This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Radio Free Asia.
-
A top Russian military commander was killed by a car bomb near Moscow. The attack happened just hours before US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Friday, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in Balashikha, a city near Moscow. He served as deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
According to TASS, Russian officials say Moskalik was the only person killed by the blast. Authorities believe the bomb was an IED containing submunitions and had the power of more than 300 grams of TNT.
The post Russian General Killed By Car Bomb In Moscow Before Talks With US appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
-
Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cite rising threats from Russia to justify once again using one of world’s most indiscriminate weapons
Rights groups have expressed alarm and warned of a “slippery slope” of again embracing one of the world’s most treacherous weapons, after five European countries said they intend to withdraw from the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines.
In announcing their plans earlier this year, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all pointed to the escalating military threat from Russia. In mid-April, Latvia’s parliament became the first to formally back the idea, after lawmakers voted to pull out of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use, production and stockpiling of landmines designed for use against humans.
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
-
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.
-
Ukraine has encroached westwards over the past year on its friendly neighbour Moldova, a country that has stood by Kyiv against the Russians and sheltered thousands fleeing the war with Moscow, to build hydroelectric dams in a bid to overcome a crippling power shortage, people close to the matter said.
Troops, engineers and construction workers from Ukraine — which is engaged in a disastrous war with Russia since February 2022 and unsure of continued U.S. assistance under President Donald Trump — entered Moldova without informing its poorer, landlocked neighbour which also shares its border on the west with Romania.
The post Ukraine Encroaches On ‘Friendly’ Moldova appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
-
The governing regime in Kiev is desperately trying to maintain its US support, as a defeat of the US-led, NATO proxy war in Ukraine looms. It is citing the collapse of the government in South Vietnam in April 1975 as a warning, saying that something similar could happen in Ukraine. At the time, the US defeat in Vietnam was a huge blow to the image and standing of US imperialism in the world.
Such pronouncements by the Kiev regime reveal a recognition that ‘its’ Ukraine has become a satellite of the United States – much as South Vietnam was widely recognized to be half a century ago. Then as now, Washington and its allies are desperately seeking to maintain their economic and military dominance over the world and to stop rising movements of liberation by the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The post Ukraine Resembles The Fall Of Saigon In 1975 appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
-
The post The Forever Wars May be over, but Trump is No Peacemaker first appeared on Dissident Voice.
The new guard of kleptocrats are seeking quick deals on Gaza and Ukraine, not because they want peace but because they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
Anyone trying to make sense of the Trump administration’s policy towards Gaza should have a thumping headache by now.
Initially, US President Donald Trump called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the tiny territory wrecked by Israel over the past year and a half, so that he could build the “Riviera of the Middle East” on the crushed bodies of Gaza’s children.
He followed up last week with an explicitly genocidal threat addressed to “the people of Gaza” – all two million-plus of them. They would be “DEAD” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were not quickly released – a decision over which Gaza’s population has precisely no control.
To make this extermination threat more credible, his administration has expedited the transfer of an extra $4bn worth of US weapons to Israel, bypassing Congressional approval.
Those arms include more of the 2,000lb bombs sent by the Biden administration, which turned Gaza into a “demolition site“, as Trump himself called it.
The White House also nodded through Israel’s reimposition of a blockade that has once again choked off food, water and fuel to the enclave – further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent.
But while all this was going on, Trump also dispatched to the region a special envoy, Adam Boehler, to negotiate the release of the few dozen Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
He was given permission to break with more than 30 years of US foreign policy and meet directly with Hamas, long designated a terrorist organisation by Washington.
‘Pretty nice guys’
The meeting reportedly took place without Israel’s knowledge.
One Israeli official observed: “You can’t announce that this organisation [Hamas] needs to be eliminated and destroyed, and give Israel full backing to do it, and at the same time conduct secret and intimate contacts with the group.”
In an interview with CNN at the weekend, Boehler remarked of Hamas: “They don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys.”
Then, in another unprecedented move, Boehler gave interviews to Israeli TV channels to speak directly to the Israeli public – apparently to prevent Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from misrepresenting the content of his talks with Hamas.
In one interview, Boehler said Hamas had proposed a five to 10-year truce with Israel. During that period, Hamas would be expected to “lay down its arms” and forgo political power in Gaza. He the proposal as “not a bad first offer”.
In another, he referred to Palestinian prisoners as “hostages”.
His approach left Israel quietly seething but unable to say much for fear of antagonising Trump.
‘No agent of Israel’
In parallel, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – who reportedly laid down the law early on to Netanyahu by ordering him to attend a meeting on the Sabbath – headed to Doha this week to try to restore a ceasefire deal he had previously negotiated.
He appears determined to push Israel into honouring the second phase of that agreement, which requires the Israeli army to withdraw from Gaza and halt its war on the enclave. That would pave the way for a third phase, in which Gaza is reconstructed.
Witkoff’s terms, according to reports, are that Hamas agrees to demilitarise and its fighters leave the enclave.
Israel is deeply opposed to a second phase. It wants to stick with phase one, in which it finishes swapping the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas for some of the many thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli torture camps.
The idea is that, once completed, Israel will be free to restart the slaughter.
Boehler reinforced Witkoff’s message, saying the White House hoped to “jump-start” talks and that the US was not “an agent of Israel” – implicitly acknowledging that, for many decades, it has very much looked like one.
Trump indicated a change of heart himself on Wednesday, telling reporters at the White House: “Nobody will expel the Palestinians.”
Sword of retribution
Apparently confounding Boehler’s claim that the US is able to make its own decisions about the Middle East, Trump was reported on Thursday to have removed him from dealing with the hostages issue following Israeli objections.
Meanwhile, Trump noisily shredded First Amendment protections on political speech, specifically in relation to Israel.
He signed an executive order empowering US authorities to arrest and deport visa holders protesting Israel’s year-and-a-half-long slaughter in Gaza – or what the world’s highest court is investigating as a “plausible” genocide.
That quickly resulted in the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last spring’s student protests at New York’s Columbia University – one of the most high-profile of dozens of protracted demonstrations on US campuses last year, which were often met with police violence.
The Department of Homeland Security accused Khalil of “activities” – namely, campus protests – supposedly “aligned to Hamas”. These demonstrations, it alleged, threatened “US national security”.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on social media, declaring that his administration would be coming after anyone “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. Axios reported last week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio planned to use AI to search through foreign students’ social media accounts for signs of “terrorist” sympathies.
These developments formalise Washington’s working assumption that any opposition to Israel’s killing and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children should be equated with terrorism – a view increasingly shared, it seems, by UK and European authorities.
In concert, the White House announced that it was cancelling some $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University over its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.
Confusingly, the university administration was among the most hardline in calling in police to crush the protests against the genocide. But the financial cuts had the intended effect, with Columbia announcing on Thursday it would inflict stringent punishments, including expulsions and degree revocations, on students and graduates who had taken part in a campus sit-in last year.
Some 60 other institutions have reportedly received letters warning that they are in danger of funding cuts if they do not “protect Jewish students” – a reference to those who cheerlead Israel’s war crimes.
That will come at a heavy price for other students, including many Jewish students, who have been exercising their constitutional right to criticise Israel’s crimes.
A sword of retribution now hangs over every single publicly funded centre of higher learning in the US: crush any sign of opposition to Israel’s destruction of Gaza, or face dire financial consequences.
‘Baffling rhetoric’
Does any of this amount to a clear strategy? Does it make any sense?
These mixed messages fit a pattern with the Trump administration. Its wider strategy is, as Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied territories, calls it: psychological overwhelming.
“Hitting us every day with XXL [extra-extra large] doses of baffling rhetoric and erratic policies serves to ‘control the script’, distracting and disorienting us, normalising the absurd, all while disrupting global stability (and consolidating US control).”
The White House is doing something similar over Ukraine.
It is now talking directly to Russia, shutting the door on Nato membership for Ukraine, publicly humiliating Ukraine’s president, while also threatening more sanctions and tariffs on Moscow unless it agrees to a rapid ceasefire.
The Trump administration’s goal is to normalise its inconsistencies, hypocrisies, lies and misdirections so they become entirely unremarkable.
Opposition to its will – a will that can change from day to day, or week to week – will be treated as treasonous. The only safe response in such circumstances is acquiescence, passivity and silence.
In the tumultuous political landscape Trump has created, the one constant – our North Star – is the western media’s uncritical cheerleading of the West’s war industries.
Consider the Biden administration. The media’s harshest condemnation came not over the destruction Washington wrought on Afghanistan during its 20-year occupation, but for ending the war – a war that had left the country in ruins and the official enemy, the Taliban, stronger than ever.
Contrast that with the media’s resolutely muted response to Biden’s 15 months of arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In doing so, the media eagerly cast aside their supposed humanitarian concerns, including their ritualistic nods to the post-Second World War global order and international law.
Similarly, the media have been openly critical of Trump’s overtures to Russia over Ukraine, siding with European leaders who insist the war must continue to the bitter end – regardless of how much higher the death toll of Ukrainians and Russians climbs as a result.
And predictably, the media have gone out of their way to accommodate Trump’s Israel-supporting, openly genocidal rhetoric and actions towards Gaza.
It was astonishing to watch outlets that regularly portray Trump as a threat to democracy contort themselves to whitewash his explicit call to exterminate “the people of Gaza” should the hostages not be immediately released. Instead, they mendaciously suggested he was referring only to Hamas leadership.
It is not just Trump and his team who are well practised in the dark arts of deception.
Illegitimacy trap
While the Trump administration may be playing fast and loose with Washington’s political culture, it is largely adhering to the West’s traditional script on Israel and Palestine.
Witkoff and Boehler are deploying a well-worn strategy, binding the Palestinians into what could be called an illegitimacy trap. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
Whatever Palestinians choose – and however much they are dispossessed and brutalised – it is they, and anyone who supports them, who are cast as the villains. The criminals. The oppressors. The Jew-haters. The terrorists.
This applies not only to Hamas but also to the accommodationists of Fatah.
Faced with relentless dispossession through decades of Israeli colonisation, Palestinian factions have responded in the two main ways available to them.
One is to adopt the course enshrined in international law as the right of all occupied peoples: armed resistance. This is the path Hamas has taken as it governs the concentration camp that is Gaza.
Every US administration, including the current one, however, has conditioned any talks about statehood on Palestinians renouncing armed resistance from the outset, dismissing their right in international law as terrorism.
For that reason, until now, Hamas has always been excluded from negotiations. The talks that have taken place – over its head – have operated on the assumption that Hamas must be disarmed before Israel is expected to make any concessions.
Hamas must relinquish its weapons voluntarily – against an opponent armed to the teeth, whose bad faith in negotiations is legendary – or it will be forcibly disarmed by Israel or its rival, Fatah.
In other words, peace with Israel is premised on civil war for Palestinians.
That appears to be the course the Trump administration will pursue. For now, it is demanding that Hamas “demilitarise” voluntarily. When that fails, Hamas will find itself back at square one.
Endless accommodation
Faced with Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, Hamas has precisely no incentive to disarm.
In fact, it has a further disincentive. Its rivals in Fatah are all too visibly caught in their own, even more fatal, illegitimacy trap.
Mahmoud Abbas’s faction, which heads the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, has chosen the alternative to armed resistance: diplomacy and endless political accommodation.
The problem is that Israel has never shown the slightest interest in granting the Palestinians – even Fatah’s “moderates” – a state.
