TAIPEI, Taiwan – Two captured North Korean soldiers fighting with Russia in its war against Ukraine were not among the 1,000 prisoners of war recently repatriated by Ukraine to Russia due to a request from Seoul, said a South Korean lawmaker.
The soldiers, identified as Ri and Baek, were part of the more than 12,000 North Korean soldiers deployed to Russia’s Kursk region to fight Ukraine who occupied parts of the region in an August counteroffensive. The two were captured in January and have been in custody in Kyiv since then.
“I have confirmed through a Ukrainian source that Ri and Baek, former North Korean soldiers captured by Ukrainian forces, were excluded from the recent prisoner exchange list,” said Yu Yong-weon, a member of South Korea’s ruling People Power Party.
Russia and Ukraine agreed to a prisoner swap of 1,000 detainees each during negotiations in Istanbul, Turkey on May 16. From May 23, they exchanged around 300 prisoners daily for three days.
“Another source said that their exclusion from the exchange was in response to a request from the South Korean government, which the Ukrainian government honored,” Yu said.
“Please make every diplomatic effort to ensure they can set foot on the free soil of South Korea.”
Radio Free Asia has not independently verified the status of Ri and Baek.
Yu visited Ukraine in February and met with the two prisoners when Ri expressed a desire to defect to South Korea.
Legally, South Korea recognizes all North Koreans as citizens under its constitution. This means that any North Korean, including a prisoner of war, or POW, is entitled to South Korean nationality upon arrival.
South Korea’s foreign ministry said it had expressed a fundamental principle that it would accept any North Korean soldiers requesting to come to South Korea and had conveyed this position to the Ukrainian side.
Russia and North Korea have aligned closely since Russian President Vladimir Putin visited North Korea for talks with Kim Jong Un and 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.
Reports of the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia first surfaced in October. Even as evidence of their presence grew – including when North Korean soldiers were taken captive by Ukrainian forces in Kursk and interviewed – neither North Korea nor Russia acknowledged their presence until April.
South Korea’s main spy agency National Intelligence Service, or NIS, reported in April that among the North Korean troops deployed to Russia, there have been a total of 4,700 casualties, including 600 deaths.
The NIS estimated the North has deployed a total of 15,000 troops to Russia in two separate deployments.
Combat has decreased since March as Russian forces have retaken most of the territory in the western Kursk, where Ukrainian forces had advanced, the agency said.
While there is currently no visible movement for a third deployment, the possibility remains open, it added.
The NIS also noted that North Korean forces have shown significant improvement in combat capability, as their initial inexperience has diminished and they have become more familiar with new equipment such as drones.
However, the prolonged deployment has reportedly led to “behavioral issues” among the troops, including excessive drinking and theft.
In exchange for troop deployments and arms exports, North Korea is believed to have received from Russia reconnaissance satellite and launch vehicle technology assistance, drones, electronic warfare equipment and SA-22 surface-to-air missiles.
Additionally, North Korea is reportedly in discussions with Russia to modernize 14 industries, including metals, aviation, energy, and tourism. Around 15,000 North Korean workers are estimated to have been sent to Russia, the NIS said.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Taejun Kang for RFA.
Over the last seven days the Ukrainian military has launched over one thousand drones against targets in Russia. Most of these were shot down by Russian air defenses. There are no reports of any serious damage.
The biggest effect the week long drone attacks achieved was to shut down air traffic in Moscow for several hours.
After waiting a few days the Russian military responded in kind.
Over the last three days a record number of drones and missiles were launched against military installations and production facilities in Ukraine (archived):
Russia stepped up missile-and-drone assaults on the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv and other regions, killing at least 12 people overnight into Sunday after President Trump last week declined to impose further sanctions on Moscow over its refusal to halt its invasion.
A Ukrainian man living with myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME/CFS) has been forced into a psychiatric hospital in Ukraine, amidst daily drone strikes and bombings.
His story highlights the lack of knowledge around ME and the additional challenges of Russian attacks on chronically ill and disabled people.
Debilitating symptoms of ME/CFS
Marc is 21 and lives in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Until 2020, he was an ambitious student and aspiring doctor. That was, until he caught Covid. He developed long Covid, and now he lives with ME/CFS – a chronic systemic neuroimmune disease which affects nearly every system in the body. ME causes a series of debilitating symptoms. These typically include influenza-like symptoms, cognitive impairment, multiple forms of pain, and heart, lung, blood pressure, and digestive dysfunctions.
Marc. Image via Marc
In particular, post-exertional malaise (PEM) is the hallmark feature of ME. This involves a disproportionate worsening of other symptoms after even minimal physical, social, mental, or emotional exertion. Often, the worsening can be permanent for the individual.
After contracting Covid-19 in 2020, Marc continued studying, first at Karazin, Ukraine, then at an Irish university where he received a scholarship. However, his health kept getting worse. Eventually, the university expelled him as he could no longer work or study. He presumed he was depressed because he couldn’t get out of bed for weeks.
He went back to Kharkiv, but the constant stress and disruption from the Russian shelling worsened his condition. At first, he still worked from his bed as an online English tutor for a couple of hours a day. He tried to volunteer, play guitar, and draw with charcoal and pastels, but it was taking a lot out of him.
Marc’s artwork. Image via Marc
A continued decline
His condition continued to decline. Doctors repeatedly told Marc it was psychosomatic.
Eventually, Marc couldn’t even leave his apartment and was starving until friends stepped in to help. He told the Canary:
I have very severe ME, I can’t tolerate sound, light, touch. I can’t talk, walk to the toilet and can very rarely use the phone. Most of the time have to lay with earplugs and mask.
At least 25% of people live with severe ME/CFS. People living with it are mostly, if not entirely, permanently bed-bound or hospitalised. On top of this, they are often unable to digest food, communicate, or process information.
He was hospitalised several times, but each time his baseline took a hit. Medical staff forced him to walk, shouted at him, and berated him for his “laziness”. Eventually, he was able to find answers online and realised he had ME. At this point though, he was already bedbound, had severe sensory intolerance, and struggled to walk or communicate.
Due to not having a source of income, his mother ended up caring for him. But she doesn’t have the funds to keep supporting him financially. Eventually, it meant she decided to seek psychiatric help for Marc.
His Mom took him to a psychiatric hospital where they pressured him to sign a waiver to be admitted. The hospital then took away his eye and ear protection, and are regularly forcing him to walk.
Marc in hospital. Image via Marc
‘I’m terrified’
Marc now has daily PEM and is still getting worse. The hospital staff do not understand his condition, and neither do his family. Before his hospital admission, he told the Canary:
My mom doesn’t believe me when I tell her I have MECFS and is taking me to the psychiatric ward today because she thinks it’s a dissociative disorder, I’ve tried so hard, reached out to brother [and] sister but they believe mom, reached out to a social worker she doesn’t believe me either, my mom opens blindfolds [and] door all the time even though I tell her it’s painful for me, she continues forcing me to speak even though I can’t without an intense burning head sensation.
So I get PEM and crash constantly at home because my caretaker doesn’t understand/believe my condition, I’m also autistic.
I’ve already been hospitalised in the ward for three weeks but at that time I could still talk [and] advocate for myself and go to the restroom, it made my situation worse and this time I’m incredibly scared about my health deteriorating.
I’ve seen 7 neurologists there not a single one believed me or even knew about ME. I asked my social worker to print out a few pamphlets in Ukrainian about ME and a plea to transfer me to neurology department so that’s my only hope, my mom will be pushing for me to be treated for psychiatric issues and I can’t protect myself. I have barely energy to write this. I’m terrified to be honest.
16 days later, Marc has only deteriorated further. Whilst he now has his ear and eye protection back, according to his friends, he is eating very little and has been unable to reply to messages for days at a time.
