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TAIPEI, Taiwan – Ukraine said its military struck three long-range artillery guns supplied to Russia by North Korea, underlining the extent of the authoritarian Asian nation’s involvement in Russian efforts to defeat the Ukrainian counteroffensive in Kursk.
The Ukrainian military said Wednesday that an aerial reconnaissance unit from the 14th Separate Drone Regiment identified the M-1978 howitzers hidden among trees and coordinated fire from Ukrainian rocket artillery.
“The M-1978 Koksan self-propelled artillery system is North Korea’s longest-range tubed artillery. Equipped with a 170mm gun, it has a range of up to 60 kilometers,” the unit said on its official Telegram channel.
“The system was originally designed with the capability to strike Seoul from the north of the demilitarized zone. Now, the Russian Armed Forces are using it in the war against Ukraine to offset their artillery losses,” it said.
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.
Evidence also has mounted that impoverished North Korea has supplied weaponry to Russia, likely to offset Russian artillery losses.
In February, Ukraine reported that its drone squad struck a North Korean self-propelled howitzer in the Luhansk region of Ukraine.
The Khortytsia, or east, group of forces said it was the first time since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 that a “very rare” North Korean M-1978 Koksan howitzer had been hit by a Ukrainian drone.
A troop formation with North Korean equipment was spotted in Russia’s Tyumen region in December. It had 10 modernized Koksan howitzers known as the M-1989.
South Korea said in October that the North had sent about 7,000 containers of weapons to Russia over the previous two months, bringing the total number of containers at that point to 20,000.
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The Washington Post this week cited Ukrainian soldiers and officials as saying that a fresh influx of North Korean troops along with air superiority, and overwhelming numerical advantage enabled Russia to recapture the town of Sudzha last week, Ukraine’s final stronghold in Kursk.
The heavy reliance on North Korean forces and equipment to reclaim nearly the entire Kursk region after seven months of Ukrainian control highlights the Kremlin’s determination to regain lost territory at any cost, the newspaper reported on Tuesday.
Since the signing of a mutual defense treaty in Pyongyang in June, North Korea and Russia have deepened relations across various sectors.
A Russian delegation, led by Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, visited North Korea last week, holding meetings with North Korean Foreign Minister Choe Son Hui and Vice Foreign Minister Kim Jong Gyu.
The North’s state media did not provide details, but the two sides were expected to discuss defense matters related to North Korea’s troop deployment to Russia amid a U.S.-proposed ceasefire for the war.
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.
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For the record, it was the U.S., from Bill Clinton to Joe Biden, that provoked the Ukrainian tragedy. And now it is the Europeans who can stop it.
NATO’s Eastern expansion led to the bloodiest military conflict in Europe since the Second World War, one that could lead to a Third.
Donald Trump in his first term tried to exit this crisis, only to be subjected to the Russiagate “scandal” and two unsuccessful impeachment efforts led the bipartisan U.S. War Party.
Eventually, they succeeded and took back power, facilitating Joe Biden’s 2020 victory with various manipulations, including producing a letter signed by 51 top, retired U.S. intelligence officers falsely blaming Russia for the criminal contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop that included his father’s involvement.
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Hours after President Donald Trump announced an agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin to avoid attacks on energy infrastructure in Ukraine, Russia conducted an attack on said infrastructure. The attack was reciprocated by a Ukrainian attack on Russian energy facilities shortly after. Trump touted the limited ceasefire agreement — technically a retreat from his previous aim to have a…
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Sufficiently gruesome to learn of the casualties in the Ukraine/Russo war. More gruesome to learn that the statistics don’t reflect actuality and are only another weapon ─ humiliate the opponent and have the public believe the enemy ignores the deaths of its soldiers.
The Kyiv Independent (?), Friday, March 14, 2025, “General Staff: Russia has lost 891,660 troops in Ukraine since Feb. 24, 2022.” In January 2025, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense estimated that 430,790 Russian troops were killed in 2024 alone.
The International Institute for Strategic Studies (ISSS) is less sanguine: “…as of early January 2025, the IISS estimates that a minimum of 172,000 Russian troops have been killed and 611,000 wounded, of which at least 376,000 are severely wounded (disabled), with up to an accumulated 235,000 wounded but recoverable.”
For one simple reason, the statistics don’t seem credible ─ other longer and more deadly wars had fewer casualties. The much, much longer Vietnam War had much less American casualties and the horrific World War II, which featured several beach invasions and large infantry battles, had less American dead and about the same casualties as claimed for the Russian battalions in their present war.
In the three years of war in Ukraine, no large infantry battles have occurred; the battles are mainly heavy weapons pulverizing a civilian area, followed by troops entering and occupying after the area is leveled and the enemy leaves. The Russians may have lost a large number of troops in the early stage of the war (30,000?), during the attempt to invade Kiev and the decision to leave. Later months do not indicate the same rate of casualties. In the next largest battle, three months in Mariupol, Ukraine claims to have killed 6,500 Russian soldiers. Even if this is slightly exaggerated, the next largest battle had only 2000 mortalities/month, which equates to 72,000 deaths in three years of equally intensive battles, of which there were none. On the southern front, Russia captured Kherson with few losses and retreated across the Dnieper when Ukraine launched its only large offensive, ceding Kherson and showing no intention of sacrificing soldiers in a losing battle.
Contrasting with Kyiv Independent’s stats, is Mediazona, an independent (?) Russian online news source that methodically searched records to obtain military losses. Their meticulous “data service, in collaboration with the BBC Russian Service and a team of volunteers, concluded that, “…Over 95,000 people fighting for Russia’s military have now died as the war in Ukraine enters the fourth year…. Given the estimate above, the true number of Russian military deaths could range from 146,194 to 211,169.”
Why is the number of Russians killed in the three-year war a meaningful and controversial topic? This is Ukraine’s way of informing the public that it may have lost territory but is not losing the war. Russia cannot continue gaining meager ground with a massive number of their soldiers permanently interred in the ground. Russia will be forced into compromise. Dubious logic.
The Russians have all they want — Crimea, the Russian mainland linked to Crimea, and the Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts incorporated into Russia. The war map, as of March 2025, tells that story
The Donetsk basin reaches to the dark lines. Russia needs only to capture Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk to control all the cities of the Donetsk Oblast, and effectively all of Donetsk and Luhansk. Their troops are at the gates of both cities. Super nationalist Vladimir Putin will not rest until his nation controls all of Donetsk, nor will he allow those who have died for that cause to lie buried without the cause succeeding.
Why this farce of “let’s end the war,” without ending the war, is a mystery. Zelensky mentions “guarantees,” undoubtedly meaning that other nations will prevent Russia from interfering again in Ukraine sovereignty. Doesn’t the Ukraine president realize that guarantees are only words on paper, that European governments say what they mean but don’t mean what they say and that governments who change with international styles may not recognize a previous government’s decisions. A solid guarantee has NATO or UN troops at the border between the two warring nations, a prelude to World War III.
“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ─ George Santayana, “Tipperary.”
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The Russians are coming and Europe is preparing for war.
