Russia today

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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun May 25, 2025 4:52 pm

Joint Vision of the Eurasian Charter for Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century

Statement by the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus. A Primary Source Document for Archives.
Karl Sanchez
May 24, 2025

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I haven’t provided one of these for many months. During the recent Conference, Lavrov mentioned and the document translated below was linked to. Along with Russia’s stated Greater Eurasian Partnership concept, the Joint Vision is an important component in how the Eurasian Security Structure would be composed. I didn’t note the importance of what Lavrov said about the aim not being a complete reconstruction of the UN and its Charter, but the unstated need to get those not obeying its guidelines and rules to obey them—the wheel here doesn’t need to be remade—and that appears to be a consensus opinion shared by the Global Majority. I find many similarities with this document and those agreed to by China and Russia that shape their behaviors. I also see many points that agree with Several of China’s Global Initiatives beyond the Global Security Initiative. The document’s dated Brest, November 22, 2024. What’s revealed are the thoughts of the Union States on what follows the eventual settlement of the Ukraine issue. Almost never mentioned is the fact of NATO’s encroachment and use of Ukraine is also an existential threat to Belarus, nor is there ever any speculation on the numbers of Belarusians in the Russian military. The document follows:

SHARED VISION
of the Eurasian Charter for Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century

We, the representatives of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, proceed from the recognition of the following key realities of our time:

1.DIVERSITY AS THE BASIS OF PEACE – Peace has always been characterized by a diversity of life, civilizations, cultures, traditions, features of historical development, value systems, and with the formation of the state as the main element of international relations, a variety of forms of state political structure and models of internal socio-economic, cultural and humanitarian development.

2.Respect for the full spectrum of diversity has traditionally served healthy competition and the overall progress of humanity, while the neglect of this key phenomenon of public life by states has led to interstate wars and conflicts and various crises.

3.DIVERSITY IN TODAY'S WORLD – The essence and importance of diversity are becoming clearer and the need to respect this phenomenon is especially needed in today's world in light of the rapid development of digital technologies, which greatly expand the knowledge of all people on the planet.

4.PARADIGM CHANGE – In the modern world, objective and irreversible profound transformations are taking place in international relations, caused by accelerated tectonic changes in various fields, which have a huge impact on all participants in international life.

5.MULTIPOLARITY ON THE HORIZON – The world is inexorably moving towards a state of multipolarity, which is a consequence of its inherent diversity. This represents an opportunity for building a just and inclusive democratic world order and peaceful coexistence in the interests of security and common prosperity of all states on the basis of mutually beneficial cooperation and genuine multilateralism in the long term.

6.SLOWING DOWN FACTORS – At the same time, the evolutionary movement of the whole world towards multipolarity and a polycentric model that meets the interests of the World Majority slows down if the fact of the diversity of civilizations, cultures, traditions, features of historical development, value systems, forms of state structure and models of internal development is ignored, and the norms and principles of international law are violated.

7.PECULIARITY OF EURASIA – Eurasia is the geographical center and material foundation of the emerging multipolar world, ancient civilizations are located here, around which states, integration associations, regional organizations and centers of power have been formed.

8.THE IMPORTANCE OF EURASIA – The Eurasian continent, due to its geographical location, size, population and resource potential, has historically played and continues to play an important role in international relations, acting as a locomotive of global development as a whole. It is in Eurasia that the main contribution to the progressive growth of the world economy is ensured, and independent development centers are being strengthened.

9.FUTURE OF EURASIA – Effective interaction between all subjects of the Eurasian space, harmonization of relations between the centers of development in Eurasia, are indispensable conditions for the consolidation of the continent in the interests of all states located on it, which in the end will also serve the goal of building a just world order on a multipolar basis.

10.COMMON GLOBAL INTEREST – In the context of the important role of Eurasia, the achievement of the goals of peace, security, stability and prosperity in this space meets the interests not only of the states of the continent, but also of all countries of the world.

In this regard, we commit to:

11.RELY ON INTERNATIONAL LAW – Be guided in their actions by the norms of international law, based on the UN Charter in its entirety and interrelated, and other international legally binding documents.

12.RESPECT DIVERSITY – Recognize and respect the diversity and equality of civilizations, cultures, traditions, historical features and systems of universal values, the diversity of forms of state political structure and models of internal socio-economic development of the countries of the world, oppose exceptionalism and double standards in international politics.

13.CREATE A MULTIPOLAR WORLD – Contribute to the speedy construction of a multipolar world and a just global order.

14.IMPLEMENT INITIATIVES – Implement initiatives that contribute to the recognition by all countries of the world of the diversity of development paths, the establishment of a dialogue among civilizations, a dialogue on global security, the formation of a new type of international relations in the interests of creating a cohesive community of states, the development of regional economic processes and partnerships in Eurasia, the implementation of mutually beneficial pan-Eurasian projects, including for the purpose of forming a Greater Eurasian Partnership and strengthening cultural and humanitarian cooperation.

15.STRENGTHEN SECURITY - To form a new continent-wide architecture of cooperation in the field of security, based on the principles of indivisibility of security, justice, legitimacy, sustainability and joint contribution of the participants.

16.RESTORE THE ROLE OF THE UNITED NATIONS - To promote the restoration and strengthening of the central coordinating role of the United Nations in world affairs and the effective use of the mechanisms of the UN system to overcome common global challenges and threats, to strengthen the voice of the countries of the World Majority in the Organization.

17.STRENGTHEN EURASIA - Work to consolidate the Eurasian space to ensure peace, stability and common prosperity on the continent in the interests of all its states.

18.TO COOPERATE IN THE AREAS - To contribute to the processes of strengthening practical cooperation on the Eurasian continent in the fields of security, economy, culture and other spheres on the basis of openness, broad inclusion, equality and mutual benefit.

19.USE EURASIAN MECHANISMS - To implement this task, use multilateral cooperation mechanisms operating on the Eurasian continent, including the EAEU, CSTO, CIS, SCO, ASEAN, CICA, LAS, GCC, Union State. To promote cross-platform interaction between them, the implementation of joint initiatives.

20.PREVENT INTERFERENCE - Counteract attempts by external forces to interfere in the affairs of the Eurasian states and pursue a policy aimed at undermining the processes of consolidation and cooperation on the continent, to impose their own development models, ideological attitudes and alien spiritual and moral values.

21.ESTABLISH EXTERNAL PARTNERSHIPS - Interact and interface with regional economic processes taking place on other continents.

We, the representatives of the Russian Federation and the Republic of Belarus, invite all Eurasian states to join the dialogue on a set of issues affecting the principles of interaction in the multipolar era and related to the continental architecture of security, cooperation and development, with a view to developing, taking into account the provisions of this document, the "Eurasian Charter for Diversity and Multipolarity in the 21st Century".

Minister of Foreign Affairs

of the Russian Federation

Sergey Lavrov

Minister of Foreign Affairs

of the Republic of Belarus

M.V.Ryzhenkov

///////////////////////////////////////

IMO, it should be clear that this was crafted to appeal to the global audience. Again, it merits comparison with many other existing documents promoting the reality of Multipolarity and the need to create mechanisms to make the UN System function properly. There’s plenty of work for all to contribute. What the leaders need are demonstrative, noisy followers advocating the concepts and goals envisioned above and in many other Declarations. All nations and peoples have a voice.

https://karlof1.substack.com/p/joint-vi ... an-charter

Putin Met with the Commission on Military-Technical Cooperation with Foreign States
A short overview of Russian military exports
Karl Sanchez
May 25, 2025

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Russian Arms Expo

We don’t get to learn everything discussed at this meeting as it goes private after Putin’s 8-minute introductory remarks, but there’s some useful information. It must be recalled that Russia’s arms sales were greatly reduced during the SMO being limited mostly to fulfillment of existing contracts. Once the SMO ends, Russia’s military equipment will be in high demand. But since it’s not overpriced, the monetary amount might not overtake the Outlaw US Empire, although I can’t see why any military wanting to get the best edge would by those woefully performing too highly priced weapons the Empire and its vassals produce.
President of Russia Vladimir Putin: Dear Colleagues, good afternoon!

Today we will summarize military-technical cooperation activities for 2024, We will discuss the current situation in this strategically important area, determine which issues need to be corrected, and on which, new decisions may need to be taken, including taking into account the strategy approved in December last year for military-technical cooperation between Russia and foreign countries for the period up to 2030.

I think it is important to emphasize that last year Russia, our enterprises had their own export We have generally fulfilled our obligations. In some cases, together decisions have been made with foreign partners that satisfy both parties, and the forms and methods of interaction are flexible and promptly adjusted.

The military-industrial complex continues to operate in an enhanced mode almost throughout nomenclature of products. And the key, priority task invariably is the provision of all necessary subdivisions and units participating in a special military operation.

At the same time, Russia continues to remain in the top five leaders of the world arms market and maintains its leading export position in many areas. This once again confirms the quality, reliability and efficiency by our gunsmiths of military products.

Of course, there’s interest to it, and we understand why. After all, almost the entire line of Russian weapons--from means of detection and destruction to air defense systems, aviation, unmanned systems and armored vehicles—shows its effectiveness, passes rigorous tests not only at training grounds or at exercises, and, most importantly, "on the ground", in front-line conditions, in real combat.

And it is natural that our experience in conducting a special military operation–-both in terms of changing tactics, and technical improvement of weapons—is also studied carefully by the political leadership, army command, and experts of the military-industrial complex of foreign states.

I will add that most of the weapons and equipment is assessed by close soldiering, the joint work of combat units and teams of enterprises, design bureaus and are promptly and constantly improved and modernized. This significantly increases their tactical and technical characteristics in terms of range, accuracy and power of fire damage, security and other indicators.

We should also consider military-technical cooperation as an important tool for the technological renewal of the Russian army and navy. Herewith of course, it is necessary to strengthen our position in global markets. Briefcase orders for Russian military products are now serious-–tens of billions of dollars—and it is necessary to actively increase the supply and volume of exports.

At the same time, along with traditional weapons, special attention should be paid to promising models that are also needed by our Armed Forces and have the potential for export, including robotic air, land, sea and underwater vehicles, laser systems, troop control systems that use artificial intelligence technologies. Such equipment is the future of the global arms market will unfold here–-it is already unfolding–-strong competition, for which we must be prepared.

I am sure that we have significant growth potential in all areas of military-technical cooperation. Previously adopted economic, financial, organizational and other decisions have proven their effectiveness. But it is impossible to rest on our laurels of course, and therefore we need an additional set of state support measures that will allow to further develop this potential.

I ask the Government to work on this issue. Of course, in conjunction with the ongoing modernisation of the defence industry.

I’ve said more than once: we need to clearly plan the work of the defence industry for the long term in order to balance the implementation of the tasks of the state defense order and contracts within the framework of military-technical cooperation, to create the groundwork for the production of civilian products, to master dual-use technologies, and thereby to ensure the maximum and effective workload of defense enterprises and their subcontractors.

Another fundamental point is that in order to promote ourselves in a highly competitive environment, it is necessary to improve cooperation with foreign partners, taking into account the specifics of the arms market, That is, to offer them not only specific weapons and equipment, but also a wider range of services—from technological cooperation and joint development of promising samples to assistance in their repair and modernization, supply of spare parts and the training of foreign specialists.

Let's get to work.

The floor is given to the Director of the Federal Service for Military-Technical Cooperation Dmitry Evgenievich Shugaev. Please. [My Emphasis]
Given the horrendous performance of US/NATO weaponry and systems, Russia should have no problem selling its military goods. What struck me is the apparent willingness to sell cutting edge systems. Ideally, no market for weapons would exist, but Humanity has yet to attain that state of advancement. So, if weapons are required, might as well get the best available.

https://karlof1.substack.com/p/putin-me ... mission-on

******

Russia Boasts World's Third-Largest Trade Surplus in 2024
7 hours ago
Red Square in Moscow. View - Sputnik International, 1920, 25.05.2025

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© Sputnik / Vitaly Belousov

MOSCOW (Sputnik) - Russia became the third-ranked country in the world in terms of trade surplus last year, while China still receives the largest net income from trade, according to Sputnik's analysis of national statistical services.

The agency analyzed trade data from 91 major countries that have already published trade data for last year. Among them, only 33 countries received a trade surplus of $2.3 trillion, while 58 economies went into the red by $2.8 trillion.
China enjoyed the largest net earnings from trade last year, receiving a trade surplus of $991 billion. Next, as in the previous year, is Germany with net trade income of $258 billion.
Russia rounds out the top three with a trade surplus of $151 billion, moving up four positions from 2023. The top five also includes Ireland, which fell from third to fifth place with a surplus of $98 billion, and the Netherlands, which posted a surplus of $89 billion and moved up three positions.
The top ten countries that earned the most from trade also included Switzerland ($77 billion), Saudi Arabia ($73 billion), Norway ($69 billion), Brazil ($59.5 billion), and Italy ($55 billion).

https://sputnikglobe.com/20250525/russi ... 26156.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon May 26, 2025 3:15 pm

MAGA AND MEGA TURNS MUGGER – FOLLOWING DRONE ATTACK ON PUTIN ON MAY 20, PUTIN HIT BACK AT KIEV, AND TRUMP DECLARED “I DON’T LIKE IT AT ALL”

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By John Helmer @bears_with

Either President Donald Trump (lead image, bottom) cannot comprehend the sequence of cause and effect. Or he cannot control his own military and intelligence operations in the war against Russia. Or Trump thinks he can deceive President Vladimir Putin (lead image, top), authorize an attack on him personally, and later, when the attack failed, and Putin retaliated with a counter-attack on Kiev, Trump is pretending “I don’t know what the hell happened to Putin…he’s sending rockets into Kiev and other cities and killing people, and I don’t like it at all.”

Trump then threatened Putin directly. “We’ll see what we’re going to do.”

Follow the sequence and decide what’s cause, what’s effect.

On the morning of May 20, President Putin arrived in Kursk by helicopter; the Kremlin announced the visit the next day. Five days later, on May 25, it was revealed by the state news agency RIA-Novosti, that a drone attack had been launched from the Ukraine at targets in Kursk, including Putin’s helicopter.