Although the hospital has acknowledged he has dysautonomia symptoms, they are trying to claim he has a dissociative disorder and is refusing to cooperate with them. Marc told the Canary:
ChatGPT says my ME is most likely neuroinflammation and dysautonomia-driven. They want to put me in the reanimating extreme ward because I can’t walk, take a shower, or speak normally.
Mom says I need to try harder and convince myself to get rid of the symptoms. Mom said being home is not an option because she’s scared, and here the doctors will help. Says they’re not helping because I’m not trying. A few neurologists who saw me saw myalgic encephalomyelitis and dismissed it because my CFS was clear.
I’m also trans on HRT for a year, my results are good and stable, they’re saying [the] dysautonomia is because of hormones and making me de-transition even though it will completely destabilise my body, endocrinologist said to do it slowly, even though before he said my results are good. I don’t know what to do.
His online friends have started a fundraiser to try to get Marc better medical care. They have also reached out to Ukrainian specialists who treat ME/CFS patients. They are hoping for more competent medical care in a safer, more stable environment.
Psychologisation rife around the world
All over the world, ill-equipped families and medical staff are forcing patients with ME/CFS into psychiatric hospitals, in blatant attempts to psychologise the illness.
Only last year, the abusive parents of a young woman in Greece forced her into a psychiatric ward against her will. It resulted in Katiana having no contact with the outside world. They trapped her in an environment which posed a serious threat to her life.
Additionally, Katiana highlighted the “widespread disbelief in the existence of ME across the Greek healthcare system. Clearly, this widespread disbelief is not confined to Greece.
A hospital in New Zealand discharged another young woman – 34 year-old Rhiannon – to a care home for pensioners. Similarly, the staff there were hugely ill-equipped for her care and the environment was utterly inappropriate for her condition.
The Canary also reported on a similar case for a young man named Karol in Poland. Clinicians and a disbelieving mother previously committed him to a psychiatric ward, and have threatened this multiple times since.
A care home in the UK is continuing to refuse to give a man with ME and long Covid the vital supplements he needs, to the point he is suffering life-threatening dehydration. And also in the UK, just last year, young women Millie and Carla were both sectioned against their will because doctors believed their ME was ‘all in their heads’.
Now Marc’s story adds to this growing list of ME patients healthcare systems globally are atrociously failing.
ME/CFS under military siege
Marc’s story is a window into the reality of life with ME/CFS under military siege. Not only is he battling the constant disbelief, gaslighting, and abuse which are rife within the medical establishment towards ME patients, but he must contend with doing so in an unstable, dangerous environment.
Given the impacts of loud noises, light, and other external stimuli on ME, the Russian bombardment not only threatens his life in the usual way but also risks worsening his condition from the environmental impacts on the city around him, too.
What’s more, as an autistic transgender man, Marc faces multiple layers of marginalisation. Clinicians appear to have weaponised his gender transition against him. Now, not only is the hospital attempting to coerce him into ‘treatments’ that will harm his ME, but it’s also forcing him to de-transition against his will.
Considering the hospital is so set on claiming Marc’s ME is psychosomatic, it beggars belief that it’s now denying him his HRT. This will undoubtedly put his mental health at risk.
Ultimately, there’s nowhere in the world that’s safe for people living with ME right now. Least of all, however, a country under military invasion.
On Monday President Donald Trump telephoned President Vladimir Putin and they talked for two hours before Trump put lunch in his mouth and Putin his dinner.
On the White House schedule, there was no advance notice of the call and no record afterwards. The White House log is blank for Trump’s entire morning while the press were told he was at lunch between 11:30 and 12:30.
Putin went public first, making a statement to the press which the Kremlin posted at 19:55 Moscow time; it was then 12:55 in Washington. Click to read.
Trump and his staff read the transcript and then composed Trump’s statement in a tweet posted at 13:33 Washington time, 20:33 Moscow time. Click to read.
If Secretary of State Marco Rubio and General Keith Kellogg, the president’s negotiator with the Ukraine and FUGUP (France, United Kingdom, Germany, Ukraine, Poland), were consulted during Trump’s prepping, sat in on the call with the President, or were informed immediately after the call, they have remained silent.
The day before, May 18, Rubio announced that the Istanbul-II meeting had produced agreement “to exchange paper on ideas to get to a ceasefire. If those papers have ideas on them that are realistic and rational, then I think we know we’ve made progress. If those papers, on the other hand, have requirements in them that we know are unrealistic, then we’ll have a different assessment.” Rubio was hinting that the Russian formula in Istanbul, negotiations-then-ceasefire, has been accepted by the US. What the US would do after its “assessment”, Rubio didn’t say – neither walk-away nor threat of new sanctions.
Vice President JD Vance wasn’t present at the call because he was flying home from Rome where he attended Pope Leo XIV’s inaugural mass. “We’re more than open to walking away,” Vance told reporters in his aeroplane. “The United States is not going to spin its wheels here. We want to see outcomes.” Vance prompted Trump to mention the Pope as a mediator for a new round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations, first to Putin and then in public.
Kellogg is refusing to go along. He tweeted on Sunday: “In Istanbul @SecRubio made it clear that we have presented ‘a strong peace plan’. Coming out of the London meetings we (US) came up with a comprehensive 22 point plan that is a framework for peace. The first point is a comprehensive cease fire that stops the killing now.”
FUGUP issued their own statement after Trump’s call. “The US President and the European partners have agreed on the next steps. They agreed to closely coordinate the negotiation process and to seek another technical meeting. All sides reaffirmed their willingness to closely accompany Ukraine on the path to a ceasefire. The European participants announced that they would increase pressure on the Russian side through sanctions.”
This signalled acceptance with Trump of the Russian formula, negotiations-then-ceasefire, and time to continue negotiating at the “technical” level. The sanction threat was added. But this statement was no longer FUGUP. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was omitted; so too Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk. The Italian, the Finn and the European Commission President were substituted. They make FUGIFEC.
Late in the Paris evening of Sunday French President Emmanuel Macron attempted to keep Starmer in Trump’s good books and preserve the ceasefire-first formula. “I spoke tonight,” Macron tweeted, “with @POTUS @Keir_Starmer @Bundeskanzler and @GiorgiaMeloni after our talks in Kyiv and Tirana. Tomorrow, President Putin must show he wants peace by accepting the 30-day unconditional ceasefire proposed by President Trump and backed by Ukraine and Europe.” By the time on Monday that Macron realized he had been trumped, the Elysée had nothing to say.
By contrast, Italian Prime Minister Meloni signalled she was happy to line up with Trump and accept Putin’s negotiations-then-ceasefire. “Efforts are being made,” Meloni’s office announced, “for an immediate start to negotiations between the parties that can lead as soon as possible to a ceasefire and create the conditions for a just and lasting peace in Ukraine.” Meloni claimed she would assure that Pope Leo XIV would fall into line. “In this regard, the willingness of the Holy Father to host the talks in the Vatican was welcomed. Italy is ready to do its part to facilitate contacts and work for peace.”
For the time being, Putin’s and Trump’s statements have put Rubio, Kellogg and the Europeans offside. Decoding the two president’s statements shows how and why.
Our colleagues asked me to briefly comment on the outcome of my telephone conversation with the President of the United States.This conversation has effectively taken place and lasted more than two hours. I would like to emphasise that it was both substantive and quite candid. Overall, [1] I believe it was a very productive exchange.
First and foremost [2], I expressed my gratitude to the President of the United States for the support provided by the United States in facilitating the resumption of direct talks between Russia and Ukraine aimed at potentially reaching a peace agreement and resuming the talks which, as we know, were thwarted by the Ukrainian side in 2022 [3].
The President of the United States shared his position [4] on the cessation of hostilities and the prospects for a ceasefire. For my part, I noted that Russia also supports a peaceful settlement of the Ukraine crisis as well. What we need now is to identify the most effective [5] ways towards achieving peace.