Hysteria has gripped the continent.
It is being spread by political elites who claim peace in Europe is no longer a given.
“Never again” is now a motto forgotten. As if two world wars born in Europe were not enough.
These are the only possible assessments to be drawn from the extraordinary March 5 European Union summit in Brussels at which rearmament and renewed militarization of Europe became the cause to unite an increasingly disunited EU.
Meanwhile, leading media are doing their part to whip up the cries of war.
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Nothing could have been clearer than Russia’s repeated conditions for a permanent end of the war, rather than a temporary ceasefire: Ukraine’s neutrality, its demilitarization and denazification, the inclusion of four Russian-speaking oblasts into the Russian Federation and treaties establishing a new security architecture in Europe.
Equally clear was Ukraine’s utter rejection of these conditions, demanding instead the return of every inch of its territory, including Crimea, and Ukraine’s membership in NATO.
It is the reason the two sides are still fighting a war.
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May 18, 2015: Remains of an Eastern Orthodox church after shelling by the Ukrainian Army near Donetsk International Airport. Eastern Ukraine. (Mstyslav Chernov. CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)Special to Consortium News and published there on February 25, 2025
The way to prevent the Ukraine war from being understood is to suppress its history.
A cartoon version has the conflict beginning on Feb. 24, 2022 when Vladimir Putin woke up that morning and decided to invade Ukraine.
There was no other cause, according to this version, other than unprovoked, Russian aggression against an innocent country.
Please use this short, historical guide to share with people who still flip through the funny pages trying to figure out what’s going on in Ukraine.
The mainstream account is like opening a novel in the middle of the book to read a random chapter as though it’s the beginning of the story.
Thirty years from now historians will write about the context of the Ukraine war: the coup, the attack on Donbass, NATO expansion, rejection of the Minsk Accords and Russian treaty proposals — without being called Putin puppets.
It will be the same way historians write of the Versailles Treaty as a cause of Nazism and WWII, without being called Nazi-sympathizers.
Providing context is taboo while the war continues in Ukraine, as it would have been during WWII. Context is paramount in journalism.
But journalists have to get with the program of war propaganda while a war goes on. Journalists are clearly not afforded these same liberties as historians. Long after the war, historians are free to sift through the facts.
The Ukraine Timeline
World War II— Ukrainian national fascists, led by Stepan Bandera, at first allied with the German Nazis, massacre more than a hundred thousands Jews and Poles.
1950s to 1990 – C.I.A. brought Ukrainian fascists to the U.S. and worked with them to undermine the Soviet Union in Ukraine, running sabotage and propaganda operations. Ukrainian fascist leader Mykola Lebed was taken to New York where he worked with the C.I.A. through at least the 1960s and was still useful to the C.I.A. until 1991, the year of Ukraine’s independence. The evidence is in a U.S. government report starting from page 82. Ukraine has thus been a staging ground for the U.S. to weaken and threaten Moscow for nearly 80 years.
November 1990: A year after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Charter of Paris for a New Europe (also known as the Paris Charter) is adopted by the U.S., Europe and the Soviet Union. The charter is based on the Helsinki Accords and is updated in the 1999 Charter for European Security. These documents are the foundation of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe. The OSCE charter says no country or bloc can preserve its own security at another country’s expense.
Dec. 25, 1991: Soviet Union collapses. Wall Street and Washington carpetbaggers move in during the ensuing decade to asset-strip the country of formerly state-owned properties, enrich themselves, help give rise to oligarchs, and impoverish the Russian, Ukrainian and other former Soviet peoples.
1990s: U.S. reneges on promise to last Soviet leader Gorbachev not to expand NATO to Eastern Europe in exchange for a unified Germany. George Kennan, the leading U.S. government expert on the U.S.S.R., opposes expansion. Sen. Joe Biden, who supports NATO enlargement, predicts Russia will react hostilely to it.
1997: Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. national security adviser, in his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, writes:
“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”
New Year’s Eve 1999: After eight years of U.S. and Wall Street dominance, Vladimir Putin becomes president of Russia. Bill Clinton rebuffs him in 2000 when he asks to join NATO.
Putin begins closing the door on Western interlopers, restoring Russian sovereignty, ultimately angering Washington and Wall Street. This process does not occur in Ukraine, which remains subject to Western exploitation and impoverishment of Ukrainian people.
Feb. 10, 2007: Putin gives his Munich Security Conference speech in which he condemns U.S. aggressive unilateralism, including its illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq and its NATO expansion eastward.
He said: “We have the right to ask: against whom is this [NATO] expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
Putin speaks three years after the Baltic States, former Soviet republics bordering on Russia, joined the Western Alliance. The West humiliates Putin and Russia by ignoring its legitimate concerns. A year after his speech, NATO says Ukraine and Georgia will become members. Four other former Warsaw Pact states join in 2009.2004-5: Orange Revolution. Election results are overturned giving the presidency in a run-off to U.S.-aligned Viktor Yuschenko over Viktor Yanukovich. Yuschenko makes fascist leader Bandera a “hero of Ukraine.”
April 3, 2008: At a NATO conference in Bucharest, a summit declaration “welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO”. Russia harshly objects. William Burns, then U.S. ambassador to Russia, and presently C.I.A. director, warns in a cable to Washington, revealed by WikiLeaks, that,
“Foreign Minister Lavrov and other senior officials have reiterated strong opposition, stressing that Russia would view further eastward expansion as a potential military threat. NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains ‘an emotional and neuralgic’ issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. In Ukraine, these include fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene. … Lavrov stressed that Russia had to view continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine and Georgia, as a potential military threat.”
A crisis in Georgia erupts four months later leading to a brief war with Russia, which the European Union blames on provocation from Georgia.
November 2009: Russia seeks new security arrangement in Europe. Moscow releases a draft of a proposal for a new European security architecture that the Kremlin says should replace outdated institutions such as NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The text, posted on the Kremlin’s website on Nov. 29, comes more than a year after President Dmitry Medvedev first formally raised the issue. Speaking in Berlin in June 2008, Medvedev said the new pact was necessary to finally update Cold War-era arrangements.
“I’m convinced that Europe’s problems won’t be solved until its unity is established, an organic wholeness of all its integral parts, including Russia,” Medvedev said.
2010: Viktor Yanukovich is elected president of Ukraine in a free and fair election, according to the OSCE.
2013: Yanukovich chooses an economic package from Russia rather than an association agreement with the EU. This threatens Western exploiters in Ukraine and Ukrainian comprador political leaders and oligarchs.
February 2014: Yanukovich is overthrown in a violent, U.S.-backed coup (presaged by the Nuland-Pyatt intercept), with Ukrainian fascist groups, like Right Sector, playing a lead role. Ukrainian fascists parade through cities in torch-lit parades with portraits of Bandera.
Protesters clash with police in Kiev, Ukraine, February 2014. (Wikimedia Commons)March 16, 2014: In a rejection of the coup and the unconstitutional installation of an anti-Russian government in Kiev, Crimeans vote by 97 percent to join Russia in a referendum with 89 percent turnout. The Wagner private military organization is created to support Crimea. Virtually no shots are fired, and no one was killed in what Western media wrongly portrays as a “Russian invasion of Crimea.”
