repeated objections raised by Moscow for years. When a major power identifies a core security interest and reiterates it for decades, ignoring it is not diplomacy. It is willful escalation.

    Germany’s role in Ukraine since 2014 is especially troubling. Berlin, alongside Paris and Warsaw, brokered the February 21, 2014 agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition — an agreement intended to halt violence and preserve constitutional order. Within hours, that agreement collapsed. A violent overthrow followed. A new government emerged through extra-constitutional means. Germany recognized and supported the new regime immediately. The agreement Germany had guaranteed was abandoned without consequence.

    The Minsk II agreement of 2015 was supposed to be the corrective — a negotiated framework to end the war in eastern Ukraine. Germany again served as a guarantor. Yet for seven years Minsk II was not implemented by Ukraine. Kyiv openly rejected its political provisions. Germany did not enforce them. Former German and other European leaders have since acknowledged that Minsk was treated less as a peace plan than as a holding action. That admission alone should force a reckoning.

    Against this background, calls for ever more weapons, ever harsher rhetoric, and ever greater “resolve” ring hollow. They ask Europe to forget the recent past in order to justify a future of permanent confrontation.

    Enough with propaganda. Enough with the moral infantilization of the public. Europeans are fully capable of understanding that security dilemmas are real, that NATO actions have consequences, and that peace is not achieved by pretending that Russia’s security concerns do not exist.

    European security is indivisible. That principle means that no country can strengthen its security at the expense of another’s without provoking instability. It also means that diplomacy is not appeasement, and that historical honesty is not betrayal.

    Germany once understood this. Ostpolitik was not weakness; it was strategic maturity. It recognized that Europe’s stability depends on engagement, arms control, economic ties, and respect for the legitimate security interests of Russia.

    Today, Germany needs that maturity again. Stop speaking as if war is inevitable or virtuous. Stop outsourcing strategic thinking to alliance talking points. Start engaging seriously in diplomacy — not as a public-relations exercise, but as a genuine effort to rebuild a European security architecture that includes, rather than excludes, Russia.

    A renewed European security architecture must begin with clarity and restraint. First, it requires an unequivocal end to NATO’s eastward enlargement — to Ukraine, to Georgia, and to any other state along Russia’s borders.

    NATO expansion was not an inevitable feature of the post–Cold War order; it was a political choice, taken in violation of solemn assurances given in 1990 and pursued despite repeated warnings that it would destabilize Europe.

    Security in Ukraine will not come from the forward deployment of German, French, or other European troops, which would only entrench division and prolong war. It will come through neutrality, backed by credible international guarantees. The historical record is unambiguous: neither the Soviet Union nor the Russian Federation violated the sovereignty of neutral states in the postwar order — not Finland, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, or others. Neutrality worked because it addressed legitimate security concerns on all sides. There is no serious reason to pretend it cannot work again.

    Second, stability requires demilitarization and reciprocity. Russian forces should be kept well back from NATO borders, and NATO forces — including missile systems — must be kept well back from Russia’s borders. Security is indivisible, not one-sided. Border regions should be demilitarized through verifiable agreements, not saturated with ever more weapons.

    Sanctions should be lifted as part of a negotiated settlement; they have failed to bring peace and have inflicted severe damage on Europe’s own economy.

    Germany, in particular, should reject the reckless confiscation of Russian state assets — a brazen violation of international law that undermines trust in the global financial system. Reviving German industry through lawful, negotiated trade with Russia is not capitulation. It is economic realism. Europe should not destroy its own productive base in the name of moral posturing.

    Finally, Europe must return to the institutional foundations of its own security. The OSCE — not NATO — should once again serve as the central forum for European security, confidence-building, and arms control. Strategic autonomy for Europe means precisely this: a European security order shaped by European interests, not permanent subordination to NATO expansionism.

    France could rightly extend its nuclear deterrent as a European security umbrella, but only in a strictly defensive posture, without forward-deployed systems that threaten Russia.

    Europe should press urgently for a return to the INF framework and for comprehensive strategic nuclear arms-control negotiations involving the United States and Russia — and, in time, China.

    Most importantly, Chancellor Merz, learn history — and be honest about it. Without honesty, there can be no trust. Without trust, there can be no security. And without diplomacy, Europe risks repeating the catastrophes it claims to have learned from.

    History will judge what Germany chooses to remember — and what it chooses to forget. This time, let Germany choose diplomacy and peace, and abide by its word.

    Respectfully,

    Jeffrey D. Sachs
    University Professor
    Columbia University

    The post Security Is Indivisible — and History Matters first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Childbirth under attack: how women and babies became targets in conflicts around the world

    Guardian investigation reveals at least 119 direct attacks on hospitals and delivery wards since start of wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan

    Thirty women were sheltering in the Saudi maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, on 28 October when the massacre began. Some had just given birth and others were still in labour.

    Working at the hospital that night, lab technician Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, 28, was one of the few known survivors. “I heard the voices of women and children screaming,” he says. “They were killing everybody inside the hospital. Those of us who were able to run, did.”

    Continue reading…

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

  • Childbirth under attack: how women and babies became targets in conflicts around the world

    Guardian investigation reveals at least 119 direct attacks on hospitals and delivery wards since start of wars in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan

    Thirty women were sheltering in the Saudi maternity hospital in El Fasher, Sudan, on 28 October when the massacre began. Some had just given birth and others were still in labour.

    Working at the hospital that night, lab technician Abdo-Rabo Ahmed, 28, was one of the few known survivors. “I heard the voices of women and children screaming,” he says. “They were killing everybody inside the hospital. Those of us who were able to run, did.”

    Continue reading…

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

  • European Security Includes Russia

    Security guarantees are not one-way instruments. They go in both directions. This is not a Russian argument, nor an American one; it is a foundational principle of European security, explicitly embedded in the Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE framework, and decades of postwar diplomacy.

    Germany has a duty to approach this moment with historical seriousness and honesty. On that score, recent rhetoric and policy choices fall dangerously short.

    Since 1990, Russia’s core security concerns have been repeatedly dismissed, diluted or directly violated — often with Germany’s active participation or acquiescence.

    The post European Security Includes Russia appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Ukraine’s Race Against Russia’s New Weapons | Ukraine Front Line Update


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Confusion at NATO: Rutte, Russia, and Delusions about Trump

    It was a speech unhinged in millenarian zeal. It was unapologetically hysterical in urging war while claiming to protect peace. It was also delivered with a note of profound self-denial: the US administration’s 2025 National Security Strategy had belittled Europe’s efforts in terms of ensuring its own security, not least of all its claims to civilisational supremacy. President Donald Trump has tirelessly insisted that the continent bloat the military industrial complex and confront its demographic problems.

    From the opening, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte reflects on a piece of the Berlin Wall kept in NATO headquarters. “It was a barrier to keep people in, and ideas out. Now it is a monument to the force of freedom, a reminder of the power of unity, and a lesson that we must stay strong, confident and steadfast.” He might have gone further to explain how the collapse of the Berlin Wall was also a chance to stabilise Europe and temper the tensions with the then ailing Soviet Union. Assurances by NATO members and respective US administrations that eastward expansion toward Russia would be eschewed, were never honoured. NATO became Washington’s spear of hubris, a post-Cold War entity of triumphalism. It would only grow, making Moscow ever more anxious.

    The message is one of foaming agitation. Russia and “the dark forces of oppression” again coming to the fore. The mission of the alliance reinvigorated. Claiming that NATO was “to stop a war before it starts”, he proceeded to fan the flames. “We are Russia’s next target, and we are already in harm’s way.” Russia, a country bleeding in war, burdened by sanctions, with an economy hovering in size between Canada and Italy, would seemingly wish to plunge a continent into an infernal maelstrom.

    Rutte is wilfully blind to this point, purposely elevating the threat posed by Russia despite its loss of over 1.1 million casualties since the war’s outbreak in February 2022, with a daily average loss of 1,200 troops a day in 2025. “Think about that, more than a million casualties so far, and 1,200 a day, killed or wounded, this year alone.” Think about that, and it makes remarks that Europe had to prepare “for the scale of war our grandparents or great-parents endured” grotesque and misplaced.