We agreed with the President of the United States that Russia would propose and is ready to engage with the Ukrainian side on drafting a memorandum [6] regarding a potential future peace agreement. This would include outlining a range of provisions, such as the principles for settlement, the timeframe for a possible peace deal, and other matters, including a potential temporary ceasefire, should the necessary agreements [7] be reached.
Contacts among participants of the Istanbul meeting and talks have resumed, which gives reason to believe that we are on the right track overall [8].
I would like to reiterate that the conversation was highly constructive, and I assess it positively. The key issue, of course, is now for the Russian side and the Ukrainian side to show their firm commitment to peace and to forge a compromise that would be acceptable to all parties.
Notably, Russia’s position is clear. Eliminating the root causes [9] of this crisis is what matters most to us.
Should any clarifications be necessary, Press Secretary [Dmitry] Peskov and my aide, Mr Ushakov [10], will provide further details on today’s telephone talks with President Trump.
Keys to Decode
1. This is a qualifier, meaning there are serious differences on the details — Putin asked Trump to pause, halt or cease all arms deliveries to the Ukraine, including US arms shipped through Israel, Germany, and Poland. This is a bullet Trump hasn’t bitten, yet.
2. Putin has made a firm decision to give Trump the “peace deal” he has asked for and wishes to announce at a summit meeting. In their call Putin was mollifying Trump’s disappointment at the failure of their plan to meet when Trump was in the Middle East. A Russian source comments: “Whatever concessions have to be made will be made only by Putin and only to Trump. The Europeans are trying to hog the headlines and turn their defeat into some sort of victory – Trump won’t let them have it and Putin won’t either.”
3. Putin does not publicly admit the mistakes he made with Roman Abramovich and Vladimir Medinsky in March 2022 at Istanbul-I. They have now been corrected at the consensus decision-making session with the military and intelligence chiefs (May 14 Kremlin session) and then on May 16 in Istanbul with Admiral Igor Kostyukov of the GRU seated on Medinsky’s right with General Alexander Fomin, Deputy Minister of Defence. For more details, click to listen.
4. Soft qualifier. This means Putin did not agree with several of Trump’s points relating to intelligence sharing, arms deliveries, Ukrainian elections.
5. Future tense. Putin suggested to Trump that he stop Kellogg and FUGUP encouraging Zelensky. Putin made an especially negative remark about the role played by Prime Minister Starmer.
6. This is a Russian lesson in escalation control. By putting the memorandum of understanding in Russian hands to initiate, Putin returns to the key parts of the December 17, 2021, draft treaty which President Joseph Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken summarily dismissed. Placing agreement on these terms first, before a temporary ceasefire, and making that ceasefire conditional on ceaseforce (halt to battlefield intelligence sharing and arms re-supply), Putin has invited Trump to choose between the US and FUGUP; between Zelensky and an elected successor; and between his personal negotiator advisors, Steven Witkoff and General Kellogg.
7. Reiteration of the formula, negotiations first, then ceasefire.
8. Qualifier repeated – see Key 1.
9. This phrase refers to the European security architecture and mutual security pact of December 2021, as well as to the two declared objectives of the Special Military Operation — demilitarization and denazification.
10. Following Putin’s statement, Ushakov added: “other details of the telephone conversation. Among other things, Putin and Trump touched upon the exchange of prisoners of citizens of the two countries: the format of ‘nine nine’ is being worked out. The leaders also discussed their possible meeting and agreed that it should be productive, so the teams of the presidents will work out the content of the summit between Russia and the United States.”
Trump followed in a stumbling speech in the Rose Garden in which, referring to the morning telephone call, he said “they [Putin] like Melania better.”
Just completed my two hour call with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. I believe it went very well. Russia and Ukraine will immediately start negotiations toward a Ceasefire [1] and, more importantly, an END to the War. The conditions for that will be negotiated between the two parties, as it can only be, because they know details of a negotiation that nobody else would be aware of. [2] The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent. If it wasn’t, I would say so now, rather than later. Russia wants to do largescale TRADE with the United States when this catastrophic “bloodbath” is over, and I agree [3]. There is a tremendous opportunity for Russia to create massive amounts of jobs and wealth. Its potential is UNLIMITED. Likewise, Ukraine can be a great beneficiary on Trade, in the process of rebuilding its Country.
Negotiations between Russia and Ukraine will begin immediately. I have so informed President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, of Ukraine, Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, President Emmanuel Macron, of France, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, of Italy, Chancellor Friedrich Merz, of Germany, and President Alexander Stubb, of Finland, during a call with me,[4] immediately after the call with President Putin. The Vatican, as represented by the Pope [5] has stated that it would be very interested in hosting the negotiations. Let the process begin! [6]
Keys to Decode
1. Trump accepts that negotiations should come before ceasefire.
2. This amounts to rejection of Kellogg’s 22-point term paper first decided with Zelensky and FUGUP in London on April 23 and repeated by Macron the night before Trump’s telephone call; as well as rejection of Witkoff’s term paper discussed at the Kremlin on April 25.
3. Agreement with the business deal-making which Witkoff has been discussing with Kirill Dmitriev. For the deal beneficiaries on both sides, read this.
4. This list includes two Germans, both Russia haters — Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Ursula von der Leyen, former German defense minister and supporter of the German rearmament plan to continue the war with Russia into the future. The British Prime Minister has been dropped by Trump, and also Polish Prime Minister Tusk. Included for the first time in this context are the Italian and Finnish representatives with whom Trump has demonstrated personal rapport. Research by Manos Tzafalias indicates that there is a substantial money interest in Finland for Trump’s associate, Elon Musk.
5. Prompt from the Catholic convert, Vice President Vance.
Vance and Rubio meeting with Pope Leo XIV on May 18. They invited the Pope to make an official visit to Washington. The last papal visit to the White House was in September 2015 on the invitation of President Obama and Vice President Biden.
6. Trump has covered his disappointment at failing to hold a summit meeting with Putin in Istanbul on the afternoon of May 16 by dismissing the negotiations which occurred without him. For details of Trump’s abortive summit plan, read this.
Viktoriia Roshchyna was investigating Russia’s torture sites, then found herself inside one. Manisha Ganguly and Juliette Garside report
Viktoriia Roshchyna, a Ukrainian journalist known as Vika, was determined to report on Russia’s “black sites”.
“These ‘black sites’, they’re not prisons; there’s no control on behaviour there,” Juliette Garside, an editor at the Guardian, tells Michael Safi. “So it’s where we know that some of the worst war crimes, the worst human rights abuses, take place.
After a two-hour telephone call between the presidents of Russia and the United States on Monday, President Vladimir Putin said:
I would like to emphasize once again that the conversation was very constructive, and I rate it highly. The question, of course, is for the Russian and Ukrainian sides to show maximum desire for peace and find compromises that would suit all parties. At the same time,I would like to note that Russia’s position is generally clear. The main thing for us is to eliminate the root causes of this crisis.
It should be no mystery to Western leaders, media and the public what those root causes are, as Moscow has been repeating them ad nauseam beginning 30 years ago and especially in the run up to Russia’s 2022 intervention in Ukraine’s then eight-year old civil war.
As was universally expected, little came out of Istanbul this week, where Ukrainian and Russian delegations met with the ostensible purpose of exploring a negotiated settlement of the proxy war the U.S. provoked three years ago.
It is an odd state of affairs when even the people doing the talking did not anticipate anything useful to emerge from their talking.
After less than two hours of negotiation, the two sides agreed only to future talks on subsidiary questions: a prisoner exchange and a 30–day ceasefire — a ceasefire Kiev and its Western backers refused for years but are now desperate to implement.
As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine enters its third year, Ukraine’s left-wing community is continuing its work fighting both neoliberalism and Russian aggression. Sotsialnyi Rukh or “Social Movement” is Ukraine’s largest and oldest democratic socialist organization. Founded in the aftermath of the Euromaidan protests of 2013-14, Sotsialnyi Rukh has held steadfast to its principled leftist…
In the past weeks and months, Russian and Ukrainian human rights activists have been focusing on negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Back in January, human rights activists and the People First campaign raised several issues to parties involved in ongoing negotiations in the hopes that the negotiations would prioritise those affected by the conflict, particularly prisoners of war, detained Ukrainian citizens, Ukrainian children which have been taken to Russia, and Russian political prisoners.