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Source: https://ria.ru/20250525/vertolet-2018957379.html

The targeting of the Ukrainian attack was aided by US satellite, drone, and fixed wing aircraft “aimed at gathering electronic intelligence and high-definition imagery”, transmitting Russian target and attack guidance data to Ukrainian operators. In the five days, May 20-25, they fired the largest barrage of drones and missiles recorded so far. Russian reports indicate that “in total, our air defence units shot down more than 1104 UAVs. The most effective in the downing of enemy drones was the Oryol region, where 221 UAVs were destroyed on the flight route to the Moscow region. According to tradition, many drones were shot down in the border over the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions.”

The attack on Putin’s helicopter while he was at meetings in Kursk has not yet been reported by the military bloggers.

In the evening of May 23, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement that “from May 20 to 8 am on May 23, the number of aerial attacks amounted to multiples of what it used to be with 788 strikes by fixed-wing UAVs and Western-made missiles targeting Russian territory outside the area of the special military operation. Our air defence forces destroyed 776 drones and missiles, though unfortunately, 12 UAVs made it through our defences and hit their targets.”

The Ministry said the reason for the exceptional number of drones and missiles fired was “to thwart direct Russia-Ukraine talks facilitated by the US Administration, which are designed to settle the conflict definitively. They also appear intended to derail the implementation of initial agreements reached in Istanbul on May 16, including a massive prisoner exchange.” The Ministry did not reveal the May 20 attack on Putin’s helicopter.

The Ministry statement ended with advance notice of military retaliation: “Without a doubt, Russia will deliver a matching response to barrages of terrorist attacks carried out by the Kiev regime. Unlike the Ukrainian side, our targets will be strictly limited to military facilities and defence industry plants. To reiterate, our fundamental commitment to a constructive search for a peaceful settlement through dialogue remains unchanged.”

Later the same day, May 23, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, answering press questions in Moscow, excused President Donald Trump from blame. “We believe these attacks are a direct result of the support provided to Ukrainian Nazis, primarily by a number of European countries, led by the United Kingdom, France, Germany, and the EU leadership. We are convinced that they bear a portion of responsibility for these crimes. We will push to bring an end to this policy. We are witnessing a clear attempt to derail peace talks and disrupt the process that began in Istanbul following an agreement between President Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump which included a 1,000 for 1,000 prisoner exchange and further work on documents setting out specific conditions and requirements that are necessary to reach an agreement. We will continue working on that despite provocations…Another possible motive behind their actions is that they still hope to use some people from the US establishment to bring President Trump and his administration back into an anti-Russia camp and share responsibility or even shift the blame. But I believe they won’t succeed this time. ”

In a second session with reporters, Lavrov added: “US President Donald Trump has demonstrated a different interpretation of the situation. He has repeatedly underscored that this is not his war but Joe Biden’s. Precisely so. His stance – that the US acts in its national interest – extends to the Ukrainian context. What national interest does the USA have in Ukraine, beyond the objective pursued by Democratic administrations: to ‘contain,’ ‘encircle,’ and ‘keep Russia in perpetual tension?’ None. Economic interests, by all means – no one forbids that… Observing developments in real time, I sense that, at this stage, the Trump administration is acting precisely in this manner. We have always conducted ourselves this way: never lecturing others, never presuming to teach anyone how to live. This marks a substantial shift in Washington’s policy compared to previous Democratic administrations. Nonetheless, we do see that this White House approach has stirred significant unease among the elites, including within Republican circles. Many are unaccustomed to living in a world where they do not dictate everything or do not seek to control all things…”

According to Lavrov, a second round of direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations will take place – but not at the Vatican – and the Russian term sheet promised at the first round will be tabled. “That, at least, is a positive development,” he added. This term sheet will include a demilitarized zone (DMZ) extending westwards from the Russian state border, including Novorossiya.

The day before, May 22, Putin had told a meeting of government ministers that his time in Kursk and the barrage which had accompanied it “only confirm what I just said: drone attacks as well as sabotage and reconnaissance actions target civilian transport, including ambulances and agricultural machinery. Most of the casualties are women and children. As I said, a decision has been made to create a buffer security zone along the Russian border. Our Armed Forces are working on this now. They are also effectively suppressing enemy firing points.”

On May 24 and 25, the Russian retaliation took place. The drone and missile strikes reported and mapped by Boris Rozhin lasted for more than six hours.

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Source: https://t.me/boris_rozhin/166020

The next day in US time, May 26, Trump escalated, blaming Putin for the retaliatory strikes but not the Ukrainians and US forces for provoking them. “I’m not happy with what Putin is doing…something happened to this guy”, he declared, repeating three times in forty seconds, “I don’t like it all”, “I don’t like it all”, “I don’t like it”.

Then came the threat: “Q: Mr President, what do you want to do about it? A: We’ll see what we’re going to do.”

https://johnhelmer.net/maga-and-mega-tu ... more-91687

Dang, Putin is fucking up Trump's wet dream.

******

From Cassad's Telegram account:

Colonelcassad
The Kremlin on Trump's statements about "Putin's madness" in connection with the strikes on Ukraine:

Of course, the beginning of the negotiation process, for which the American side has made a great deal of effort, is a very important achievement. And we are truly grateful to the Americans and personally to President Trump for their assistance in organizing and launching this negotiation process. This is a very important achievement. Of course, at the same time, this is a very important moment, which is associated, of course, with the emotional overload of absolutely everyone and with emotional reactions. We are closely monitoring all reactions. At the same time, President Putin makes the decisions that are necessary to ensure the security of our country. We all witnessed how the Kiev regime threatened foreign leaders on the eve of their arrival in Moscow to celebrate Victory Day. Everyone heard these threats from the Kiev regime. And many leaders who were here, they actually witnessed the Kiev regime's attempts to carry out drone strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation, on large cities and on the capital on the eve of such an important day. These attempts continue. We are forced to take action. And President Putin is doing what he must to ensure Russia's security (c) Peskov

https://t.me/s/boris_rozhin

Google Translator

*****

Russian military expansion as the only guarantee of peace

Lucas Leiroz

May 26, 2025

For Moscow, the only way to protect its people is by advancing on the battlefield.

The illusion of a fully diplomatic understanding between Moscow and Kiev does not withstand the harsh reality of the battlefield. Despite signals of renewed dialogue, the Russian government understands that any peace agreement with the Ukrainian regime, if not based on new territorial configuration, will amount, at best, to a temporary ceasefire. The reason is simple: Kiev does not act as a sovereign entity but as a military protectorate of the West. And as such, it will not seek a just peace, but rather a disguised rearmament. In light of this, Russia is already preparing the only effective response: the liberation of new regions and the expansion of the security zone as far as necessary.

President Vladimir Putin’s recent statements are clear. By affirming that a “security buffer zone” will be established along the border, Putin announced more than a tactical measure—he announced a new phase of the special military operation. This zone will not be the result of fragile negotiations, but of military conquest. And it will expand not only to protect oblasts like Belgorod, Bryansk, and Kursk, but to ensure, once and for all, that no threat can ever arise again at Russia’s borders.

This decision stems from the realization that the current Ukrainian government will never uphold any real security guarantees. Since the beginning of the conflict, Russia has sought to restore peace, demanding only neutrality, respect for the New Regions integrated into the Federation, and an end to the aggression against the civilian population of Donbass. In response, Kiev intensified drone attacks, sabotage, and incursions against Russian civilians—actions typical of a terrorist state manipulated by foreign powers.

Given this, the move toward the Kharkov, Sumy, and Chernigov regions is not only legitimate but necessary. Russia can no longer tolerate the presence of hostile forces so close to its territory. What is unfolding is the formation of a new front line—deeper, safer, and strategically advantageous. The incursions into these regions have already begun, but what was once defensive and limited will now become offensive and continuous. The liberation of these areas will not be symbolic—it will be total.

If Kiev insists on its role as a vassal of the West, new fronts of liberation may open. Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev, and even Odessa are on Russia’s strategic horizon. These regions, in addition to being historically Russian, are currently used as bases for terrorist attacks—whether against Donbass or civilian vessels in the Black Sea. The security of the New Regions, Crimea, and the Black Sea requires that these centers of hostility be neutralized or reintegrated.

It is time to abandon diplomatic euphemisms and face the facts: Ukraine, as it exists today, is an unsustainable fiction. Artificially created from Soviet borders, it only survives as a political entity because it serves NATO’s interests. But times have changed. The era of the unipolar world is ending, and with it will fall the puppet regimes propped up by foreign weapons.

Russia’s historic mission in this conflict is clear: to ensure that its people never again live under threat, that Russian cities are never again bombed with impunity, and that no neighboring government ever again becomes a base of operations for geopolitical enemies. If that requires taking Kharkov, Odessa, Kiev, or the Carpathians—so be it.

Putin has already stated that he will not accept an unsafe peace deal. Peace must be based on strategic security and recognition of the new territorial reality. If Kiev refuses to accept this truth, Moscow will have no choice but to advance. And the people of the regions still under Ukrainian control will have to choose: continue under a regime that sends them to die in senseless battles, or reintegrate into the historical Motherland that will welcome them with dignity, security, and development.

Ukraine is heading toward territorial dismantlement. This is inevitable. It is up to Kiev to decide whether this process will be negotiated or imposed. But for Russia, the path is already set: to protect its people and win this war—on all fronts, across all maps.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... -of-peace/

Lavrov’s visit and the current situation in Armenia: Balancing act or drift?

Erkin Oncan

May 26, 2025

As options narrow, Armenia’s biggest challenge will be determining which path offers a more stable future.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently made a critical visit to Armenia.

This marked Lavrov’s first official trip to Yerevan in several years. During his visit, he met with Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan, Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, and President Vahagn Khachaturyan.

At a joint press conference with Mirzoyan, Lavrov dismissed Western-led security initiatives as ineffective and biased, advocating instead for a multipolar, inclusive, and international law-based security order.

In Yerevan, Lavrov reminded Armenia of its historical alliance with Russia and warned of the potential consequences of Yerevan’s rapprochement with the West. He also sharply criticized France and the European Union (EU), accusing them of pursuing a destabilizing and anti-Russia agenda in the Caucasus.

Notably, however, Lavrov avoided mentioning U.S.-Armenia relations or directing harsh criticisms toward Washington—a stance likely linked to the dialogue established during the Trump administration.

Lavrov’s visit came at a time of strained relations between the two countries. In Armenia, dissatisfaction with Russia is visibly growing due to Moscow’s perceived inaction or insufficient response regarding Nagorno-Karabakh.

Additionally, Yerevan has recently suspended its participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) while expanding diplomatic, economic, and military ties with France, the EU, and other Western actors.

A ‘New Chapter’ in Russia-Armenia Relations?

This visit has been interpreted by some as the opening of a ‘new chapter’ in Russia-Armenia relations, which have deteriorated since the Second Karabakh War. However, the situation also starkly highlights the ‘dilemma’ in Armenian politics.

While Pashinyan’s inner circle describes Armenia’s ‘dual-track’ policy between Russia and the West as a ‘multi-vector foreign policy,’ this oscillation is, in fact, the natural outcome of the ‘Velvet Revolution’ that brought Pashinyan to power—a movement aimed at pulling the Caucasus away from Russia.

Historically aligned with the Russia-Iran axis and reliant on Moscow’s mediation in regional issues—especially regarding Karabakh—Armenia’s political trajectory irreversibly shifted after the 2018 Velvet Revolution, which propelled Pashinyan to power.

Like other post-Soviet states that underwent color revolutions, Armenia, through its Velvet Revolution, embraced closer ties with the West, EU values, and ‘democracy.’ During the protests, Pashinyan denied comparisons to color revolutions, insisting the movement was purely about domestic affairs and that Armenia’s foreign policy would remain unchanged. However, every step taken since then reveals that the so-called ‘multi-vector foreign policy’ is, in reality, a Western-oriented shift.

This policy has undergone a significant transformation in the context of relations with Russia:

In February 2024, Yerevan announced the de facto freezing of its CSTO membership.
By May 2024, it halted membership fee payments.
In June 2024, it formally declared its intent to withdraw.
And in April 2025, it confirmed it would no longer participate in budget discussions.
Underlying this stance is Armenia’s growing dissatisfaction with the CSTO’s failure to meet its security expectations, particularly regarding assistance during the Karabakh war.

However, Russia and the CSTO refrained from intervening in Karabakh, citing the conflict as ‘outside the alliance’s legal boundaries.’ The real reasons, though, were discomfort with Pashinyan’s pro-Western tilt and a desire to maintain balanced relations with Azerbaijan.

Armenia’s EU Path

While criticizing Russia for lacking military support when needed, Yerevan simultaneously took the following steps:

April 2024: Armenian FM Ararat Mirzoyan signed a judicial cooperation agreement with Eurojust in Brussels, aiming for legal unity among EU member states.
September 2024: Armenia and the EU launched a visa liberalization dialogue for short-term visa-free travel.
February 2024: At the fifth EU-Armenia Partnership Council meeting, the EU pledged €5.5 million in humanitarian aid for Armenians displaced from Karabakh.
April 2024: At the EU-U.S.-Armenia trilateral summit in Brussels, the EU adopted a €270 million Resilience and Growth Plan for Armenia (2024-2027).
January 2025: The Armenian government approved a bill initiating EU accession talks.
February 2025: Armenia joined the EU’s Interreg Black Sea Basin Program, enhancing cooperation with Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, and the Mediterranean.
April 2025: President Vahagn Khachaturyan signed the EU accession bill into law.
Undoubtedly, Armenia’s accelerated transformation is also linked to the ‘loss of Karabakh.’ While this was a major defeat, it also allowed the Pashinyan administration to shed a historical burden.

However, Armenia’s ties with the EU date back much further:

1996: Signed a Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU.
2001: Joined the Council of Europe.
2004: Enhanced relations under the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP).
2009: Joined the Eastern Partnership initiative.
2013: Entered the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) but ratified the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership Agreement (CEPA) with the EU in 2017.
Post-Velvet Revolution, ‘democratic reforms’ gained momentum.
What Does the EU Want from Armenia?