April 12, 2014: The Coup government in Kiev launches war against anti-coup, pro-democracy separatists in Donbass. Openly neo-Nazi Azov Battalion plays a key role in the fighting for Kiev. Wagner forces arrive to support Donbass militias. U.S. again exaggerates this as a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine. “You just don’t in the 21st century behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext,” says U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, who voted as a senator in favor of the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 on a completely trumped up pre-text.
May 2, 2014: Dozens of ethnic Russian protestors are burnt alive in a building in Odessa by neo-Nazi thugs. Eight days later, Luhansk and Donetsk declare independence and vote to leave Ukraine.
Sept. 5, 2014: First Minsk agreement is signed in Minsk, Belarus by Russia, Ukraine, the OSCE, and the leaders of the breakaway Donbass republics, with mediation by Germany and France in a Normandy Format. It fails to resolve the conflict.
Feb. 12, 2015: Minsk II is signed in Belarus, which would end the fighting and grant the republics autonomy while they remain part of Ukraine. The accord was unanimously endorsed by the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 15. In December 2022 former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admits West never had intention of pushing for Minsk implementation and essentially used it as a ruse to give time for NATO to arm and train the Ukraine armed forces.
2016: The hoax known as Russiagate grips the Democratic Party and its allied media in the United States, in which it is falsely alleged that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to get Donald Trump elected. The phony scandal serves to further demonize Russia in the U.S. and raise tensions between the nuclear-armed powers, conditioning the public for war against Russia.
May 12, 2016: The US activates missile system in Romania, angering Russia. U.S. claims it is purely defensive, but Moscow says the system could also be used offensively and would cut the time to deliver a strike on the Russian capital to within 10 to 12 minutes.
June 6, 2016: Symbolically on the anniversary of the Normandy invasion, NATO launches aggressive exercises against Russia. It begins war games with 31,000 troops near Russia’s borders, the largest exercise in Eastern Europe since the Cold War ended. For the first time in 75 years, German troops retrace the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union across Poland.
German Foreign Minister Frank Walter-Steinmeier objects. “What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering,” Steinmeier stunningly tells Bild am Sontag newspaper. “Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”
Instead, Steinmeier calls for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he warns, adding it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.”
December 2021: Russia offers draft treaty proposals to the United States and NATO proposing a new security architecture in Europe, reviving the failed Russian attempt to do so in 2009. The treaties propose the removal of the Romanian missile system and the withdrawal of NATO troop deployments from Eastern Europe. Russia says there will be a “technical-military” response if there are not serious negotiations on the treaties. The U.S. and NATO essentially reject them out of hand.
February 2022: Russia begins its military intervention into Donbass in the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war after first recognizing the independence of Luhansk and Donetsk.
Before the intervention, OSCE maps show a significant uptick of shelling from Ukraine into the separatist republics, where more than 10,000 people have been killed since 2014.
Ukrainian troops in the Donbass region, March 2015. (OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons)March-April 2022: Russia and Ukraine agree on a framework agreement that would end the war, including Ukraine pledging not to join NATO. The U.S. and U.K. object. Prime Minister Boris Johnson flies to Kiev to tell Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to stop negotiating with Russia. The war continues with Russia seizing much of the Donbass.
March 26, 2022: Biden admits in a speech in Warsaw that the U.S. is seeking through its proxy war against Russia to overthrow the Putin government. Earlier in March he overruled his secretary of state on establishing a no-fly zone against Russian aircraft in Ukraine. Biden opposed the no-fly zone, he said at the time, because “that’s called World War III, okay? Let’s get it straight here, guys. We will not fight the third world war in Ukraine.”
September 2022: Donbass republics vote to join the Russian Federation, as well as two other regions: Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.
May 2023: Ukraine begins a counter-offensive to try to take back territory controlled by Russia. As seen in leaked documents earlier in the year, U.S. intelligence concludes the offensive will fail before it begins.
June 2023: A 36-hour rebellion by the Wagner group fails, when its leader Yevegny Prigoshzin takes a deal to go into exile in Belarus. The Wagner private army, which was funded and armed by the Russian Ministry of Defense, is absorbed into the Russian army. The Ukrainian offensive ends in failure at the end of November.
September 2024: Biden deferred to the realists in the Pentagon to oppose long-range British Storm Shadow missiles from being fired by Ukraine deep into Russia out of fear it would also lead to a direct NATO-Russia military confrontation with all that that entails.
Putin warned at the time that because British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine would actually launch the British missiles into Russia with U.S. geostrategic support, it “will mean that NATO countries — the United States and European countries — are at war with Russia. And if this is the case, then, bearing in mind the change in the essence of the conflict, we will make appropriate decisions in response to the threats that will be posed to us.”
November 2024: After he was driven from the race and his party lost the White House, a lame duck Biden suddenly switched gears, allowing not only British, but also U.S. long-range ATACMS missiles to be fired into Russia. It’s not clear that the White House ever informed the Pentagon in advance of a move that risked the very World War III that Biden had previously sought to avoid.
February 2025: The first direct contact between senior leadership of the United States and Russia in more than three years takes place, with a phone call between the countries’ presidents and a meeting of foreign ministers in Saudi Arabia. They agree to begin negotiations to end the war.
*****
This timeline clearly shows an aggressive Western intent towards Russia, and how the tragedy could have been avoided if NATO would not allow Ukraine to join; if the Minsk accords had been implemented; and if the U.S. and NATO negotiated a new security arrangement in Europe, taking Russian security concerns into account.
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On March 3rd, Timothy Ash of elite British state-connected ‘defence’ think tank Chatham House made a series of startling proclamations in an interview with Bloomberg. His topline message was stark – “NATO is dead.” He spoke following the very public February 28th Oval Office fallout between Volodomyr Zelensky and Donald Trump. The impact of that debacle reverberates today, with questions abounding over continued US aid and intelligence sharing with Kiev, pending the Ukrainian leader’s signoff on a White House-endorsed minerals for security agreements deal.
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The Peace In Ukraine Coalition is cautiously optimistic about emerging possibilities for ending the war in Ukraine. It is a good thing that the U.S. and Russia are talking. An end to the hostility between the two nuclear superpowers would bring a sigh of relief to people all over the world.
We do not know if the Trump administration, Russia and Ukraine will be able to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine. We encourage diplomacy, however, rather than fear it. We want the killing to stop as soon as possible. For three years we have been calling for a ceasefire, negotiations and an end to US weapons shipments that fuel the war.
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The real enemy of any government or regime, in the last analysis, is its own people. They are who rulers fear most.
That is accordingly why so much effort is devoted by rulers to propaganda, primarily designed to sustain the myth there exists a national interest to which all are bound, regardless of socioeconomic status or one’s actual life experience.
In truth there is no such thing as a “national interest.” Only the interests of the dominant class of rulers matters. Thus heavy lies the crown, and lightly is tread the line between legitimacy and illegitimacy.