The invasion of Ukraine was only possible thanks to a system of political repression Russia has inflicted on its own people for decades.
In February, on the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a group of UN special rapporteurs and experts called for parties involved in negotiations to put legal and humanitarian issues at the forefront of discussions. They stressed that the Russian government must be held accountable for its aggression and war crimes in Ukraine committed, and its repressive policies towards its own citizens.
The invasion of Ukraine was only possible thanks to a system of political repression Russia has inflicted on its own people for decades. According to experts, over 3,000 individuals have been persecuted by Russian authorities for political reasons. Despite recent efforts by human rights activists to advocate for person-centred negotiations, it seems more and more doubtful that the focus will be on human rights
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Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has challenged the established system of international relations, which has now proven to be woefully fragile. Most countries see Putin’s decision to unleash outright war on Ukraine as unacceptable. While many democratic countries have continued to provide Ukraine with assistance, this has at times proven insufficient in the face of Russian violence.
Since January, the rejection by the US of legal norms in place since the two world wars has unleashed a new crisis in international politics.
US tactics to repeal basic human rights seem eerily familiar for Russian activists, who have been fighting similar state tactics for the past 25 years.
The new American administration’s policy is increasingly similar to Putin’s own tactics. Both favour the “right of the strong”, whereby great powers can decide the fate of others and dictate conditions. The US has shown itself to be less interested in international law, making it increasingly easy for norms to be overlooked.
US tactics to repeal basic human rights seem eerily familiar for Russian activists, who have been fighting similar state tactics for the past 25 years. Russians knew a world without regard for international human rights or legal norms long before 2025, or the invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
For 25 years, Putin’s government has created a country which prioritises the interests of the state and denies basic human rights.
What is happening in the US is recognisable to many Russians.
By wanting to end the war in Ukraine and find a quick solution, the US president is effectively equating the aggressor with the victim of aggression.
Negotiations thus far suggest Trump is more likely to ensure Russian interests that are detrimental both to the safety of the Ukrainian people, who have been subjected to aggression and occupation, and to justice and a sustainable peace.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine was the result of years of human rights violations within Russia and the lack of a response from the international community to these violations.
An unfair peace — a “deal” that contradicts the norms of international law — sets a dangerous precedent. It normalises the war against Ukraine, thereby giving Russia the green light to repeat its aggression and to enact even harsher repressive policies inside Russia.
Such a “deal” is a signal to the whole world, a move towards dangerous instability, reminiscent of the brink of the outbreak of the world wars. Departing from the principles of human rights and international law in peacekeeping practices encourages impunity and will inevitably lead to new wars of aggression. Democracy in many countries will also be at risk, as the new rules of the game will open up opportunities for autocrats and dictators to violate human rights in their countries without regard for international institutions and their international obligations.
No peace without rights
We call on the leaders of all democratic countries, all politicians for whom human rights are not merely empty words, and civil society to take a stand and bring human rights back into international politics.
This is the only way to create reliable conditions for long-term peace in Europe and prevent the emergence of new-large scale military conflicts globally. Otherwise, the world will find itself in a situation where the fate of countries and the people living in them will be decided through wars unleashed by imperialist predators.
We call on all parties taking part in peace negotiations in Ukraine to prioritise the human aspect: the fate of prisoners of war and the protection needed for civilians, including in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine.
We insist that negotiations be based on the fundamental norms of international legal agreements, including the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act, as they define aggression, protect the principle of territorial integrity and sovereignty, and link military and political security with human rights. Without this, it will be impossible to achieve a just and sustainable peace.
The appeal was drafted and signed by members of the the Council of Russian Human Rights Defenders: Galina Arapova, Sergey Davidis, Yury Dzhibladze, Leonid Drabkin, Sergey Krivenko, Sergey Lukashevsky, Karinna Moskalenko, Oleg Orlov, Lev Ponomarev, Alexander Cherkasov, and Yelena Shakhova.
The names of the other Council members who signed the appeal are not given for security reasons.
On May 9 Russia welcomed twenty-seven heads of state from around the world to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the conclusion of the Great Patriotic War, which ended in victory over the Nazis, one of the greatest achievements in Russian history, and one that would make any nation justly proud.
The United States likes to portray the defeat of Nazism as a glorious U.S. achievement, with a nod to British, Canadian, Australian, French and a few others for their supporting roles. This ignores the central fact that the Wehrmacht had been ground nearly to pulp by the time the U.S. invaded Normandy on June 6, 1944, an event that 80 years of Hollywood fantasies have attempted to transform into the key battle of the war. In reality, however, this much-delayed opening of a second front in the European war occurred when Hitler’s troops had been reduced to mostly children and old men, the military-aged soldiers having perished in gargantuan numbers on the Eastern front. Tens of millions of Soviet soldiers and civilians were also killed there, a large majority deliberately starved by Hitler, who looked to eliminate Slavic peoples and re-populate their territories with a civilized master race of “Aryans.”
U.S. mind-managers have dispatched this immense Russian agony to Orwell’s memory hole, along with the suffering of the Chinese, who lost about half as much as the USSR on the battlefield (which was still an enormous total) in horrendous camps, and in “scientific” laboratories that treated them like experimental rats. British, French, and American losses, especially civilian deaths, were but a tiny fraction of these.
The ferocity of the battles fought in Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk defies description and is well beyond the West’s impoverished moral capacity to even begin to apprehend. Three million Nazi soldiers invaded the USSR with the launching of Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941. This represented eighty percent of the German Army, almost all of whom were either killed, captured, or wounded over the subsequent three years. Meanwhile, the USSR not only fought the invading Germans, but also ardent Nazi-supporters in Poland, Ukraine, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria, along with other European countries that facilitated German military operations and replaced fallen German soldiers in battle.
Both Churchill and FDR accepted that it was the USSR that defeated the Nazis. Western supplies helped, but it was the heart and determination of the Red Army that brought the Nazi beast down.
After the war, the Western powers obscured this story with a fanciful tale of being the most heroic human rights champions in history. But it was actually the Red Army that shot anti-Semites while Western myth-makers re-invented the Jew-haters as anti-Communist freedom fighters worthy of admiration.
Renewing the Cold War it had initiated in 1917 in reaction to the Bolshevik Revolution, Washington imposed a “cordon-sanitaire” in order to eradicate Communism in Western Europe, a broadly-defined demon class that included major elements of the wartime anti-fascist resistance and trade union movements while those who had accommodated Nazism or gone into hiding faced no such exclusion.
Today’s inheritors of collaborationist Europe have redoubled their attacks on Russia with economic sanctions and anti-Russian “human rights” tribunals, all in the name of a “never again” anti-genocide crusade that lacks even the slightest pretense of concern for Israel’s ongoing extermination of the Palestinian people.
Our problems go far beyond Donald Trump.
Source:
“Victory Day: Rescuing the Truth,” La Jornada, May 10, 2025 (Spanish)
Across the scorched fields and ruined factories of Donbass, a new kind of soldier moves among Russian units—not born under the tricolor, but under the flags of the very nations arming Ukraine.
They come from America, Britain, France, and beyond. Men once proud of their military service now walk away from NATO’s wars and into the ranks of Russia’s armed forces—or into the humanitarian trenches of liberated towns. Why? Because they’ve seen through the lie.
Some fight on the front lines, side by side with Russians defending cities like Chasov Yar. Others deliver aid, rebuild homes, and film what the West will never show its citizens: that this war isn’t about democracy or borders, but about global power, corruption, and forgotten people.