For Europe, Armenia’s significance lies less in its commitment to ‘European values’ and more in its geographic proximity to Russia and Iran.

EU membership is a lengthy process—only three former Soviet states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) have completed it. Others, like Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, remain embroiled in political struggles between ‘pro-Russia’ and ‘pro-EU’ factions. These parallels suggest Armenia’s accession could take years.

The EU’s primary goal appears not full membership but advancing strategic interests through the accession process. A ‘European’ Armenia would align with the bloc’s geopolitical objective of countering Russia.

What Does Russia Want from Armenia?

A key factor in Armenia’s loss of Karabakh was the absence of Russian support. While Azerbaijan’s military ended Armenia’s 28-year occupation, the shift was ultimately driven by Pashinyan’s political stance—not just Turkish drones, Israeli weapons, or Azerbaijan’s resolve.

From this perspective, the Karabakh conflict, like other post-Soviet crises, was ‘internationalized’—tied to U.S. imperialism, the strategy of ‘encircling Russia,’ and color revolutions.

The traditional regional alignment—Armenia-Russia-Iran vs. Azerbaijan-Israel-Turkey—was disrupted under Pashinyan. Thus, for Moscow, Armenia’s domestic politics and bilateral relations are inseparable from Russia’s broader encirclement concerns.

From Moldova and Ukraine to Georgia and Armenia, nearly every post-Soviet state near Russia has experienced color revolutions, military conflicts, and political divisions between ‘pro-Russia’ and ‘pro-West’ factions.

Yet despite tensions, geographic proximity, shared history, and economic necessity prevent a complete rupture.

Economic Ties Amid Political Strains

In 2024, Russia-Armenia trade hit a historic high of $12.4 billion—a 56.5% increase from 2023. In the first half of 2024, Armenia imported 66 tons of gold, nearly all from Russia. Agricultural trade also rose by 16.2%.

However, while imports from Russia surged, Armenian exports to Russia declined—a trend Pashinyan’s critics attribute to his pro-Western policies, while his supporters blame ‘dependence on Russia.’

For the Kremlin, Armenia is both a security concern and a strategic foothold in the South Caucasus. Despite tensions, Russia remains committed to preserving ties, leveraging historical and economic bonds to counter Western influence.

What Comes Next?

A key agenda item during Lavrov’s visit was Armenia’s upcoming 2026 elections, which will be a major test for Pashinyan.

A recent poll by MPG Politring (Gallup’s Armenian partner) asked, “If elections were held today, who would you vote for?”

5%: Pashinyan’s ruling Civil Contract party.
8%: Robert Kocharyan’s ‘Armenia’ bloc.
7%: Serzh Sargsyan’s ‘I Have Honor’ alliance.
Notably, 23.7% said they would not vote—a segment that could decide Pashinyan’s fate.

The Dilemma of Dual-Track Policy

Armenia’s ambiguous political climate leaves it with two outcomes from its dual-track foreign policy: Moscow’s security umbrella vs. the EU’s political and economic promises.

Pashinyan’s government is attempting to balance both, but this strategy carries risks. As options narrow, Armenia’s biggest challenge will be determining which path offers a more stable future.

The outcome will hinge on where Armenia’s interests diverge from Pashinyan’s.

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... -or-drift/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed May 28, 2025 4:00 pm

THE KREMLIN IGNORES TRUMP’S “INFANTILE” STATEMENTS – WON’T THROW THE BABY OUT WITH THE BATHWATER

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By John Helmer @bears_with

Russian officials will ignore President Donald Trump’s tweets in order to focus on the main chance.

“We do not consider the infantile attitude of Trump as a problem,” an official source said, responding to Trump’s statement and tweets of May 26 and 27.

“We consider he is the legitimate counter party [for end-of-war negotiations]. We consider he is a more adequate person than any of the European and British leaders. He is far from the worst of the leadership in the western world, whether on the left or on the right. He is not [ex-Prime Minister Elizabeth] Truss not [Boris] Johnson. He is not [French President Emmanuel] Macron. He is a real leader and [President Vladimir Putin] has no hesitation to talk to him with trust.”

“There will be a summit meeting even if it is often now that Trump speaks the last words he hears from Macron or [Finnish President Alexander] Stubb. But this is not a problem. He has an independent mind and he conveyed his wish to end war with Russia. This is the foundation on which it is necessary to build. He is trusted on this wish he has expressed.”

The official refused to be drawn into discussing the escalation of Ukrainian drone and missile attacks, including Putin’s helicopter in Kursk, or the Russian retaliation raids on Kiev and around the country. He did not touch on Putin’s decision “to create a buffer security zone along the Russian border. Our Armed Forces are working on this now. They are also effectively suppressing enemy firing points.”

Asked whether it is now the Russian negotiating objective to secure four, five, or eight regions, the official replied: “Look, our position has changed continually about the regions. No one went into this [the Special Military Operation] for land. We can stop where we want if our main, long-term objective is reached — demilitarization of all Ukraine and de-nazification. We have specific proposals on that. Very specific. So on these terms, land can be given for a peaceful treaty with the US on Ukraine. Only with US. Not with the Europeans. And the main discussions on security with the US then start with normal diplomatic and business relations at all levels. This is the minimum expectation and it will be met.”

The official passed over Trump’s latest tweet on Tuesday evening: “What Vladimir Putin doesn’t realize is that if it weren’t for me, lots of really bad things would have already happened to Russia, and I mean REALLY BAD. He’s playing with fire!”

The official responded: “We have changed our position that [Putin] will meet only on the conclusion of all the technical details. We are ready to meet at any stage of the technical Ukraine discussions. A meeting [with Trump] will happen.”

Since the Istanbul meeting between Russian and Ukrainian delegations on May 16, details and recriminations have been leaked in the public manoeuvring before the next round.

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Pope Leo XIV met Vice President J D Vance at the Vatican on May 19; they agreed the US would try to move the Russia-Ukraine talks from Istanbul to the Vatican.

The US attempt to remove the talks from Turkey to the Vatican has been dismissed by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. Addressing the Papal nuncio in Moscow, he said: “I’d like to ask them to spare their efforts on working out options that are not quite realistic. Imagine the Vatican being the venue for the talks. I would say this is somewhat inelegant when two Orthodox countries would use a Catholic venue to discuss the root causes of the crisis. One of them is the destruction of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church…I think it would not be very comfortable for the Vatican itself to receive delegations from two Orthodox Christian countries under these circumstances.”

Asked if the US has been demanding the replacement of Vladimir Medinsky as the head of the Russian delegation, Lavrov has answered: “As for rumours about the fact that the United States wants to change the Russian negotiator…If the United States wanted to convey something to us, they know how to do it without descending to the humiliating form of spreading a rumour. As for the head of the negotiating team of Russia, Mr. V.R. Medinsky, he is appointed — if anyone else doubts – by the President of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin, and not the head or representative of any other state.”

Lavrov added that for the location of the next round of negotiations, “If you ask me, I would again appeal to our Turkish friends. It’s good in Istanbul.”

As for Trump’s tweets, “changes in rhetoric come from many world leaders,” he said. “As a person who does not like obstacles to achieving noble goals, [Trump] has certain assessments, a certain rhetoric. The main thing here is to pay attention, not to the rhetoric, but to ensure that Europe stops sabotaging the movement towards a world that is supported by both the United States and Turkey, and to whom the Russian Federation is fully committed.”

“Until recently,” Lavrov added, “all of Europe shouted in one voice: ‘No ceasefire, pumping Ukraine with weapons. That’s what we have to do. And finish off Russia on the battlefield. What are they screaming now? ‘Keep up the fire immediately without preconditions.’ At the same time, French President Macron adds they will not stop supplying weapons to Ukraine during the very ceasefire demanded by Russia. Here’s all the rhetoric for you.”

The official reporting the current consensus of the General Staff, the Foreign Ministry, and the Kremlin dismisses the characterization of the Europeans as “brain-dead”. If Trump believes he must work with the Europeans, “we do not consider it a problem. We will honour any peace Trump makes and stops military supply and money to Kiev. Of course, we can deal with the Europeans severely.”

The last word refers to the new Russian identification of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz as Adolf Hitler Redux.

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The German election poster of Merz says “Strong Chancellor, Strong Germany”. The graffiti which have been added, along with the Hitler moustache, say “A Little Man” and “Where is the firewall?”.

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Chancellor Merz in Kiev with Vladimir Zelensky on May 10, 2025.

“Europe has again found the Nazi flag,” Lavrov referring to Germany, “in order to once again go to a complete dead-end, failed adventure to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia. When we have just celebrated the 80-year anniversary of the defeat of nazism, we hear from the mouth of the current leader of Germany that Germany will regain the position of the main leading military force in Europe [this] is quite symptomatic. History probably doesn’t teach these people anything.”

The Russian assessment of Merz is that he is not as intelligent as Hitler was; that their Russian race hatred is the same.

Merz’s announcement this week on lifting the range and attack targeting of missiles Germany, France and the UK will supply to the Ukraine, Lavrov said, “once again emphasizes the level of competence of the persons who have now broken through in Europe to power. Yesterday, [Merz] said with such pathos that from now on, forever, there are no restrictions on the range of strikes. And he spoke for himself, and for France, and for Britain, and for the United States. An hour later, the Vice-Chancellor of Germany [Lars Klingbeil] said that there was no such thing and was not under way. The same was said by the representatives of the Bundeswehr. And then Merz apparently figured out that what he said had meant not a new decision, but some decision made by the previous administration in Berlin. This once again leads us to think about the fact that the decision to allow Ukraine what in fact,it will want, at least to some extent for striking targets on Russian territory, was made a long time ago. It was kept secret.”

There was flurry of last-minute messages between Trump’s staff and the Kremlin, the official source now acknowledges, when the US president was in the Middle East from May 12 to 16. “No meeting was planned for Istanbul [between Putin and Trump]. We fulfilled the condition of talking to the Ukrainians which in fact had been our demand that we talk directly. We expected the meeting to go forward. But new logistical and not well formulated ideas were introduced for the agenda. A venue change was proposed. It was not agreed. New expectations were involved. It was then calculated it would not be sensible to go for a meeting where all of the agenda was changed and the venue and host were changed.”

“The ceasefire was made the central issue. [Putin] was not going to discuss ceasefire because he already agreed to ceasefires if the meeting was for wider and bigger issues of long-term security and peace with new economic relations. It was considered normal that a ceasefire should come from the summit meeting. But not the main and central outcome. [Putin] had already offered ceasefires. Maybe the Europeans changed the mind of Trump that everything is about Ukraine and about ceasefire. No one says no to ceasefire. But there’s no way [Putin] was going to walk into a meeting with a changed agenda and a small objective.”

“And so, this way or another we will solve the Ukraine issue and we are not in any hurry.”

Listen to the discussion with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern on Wednesday – 19:30 Moscow time, 12:30 Washington, DC time — and the Gorilla Radio broadcast with Chris Cook on Wednesday at 4:30 pm British Columbia time. https://johnhelmer.net/the-kremlin-igno ... more-91700
https://gorilla-radio.com/
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https://johnhelmer.net/the-kremlin-igno ... more-91700

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Russia To Defend Its National Interests Amid Trump’s Push to End Ukraine Conflict

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X/ @Ukrinform_News

May 28, 2025 Hour: 8:33 am

Previously, Trump said Putin was ‘playing with fire’ by refusing to halt the special military operation in Ukraine.

On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Russia will defend its national interests amid U.S. President Donald Trump’s push to quickly resolve the conflict in Ukraine.

“It is clear that the American side, and President Trump personally — who is making notable efforts to reach a peaceful solution — wants a swift resolution. However, there are still many issues that need to be discussed, that cannot be sacrificed, and that neither side will sacrifice due to their national interests,” Peskov said.

“Just as in the United States, Russia has its national interests, which are above everything else. They are also a top priority for our president,” Peskov added.

Earlier, through his platform Truth Social, Trump said Russian President Vladimir Putin was “playing with fire” by refusing to halt the special military operation in Ukraine.

In response, Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yuri Ushakov said Moscow has concluded that Trump is not being properly informed about what is really happening in the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Zelenskyy says Ukraine has reached defence sector accords with Germany as he meets Merz – Ukraine-Russia war live https://t.co/jGY5DwiLnA

— Linda Hazlett🇨🇦 (@linda_hazlett) May 28, 2025
“In particular, he is not being told that Ukraine is carrying out massive terrorist attacks on Russian cities. Trump is only aware of the countermeasures we are taking,” Ushakov said.

Peskov also stated that work on the memorandum — a roadmap for the future signing of a peace treaty — agreed upon by Putin and Trump during their most recent phone conversation, is “in its final phase.”

“A document is currently being prepared to discuss the conditions for a cease-fire. Meanwhile, the special military operation continues. It is precisely these root causes that pose a serious threat to our national interests,” the Kremlin spokesperson said, noting that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is preparing an agreement with the European Union for the production of long-range weaponry.

Trump, who recently claimed Putin had gone “crazy” due to his latest aerial bombing campaign against Ukraine, once again lashed out at the Kremlin leader.

“What Vladimir Putin doesn’t understand is that if it weren’t for me, many very bad things — and I mean very bad things — would have already happened to Russia. He’s playing with fire!” Trump said.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/russia-t ... -conflict/

Belarus to Move Military Exercises Away From the Baltic Border to Ease Tensions

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X/ @ELMObrokenWings

May 28, 2025 Hour: 8:57 am

The Zapad-2025 drills are scheduled to take place next fall on Russian and Belarusian territory.

On Wednesday, Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin announced that his nation’s joint military exercises with Russia and other member countries of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) will be relocated away from the Baltic border in an effort to ease potential geopolitical tensions.

“We have decided to reduce the scope of the Zapad-2025 exercises, and through this, we once again confirm our readiness for dialogue and our commitment and intent to de-escalate tensions — not just with words, but with actions as well,” Khrenin said during a meeting of the CSTO Council of Defense Ministers in Kyrgyzstan.

“The decision was made without expecting any constructive response, but to demonstrate to our allies and partners around the world the truly peaceful stance of the Republic of Belarus,” he added.