Even during the so-called apex of peacemaking – the Oslo Accords of the 1990s – Palestinian statehood was never mentioned.
Oslo was simply a nebulous process in which Israel was supposed to gradually withdraw from the occupied territories as Palestinian leaders took responsibility for maintaining “security” – meaning, in practice, Israel’s security.
In short, the Oslo concept of “peace” was little different from the catastrophic status quo in Gaza before the genocide began.
During its so-called disengagement in 2005, Israel pulled its soldiers back to a fortified cordon, and from there controlled all movement and trade in and out of the enclave.
In the vacated space, Israel allowed only a glorified local authority, running the schools, emptying the bins and acting as a security contractor for Israel against those not ready to accept this as their permanent fate.
Hamas refused to play ball.
Abbas’s PA, on the other hand, accepted this kind of model for its series of cantons across the West Bank – on the assumption that obedience would eventually pay dividends.
It hasn’t. Now Israel is gearing up to formally annex most of the West Bank, backed by the Trump administration. Behind the scenes, the White House is finagling support from the Gulf states.
Fatah cannot extricate itself any more than Hamas from the illegitimacy trap set for it by Washington and Europe.
Clinging to the old order
Paradoxically, critics in Washington – backed by the media and European elites – dismiss Trump’s moves on Ukraine as appeasement of a supposedly resurgent Russian imperialism, rather than as peacemaking.
These same critics are equally discomfited by the Trump administration’s meetings with Hamas.
All of this breaks with the decades-old Washington consensus, which dictates who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, who are the law enforcers and who are the terrorists.
In typical fashion, Trump is disrupting these former certainties.
The reassuring, knee-jerk response is to take one side or another. Either Trump is a mould-breaker, remaking a dysfunctional world order. Or he is a fascist-in-the-making, who will hasten the collapse of the established world order, bringing it crashing down on our heads.
The truth is he is both.
There is a consistency to Trump’s approach to both Ukraine and Gaza – despite the apparent contradiction. In both he appears determined to bring to an end a failing status quo. In the former, he wants an end to war and destruction by forcing Ukraine’s surrender; in the latter, he wants the running sore of a Palestinian concentration camp gone by forcibly emptying it of its inhabitants.
This new consistency replaces an older one, in which Washington’s elite perpetuated forever wars against painted devils that justified the siphoning of national wealth into the coffers of the war industries on which that elite’s wealth depended.
The pretexts for those forever wars had become so threadbare, and so destabilising in a world of ever-depleting resources, that the elites behind those wars were utterly discredited.
The far-right, most especially Trump, is riding that wave of disillusionment. And its success stems precisely from this rule-breaking, by presenting itself as a new broom sweeping away the old guard of corporate war-makers.
As the Bidens, Starmers, Macrons, and Von der Leyens sink deeper into the mire, the more desperately they cling to a crumbling system. Trump’s disruption works against them.
Feathering their nests
But the new guard is no more invested in peace than the old, as Gaza makes clear. It is simply looking for new ways to do business – new deals that still siphon national wealth away from ordinary people and into the pockets of billionaires.
Trump would rather strike lucrative deals with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over resources – in both Russia and Ukraine – than sink more money into a futile war that locks up the region’s vast potential profits.
And he would rather put an end to Gaza’s decades-long status as a no-go zone, a holding centre for Palestinians, when it could instead be transformed into a playground for the rich, its vast offshore gas reserves finally exploited.
The new guard of kleptocrats is less interested in forever wars – not because they have any love for peace, but because they believe they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
This newfound openness to “doing things differently” has an appeal, especially after decades of the same cynical elites waging the same cynical wars.
But make no mistake: the fundamentals remain unchanged. The rich are still looking out for themselves. They are still feathering their own nests, not yours. They still see the world as their plaything, where lesser humans – you and me – are expendable.
If he can, Trump will end the war in Ukraine by cutting a money-making deal, over Kyiv’s head, with Russia.
If he can, Trump will end the slaughter in Gaza by striking a deal with Israel and the Gulf states, over the heads of Hamas and Fatah, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their homeland.
And if he can get away with it, Trump is ready for something else, too. He’s prepared to break heads at home to ensure his critics can’t stop him and his billionaire pals from getting their way.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.
Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.
The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”
The post On Neo-Nazi Influence In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Secretary of Marco Rubio said today (Friday) that “If it’s not possible to end the war in Ukraine , we need to move on.” Rubio told reporters that the Trump could decide this “in a matter of days…” (NYTimes, 4/18/2025)
The context: Russia has made its conditions very clear. (1) Ukraine must not join NATO. (2) Ukraine must give up the four oblasts and Crimea. 3) Ukraine must be demilitarized and not pose a military threat to Russia.
Although to this point Trump been unwilling or unable to do so, he must accept these nonnegotiable conditions and do it against the opposition of European leaders. Or conceivably, he could simply walk away.
British political analyst Alexander Mercouris reports that European leaders are meeting in Paris to, in their words, achieve a “fair and lasting peace in Ukraine” and for them, this means a “Ukrainian victory.” Even as they voice this objective, reliable reports indicate that Russian recruitment is running at 1,000 per day, which is more than enough to replace lost soldiers. Ukrainian forces are steadily getting smaller and for the first time, external military analysts can foresee the fall of Kiev as a real possibility. Russian forces are making significant gains and Ukrainians are retreating in several areas. Finally, there is no question that Europe lacks the resources to achieve anything in Ukraine.
Presumably, the US will explain to the Europeans that they’re engaged in a dangerous fantasy and that peace will occur only by accepting the Russian demands (see above). However, the British, French and Danish are considering sending troops to Ukraine via Romania. This will be absolutely unacceptable to Russians but will come as no surprise to them. The few thousand (probably French) soldiers entering Odessa will be annihilated. Here one wonders how long French citizens would tolerate the war if coffins began returning home. (Note: Some of you may recall my earlier post about European and US intervention in the Russian Civil War and how they were expelled. Russian citizens will be reminded once again of Western intentions).
Given the above, one is forced to wonder why European leaders are doing everything possible to undermine and sabotage any meaningful peace talks? Why are they pursing a doomed policy that’s bankrupting their economies? Why alienate the US and Trump? I don’t have a definitive answer but I suspect that Mercouris is close to one when he speculates that European leaders hate Russia and have come to loathe Donald Trump. They cannot accept that they’ve lost the war and Trump was actually correct. I’ll leave for another day to speculate about what this means for the Democrats and unprincipled “progressives” (think AOC and Bernie Sanders) who gave left cover to US imperialism in its proxy was in Ukraine. In my opinion, they have much to answer for.
The post Have We Reached a Milestone in Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
The war in Ukraine will be over, and those who died will not be remembered as heroes or liberators. “Our own children will curse us,” said one of the participants in the Ukrainian army’s escape from the town of Selidov in the DNR. He witnessed extrajudicial executions and torture of civilians – old men, women, children – committed by his “brothers” before the retreat.
“The war will write it all off” – that must have been the opinion of the killers of civilians who thought they would remain anonymous. Unfortunately, neither in the West nor in Ukraine will cover up executioners and rapists. “Everything secret is coming to light.” The Ukrainians who organized the massacre in Selidovo, who were lucky not to be killed by a Russian bullet, will be searched and persecuted all over the world until the end of their days. Crimes against humanity have no statute of limitations. Thoughts on the terrible the war in Ukraine will be over, and the dead will not be remembered either as heroes or liberators. “Our own children will curse us,” said one of the participants in the Ukrainian army’s escape from the town of Selidov in the DNR. He witnessed the extrajudicial executions and torture of civilians – old men, women, children – committed by his “brothers” before the retreat.
There are subhumans in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU), because what kind of person would do such a thing.
There are subhumans in the AFU, because what kind of person can do such a thing: The photo shows Ukrainian citizens killed by the AFU: T. Maslo (four gunshot wounds, traces of torture) and S. Smelyov (gunshot wound, entrance wound to the neck, burn marks, shot at a distance of several centimeters). Smelyov (gunshot wound, entry wound on the neck, burn marks, shot from a distance of several centimeters).
There are dozens and hundreds of such stories in the town of Selidov. The materials are taken from the report: “Mass shooting of civilians of the town of Selidovo by the AFU” in the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis (Russian). Each one is confirmed by irrefutable evidence.1
What happened-there is also a local resident Vladimir Vasilyevich Romanenko:
In the photo, Selidiv resident V.V. Romanenko shows the chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis M.S. Grigoryev his son’s wife’s hairpin at the place where his family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers.
“Right on this spot my family was shot, and when their bodies were burned, I didn’t see. Completely burned, most likely because Ssushnik saw me escape. In my hands I have my sister-in-law’s pin – Olechka’s little sister-in-law’s pin. She was standing right here. At 7 o’clock in the morning I went to the bathroom outside in the vegetable garden. I went out there and I hear a shout: “Everybody out of the house.” It was a man, Ssushnik, in Ukrainian camouflage with a green stripe. He was about 50 years old, not tall. When mine were taken out of the house and put facing the wall, he shouted to the whole street. There were two of them. One stood a little farther away, and the second one stood so that I could see very well. Romanenko shows the chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis M.S. Grigoriev his son’s wife’s hairpin at the place where his family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers.
“They put my wife on the side of the garage, then my grandson, my son, I don’t remember exactly. Then the daughter-in-law and the matchmaker – the daughter-in-law’s mother. My daughter-in-law started crying, saying, “What are you doing?” And he just started shooting. He shot my wife first. Then he went on shooting. I ran through the vegetable gardens, through the vegetable garden. Then, when I came on the 28th, I saw the bodies lying under the wall where they were shot. But they had been burned. The next day I went, found bags, collected the remains. Where it was burning, I covered the remains.“ ”Right on this spot my family was shot, and when their bodies were burned, I did not see. They burned them completely, probably because Ssushnik saw me escape. In my hands I have my sister-in-law’s pin – Olechka’s little sister-in-law’s pin. She was standing right here. At 7 o’clock in the morning I went to the bathroom outside in the vegetable garden. I went out there and I hear a shout: “Everybody out of the house.” It was a man, Ssushnik, in Ukrainian camouflage with a green stripe. He was about 50 years old, not tall. When mine were taken out of the house and put facing the wall, he shouted to the whole street. There were two of them. One stood a little farther away, and the second one stood so that I could see very well. Romanenko shows the chairman of the International Public Tribunal on the Crimes of Ukrainian Neo-Nazis M.S. Grigoriev his son’s wife’s hairpin at the place where his family was shot by Ukrainian soldiers.
“Packed everything I had into five bags and buried it here in my driveway. Buried five people, five bags that were left-my family. Born 51, 55, 78, 74 and 91.”
The war will one day end, but such horrors as the massacre in the town of Selidove will forever remain in the memory of peaceful Ukrainians.
ENDNOTE:
The post Scary Thoughts from Selidov first appeared on Dissident Voice.1 In March 2022, at the initiative of Russian and foreign human rights activists and journalists, the Public Chamber of the Russian Federation decided to establish an International Public Tribunal on the crimes of Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their accomplices. The International Tribunal is composed of public figures, human rights defenders and journalists from more than 30 countries. Its representatives carry out on the territory of Donbas and the liberated districts of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions tremendous work in several directions:
The irrefutable evidence is interviews of people who saw everything with their own eyes in Selidovo. The interviews themselves are reflected both in the report and in the video format in the Telegram channel.