    In the Rutter strategy, it becomes axiomatic to link Ukraine’s decidedly gloomy fate to that of NATO, a false link one has come to expect in that dubious, often mendacious discipline called international relations. Russia’s ambitions on Ukrainian territory become synonymous with the Kremlin’s feverish designs on Western and Central European capitals. “Allied defence spending and production must rise rapidly, our armed forces must have what they need to keep us safe, and Ukraine must have what it needs to defend itself – now.” He proudly mentions NATO allies agreeing to push defence expenditure to levels of 5% of GDP by 2035, an insular, wasteful measure. “But this is not the time for self-congratulation, I fear that too many are quietly complacent, and too many don’t feel the urgency, too many believe that time is on our side.”

    Whether by design or ignorance, Rutte’s smug civilisational rhetoric ignores the threatening shadow of Trump’s National Security Strategy, which takes aim at alleged anti-democratic practices of European states. (The phrasing here, as with much of the document, is conceptually confused and a travesty of language.) “The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition.” Peace was demanded by the European majority, “yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes.”

    The NSS comes close to dismissing Europe as an ailing patient on the verge of expiring, abominating the European Union and those “transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.”

    This can hardly sit well with Rutte and NATO’s European component, seeing as the Trump administration envisages an unrecognisable continent in the next two decades, doubting that “certain European countries will have economies strong enough to remain reliable allies.” Rarely has such an explicit statement on abandonment been made.

    The howling subtext here is Ukraine’s increasing irrelevance to US foreign policy, evident in the parallel lines of European-Ukrainian negotiations on the war, and US-Russian discussions that sup from a different cup. Washington would support European allies in preserving “freedom and security” and restore “Europe’s civilizational self-confidence and Western identity” but would have its main eyes trained on asserting and enforcing “a ‘Trump Corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine.” Latin America promises to suffer most, given this brash assertion of hemispheric domination.

    Rutte, bless him, is putting on a brave face. In an interview with the BBC following his Berlin address, he remained industriously oblivious. Trump was “good news for collective defence, for NATO and for Ukraine”. Under the US President’s stewardship, NATO was “stronger than it ever was”. Time for a dose of that stiff medication called “reality”.

    The post Confusion at NATO: Rutte, Russia, and Delusions about Trump first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukraine Says It Hit Russian Submarine


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Who’s The Dictator? Venezuela’s Maduro Or Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

    Within the narrow spectrum of establishment punditry, “dictator” functions as a term of opprobrium reserved for governments Washington designates as enemies. By this measure, Maduro is cast as the dictator, while Zelenskyy is sanctified as democratic.

    Ronald Reagan’s UN ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, wrote about a democracy “double standard” in 1979. A Democrat turned anti-communist neoconservative, she formulated a convenient rhetorical distinction. The so-called Kirkpatrick Doctrine supported “authoritarian” traditional dictatorships and opposed leftist “totalitarian regimes.”

    The post Who’s The Dictator? Venezuela’s Maduro Or Ukraine’s Zelenskyy appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Who’s the Dictator? Venezuela’s Maduro or Ukraine’s Zelenskyy

    Washington brands Nicolás Maduro a dictator, celebrates Volodymyr Zelenskyy as democratic, and sponsors María Corina Machado to achieve regime change in Venezuela rather than promote genuine democracy.

    Within the narrow spectrum of establishment punditry, “dictator” functions as a term of opprobrium reserved for governments Washington designates as enemies. By this measure, Maduro is cast as the dictator, while Zelenskyy is sanctified as democratic.

    Ronald Reagan’s UN ambassador, Jeane Kirkpatrick, wrote about a democracy “double standard” in 1979. A Democrat turned anti-communist neoconservative, she formulated a convenient rhetorical distinction. The so-called Kirkpatrick Doctrine supported “authoritarian” traditional dictatorships and opposed leftist “totalitarian regimes.”

    In its modern incarnation, the Brookings Institution argues that US geopolitical interests justify backing “friendly” autocrats while opposing “regimes” critical of Washington.

    Thus Ahmed al-Sharaa, former Al Qaeda “terrorist” and now head of Syria after a US-backed coup, was welcomed to the Trump White House. A week later, the “benevolent monarch” from a country that does not even bother to hold national elections – Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman – graced the Oval Office.

    Ukrainian exceptionalism

    What about the leader who banned opposition parties, shuttered critical media, arrested political opponents, closed trade unions, sent security forces into churches, and persecuted speakers of Ukraine’s main second language? When Zelenskyy’s term in office was set to end on May 20, 2024, he declared martial law to suspend elections.

    Yet Senate Democrats still deem Zelenskyy to be in “the front lines of democracy.” Forbes praises his “moral velocity.” NPR anoints him an “icon of democracy.”

    While Trump and company may have uttered unkind words about the Ukrainian president, follow the money. The US has showered Ukraine with $128–137 billion in aid since Trump took office.

    Ukraine is widely recognized as being caught in a war. Yet the deadly hybrid war against Venezuela is rendered invisible – reduced to merely “sanctions” against an errant regime or at most “pressure.” The latest escalation involves what are euphemistically called “kinetic strikes” on small boats, backed by the largest armada in the Caribbean since the 1961 Cuban Missile Crisis. The most recent act of war, the seizure of an oil tanker, has been condemned by the Venezuelans as “international piracy.”

    Causalities in the Ukraine war are mourned, but the over 100,000 fatalities by US sanctions in Venezuela are ignored. Both are at war and should be judged by the same standards.

    Venezuela: the exception that proves the rule

     Since Hugo Chávez’s 1998 victory and the initiation of the Bolivarian Revolution, Venezuela has held over 20 national elections. Washington deemed only the two won by the opposition as legitimate, proving the operative rule that “democracy” is attained when outcomes please the hegemon.

    Maduro first ran for president in 2013 after Chávez’s death. The US was the only country not to recognize his win.

    In 2018, Washington’s regime-change offensive of sanctions, amounting to illegal collective punishment, and other coercive measures was taking its toll. The US called a boycott of the presidential election, hoping to achieve by extra-parliamentary means what it could not attain by the ballot. Declaring the contest illegitimate six months before the actual vote, Washington even threatened opposition politician Henri Falcón with sanctions for running.

    Venezuela did not fall in 2018. Falcón came in second with 21% of the vote after Maduro, who the US again refused to recognize.

    The following year, Washington tried a new “democracy promotion” gambit. Juan Guaído, after receiving a call from Trump’s VP Michael Pence, declared himself “interim president” of Venezuela on a Caracas street corner. The 35-year-old had never run for national office. This embarrassment lasted until 2022, when Guaidó’s own opposition found him so toxic that he was given the boot.

    The making of Nobel Laureate María Corina Machado

    Ahead of the 2024 Venezuelan presidential election, Washington’s regime-change campaign had “failed.” Maduro’s resolute political leadership and the unbroken civilian-military unity had defeated Washington’s illegal measures.

    The Biden administration faced a choice: boycott again and hand Maduro an uncontested mandate, or back a candidate and thereby legitimize elections in a government it refused to recognize. Washington’s workaround was to promote a candidate who could not legally assume the presidency.

    The audition began with a US House Foreign Affairs Committee “bipartisan roundtable” in February 2024 featuring María Corina Machado as the sole opposition candidate. Machado had been disqualified in 2015 from running for public office due to treasonous activities. But the fanatical Zionist was photogenic, fluent in English, and came from one of Venezuela’s wealthiest families.

    Even so, Washington’s favorite was not a consensus candidate among those opposed to the ruling Chavista party. Widely resented, Machado belonged to the extreme insurrectionary wing in a fractious field of competing opposition groupings.

    She returned to Venezuela to stage a dubious “opposition primary,” not run by the electoral authority but by her own private NGO, Súmate, which had received NED funding. Machado claimed an implausibly lopsided victory and destroyed the ballots, eliminating any possibility of verification.

    Barred from running, Machado hand-picked Edmundo González Urrutia as her surrogate. A minor Foreign Ministry official in the 1980s, he was unknown even in right-wing circles. With Washington and the corporate press running interference, González did not even bother to leave the capital city during the campaign. Which was just a well since his platform of privatization at home and genocide in Palestine was far more popular inside the Beltway than in Venezuela.

    Predictably, both Maduro and González claimed victory. The contested election went to the Venezuelan supreme court, which required all candidates to submit their evidence proving they won. Largely underreported in the US press, González refused to submit anything, leaving no legal pathway for him to be declared president, even if he had won. Even Trump, disputing his 2020 defeat, fought it out in the courts.

    To this day, the US has not formally recognized González as president of Venezuela. Why bother when the objective of demonizing Maduro was accomplished with a help from the fourth estate.

    Propaganda gap

     As MAGA mavens might say, exporting democracy exhausted our strategic reserves at home. Masked ICE agents now have license to terrorize US cities.