The Belarusian minister also emphasized that the military exercises are not directed against anyone and, in terms of intensity and scale, are incomparable to NATO drills conducted on European soil.

Khrenin also used the occasion to meet with Kyrgyz Defense Minister Ruslan Mukambetov. The two officials signed a cooperation agreement focused on leisure, recreation, and health improvement programs for military personnel and their families.

The Zapad-2025 exercises are scheduled to take place next fall on Russian and Belarusian territory. In previous years, the drills were conducted near the Baltic and Polish borders and included both aerial exercises and ground deployments.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/belarus- ... -tensions/

New international configuration
May 26, 21:09

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New international configuration

The US intelligence report (DIA) notes a new international configuration in which Russia, China, Iran and North Korea are becoming not a formal bloc, but a network-centric system with a redistribution of functions. China legitimizes - diplomatically and visually, but avoids open arms supplies. Iran supplies drones and exchanges technologies. The DPRK is the main donor of artillery and "manpower". Moscow, according to DIA, is building around itself not an alliance, but a diversified logistics and technological conveyor.

China is playing a game on two fronts: on the one hand, it is expanding its participation in joint exercises and patrols with Russia, including the Arctic, and on the other, it avoids direct supplies of lethal aid, fearing sanctions pressure and reputational costs. This emphasizes Beijing's strategy - "deep partnership without an open alliance." However, recognition of the importance of BRICS and participation in global forums with the Russian Federation establishes Beijing as a key subject of the new multi-centered world, where its status is no longer secondary.

Iran, according to the report, acts pragmatically: by supplying armed UAVs, it counts on access to advanced Russian military technology. For Tehran, this is a way to bypass Western restrictions and expand its capabilities in the aerospace and missile spheres. But the DIA admits that Russia shares high technologies in a limited way, fearing the growth of Iran's ambitions in its areas of influence.

North Korea is presented as a military resource donor. According to the DIA, Pyongyang has supplied millions of artillery shells, dozens of missiles and sent 12,000 people to help the Russian Federation. In exchange, it received air defense and electronic warfare equipment, missile systems, strategic cover and a new political status. The signing of the comprehensive strategic partnership agreement is North Korea's exit from China's shadow and an attempt to rely on a more flexible and direct alliance with Russia.

An analytically important point is the DIA's recognition that Russia is building a cross-border technological ecosystem: the exchange of knowledge and platforms is taking place along the lines of WMD, satellites, nuclear and missile technologies. This is an alarming signal for the United States: the destruction of the West's monopoly on "technological containment" is turning sanctions into a political ritual that does not have the same isolating power.

The United States, in the opinion of Americans, is faced with the phenomenon of a new international sub-coalition, where each country is closing its own section. Instead of hierarchy, there is decentralized interdependence that can undermine the foundations of the unipolar model.

https://armedservices.house.gov/uploade ... record.pdf - download report

https://t.me/Taynaya_kantselyariya/12542 - zinc

Next should come the howls about the "new axis of evil" and the waving of the sanctions club.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9861897.html

Google Translator

******

Russian Navy Launches Baltic Sea Drills Amid Rising NATO Tensions

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Russian military drills in the Baltic Sea, May 20254. X/ @globalsouthinfo

May 27, 2025 Hour: 9:16 am

During the drills, live-fire exercises will target enemy sea and air threats, including unmanned surface drones.

On Tuesday, the Russian Navy began naval exercises in the Baltic Sea involving more than 20 ships, about 3,000 troops, nearly 25 aircraft and helicopters, and around 70 pieces of military equipment. Among the vessels taking part are frigates, corvettes, tankers, tugboats and a variety of support ships.

The Navy said that vessels from the Baltic and Northern Fleets, based in the Kaliningrad exclave and in St. Petersburg, respectively, are participating. Forces from the Moscow and Leningrad military districts, along with the Aerospace Forces, have also been mobilized.

During the drills, live-fire exercises will target enemy sea and air threats, including unmanned surface drones. Images released by the Baltic Fleet show ships, bombers and fighter jets navigating the sea, which has become a scene of heightened tensions in recent weeks between Russia and NATO countries.

On Monday, Kremlin adviser Nikolai Patrushev accused the West of “creating military tension in the Baltic” and planning to block the passage of Russian vessels through international straits. Patrushev said Estonian authorities are attempting to stop ships headed to Russian ports under the pretext of protecting critical underwater infrastructure, including the exclusive economic zone, and safeguarding environmental security.


Two weeks ago, the Estonian Navy attempted to stop a flagless oil tanker it described as part of Russia’s “shadow fleet” used to evade Western sanctions. The tanker did not comply, and a Russian fighter jet appeared to escort it, violating Estonian airspace.

Following the incident, a Greek-owned, Liberia-flagged tanker that had departed from Estonia’s port of Sillamäe was detained in Russian waters in the Baltic Sea and only allowed to resume its journey to Rotterdam the next day.

Last week, the Kremlin stated that Russia will defend the navigation of its vessels “by all means at its disposal.” Meanwhile, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned that the Baltic region could become a “scene of confrontation” between NATO allies and Russia.

Speaking to the press from the Maritime Operations Center in Gdynia, Tusk commented on an incident involving a Polish Navy ship that detected a Russian vessel “carrying out suspicious maneuvers” near a section of the Baltic Sea where a submarine cable “crucial to Poland” runs.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/russian- ... -tensions/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu May 29, 2025 3:16 pm

WHAT IS NEW IN RUSSIAN THINKING ABOUT TRUMP, WHAT ISN’T NEW IN EURO-NAZI THINKING

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By John Helmer @bears_with

There is a risky way of being an American against the wars that President Donald Trump is aiming to fight, especially the one Trump claims not to be fighting against Russia on the Ukraine battlefield. The risk is that you may have to use words like imperialism, oligarchy, false consciousness, revolution.

Trump is right about one thing – Americans don’t have to go to Harvard on state grants and minority quotas to learn about words like those.

One of the first great Americans to run that word risk, miss Harvard, and do more than sympathize with the Russian revolutionists of the late 19th and early 20th century was Clarence Darrow. He is also one of the first and still the most eloquent of examples of being an American against American wars which is almost unremembered today. “If this war be called patriotism,” Darrow said in 1898 about the US war to take the Philippines from Spain, “then blessed be treason”.

Few enough words to make the tweet limit, but not rightfor endorsement in Truth Social. Too “WARPED RADICAL LEFT”.

Darrow (1857 -19384) was the greatest courtroom lawyer in American history, practising across the country in the defence of the oligarch-owned railroads and also union workers; big city mayors; blacks framed for the murder of whites; women who killed violent husbands; Jewish thrill-homicidalists; and the McNamara brothers who on October 1, 1910, dynamited the Los Angeles Times, killing 21 and injuring more than 100. After that trial Darrow was prosecuted himself for bribing the jurors; in his two-day address to the jury he had them in tears; they acquitted him on the defence of moral necessity.

“The great question between capital and labour,” Darrow said in 1912, “cannot be solved by marching”. Nowadays that last word would be replaced by tweeting.

“Clarence Darrow is the greatest power for evil in the United States today!” declared the California state prosecutor in Trump style – it was March 1913 and Darrow was on trial on a second bribery charge. The jury deadlocked – eight for conviction, four for acquittal – and the judge declared a mistrial.

In today’s podcast with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern, we discuss the Russian assessment of Trump’s tweets and the future sequencing of wars which Russians understand that Trump and his State Department and Pentagon are attempting – just as the Russians are sequencing their own war in the Ukraine and the future war against the Euro-Nazis led by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

Click to view and to listen. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7a-FBfYkyP4

In the short run, a Moscow source in a position to know says: “both sides — three, if you include China — know all the sequencing moves. Russians are better at sequencing [than the Americans]. So far in surrenders and strategic withdrawals from Syria, on Gaza, on Iran too, it’s all for a purpose. US sequencing is nothing new and not surprising. You can be sure that the Russians have plotted where and what they will give up, and what posture they will take to fight when they must.”

Commenting on the Russian memorandum or term sheet to be tabled at the next round of negotiations with the Ukrainians, the source adds, “the Russians will agree to a ceasefire where they are. The peace terms will include all four [Novoriossiya] regions. Added to that, demilitarization across the Dnieper River [eight regions] and change of regime [in Kiev and Lvov] will give the result that’s wanted; at a minimum the four regions will be fully folded into Russia. The ceasefire won’t be negotiable beyond three months or six months, when an election must take place [replacing Vladimir Zelensky].”

The Russian assessment of Trump is that he is preparing to make money, not war. “When [President Putin] says he trusts Trump, he means that it’s expected Trump would hold to his side of an agreement – if it’s reached – to stop supplying arms and intelligence, either directly or indirectly, to the Ukraine and that would be the essence of a peace treaty.” This pact will also include Trump’s agreement to halt enforcement of economic sanctions against Russia, reopen airspace, and resume international banking and the Euroclear and Swift transfer systems.

The sequencing priority on the Russian side right now, according to the source, is for time to rebuild the military forces, starting with acknowledgement of mistakes — battlefield failures, command-control failures, commander-in-chief misjudgements – and what must be done next, and for the future. The mistakes conceded have been made strategically since 2014, operationally in February 2022, and tactically since then.

To follow up the mentions in the podcast, here are the references:

The demilitarized zone proposed by former president Dmitry Medvedev on May 25:

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Source: https://x.com/MedvedevRussiaE/

The new Russian emphasis on Germany as the principal enemy in Europe and Merz’s neo-nazism:

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Source: https://mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/news/2019597/

“Genuine Nazism is rearing up its ugly head. Examples abound, including speeches by new Chancellor Friedrich Merz in which he claims that time has come for Germany to lead Europe again. One would have to be cynical to the bone to utter such words. The militarisation of Europe is proclaimed as a main objective for the second half of the decade. This is a dangerous dynamic.

It is they who plead for a respite – solely to rearm. They have stated as much publicly. My former colleague, now President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, declares that Vladimir Putin is obliged to agree to an immediate ceasefire – yet insists such a ceasefire must impose no restrictions on the West’s dealings with the Ukrainian regime.

What does this signify? That they intend to continue militarising this state.

Present here are members of our delegation who recently attended the first round of talks in Istanbul. The Ukrainians sat with them, conversed, and discussed agreements that began to take shape – concerning POW exchanges and a memorandum outlining key issues for a settlement to be drafted by both parties, to which priority attention must be given. An understanding was reached. Yet nothing substantive followed. They agreed because they presumed Western support, including from the United States, would be eternal – that they would forever be permitted every indulgence.

However, US President Donald Trump has demonstrated a different interpretation of the situation. He has repeatedly underscored that this is not his war but Joe Biden’s. Precisely so. His stance – that the US acts in its national interest – extends to the Ukrainian context. What national interest does the USA have in Ukraine, beyond the objective pursued by Democratic administrations: to “contain,” “encircle,” and “keep Russia in perpetual tension?” None. Economic interests, by all means – no one forbids that.

Another revealing statement by Friedrich Merz emerged when he sought to justify his militarisation agenda – the creation of Europe’s strongest army. He asserted that Russia would not stop in Ukraine and would proceed to seize Europe. In Freudian terms, he projected his own inclinations: rather than protecting his compatriots, he envisions conquest and exploitation. These Nazi instincts have proven remarkably persistent.”

European attitudes towards Ukraine and towards the social cost of rearmament against Russia have been changing slowly, but they still fall far short of majorities in favour of Russia’s terms for peace.
On the contrary, the anti-Russian, no-concessions line represented for Trump by General Keith Kellogg and agreed with France, UK, Germany, Ukraine and Poland (FUGUP) preserves majority public support in Europe overall and in the UK.

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Source: https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/

Measured country by country, there are big differences in public opinion between Denmark, Belgium, and The Netherlands, which are the most anti-Russian states, and Romania and Italy where pro-war sentiment is least popular.

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Source: https://geopolitique.eu/

British public opinion is solidly in favour of backing the Ukraine to oppose territorial concessions in the negotiations with Russia; of putting British troops on the ground as peacekeepers; and of paying more from the national budget to reach Trump’s target for NATO defence spending.

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Polling dated mid-February 2025. Source: https://yougov.co.uk/

NOTE: The lead image is an adaptation of an 1899 cartoon by Victor Gillam, published in Judge, a weekly magazine of political satire based in New York from 1881 to 1947, and oriented towards the Republican Party.The title of the cartoon was "A Lesson for Anti-Expansionists", showing the growth of Uncle Sam over the stages of his life; the lesson was that the US “has been an expansionist first, last, and all the time.”

https://johnhelmer.net/what-is-new-in-r ... more-91709

******

Russia is a bulwark of the anti-imperialist world

It is incumbent upon all progressive humanity to defend Russia from imperialist aggression and lying propaganda.
Proletarian writers

Wednesday 30 April 2025

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Russia draws the rabid hatred of our bourgeoisie because, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, it began a process of re-establishing economic independence rather than remaining a supine colony for the vultures of western capital to exploit at will.
The following resolution was passed unanimously by the tenth party congress of the CPGB-ML.

*****

This congress salutes Russia’s important role in fighting against the incessant provocations and aggression of imperialist nations.

This congress understands that Nato was formed as an alliance of imperialist states to counter the rise of socialism and the anticolonial movement, which were the main threats to the ability of western European nations and the USA to extract superprofits from the oppressed nations of the world. In particular, Nato was a military alliance directed against the USSR after it had defeated the second military attempt to crush it – Nazi Germany – and had won even greater prestige and respect from workers around the world, much to the chagrin of the imperialists.

Although touted as a ‘defensive’ alliance, Nato began a programme of aggressive expansion and open hostility after the destruction of the USSR and eastern bloc with the criminal bombing of Yugoslavia. It set about wreaking havoc across the world almost entirely unchecked, seeking new markets, new sources of labour-power to exploit, resources to plunder, and rival industries to crush.

Russia draws the rabid hatred of our bourgeoisie because, under the leadership of Vladimir Putin, it began a process of re-establishing economic independence rather than remaining a supine colony for the vultures of western capital to exploit at will.