- collecting testimonies of victims and victims of Ukrainian war crimes, witnesses and prisoners of war;
- public investigation of these facts;
- disseminating objective information about them;
- establishing the identity of the criminals.
The irrefutable evidence is interviews of people who saw everything with their own eyes in Selidovo. The interviews themselves are reflected both in the report and in the video format in the Telegram channel.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – North Korean forces deployed in Russia’s Kursk region may soon be sent into annexed regions of Ukraine that remain fiercely contested by Russian and Ukrainian forces, a senior Ukrainian official said.
As many as 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia, according to Ukraine and the United States, to fight Ukrainian forces who occupied parts of Russia’s Kursk region in an August counter offensive. Neither North Korea nor Russia have acknowledged their presence.
“Russia plans to use the DPRK soldiers for war on the territory of Ukraine,” said Andrei Kovalenko, head of the National Security Service’s Center for Countering Disinformation.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, is North Korea’s official name.
“But the Russians will manipulate and indicate that the North Korean soldiers are fighting on Russian territory by the Russian Constitution,” he said in a post on the Telegram messaging app on Tuesday.
Russia annexed four Ukrainian regions – Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – after holding widely condemned referendums in September 2022. Kovalenko suggested that these occupied territories are the most likely destinations for North Korean troops.
The international community has not recognized Russia’s annexation of Ukrainian land and fierce fighting continues as Ukraine pushes back in those areas.
Kovalenko said Russia is also importing labor from North Korea, mainly young people aged 18-25, for industrial work. In return, the North Korean authorities receive US$1,000 per person from Russia.
Radio Free Asia has not independently verified his claims.
South Korea’s main spy agency reported in October that Russia would pay North Korean troops about US$2,000 per month each, although it was likely that most of the money would “remain with the state.”
Kovalenko’s remarks came amid reports that Russian artillery units were relying almost entirely on ammunition supplied by North Korea to sustain their bombardments along the Ukrainian front.
Between September 2023 and March 2025, four Russian-flagged vessels made 64 trips transporting nearly 16,000 containers from North Korea to Russian ports, according to satellite data analysed by the U.K.-based Open Source Centre. The shipments are estimated to have included between 4 million and 6 million artillery shells.
By comparison, Russia is believed to have produced no more than 2.3 million artillery shells domestically in 2024, according to Ukrainian and Western officials.
Although the Kremlin denied any arms transfers from North Korea in October 2023, at least six Russian artillery unit reports reviewed by Reuters news agency confirmed that between 50% and 100% of the munitions used in Ukraine this year were of North Korean origin. Three other unit reports made no mention of North Korean ammunition.
North Korea and Russia have been deepening their military and economic ties in recent months, with Pyongyang reportedly supplying Moscow with large quantities of munitions and other military aid for its war in Ukraine.
In return, Russia has provided technological assistance and expanded cooperation in various sectors, fueling concerns over potential arms transfers and security threats.
High-level meetings between officials from both countries, including defense ministers, have signaled a growing strategic partnership.
Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Two Chinese nationals captured while fighting for Russia in Ukraine said they were tricked by false promises and online recruitment ads into enlisting, and criticized Moscow for exploiting foreign fighters in its war effort.
“I wanted to make money, but I didn’t expect to end up in a war,” said Zhang Renbo, a former firefighter from China, during a Ukrainian government press conference on Monday.
He and Wang Guangjun, both born in the 1990s, are the first confirmed Chinese nationals captured fighting in the Russian ranks against Ukraine. Their capture was announced by President Volodymyr Zelensky earlier this month, who said “several hundred” Chinese citizens are believed to be fighting for Russia.
Wang said he lost his job last summer and came across a TikTok ad offering a lucrative opportunity to join the Russian military. The recruiter promised him a salary far above the Chinese average and offered to pay for travel and paperwork.
But soon after arrival, Wang claimed, the Russians confiscated his phone and bank card. He was unable to access the promised pay or contact anyone back home.
“Everything we heard from the Russians was a lie,” Wang said.
Radio Free Asia has not independently verified the men’s claims.
The two men said they signed enlistment contracts voluntarily but without any connection to the Chinese government.
Both claimed they were initially offered non-combat jobs – Wang in the military directly, Zhang through construction work – only to be placed on the battlefield later. Their route into the war passed through Moscow and Russian-occupied Donetsk before they reached the front lines.
Wang said he had been at the front for just three days before he was captured.
He described being sheltered by Ukrainian soldiers during a Russian gas attack after his capture and said he had been treated well ever since. In the video of the press conference, the two men appear to be in good health.
Zhang, who comes from a wealthier background, said he never saw any Ukrainian troops until the moment he was taken prisoner. Both men said they had not killed anyone during their time on the battlefield.
The two criticised Russia sharply during the press conference and discouraged other Chinese nationals from joining the conflict.
“It’s better not to participate in wars at all,” Wang said. “Real war is completely different from what we have seen in movies and on TV.”
They also denied any involvement by the Chinese state in their recruitment.
When asked whether Beijing was aware of their actions, they said China had issued general warnings against travelling to conflict zones and noted that Chinese citizens who join foreign militaries could face legal consequences. Still, both said they hoped to return to China as part of a future prisoner exchange.
“I understand there may be punishment,” Zhang said. “But I still want to return home and to my family.”
Russia has increasingly turned to foreign nationals to fill its ranks in Ukraine, recruiting fighters from countries including India, Nepal, Syria, and reportedly North Korea.
As many as 12,000 North Korean soldiers are in Russia to fight Ukrainian forces who occupied parts of Kursk in an August counterattack, according to the U.S. and Ukraine. Neither Pyongyang nor Moscow has acknowledged their presence.
According to Wang, he was placed in a training camp alongside recruits from Central Asia, Ghana, and Iraq, and said communication with commanders was limited to gestures.
Edited by Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
A March 29 article on America’s involvement in the war in Ukraine in The New York Times by Adam Entous “reveals that America was woven into the war far more intimately and broadly than previously understood.” “Understood” is a euphemism. It means the American and global public were lied to.
The article reveals that the war in Ukraine truly was, as former British prime minister Boris Johnson and U.S. secretary of state Marco Rubio have already said, a proxy war against Russia. U.S. military and intelligence were involved in every stage of the war, including supplying the weapons, the training, the planning, the war-gaming, the intelligence and the targeting.
The post Blockbuster Article Prepares Americans For Defeat In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
We are passionate supporters of all but one of the items on the Hands Off agenda for the April 5 rallies. We couldn’t agree more that the corrupt U.S. government should stop destroying, privatizing, firing, and giving away the post office, schools, land, Social Security, healthcare, environmental protections, and all sorts of essential public services. But we are deeply disturbed to see NATO (The North Atlantic Treaty Organization) on the list of items that we are rallying to protect.
Many people believe that NATO is a peace-loving, defensive alliance, but the opposite is true. During the past 30 years, NATO has fomented a vast arc of violence stretching from Libya to Afghanistan, leaving villages bombed, infrastructure destroyed, and countless dead.
Originally formed in opposition to the Soviet Union, NATO not only failed to disband with the fall of the Soviet Union, but it increased from 16 members in 1991 to 32 members today. Despite promises not to expand eastward, it ploughed ahead against the advice of senior, experienced U.S. diplomats who warned that this would inflame tensions with Russia. While Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine,1in violation of the UN Charter, we cannot deny the disastrous role played by NATO in provoking and then prolonging the war in Ukraine. Two years ago, then NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted that insisting on NATO membership for Ukraine had brought on the Ukraine war. “[Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders,” he said.
The inclusion of NATO in the Hands Off list contradicts the basic Hands Off agenda. Right now, at the bidding of President Trump, NATO is openly and aggressively pressuring its member nations to move money from healthcare, retirement funds, and clean energy to weapons and militarism. Watch a video of the Secretary General of NATO publicly telling the European Union to move money from healthcare and retirement to war. It should be clear which side of the Hands Off agenda NATO is on.
NATO is a destabilizing, law-breaking force for militarization and war provocation. Its existence makes wars, including nuclear wars, more likely. Its hostility toward the few significant militaries in the world that are not among its members fuels arms races and conflicts. The commitment of NATO members to join each others’ wars and NATO’s pursuit of enemies far from the North Atlantic risk global destruction.
We would be happy to expand the Hands Off demands to international issues, such as Hands Off Palestine or Yemen or Greenland or Panama or Canada. But we do object to including a destructive institution like NATO, an institution that systematically and grossly violates the commitment to settle disputes peacefully contained in the UN Charter. If we are truly committed to human needs and the environment, as well as peace, diplomacy, and the UN Charter, then we should eliminate NATO from the Hands Off agenda.
We should go beyond that. We should recognize that while many government agencies are being unfairly cut and need to be defended, one enormous agency that makes up over half of federal discretionary spending is being drastically increased and needs to be cut. That is the Pentagon. The U.S. government spends more on war and war preparation than on all other discretionary items combined. Of 230 other countries, the U.S. spends more on militarism than 227 of them combined. Russia and China spend a combined 21% of what the U.S. and its allies spend on war. Of 230 other countries, the U.S. exports more weaponry than 228 of them combined. The U.S. spends more on war per capita than any other nation, except Israel.
This is not normal or acceptable, or compatible with funding human and environmental needs. NATO has taught people to measure military spending as a percentage of a nation’s economy, as if war were a public service to be maximized. Trump has recently switched from demanding 2% of economies for war to 3%, and then almost immediately to 5%. There’s no logical limit.
Companies that profit from war, like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, will always push for more military spending. So will NATO. While NATO allies consider Russia their most immediate and direct threat, their long-term adversary is China. The constant search for enemies leads to a vicious cycle of arms races. But there is a different path: the pursuit of disarmament negotiations, the rule of law and global cooperation. If we pursued that path, we could move massive amounts of money away from weapons to invest in addressing the non-optional dangers of climate, disease, and poverty.
The rational and moral international piece of the Hands Off agenda should be to eliminate both NATO and the voracious militarism that threaten the future of life on this planet.
NOTE:
The post Why Are HANDS OFF Rallies Supporting NATO? first appeared on Dissident Voice.1 It is a matter or record:
* that the current violence in Ukraine began with the US abrogation of a promise not to expand NATO one inch further east in 1990
*that the Obama administration engineered a coup to overthrow the elected president Yanukovych of Ukraine in 2014, and this precipitated the overwhelming Crimean vote to secede from Ukraine
* that Donbass oblasts voted also to secede from Ukraine, and that Ukraine began bombing Donbass
* that German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande signed on as guarantors of the Minsk Accords, which they admitted was to give Ukraine time to militarize and join NATO
* that US secretary of state Marco Rubio has admitted that it is a proxy war waged against Ukraine
If this is factually accurate, then to state “Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine” is fallacious. — DV Ed
* that the current violence in Ukraine began with the US abrogation of a promise not to expand NATO one inch further east in 1990
*that the Obama administration engineered a coup to overthrow the elected president Yanukovych of Ukraine in 2014, and this precipitated the overwhelming Crimean vote to secede from Ukraine
* that Donbass oblasts voted also to secede from Ukraine, and that Ukraine began bombing Donbass
* that German chancellor Angela Merkel and French president Francois Hollande signed on as guarantors of the Minsk Accords, which they admitted was to give Ukraine time to militarize and join NATO
* that US secretary of state Marco Rubio has admitted that it is a proxy war waged against Ukraine
If this is factually accurate, then to state “Russia bears full responsibility for invading Ukraine” is fallacious. — DV Ed
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Now that Phil Goff has ended his term as New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, he is officially free to speak his mind on the damage he believes the Trump Administration is doing to the world. He has started with these comments he made on the betrayal of Ukraine by the new Administration.