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Russian President Vladimir Putin has signaled that he’s open to a ceasefire in Ukraine but that he has “questions” about the 30-day US-Ukraine proposal that need to be discussed.
“The idea itself is the right one, and we definitely support it,” Putin said, according to The New York Times. “But there are questions that we need to discuss, and I think that we need to talk them through with our American colleagues and partners.”
The Russian leader listed potential conditions for a 30-day truce, including a guarantee that Ukraine wouldn’t be supplied with more weapons.
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The Peace In Ukraine Coalition is cautiously optimistic about emerging possibilities for ending the war in Ukraine. It is a good thing that the U.S. and Russia are talking. An end to the hostility between the two nuclear superpowers would bring a sigh of relief to people all over the world.
We do not know if the Trump administration, Russia and Ukraine will be able to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine. We encourage diplomacy, however, rather than fear it. We want the killing to stop as soon as possible. For three years we have been calling for a ceasefire, negotiations and an end to US weapons shipments that fuel the war. We are encouraged that in this moment there is a possibility of real progress towards peace.
Successive U.S. administrations insisted on expanding NATO – an anti-Russia military alliance – to Russia’s very borders, despite warnings by senior U.S. diplomats, academics, and secretaries of defense that NATO expansion was unnecessary and would likely provoke a war. President Biden shares particular responsibility, because he was President Obama’s point man on Ukraine in 2014, and because the Biden administration rejected multiple chances for peace, both before and after Russia’s invasion. A less aggressive U.S. foreign policy would have prevented the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young soldiers and saved hundreds of billions of dollars.
Misinformation about the Ukraine war is rampant. There is no evidence whatsoever to support the oft-repeated contention that Russia intends to invade other European countries. Even now the word “unprovoked” is dutifully repeated throughout the U.S. media sphere.
By hitching itself to the tragically flawed policy of the Biden administration, the Democratic Party is now seen by many as “the war party.” This does not mean that the Republican Party has morphed into the party of peace. One need look no further than U.S. facilitation of Israel’s blatant genocide in Gaza to see that both major political parties have blood on their hands.
The post Seize the Moment: End the War in Ukraine! first appeared on Dissident Voice.According to recent polls, a majority of the Ukrainian people want a ceasefire and negotiations to end the war. They have suffered far too much already. Continuing the war will only result in further death and destruction.
NO MORE KILLING IN OUR NAME!!
Diplomacy to End the War In Ukraine
End U.S.-Israeli Genocide in Palestine
We Call for:
Good faith negotiations for a lasting peace in Ukraine and Europe
An end to U.S. military involvement in Ukraine, with weapons, intelligence and advisers
An end to the expansion of NATOThe Peace In Ukraine Coalition is comprised of many national and local peace groups, including CODEPINK, DSA – International Cttee., Massachusetts Peace Action, World Beyond War and Veterans For Peace.
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When U.K. officials signed a 100-year partnership with Ukraine in mid-January, they claimed to be Ukraine’s “preferred partner” in developing the country’s “critical minerals strategy.”
Yet within a month, U.S. President Donald Trump had presented a proposal to Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky to access the country’s vast mineral resources as “compensation” for U.S. support to Ukraine in the war against Russia.
Whitehall was none too pleased about Washington muscling in.
When Foreign Secretary David Lammy met Zelensky in Kyiv last month he reportedly raised the issue of minerals, “a sign that [Keir] Starmer’s government is still keen to get access to Ukraine’s riches”, the iPaper reported.
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The race to ReArm Europe showed no signs of slowing during a debate in the European Parliament on Tuesday, as political representatives across the spectrum threw their weight behind the military expansion plans of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa. The only occasional rebuke from centrist and right-wing parties was that the proposal doesn’t go far enough in light of Donald Trump’s return to the White House and the widening disconnect between his administration and European governments.
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Europe’s resistance to America’s rapprochement with Russia and peace efforts for Ukraine means stagnation which will only hinder its development towards a more autonomous structure.
Another point of Hahn’s piece is made in his discussion about the future configuration of the government in Kiev. It is a warning to those who want to remove Zelenski:
Despite Zelenskiy’s weakened position domestically and internationally, this at least partially illegitimate president may be the last or next to last surviving pillar of the Maidan regime and the Ukrainian state. For all his narcissism, egoism, corruption, and mounting authoritarianism, Zelenskiy currently holds the Ukrainian elite together and is the face of Ukraine abroad, still well-liked in Europe. He remains a figure that minimally satisfies all the various factions in Ukrainian politics and is able to hold off opposition elements, many of which he has emasculated by banning parties and media and by either forcing their leaders into exile or arresting them (e.g., former President Petro Poroshenko and Viktor Medvedchuk).
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Woman at rally supporting peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Berlin, Germany. (Photo: Reuters)
When European Union leaders met in Brussels on February 6 to discuss the war in Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron called this time “a turning point in history.” Western leaders agree that this is an historic moment when decisive action is needed, but what kind of action depends on their interpretation of the nature of this moment.
Is this the beginning of a new Cold War between the U.S., NATO and Russia or the end of one? Will Russia and the West remain implacable enemies for the foreseeable future, with a new iron curtain between them through what was once the heart of Ukraine? Or can the United States and Russia resolve the disputes and hostility that led to this war in the first place, so as to leave Ukraine with a stable and lasting peace?
Some European leaders see this moment as the beginning of a long struggle with Russia, akin to the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, when Winston Churchill warned that “an iron curtain has descended” across Europe.
On March 2, echoing Churchill, European Council President Ursula von der Leyen declared that Europe must turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” President Zelenskyy has said he wants up to 200,000 European troops on the eventual ceasefire line between Russia and Ukraine to “guarantee” any peace agreement, and insists that the United States must provide a “backstop,” meaning a commitment to send U.S. forces to fight in Ukraine if war breaks out again.
Russia has repeatedly said it won’t agree to NATO forces being based in Ukraine under any guise. “We explained today that the appearance of armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a false flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on February 18. “Of course this is unacceptable to us.”
But the U.K. is persisting in a campaign to recruit a “coalition of the willing,” the same term the U.S. and U.K. coined for the list of countries they persuaded to support the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003. In that case, only Australia, Denmark and Poland took small parts in the invasion, Costa Rica publicly insisted on being removed from the list, and the term was widely lampooned as the “coalition of the billing” because the U.S. recruited so many countries to join it by promising them lucrative foreign aid deals.
Far from the start of a new Cold War, President Trump and other leaders see this moment as more akin to the end of the original Cold War, when U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik in Iceland in 1986 and began to bridge the divisions caused by 40 years of Cold War hostility.
Like Trump and Putin today, Reagan and Gorbachev were unlikely peacemakers. Gorbachev had risen through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party to become its General Secretary and Soviet Premier in March 1985, in the midst of the Soviet war in Afghanistan, and he didn’t begin to withdraw Soviet forces from Afghanistan until 1988. Reagan oversaw an unprecedented Cold War arms build-up, a U.S.-backed genocide in Guatemala and covert and proxy wars throughout Central America. And yet Gorbachev and Reagan are now widely remembered as peacemakers.