The military actions taken by Russia have been a direct response to imperialist aggression, which funds colour revolutions and terrorism in countries it seeks to destabilise and control economically. The majority of Russia’s military activity has thus occurred within the former states of the USSR, in the case of Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria and Ukraine, or within states that had an existing friendly relationship with the USSR in the case of Syria, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Although this congress has no illusions about the bourgeois nature of the Russian state and economy, Russia is not an imperialist nation and it is currently playing a significant anti-imperialist role in the world. It was not protestors outside Downing Street that stopped British or Israeli bombs and missiles being launched at Syria, it was the presence of the Russian armed forces and anti-aircraft batteries.

This congress holds that it is incumbent upon us to defend Russia from imperialist aggression and propaganda, as it is still, along with China and Iran, one of the great prizes that imperialism seeks to conquer in order to try to breathe new life into its moribund system.

This congress says: Hands off Russia!

https://thecommunists.org/2025/04/30/ne ... ist-world/

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Chronicles of Grant Eating
May 29, 9:52

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"Media Chronicles"

The editorial board of Underside has obtained internal documents from the investigative publication Chronicle.Media ( https://t.me/acp_chronicle ), which exposes corruption in Russia.

Of course, there is no talk of any “independent” journalism. An analysis of the financial papers and correspondence of the publication’s key figures revealed that the activities of the foreign-based team of investigative journalists are financed by Western donors.

A significant share of foreign “orders” for Chronicle went through the Czech structure Sdružení investigativních novinářů – Fond 19/29 ( https://foundation19-29.com/ ) — the foreign reincarnation of the Russian foreign agent organization Foundation 19/29. The Czech foundation is headed by Russian journalist Grigory Pasko ( https://x.com/grigorypasko ) , who was convicted of treason . ( https://x.com/grigorypasko ) Through the foundation, "Chronicles" received money from Western-affiliated organizations: Prague Civil Society Center ( https://www.praguecivilsociety.org/ ) (Prague Civil Society Center) and Fonds Eur Pr la Dem/FEDEM ( https://www.europe-en-france.gouv.fr/fr ... onal-FEDER ) (EED, European Endowment for Democracy). For 2024, the "investigators" signed a contract for 15 thousand dollars with Russophobes from the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC),

familiar to our reader ( https://underside.today/2022/09/13/center-owl/ ). We also found application documents for grants from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Norwegian FrittОrd foundation ( https://frittord.no/en/home ), the Brussels-based Journalismfund ( https://grants.journalismfund.eu/en ), the International Research & Exchanges Board ( https://www.irex.org/ ) (IREX), and other connoisseurs of paid publicity.

In some cases, the ideological inspirers of Chronicles.Media — former head of Alexei Navalny’s headquarters in St. Petersburg Alexander Shurshev ( https://t.me/Shurshevru ) and the founder of the “Walking Without Putin” movement Mikhail Obozov ( https://obozov.com/ ) — tried to sell the same work to two different customers. The would-be investigators asked both NED and IREX for money to expand their work in Russia.

The editors found that Chronicles.Media is nothing more than a large-scale business of discrediting Russian authorities through foreign contracts. How much do fugitive journalists earn on their “word of honor,” and who helps distribute the materials — from affiliated Telegram channels (including: SOTA, (https://t.me/sotaproject ) ASTRA ( https://t.me/astrapress ), Rotunda, ( https://t.me/rotondamedia ) Meduza ( https://t.me/meduzalive ), Kompromat GRUPP ( https://t.me/criminalru ) ( https://t.me/criminalru ) to the websites ( https://kasparov.ru/ ) G. Kasparov ( https://kasparov.ru/ ) and "Paper" ( https://paperpaper.io/ ) - in detail and with documents - in the Underside material.

https://underside.today/2025/05/29/chronicles/ - zinc

It is good and pleasant to expose corruption in Russia for American and European money. There's just some kind of combo here...
On the issue of the fact that after the USAID shop closed, there were other intermediaries through which grant-eaters receive funding, both from the US and from Europe...
The fact that the characters also tried to rip off the Americans for money also says a lot about them.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9866611.html

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Fri May 30, 2025 3:10 pm

WHAT DID PRESIDENT TRUMP KNOW WHEN PRESIDENT PUTIN’S HELICOPTER CAME UNDER UKRAINIAN DRONE ATTACK IN KURSK?

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By John Helmer @bears_with

The first report came from RIA-Novosti, the Russian state news agency, on May 25 at 13:24.

“President Vladimir Putin’s helicopter (lead image, top) was in the epicentre of repelling a large-scale attack by Ukrainian Armed Forces drones during a visit to the Kursk region, said Yury Dashkin [Major General in command of the 32nd Air Defence Division, lead image, below) commander of the air defence division in whose area of responsibility the region is located. According to him, during the president’s visit, the Ukrainian military launched an ‘unprecedented attack,’ with 46 drones destroyed by the air defence system. ‘At the same time, we conducted an anti-aircraft battle and ensured the safety of the president’s helicopter flight in the air. [The helicopter was] actually in the epicentre of repelling a massive drone attack,’ Dashkin said.”

The drone attack on Kursk had taken place five days earlier, on May 20. Putin’s visit to the region, his meetings with local officials, the region governor, engineers and scientists at the Kurchatov nuclear power plant, and local medical, rescue and social welfare volunteers was not reported by the Kremlin website until the following morning. The report of the attack on the helicopter was kept secret at the time. The Kremlin has made no comment on the later press reports.

Note Gen Dashkin’s precise wording: he did not claim the President’s helicopter was targeted directly; he did not say Putin was on board at the time (the President also travelled in Kursk by motorcade); he did not reveal whether there was more than one helicopter in the presidential flight to Kursk; he did not say whether the air defence command was spoofing the electronic tracking technology which the US and the Ukrainians have been using for their drone and missile attacks in recent days.

The Kremlin pool reporter for Kommersant, Andrei Kolesnikov, reported on Putin’s movements and meetings after the 24-hour security delay. Kolesnikov noted in passing: “The situation was not cloudless: when the cortege of the president moved around the region, there were drones of the APU in the sky – they cannot be ignored on the video footage, which I saw. However, the region lives in such an environment not for the first year, as you know — so Vladimir Putin should have recognized how the region is working.”

Pick-up of the May 25 report by Newsweek of the US conceded: “This is the first known instance in which the Russian president is reported to have flown through an active drone attack.”

The magazine then adopted the Ukrainian version of what had happened. “Ukrainian officials haven’t comment on the alleged attack on Putin, but Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has said that his country has every right to kill Putin if the opportunity arises, if doing so would protect Ukraine and its people. Zelensky told The Sun in Kyiv in November 2023 that he has lost track of the number of times Moscow has attempted to assassinate him since Putin launched a full-scale invasion of his country. ‘That’s war, and Ukraine has all the rights to defend our land,’ the Ukrainian leader said when asked if Kyiv would take a chance to assassinate Putin if such an opportunity arose.”

“Zelensky is no longer in Kiev,” a Moscow source in a position to know commented this week. “He spends much of his time travelling around the world, and then in a command post in Poland. He simulates his presence in country for PR purposes. He only goes to Kiev when foreign government officials visit.” In March 2022 Putin told former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett that he would not order an assassination strike on Zelensky.

Five years later, has Zelensky make an attempt against Putin? what role are the US electronic warfare forces playing in tracking Putin’s movements and targeting his position? When Trump tweeted on May 27 that Putin is “playing with fire!” had Trump fired first – and missed?

Since the Kursk incident, the public White House log records that Trump had received his weekly intelligence briefing at 11 am on May 22, and then again at the same time on May 29. There is no record yet that Trump has responded to a reporter’s question on the incident.

What Trump knew in advance and after the Kursk incident, and what message the Kremlin is sending by revealing the details now, are discussed with Chris Cook in this Gorilla Radio broadcast from Victoria, BC, on May 28. Listen from Minute 31:55.

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Source: https://gradio.substack.com/p/gorilla-r ... k-dave-73c -- Min 31:55

Chris Cook has hosted Gorilla Radio, broadcast/webcasting since 1999. Click on the archive here; The Gorilla Radio blog is at https://gorillaradioblog.blogspot.com/ and on Telegram at https://t.me/gorillaradio2024

https://johnhelmer.net/what-did-preside ... more-91726

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Russia and the DPRK’s military cooperation is anti-imperialism in action

Nato’s reckless invasion of Kursk has totally backfired, leading not to a triumphant advance but to the total defeat of its proxy war against Russia.
Lalkar writers

Thursday 1 May 2025

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The development of active military cooperation between Russia and People’s Korea should be welcomed by all progressive people. It strikes another blow at imperialist plans to reassert their hegemony over the planet.

After months of gnashing of teeth and screaming by the imperialist press over mere rumours of DPRK military involvement in the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the governments of the DRPK and Russia have calmly confirmed that indeed, north Korean troops have been operating in the Kursk region in Russia.

The first stories breaking the ‘news’ that the two countries that had signed an agreement to defend each other had started, well, defending each other appeared towards the end of December of last year, with claims that Ukrainian forces had captured and injured “a north Korean soldier”. (North Korean soldier captured in Ukraine dies, reports say by Koh Ewe, BBC News online, 27 December 2024)

Kiev and Seoul (read imperialist compradors) suddenly claimed that 10,000 Korean troops had been fighting in the Kursk region of Russia, with the US regime going further and claiming that 1,000 DPRK troops had been killed in action. Quite how the capture of a single injured ‘north Korean’ soldier led to these figures was never demonstrated.

Some evidence was offered in the wake of these claims in the form of passports found. Eagle-eyed analysts quickly spotted that the passports were not written in Hangeul, used in Korea, but Cyrillic (a lettering system common to many countries comprising the former USSR) and that the passports stated that the holders were Tuvan, an ethnic group living mostly in central Russia.

In response, counterclaims were made that these were forged documents aimed at hiding the DPRK’s involvement in the conflict. While this is certainly possible, it seems to be rather convoluted given that the DPRK and Russia had openly signed an agreement that allows both to parties to render military aid to one other.

Moreover, given the above claims of 10,000 troops in the field and 1,000 troops killed in action, why would the imperialist intelligence agencies need to rely on such flimsy and questionable evidence?

All this was soon rendered redundant, however, with the recognition from both Moscow and Pyongyang of the heroic contribution made by DPRK soldiers in defence of Russia.

Russia and People’s Korea
Those who have even a passing understanding of the history of Korea and the close ties between Soviet Russia and the DPRK could hardly be surprised at yet another example of fraternal support between the peoples of these two countries.

Not only were the founders of People’s Korea students of the Soviet experience, but the Soviet Union gave material supported to Korea’s national-liberation struggle. During the Korean people’s struggle against the fascist Japanese occupiers of Korea and Manchuria, and later again during the Fatherland Liberation War (readers may know this simply as the ‘Korean war’), the Soviet Union and China provided materiel, manpower and expertise.

In the wake of WW2, once the Korean people had booted out the Japanese occupiers after decades of struggle, the Soviet Union sent many experts and much machinery and goods to the northern part of Korea, to help the people consolidate their victory. Soviet experts were present as comrades to support and advise as the Korean people started organising their own affairs to suit the people of the Korean peninsula, rather than the rapacious wants of this or that imperialist power.

Gains were rapidly made.

The same could not be said of the southern half of Korea. When US forces came to bring Korea into their own ‘sphere of interest’ they came armed to the teeth and would brook no question of the Korean people exercising their own will and ordering life to meet the Korean people’s needs.

People’s councils that had sprung up all over the peninsula were banned, and many participants in these early soviets were imprisoned and killed. The abhorrent practice of creating camps to force Korean women into prostitution, which had begun under Japanese occupation, was continued by the American occupation.

What gains had been made by the people were put to the torch.

When the time came for the Soviet and US presence in Korea to be ended, the Soviets left as agreed, while the Americans reordered life in the south to better serve their needs; that of access to an exploitable and cheap workforce, a market for its own goods and a base from which to combat Chinese and Korean communism.

Alongside maintaining their unwanted military presence, Washington’s forces rehabilitated Japanese colonisers and Koreans who had served the Japanese occupiers, installing them as a police force to put down rebellions, reverse land reforms and break up democratic groupings with no force spared.

Many massacres were committed against the Korean people. And this all before war proper broke out.

The focus of this article isn’t on the horrific slaughter inflicted on the Korean people and their allies, chief among them the Chinese communists. Nor is its focus on the heroic resistance shown in that conflict. The Fatherland Liberation War can’t be encompassed so easily, therefore the attempt won’t be made here.

During that relatively unknown conflict (in the west), much support, including in the form of Soviet pilots and planes, was given freely. The Soviet airmen themselves wore Korean uniforms in a bid to allow the US administration to ignore the open secret of Soviet support and thus avoid direct confrontation between the USA and the USSR.

After the ceasefire was signed (the DPRK is still officially at war with the comprador regime installed in the south of Korea) the north of Korea was left with millions dead and practically all housing, infrastructure and means of production destroyed.

The Korean people stood up and, honouring the sacrifice of their countrymen and allies, got on with rebuilding their country. Again, China and Russia sent material and experts to aid the Korean people in their struggle to repair the damage and loss.

The Korean people went beyond repair and built a thriving socialist society. Land and factories were socialised, and the building of a planned economy was begun. This building continues to this day even after the weathering of the dissolution of the DPRK’s great ally, the Soviet Union.

This potted history is given to underscore the close fraternal bonds that have been forged between the peoples of Russia and Korea over many decades.

Military agreement
A recent statement on support in the Kursk region of Russia stated:

“On the basis of the analysis and judgement that the prevailing situation conformed to the invocation of Article 4 of the treaty on comprehensive strategic partnership concluded between the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and the Russian Federation, Comrade Kim Jong Un decided on our armed forces’ participation in the war, informed the Russian side of it and, in accordance with agreement, issued an order of the Central Military Commission of the Workers’ Party of Korea to combat sub-units of the armed forces of the Republic to annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”

And “Kim Jong Un defined it as a sacred mission for further consolidating as firm as a rock the traditional friendship and solidarity between the DPRK and Russia, guaranteeing the development and prosperity of the two countries and defending the honour of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“The military activities of the armed forces of the Republic [DPRK] conducted within the territory of the Russian Federation fully conform to all the provisions and the spirit of the UN charter and other international laws and the treaty on comprehensive strategic partnership between the DPRK and Russia, and serve as a good example and excellent paradigm of the most faithful expression of action to implement them.” (WPK Central Military Commission highly praises combat sub-units of armed forces of DPRK for performing heroic feats in operations to liberate Kursk area of Russian Federation, KCNA, 28 April 2025)

Clearly, the presence and role played by DPRK troops on Russian soil is according to international law and the agreements made. Moreover, these two nations have a long history of aiding each other to resist imperialism. So why are the imperialists biting their own fingers off in rage at the admission of an expected, legal and long-suspected action?