    Trump rationalizes the mission against Venezuela as a war on narco-terrorism. The problem is that few buy the alibi from the world’s largest consumer of narcotics, leading drug money launderer, and top gun runner to the cartels.

    Proving the obvious, Trump sprung Juan Orlando Hernández from federal penitentiary, after the former Honduran president was convicted in US courts of aiding in the importation of over 400 tons of cocaine. Sentenced to 45 years for running a “narco-state.” Hernandez was freed in Trump’s undisguised interference in Honduras’s November 30 presidential election.

    As Trump’s hypocrisy on narco-trafficking and his weak justification for naked imperial aggression falter – and as US public opinion rejects further escalation – the corporate press has moved in to fill the propaganda gap, justifying “Maduro must go.”

    In the end, the “dictator” narrative reveals less about Venezuela or Ukraine than about Washington’s geopolitical imperatives. Media caricatures, selective indignation, and shifting standards of legitimacy validate intervention when convenient and dismiss democratic processes conflicting with US aims. Stripped of moral pretenses, the discourse reduces to a simple calculus: allies are democratic by definition, adversaries authoritarian by decree, The empire’s issue is not democracy, but domination.

    The post Who’s the Dictator? Venezuela’s Maduro or Ukraine’s Zelenskyy first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Zelenskyy Tours Kupyansk Area Russia Claims To Control | Ukraine Front Line Update


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Lord Hughes Buries the Skripals Alive

    As all cricket and football followers know, the British are bad losers.  They blame the other side or the umpire; they stampede inside the stadium, then they riot outside.

    They believe their cleverness is in getting the media to portray their defeats on the battlefield as feats of heroism. That’s been the British story against Russia from the charge of the Light Brigade in the Crimean War in 1854 to the Novichok operation of 2018. The success of both these stories as wartime propaganda has depended on public belief in little fools sitting on tall horses — noblemen whose ambition has braced them against their deceit and camouflaged their mental incapacity.

    In March 2022 Anthony Hughes was the small nobleman whom His Majesty’s Government (HMG) in Whitehall put in charge of turning a failed MI6 operation into a John Le Carré thriller in which British morality stumps Kremlin evil. Le Carré – whose real name and job were exposed by Kim Philby for the KGB — earned £100 million for his efforts; Hughes has been paid £192,110, plus £5,529 in train fares and overnight bedrooms.

    Hughes’s publication, released on December 4, runs to 126 pages, plus 47 pages of references, name lists and other appendixes.  In the direct quotes to follow from the Hughes report, the page numbers are given for each reference.


    Left: The report is at  https://dsiweb-prod.s3.eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/uploads/Web_Accessible_E03283426_Project-Orbit.pdf
    Right: Hughes presents his report on December 4, 2025. Click on the Dawn Sturgess Inquiry website for the full proceeding records and the preceding inquest archives.   

    Hughes reports how his brain has worked in the second of his conclusions at page 123: “if I state a fact, or say that it is ‘likely’, I have found it proved at least on the balance of probabilities, that is, to the ordinary civil standard adopted in UK courts. Where I say that I am ‘sure’, I have been satisfied of that fact to the level generally applied in criminal courts, that is, beyond reasonable doubt. Other expressions, such as that something is ‘possible’, do not represent findings of fact but are indications of my state of mind.”

    For forensic analysis of Hughes’s “state of mind”, the bar has been set low enough in this two-part series for the reader to judge whether what the judge adduces to be evidence is all there is; or all that is provably true independent of what Hughes has to say; or no more than the British Government has been confident Hughes would be too loyal or too incompetent to doubt.

    That Dawn Sturgess — the only person in the world to have died from a dose of the alleged Russian poison known as Novichok — was clinically dead at her apartment on June 30, 2018, by the time the paramedics arrived is one of Hughes’s certainties. “It is absolutely clear that her condition was in fact unsurvivable from a very early stage – indeed, from before the time the ambulance crew arrived to treat her. This was a result of the very serious brain injury that was itself the consequence of her heart stopping for an extended period of 30 minutes or so immediately after she was poisoned. Looking back, I am sure that no medical treatment could in fact have saved her life” [page 123].

    Hughes concludes also that he is “sure that [Alexander] Petrov and [Ruslan] Boshirov brought with them to Salisbury the ‘Nina Ricci’ bottle containing Novichok made in Russia that was subsequently responsible for Dawn Sturgess’ death.”  Hughes also claims he is sure that three Russians who were tracked by the UK security agencies had “the intention of working together to kill Sergei Skripal”; that “I am sure that Petrov and Boshirov brought with them to Salisbury the ‘Nina Ricci’ bottle containing Novichok made in Russia that was subsequently responsible for Dawn Sturgess’ death. It was probably this bottle that they used to apply poison to the door handle of Sergei Skripal’s house”.

    This slip from certainty to probability doesn’t deter Hughes’s conclusion that “there is a clear causative link between the use and discarding of the Novichok by Petrov and Boshirov, and the death of Dawn Sturgess… I am sure that, in conducting their attack on Sergei Skripal, they were acting on instructions. I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin. I therefore conclude that all those involved in the assassination attempt (not only Petrov, Boshirov and Fedotov, but also those who sent them, and anyone else giving authorisation or knowing assistance in Russia or elsewhere) were morally responsible” [page 124-125].

    “Must have been” and “morally responsible” are not the courtroom standards Hughes defined for himself. They represent the standard of beyond unreasonable doubt – British moral certainty of  Russian evil leading to the judgement of moral responsibility for that evil.

    In between reasonable doubt and unreasonable conviction – between the tested evidence and the propaganda – Hughes reveals his certainty that  in 2018 Novichok was a Russian weapon, not a British, American, Iranian, Korean or other state weapon, and that his evidence for this comes from UK officials, intelligence and propaganda agencies. “There is no reason to doubt the information made widely public by Drs Mirzayanov, Uglev and Fyodorov many years before the events which concern this Inquiry. In his letter of 13 April 2018 to the Secretary-General of NATO, Sir Mark Sedwill (then National Security Adviser, HM Government) confirmed that this open-source reporting was not only ‘credible’, but consistent with intelligence which showed that Russia continued to produce and stockpile small quantities of Novichoks in the 2000s.44 This is an issue which I considered specifically in closed session; the closed material adds further support to my conclusions” [page 13].

    This is a description of hearsay. Hughes ignores all the public evidence which contradicts it.


    For the evidence reconstructing the Skripal attack and the subsequent Sturgess death as an MI6 operation to foil Russian agents on mission to exfiltrate Sergei Skripal and return him to Russia, and the British government’s effort to mobilise public opinion for war against Russia on the Ukraine battlefield, read the only two books available here; and Tim Norman’s three-part series discrediting the Hughes hearings at Part 1, Part 2,  and  Part 3.  

    Instead, Hughes reports that “Petrov and Boshirov had the opportunity to apply the Novichok to the door handle between those times. There was a plain opportunity to do so during Trip 3…during the 16 minutes between being on camera at the Shell petrol station and re-appearing on Devizes Road. There might have been another opportunity during Trip 4… but this would have been much more restricted for time. The question of whether Counter Terrorism Policing obtained DNA and fingerprints from No. 47 was explored in the open hearings… At the request of the family of Dawn Sturgess, I enquired in closed hearings whether further detail was available. From that, I am able to conclude that there has been nothing further relating to DNA and fingerprint testing of value to the investigation to date” [page 52].

    In sum, there is no evidence of any kind that the alleged assassins put Russian Novichok on the Skripals’ door handle.

    The evidence from Yulia Skripal in hospital, in reply to questions from her treating doctor, Stephen Cockroft, was that she believed she had been sprayed with a poison by an assailant at lunch in a restaurant much later. Hughes has dismissed Skripal’s testimony. “A note in Yulia Skripal’s medical records suggests she appeared to assent to the suggestion that she had been sprayed. This is also suggested by the statement of a nurse who entered the room as the question was being asked. However, Dr Cockroft’s evidence was simply that she nodded or shook her head from time to time before the re-sedation took hold, but not that she positively agreed or disagreed with the questions asked” [page 48].

    This is false. Cockroft’s evidence was that when he asked his questions, Yulia Skripal blinked her eyes in a signal form of communication which Cockroft suggested after his patient revived from sedation,  and before orders were given to put her into a coma again.