Moscow and Kiev have been vying with each other to curry favour with the new U.S. administration. Just as Russian diplomacy appeared to be outstripping Kiev, things changed dramatically on April 30 with the signing of the so-called minerals deal between the U.S. and Ukraine in Washington.
Weeks of tense bargaining preceded the conclusion of the agreement, which at one point disrupted U.S. aid for Ukraine. But the latter showed extraordinary grit, tenacity and tact to hang on and, eventually, extracted out of the Trump administration what President Vladimir Zelensky called a “truly equal” deal. This must be the finest hour of Ukrainian nationalism and underscores that the country is far from a write-off on the geopolitical chessboard.
On May 2, 2014, Neo-Nazi gangs massacred 48 people who had rejected the U.S.-backed overthrow of a democratically-elected government in Kiev earlier that year. The deliberately-set fire in the Trade Unions Building in Odessa has never been satisfactorily investigated by Ukrainian authorities.
Eight days later two ethnic Russian majority oblasts in the east declared independence from Ukraine, leading to the U.S.-backed war against them by the unconstitutional government. Eight years later Russia intervened in the civil war.
This is how Robert Parry, founder of Consortium News, reported the story on May 10, 2014. He emphasized the effort by the U.S. government and media to bury the U.S. role in the 2014 unconstitutional change of government and the part played by Neo-Nazis in Ukraine, which the U.S. government, corporate media and their “anti-disinformation” allies are still trying to hide.
On April 23rd, Politico published an extraordinary article, “The US cavalry isn’t coming”, documenting in forensic detail the extent to which European defence planning and infrastructure has for decades been exclusively “built on the assumption of American support,” and “speeding American reinforcements to the frontlines.” Now, “the prospect of that not happening is throwing military mobility plans into disarray,” and the continent “stands alone” – defenceless, directionless, and bereft of solutions to the disastrous results of their prostration to US hegemony over many decades.
The agreement between Washington and Kyiv to create an investment fund to search for rare earth minerals has been seen as something of a turn by the Trump administration. From hectoring and mocking the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky before the cameras on his visit to the US capital two months ago, President Donald Trump had apparently softened. It was easy to forget that the minerals deal was already on the negotiating table and would have been reached but for Zelensky’s fateful and ill-tempered ambush. Dreams of accessing Ukrainian reserves of such elements as graphite, titanium and lithium were never going to dissipate.
Details remain somewhat sketchy, but the agreement supposedly sets out a sharing of revenues in a manner satisfactory to the parties while floating, if only tentatively, the prospect of renewed military assistance. That assistance, however, would count as US investment in the fund. According to the White House, the US Treasury Department and US International Development Finance Corporation will work with Kyiv “to finalize governance and advance this important partnership”, one that ensures the US “an economic stake in securing a free, peaceful, and sovereign future for Ukraine.”
In its current form, the agreement supposedly leaves it to Ukraine to determine what to extract in terms of the minerals and where this extraction is to take place. A statement from the US Treasury Department also declared that, “No state or person who financed or supplied the Russian war machine will be allowed to benefit from the reconstruction of Ukraine.”
Ukraine’s Minister of Economy, Yulia Svyrydenko, stated that the subsoil remained within the domain of Kyiv’s ownership, while the fund would be “structured” on an equal basis “jointly managed by Ukraine and the United States” and financed by “new licenses in the field of critical materials, oil and gas – generated after the Fund is created”. Neither party would “hold a dominant vote – a reflection of equal partnership between our two nations.”
The minister also revealed that privatisation processes and managing state-owned companies would not be altered by the arrangements. “Companies such as Ukrnafta and Energoatom will stay in state ownership.” There would also be no question of debt obligations owed by Kyiv to Washington.
That this remains a “joint” venture is always bound to raise some suspicions, and nothing can conceal the predatory nature of an arrangement that permits US corporations and firms access to the critical resources of another country. For his part, Trump fantasised in a phone call to a town hall on the NewsNation network that the latest venture would yield “much more in theory than the $350 billion” worth of aid he insists the Biden administration furnished Kyiv with.
Svyrydenko chose to see the Reconstruction Investment Fund as one that would “attract global investment into our country” while still maintaining Ukrainian autonomy. Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House of Foreign Affairs Committee, thought otherwise, calling it “Donald Trump’s extortion of Ukraine deal”. Instead of focusing on the large, rather belligerent fly in the ointment – Russian President Vladimir Putin – the US president had “demonstrated nothing but weakness” towards Moscow.
The war mongering wing of the Democrats were also in full throated voice. To make such arrangements in the absence of assured military support to Kyiv made the measure vacuous. “Right now,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said on MSNBC television, “all indications are that Donald Trump’s policy is to hand Ukraine to Vladimir Putin, and in that case, this agreement isn’t worth the paper that it’s written on.”
On a certain level, Murphy has a point. Trump’s firmness in holding to the bargain is often capricious. In September 2017, he reached an agreement with the then Afghan president Ashraf Ghani to permit US companies to develop Afghanistan’s rare earth minerals. Having spent 16 years in Afghanistan up to that point, ways of recouping some of the costs of Washington’s involvement were being considered. It was agreed, went a White House statement sounding all too familiar, “that such initiatives would help American companies develop minerals critical to national security while growing Afghanistan’s economy and creating new jobs in both countries, therefore defraying some of the costs of United States assistance as Afghans become more reliant.”
Ghani’s precarious puppet regime was ultimately sidelined in favour of direct negotiations with the Taliban that eventually culminated in their return to power, leaving the way open for US withdrawal and a termination of any grand plans for mineral extraction.
A coterie of foreign policy analysts abounded with glowing statements at this supposedly impressive feat of Ukrainian diplomacy. Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council think tank’s Eurasia Centre, thought it put Kyiv “in their strongest position yet with Washington since Trump took office”. Ukraine had withstood “tremendous pressure” to accept poorer proposals, showing “that it is not just a junior partner that has to roll over and accept a bad deal”.
Time and logistics remain significant obstacles to the realisation of the agreement. As Ukraine’s former minister of economic development and current head of Kyiv school of economics Tymofiy Mylovanov told the BBC, “These resources aren’t in a port or warehouse; they must be developed.” Svyrydenko had to also ruefully concede that vast resources of mineral deposits existed in territory occupied by Russian forces. There are also issues with unexploded mines. Any challenge to the global rare earth elements (REEs) market, currently dominated by China (60% share of production of raw materials; 85% share of global processing output; and 90% manufacturing share of rare earth magnets), will be long in coming.
Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties says tortured inmates bypassed amid focus on territory and security guarantees
Ukrainian and Russian civil society leaders have called for the unconditional release of thousands of Ukrainian civilians being held in Russian captivity, pushing for world leaders to make it a central part of any peace deal.
Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Kyiv-based Centre for Civil Liberties, which won the 2022 Nobel peace prize, said most of the discussion on ending the conflict, led by Donald Trump’s administration, focused solely on territories and potential security guarantees.
Despite U.S. pressure for a fast deal Russia does not expect any quick resolution of the conflict. It just announced a new unilateral ceasefire from May 8 to May 10, i.e. around the 80th anniversary of its victory in World War II on May 9.
It is another public sign that Russia is willing to adhere to a ceasefire agreement IF the conditions are right.
Trump still tries to behave like a neutral mediator in a conflict between Kiev and Moscow. He wants to impose a peace deal that projects his personal ‘greatness’.
But the U.S. has been and continues to be the main party of the war with Russia while Ukraine is the mere proxy force that does the bleeding.
How odd to look back now — now, as Washington’s proxy war in Ukraine ends in ignominious defeat—and think of that cornucopia of propaganda spilling out of what I called during the early months Washington’s “bubble of pretend.” Take a few minutes to remember with me.
There was the “Ghost of Kyiv,” an heroic MiG–29 pilot credited with downing six, count ’em, six Russian fighters in a single night, Feb. 24, 2022, two days after the Russian intervention began. The Ghost turned out to be a fantasy confected out of a popular video game.