Anti-imperialist forces grow closer
As Mao Zedong wisely said, the US-led bloc of imperialists is often “lifting a rock only to drop it on its own feet”. Inflicting ever more draconian sanctions on Russia has had the unintended effect (among many!) of rendering the heavy penalties for bypassing the longstanding and broad sanctions inflicted on the DPRK essentially ineffective in Russia’s case.

The increasingly open nature of the US-backed proxies’ attacks on Russia have led to open agreements mutual defence agreements between Russia and Korea.

That these developments have taken place as a result of repeated (failed) attempts by the USA and its allies to maintain western-led imperialist hegemony over the world and its people is obvious to all those who have eyes to see.

One of the few criticisms with some basis levelled at the Korean People’s Army (KPA) by military analysts and think tanks, is that it hasn’t engaged in modern warfare for over a generation. Ignoring that failing to wage war is used as a ‘criticism’, we can safely say that problem has been rectified.

The KPA will make good use of the lessons learned by the armed forces of the Russian Federation and their own recent experience.

The imperialists don’t generally tear their hair out over military agreements and the sight of militaries working together; the USA has a long history of forming coalitions and making agreements (the ‘trustworthiness’ of these are also on record). Moreover, imperialism has a long history of using mercenaries and proxies from many nations, among them ex-Nazi Germans, current Nazi Ukrainians, and ‘jihadi’ terrorist death squads, throughout the middle east, Africa and Latin America.

So why shouldn’t Russia have allies?

What imperialism is reacting to is the content of these developments, not their form.

The content of Russia-Korea cooperation is one of anti-imperialism. As the conflict in Ukraine is one that has been brought about by US imperialist aggression, Russia’s defence, now further fortified by the DPRK, is of an anti-imperialist nature. As imperialism flails and thrashes in its death throes, its actions will create more problems for itself and force other anti-imperialist nations like China and Iran into ever closer cooperation.

Oppressed nations that wish to throw off the chains of imperialism, and those already resisting and defending their sovereignty, would do well to learn from the painful lessons gained by Russia and the DPRK, throwing their lot in with one other and building a firm bloc of resistance.

Progressive peoples and genuine anti-imperialists all over the world should welcome this development and take this understanding to the national-liberation and anti-imperialist movements in their own countries.

https://thecommunists.org/2025/05/01/ne ... perialism/

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"Greater Central Asia": American Strategy in Central Asia
May 29, 2025
Rybar

Experts and analysts from the American Foreign Policy Council and the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute in the United States have prepared a report with proposals for the White House to pursue policy in the region called “ Greater Central Asia ” (GCA).

Strategy in detail
According to the report, in addition to the main 5 republics, the Greater Central Asia also includes Azerbaijan , since Central Asia and Azerbaijan consider themselves as a separate political and economic region . It is proposed to include Georgia , Armenia , Mongolia , and Afghanistan in the " Grand Strategy " for its success .

The region is unique in that it is surrounded by major powers: China, India, Russia and Pakistan, all of whom possess nuclear weapons. Iran is also actively seeking this status, and Turkey has the potential to become one.

Since the conflict in GCA carries enormous global risks, consultative mechanisms are being created, and the US is promoting the creation of centripetal forces in the region (analysts recall the existence of the Central Asian Economic Union in the 1990s ).

The United States cannot guarantee regional security through ground operations or membership of GCA states in collective security organizations, and cannot hope for significant investment. But it can promote the creation of exclusive regional structures and actively defend the interests of the U.S. private sector.

All this will be done through the development of media , the attraction of new elites through educational programs , and the expansion of cooperation between representatives of the region’s security agencies and American agencies.

As a result, specific measures must be taken:

Rename the region "Greater Central Asia." Call the US engagement platform C6+1 .
Appoint a special envoy for the GCA in the National Security Council . He will be responsible for developing and monitoring U.S. activities and for coordinating the activities of regional U.S. embassies.
Remove bureaucratic barriers to a unified regional approach within the State Department and other government agencies.
Create a non-governmental U.S. Business Council (UBC) based in the United States to help develop protocols for common business and tourism visas, rapid border crossings, region-wide communications, and trade standardization.
Develop a broader regional security framework in the region focused on intelligence sharing, counter-terrorism cooperation, and joint security initiatives.
The strategy is indicative in the context of possible US policy in the region. The region's position simply obliges the US to react and act more actively, otherwise "Greater Central Asia" will become a field of clashes between other major states.

The Americans propose creating alternative trade corridors and diversified supply chains for minerals . At the same time, regional elites must " serve themselves " : the US will not pay, but will prompt and direct. This tactic also fits into the logic of the current US policy of cutting costs.

The general idea is simple: the transit region needs to be turned into one big fist, driving a wedge between the Eurasian powers and turning it into a tool for realizing one's own interests. Such a strategy may interest the Republican administration, since the anti-Chinese message of the strategy is visible to the naked eye.

https://rybar.ru/bolshaya-czentralnaya- ... dnej-azii/

Google Translator

*****

The Yeltsin Center was headed by an Israeli citizen
Matryoshka
May 30, 17:10

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The Yeltsin Center was headed by an Israeli citizen

Deputy Chairman of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy Mikhail Delyagin sent appeals to law enforcement agencies with a request to check media reports about anti-Russian events at the Yeltsin Center. This was reported by the RIA Novosti agency, citing the text of the document.
The document is addressed to the head of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation Alexander Bastrykin, the Prosecutor General of the Russian Federation Igor Krasnov, the Minister of Internal Affairs of Russia Vladimir Kolokoltsev and the head of the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation Konstantin Chuichenko.

The parliamentarian specifies that the person responsible for the possible anti-Russian events may be the first deputy executive director of the Yeltsin Center Lyudmila Telen, who is an Israeli citizen and was noticed publishing statements against the SVO on social networks.

"I ask you to conduct a substantive investigation of the information presented in the publications, take the necessary measures on the merits of the case and inform me," the document says.

In February, the Yeltsin Center was accused of mocking the murdered SVO members. The scandal was caused by the demonstration of works by artist Alisa Gorshenina, who, together with the Pussy Riot group, created a video clip that talks about "trampling on the remains of SVO fighters" and setting fire to the Ostankino Tower.

https://www.vesti.ru/article/4513471 - zinc

The Communist Party of the Russian Federation asks to find the deputy director of the "Yelin Center".

State Duma deputy from the Communist Party of the Russian Federation Denis Parfenov will send a request to check the whereabouts of the first deputy executive director of the Yekaterinburg Yeltsin Center Lyudmila Telen, who is now allegedly in Israel. This was told to a URA.RU correspondent by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the party Viktor Tsarikhin.

"I do not rule out [that Telen is in Israel], so we asked our comrade Denis Andreevich Parfenov to send a request to the competent authorities to clarify all the details of this information. I am sure that they will sort it out and take the necessary measures. But the issue is not only about her, but in general about those people who directly carry out work on the territory of the Yeltsin Center, coordinate the exhibits, bring schoolchildren there to get acquainted with the alleged history of our country and the distorted information that is harmful,” Tsarikhin emphasized.

He added that the party has been doing everything to close it since the opening of the organization, since 2015. “The CPRF will not stop in its fight to close it. I believe that there is an opportunity to close the exhibit [current] and then close the center as a whole. The building should be transferred, as former Governor Yevgeny Kuyvashev spoke about, to children for an art school,” Tsarikhin said.


https://ura.news/news/1052937726 - zinc

Of course, the issue is not only that one of the heads of the Yeltsin Center is an Israeli citizen, this is only one of the symptoms of a chronic disease. Now the situation has changed in the sense that Putin's plenipotentiary representative Vladimir Zhoga (former Sparta battalion commander) has also joined the issue of the hostile activities of the Yeltsin Center on the territory of the country.

P.S. The Yeltsin Center must be closed. They closed Memorial, Ekho Moskvy and Novaya Gazeta. The time will come for the Yeltsin Center.
The museum of the real history of the "holy 90s", without distortions, can well exist without the Yeltsin Center.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9869570.html

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Russia Will No Longer Look The Other Way As Serbia Indirectly Arms Ukraine
Andrew Korybko
May 30, 2025

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Whatever ends up happening, and hopefully nothing too dramatic will unfold, it’s long overdue for Russia to finally call Vucic out.

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) accused Serbia of shooting Russia in the back by arming Ukraine. Such reports first circulated in connection with spring 2023’s Pentagon leaks, but they were denied by President Aleksandar Vucic, who just defied EU pressure by visiting Moscow during Victory Day. He reacted to the latest news by declaring that he’ll block the supply of Serbian arms and ammo to countries that are suspected of sending them to Ukraine, but that contradicts what he said in June 2023.

Back then, he said that “Is it possible that it’s happening? I have no doubts that it might happen. What is the alternative for us? Not to produce it? Not to sell it?... But I’m not a fool. I am aware that some of the arms might end up in Ukraine.” In other words, he looked the other way as countries sent Serbian arms and ammo to Ukraine, but SVR’s report suggests that Russia will no longer look the other way about this. Russia might thus stop supporting his claim that recent protests against him are a Color Revolution.

To be absolutely clear, Russia won’t incite such demonstrations, but it might remain silent if he repeats these accusations the next time that there are large-scale protests against him. That would reflect the reality that there are legitimate reasons to oppose him, hint that the participants aren’t all pro-Western stooges, and potentially encourage patriots to keep up the pressure. That’s not to imply that Russia wants to replace him, just that it might now believe that holding his feet to the fire isn’t a bad thing.

After all, not only is he allowing other countries to send Serbian arms and ammo to Ukraine, but his top general hinted at carrying out a pro-Western military pivot under sanctions duress at the beginning of the year. Furthermore, Vucic recently sacked Deputy Prime Minister Aleksandar Vulin, who was widely considered to be the most Russian-friendly official in his government. These developments probably played a part in why SVR finally decided to call Vucic out for allowing Serbia to indirectly arm Ukraine.

It also can’t be ruled out that Russia obtained intelligence pointing to a more robustly pro-Western pivot by Serbia, such as official compliance with sanctions to complement its consistent votes against Russia at the UN or some other manifestation, perhaps permanently phasing out the use of Russian arms. That could explain why Russia decided to expose Vucic despite years of defending him. However it happened, Russia no longer sees Vucic the same way as before, and it now wants the entire world to know.

SVR reminded everyone that “Russia has come to the aid of the Serbs more than once at the most critical moments of their history. Let us recall, for example, the liberation of Serbia from the yoke of the Ottoman Empire, the prevention of a national catastrophe during the First World War, the fight against the fascist occupiers and their henchmen during the Second World War, the NATO bombing of Belgrade, the Kosovo tragedy.” This reinforces the fact that Russia feels betrayed by Serbia and Vucic in particular.

People-to-people ties still remain strong, yet Vucic might soon crack down on his majority-Russophile population on the false pretext that Russia is plotting his removal. It wouldn’t be surprising if a Western intelligence agency tips him off about a fake plot in order to prompt his predictable response. Whatever ends up happening, and hopefully nothing too dramatic will unfold, it’s long overdue for Russia to finally call Vucic out. The best-case scenario is that he gets the message and stops indirectly arming Ukraine.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/russia-w ... -the-other
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sat May 31, 2025 3:01 pm

Stalin, Diptrans and Medvedev
May 30, 19:09

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Moscow "activists" were fined 20 thousand rubles each for anti-Stalin signs near the high relief at Taganskaya.
The court fined "activists" Timofey Rostopchin and Sofya Bezmenova 20 thousand rubles each under Article 20.2, Part 5 of the Code of Administrative Offenses - violation of the rules for organizing and holding a rally.

The characters decided to troll Medvedev. By putting Medvedev's statements from the late 2000s and early 2010s, when he was pushing for de-Stalinization, on the bas-relief with Stalin.
Now he wears a Stalinist jacket, scares directors of defense plants with Stalin's quotes, and actively pushes for the protection of Russian history in its entirety. 15 years ago, he had a slightly different approach. It can be said that Diptrans does not agree with that Medvedev who had not yet changed his shoes. And Diptrans has no questions for the new Medvedev.

In general, the authorities are showing that it is impossible to deface the bas-relief with Stalin with impunity. So far, they have limited themselves to fines, but in the case of acts of vandalism, they can open a criminal case, as they once did against Enteo when he wanted to deface Lenin's Mausoleum. It's not that the authorities now have big fans of the Bolsheviks, quite the opposite. But in the conditions of the war in Ukraine and active decommunization programs financed by the US and EU, which are obviously directed against the Russian Federation, supporting the same thing inside the country would actually mean condoning the subversive activities of the West. This again is a reason to think about whose mill the characters calling for total decommunization, the demolition of monuments to Lenin, etc. are pouring grist into. Their activities are in complete synergy with the West's strategy aimed at destroying Russia, which is being actively implemented on the territory of most of the former Soviet republics.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9869949.html

Google Translator

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Stalin Biographer EXPOSES Ukraine-War Lies | Dr. Geoff Roberts
May 30, 2025



https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2025/05/sta ... f-roberts/

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Did the CIA Covertly Support Chechen Separatist Terrorism? — Part II
By Max Parry - May 30, 2025 0

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[Source: library.panos.co.uk]

[See Part I here.]

Part II: “Humanitarian Aid”
In February, corporate media went ballistic when the new administration of U.S. President Donald Trump announced the dismantling of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

The uproar claimed the dismantling of the foreign aid agency would not only result in massive government layoffs but cause an uptick in hunger and disease around the world. Superficially, the shutdown was depicted in the media as a betrayal of Washington’s supposed humanitarian values, but to those aware of its real history as a tool of Western imperialism, the shuttering of USAID was cause for celebration.