    Hughes has dismissed this crucial evidence. “The questioning was clearly inappropriate,” he has concluded. “Materially for the Inquiry, the exchange under sedation provides no reliable evidence at all about how Yulia Skripal was exposed to the Novichok. When, in due course, she was able properly to be interviewed, she made it clear that she did not know how she came to be exposed to the Novichok” [page 49]. Hughes was lying – Skripal was not under sedation when she answered the doctor at her bedside. Hughes was fabricating when he claimed the subsequent police and security service interrogations of Skripal were the “proper” interviews.

    Hughes acknowledges there is no evidence at all that the Russian assassins came within several hundred metres of the Skripal house in order to attack the Skripals or their door handle. Instead,  Hughes has fitted into the gap in evidence of the alleged crime a judicial speculation. “There was clearly [sic] an opportunity [sic] to pass, or visit, or view Sergei Skripal’s house in that intervening 17 minutes” [page 40]; and then, minutes after the alleged murder attempt at the door handle, CCTV records of the Russians and the Skripals lead to the inference by Hughes: “the camera in Devizes Road that Petrov and Boshirov walked past at 13:40 had been passed just five minutes earlier by the Skripals, who were travelling in Sergei’s car and heading into Salisbury city centre for lunch…It follows [sic] that the two men might [sic] have been in a position to see the departure of the Skripals from their home” [page 40].

    “Might” is an untested, unverified possibility, but in Hughes’s judgement, it does more than “follow” inferentially — this is known by the technical term in jurisprudence as guesswork. Sic is legal Latin for a Hughes hunch.

    In summary, Hughes presents no evidence of the weapon in the possession of the accused murderers, no evidence of the murderers at the crime scene; no evidence that the victims, the Skripals, were directly poisoned through their hands; no evidence of the murderers’ intention to kill Sergei Skripal; and no evidence from the victims’ themselves, neither the Skripals, nor Sturgess, nor her boyfriend. Also, the chain of custody in finding and testing Novichok in a bottle on a kitchen bench, in other locations,  and in blood drawn for testing  hours, days,  and weeks after the alleged crime is so faulty as to allow tampering, fabrication,  and falsification which should have made the evidence inadmissible in Hughes’s judgement.

    As for the allegations of criminal intention on the part of the accused Russians, Hughes provides  nothing. Instead, he has detailed the intelligence service and police evidence of the paperwork preceding their flights to London; then the CCTV and telephone tracking evidence of their movements in London and Salisbury. There is no evidence of what was inside their bags; no evidence that they were carrying Novichok in one or more perfume bottles. “I do not think that it is legitimate to draw any firm conclusion from the transfer of the rucksack” [page 39], Hughes acknowledges from the available CCTV records that he neither knows what was in the bags the Russians were carrying or why.

    After they have publicly denied the charges against them, Hughes dismisses the evidence, just as he had of Yulia Skripal’s unforced testimony to her doctor.  “It has not been possible for me to investigate the reliability of these statements nor of their authors, and I do not therefore rely on them” [page 25].

    Instead, Hughes concludes he is certain that after the assassins had lethally dosed the Skripals’ door handle, at least fifteen minutes later “Sergei Skripal’s hands were contaminated with Novichok at this point” [page 18]; he then used these hands to pass bread to two boys to feed ducks in a park pond. That neither the boys nor the ducks showed any poisoning symptoms, Hughes has concluded: “given the evidence I heard regarding the toxicity of even tiny amounts of Novichok and its transmission through skin contact, as well as other routes…it may well be a matter of luck that the boy who took the bread from Sergei Skripal was not more gravely affected” [page 19]. Conviction based on the possibility of luck is generally known as superstition. As a courtroom standard in England, it ended with the Witchcraft Act of 1735.

    No direct testimony from the Skripals appears in the report. Hughes didn’t allow any cross-examination or public testimony by the Skripals on the ground that “it proved unsafe for me to require Sergei or Yulia Skripal to attend the open hearings to give oral evidence” [page 15]. Hughes fails to explain why he himself did not interview the Skripals in closed proceeding at a secret location. If the security of several dozen closed sessions had been tested to the satisfaction of the Government, of the police, and of the judge, why had he failed to test the Skripals directly? There is no answer – and from the British media has come no doubt, scepticism, or suspicion that there is an alternative explanation.


    Sources: The Guardian and BBC.  

    In the very last line of the report it is revealed that Sergei and Yulia Skripal weren’t represented by Adam Chapman at the London law firm of Kingsley Napley – motto, “when it matters most”. However, Chapman had appeared in court many times, confirming to the judge that he  was in communication with the Skripals and receiving instructions from them on what to say. Instead of Chapman, a person named Natalie Cohen has now been listed by Hughes as doing that job.

    According to her law firm resumé, until 2024 Cohen had spent her career as a state employee litigating for government ministries and official agencies in court cases.   In Cohen’s career advertisements and in the Hughes report, Cohen claims no credit for representing the Skripals in the proceedings.  If she had, she would have been lying.


    Source: The Dawn Sturgess Inquiry, page 174.

    Instead, buried in the very small print of a notice issued by Hughes in April 2024, he recorded that Chapman had told him he was retiring and that in his place Chapman was nominating Cohen to represent the Skripals. Note – Chapman nominated Cohen; the Skripals did not; Hughes didn’t care.

    “I know how Government and policy making works from the inside will hopefully be a valuable perspective for clients,” Cohen announced in a selfie for Kingsley Napley.  Her record reveals cases for the regional police. In the Grok summary, “her expertise focused on defending government decisions against claims of unlawfulness, procedural unfairness, or breaches of human rights under the Human Rights Act 1998.”

    There is no evidence that the Skripals knew Cohen or agreed to have such a state lawyer represent them. “Accordingly”, Hughes recorded, “I am satisfied that Sergei Skripal and Yulia Skripal have appointed Natalie Cohen as their qualified lawyer.”

    “The lie told often enough becomes the truth” – Vladimir Lenin recognised the method of state propaganda long before Adolph Hitler and then Joseph Goebbels adopted it, claiming they were following the method of Winston Churchill.  Lord Hughes of Ombersley is small fry by comparison; his report is nothing new. Lenin’s heirs turn out to have the antidote.

    To be continued in Part 2 to follow.

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  • Helmet Cam Footage Of American Soldier Capturing Russians In Ukraine Goes Viral


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

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  • “The Days of the United States Propping Up the Entire World Order Like Atlas Are Over.”

    On Thursday, the White House released the new National Security Strategy for the United States. Others may well give it a different read, but here is my quick take:

    The document is ghoulish, abhorrent, repetitious, and sometimes incoherent, but I found its honesty refreshing. The mask is torn off sanctimonious bullshit, tall tales about spreading democracy and caring about human rights. The US is “not grounded in traditional political idealism,” but by “America First.” (P.8) A bit of the usual boilerplate is here, but for the most part, the ideological cover is gone.

    Dan Caldwell, onetime advisor to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, applauded the new American military restraint, saying, “For too long, delusion undergirded our foreign policy, delusion about America’s role in the world, delusion about our interests, and delusion about what we can achieve through military force. This is a reality-based document in that regard.” (NY Times,12/7/2025)

    In place of pretense, the document spells out what US policy has always been about: undisguised economic nationalism — whatever benefits American grifter capitalism. All this unexpected candor required the New York Times to lamentably and hypocritically describe the new doctrine as “Security Strategy Focused on Profit, Not Spreading Democracy.” Going further, General Wesley Clark, former NATO Commander, joined in by saying that “The United States has sacrificed the magic of America. For 250 years, America lived the dream that we gave to all mankind. And we acted to protect that. The rules-based international order has served us so well.” Yes, he actually said that…

    Here are a few specifics from a document that, without explicitly saying so, recognizes that the US is a declining power and must accommodate that reality

    Ukraine: The US must press for an “expeditious cessation of hostilities.” This is as clear a public admission that we’re going to see from Trump that the US proxy war is lost. Ukraine will not be joining NATO; the organization must cease being a “perpetually expanding alliance.” The US should also “re-establish strategic stability with Russia.” This section states that “The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over.” One detects Vance’s input here.

    The Middle East: The US will recede from the Middle East. There will be “No more” decades of nation-building wars, even as the area remains an area of “partnership, friendship, and investment.” The document also states that “We seek good and peaceful relations with other countries without imposing on them democratic or other changes that differ widely from their traditions and histories.” This falls under a section called “Flexible Realism.”

    Europe: The US evidences contempt for Europe. As recently as last Wednesday, Trump said, “The European Union was founded to screw the United States.” The document asserts that Europe faces “civilization erasure” in 20 years, in large measure because immigration will make it “non-European.” Further, Europe must learn to “stand on its own feet” and “We expect our allies to spend far more on their Gross National Product (GDP) on their own defense to start making up for the enormous imbalances over decades of much greater spending by the United States.” This refers to Washington’s demand that European allies spend 5% of their GDP on defense.