So crude, the early Ukrainian propaganda, so rank.
It appears that what many of us predicted about Ukraine may be coming to pass. Last Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov appeared on the CBS program Face the Nation. In response to a question about Ukraine from Margaret Brennan, Lavrov said,“Trump is probably the only leader on earth to address the root causes that got us into this war and wants to rectify it.” Further, he said, “The President of the United States, and rightly so, believes that we are moving in the right direction.” He added that some matters need to be “fine tuned.”
On Friday, Trump’s trusted envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow for talks with Putin. Does this mean that the endgame is in sight, that Trump will finally extricate the US from Ukraine? We know that in a single day, Trump can voice indisputable truths, including that if Zelensky continues on his present path “he could lose his entire country.” And when asked what concessions Russia has made, Trump replied that “Russia isn’t taking the entire country.” However, we also know that only hours later Trump might prattle on and prevaricate about negotiations while evading the truth that the US and the collective West have already lost the war. It’s axiomatic that losers in a war do not dictate the peace terms so it’s telling that here we have a case where the delusional losers, with the exception of Trump, are still trying to prolong the war. In the US, opponents of a peace settlement include the MIC, neocons, Democrats, Lindsey Graham Republicans and members of his own team like Kellogg and Rubio.
In any event, a reality-based analysis suggests that there is no deal to be had for Trump, no final settlement is within reach. Geopolitical analyst Larry Johnson is correct in asserting that, “Trump is playing a game of strip poker but he’s butt ass naked with no more cards to play.” The longer he dithers in exiting, the more likely he’ll be seen as a bluffing buffoon, all hat and no cowboy. Given this reality, sooner rather than later, Trump will walk away and simply say, “We made our best offer so now we’re getting out.” I suspect that Putin will understand this is about Trump saving face.
What will happen when Trump pulls the plug on the Ukraine Project? The vaunted “Coalition of Willing,” which once numbered 27, is now down to 3: Britain, France and Germany. I once thought that Macron was semi-serious about putting French “peacekeeper” boots on the ground in Ukraine but the absence of a US security guarantee renders that avenue inoperable. Further, this would be a bridge too far for the public to tolerate and the massive protests it would ignite would be political suicide for Macron.
The outcome for Ukraine is obvious: It will be decided on the battlefield where the Russian army is much stronger than it was in 2021. By all accounts, Russia is breaking through Ukrainian defenses across the board. On Saturday, Russian commander, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov said that Russian forces had taken the last village that Ukrainian troops had held in Kursk. Gerasimov also said that 76,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed or wounded in the Kursk region. When the mud season ends in a few weeks, we can expect a major Russian assault and the absorption of more territory.
For Ukraine, the war is unsustainable. How long the Kiev regime lasts is impossible to predict but six to eight months is a plausible guess. The fanatical ultra-nationalist elements (Neo-Nazis/Azov/Bandera Battalion elements) will fight a rear guard action with support from Europe but eventual collapse is inevitable. Subsequently, I would expect Russia to control events in Ukraine, commencing with denazification. The country will never be allowed to pose a military threat to Russia.
The hubris of those provoking and continuing to cheer on this proxy war is diabolical and they did and do so in full knowledge that Russia would see it as an existential threat. In addition to all the horrific consequences that have preceded it, they are now responsible for the wholly preventable deaths to follow, the majority of which will be ever younger Ukrainian soldiers.
European leaders who warned that the Russians would advance to the English Channel will continue shouting “Russia, Russia, Russia!” British political analyst Alexander Mercouris is certainly correct in suggesting that “European unity is now built entirely around hostility toward Putin, toward Russia,” even if that means sacrificing Ukraine. Thus we can expect Europe to press forward with rearmament at the expense of a working class that’s already experiencing increasing immiseration.
Here in the United States, all the usual suspects, including some on the putative left, will vilify Trump for “cutting and running” on Ukraine. Sadly, I believe that we’re a long way from the point that our heavily propagandized fellow citizens grasp how they’ve been had, lied to about Ukraine by the ruling class and their servile mass media outlets. The next deception on the horizon is the “China threat” and the need to challenge and confront this dangerous duplicity could not be more urgent.
The episode of 25 April, dedicated to the 80th anniversary of the liberation from Nazi fascism, begins with the memory of Livia Gereschi. She was a foreign language teacher who, during a round-up by an SS unit in La Romagna in the Pisan Mountains on the night of 6 to 7 August 1944, rescued women and children. She managed to convince the SS commander to release women and children (including the writer and his mother), but was instead taken away with the men and shot on 11 August. The massacre of 69 civilians was carried out by the German 16th SS Panzergrenadier Division with the support of Italian fascists. The same division later committed the massacres of Sant’Anna di Stazzema (Lucca), Marzabotto (Bologna), and others.
The writer Manlio Cancogni recounts the massacre of 560 civilians on 12 August 1944 in the village of Sant’Anna di Stazzema through the testimony of survivors:
Germans led more than 140 people forcibly taken from their homes to the square in front of the church. They took them almost from their beds, half-clothed, their limbs still numb from sleep. They piled them first against the front of the church, and when they aimed their machine-gun barrels at these bodies, they had them so close that they could read in the stunned eyes of the victims, who fell under the blows without even having time to cry out. They piled the benches of the devastated church, the mattresses taken from the houses on top of the pile of still warm and perhaps still living bodies and set them on fire. And as they watched, unsatisfied, as the corpses were consumed, they pushed other men and women into the brazier, who were then led to the site, lifeless with fear. And then there were the children, the tender bodies of the children who served to excite this mad lust for destruction. They smashed their heads with the butt of their machine-gun, stuck a stick in their abdomens and nailed them to the walls of the houses. Seven of them were taken and put in the oven prepared that morning for bread and left there to roast.
The history of Nazism and its atrocities did not end with the defeat of Nazi Germany eighty years ago. Hitler’s Nazism – history shows us – was an instrument of Western domination. It is therefore not surprising that Nazism re-emerged in Europe when the West again attacked Russia by organising the coup in Ukraine. Through the CIA and other intelligence services, neo-Nazi militants are being recruited, financed, trained and armed to go into action on Kiev’s Maidan Square in February 2014. The neo-Nazi formations are then incorporated into the National Guard trained by US instructors from the 173rd Airborne Brigade, transferred from Vicenza (in the North of Italy) to Ukraine, and joined by others from NATO.
The Ukraine of Kiev becomes the nursery of resurgent Nazism in the heart of Europe. Neo-Nazis arrive in Kiev from all over Europe (including Italy) and the USA, recruited mainly by Pravy Sektor and the Azov Battalion, whose Nazi imprint is represented by the SS Das Reich emblem. After being trained and tested in military actions against Ukrainian Russians in the Donbass, they are sent back to their country with a Ukrainian passport. At the same time, Nazi ideology is being disseminated among the younger generation in Ukraine. The Azov battalion is particularly involved in this regard, organising military training camps and ideological education for children and young people, who are taught first and foremost to hate Russians.
This article was originally published in Italian on Grandangolo, Byoblu TV and republished at Global Research.
A top Russian military commander was killed by a car bomb near Moscow. The attack happened just hours before US envoy Steve Witkoff met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
On Friday, Lt. Gen. Yaroslav Moskalik was killed by a car bomb in Balashikha, a city near Moscow. He served as deputy chief of the Main Operations Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces.
According to TASS, Russian officials say Moskalik was the only person killed by the blast. Authorities believe the bomb was an IED containing submunitions and had the power of more than 300 grams of TNT.
Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania cite rising threats from Russia to justify once again using one of world’s most indiscriminate weapons
Rights groups have expressed alarm and warned of a “slippery slope” of again embracing one of the world’s most treacherous weapons, after five European countries said they intend to withdraw from the international treaty banning antipersonnel landmines.