The indignation within the establishment only further revealed its raison d’être as a mechanism for CIA soft power and U.S. global dominance behind the guise of foreign assistance.

In the first part of this investigation, the CIA’s clandestine backing of Chechen separatism was exposed in a historical and geopolitical context. One of the pathways through which material assistance was provided were not-for-profit charities that used humanitarian aid as a front for funding terrorism. Perhaps the most incriminating piece of evidence turned up in the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing when it came to light that an uncle of the Tsarnaev brothers lived at one time in the Maryland home of a career CIA case officer named Graham Fuller.

Fuller was the vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council in the Reagan administration and the CIA Station Chief in Kabul in 1978, just before the agency began its infamous covert program to aid the Afghan mujahideen in a proxy war against the Soviet Union, known as Operation Cyclone. While married to Fuller’s Turkish-American daughter and sharing a roof with his spymaster father-in-law, Ruslan Tsarni formed a company called the Congress for Chechen International Organizations.

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Ruslan Tsarni [Source: slate.com]

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Graham Fuller [Source: turkey.theglobepost.com]

Legal documents show Tsarni’s group delivered money and thousands of mine-resistant blast boots, uniforms and other items to the separatists in collaboration with a pretend charitable trust called the Benevolence International Foundation (BIF). After 9/11, BIF was indicted by the U.S. Treasury Department for redirecting donations intended for humanitarian relief to sponsor al-Qaeda. This included aiding the travel of known terrorists and purchasing ammunition for jihadist camps around the world, including Chechnya, Bosnia, Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Another uncle of the Boston bombers, Alvi Tsarni, shared an address with a Chechen exile group called the United States-Chechen Republic Alliance Inc. (USCRA) in Silver Spring, Maryland. The president of USCRA, Lyoma Usmanov, was the self-appointed ambassador to the U.S. representing the Chechen separatist government-in-exile. USCRA was registered as a charitable organization and by incredible luck, Usmanov’s sponsor in the U.S. was none other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, the foreign policy adviser to Jimmy Carter who set up Operation Cyclone.

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[Source: jimmysllama.com]

Ruslan Tsarni also worked as a legal consultant for a company in Kazakhstan promoting privatization programs in Central Asia that was contracted by the currently embattled USAID. A long-time CIA front organization, so-called foreign aid programs first became the agency’s preferred vehicle for its nefarious meddling overseas during the Cold War. In the early 1970s, the true nature of the agency was epitomized in the case of Dan Mitrione, a USAID contractor who was kidnapped and killed in Uruguay by left-wing Tupamaro guerrillas. It turned out Mitrione was targeted by the Marxist rebels because he was sent by the CIA to train the police forces under Uruguay’s right-wing dictatorship in “advanced counterinsurgency techniques.”

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Dan Mitrione [Source: spartacus-educational.com]

Concerned that the South American nation was on the verge of electing a socialist like Chile’s Salvador Allende, the CIA dispatched Mitrione using his USAID employment as official cover to Montevideo where he became “Chief Public Safety Adviser” to the Uruguayan police. At Mitrione’s instruction, homeless people were rounded up as guinea pigs for electroshock torture and other abusive interrogation methods, with many murdered in the process.

The very next year, Mitrione was captured and eventually executed by the Tupamaros after the U.S.-backed Uruguayan junta refused to exchange political prisoners for his release. In 1972, Greek-French filmmaker Costa-Gavras based his classic thriller State of Siege on the Mitrione story which only brought greater infamy to USAID.

Mitrione’s untimely end bears a resemblance to the fate of Fred Cuny, a mysterious American “disaster relief specialist” with deep military and intelligence connections who disappeared in Chechnya in April 1995. Like George W. Bush, Cuny billed himself as a Texan even though he was born in Connecticut in 1944. After a failed attempt at becoming a Marine as a young man, Cuny’s aspirations shifted to humanitarian work. For the next several decades, he embarked on a career in worldwide emergency assistance, helping developing countries like Bangladesh, Nicaragua and the short-lived Nigerian breakaway state of Biafra recover from natural disasters.

Instead of working directly for an NGO like Oxfam, the New Haven-born maverick started his own shadowy consulting company called Intertect that was hired by non-profits and aid agencies on a contractual basis. Cuny became a game changer in his field and authored several standardized manuals used in refugee mitigation before making the transition to emergency management in conflict zones, overseeing famine relief in war-stricken nations such as Ethiopia and Sri Lanka. Eventually, the self-described “Master of Disaster” started working exclusively in war zones where his real motives started to become murky.

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Fred Cuny [Source: fredcuny.info]

The recent USAID debacle in the Trump administration was a reminder of the CIA’s history of penetrating civil society with clandestine operators to give its skullduggery a humanitarian face. Very often, development agencies and the non-profit industrial complex have been a Trojan Horse for neo-colonialism in the Global South.

In the most sinister cases, they have even facilitated the sponsoring of terrorism. In the wake of the defunding of USAID, explosive remarks by U.S. Congressman Scott Perry (R-PA) suggesting the aid agency had funded Islamist terror groups, including ISIS and Boko Haram, were taken seriously enough by federal lawmakers in Nigeria to order a formal inquiry into the matter. While Perry’s claims are unproven, there is historical precedent for it.

During the Afghan-Soviet War, USAID worked hand-in-glove with Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and the Peshawar Seven, providing financial assistance to the anti-communist coalition of jihadist warlords and drug traffickers. Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami (“Party of Islam”) later helped facilitate the shipments from Ruslan Tsarni’s company to the Chechens via Osama bin Laden’s fake charity.

The al-Qaeda front company that financed both the Bosnian and Chechen mujahideen, Benevolence International Foundation, labeled itself as a “humanitarian organization helping those afflicted by wars,” providing “short-term relief such as emergency food distribution, long term projects, education and self-sufficiency to the children, widowed, refugees, injured and staff of vital governmental institutions.”

Except the Chechen movement did not just receive cloak-and-dagger support from phony, innocuously named Islamic “charities” but from what many assume to be legitimate philanthropic enterprises as well. During the Russo-Chechen conflict, Moscow frequently accused Western NGOs like Doctors Without Borders (known internationally as Médecins sans Frontières) of directly helping the separatists—when the truth is it likely ran much deeper. Enter Fred Cuny.

Hoping to one day land a position in government, Cuny set about ingratiating himself with the powers-that-be after working with the USAID recovery program in El Salvador during a devastating 1986 earthquake. At the end of the Persian Gulf War in 1991, his Dallas-based firm was tapped by the State Department to take part in Operation Provide Comfort, a U.S. military-led humanitarian aid operation safeguarding Kurdish refugees from the Iraqi military. In the wake of Operation Desert Storm, a Kurdish uprising was put down by Saddam Hussein’s troops, causing thousands to flee in an exodus to the Turkish and Iranian borders.

Part of the planning by Cuny and USAID involved the implementation of a no-fly zone over Iraqi Kurdistan to allow the delivery of food and shelter to those displaced. Operation Provide Comfort not only returned an estimated half a million Kurds to safety but eventually led to the establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq, a valuable strategic asset for the U.S. in the Middle East. Years later, Cuny’s strategy of a no-fly zone would be replicated over Libyan airspace in the NATO overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, an imperialist foray similarly conducted under the façade of protecting human rights.

The Iraq mission was such a success that Cuny was invited to participate in preparations for the 1993 U.S. military intervention in Somalia, based on hunger relief, but was ultimately sidelined. The Battle of Mogadishu turned out to be a complete disaster for U.S. forces partly because they ignored Cuny’s advice to steer clear of the war-ravaged Somali capital, a prognosis which further gained him entrée with decision-makers in Washington. Whether in the Mideast or Horn of Africa, humanitarianism was merely a cover for the American empire’s real aims, with Cuny serving as its point man. Next stop, Eastern Europe.

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Fred Cuny during Operation Provide Comfort in Iraq in 1991. [Source: onlineethics.org]
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[Source: fredcuny.info]

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Intertect was called upon by the State Department to lead “needs assessments” across the former USSR, with a particular focus on the Caucasus. Cuny’s analysis as a top-tier adviser helped formulate U.S. policy toward the newly independent states and federal subjects, many of which had disintegrated into “frozen conflicts” and interethnic strife. But first, the 6-foot, 3-inch Texan would undertake an assignment in the former Yugoslavia, another ex-socialist state fragmenting into civil war and ethnic cleansing since the restoration of capitalism.

In Bosnia, Cuny partnered with billionaire hedge-fund tycoon George Soros and his Open Society Foundations NGO on the pretext of bringing philanthropic aid to war-wrecked Sarajevo. In the 1980s, the Soros Foundation had played a central role in bringing down communist governments in the Soviet Bloc, pouring money into the coffers of “pro-democracy” protest movements like Poland’s Solidarity and Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia. Soros financed Hungarian dissident student groups in his country of origin as well.

Taking ideological inspiration from philosopher Karl Popper, Soros advocated “open societies” while profiting immensely as a currency manipulator from the neo-liberal market reforms imposed on the Socialist Bloc. It is no coincidence that the CIA sent millions to the very same “Color Revolutions” behind the Iron Curtain because the agency’s goal of dismantling communism overlapped with his Open Society Institute.

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Russian President Boris Yeltsin with George Soros after meeting with Western business leaders in 1993. [Source: rt.com]

The former Yugoslavia had been part of the Non-Aligned Movement throughout the Cold War but, after the death of long-time President Josip Broz Tito, it could not escape the wave of protests bringing down Marxist-Leninist governments across Eastern Europe. In the grip of a nationalist fervor instigated by the West, the federal republic was being ripped apart by sectarian bloodshed when Soros—and more likely than not, the CIA—deployed Cuny to the Balkans.

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Fred Cuny and George Soros in Bosnia in a still from the PBS documentary The Lost American. [Source: flickr.com]

Working with both the military and armed insurgents to access refugees is par for the course for development workers in hot spots, but Cuny developed a reputation as a renegade within the disaster relief community for overstepping the bounds of impartiality. Nowhere was this more apparent than in Bosnia where he became an unapologetically strong advocate for the Bosniak Muslims and extremely one-sided against the Serbs.

The fact that Cuny was known to hyperbolize details about his personal life did not help dispel the rumors he might be a spy, a suspicion even held by members of his own family. A fellow relief worker interviewed for the PBS documentary The Lost American surmised Cuny was “moonlighting for Uncle Sam.”

In 2001, the BBC reported that, during the Yugoslav Wars,

“The scale of America’s espionage operations cannot be understated. Hundreds of personnel from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency were deployed in Bosnia during 1994 and ’95.”

Meanwhile, the head of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping mission in the former Yugoslavia, Thorvald Stoltenberg, conceded:

“American intelligence-gathering in the region was conducted on a huge scale. At any one time over 100 operators from across the spectrum of U.S. intelligence agencies were on the ground in Bosnia. They were deployed not only in non-governmental organizations (NGOs) but in UN civilian and military agencies as well.”

More than likely, Cuny was one of them. Following the first of a dubious pair of marketplace massacres in Sarajevo, the daredevil “humanitarian” personally lobbied for NATO air strikes against the Bosnian Serbs who were blamed for the atrocities which killed dozens of civilians. In actuality, the shelling of the markets, which conveniently took place as pressure was mounting for NATO involvement in the Balkans, were more conceivably “false-flag” operations to induce the Clinton administration into launching Operation Deliberate Force. In fact, the UN was already privy to earlier instances of subterfuge in which Bosnian Muslim forces staged attacks against their own people.

After the first Markale market bombardment in February 1994, UN peacekeepers at first said the shells were fired by the Bosniaks themselves. Suddenly, Cuny suspiciously appeared on the scene for an interview with ABC News anchor Peter Jennings to claim the mortars came from Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb) territory and that NATO warplanes should have intervened. Within a few weeks, the alliance began the first combat engagement of its entire 45-year history, enforcing a no-fly zone over Bosnia and shooting down Serb jets.

After the second Markale massacre in August 1995, a few months after Cuny’s disappearance in Chechnya, Le Nouvel Observateur editor Jean Daniel let the cat out of the bag in an article titled “No More Lies About Bosnia” when he wrote that French Prime Minister Édouard Balladur verified the Bosniaks had been behind the attacks:

“‘They [the Muslims] have committed this carnage on their own people?’ I exclaimed in consternation. ‘Yes,’ confirmed the Prime Minister without hesitation, ‘but at least they have forced NATO to intervene.’”

French President Francois Mitterrand was also quoted saying that UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali “informed me that the projectile which hit the Markale marketplace in Sarajevo was an act of Muslim provocation.”

But it was too late—the NATO air campaign had already begun.

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Markale marketplace massacre in Sarajevo. [Source: theatlantic.com]

In the middle of the Bosnian war, Cuny and Soros joined with former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Morton Abramowitz to start the International Crisis Group (ICG), a high-level policy-making think tank which appointed Zbigniew Brzezinski to its board of trustees.

Abramowitz had been one of the key figures in the Reagan administration who secured the delivery of MANPAD anti-aircraft missiles to the Afghan mujahideen and later led the calls for the CIA to arm the al-Qaeda-linked Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). Presently, the one-time leader of the KLA and ex-President of Kosovo, Hashim Thaçi, is on trial for war crimes and was previously implicated in human organ trafficking. Abramowitz also wrote an endorsement letter for the late Fetullah Gülen to secure the radical Turkish imam’s safe harbor in Pennsylvania.

Abramowitz’s lengthy list of affiliations typified the revolving door between foreign policy think tanks and emergency management NGOs, serving on the committee of a regime-change arm like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) while synchronously holding advisory board positions with Human Rights Watch (HRW) and the International Rescue Committee (IRC).

The latter brought Intertect under its auspices to assist Cuny’s work in Sarajevo using Soros Foundation grants to build a water filtration system for the blockaded city. According to New York Times Magazine correspondent Scott Anderson’s book The Man Who Tried to Save the World, the water treatment was stymied by Bosnia’s own government because it feared a decrease in civilian deaths might diminish sympathy from the international community and hinder a source of war propaganda.