    Latin America: The United States will reassert its preeminence in the region, a development referred to as “The Trump Corollary” to the 1823 Monroe Doctrine. Hemispheric competitors will be prevented from owning and controlling energy facilities, ports, and telecommunication networks. The goal is to make the Western Hemisphere an increasingly attractive market for American commerce and investment. In accordance with this objective, US diplomats in the region are to seek out “major business opportunities in their country, especially major government contracts.” And they should be “sole-source contracts for our companies.” I sense that profits from the Western Hemisphere are expected to offset a shortfall elsewhere. There is an unmistakable message here that Latin American countries will no longer retain their sovereignty.

    China: As nearly as I can tell, the document cautions that war over Taiwan should be avoided because it would have “major implications for the US economy.” Further, “Our allies must step up and spend — and more importantly do — much more for collective defense.” The document refers to establishing a “mutually advantageous relationship with China.”

    Finally.

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  • If Trump Is Serious About Peace, Marco Rubio Has to Go

    Donald Trump campaigned on ending endless wars and now boasts that he has resolved eight wars. In reality, this claim is delusional, and his foreign policy is a disaster. The United States remains mired in ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, and now Trump is careening blindly into new wars in Latin America.

    The dangerous disconnect between Trump’s delusions and the real-world impacts of his policies is on full display in his new National Security Strategy document. But this schism has been exacerbated by putting U.S. foreign policy in the hands of Secretary of State Marco Rubio, whose neocon worldview and behind-the-scenes maneuvering has consistently undercut Trump’s professed goals of diplomacy, negotiated settlements and “America First” priorities.

    The eight wars Trump claims he has ended include non-existent wars between Egypt and Ethiopia, and Serbia and Kosovo, and the war between Armenia and Azerbaijan that ended in 2023, after Azerbaijan invaded and ethnically cleansed the ancient Armenian community of Nagorno-Karabakh. Trump stole credit for peace between Thailand and Cambodia, which was actually mediated by Malaysia, while India insists that it ended its war with Pakistan without help from Trump.

    Trump recently invited the presidents of Rwanda and the DRC to Washington to sign a peace deal, but it’s only the latest of many agreements that have failed to end decades of war and proxy war that rage on in the eastern Congo.

    Trump even claims to have brought peace to Iran, which was not at war until he and Netanyahu plotted to attack it. Now diplomacy with Iran is dead—torpedoed by Trump’s treacherous use of negotiations as cover for the U.S.-Israeli surprise attack in June, an illegal war right out of Rubio’s neocon playbook.

    Rubio has undermined diplomacy with Iran for years. As a senator, he worked to kill the JCPOA nuclear agreement, framed negotiations as appeasement, and repeatedly demanded harsher sanctions or military action. He defended the U.S. and Israeli attacks in June, which confirmed the claims of Iranian hardliners that the United States cannot be trusted. He makes meaningful talks with Iran impossible by insisting that Iran cease all nuclear enrichment and long-range missile development.  By aligning U.S. policy with Israel’s, Rubio closed off the only path that has ever reduced tensions with Iran: sustained, good-faith diplomacy.

    Trump’s eighth claimed peace agreement was his Gaza “peace plan,” under which Israel still kills and maims Palestinians every day and allows only 200 truckloads per day of food, water, medicine, and relief supplies into Gaza. With Israeli forces still occupying most of Gaza, no country is sending troops to join Trump’s “stabilization force,” nor will Hamas disarm and leave its people defenseless. Israel still calls the shots, and will only allow rebuilding in Israeli-occupied areas.

    As secretary of state, it was Marco Rubio’s job to negotiate peace and an end to the occupation of Palestine. But Rubio’s entire political career has been defined by unwavering support for Israel and corrupted by over a million dollars from pro-Israel donor groups like AIPAC. He refuses to speak to Hamas, insisting on its total isolation and destruction.

    Rubio even refuses to negotiate with the weakest, most compromised, but still internationally recognized, Palestinian Authority. In the Senate, he worked to defund and delegitimize the PA, and now he insists it should play no role in Gaza’s future, but he offers no alternative. Contrast this with China, which recently convened fourteen Palestinian factions for dialogue. With a U.S. secretary of state who won’t talk to any Palestinian actors, the United States is only supporting endless war and occupation.

    Ukraine is not on Trump’s list of “eight wars,” but it is the conflict he most loudly promised to end on day one. Trump took his first steps to resolve the crisis in Ukraine with phone calls with Putin and Zelenskyy on February 12, 2025. War Secretary Pete Hegseth told a meeting of America’s NATO allies in Brussels that the U.S. was taking Ukraine’s long-promised NATO membership off the table, and that “we must start by recognizing that returning to Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders is an unrealistic objective. Chasing this illusionary goal will only prolong the war and cause more suffering.”

    Zelenskyy and his European backers are still trying to persuade Trump that, with his support, they can win back at the negotiating table what Ukraine and its western allies lost by their tragic decision to reject a negotiated peace in April 2022. Russia was ready to withdraw from all the land it had just occupied, but the U.S. and U.K. persuaded NATO and Ukraine to instead embark on this long war of attrition, in which their negotiating position only grows weaker as Ukraine’s losses mount.

    On November 21st, Trump unveiled a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine that was built around the policy Trump and Hegseth had announced in February: no NATO membership, and no return to pre-2014 borders. But once Rubio arrived to lead the U.S. negotiating team in talks in Geneva, he let Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and the Europeans put NATO membership and Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders back on the table.

    This was a poison pill to deliberately undermine the basic concept of Ukrainian neutrality that Russia insists is the only way to resolve the security dilemma facing both NATO and Russia and ensure a stable and lasting peace. As a European official crowed to Politico, “Things went in the right direction in Geneva. Still a work in progress, but looking much better now… Rubio is a pro who knows his stuff.”

    Andriy Yermak, who led Ukraine’s negotiating team in Geneva, has now been fired in a corruption scandal, reportedly at Trump’s behest, as has Trump’s envoy to Kyiv, Keith Kellogg, who apparently leaked Trump’s plan to the press.

    Trump is facing a schism in his foreign policy team that echoes his first term, when he appointed a revolving door of neocons, retired generals and arms industry insiders to top jobs. This time, he has already fired his first National Security Advisor, Mike Waltz, several NSC staff, and now General Kellogg,

    Trump’s team on Ukraine now includes Vice President J.D. Vance, Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner, Deputy National Security Advisor Andy Baker and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, who all seem to be on board with the basic policy that Trump and Hegseth announced in February.

      But Rubio is keeping alive European hopes of a ceasefire that postpones negotiations over NATO membership and Ukraine’s borders for a later date, to allow NATO to once again build, arm and train Ukrainian forces to retake its lost territories by force, as it did from 2015 to 2022 under cover of the MInsk Accords.

    This raises the questions: Does Rubio, like the Europeans and the neocons in Congress, still back the Biden-era strategy of fighting a long proxy war to the last Ukrainian? And if so, is he now in fact working to undermine Trump’s peace efforts?

    Ray McGovern, the founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, thinks so, writing “…we are at the threshold on Ukraine, at the beginning of a consequential battle between the neocons and Europeans on one side, and Donald Trump and the realists on the other. Will Trump show the fortitude to see this through and overcome his secretary of state?”

    But it’s perhaps in Latin America where Rubio is playing the most aggressive role. Rubio has always promoted regime-change policies, economic strangulation, and U.S. interference targeting left-leaning governments in Latin America. Coming from a conservative Cuban familiy, he has long been one of the most hard-line voices in Washington on Cuba, championing sanctions, opposing any easing of the embargo, and working to reverse Obama-era diplomatic openings.

    His position on Venezuela is similar. He was a leading architect of the Trump administration’s failed “maximum pressure” campaign against Venezuela, promoting crippling sanctions that devastated civilians, while openly endorsing failed coups and military threats.

    Now Rubio is pushing Trump into a catastrophic, criminal war with Venezuela. In early 2025, Trump’s administration briefly pursued a diplomatic track with Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, spearheaded by envoy Richard Grenell. But Marco Rubio’s hard-line, pressure-first approach gradually overtook the negotiation channel: Trump suspended talks in October 2025, and U.S. policy shifted toward intensified sanctions and military posturing.