In announcing their plans earlier this year, Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all pointed to the escalating military threat from Russia. In mid-April, Latvia’s parliament became the first to formally back the idea, after lawmakers voted to pull out of the 1997 Mine Ban Treaty, which bans the use, production and stockpiling of landmines designed for use against humans.
Ukraine has encroached westwards over the past year on its friendly neighbour Moldova, a country that has stood by Kyiv against the Russians and sheltered thousands fleeing the war with Moscow, to build hydroelectric dams in a bid to overcome a crippling power shortage, people close to the matter said.
Troops, engineers and construction workers from Ukraine — which is engaged in a disastrous war with Russia since February 2022 and unsure of continued U.S. assistance under President Donald Trump — entered Moldova without informing its poorer, landlocked neighbour which also shares its border on the west with Romania.
The governing regime in Kiev is desperately trying to maintain its US support, as a defeat of the US-led, NATO proxy war in Ukraine looms. It is citing the collapse of the government in South Vietnam in April 1975 as a warning, saying that something similar could happen in Ukraine. At the time, the US defeat in Vietnam was a huge blow to the image and standing of US imperialism in the world.
Such pronouncements by the Kiev regime reveal a recognition that ‘its’ Ukraine has become a satellite of the United States – much as South Vietnam was widely recognized to be half a century ago. Then as now, Washington and its allies are desperately seeking to maintain their economic and military dominance over the world and to stop rising movements of liberation by the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
The new guard of kleptocrats are seeking quick deals on Gaza and Ukraine, not because they want peace but because they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
Anyone trying to make sense of the Trump administration’s policy towards Gaza should have a thumping headache by now.
Initially, US President Donald Trump called for the mass expulsion of Palestinians from the tiny territory wrecked by Israel over the past year and a half, so that he could build the “Riviera of the Middle East” on the crushed bodies of Gaza’s children.
He followed up last week with an explicitly genocidal threat addressed to “the people of Gaza” – all two million-plus of them. They would be “DEAD” if the Israeli hostages held by Hamas were not quickly released – a decision over which Gaza’s population has precisely no control.
To make this extermination threat more credible, his administration has expedited the transfer of an extra $4bn worth of US weapons to Israel, bypassing Congressional approval.
Those arms include more of the 2,000lb bombs sent by the Biden administration, which turned Gaza into a “demolition site“, as Trump himself called it.
The White House also nodded through Israel’s reimposition of a blockade that has once again choked off food, water and fuel to the enclave – further evidence of Israel’s genocidal intent.
But while all this was going on, Trump also dispatched to the region a special envoy, Adam Boehler, to negotiate the release of the few dozen Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
He was given permission to break with more than 30 years of US foreign policy and meet directly with Hamas, long designated a terrorist organisation by Washington.
‘Pretty nice guys’
The meeting reportedly took place without Israel’s knowledge.
One Israeli official observed: “You can’t announce that this organisation [Hamas] needs to be eliminated and destroyed, and give Israel full backing to do it, and at the same time conduct secret and intimate contacts with the group.”
In an interview with CNN at the weekend, Boehler remarked of Hamas: “They don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys.”
Then, in another unprecedented move, Boehler gave interviews to Israeli TV channels to speak directly to the Israeli public – apparently to prevent Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, from misrepresenting the content of his talks with Hamas.
In one interview, Boehler said Hamas had proposed a five to 10-year truce with Israel. During that period, Hamas would be expected to “lay down its arms” and forgo political power in Gaza. He the proposal as “not a bad first offer”.
In another, he referred to Palestinian prisoners as “hostages”.
His approach left Israel quietly seething but unable to say much for fear of antagonising Trump.
‘No agent of Israel’
In parallel, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff – who reportedly laid down the law early on to Netanyahu by ordering him to attend a meeting on the Sabbath – headed to Doha this week to try to restore a ceasefire deal he had previously negotiated.
He appears determined to push Israel into honouring the second phase of that agreement, which requires the Israeli army to withdraw from Gaza and halt its war on the enclave. That would pave the way for a third phase, in which Gaza is reconstructed.
Witkoff’s terms, according to reports, are that Hamas agrees to demilitarise and its fighters leave the enclave.
Israel is deeply opposed to a second phase. It wants to stick with phase one, in which it finishes swapping the remaining Israeli captives held by Hamas for some of the many thousands of Palestinians imprisoned in Israeli torture camps.
The idea is that, once completed, Israel will be free to restart the slaughter.
Boehler reinforced Witkoff’s message, saying the White House hoped to “jump-start” talks and that the US was not “an agent of Israel” – implicitly acknowledging that, for many decades, it has very much looked like one.
Trump indicated a change of heart himself on Wednesday, telling reporters at the White House: “Nobody will expel the Palestinians.”
Sword of retribution
Apparently confounding Boehler’s claim that the US is able to make its own decisions about the Middle East, Trump was reported on Thursday to have removed him from dealing with the hostages issue following Israeli objections.
Meanwhile, Trump noisily shredded First Amendment protections on political speech, specifically in relation to Israel.
He signed an executive order empowering US authorities to arrest and deport visa holders protesting Israel’s year-and-a-half-long slaughter in Gaza – or what the world’s highest court is investigating as a “plausible” genocide.
That quickly resulted in the arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of last spring’s student protests at New York’s Columbia University – one of the most high-profile of dozens of protracted demonstrations on US campuses last year, which were often met with police violence.
The Department of Homeland Security accused Khalil of “activities” – namely, campus protests – supposedly “aligned to Hamas”. These demonstrations, it alleged, threatened “US national security”.
“This is the first arrest of many to come,” Trump wrote on social media, declaring that his administration would be coming after anyone “engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity”. Axios reported last week that Secretary of State Marco Rubio planned to use AI to search through foreign students’ social media accounts for signs of “terrorist” sympathies.
These developments formalise Washington’s working assumption that any opposition to Israel’s killing and maiming of tens of thousands of Palestinian children should be equated with terrorism – a view increasingly shared, it seems, by UK and European authorities.
In concert, the White House announced that it was cancelling some $400m in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University over its “continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students”.
Confusingly, the university administration was among the most hardline in calling in police to crush the protests against the genocide. But the financial cuts had the intended effect, with Columbia announcing on Thursday it would inflict stringent punishments, including expulsions and degree revocations, on students and graduates who had taken part in a campus sit-in last year.
Some 60 other institutions have reportedly received letters warning that they are in danger of funding cuts if they do not “protect Jewish students” – a reference to those who cheerlead Israel’s war crimes.
That will come at a heavy price for other students, including many Jewish students, who have been exercising their constitutional right to criticise Israel’s crimes.
A sword of retribution now hangs over every single publicly funded centre of higher learning in the US: crush any sign of opposition to Israel’s destruction of Gaza, or face dire financial consequences.
‘Baffling rhetoric’
Does any of this amount to a clear strategy? Does it make any sense?
These mixed messages fit a pattern with the Trump administration. Its wider strategy is, as Francesca Albanese, the United Nations special rapporteur on the occupied territories, calls it: psychological overwhelming.
“Hitting us every day with XXL [extra-extra large] doses of baffling rhetoric and erratic policies serves to ‘control the script’, distracting and disorienting us, normalising the absurd, all while disrupting global stability (and consolidating US control).”
The White House is doing something similar over Ukraine.
It is now talking directly to Russia, shutting the door on Nato membership for Ukraine, publicly humiliating Ukraine’s president, while also threatening more sanctions and tariffs on Moscow unless it agrees to a rapid ceasefire.
The Trump administration’s goal is to normalise its inconsistencies, hypocrisies, lies and misdirections so they become entirely unremarkable.
Opposition to its will – a will that can change from day to day, or week to week – will be treated as treasonous. The only safe response in such circumstances is acquiescence, passivity and silence.
In the tumultuous political landscape Trump has created, the one constant – our North Star – is the western media’s uncritical cheerleading of the West’s war industries.