By Phil Goff
Like many others, I was appalled and astounded by the dishonest comments made about the situation in Ukraine by the Trump Administration.
As one untruthful statement followed another like something out of a George Orwell novel, I increasingly felt that the lies needed to be called out.
I found it bizarre to hear President Trump publicly label Ukraine’s leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy a dictator. Everyone knew that Zelenskyy had been democratically elected and while Trump claimed his support in the polls had fallen to 4 percent it was pointed out that his actual support was around 57 percent.
- READ MORE: Explainer: What was actually wrong with what Phil Goff said?
- ‘We need to stand up for what is right’ — Phil Goff doesn’t regret Trump comments
Trump made no similar remarks or criticism of Russia’s Vladimir Putin and never does. Yet Putin’s regime imprisons and murders his opponents and suppresses democratic rights in Russia.
Then Trump made the patently false accusation that Ukraine started the war with Russia. How could he make such a claim when the world had witnessed Russia as the aggressor which invaded its smaller neighbour, killing thousands of civilians, committing war crimes and destroying cities and infrastructure?
That President Trump could lie so blatantly is perhaps explained by his taking offence at Zelenskyy’s refusal to comply with unreasonable and self-serving demands such as ceding control of Ukraine’s mineral wealth to the US. What was also clear was that Trump was intent on pressuring Ukraine to capitulate to Russian demands for a one sided “peace settlement” which would result in neither a fair nor sustainable peace.
It is astonishing that the US voted with Russia and North Korea in the United Nations against Ukraine and in opposition to the views of democratic countries the US is normally aligned with, including New Zealand.
Withdrew satellite imaging
It then withdrew satellite imaging services Ukraine needed for its self defence in an attempt to further pressure Zelenskyy to agree to a ceasefire. No equivalent pressure has yet been placed on Russia even while it has continued its illegal attacks on Ukraine.
Trump and Vance’s disgraceful bullying of Zelenskyy in the White House as he struggled in his third language to explain the plight of his nation was as remarkable as it was appalling.
What Trump was doing and saying was wrong and a betrayal of Ukraine’s struggle to defend its freedom and nationhood.
Democratic leaders around the world knew his comments to be unfair and untrue, yet few countries have dared to criticise Trump for making them.
Like the Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, everyone knew that the emperor had no clothes but were fearful of the consequences of speaking out to tell the truth.
As New Zealand’s High Commissioner to the UK, I had on a number of occasions met and talked with Ukrainian soldiers being trained by New Zealanders in Britain. It was an emotionally intense experience knowing that many of the men I met with would soon face death on the front line defending their country’s freedom and nationhood.
They were extremely grateful of New Zealand’s unwavering support. Yet the Trump Administration seemed to care little for that country’s cause and sacrifice in defending the values that a few months earlier had seemed so important to the United States.
The diplomatic community in London privately shared their dismay at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine. The spouse of one of my High Commissioner colleagues who had been a teacher drew a parallel with what she had witnessed in the playground. The bully would abuse a victim while all the other kids looked on and were too intimidated to intervene. The majority thus became the enablers of the bully’s actions.
Silence condoning Trump
By saying nothing, New Zealand — and many other countries — was effectively condoning and being complicit in what Trump was doing.
It was in this context, at the Chatham House meeting, that I asked a serious and important question about whether President Trump understood the lessons of history. It was a question on the minds of many. I framed it using language that was reasonable.
The lesson of history, going back to the Munich Conference in 1938, when British Prime Minister Chamberlain and his French counterpart Daladier ceded the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, was clear.
Far from satisfying or placating an aggressor, appeasement only increases their demands. That’s always the case with bullies. They respect strength, not weakness.
Czechoslovakia could have been part of the Allied defence against Hitler’s expansionism but instead it and the Czech armaments industry was passed over to Hitler. He went on to take over the rest of Czechoslovakia and then invaded Poland.
As Churchill told Chamberlain, “You had the choice between dishonour and war. You chose dishonour and you will have war.”
The question needed to be asked because Trump was using talking points which followed closely those used by the Kremlin itself and was clearly setting out to appease and favour Russia.
A career diplomat, trained as a public servant to be cautious, might have not have asked it. I was appointed, with bipartisan support, not as a career diplomat but on the basis of political experience including nine years as Foreign, Trade and Defence Minister.
Question central to validity, ethics
“The question is central to the validity as well as the ethics of the United States’ approach to Ukraine. It is also a question that trusted allies, who have made sacrifices for and with each other over the past century, have a right and duty to ask.
The New Zealand Foreign Minister’s response was that the question did not reflect the view of New Zealand’s Government and that asking it made my position as High Commissioner untenable.
The minister had the prerogative to take the action he did and I am not complaining about that for one moment. For my part, I do not regret asking the question which thanks to the minister’s response subsequently received international attention.
Over the decades New Zealand has earned the respect of the world, from allies and opponents alike, for honestly standing up for the values our country holds dear. The things we are proudest of as a nation in the positions we have taken internationally include our role as one of the founding states of the United Nations in promoting a rules-based international system including our opposition to powerful states exercising a veto.
They include opposing apartheid in South Africa and French nuclear testing in the Pacific. We did not abandon our nuclear free policy to US pressure.
In wars and in peacekeeping we have been there when it counted and have made sacrifices disproportionate to our size.
We have never been afraid to challenge aggressors or to ask questions of our allies. In asking a question about President Trump’s position on Ukraine I am content that my actions will be on the right side of history.
Phil Goff, CNZM, is a New Zealand retired politician and former diplomat. He served as leader of the Labour Party and leader of the Opposition between 11 November 2008 and 13 December 2011. Goff was elected mayor of Auckland in 2016, and served two terms, before retiring in 2022. In 2023, he took up a diplomatic post as High Commissioner of New Zealand to the United Kingdom, which he held until last month when he was sacked by Foreign Minister Winston Peters over his “untenable” comments.
This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.
Photograph Source: Ministry of Defense of Ukraine – CC BY-SA 2.0
In a practice that might seem quaint if it weren’t so murderous, the American uniparty is currently assigning party colors to its ‘boutique’ wars in Ukraine and West Asia. While these wars were arguably started by, and are being prosecuted by, the United States, the powers that be in the US have apparently determined that branding them by team color (Red v Blue) would effectively preclude the development of a national anti-war response.
In this light, the (New York) Times recently shat out the second installment of its ex-post recitation of CIA talking points crafted with a method that I call ‘cat-litter journalism.’ The focus of the new Times’ piece is the American war in Ukraine. Should this read as a misstatement to you, that maybe it is a war between Ukraine and Russia, tell it to the New York Times. The gist of the Times piece is that the Americans would have won the war if it hadn’t been for the Ukrainians.
The phrase ‘cat-litter journalism’ refers to the near-random assemblage of earlier reporting by the Times that has been reassembled to convey the illusion that its ‘reporting’ ties to any determinable facts. Deference to authority is another way to describe the piece. Without footnotes and / or links, the assertions made in the piece are a compilation of the least plausible state propaganda of recent years crafted for the post-election political dynamic.
‘In some ways, Ukraine was, on a wider canvas, a rematch in a long history of U.S.-Russia proxy wars — Vietnam in the 1960s, Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria three decades later.’ nytimes.com’ 3/29/25.
For readers upset by the prospect of their favorite war losing its luster, fear not. The political logic of Donald Trump’s rapid policy dump upon entering office is the ethereal nature of Presidential power. For good and not-good reasons, Mr. Trump is about to hit a wall of institutional pushback. Further, his ‘peace through strength’ schtick (borrowed from Richard Nixon) is a serious misreading of the current political environment.
The reason why New York Times reporters are acting like rats fleeing a sinking ship with respect to the CIA’s war in Ukraine is that the Ukraine ship is sinking. Don’t take my word for it. The new US Intelligence Assessment for 2025 states 1) that Ukraine (the CIA) has substantially lost the conflict, and 2) nothing that the West has at its disposal will turn the situation around. Having a chair to sit in when the music stops is the political needle being threaded.
Russia in the past year has seized the upper hand in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine and is on a path to accrue greater leverage to press Kyiv and its Western backers to negotiate an end to the war that grants Moscow concessions it seeks. dni.gov.
The political logic of parsing the war in Ukraine from the genocide in West Asia goes like this, 1) by US calculations, there is no way for the West to prevail in Ukraine, and 2) attending to the denouement in Ukraine when a promise of genocide has been sold to a foreign adversary (Israel) requires operational consolidation. Once the US moves outside of Gaza (it already has), Greater Israel begins to resemble Poland on August 31, 1939.
For those who may have forgotten, here is the leader of the Blue Team telling us that ‘Putin has already lost the war’ in mid-2023. Two years later, the New York Times is belatedly informing us that it was the Ukrainians who lost the war; that the US is blameless, if not heroic, for its ‘support’ of Ukraine; and that maybe the US should have gotten one-million citizens of a more deserving nation killed for the privilege.
That British ‘intelligence,’ MI6, was active in both the Russiagate fraud and in maintaining friendly relations with Ukrainian fascists from 1944 to the present so that they were available for service in Ukraine 2013 – present, argues for ending the Five-Eyes Alliance and criminally charging the Brits for interfering in American elections. The problem is that the Western ruling class has demonstrated itself to be immune from public sanction.
That the leader of the Blue Team was the largest recipient of legal bribes from supporters of Israel in Congress unites him in a deep moral commitment to genocide with Donald J. However, in the American terms of discourse in 2025, Donald Trump ‘got the better deal.’ Miriam Adelson contributed $150 million to Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, with $100 million of it reportedly dedicated to improving the lives of Western arms dealers. Joe Biden only got four million dollars for his genocide.
This ‘genocide for hire’ posture of America 2.0, where US foreign policy does the bidding of foreign adversaries in exchange for specific payments to specific politicians, might seem irredeemably corrupt. In fact, it is irredeemably corrupt. However, there is a political term— ‘imperialism,’ that rehabilitates corrupt acts under the nuevo-scriptural precept of ‘kick their ass and steal their gas’ that is emerging from the gold toilet crowd.
Were it not for the earlier ‘coming-clean’ piece from the Times that began in the aftermath of the US – British coup in Ukraine in 2014, the US timeline found in the recent Times article would be inexplicable. How could the timelines match US state propaganda so perfectly given that between the two articles, pretty much everything that the Americans and Brits said about the conflict was later restated in materially different terms?
Further, as the vile, offensive, and yes, fascistic, efforts by the Trump administration to quell domestic rebellion against corrupt acts by politicians taking money from adversarial foreign governments to commit genocide, the ship of state is struggling. Threatening Americans with deportation, imprisonment, and being disappeared for expressing their constitutionally protected right to object to these policies is profoundly anti-American under the existing terms of discourse.
Ominously for we, the people, Donald Trump was able to extract far more money than Joe Biden was for a roughly equivalent genocide (thus far). Yes, under US law, American politicians can take money from adversarial foreign governments which personally benefits them, and not the United States, in exchange for the promise that the US will commit genocide against foreign nationals for the benefit of other foreign nationals. Question: where is MAGA on this?