While Democrats deride Trump as a Putin stooge, in his first term in office Trump was actually responsible for escalating the Cold War with Russia. After the Pentagon had milked its absurd, self-fulfilling “War on Terror” for trillions of dollars, it was Trump and his psychopathic Defense Secretary, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, who declared the shift back to strategic competition with Russia and China as the Pentagon’s new gravy train in their 2018 National Defense Strategy. It was also Trump who lifted President Obama’s restrictions on sending offensive weapons to Ukraine.
Trump’s head-spinning about-turn in U.S. policy has left its European allies with whiplash and reversed the roles they each have played for generations. France and Germany have traditionally been the diplomats and peacemakers in the Western alliance, while the U.S. and U.K. have been infected with a chronic case of war fever that has proven resistant to a long string of military defeats and catastrophic impacts on every country that has fallen prey to their warmongering.
In 2003, France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin led the opposition to the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council. France, Germany and Russia issued a joint statement to say that they would “not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorize the use of force. Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume all their responsibilities on this point.”
At a press conference in Paris with German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, French President Jacques Chirac said, “Everything must be done to avoid war… As far as we’re concerned, war always means failure.”
As recently as 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, it was once again the U.S. and U.K. that rejected and blocked peace negotiations in favor of a long war, while France, Germany and Ital
y continued to call for new negotiations, even as they gradually fell in line with the U.S. long war policy. Former German Chancellor Schröder took part in the peace negotiations in Turkey in March and April 2022, and flew to Moscow at Ukraine’s request to meet with Putin. In an interview with Berliner Zeitung in 2023, Schröder confirmed that the peace talks only failed “because everything was decided in Washington.”
With Biden still blocking new negotiations in 2023, one of the interviewers asked Schröder “Do you think you can resume your peace plan?”
Schröder replied, “Yes, and the only ones who can initiate this are France and Germany… Macron and Scholz are the only ones who can talk to Putin. Chirac and I did the same in the Iraq war. Why can’t support for Ukraine be combined with an offer of talks to Russia? The arms deliveries are not a solution for eternity. But no one wants to talk. Everyone sits in trenches. How many more people have to die?”
Since 2022, President Macron and a Thatcherite team of iron ladies – European Council President von der Leyen; former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock; and Estonia’s former prime minister Kaja Kallas, now the EU’s foreign policy chief – have promoted a new militarization of Europe, egged on from behind the scenes by European and U.S. arms manufacturers.
Has the passage of time, the passing of the World War II generation and the distortion of history washed away the historical memory of two world wars from a continent that was destroyed by war only 80 years ago? Where is the next generation of French and German diplomats in the tradition of de Villepin and Schröder today? How can sending German tanks to fight in Ukraine, and now in Russia itself, fail to remind Russians of previous German invasions and solidify support for the war? And won’t the call for Europe to confront Russia by moving from a “welfare state to a warfare state” only feed the rise of the European hard right?
So are the new European militarists reading the historical moment correctly? Or are they jumping on the bandwagon of a disastrous Cold War that could, as Biden and Trump have warned, lead to World War III?
When Trump’s foreign policy team met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia on February 18, ending the war in Ukraine was the second part of the three-part plan they agreed on. The first was to restore full diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia, and the third was to work on a series of other problems in U.S.-Russian relations.
The order of these three stages is interesting, because, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, it means that the negotiations over Ukraine will be the first test of restored relations between the U.S. and Russia.
If the negotiations for peace in Ukraine are successful, they can lead to further negotiations over restoring arms control treaties, nuclear disarmament and cooperation on other global problems that have been impossible to resolve in a world stuck in a zombie-like Cold War that powerful interests would not allow to die.
It was a welcome change to hear Secretary Rubio say that the post-Cold War unipolar world was an anomaly and that now we have to adjust to the reality of a multipolar world. But if Trump and his hawkish advisers are just trying to restore U.S. relations with Russia as part of a “reverse Kissinger” scheme to isolate China, as some analysts have suggested, that would perpetuate America’s debilitating geopolitical crisis instead of solving it.
The United States and our friends in Europe have a new chance to make a clean break from the three-way geopolitical power struggle between the United States, Russia and China that has hamstrung the world since the 1970s, and to find new roles and priorities for our countries in the emerging multipolar world of the 21st Century.
We hope that Trump and European leaders can recognize the crossroads at which they are standing, and the chance history is giving them to choose the path of peace. France and Germany in particular should remember the wisdom of Dominique de Villepin, Jacques Chirac and Gerhard Schröder in the face of U.S. and British plans for aggression against Iraq in 2003.
This could be the beginning of the end of the permanent state of war and Cold War that has held the world in its grip for more than a century. Ending it would allow us to finally prioritize the progress and cooperation we so desperately need to solve the other critical problems the whole world is facing in the 21st Century. As General Milley said back in November 2022 when he called for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, we must “seize the moment.”
The post Is This the Beginning or the End of a New Cold War? first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Apparently, the greatest battles are fought within ourselves, and I can kind of run with that right now.
On one hand, you have the ex-comedy guy that somehow ended up in charge of a country with a bit of a Nazi problem, Voldemort Zelenskyy.
President Zelenskyy may well do something for Home Counties women of a certain age, but I’m always going to be a tad sceptical of a man that said he wants his country to become a “big Israel”.
Ukraine and Zelensky: no friends of ours
Part of this drive to become a big Israel involves “conscription squads” descending on towns and cities across Ukraine, searching for men between the ages of 25 and 60, KIDNAPPING them, and forcing them to sign up to stand in front of Putin’s army.
I still see a few lost souls on the left with a Ukrainian flag next to their social media user names. Honestly, Ukraine and Zelenskyy are no friends of ours, although they do have a deep and intimate relationship with the British tax payer.
May I remind you, Zelenskyy described the fugitive leader of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as the greatest statesman of our times.
Child killer, ethnic cleanser, tyrant, evil genocidal murderer — add one of your own if you like — but greatest statesman of our times? Fuck off.
Then on the other hand, you have the greatest threat to world peace since himself, a Hillbilly MAGA fanatic masquerading as a vice president, and the world’s richest person egging them on from the sidelines.
President Donald Trump definitely doesn’t do anything for Home Counties women of a certain age, but I have absolutely no scepticism towards Trump, because he makes no secret of his desire to turn Gaza into a rich (white) man’s paradise.
Trump: truly evil
What can I say about Trump that hasn’t already been said?
Robert De Niro, an actor that is entirely familiar with portraying violent and dangerous characters, said of Trump:
I’ve spent a lot of time studying bad men. I’ve examined their characteristics, their mannerisms, the utter banality of their cruelty. Yet there’s something different about Donald Trump. When I look at him, I don’t see a bad man. Truly. I see an evil one.
So there you have it. Two cheeks of the same, yet entirely different arse.
While some on the left will applaud Trump for cutting out the supply of American arms to Ukraine, let us not forget the very same American idiot is arming Israel to “finish the job”, in Gaza.