    Rubio’s hostility extends across the region: he has attacked progressive leaders in Colombia, Chile, Bolivia, Honduras, and Brazil, while supporting authoritarians aligned with U.S. and Israeli interests. While Trump has warmed to Brazil’s president Lula and craves access to its reserves of rare earth elements, the second largest after China’s, Lula has no illusions about Rubio’s hostility and has refused to even meet with him.

    Rubio’s approach is the opposite of diplomacy. He refuses engagement with governments he dislikes, undermines regional institutions, and encourages Washington to isolate and punish rather than negotiate. Instead of supporting peace agreements—such as Colombia’s fragile accords or regional efforts to stabilize Haiti—he treats Latin America as a battleground for ideological crusades.

    Rubio’s influence has helped block humanitarian relief, deepen polarization, and shatter openings for regional dialogue. A Secretary of State committed to peace would work with Latin American partners to resolve conflicts, strengthen democracy, and reduce U.S. militarization in the hemisphere. Rubio does the reverse: he inflames tensions, sabotages diplomacy, and pushes U.S. policy back toward the dark era of coups, blockades, proxy wars and death squads.

    So why is Trump betraying his most loyal MAGA supporters, who take his promises to “end the era of endless wars” at face value? Why is his administration supporting the same out-of-control American war machine that has run rampant around the world since the rise of neocons like Dick Cheney and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s?

    Is Trump simply unable to resist the lure of destructive military power that seduces every American president? Trump’s MAGA true believers would like to think that he and they represent a rejection of American imperialism and a new “America First” policy that prioritizes national sovereignty and shared domestic prosperity. But MAGA leaders like Marjorie Taylor Green can see that is not what Trump is delivering.

    U.S. secretaries of state wield considerable power, and Trump is not the first president to be led astray by his secretary of state. President Eisenhower is remembered as a champion of peace, for quickly ending the Korean War – then slashing the military budget – and for two defining speeches at the beginning and end of his presidency: his “Chance for Peace” speech after the death of Soviet premier Josef Stalin in 1953; and his Farewell Address in 1960, in which he warned Americans against the “unwarranted influence” of the “military-industrial complex.”

    For most of his presidency though, Eisenhower gave his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, free rein to manage U.S. foreign policy. By the time Eisenhower fully grasped the dangers of Dulles’ brinksmanship with the U.S.S.R. and China, the Cold War arms race was running wild. Then Eisenhower’s belated outreach to the Soviets was interrupted by his own ill-health and the U-2 crisis. Hillary Clinton had a similarly destructive and destabilizing impact on Obama’s first-term foreign policy, in Afghanistan, Iran, Libya, Syria and Honduras.

    These should be cautionary tales for Trump. If he really wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, not a warmonger, he had better make the necessary personnel changes to his inner circle before it is too late. War with Venezuela is easily avoidable, since the whole world already knows the U.S. pretexts for war are fabricated and false. Rubio has stoked the underlying tensions and led this escalating campaign of lies, threats and murders, so Trump would be wise to replace him before his march to war crosses the point of no return.

    This would allow Trump and Rubio’s successor to start rebuilding relations with our neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean, and to finally change longstanding U.S. policies that keep the Middle East, and now Ukraine, trapped in endless war.

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  • The Agony of Defeat

    A peaceful settlement of the Ukraine conflict is not in the cards. It is a logical impossibility given the following truths

    1.     America’s leaders could not tolerate terms minimally acceptable to Russia. For such terms would represent a) an unmistakable loss of status and self-regard; b) a reversion from the strategic foundations of the country’s foreign policy put firmly in place over the past 35 years; and c) a domestic political embarrassment carrying heavy costs for Trump and his movement. Furthermore, Trump’s narcissistic, warped personality is too vulnerable to endure a rebuke and a failure of that magnitude. He is terrified at the prospect of looking like a loser.

    2.     Currently, there is not a single official at the policy level who has direct knowledge of Russia or has dealt with it on a sustained basis. Similarly, there is not a single official at the policy level who has the experience of having conducted serious diplomacy with foreign powers. Ignorant amateurs wedded to a rigid conception of American national interest are at the helm. A crew made up of a New York real estate operator who draws heavy financing from the Qatari government, a FOX news loudmouth, a Castro-obsessed Miami pol and an opportunistic novice Veep is in so far over their heads that the bubbles don’t reach the surface – and their skipper is an erratic, mentally impaired narcissist whose hold on reality is tenuous.

    The fixed goal of everything that the United States does in the world is the securing of American dominance as institutionalized since 1991 – in every sphere of international life that counts and in every region where either the stakes are high or the prospect of a putative rival arising exists. To that end, they are prepared to use all the formidable means available to them. There is no group or intellectual current of weight whose worldview deviates markedly from this line in either political party, in Congress or among prominent members of the foreign policy community.

    3.     Therefore, the United States in Ukraine has stranded itself in a cul de sac that is strategic, political, intellectual and psychological. Trump’s so-called 28 Point peace proposal – a pastiche of the not-so-good, the very bad, and the very ugly – is an absurd non-starter. Dead on arrival in Moscow whoever the delivery man. When he finally realizes that he is cornered, Trump’s first instinct will be to bluster his way out; that failing, to forcibly fight his way out. Only the pervasive, unlimited capacity for self-delusion hides that unyielding fact. Self-delusion is the cardinal feature of the faux diplomatic initiatives that the White House is desperately trying to make real – over the strenuous objections of Kiev and the European allies who have succeeded in stiffening its provisions so they are yet more unpalatable to Moscow.

    4.     Vladimir Putin, and his associates, tacitly feed this delusion by taking a calculatingly temperate tack in reaction to this non-starter of a “peace” plan despite Washington’s quixotic and bumbling machinations. Whether they do so to satisfy partners (China, India, Turkey, Brazil) who for their own national reasons want to see an end to the war and whose cooperation is valued OR due to Putin’s long-standing and enduring hopes of engaging constructively with the United States, their non-confrontational approach carries the risk of entrenching the Americans’ fantastical view of the world. So that when crunch time comes, and humiliating defeat is at the door, they might revert to type and impulse by resorting to the violent, escalatory option.

    Far-fetched? For some time, the Kremlin may well have been emboldening Washington to consider escalation by passively accepting that hundreds of American military personnel are firing American HIMARS and ACATM missiles into Russia proper, that American AWACS and satellites guide Ukrainian attacks against strategic radar sites, that analogous technical assistance allows for assault on Russia’s “shadow” oil fleet, that the Pentagon draws up the battle plans for the Ukrainian army and orchestrated the ill-starred 2023 offensive, that the CIA implanted itself along the country’s border to provide Kiev Intelligence and to facilitate para-military operations. This passive behavior has led many within Washington policy circles to believe that Putin is lacking in ruthlessness – whatever his other strengths. That impression has been reinforced by Russian restraint on Syria, Iran, Palestine and Venezuela when the Kremlin was confronted by audacious, in-your-face American actions. The conclusion that Putin is not a ruthless leader is probably correct – although incorrect in the corollary assumption that he would allow himself to be bullied into major concessions when push comes to shove over Ukraine. Putin’s reading of the Trump presidency is that the man’s mercurial nature and unpredictability potentially opens the possibility for some kind of meeting of the minds which was foreclosed by more conventional American leaders like Biden. A stable Russo-American modus vivendi, in turn, is the sine qua non for a longer-term reconciliation of Russia within the wider European system.

    Another consideration. In all likelihood, there lurks in the back of Putin’s mind the dread fear that an unhinged Trump, roiling in the coils of his twisted psyche, could do something truly insane that endangers all. Keeping company with him – however tenuous – is seen as mitigating that risk by ensuring that Trump didn’t disconnect from reality totally.

    What he fails to perceive is that behind the showmanship and disconnects, Trump’s outlook on the world – especially the fixed belief in the country’s superiority and privileged exceptionalism – at its core closely resembles that of the Washington consensus. Scratch beneath the surface and we experience deja vu all over again – decked out in novel costume.

    Looking beyond Ukraine, bear in mind that this government, in less than a year, has established a stunning record for bellicosity: launching a massive air assault against Iran with no legal or security justification (an aggression concealed by a deceptive veil of fictitious peace talks); lending its military might and diplomatic muscle to Israel’s attacks on Lebanon and Syria followed by partial territorial seizures; participating in the Palestinian genocide; declaring war on Venezuela behind a smokescreen of transparent lies to hide the actual objective of taking control of the country’s petroleum resources; encouraging the newly minted Japanese government of ultra-nationalist Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to make the reckless declaration that Japan had a strategic national interest in Taiwan’s independence and, if necessary, defense; imposing or threatening coercive economic sanctions on an array of countries suspected of disobedience to  Washington.