If any of this suggests a path out of the current mess through electoral politics, the evidence doesn’t support that conclusion. Here is one of the several pieces that I wrote in and around early 2019 where I correctly argued that were Joe Biden to be elected, he would fail to govern and that Donald Trump, or someone worse, would follow Biden. That is what happened. I was right, and the DNC just reelected Donald Trump.
For those who don’t see it yet, Donald Trump is in the process of imploding politically. His economic policies, which share quite a bit with Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and Ronald Reagan, are ideological— based on a group of like-minded people sitting around making shit up with no one to challenge them. He doesn’t understand basic economics well enough to avoid the catastrophe-in-the-making that his policies will produce.
Firing tens of thousands of Federal workers without a coherent plan to reemploy them both raises the unemployment rate and lowers wages. As I’ve previously written, adding former Federal employees to the unemployment line increases the number of workers vying for a limited number of jobs, thereby leading the most desperate to accept lower wages. Rising unemployment and falling wages is a recipe for electoral defeat.
With respect to liberal fears of a Fourth Reich, ex-CIA Larry Johnson and others familiar with military production argue that the lead time from cold start to having weapons in hand is a decade. When existing facilities can be used, this lead time can be reduced to three years. In its wisdom, the US began firing its skilled manufacturing workforce in the 1970s. Skilled work in 2025 is ‘influencing’ teenagers to buy Viagra for their pet gerbils on YouTube.
When Mr. Trump references ‘peace through strength,’ he asserts that while his aim (‘peace’) is virtuous, his method will be the threatened or actual use of violence to achieve it. The social logic is that the party being threatened has a choice to surrender or be killed. This framing has been used by repressive power for millennia to claim that political repression maintained through violence is ‘peace.’ In so doing, the term is emptied of content. The definition of peace is reduced to ‘not death.’
The political benefit of this approach for empires is that it frames repressive political power as a defense of peace, and its opponents as the instigators of violence. In history, the US is only two generations from the ‘Indian Wars,’ where innocent settlers ‘were overwhelmed and slaughtered by ignorant savages,’ for those who buy Hollywood’s version of the history. Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States and Robert Hughes’ The Fatal Shore illustrate the genocidal versions of this view-from-power of ‘peace.’
How the phrase (peace through strength) was heard on the campaign trail by Mr. Trump’s constituents was likely through the anti-historical fantasy that the US has won the wars that it has engaged in since WWII. As actual history has it, it was the Russians who won WWII. Richard Nixon used the term, combined with his claim that he had a ‘secret plan’ to end the US war in Vietnam. He didn’t. Nixon ended up expanding the war to Laos and Cambodia before the ignominious ‘fall of Saigon’ in 1975.
With respect to the US proxy war in Ukraine, the precise social logic of Mr. Trump implying that the Biden administration was ‘weak’ in threatening imminent nuclear annihilation in the latter days of the administration begs the question of what the word means? Is ending the world a sign of strength? To whom? Who would be alive to judge the matter, and what would be the consequence of any such judgment?
One might have imagined that Times readers previously burned by its fraudulent reporting regarding Iraq’s WMDs and Russiagate would have felt ‘twice bitten, thrice shy’ with respect to its Ukraine reporting. Implied in the steadfastness of its readership is that getting true information about the world isn’t— is not, why its readers read the Times. Or perhaps, Times readers like their news several years after the fact, when it can be found in the ‘corrections’ section.
The residual purpose of the New York Times is to demonstrate that Pravda in the waning days of the Soviet Union is the model to which the American press aspires. But this is only a ‘press’ story to the extent that the volunteer state media in the US doesn’t require threats to carry water for power. They want to do so. It gives them purpose, and the occasional invitation to the right dinner party.
I wrote early on in the US war in Ukraine that the Ukrainians ‘would rue the day that they ever heard of the United States.’ With the New York Times now blaming the Ukrainians for the American loss against Russia, they join the Palestinians in being tossed onto the garbage heap of empire. So are the Russians. The difference is that the Russians can take care of themselves. That is why American imperialists hate Russia so much. They don’t control it.
The post New York Times Throws Ukraine Under the Bus, Admits US Proxy War appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Rob Urie.
Ironically, it was the US under President Trump which has broken with the US national security establishment’s bi-partisan strategy of incremental encirclement and escalation against Russia. That break offered Europe the opportunity to escape the trap created by its past lack of policy vision. Instead, Europe has proved plus royaliste que le roi (more royal than the King) and has remained loyal to the US national security Deep State.
— Thomas Palley
In her recent “Threat Assessment” testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard reasonably described Russia as a “formidable competitor.” However, in keeping with Trump’s desire for improved diplomatic and economic relations with Moscow, she avoided the word “adversary.” And, in a thinly disguised reference to Biden’s “Ukraine Project,” Gabbard said that Russia has gained significant information about US intelligence and weapons from the Ukraine war. As for Biden’s plan to weaken or overthrow Putin, Gabbard concluded that the Russian leader “is presently less likely to be replaced than at any point in his quarter-century rule.” Gabbard’s assessment was considerably at odds with those under Biden, which referred to Russia’s “malign influence” and a threat to the United States and its allies. Most important is the conclusion that “This grinding war of attrition will lead to a steady erosion of Kyiv’s position on the battlefield, regardless of any U.S. or allied attempt to impose new and greater costs on Moscow.” This is not an equivocal statement, and Trump surely knows it’s true.
One encouraging consequence of the report is that it leaves Democrats and liberals in the awkward position of supporting not just a lost cause but one that’s increasingly becoming known as a war provoked by the United States. Those who’ve long asserted that Ukraine was used as a proxy have been provided further vindication — as if any was needed — by the “expose” in the New York Times, titled “The Partnership: The Secret History of the War in Ukraine.” The roughly 13,000-word piece is “secret” only if one relies on the Times as their only source of information. In any event, the article details how American military and intelligence officers shaped Ukraine’s strategy. Planning began with the US and Ukraine at a clandestine meeting in Wiesbaden, Germany, in 2022, a gathering known “only to a small circle of American and allied officials.” As the war progressed, “One European intelligence chief recalled being taken aback by how deeply enmeshed his N.A.T.O. counterparts had become in the Ukraine operation. They are part of the kill chain now.”
One surely unintended takeaway for the reader from the Times’ investigation is US hubris. According to the authors, the Biden administration provided everything to Ukraine but boots on the ground, and the effort was succeeding until the Spring of 2023. At that point, Ukrainian generals went rogue, became disobedient, and denied their US overlords a devastating victory over Russian forces. The latter are barely stick figures waiting to be chopped down by Ukrainian forces, who the omniscient American advisors have been giving every advantage. Zelensky also receives his share of the blame because he was too obsessed with good PR to be an effective wartime leader.
Notably, none of the 300 (mostly anonymous) interviewees were Russian, so that perspective is absent. Not surprisingly, there’s neither a scintilla of remorse nor even a tacit admission of the price Ukrainians paid for allowing their country to be used by the United States in this manner. Finally, one is forced to wonder whether this duplicitous account of the war will be the “blame game” narrative for the Democrats when the war is lost.
Checkmate in Ukraine isn’t imminent, but nothing can be done to prevent the loss of this US-initiated war. Putin has a strong hand to play, and all indications point toward the conclusion that the longer the fighting continues, the more territory will fall to Russian advances. Whether Trump will be able to end the war remains an open question. We know that Starmer, Macron, Mertz (once he assumes the German chancellorship), and Zelensky all seek to sabotage peace. And in Kyiv, the Azov Battalion has morphed into the Third Army Brigade, and its leader is Andriy Biletsky, today’s Stephan Bandera. He and his Hitler-worshipping Nazi followers oppose any negotiations with Russia and will continue some rearguard action until they are finally vanquished.
Trump also faces strong opposition from neoliberal warhawks like Waltz and Rubio. I sense that if Trump wants an actual peace settlement—and I believe he does—he must instruct more capable and trustworthy negotiators that Moscow sees Ukraine as an existential threat and its demands are non-negotiable. Russia is clearly winning and continues to absorb more territory. Finally, I wouldn’t bet against Trump going back on his promise and walking away from the Ukraine Project, leaving the remaining parties to resolve matters.
Because the billionaire sector of the US ruling class behind Trump has a different world order in mind, the present iteration of European oligarchs find themselves up that proverbial creek without paddles. Trump isn’t even bothering to say, “Thank you for your service in fighting Russia” because he knows these vassals enthusiastically cooperated with a doom-to-fail war that killed well over a million soldiers. In a final desperate attempt to save themselves, Europe’s soon-to-be politically extinct vassals want Trump to give them a “security guarantee” before inserting their own “peacekeepers” into Ukraine. That will never happen
Some critics have employed words like delusional, crazy, and stupid to describe European leaders. However, it’s more accurate to say that these heads of state are so heavily invested in the fable, the fiction of the “Russian threat,” for over seventy years in order to maintain their junior accomplice role with Washington. Thomas Palley argues they have become a “US foreign policy satrap, a condition which still endures.” These leaders are certainly not “stupid,” and they know that if the truth about the “Ukraine project” gains traction — and Trump seeks closer relations with Russia — suspicions will rise within the European public that Russophobia was manufactured and remains a hoax.
Finally, as I have argued in the past, what makes Ukraine so difficult to grasp is the edifice of lies, the false narrative about the “Russian threat” that is so pervasive in the popular mindset and used to disguise the actual motives behind US imperialism. Political scientist Michael Parenti once characterized this as “suppression by omission,” in this case, the entire context of the war in Ukraine. We must use every means to bring those omissions to light.
The post Will Trump Keep His Promise to End the War in Ukraine? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
If you believe Donald Trump might invade, you should be calling for Canada to withdraw from NATO. The alliance won’t defend Canada, has enabled US interference, and gobbles up resources.
During a recent meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, US President Donald Trump questioned the border and Canadian sovereignty. He said, “if you look at a map, they drew an artificial line right through it, between Canada and the U.S. … somebody did it a long time ago, many many decades ago, and (it) makes no sense.” Trump also repeatedly said Canada should be a US state, noting “to be honest with you, Canada only works as a state.”
Sitting next to the US president, Rutte stayed silent. A bit later Trump suggested Rutte might assist him in taking part of NATO member Denmark, noting “I’m sitting with a man who could be very instrumental. You know Mark, we need that for international security.” Rutte replied, “when it comes to Greenland yes or not joining the U.S. I would leave that outside for me this discussion because I don’t want to drag NATO in that.”
Rutte doesn’t seem to want to commit even rhetorically to defending alliance members’ sovereignty. Even if Rutte had interrupted Trump and told the US president his comments were inappropriate, the idea that NATO would defend Canada from a US invasion is ridiculous. Latvia and Estonia will not send troops to repel a US invasion. Nor will France or the UK.
Will Canada send troops to defend Greenland if Trump takes it from NATO member Denmark? Does anyone think that would that be a good idea?
Article 5 of the NATO Charter is not clear on what collective defence entails. It says an attack against one member “shall be considered an attack against them all.” But it doesn’t stipulate what the response should be, noting only that each member state must take “such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force.” Article 5 has only ever been invoked after the September 11, 2001, attacks in the US.