Don’t get me wrong, president Zelenskyy got exactly what he deserved. I’m regularly sickened to see European leaders emptying their respective countries’ coffers to fund and fuel further death and destruction.
Did anyone ask you how you felt about cuts to vital public services to fund a conflict in a former Soviet state? Nor me.
Take from the pensioners to give to Ukraine
What the Labour Party takes from Britain’s poorest pensioners with one hand, they give to Zelenskyy to fight an unwinnable war with the other.
Putin’s Russia is likely to win, and no amount of sabre rattling, Euros, or British Pounds from domestically-desperate liberals is going to change that.
Why aren’t the far-right flag shaggers apoplectic with rage with the military welfare being gifted to the tiresome Zelenskyy when there were 2,270 homeless veteran cases reported last year? The double standards are truly staggering.
This has to end somewhere and somehow because it is unsustainable and entirely unacceptable when there is a vast array of problems both home and abroad that need to be prioritised way ahead of Zelenskyy’s pocket money.
We seem to live in an age where the corporate media demand that you pick a side. If you’re not screaming “Slava Ukraini” from the rooftops you’re labelled a Putin apologist.
The Putin apologist label is often used to stifle perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Ukrainian regime in the same way Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters were wrongly accused of being virulent antisemites to stifle perfectly legitimate criticisms of the Israeli pariah state.
If we carry on as we are, Keir Starmer’s final bill for the Ukraine distraction will end up making Brexit look like a bargain.
I know it’s not a popular opinion amongst the British people, but if Ukraine is our problem so is Gaza, Lebanon, and South Sudan.
Why should a failed colonialist country like Britain get to decide the life of a child from Kyiv is worth more than the life of a child from Rafah?
Vote Labour, get ne-Nazis
Nearly 900,000 Russian sons and daughters have died fighting this needless war. Countless Ukrainian’s have perished, many of whom had absolutely no choice but to lay down their lives for someone else’s conflict.
Unless peace prevails, it will be British sons and daughters that pay the ultimate price for NATO’s ongoing expansion and Putin’s aggressive response.
The voices for peace are few and far between. There is no weakness in declaring death and destruction must come to an immediate end. A strong leader understands that every war starts with words and ultimately, ends with words.
Britain simply does not have that leadership. Starmer is no different to any of the previous occupants of Number 10, Downing Street.
If Keir Starmer was a genuinely principled leader, he wouldn’t be allowing British Labour MPs to parade members of Ukraine’s far-right Azov Brigade around parliament, would he?
Vote Labour, get Neo-Nazis.
They secretly harbour ambitions of a return to the ‘halcyon days’ of the British Empire and a time when Britain had an armed forces that rampaged and robbed its way around the world with no fucks given for the millions of victims of its colonial desires.
Zelenskyy got the brutal stage-managed slap he well and truly deserved, be in no doubt of that. Britain now has to decide if they want to be next in line for a pasting, and while that is unlikely to come from a mesmerised Donald Trump, it will take a bit more than a state visit to stop Mr Putin from reaching out and putting little isolated Keir Starmer flat on his backside.
Featured image via Rachael Swindon
This post was originally published on Canary.
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Commando Zelenskyy
One thing that instantly struck me watching the White House press conference February 28, 2025 with US President Donald Trump, Vice President J. D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was that the grand welcome accorded to Zelenskyy by the previous US government of Joe Biden and some Western European governments had gone to Zelenskyy’s head. He expected that as he was like an idol to warmongers like Biden and to reporters itching to see Russia defeated, that he would be so to Trump, too.
(Watch Biden/Zelenskyy bonhomie at a press conference with reporters from the dominant/major/traditional/
legacy media, the war media, to whom Russia is the “evil empire,” per President Ronald Reagan’s label.) Zelenskyy was told to put on a suit when visiting the White House. He showed up wearing a commando like stylish black sweatshirt with the logo of Ukrainian tryzub or trident and black pants, both from Ukrainian fashion designer Elvira Gasanova’s menswear label Damirli.
One should have the freedom to wear whatever one wants, however, Zelenskyy has not always worn such casual clothes. He used to wear suits till Russia attacked1 Ukraine, since then his attire has been military/commando style clothes which he says he’ll wear till the war ends. Zelenskyy is not always on the war front, but his clothing creates an impression that he is just coming from the war front, this in turn deludes him into believing that he is kind of a commando. This commando mentality proved almost fatal for the United States-Ukraine relations when he acted as one during the meeting. On March 3, Trump ordered a pause to all military aid to Ukraine — the first wise step to stop the war. Intelligence sharing is also on pause. Zelenskyy needs to come out of this commando mentality.
If Zelenskyy was more powerful than Trump, he could do, wear, say, whatever he wanted to. But he is not. He met Trump for Ukraine, not for himself. If the meeting was a personal one, no one will give a damn even if he blew it up. No. This interaction was for Ukraine and he should have remembered that. As the saying goes: Beggars can’t be choosers. Or as Trump put it: “You don’t have the cards. With us, you have the cards. Without us, you don’t have any cards.”
Zelenskyy badly needs a class in 101 diplomacy. You don’t cut off the branch you’re sitting on; Zelenskyy almost cut off the branch (of the US aid tree) on which Ukraine depends. During the meeting, he constantly argued rather than try and take the conversation towards a more agreeable path.
Despite the fact that US Senator Lindsey Graham, a strong Trump supporter, had warned Zelenskyy beforehand: “Don’t take the bait. Don’t let the media or anyone else get you into an argument with President Trump.”
Zelenskyy’s arguments wouldn’t have mattered if he was arguing with the Biden team, because it was the Biden regime’s war.
Another thing one can deduce from Zelenskyy’s behavior is that he’s not smart like Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu or India’s Narendra Modi (both have big egos and cruel mentality, and wouldn’t hesitate to unleash violence to achieve the desired goals). But neither argue or show any displeasure when they meet Trump because they know they are weak partners vis-a-vis the US which is very strong — I would say too strong for our world, not a very good thing. Israeli leaders are famous for insulting, bypassing, or ordering US leaders but they can’t do that with Trump — of course, instead, they get things done with flattery.
Invited for lunch, but humiliated and shown the door without lunch from the White House, Zelenskyy flew into London in the warm and comforting embrace (albeit, a momentary one) of Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the UK. (Britain, once the greatest empire in the world, now has not much power except, every now and then, it makes some noise to draw attention.)
A conference of 18 leaders: Europeans and Canada’s Justin Trudeau, were called to support Ukraine which Starmer called “coalition of the willing.” The unwilling ones will be crushed or maligned. But the leaders were aware that without the US not much can be accomplished.
Donald Tusk of Poland: “Dear [Zelenskyy], dear Ukrainian friends, you are not standing alone.”
Tusk should have added: We are all together but still alone unless the Globo Cop US joins in.
It seems like Zelenskyy came his senses. On March 4, he said:
“None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians.” “My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”
Zelenskyy must be feeling very humiliated: first for being dressed down by Trump, and, then for accepting “Trump’s strong leadership.”