Consider the Biden administration. The media’s harshest condemnation came not over the destruction Washington wrought on Afghanistan during its 20-year occupation, but for ending the war – a war that had left the country in ruins and the official enemy, the Taliban, stronger than ever.
Contrast that with the media’s resolutely muted response to Biden’s 15 months of arming Israel’s genocide in Gaza. In doing so, the media eagerly cast aside their supposed humanitarian concerns, including their ritualistic nods to the post-Second World War global order and international law.
Similarly, the media have been openly critical of Trump’s overtures to Russia over Ukraine, siding with European leaders who insist the war must continue to the bitter end – regardless of how much higher the death toll of Ukrainians and Russians climbs as a result.
And predictably, the media have gone out of their way to accommodate Trump’s Israel-supporting, openly genocidal rhetoric and actions towards Gaza.
It was astonishing to watch outlets that regularly portray Trump as a threat to democracy contort themselves to whitewash his explicit call to exterminate “the people of Gaza” should the hostages not be immediately released. Instead, they mendaciously suggested he was referring only to Hamas leadership.
It is not just Trump and his team who are well practised in the dark arts of deception.
Illegitimacy trap
While the Trump administration may be playing fast and loose with Washington’s political culture, it is largely adhering to the West’s traditional script on Israel and Palestine.
Witkoff and Boehler are deploying a well-worn strategy, binding the Palestinians into what could be called an illegitimacy trap. Damned if you do; damned if you don’t.
Whatever Palestinians choose – and however much they are dispossessed and brutalised – it is they, and anyone who supports them, who are cast as the villains. The criminals. The oppressors. The Jew-haters. The terrorists.
This applies not only to Hamas but also to the accommodationists of Fatah.
Faced with relentless dispossession through decades of Israeli colonisation, Palestinian factions have responded in the two main ways available to them.
One is to adopt the course enshrined in international law as the right of all occupied peoples: armed resistance. This is the path Hamas has taken as it governs the concentration camp that is Gaza.
Every US administration, including the current one, however, has conditioned any talks about statehood on Palestinians renouncing armed resistance from the outset, dismissing their right in international law as terrorism.
For that reason, until now, Hamas has always been excluded from negotiations. The talks that have taken place – over its head – have operated on the assumption that Hamas must be disarmed before Israel is expected to make any concessions.
Hamas must relinquish its weapons voluntarily – against an opponent armed to the teeth, whose bad faith in negotiations is legendary – or it will be forcibly disarmed by Israel or its rival, Fatah.
In other words, peace with Israel is premised on civil war for Palestinians.
That appears to be the course the Trump administration will pursue. For now, it is demanding that Hamas “demilitarise” voluntarily. When that fails, Hamas will find itself back at square one.
Endless accommodation
Faced with Trump’s plan to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from Gaza, Hamas has precisely no incentive to disarm.
In fact, it has a further disincentive. Its rivals in Fatah are all too visibly caught in their own, even more fatal, illegitimacy trap.
Mahmoud Abbas’s faction, which heads the Palestinian Authority (PA) in the West Bank, has chosen the alternative to armed resistance: diplomacy and endless political accommodation.
The problem is that Israel has never shown the slightest interest in granting the Palestinians – even Fatah’s “moderates” – a state.
Even during the so-called apex of peacemaking – the Oslo Accords of the 1990s – Palestinian statehood was never mentioned.
Oslo was simply a nebulous process in which Israel was supposed to gradually withdraw from the occupied territories as Palestinian leaders took responsibility for maintaining “security” – meaning, in practice, Israel’s security.
In short, the Oslo concept of “peace” was little different from the catastrophic status quo in Gaza before the genocide began.
During its so-called disengagement in 2005, Israel pulled its soldiers back to a fortified cordon, and from there controlled all movement and trade in and out of the enclave.
In the vacated space, Israel allowed only a glorified local authority, running the schools, emptying the bins and acting as a security contractor for Israel against those not ready to accept this as their permanent fate.
Hamas refused to play ball.
Abbas’s PA, on the other hand, accepted this kind of model for its series of cantons across the West Bank – on the assumption that obedience would eventually pay dividends.
It hasn’t. Now Israel is gearing up to formally annex most of the West Bank, backed by the Trump administration. Behind the scenes, the White House is finagling support from the Gulf states.
Fatah cannot extricate itself any more than Hamas from the illegitimacy trap set for it by Washington and Europe.
Clinging to the old order
Paradoxically, critics in Washington – backed by the media and European elites – dismiss Trump’s moves on Ukraine as appeasement of a supposedly resurgent Russian imperialism, rather than as peacemaking.
These same critics are equally discomfited by the Trump administration’s meetings with Hamas.
All of this breaks with the decades-old Washington consensus, which dictates who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, who are the law enforcers and who are the terrorists.
In typical fashion, Trump is disrupting these former certainties.
The reassuring, knee-jerk response is to take one side or another. Either Trump is a mould-breaker, remaking a dysfunctional world order. Or he is a fascist-in-the-making, who will hasten the collapse of the established world order, bringing it crashing down on our heads.
The truth is he is both.
There is a consistency to Trump’s approach to both Ukraine and Gaza – despite the apparent contradiction. In both he appears determined to bring to an end a failing status quo. In the former, he wants an end to war and destruction by forcing Ukraine’s surrender; in the latter, he wants the running sore of a Palestinian concentration camp gone by forcibly emptying it of its inhabitants.
This new consistency replaces an older one, in which Washington’s elite perpetuated forever wars against painted devils that justified the siphoning of national wealth into the coffers of the war industries on which that elite’s wealth depended.
The pretexts for those forever wars had become so threadbare, and so destabilising in a world of ever-depleting resources, that the elites behind those wars were utterly discredited.
The far-right, most especially Trump, is riding that wave of disillusionment. And its success stems precisely from this rule-breaking, by presenting itself as a new broom sweeping away the old guard of corporate war-makers.
As the Bidens, Starmers, Macrons, and Von der Leyens sink deeper into the mire, the more desperately they cling to a crumbling system. Trump’s disruption works against them.
Feathering their nests
But the new guard is no more invested in peace than the old, as Gaza makes clear. It is simply looking for new ways to do business – new deals that still siphon national wealth away from ordinary people and into the pockets of billionaires.
Trump would rather strike lucrative deals with Russia’s Vladimir Putin over resources – in both Russia and Ukraine – than sink more money into a futile war that locks up the region’s vast potential profits.
And he would rather put an end to Gaza’s decades-long status as a no-go zone, a holding centre for Palestinians, when it could instead be transformed into a playground for the rich, its vast offshore gas reserves finally exploited.
The new guard of kleptocrats is less interested in forever wars – not because they have any love for peace, but because they believe they’ve found a better way to make themselves even richer.
This newfound openness to “doing things differently” has an appeal, especially after decades of the same cynical elites waging the same cynical wars.
But make no mistake: the fundamentals remain unchanged. The rich are still looking out for themselves. They are still feathering their own nests, not yours. They still see the world as their plaything, where lesser humans – you and me – are expendable.
If he can, Trump will end the war in Ukraine by cutting a money-making deal, over Kyiv’s head, with Russia.
If he can, Trump will end the slaughter in Gaza by striking a deal with Israel and the Gulf states, over the heads of Hamas and Fatah, to ethnically cleanse the Palestinians from their homeland.
And if he can get away with it, Trump is ready for something else, too. He’s prepared to break heads at home to ensure his critics can’t stop him and his billionaire pals from getting their way.
The U.S. relationship with Ukrainian fascists began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles.
Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.
The government study said, “Bandera’s wing (OUN/B) was a militant fascist organization.” Bandera’s closest deputy, Yaroslav Stetsko, said: ““I…fully appreciate the undeniably harmful and hostile role of the Jews, who are helping Moscow to enslave Ukraine…. I therefore support the destruction of the Jews and the expedience of bringing German methods of exterminating Jewry to Ukraine….”