In the past NATO has undercut Canadian sovereignty. Unbeknownst to most Canadians, NATO was employed by Washington to topple a government in Ottawa. When Prime Minister John Diefenbaker didn’t provide unconditional support during the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, US President John F. Kennedy used NATO as part of a multifaceted effort to precipitate the downfall of his minority Conservative government. On January 3, 1963, the outgoing commander of NATO, US General Lauris Norstad, came to Ottawa on an unplanned visit in which he claimed Canada would not be fulfilling her commitments to the alliance if the country did not acquire nuclear warheads. It was part of a series of moves by the Kennedy administration to weaken Diefenbaker, which led to the fall of his government. During the subsequent election campaign, Kennedy’s top pollster, Lou Harris, helped longtime external affairs official Lester Pearson defeat Diefenbaker.
NATO continues to undercut Canadian sovereignty. It’s used to justify purchasing expensive offensive kit (think F-35s and surface combatant warships) that are a drag on resources. The alliance also undermines Canadian defence since it promotes a forward military posture. In recent years, Canada has participated in NATO maritime operations in the Baltic and Black seas. In 2018, Canada took charge of NATO Mission Iraq. About 200 Canadian troops were deployed there.
For the past eight years Canada has led a NATO battlegroup in Latvia. About 700 Canadian soldiers are stationed on Russia’s border. There are also Canadian troops elsewhere in Eastern Europe as part of NATO aligned deployments.
NATO has entangled Canada in, what former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson labelled, a “proxy war” that has devastated Ukraine. Ottawa has donated over $4 billion in military assistance and $6 billion in other types of assistance in a bid to continue the fight until the last Ukrainian. While Russian violence is condemnable, NATO provoked the war through its interventionist, antidemocratic, moves.
When NATO promoted Ukraine’s accession to the alliance in 2008, most Ukrainians opposed joining. Subsequently, NATO countries supported the ouster of elected President Viktor Yanukovych who passed legislation codifying Ukrainian neutrality. As John Mearsheimer warned in 2015, NATO was “leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked.”
Pro-NATO commentators generally ignore the alliance’s provocations. They oppose Donald Trump’s — who often says the quiet part out loud — bid to end the conflict in Ukraine. Simultaneously they’ve been upended by Trump’s crass attacks on Canada and have suddenly become wary of US power. While they’ve begun criticizing Canada’s military dependence on the US, they continue to support militarism and imperialism.
In a sign of the crisis faced by militarists, the opinion section of last Saturday’s Globe and Mail published a long article headlined “WANTED: NEW ALLIES: Successive Canadian governments have leveraged our close relationship with Washington to get the most out of our low defence spending. This long-standing approach cannot continue.” Next to it, the paper published Thomas Homer Dixon’s “If you want peace, prepare for war” and a column by a Royal Military College professor headlined “Canada needs to develop its own nuclear program”.
The militarists/imperialists can’t see an option outside of militarism and global hierarchy. Their calls to establish a NATO without the US is an excuse for more militarism and prolonging the conflict in Ukraine. It would do little to protect Canada.
While there may be an argument for developing a guerrilla type defence structure, membership in NATO undercuts this country’s moral standing. Canada’s best defence against an invasion is making sure hundreds of millions of people in the US and elsewhere know this country is not their enemy.
Image credit: GHY International
The post NATO: More Militarism, No Defence against US Expansionists first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
European leaders gathered in Paris on March 27 for another summit on the war in Ukraine, continuing discussions launched alongside peace negotiations initiated by the Trump presidency. The stated goal of the meeting was shaping a roadmap towards a “robust peace.”
Judging from the conclusions of the summit, European heads of state continue to believe such a peace will be achieved by prolonging sanctions on Russia, financing more weapons for Ukraine, and preparing a so-called “reassurance force” to be deployed after a future ceasefire.
The post Europe Insists On Continued Sanctions, Troop Deployment In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
The convulsions wracking the American body politic inescapably impact the nation’s foreign relations. For the United States today is in a condition that defies all conventional categories. Its leader(s) are abnormal, its government is abnormal, its conduct is abnormal – and, perhaps, its society itself is abnormal. Donald Trump is a malignant narcissist compounded by extreme megalomania; Elon Musk, his Co-President, is also a megalomanic neo-Fascist with Nazi affinities – a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute is a Hitler salute.1 Together, they have launched a no-holds-barred campaign to impose on the country an autocratic yoke that aims to control and dictate in accordance with their primitive dogmas and destructive impulses. Already, the United States’ Constitutional republic is badly wounded, its hallowed public institutions assaulted, its democratic political culture corrupted. Their restoration is highly improbable. An immediate consequence is to mutilate further America’s moral standing buried in the rubble of Gaza, to dissolve the last shreds of its soft power, to transform its vaunted image as “The City on a Hill” into a model of what you don’t want to become. Instead, Trump’s I & II have emboldened neoliberals worldwide to act as their instincts tell them: Bolsonaro in Brazil, Milei in Argentina, Modi in India, Erdogan in Turkiye and a host of other minor power wielders. In contrast, what nation’s responsible leadership wants to emulate the United States circa 2025?
Narcissist Praxis
A narcissist’s behavior is more compulsive than calculated. It affirms three overriding needs: The first is to gather the power to control others and one’s environs. That serves a dual purpose: feeding the desire for adulation, and for ensuring that those persons cannot do anything to you that undermines the exalted sense of self. The second is to create situations, and to surround oneself with courtiers, where that sacred self is celebrated – a hunger that never is satiated. Third, to destroy whatever or whomever is felt to threaten or obstruct fulfillment of those drives: rivals, critics, the recalcitrant. These traits make permanent relationships extremely difficult since anybody can become prey were an action of theirs to pierce the multiple mental barriers in place to protect what is in essence a fragile core self. The same applies to fixed commitments. Therefore, a full-blown narcissistic can never be counted on to honor a pledge, to keep a promise or to abide by a treaty. Trump’s entire career is marked by deceit, lies, cheating and a skirting of the law confirms that judgment. He is totally untrustworthy.
The implication is that any party dealing with the Trump administration must be ultra cautious by insisting that any agreement is nailed down as concretely as possible. A large security deposit and valuable collateral are obligatory. Russian leaders are well aware of this given their experience of being deceived repeatedly by the U.S. and its partners since 1991. (Sergei Lavrov recently: “Words are not enough.”) Moreover, Putin himself gives every evidence of understanding the peculiar psychology of the man. The same can be said of China’s Xi. The governments most susceptible to falling victim to Trump’s ploys are those needy of external aide of one kind or another – thus, vulnerable to America’s pressure tactics. And, of course, any national leader who remains deluded about the man’s true nature. Trump’s predatory instincts are aroused by the weak and the craven – be it a Chuck Schumer at home or a Olaf Schulz abroad. The pleasure in debasing them is a fringe benefit of power. Moreover, he can be expected to apply his bullying to as many parties as catch his attention (the above noted apart). There is no proportionality between the target’s intrinsic worth and how extreme the measure of coercion he is prepared to apply. A Chinese company at the Panama Canal – invasion. The potential riches of exploitable natural resources in Greenland – demand that long-time friend Denmark hand it over or risk economic sanctions. Canada’s insistence on maintaining its independence existence when turning its de facto interdependence with the U.S. into de jure integration would aggrandize America – tariffs and threat of outright import restrictions. The criterion is not something objective; rather, it is whatever Trump feels will add to his grandiose visions or some irritating action that gets under his skin.
To understand these flights of fancy, we should note the abundance of evidence that Trump’s grip on reality is fragile. His mind resides in a virtual reality that shutters perceptions of actual reality. As has been said in another context, “his own grip on truth or falsity is so fluid, so subservient to his desires, that it matters little to him what is true and what is false; so he is able to act as if something is true if that serves his purposes best. Belief has become a creature of his will: he will treat an unfounded suspicion as if it were a Cartesian certainty. He has contempt for people who are candid and trusting, who can respect the truth.”2
What Trump craves are gratifications not constructive accomplishments that are tangible &/or enduring. It is a mistake to presume that Trump has thought out plans or strategies about anything. His behavior is dictated by the syncopation of his compulsions. Narcissists live their lives to the pulse of any inner beat: I need, I want, I need, I want. Empathy is foreign to narcissists. They have neither the capacity nor the inclination to relate to others except at a very superficial level.3
Trump harbors no clear conception of the America that he is transforming in tumult and disarray, no mental model of how that disassembled America is to be recast. The same holds for foreign affairs. To pose the question: what is his goal? How does he view the global ‘system’? Where do individual actions fit into a broad, long-term strategy? is to misunderstand Trump and what makes him tick. There are no answers because he is incapable both psychologically and intellectually of thinking along those lines. A couple of things can be said about what sort of environment best suits him. First, the two fixed points of reference are further exhalation of self, and expanding the tangible benefits that the United States derives from all its external relations. The former is unlimited; the latter is thought of in narrow, short-term ways. Trump doesn’t give a fig about the well-being of other countries (with the glaring exception of Israel) nor does he concern himself with how the impact on them of his deeds and misdeeds could redound to the disadvantage of the United States. Equally, there is no regard to the overall ordering of international affairs. He is neither a liberal believer in promoting multilateral world institutions to create a measure of stability and to perform certain basic system maintenance functions nor imperial in his designs. The latter doesn’t appeal to him since he abhors the thought of taking any sort of responsibility for others. Both approaches entail commitments that are utterly alien to him. His mercurial, impulsive modus operandi demands absolute freedom to act how, where and when he wants. A world in flux doesn’t faze him; indeed, that is an environment rich in opportunities for buccaneering. In that respect, Trump has more in common with Captain Kidd or Clive of India than he does with Bismarck. Grab what you can – whatever the commodity, e.g. mineral rights.
Russia and Ukraine
How doesn’t Trump’s surprisingly warm embrace of Vladimir Putin along with expressions of support for Russia’s interpretation of the Ukraine crisis reconcile with the portrait of the man sketched above? Some suggest it reflects a statesmanlike side to him that otherwise is not visible. Others opine that Putin has found ways to beguile him. Are these conjectures credible? I think not. Let’s bear in mind that Trump has always been attracted to strong men who exercise power forcefully. Engaging with them mano y mano exalts his own sense of exceptional prowess.
Deep down, Trump is an insecure person who requires a) adulation and b) constant demonstrations of his potency. The latter is expressed in his characteristic style of bullying, disparagement of others, and the relishing of contrived ‘wins.’ Putin, he instinctively realizes, is superior to him – in all respects: intelligence, range of knowledge, erudition, articulateness, political skills, diplomatic skills. Dealing on an equal basis with such a man massages Trump’s inflated ego. The content of the practical dealings is less important than the engagement. Trump need not emerge from these dealings as a ‘winner,’ but he could not tolerate being seen as the ‘loser.’ Hence, Putin faces the delicate challenge at once of avoiding concessions designed to flatter and protect Trump’s self-image while not conceding anything of consequence re. Russian interests. He seems aware of this; hence, his emollient manner in addressing Trump. The crunch will come on Ukraine.
Trump has made a sudden commitment to the termination of the open-ended Ukraine project of exploiting that benighted country as a weapon for subordinating Russia. He recognizes – more by instinct than rigorous analysis – that it is a catastrophic failure, and that reversion from it is called for. Let us bear in mind, though, that the campaign that was launched by Barack Obama in 2014 was deepened by Trump I who generously armed the Ukrainian military, and built up the powerful army that was poised to invade the breakaway Russophile oblasts of the Donbass, following a plan drafted by the Pentagon. Only nine months after he left office it was activated by Joe Biden. At that time, Trump shared an overwhelming consensus by the country’s political class that taking on Russia in the Ukraine served major American national interests. Several of Trump’s appointees have been vocal promoters of the campaign.