Advice for Zelenskyy, if he’s allowed to stay in power, or any other leader who takes over: Try to stay neutral, avoid joining NATO, be friendly, as much as possible, with your neighbors, including Russia, and prevent being a proxy in the hands of US/European warmongers. The devastating result in the form of death and destruction for both Ukraine and Russia is in front of you, due to your prolongation of the war.
Ukrainians must watch the following video of a speech given by Jeffrey Sachs to the European Parliament.
Business-being Trump
The effective rate for many anti-bacterial, disinfectant, and other products is advertised as 99.99% effective. In other words, it’s not absolutely effective and not totally potent.
The same analogy can also be applied to Trump. One could say Trump is 99.99% nasty, greedy, cruel, or whatever. That, however, leaves room for some uprightness in Trump.
Trump’s figure for US support of $350 billion dollars to Ukraine was, as usual, exaggerated, the actual amount is about $183 billion — huge sum of money for the war, for which major support comes only from the Democratic Party’s “affluent upper-middle class base.” However, the total amount Ukraine received from the US, European Union institutes, several countries, and groups amounts to $380 billion.
For Trump, Zelenskyy is not a hero. Trump is a different entity with a diverse agenda; he has been talking about ending the Russia/Ukraine war for a long time and so it was counterproductive to argue and throw tantrums rather than listening to Trump and then requesting a favor here and a favor there. Of course, Trump has his own interest in facilitating a ceasefire, he is eyeing Ukraine’s rare earth minerals.
After all, Trump is business-being and like most businesspersons, his motive is always a financial one.
Trump is right when he points out the danger of the Russian Ukraine war:
“You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War Three2.”
Trump attacked
The war news media and many European leaders instead of thanking Trump for his efforts in working for a ceasefire, which would not only prevent loss of life and destruction in Ukraine and Russia but would also save US and European taxpayers’ money, lambasted him for being a “bully” and termed discussion with Zelenskyy an “ambush.”
Financial Times’ Europe editor Ben Hall said Trump and Vance “were spoiling for a fight” with Zelenskyy. Marc Polymeropoulus, MSNBC’s National Security & Intelligence Analyst noted that Trump and Vance “have humiliated the United States” when they shouted at Zelenskyy.
German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier: “The scene in the White House yesterday took my breath away. I would never have believed that we would one day have to protect Ukraine from the U.S.A.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) accused Trump and Vance of “doing Putin’s dirty work.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) described Trump’s berating of Zelenskyy “utter embarrassment” for the US.
Trump is wrong on a huge number of issues but not on this one. All those criticizing him are foes of Ukrainian people; it’s they who are paying the price for this meaningless war.
ENDNOTES:
The post Ukrainian Commando vs US Business-Being first appeared on Dissident Voice.1 The former USSR’s (now Russia) request for NATO membership in mid 1950s was rejected. Why? two logical reasons: one, if Russia is in NATO then you have no enemy to fight with. That is a no, no. Also, there wouldn’t be a war lobby and no arms-related corruption; not a good thing for lobbyists, Congresspersons, weapons producers who always get their cuts, profit, and so on. The other reason was a united Europe wouldn’t be as vulnerable to US dictates as it is now.2 The World War I and the World War II started by Europeans and the world was dragged in because most countries were under European colonial rule. (The name World War is a misnomer — actually it should be called European World War.) How wise are these idiot European leaders whose insanity could drive Europe towards the European World War III.
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will introduce 27 European Union members with her “ReArm Europe” costing $840 billion.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
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The oval office sparring between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Volodymyr Zelensky was indeed a unique event. These gatherings are generally photo opportunities of little substance that work to the public relations benefit of all parties. An argument taking place as the cameras rolled was something that has never taken place before. Of course the United States often supports foreign leaders only to pull the rug out from under them when circumstances change. Iraq’s Saddam Hussein is but one example. The U.S. backed him in his war against Iran only to later invade his country and have him hanged.
The post Liberals Want War In Ukraine, Trump Wants Peace In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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There should be little doubt about how a lasting peace can be established in Ukraine. In April 2022, Russia and Ukraine were on the verge of signing a peace agreement in Istanbul, with the Turkish government acting as mediator.
The U.S. and U.K. talked Ukraine out of signing the agreement, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have since died or been seriously injured. Yet the framework of the Istanbul Process still provides the basis of peace today.
The draft peace agreement (dated April 15, 2022) and the Istanbul Communique (dated March 29, 2022) on which it was based, offered a sensible and straightforward way to end the conflict.
The post Negotiating Lasting Peace In Ukraine appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
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Read a version of this story in Korean
North Korean troops train at a base designed to emulate the layout of Seoul and other major South Korean cities, a South Korean lawmaker said, citing testimony from North Korean prisoners of war in Ukraine.
If the testimony is true, it is an indication that North Korea has not given up on the possibility of invading the South, a South Korean ministry official said.
The POW’s testimony was revealed during an interview — broadcast on South Korean radio and simultaneously livestreamed on YouTube — with National Assemblyman Yu Yong-weon about his recent visit to Ukraine, where he met with two North Korean POWs.
North Korea has sent an estimated 12,000 soldiers to fight in Russia’s war against Ukraine, although neither Moscow or Pyongyang has publicly confirmed this.
During the interview, Yu said that one POW identified as Ri told him that the base was located in Koksan county, North Hwanghae province, just over 40 miles (65 kilometers) from the DMZ that divides North from South.
A North Korean soldier, right, identified as Ri, captured in Kursk and now at an unidentified detention center in Ukraine. Part of the image has been blurred by South Korean lawmaker Yu Yong-weon, left, who interviewed the soldier. (Yu Yong-weon)“When you go to this training site, it is a Ministry of Defense training ground,” said Ri, according to an audio clip from their conversation played during the program. “The training ground has geographic shapes and buildings resembling those of Seoul’s Jongno-gu (a downtown district), Busan, Daegu, Jeonju, and Jeju island. … It’s in Koksan.”
Radio Free Asia looked at satellite photos of the Koksan area in North Korea’s North Hwanghae province for evidence of what Ri described.
In a photo taken by Google Earth on Nov. 25, 2022, the Koksan Training Base, located next to a mountain and surrounded by fields, has a headquarters, a barracks and what appears to be many buildings that private satellite imagery analyst Jacob Bogle told RFA Korean closely resembled Ri’s description.
Urban warfare training center (Paul Nelson/RFA)Based on the satellite images, The entire base is approximately 3.5 kilometers (2 miles) long and 1.5 kilometers (1 mile) wide, with the model buildings spread over approximately 40 hectares (100 acres)
“The base complex is split up into 4 sections of MOUT across the area,” Bogle said, using the abbreviation for “military operations on urbanized terrain.”
“Most are simple, there may be around 5 structures that are two floors, but the vast majority are single-story structures, but some are as long as 36 meters (40 yards),” he said.