    5.     Domestic criticism of Trump’s mishandling of the United States’ foreign relations is feeble. The Democratic Party leaders share the same worldview (re. the Biden administration – and are inhibited about crossing swords with Trunp on any issue. The MSM have been intimidated into subservience to the point where even the most egregious lies and illegal actions are not labelled as such. Examples: the global tariff wars that are in direct violation of the Constitution (Article I, Section 8) that grants Congress the power “To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” which includes the authority to set tariffs on imported goods – with statutory exemptions limited to national security emergencies; the promiscuous use of the armed forces without even prior notification of the Congress; the ridiculous tale about Venezuela’s fishing skiffs delivering drugs only 800 miles off the U.S. coast, , the condition of Russia’s economy, the Afghan who shot the two National Guardsman – a CIA commando trained to fight a dirty war against the Taliban – as reason to suspend all asylum petitions,  the destruction of the Nordstrom II gas pipeline, the denunciation as ‘traitor’ anyone who reminds serving military officers that they are bound by the Department of Defense’s manual stipulating codes of conduct as well as international law to refuse a manifestly illegal order. Hence, the public is instilled with the notion that there is nothing out-of-the-ordinary about the Trump dangerous escapades and inanities.

    A conscientious follower of the MSM remains largely oblivious to the meaning and consequence of these matters. Superficial and fleeting mention of tactical differences or disagreements over the grammar of policy elbows out any serious critical commentary. Therefore, tolerance is high, electoral costs abnormally low and the President’s ability to act with feckless impunity unimpeded.

    The United States is being defeated in Ukraine – comprehensively. One could say that it is facing defeat – or, more starkly, that it is staring defeat in the face. Neither formulation is appropriate, though. The U.S. doesn’t look reality squarely in the eye. We prefer to look at the world through the distorted lenses of our delusions. We plunge forward on whatever path we’ve chosen while averting our eyes from the topography that we are trying to traverse.

    It is not that America is a stranger to defeat. We are very well acquainted with it: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Mali – in strategic terms if not always military terms. To this broad category, we might add Venezuela, Cuba, Belarus, Georgia and Niger. Moreover, Washington’s failures are now crowned by its embarrassment at being forced to run up the white flag when China stared it down in the Trump initiated tariff war. That rich experience in frustrated ambition has failed to liberate us from the deeply rooted habit of eliding defeat. Indeed, we have acquired a large inventory of methods for doing so.

    Vietnam being the prime example. A society that so thoroughly can erase from the collective mind a Vietnam where 59,000 Americans died, surely can suppress Ukraine where no deaths are recorded.

    The post The Agony of Defeat first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Ukraine – Roadblocks To A Peace Agreement

    The new U.S. National Security Strategy says with regard to Ukraine:

    It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.

    The U.S. is pressing forward with that mission. With the help of the Ukrainian anti-corruption vertical (the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), the Specialized Anti-corruption Prosecutor Office (SAPO) and the High Anti-Corruption Court (HACC) – all created by the U.S. after the 2014 Maidan coup) it has removed Andreij Yermak from his position as the head of the president’s office.

    The next step is to press the acting President Vladimir Zelensky to agree to a peace agreement with Moscow. This will require him to give up land that the Ukrainian army is still holding.

    The post Ukraine – Roadblocks To A Peace Agreement appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Trump Ukraine Plan AOA (Alive On Arrival)

    Despite widespread rejection and ridicule in Western media of Donald Trump’s peace proposal on Ukraine being “dead on arrival” in Moscow, there was Trump’s envoy and his son-in-law discussing the “dead” document for five hours until midnight on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.

    Yury Ushakov, Putin’s chief aide on Ukraine, in the official readout, said the two sides discussed several options, including territorial issues, and agreed to continue contacts.

    “We did not discuss specific formulations, specific American proposals, but discussed the very essence of what is embedded in these American documents.

    The post Trump Ukraine Plan AOA (Alive On Arrival) appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Trump Ukraine Plan AOA (Alive On Arrival)

    Despite widespread rejection and ridicule in Western media of Donald Trump’s peace proposal on Ukraine being “dead on arrival” in Moscow, there was Trump’s envoy and his son-in-law discussing the “dead” document for five hours until midnight on Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.

    Yury Ushakov, Putin’s chief aide on Ukraine, in the official readout, said the two sides discussed several options, including territorial issues, and agreed to continue contacts.

    “We did not discuss specific formulations, specific American proposals, but discussed the very essence of what is embedded in these American documents.

    The post Trump Ukraine Plan AOA (Alive On Arrival) appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Police Race To Evacuate Pokrovske Families As Russia Closes In | Ukraine Front Line Update


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

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Global Arms Revenue Reached Record High Last Year With US Companies in the Lead

    An annual report out Monday that tracks global arms sales shows that weapons makers in 2024 generated more revenue than at any time since the group behind the research began tracking the data over 35 years ago. The annual report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) shows that the top 100 weapons makers in the world — led by those in the United States — brought in a…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • What Defeat Looks Like

    European leaders are in panic mode. They are scrambling to ensure that Trump’s 28-point peace plan that they believe favours Russia can be revised to give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an equal say alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    This is delusional thinking. Whether or not Zelensky and his U.S./NATO allies, who have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into this conflict care to accept it, Russia is the indisputable victor in this terrible 14-year war, beginning with the 2014 Ukrainian civil war, which Russia entered in 2022.

    Moscow will call the shots when it finally ends. As in Potsdam at the end of WWII, the only path forward now is working out the terms of defeat.

    The post What Defeat Looks Like appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • The Neocon-Realist War Over Ukraine

    Donald Trump made some revealing remarks to the media as he flew to Florida for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Asked if he thought Ukraine is being asked to give too much land to Russia in his proposal to end the war, Trump responded:

    “It’s clearly up to the Russians. It’s moving in one direction. … That’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway. So, do you want to fight and loose another 50,000 or 60,000 people? Or do something now? They are negotiating; they are trying to get it done.”

    That’s the same realistic approach Trump’s new special envoy to Ukraine, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, took with the Ukrainians and Europe’s so-called “coalition of the willing” during a visit to Kiev earlier this week.

    The post The Neocon-Realist War Over Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • Trump’s Peace With NATO Reinforces Its Purpose: US-Led Global Hegemony

    This October, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth dominated the NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels, while pressuring Europeans to assume an even heavier share of the defense burden. Referring to his peers as “ministers of war,” Hegseth demanded that member states purchase additional U.S. arms for Ukraine. “All countries need to translate goals into guns,” he hammered home. “That’s all that matters…

    Source

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • Putin ‘Optimistic’ On US Peace Plan, Calls Zelensky ‘Illegitimate’

    Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on 27 November that the Kremlin generally agrees that the 28-point US peace plan for Ukraine could form a basis for an agreement, while at the same time calling Ukraine’s leadership illegitimate.

    “In general, we agree that this could be the basis for future agreements,” he said while speaking to reporters at the conclusion of a visit to Kyrgyzstan.

    “It would be impolite of me to talk about any final options now, as there aren’t any. But some things are fundamental,” Putin said.

    The post Putin ‘Optimistic’ On US Peace Plan, Calls Zelensky ‘Illegitimate’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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  • New Russian Fighter Destroys “Patriots” Days after Delivery from Germany

    In the unforgiving battlefields of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, the Kiev regime is yet to learn that any perceived superiority complex is nothing but that – a set of dangerous delusions that may seem “real” (or even “crystal clear”, “natural”, etc). Probably the most dangerous of such delusions is the near-total disregard of Moscow’s military might due to the Neo-Nazi junta’s stubborn refusal to accept battlefield realities, one of which has a name – the Su-30SM2. Russia’s latest upgrade to the legendary Su-30SM, the “Flanker-H” (its NATO reporting name) is part of a long line of Su-30 series, by far the most successful commercial Su-27 derivative.

    For Moscow, in addition to the legendary Su-35S and MiG-31BM, the Su-30SM is instrumental in maintaining not only air superiority, but also conducting SEAD (suppression of enemy air defenses) missions, drone hunting, etc. However, one of the most pressing issues faced by the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) is the diversity of the “Flanker” fleet. Although the expected advantage of determining which is best suited for a certain role and then perfecting the said role, this significantly complicates maintenance, logistics, training, etc. This is why the VKS made a decision to start upgrading the Su-30SM to the SM2 standard, bringing the jet much closer to the capabilities of the Su-35S.