Trump is anything but a natural conciliator and humanitarian – as evinced by his mad design for extirpating the Palestinians, his bullying of every country friend or foe in sight, and his confrontational approach toward China. The expediency of calming relations with Russia has much to do with the girding of loins for the priority given aggressive campaigns in the Middle East and East Asia rather than earnest concern for European peace. Trump came to see Ukraine as a financial investment that went sour. So, you blame your agents for the failure and grab whatever tangible assets are lying around. He never will admit that our aid, in fact, was spent to make possible the spilling of Ukrainian blood for American purposes. Mea Culpa is not in his vocabulary
The sobering truth is that Trump’s overriding desire is to be in the limelight, to be praised, to be seen as a winner. So, being hailed as the Great Peacemaker (Ukraine) would be as gratifying as being acclaimed as the Great War Leader (Iran). Fame is fungible for him.
At the more practical level, the White House notion as to what should be the basis for an agreement with Russia bears no relation to the realities on the ground or to the Kremlin’s oft-repeated statement of its unnegotiable core objectives. Trump will not be happy with terms, however dressed up, that constitute a clear humiliation of the U.S. Ignorance, and fantasy, attaches to the proposal of a ceasefire which makes zero sense from a Moscow perspective. Simply put, the White House has no viable plan to bring peace to Ukraine, much less a conception for a redesigned pan-European security system as viewed by Russia as the sine qua non for continental peace and stability. So, when the White House and the Kremlin get down to talking about concrete issues, and the wider question of reconstructing European security institutions, real comity will be illusory. At present, the two parties have conceptions of the outcome that are incompatible. How will Trump react when his simplistic ideas for ending the war prove to be fanciful? Find a scapegoat – Biden, Zelensky, the Europeans? Concoct another fictional narrative eagerly spread by credulous mass media? (This second in combination with the first?) Create a noisy distraction (attack Iran, rename the Washington Monument the TRUMP MONUMENT)?
[Trump’s publicly expressed views sympathetic to Russia on the Ukraine also may have something to do with electoral considerations. In 2016, Trump gained advantage from denouncing the Democrats’ forever wars, e.g. Afghanistan. Outflanking Hillary on that (and her alleged being soft on Wall St) may have made the difference. Perhaps, he or his advisers had the notion that they could siphon off some disaffected Democratic voters by substituting Ukraine for Afghanistan. Once having committed himself this way, Trump as President could not easily reverse course on a dime – and for the reasons cited above, was comfortable pursuing a deal with Putin.]
In the total absence of any sort of superego or any firm convictions, the only constant in Trump’s makeup is respect for the raw power of another party who has the demonstrated will to use it. The odd coupling with Elon Musk is further indication of that disposition. Equally, there is a long record of Trump either keeping his distance from anybody who seriously can hurt him or treating them with circumspection. That is a partial explanation for his accommodating attitude toward Putin. Does the same hold for China and Xi? There, Trump equivocates. He sees in a China a rival to American paramountcy – as does the near entire American foreign policy community. He accuses its of mistreating the United States, especially on trade and commercial matters generally. He has taken several audacious steps against it – going back to the Trump I administration. Yet, at the same time he occasionally conjures a vision of a modus vivendi grounded on a newly equilibriated relationship which is weighed in favor if the United States. In addition, he respects Xi as the type of strong, forceful leader he admires. So, we might expect a confrontational stance in the economic sphere, but a reluctance to raise further tensions over Taiwan. Trump is hyperaggressive; he also is a coward who deep down is afraid of getting bloodied. Consider his reaction when, in the debate with Kamala Harris, he had all of his sordid record and actions thrown in his face. Trump sulked and then immediately cancelled subsequent bouts. Hence, this is not a man who hankers for a test of arms with a powerful opponent – nor a warmonger. Most likely, we will witness much pawing of the earth, but no charge.
The same cowardness militates against his starting a war with Iran. Despite all the blustering threats of recent weeks, Trump suddenly tweets that an understanding with Tehran about its nuclear program just might be in the cards. A changeability that stems from a readiness to contradict himself as if turning on a dime as well as his deep fear of actually getting into a dangerous brawl with someone who hits back (as none of his domestic opponents/rivals/victims do).
Trump’s penchant for treating directly with strong leaders of strong states – Putin, Xi, Modi – has led some analysts to wonder whether that could be the basis for a strategy of fostering a concert among them. That could be seen as encompassing an informal set of understandings on rules of the road and convergent interests in promoting stability through a collaborative superintending of world affairs. A version of the imagined concert that allows for hard bargaining and a good measure of rivalry for the arrangement to conform to Trump’s aberrant temperament and behavior. That, though, would reduce its effectiveness and jeopardize its stability. So, an intriguing idea – but unrealistic on a number of counts. One, the Trump national security team lack the diplomatic skills and aptitude to launch such a sophisticated, multifaceted project and to nurture it over the years required to bring it to fruition. Two, other leaders are unlikely to place the requisite trust in an erratic, obsessive and narcissistic a person as Trump. Three, in light of the United States’ commitment to keeping an outsized role in managing the world’s affairs, there are certain to arise points of friction that will erode the underlying consensus and goodwill critical for the concert to work.
ENDNOTES:
The post Nemesis first appeared on Dissident Voice.
1 Last week, Musk’s daughter affirmed in a public statement that her father indeed was making the Nazi salute. Just a few weeks earlier, Steve Bannon – who did more than anybody else to get Trump elected in 2016 – too gave the Nazi salute from the dais of an international gathering of far-Right movements. Swastikas and other Nazi symbols are prevalent at MAGA rallies; Trump himself tacitly has given his benediction to neo-Nazi outfits like Proud Boys and Neo-Aryans.
2 Shakespeare, Othello.
3 A narcissist like Trump seeks to animate others with his demented energy, grandiose plans, and megalomaniacal projects. An adrenaline junkie, his world is a whirlwind of comings and goings, reunions and divorces. A narcissist is like a child in his frenetic restlessness. It is a form of ‘primitivization,’ as Eric Hoffer has called it. “By plunging into ceaseless action and hustling,” the person never matures. “People in a hurry can neither grow nor decay; they are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility.”
The narcissist is the self-appointed gatekeeper to reality; deciding what is, what happened, what did not happen, how it happened, whether important or not, who is who. What counts most is how it is recorded. The tree that falls in the forest with no one around surely makes a sound, but that event has little meaning unless I; am there to register it. In fact, my being there is the main news.
The narcissist is the self-appointed gatekeeper to reality; deciding what is, what happened, what did not happen, how it happened, whether important or not, who is who. What counts most is how it is recorded. The tree that falls in the forest with no one around surely makes a sound, but that event has little meaning unless I; am there to register it. In fact, my being there is the main news.
This is posted on Sebastian Sas’ important YouTube Channel with no less than 120,000 subscribers. His succinct analysis is based on an article published by the NED, EU and NATO-supported Ukraine-based newspaper, European Pravda.
I hope you are half as shocked as Sas — and I — are. Because, remember that this war, this destruction of Ukraine has been caused by the Russia-NATO conflict — that is, by the Obama administration’s regime change in Kiev in 2014, the US-led NATO’s expansion and the US/Western pumping of arms into Ukraine.
Now, Ukraine is destined to be paying for generations ahead and give away its natural resources to an extent that makes it impossible to see it as a sovereign state in the future. The Trump Regime’s proposal is in colonial-slave style — also meant to undermine the European Union’s plans…
The post Mineral Deal Gives the US Total Control over Ukraine’s Future first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
As a result of three years of the war, Ukraine faced a massive demographic crisis. According to various estimates, mass migration, a high rate of premature mortality and a sharp decline in birth rates have led to a huge population decline from 41 to 30 million people. Over 2024 the number of the Ukrainians, who died, exceeded the amount of those, who were born, threefold. Experts from the Institute for Demography and Life Quality Problems of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, has predicted that Ukraine’s population can decrease to 25 million people by 2050.
Realizing the complexity of the situation, the Ukrainian authorities are taking steps to improve the demographic indicators. At the end of the last year, the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine adopted the Demographic Development Strategy until 2040, aimed at creating comfortable conditions for Ukrainian families, providing affordable housing, high-quality public infrastructure, safe environment and inclusive labor market. Simultaneously, the Ministry of National Unity is trying to return the Ukrainians to their homeland. In addition, the government has included free assistance to families in infertility treatment into a number of medical support programs.
Despite all the declared measures, Kyiv will have to do a lot to overcome negative demographics tendencies. But the most important thing is that it is impossible to solve the issue of fertility and to increase life expectancy without stopping the war, the action the Ukrainian authorities are not ready to take under current circumstances in the conflict zone. The war is forcing more and more people to leave Ukraine and, above all, to take their children out of the country. And the prospect for returning refugees is becoming unclear due to the destructions, low level of security, ambiguity about the time the war will come to an end and its results for Ukraine.
The post Is it Possible to Overcome the Demographic Crisis during the War? first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
TAIPEI, Taiwan – Russian President Vladimir Putin said that Ukraine could be placed under a “temporary administration” as part of a peace process that could include help from North Korea and other Moscow allies.
The announcement came as South Korea reported that the North appeared to have dispatched at least another 3,000 soldiers to Russia in January and February.
Speaking about efforts to settle the war during his visit to Murmansk, Russia, Putin said not just the United States, but also all BRICS countries, as well as North Korea, could be partners for cooperation, according to the Russian news agency Tass.
“This is not only the United States but also the People’s Republic of China, India, Brazil, South Africa, all BRICS countries,” Putin said.
“And many others, for example, including the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” he said, using North Korea’s official name, without elaborating.
The United States brokered a tentative ceasefire agreement between Ukraine and Russia this week to halt hostilities in the Black Sea and ensure safe navigation for commercial vessels.
However, Russia’s compliance is contingent upon the lifting of certain Western sanctions, particularly those affecting its agricultural exports. European leaders have expressed skepticism about easing sanctions, saying that the time is not right for such actions.
China has maintained a complex stance on the Russia-Ukraine war, emphasizing respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty while also acknowledging Russia’s security concerns regarding NATO expansion.
North Korea has reportedly deployed up to 12,000 troops and supplied ballistic missiles to support Russia’s efforts in Ukraine, marking its first significant military involvement abroad since the 1950s. Neither Russia nor North Korea has confirmed the claims made by the U.S. and South Korea.
Additional troops to Russia
The Russian leader’s remarks came as the South Korean military confirmed that North Korea appeared to have additionally dispatched at least 3,000 soldiers to Russia in January and February in support of Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
“Of the some 11,000 North Korean soldiers dispatched to Russia, 4,000 casualties have occurred, and it appears that some 3,000 or more have been additionally dispatched in January and February,” the South’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, or JCS, said.
The JCS said the North continued to supply missiles, ammunition and artillery equipment to Russia, including “a considerable amount of short-range ballistic missiles and around 220 pieces of 170 millimeter self-propelled howitzers and 240 mm rocket launchers.”
It added Pyongyang appeared to be making technological upgrades to launch another military spy satellite, although there were no imminent signs of such a launch.
The JCS also noted that North Korea appeared to be carrying out a smaller number of wintertime military training sessions compared with last year, attributing the fall to troop mobilization for various construction works, preparation for additional deployment to Russia and chronic energy shortage.
North Korea unveiled on Thursday what appears to be its first airborne radar system and suicide attack drones equipped with artificial intelligence, adding to indications that Russia has provided technical assistance in exchange for the North sending troops to fight Ukraine.