Satellite photo of North Korea’s Koksan Training Base, Nov. 25, 2022. (Google Earth image with analysis by Jacob Bogle)Bogle said that about half of these buildings are likely unfinished, roofless structures, that are likely models for training purposes rather than actual buildings
Further analysis of historical satellite imagery reveals that a full-scale urban warfare training facility was established in earnest at Koksan Training Base in 2020.
Previously, there were only a few structures with only some outer walls, but since 2020, at least 72 mock buildings have been newly constructed.
In addition to the buildings, there are 33 model tanks, and 8 model fighter jets situated within the training ground, which appear to have remained in their current location for over 20 years.
“One key sign that the fighter jets and tanks aren’t real is that they never move,” said Bogle. “The fighter jets, for example, have been in the exact same position since 2003. These mockups are used to familiarize recruits with the overall appearance of DPRK and enemy equipment in basic training drills, and some are used as target practice.”
DPRK is the abbreviation of North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
Looking forward in time, Google Earth photos from Aug. 14 and Sept. 28, 2024 show two rows of new structures, and evidence that dirt in the vacant lots has been disturbed.
“That can indicate ongoing drills on the site,” said Bogle. Referring to the new buildings he said that the low-res imagery made it difficult to determine what they were exactly, but their size and positioning suggest they are target structures.
Korean People’s Army special operations force train at a five-story building at a base, Sept. 11, 2014. (KCNA)The Koksan Training Base is also believed to have been visited by the country’s leader Kim Jong Un in Sept. 2024, when state media reported that he gave onsite guidance to soldiers at a training ground.
NK news, a U.S. media outlet specializing in North Korea, analyzed a documentary video broadcast on the state-run Korean Central Television in January about the visit, and reported it likely took place in Koksan.
On Friday, during a press briefing by the South Korean Ministry of Unification, a reporter asked spokesperson Goo Byung-sam about Ri’s testimony and the satellite imagery in the Korean version of this report, which was published on Thursday.
The spokesperson said it was a military matter and that it would be inappropriate for the Ministry of Unification to comment.
“That said, if this report is true, it would be yet another piece of evidence that North Korea has not abandoned its ambitions of invading the South,” Goo said.
Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Jamin Anderson for RFA Korean.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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We reported this week about a Labour Party MP proudly meeting a prominent neo-Nazi’s wife. But it turns out there was actually a “roundtable discussion in Parliament” with members of Ukraine’s far-right Azov Brigade. And this is exactly what happens when our lapdog establishment media outlets whitewash fascism on behalf of the corrupt political order they defend.
Azov neo-Nazis in the UK parliament
Labour MP Alex Sobel previously said it was his “honour” to meet Ukrainian campaigner Kateryna Prokopenko – the wife of Azov commander Denys Prokopenko. But Ukrainian-American journalist Lev Golinkin is just one critic who has been voicing concerns about this type of meeting. Because he has outlined Prokopenko’s membership of “the White Boys Club — a right-wing group of fans of the Dynamo Kyiv soccer team — which previously posted “phrases like ‘100% White’ and ‘88’ (code for ‘Heil Hitler’), praise for Holocaust perpetrators, and Waffen-SS insignia” on social media”.
As a Jewish person himself, Golinkin rightly sees the danger in platforming and empowering people with links to Azov – a movement whose founder Andriy Biletsky once said Ukraine’s purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led Untermenschen [inferior races]”.
But fellow Labour MP Alistair Carns joined Sobel’s fawning over the Ukrainian far right by revealing the presence of actual Azov veterans in parliament:
I was honoured to take part in an important roundtable discussion in Parliament yesterday with the brave Ukrainian Veterans of the Azov Brigade who fought defending Mariupol, and who were illegally held captive by the Russians. We spoke about issues relating to the status of… pic.twitter.com/wdtcVzdgPV
— Al Carns (@AlistairCarns) March 4, 2025
One figure present was allegedly Azov instructor Valeriy Horishny, a longstanding adherent to far-right ideology.
Carns also suggested that Russian invaders had “illegally” captured Azov fighters. It’s unclear what he meant by that, as it is legal to hold prisoners of war providing they don’t face mistreatment in captivity.
The West’s dangerous whitewashing of the Ukrainian far right for Russia-bashing purposes
Russia has certainly committed crimes in Ukraine in what has been a devastating conflict that didn’t need to go on for so long. The war has hurt ordinary Ukrainians and Russians alike, but Western governments saw an opportunity to further their own interests by fuelling Ukraine’s resistance to the 2022 invasion. So as Golinkin has explained, despite the fact that “nearly every Western institution raised alarms about Azov” before 2022, the West gradually found ways to whitewash the group’s fascism and welcome it with open arms.
Boris Johnson welcomes fighters from Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Azov Battalion to the UK parliament.
The battalion’s founder Andriy Biletsky said Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade…against Semite-led Untermenschen.”
This won’t even make the papers. pic.twitter.com/gRbXnc0FdO
— Matt Kennard (@kennardmatt) May 23, 2024
Academics produced in-depth reports about Azov, but in the case of Stanford university, research suddenly seemed to disappear when it became inconvenient context. Stanford had previously highlighted that:
The Azov Movement is a far-right nationalist network of military, paramilitary, and political organizations based in Ukraine.
And it described how:
It is notable for its recruitment of far-right foreign fighters from the U.S., Russia, and Europe, as well as extensive transnational ties with other far-right organizations.
But as Golinkin emphasised in 2023, Prokopenko is “the type of person who Western media says is an example of not a neo-Nazi”, but:
He’s been photographed numerous times with a Totenkopf, which is one of the most common neo-Nazi symbols in the world. And he was part of Azov’s beginning — he was part of Azov’s beginning from 2014, from when it was still just a battalion form of a neo-Nazi gang.
He criticised US establishment voices for calling Trump supporters fascists while at the same time “whitewashing neo-Nazis” from Ukraine:
it’s insane that we are doing this… because they’re our neo-Nazis, and we’re celebrating them…
He added:
Azov has remained a hub for neo-Nazis to come over, and they can get battlefield experience…
how many world countries have actual neo-Nazi units? So, Azov has used this war to their advantage. They’ve used it brilliantly.
The media’s role in glorifying the Azov Battalion
Golinkin continued by insisting that:
the same media who spent seven years tracking Azov and tracking its neo-Nazi nature, suddenly, at the beginning of this invasion, suddenly turned around and said that, all of a sudden, this organization stopped being far-right… It’s just an incredible feat of whitewashing, which is denying reality, with Western media across the board suddenly saying, based on nothing, based on propaganda, that this entire group that attracted neo-Nazis from all over the world, that we’ve reported on, has suddenly stopped, stopped being neo-Nazis, and now they’re OK.
He also argued that:
the message that we are sending is that if you are the right type of neo-Nazi, we will arm you, we will train you, we will take you to Congress, we will celebrate you across our media, you will be our hero.
That’s exactly what’s happening in the UK too. Dominant European nations are intent on pushing Ukraine to continue its unwinnable war that many Ukrainians don’t want but are being forced to fight. And they’re empowering the far right in the process.
Featured image via screengrab
By Ed Sykes
This post was originally published on Canary.
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