    The two core components of this upgrade are the AL-41F1S jet engine (the AL-41F1 variant is used by the Su-57 before the wider introduction of the next-generation AL-51F1) and the N035 “Irbis”, a hybrid PESA/AESA (passive/active electronically scanned array) radar. As previously mentioned, this not only improves the Su-30SM/SM2’s capabilities, but it also makes the jet much easier to maintain. In addition, the extended service life of the engines makes them cheaper and safer in the long term, while the updated avionics contribute to not only superior capabilities, but also much better interoperability (especially with the Su-35S).

    The introduction of the Su-30SM2 marked a pivotal moment, which was bad news for the political West that decided to respond by sending additional SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, specifically the extremely overhyped and exorbitantly overpriced US-made “Patriot”.

    Germany officially donated the latest batch, praising it as “instrumental in defending Ukrainian democracy”. However, barely a day or so after the delivery, the Su-30SM2’s combat debut over NATO-occupied Ukraine turned out to be a total disaster for the “Patriot”. Military sources report that a daring SEAD mission was launched, destroying the latest batch of US/NATO’s air defense “crown jewels”.

    The operation, executed with unspecified precision-guided munitions (most likely the ramjet-powered Kh-31P supersonic anti-radiation missile) launched from standoff ranges, reportedly neutralized critical components of the system, including its multifunctional radar and launchers. The operation highlights the Su-30SM2’s enhanced capabilities, particularly its integration of advanced avionics and weapon systems that allow it to evade and overwhelm sophisticated air defenses. The more advanced engines provide at least 15% more thrust, giving it additional energy and contributing to the increase in range and payload capacity, also improving its loitering capabilities.

    The latest success against the “Patriot” comes at a time when the Kiev regime is begmanding more air defense systems, to which several NATO member states responded by buying more US-made SAM systems. In a move reportedly coordinated with Denmark and Norway, Berlin transferred at least six “Patriot” systems to the Neo-Nazi junta, costing billions. Obviously, European taxpayers will foot the bill for what President Donald Trump said was “good business for America”. Given the fact that the Russian military already destroyed dozens of “Patriot” systems in NATO-occupied Ukraine, all Washington DC needs to worry about is making money (its reputation is ruined anyway).

    Namely, a single interceptor missile of the latest PAC-3 variant costs $7 million. Just one launcher can hold up to 12, which means a full load of missiles costs $84 million. There are up to eight launchers per battery, bringing the total value of interceptors to $672 million. This is without even considering the cost of all components of the battery (upward of $2.5 billion). The Russian military has wiped out dozens of such batteries, so do the math on how much money the troubled EU is spending so it could keep arming the Neo-Nazi junta with these US-made air defense systems. Although it had some initial success, the “Patriot” is now a relatively easy prey for the Kremlin.

    The Russian military drastically improved its tactics by using decoys and high-precision attacks, forcing the “Patriot” operators (many of whom are undoubtedly NATO personnel) into reactive modes, which makes it easier for strike aircraft (such as the Su-34) to conduct their missions. The Su-30SM2’s precision strike serves as a stark reminder that no defense is impenetrable, forcing the Kiev regime to disperse its air defense assets, which dilutes coverage, further eroding their capabilities and impact. On the other hand, by upgrading its Su-30SM fleet to the SM2 standard, Moscow significantly expanded its already impressive strike capabilities.

    Unlike the Su-35S, which was designed primarily as an air superiority fighter with secondary strike capabilities, the Su-30 is a true multirole platform. In addition, the Su-35S is more expensive, as it was designed to counter the American F-22 “Raptor” and other Western air superiority fighter jets. With the latest upgrade to the SM2 standard, the VKS effectively got a jet that’s around 75-80% as capable as the Su-35S while being at least 35-40% cheaper. This indicates that Russia retains a massive advantage in the effectiveness of its “economy of war” concept, which requires weapon systems to be affordable without a significant loss in capabilities.

    The post New Russian Fighter Destroys “Patriots” Days after Delivery from Germany first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Trump defends envoy after leak shows him coaching Russian official

    Donald Trump has once again shown us exactly why he is not fit to lead one of the most powerful countries in the world.

    An unknown source leaked the recordings of two telephone conversations. One appears to show Trump’s special envoy, Steve Witkoff, advising Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s most senior foreign policy aide, on how to appeal to the president.

    And of course, Trump has defended him. He said it was the “standard thing”.

    According to the BBC, Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he hadn’t heard the audio, but he was “doing what a dealmaker does” to sell his peace plan to both Russia and Ukraine.

    The leak emerged after the US presented its 28-point draft peace plan.

    The other leaked recording is a phone call between Mr Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, Mr Putin’s economic adviser. It seems to suggest that the Kremlin created the 28-point plan, which Trump then presented as his own.

    As the Telegraph reported, Mr Dmitriev allegedly said during the call:

    I think we’ll just make this paper from our position, and I’ll informally pass it along, making it clear that it’s all informal

    And let them do like their own. But, I don’t think they’ll take exactly our version, but at least it’ll be as close to it as possible.

    The Telegraph then added that he suggested “talking to Steve about this paper” — which is an apparent reference to Witkoff.

    Mr Dmitriev claimed the transcript was fake.

    Trump—Quick to defend

    Republicans called for Trump to remove Witkoff from the Ukraine-Russia peace negotiations. However, Trump was quick to defend him.

    Russia has, of course, denied leaking the recording.

    An unknown source leaked the US-backed peace plan last week. It included giving Russia some Ukrainian-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine. It has been widely criticised for being too Russian-focused and has now been heavily edited. However, Zelensky still wants to negotiate with Trump on the territorial concessions. He has asked the president for a meeting “as soon as possible”

    The US is arguing that the current trajectory of the war means that, eventually, Russia will take that land anyway.

    From Trump’s refusal to criticise Putin during his 2016 election campaign, to surrounding himself with people known to be friends and business associates of Russia — it is clear that Trump’s relationship with Russia has always been a little too special. And now, it seems that Ukraine is going to pay the price of that friendship.

    Featured image via HG

    By HG

    This post was originally published on Canary.

  • UK Planning Smear Campaign against Trump – Russian Intelligence

    London is counting on arms contracts fueling the Ukraine conflict and won’t let the US just put and end to it, the SVR has warned.
    UK planning smear campaign against Trump – Russian intelligence© Getty Images / Win McNamee; pcruciatti

    Britain is preparing a smear campaign aimed at damaging US President Donald Trump’s reputation in order to derail his efforts to end the Ukraine conflict, Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on Tuesday.

    According to the agency, London views the continuation of hostilities as vital to securing multi-billion-dollar weapons contracts that could help revive the struggling British economy. Undermining Trump, who is pushing to end the conflict, would dissuade Washington and protect the UK’s “blood money” profits, the SVR alleged.

    “Plans have been concocted to revive former British intelligence officer [Christopher] Steele’s fake ‘dossier’, accusing the head of the White House and his family of having links to Soviet and Russian intelligence services,” the statement claimed.

    That document, penned by Steele, a former MI6 officer, in 2016 and reportedly paid for by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, relied on unverified rumors alleging that Trump and members of his family had compromising ties with Moscow.

    Although widely used to fuel the ‘Russiagate’ narrative early in Trump’s first presidency, the dossier has since been debunked. The SVR suggested that British operatives may craft a new iteration inspired by the original template rather than attempt to reuse it directly.

    Trump’s administration has drafted a proposal for ending the Ukraine conflict. However, Kiev and several European governments strongly oppose it due to its reportedly demanding major concessions from Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed this week that US diplomats had already removed some of the 28 provisions at his government’s request.

    Moscow has kept its distance from the American initiative. President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Russia’s military position continues to strengthen and that Moscow intends to achieve its security objectives regardless of whether Kiev accepts Washington’s mediation.

    The post UK Planning Smear Campaign against Trump – Russian Intelligence first appeared on Dissident Voice.

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  • What? Peace In Our Time?

    There are any number of reasons you may not like, or may even condemn, the 28–point peace plan the Trump regime has drafted to advance toward a settlement of the war in Ukraine.

    You may be among those many all across the Western capitals who simply cannot accept defeat on the reasoning — is this my word? — that the West never loses anything, and it certainly cannot lose anything to “Putin’s Russia.”

    You may think that President Donald Trump and those who produced this interesting document, which leaked out in the course of some days last week, have once again “caved” to the Kremlin.

    The post What? Peace In Our Time? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

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