RELATED STORIES
North Korea unveils its first airborne radar, AI-powered suicide drones
Captured North Korean soldier reveals use of Russian drone-jamming gun
UK, allies sanction North Korean officials linked to Russia troop deployment
North Korean leader’s visit to Russia
Separately, Russia’s top official said preparations were under way for North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s visit to Russia this year, the latest sign of deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang.
Speaking to journalists in Moscow on Thursday, Russia’s deputy foreign minister Andrey Rudenko said Moscow was preparing for Kim’s visit to the country, Tass reported, without elaborating.
It would be Kim’s third visit to Russia, following his trip to Vladivostok in 2019 and the Vostochny Cosmodrome space center in the Amur region in 2023.
Russia and North Korea have aligned closely since Putin and Kim signed a mutual defense treaty during the Russian leader’s visit to Pyongyang last year. It elevated military cooperation and resulted in the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia.
Edited by Mike Firn and Stephen Wright.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The court condemned Ukrainian authorities for failing to prevent a fiery 2014 massacre in which dozens of anti-Nazi activists were burned alive – but the judges’ political bias meant victims were implicitly blamed for their fate, and their families received a paltry 15,000 euro payout.
The European Court of Human Rights has found the Ukrainian government guilty of committing human rights violations during the May 2, 2014 Odessa massacre, in which dozens of Russian-speaking demonstrators were forced into the city’s Trade Unions House and burned alive by ultranationalist thugs.
This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Citing the “relevant authorities’ failure to do everything that could reasonably be expected of them to prevent the violence in Odessa,” the court ruled unanimously that Ukraine violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which guarantees the right to life. The judges also condemned the Ukrainian government’s failure “to stop that violence after its outbreak, to ensure timely rescue measures for people trapped in the fire, and to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events.”
42 people were killed as a result of the fire, a bloody bookend to the so-called “Maidan revolution” that saw Ukraine’s democratically-elected president deposed in a Western-backed coup in 2014. Ukrainian officials and legacy media outlets have consistently framed the deaths as a tragic accident, with some figures even blaming anti-Maidan protesters themselves for starting the blaze. That notion is thoroughly discredited by the verdict, which was delivered by a team of seven judges including a Ukrainian justice.
As dozens of anti-Maidan activists burned to death, the ECHR found deployment of fire engines to the site was “deliberately delayed for 40 minutes,” even though the local fire station was just one kilometer away.
In the end, the judicial body determined there was nothing which indicated Ukrainian authorities “had done everything that could reasonably be expected of them to avert” the violence. Officials in Kiev, they said, made “no efforts whatsoever” to prevent skirmishes between pro- and anti-Maidan activists that led to the deadly inferno, despite knowing in advance such clashes were likely to break out. Their “negligence… went beyond an error of judgment or carelessness.”
The case was brought by 25 people who lost family members in the Neo-Nazi arson attack and clashes that preceded it, and three who survived the fire with various injuries. Though the ECHR found Ukraine violated their human rights, the court demanded Ukraine pay them just 15,000 euros each in damages.
The ruling also stopped short of acknowledging the full reality of the Odessa slaughter, as it largely overlooked the role played by Western-supported neo-Nazi elements and their intimate ties to the sniper massacre in February 2014 in Maidan Square which has been conclusively determined to have been a false flag. In the judges’ decision, they downplayed or justified violence by the violent Ukrainian football fans and skinheads, charitably describing them as “pro-unity activists.”
Russians burned alive while Ukrainian officials looked away
Ukraine’s Maidan protests commenced in November 2013 after President Yanukovych declined to form a trade agreement with Europe and renewed dialogue with Russia, and tensions quickly began to escalate between Odessa’s sizable Russian-speaking population and Ukrainian nationalists. As the ECHR ruling noted, “while violent incidents had overall remained rare… the situation was volatile and implied a constant risk of escalation.” In March 2014, anti-Maidan activists set up a tent camp in Kulykove Pole Square, and began calling for a referendum on the establishment of an “Odessa Autonomous Republic.”
The next month, supporters of Odesa Chornomorets and Kharkiv Metalist football clubs announced a rally “For a United Ukraine” on May 2. According to the ECHR, that’s when “anti-Maidan posts began to appear on social media describing the event as a Nazi march and calling for people to prevent it.” Though the European court branded the description Russian “disinformation,” there’s extensive evidence that hooligans associated with both clubs had overt Neo-Nazi sympathies and associations, and well-established reputations for violence. The football clubs involved later went on to form the notorious Azov Battalion.
Fearing their tent encampment would be attacked, anti-Maidan activists resolved to disrupt the “pro-unity” march before it reached them. The ECHR revealed Ukraine’s security services and cybercrime unit had substantive intelligence indicating “violence, clashes and disorder” were certain on the day. However, authorities “ignored the available intelligence and the relevant warning signs,” and failed to take the “proper measures” to “stamp out any provocation.”
On May 2, 2014, anti-Nazi activists confronted the demonstrators as the march began, and violent clashes immediately erupted. At roughly 5:45 PM, in the precise manner of the Maidan Square sniper false flag massacre three months earlier, multiple anti-Maidan activists were fatally shot “by someone standing on a nearby balcony” using “a hunting gun,” the ruling states. Subsequently, “pro-unity protesters… gained the upper hand in the clashes,” and charged towards Kulykove Pole square.
Anti-Maidan activists took refuge in the Trade Unions House, a five-story building overlooking the square, while their ultranationalist adversaries “started setting fire to the tents,” according to the ruling. Gunfire and Molotov cocktails were exchanged by both sides, and before long, the building was ablaze. “Numerous calls” were made to the local fire brigade, including by police, “to no avail.” The court noted that the fire chief had “instructed his staff not to send any fire engines to Kulykove Pole without his explicit order,” so none were dispatched.
Many of those trapped in the building died when attempting to escape by jumping from its upper windows, and those that survived were treated to more ‘unity’ by the violent demonstrators outside. “Video footage shows pro-unity protesters attacking people who had jumped or had fallen,” the ECHR notes. It was not until 8:30 PM that firefighters finally entered the building and extinguished the blaze. Police then arrested 63 surviving activists they found remaining in the building or on the roof. Those detained weren’t released until two days later, when a several hundred-strong group of anti-Maidan protesters stormed the police station holding them.
The litany of security failures and industrial scale negligence by authorities that day was greatly aggravated by “local prosecutors, law enforcement, and military officers” not being “contactable for a large part or all of [the] time,” as they were coincidentally attending a meeting with Ukraine’s Deputy Prosecutor General. The ECHR “found the attitude and passivity of those officials inexplicable” – apparently unwilling to consider the obvious possibility that Ukrainian authorities purposefully made themselves incommunicado to ensure maximum mayhem and bloodshed, while insulating themselves from legal repercussions.
Because Ukrainian authorities “had not done everything they reasonably could to prevent the violence,” nor even “what could reasonably be expected of them to save people’s lives,” the ECHR found Kiev violated Article 2 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court also concluded authorities “failed to institute and conduct an effective investigation into the events in Odessa,” a violation of the “procedural aspect” of Article 2.
Anatomy of a Kiev coverup
Though left unstated, the ECHR’s appraisal of the Odessa massacre, and the officials who failed in their most basic duties points to a deliberate state-level coverup.
For example, no effort was made to seal off “affected areas of the city centre” in the event’s aftermath. Instead, “the first thing” local authorities did “was to send cleaning and maintenance services to those areas,” meaning invaluable evidence was almost inevitably eradicated.
Unsurprisingly, when on-site inspections were finally carried out two weeks later, the probes “produced no meaningful results,” the ECHR noted. The Trade Unions House likewise “remained freely accessible to the public for 17 days after the events,” giving malicious actors plentiful time to manipulate, remove, or plant incriminating evidence at the site. Meanwhile, “many of the suspects absconded,” the court noted. Several criminal investigations were opened, only to go nowhere, left to expire under Ukraine’s statute of limitations.
Other cases that reached trial “remained pending for years,” before being dropped, despite “extensive photographic and video evidence regarding both the clashes in the city centre and the fire,” from which culprits’ identities could be easily discerned. The ECHR expressed no confidence that Ukrainian authorities “made genuine efforts to identify all the perpetrators,” and several forensic reports weren’t released for many years, in breach of basic protocols. Elsewhere, the Court noted a criminal investigation of an individual suspected of having shot at anti-Maidan activists was inexplicably discontinued on four separate occasions, on identical grounds.
The court also noted “serious defects” in investigations into Ukrainian officials’ role in the massacre. Primarily, this took the form of “prohibitive delays” and “significant periods of unexplained inactivity and stagnation” in opening cases. For instance, “although it had never been disputed that the fire service regional head had been responsible for the delayed deployment of fire engines to Kulykove Pole,” it took nearly two years for the Ukrainian government to officially investigate.
Similarly, Odessa’s regional police chief not only failed to implement any “contingency plan in the event of mass disorder,” as required, but internal documents claiming that security measures had in fact been undertaken were found to have been forged. A criminal investigation into the chief took nearly a year to materialize, then remained pending “for about eight years,” when it was closed after the statute of limitations expired.
The Georgian connection
The notion that the incineration of anti-Maidan activists in May 2014 was an intentional and premeditated act of mass murder, conceived and directed by Kiev’s US-installed far-right government, was apparently not considered by the ECHR. But testimonies from a Ukrainian parliamentary commission which was instituted in the massacre’s immediate aftermath indicate the violence was not a freak twist of fate spontaneously produced by two hostile factions clashing in Odessa, as the ruling suggests.
That parliamentary commission found Ukrainian national and regional officials explicitly planned to use far-right activists drawn from the fascist Maidan Self-Defence to violently suppress Odessa’s would-be separatists, and disperse all those camped by the Trade Unions House. Moreover, the notorious ultra-nationalist Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy and 500 of its armed members of Maidan Self-Defense were dispatched to the city from Kiev on the eve of the massacre.
From 1998 – 2004, Parubiy served as founder and leader of Neo-Nazi paramilitary faction Patriot of Ukraine. He also headed Kiev’s National Security and Defence Council at the time of the Odessa massacre. Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations immediately began scrutinizing Parubiy’s role in the May 2014 events after he was replaced as lead parliamentary speaker, following the country’s 2019 general election. This probe has seemingly come to nothing since, although a year prior a Georgian militant testified to Israeli documentarians that he engaged in “provocations” in the Odessa massacre under the command of Parubiy, who told him to attack anti-Maidan activists and “burn everything.”
That militant was one of several Georgian fighters who has admitted they were personally responsible for the February 2014 Maidan Square false flag sniper massacre, under the command of ultranationalist Ukrainian figures like Parubiy, and Mikhael Saakashvili, the founder of infamous mercenary brigade Georgian Legion. The slaughter in Maidan brought about the end of Viktor Yanukovych’s government, and sent Ukraine hurtling towards war with Russia.
The Odessa massacre was another chapter in that morbid saga – and Europe’s foremost human rights court has now formally laid responsibility for the horror at Kiev’s feet.
The post Ukraine Guilty of Human Rights Violations in Trade Union Massacre, Top European Court Finds first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The Grayzone’s Aaron Maté argues that the US and NATO provoked Russia in Ukraine by expanding NATO, dismantling arms control, installing military assets threatening Russia, meddling in Ukraine and blocking multiple opportunities for peace.
The post How NATO Provoked Russia In Ukraine And Undermined Peace appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.