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Morton Abramowitz [Source: wikipedia.org]

Abramowitz also belonged to the misleadingly named American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC), later amended to “American Committee for Peace in the Caucasus,” to dissociate from the notoriety brought to the separatists by the Moscow Theater and Beslan school terrorist attacks.

Chaired by Brzezinski and former U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig, the Chechen lobby group was filled with neo-conservative idealogues and deep state intellectuals. The ever-itinerant Cuny soon arranged with the Soros Foundation to lead an assessment in Chechnya just as the Russians were singled out for war crimes by HRW, Amnesty International and other leading Western NGOs.

Upon his return from a single visit to the conflict-ridden region in 1995, Cuny penned a lengthy opinion column for The New York Review of Books condemning Russia’s admittedly brutal military campaign during the first Chechen war. He also testified before a congressional subcommittee assailing the tactics used in the Russian offensive ordered by Yeltsin, which at the time officially had the full endorsement of the Clinton administration.

This caused a row within the Soros Foundation, as such a glaring violation of the expected neutrality of aid workers risked putting his own peers in jeopardy, especially those employed by an NGO already seen as a CIA front by the Russians. On the other hand, Cuny himself never came in harm’s way in Sarajevo partly because he played up the mystique that he might be a spook. In Chechnya, however, he would not be as fortunate, except his fate would unexpectedly arrive at the hands of those with whom he was collaborating.

Russian-based media labeled Cuny a spy when he conspicuously showed up and began to curry favor with the “rebels” in Chechnya, a trouble spot so perilous and battle-scarred that virtually no foreign development agencies were active in the republic. It was for this reason that pin was initially blamed on the Russian military when the relief guru suddenly vanished in separatist-controlled territory days after his diatribe against the assault on Grozny was published.

Rumors spread that the Russians had retaliated by dropping leaflets inside separatist-held areas identifying Cuny as one of their own spies, and that the Chechens fell for the disinformation enough to execute the American aid worker along with his three companions. While Cuny’s body was never located, it was later ascertained by his family and correspondent Scott Anderson that his killing by a firing squad of Chechen bandits had nothing to do with the Russians at all.

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Chechen warlord Shamil Basayev (left) with Fred Cuny in a still frame from the PBS documentary The Lost American. Basayev was the mastermind of the Moscow Theater and Beslan school massacres, among other terrorist attacks. [Source: flickr.com]

Touting his national security connections, Cuny had professedly returned to Chechnya hoping to broker a temporary cease-fire to grant the entrance of relief assistance to the beleaguered republic.

Already skirting the line between humanitarian aid and military intervention, Cuny was now shifting from non-governmental work to statecraft. In the thick of intense fighting, he ventured toward the heavily fortified village of Bamut and slipped behind separatist lines with the intention of reaching Chechnya’s then-President Dzhokhar Dudayev.

If the Texan was just an ordinary relief worker and not a deep cover agent, it was difficult to fathom when the news of his disappearance produced an exhaustive on-the-ground, search-and-rescue mission that saw unprecedented coordination among the CIA, FBI and Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia, as well as the American, Russian and separatist authorities.

U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott told the press that “finding Fred Cuny is not just a concern for us, it is a priority.” Equally set on learning his whereabouts was the employer that had dispatched him, the Soros Foundation, not to mention Cuny’s colleagues in emergency management and his own family members. To Fred Cuny, there was clearly more than meets the eye.

While visiting Moscow for the historic 50th anniversary Victory Day ceremony, U.S. President Bill Clinton took the opportunity to formally ask Russian President Boris Yeltsin for help in tracking down the aid planner who, by that time, had been missing for nearly a month. It was soon learned that it was not a Russian deception campaign blowing his cover that endangered Cuny’s life but something else entirely.

If the Chechens had done the deed on their own accord, a mystery still surrounded the motive for the separatists to inexplicably murder an influential American with prominent U.S. government contacts who defended their cause. In the words of journalist Scott Anderson, Cuny was “well known and well-liked by senior rebel commanders,” including Aslan Maskhadov, Dudayev’s successor.

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U.S. President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin at the Kremlin in May 1995. [Source: nsarchive.gwu.edu]

One theory floated was that Dudayev personally ordered the execution because Cuny had learned the truth surrounding a coveted secret in Bamut, which is home to a decommissioned Soviet-era missile base that once housed nuclear warheads. While the atomic arsenal in post-Soviet states was officially dismantled and returned to Russia during the chaotic breakup of the USSR, Dudayev publicly claimed to possess two “loose nukes” and was blackmailing Moscow into thinking he might use them if Chechnya were refused autonomy.

Whether or not the Chechens had any nuclear weapons was irrelevant, but the possibility that they did was enough to create a strategic advantage. If Cuny was able to confirm Dudayev was bluffing and word got out, it could have sealed his fate. (The Chechen leader would himself be killed 12 months later in a Russian air strike that pinpointed his location by intercepting a satellite phone call.)

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Dzhokhar Dudayev. [Source: russian.rt.com]

The only reason Cuny’s disappearance did not receive nationwide attention in the United States was because the Oklahoma City bombing occurred the same week, which buried other national news headlines. Coincidentally, it has been long rumored that one of the “John Doe” mystery accomplices of executed perpetrator Timothy McVeigh was none other than Ramzi Yousef, the al-Qaeda-connected militant found guilty of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and nephew of alleged 9/11 mastermind, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

In the late 1980s, the early incarnation of Osama bin Laden’s bogus charity that supported the Chechens, then known as the Benevolence International Corp., was founded as a front for Abu Sayyaf, a Philippines-based Islamist affiliate made up of Afghan mujahideen veterans. Months prior to the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in the Oklahoma capital, McVeigh and sentenced co-conspirator Terry Nichols visited Cebu City in the Philippines, while a government informant who infiltrated Abu Sayyaf named Edwin Angeles claimed the two met with Yousef at a terrorist gathering. Meanwhile, the Oklahoma City and 1993 WTC bombings bore a striking resemblance to one another in their use of Ryder truck bombs.

While Fred Cuny never became a household name, his story would eventually serve as the indirect inspiration for the 2003 film Beyond Borders starring Angelina Jolie, which coincided with the Hollywood actress’s own real-world segue into pseudo-humanitarian efforts as a Goodwill Ambassador for the UN. In the movie, Jolie plays a socialite who abandons her life of privilege to do charity work for a trailblazing relief specialist played by Clive Owen, a fictional part clearly based on Cuny for the screen.

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Angelina Jolie in a scene from Beyond Borders (2003). [Source: imdb.com]
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Chechen jihadists in Beyond Borders (2003). [Source: imdb.com]

At one point early in the feature, Owen’s character is secretly recruited as an intelligence asset by the CIA. Later, he is busted by Vietnamese troops smuggling arms inside humanitarian aid shipments in Cambodia, a country where Cuny did refugee work in the 1970s (the CIA is known to have covertly supported the Khmer Rouge). Initially dismayed, Jolie’s lovestruck character goes looking for Owen in Chechnya when he goes missing at the end. The box office bomb was roundly criticized for its use of Third World hardship as a backdrop for the romance between the two “white savior” leads, but also by many within the disaster community for acknowledging the reality of aid workers as stooges of espionage.

Cuny became a legend in what former UN expert Alfred de Zayas calls the “human rights industry,” where today he is celebrated in the memoirs of leading humanitarian interventionist advocates such as former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power. The diplomat crossed paths with Cuny in the Balkans when she was a free-lance correspondent before turning the doctrine of Washington’s so-called “Responsibility to Protect” (R2P) into a life-long obsession.

Between her graduation from Yale University and her stint as a war propagandist, a young Power had also worked as a “researcher” at the Morton Abramowitz-chaired think tank, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Most recently, Power served as the head of USAID under Joe Biden.

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A young Samantha Power with Bosnian military officers. [Source: hls.harvard.edu]

USAID was originally established to consolidate various international assistance programs during the Cold War. While its stated purpose was to foster economic growth and humanitarian aid, its real function was as an instrument to counter Soviet influence in the developing world.

Although it is a government agency, it partners with and funds civil society to carry out its development programs and projects in countries around the world. Ostensibly an independent federal agency, it receives foreign policy guidance from the Secretary of State, and it is not by accident that USAID’s practices have always aligned with Washington’s national security goals.

Liberals screaming bloody murder over the Trump administration’s spending freeze can take comfort in the fact that the agency appears to be merging into the State Department and not actually ceasing operations completely. In the meantime, the CIA will surely find another apparatus for its regime-change machinations.

USAID was founded in 1961 under U.S. President John F. Kennedy. Recently, the Trump administration released a new trove of declassified documents pertaining to the November 1963 assassination of the 35th U.S. president in Fred Cuny’s hometown of Dallas, Texas. Some of the most sensational revelations were regarding the extent of CIA covert operations around the globe at the time, including in George Soros’s native Hungary.

For decades, Western intelligence agencies denied any involvement in the 1956 Hungarian uprising, whose proponents have long insisted was entirely spontaneous. While the new JFK files do not irrefutably prove direct involvement in the Hungarian counter-revolution against the communist government, they do indicate the commander of the insurgency, General Bela Kiraly, was a CIA asset. It was already divulged in previous decades that the British Intelligence Service (MI6) had trained many of the “freedom fighters” in the 1956 revolt that was crushed by a Soviet military intervention. Subsequently, Kiraly fled to the United States where he founded a CIA-sponsored “non-profit charity” called the Hungarian Freedom Fighters Federation, Inc. (HFFF).

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A crowd of Hungarians gather around a toppled statue of Stalin in Budapest (1956). [Source: liberationschool.org]

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Time magazine cover dated January 7, 1957. [Source: content.time.com]

Throughout the Cold War, Hungary was designated as one of the “Captive Nations” within the Soviet sphere of influence in Eastern Europe. By his own Machiavellian admission, Zbigniew Brzezinski engineered a similar Soviet intervention using Islamists in Afghanistan “that had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap” and gave “the USSR its Vietnam War.” Like the Hungarian insurrection in 1956, which inevitably featured fascist remnants from the Arrow Cross Party that collaborated with Nazi Germany, the Afghan mujahideen were promoted as heroic resistance fighters and even portrayed favorably in Hollywood movies like Rambo III and the 1987 James Bond entry, The Living Daylights. Religious extremists who disfigured women’s faces with acid for refusing to veil and banned girls from schools were given a facelift as pro-democracy rebels.

Upon entering the Carter administration, Brzezinski also founded the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) devoted to the idea of undermining the USSR by stirring up ethnic tensions. A 1982 CIA policy paper discusses how the NWG expanded upon the Cold War strategy of “Captive Nations” to promote Islamism among Muslim minority nationalities as a tool for subverting the Soviets. In 1994, Brzezinski co-founded the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation (VOC) with National Captive Nations Committee (NCNC) chairman Lev Dobriansky, a Ukrainian nationalist who penned the original Captive Nations resolution passed by Congress in 1959 that called for the overthrow of Soviet-aligned governments.

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Sylvester Stallone in Rambo III (1988), assisting Afghan mujahideen against the Soviets. [Source: rsn.aarweb.org]

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“More than 100 nations and nationalities live in the USSR” – Soviet poster from 1979. [Source: reddit.com]

The NCNC was frequently criticized as anti-Russian by Russian émigrés for often equating the Soviet Union with the Motherland itself. Once the Cold War was over and the West continued to foment breakaway movements like Chechen separatism within the newly formed Russian Federation, it became abundantly clear the suspicions of Russian expats were right all along.

Through a multitude of civil society organizations, the U.S. bankrolled Chechen groups both inside Russia and in exile. However, significant amounts of financial aid spilled over into Chechen and other Caucasian jihadist groups, which the State Department and Western intelligence agencies consistently refused to refer to as terrorists, even when they had well-documented associations with al-Qaeda. In hindsight, it is not a question of whether the CIA supported Chechen separatist terrorism but when that support began, which may have been when Fred Cuny set foot in southern Russia.

Historically, the human rights industry and aid-industrial complex has done little to support authentic movements of national liberation fighting for their self-determination, a process which is only achievable by breaking from the tentacles of Western imperialism.

https://covertactionmagazine.com/2025/0 ... m-part-ii/
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Sun Jun 01, 2025 5:42 pm

Presidential Adviser Anton Kobyakov: “The USSR Still Legally Exists”
Posted by Internationalist 360° on May 31, 2025
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Anton Kobyakov emphasized that a proper legal assessment of the USSR’s dissolution is essential to fully understand current geopolitical developments

In 1991, the dissolution of the Soviet Union was carried out in a manner that many legal experts argue was fundamentally flawed. Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov asserted at a press conference following the International Legal Forum in St. Petersburg that the Soviet Union “still legally exists.”

Kobyakov explained, “The Soviet Union continues to exist in a legal sense – something that constitutional law specialists, including those in Western countries such as the United States and France, have long acknowledged. This is because the procedure for the so-called dissolution of the USSR was violated. Since the Congress of People’s Deputies (also known as the Congress of Soviets) established the USSR in 1922, it should have been dissolved through a decision by that same Congress. If the legal procedure was not properly followed, then, according to constitutional law experts, the USSR remains legally intact.”

He also criticized the legitimacy of the Belovezha Accords, which are widely credited with dissolving the USSR. “From a legal perspective, the Belovezha Accords are entirely questionable,” Kobyakov stated. “This agreement was later ratified by the Supreme Soviets of the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Belarus – acts that, in fact, exceeded their authority. If the Soviet Union was not legally dissolved, then the Ukrainian crisis, for example, could be viewed as an internal matter rather than an international conflict.”

The adviser emphasized that a proper legal assessment of the USSR’s dissolution is essential to fully understand current geopolitical developments.

The 13th St. Petersburg International Legal Forum took place from May 19 to 21, organized by the Russian Ministry of Justice and Roscongress. As in previous years, the event is hosted at the Expoforum Exhibition and Convention Center in St. Petersburg. TASS serves as the forum’s official information partner.

Sergei Stepashin Confirms That the Procedure for Dissolving the USSR Was Violated

The procedure for dissolving the USSR was violated, legally the Soviet Union still exists. This was stated by the chairman of the Association of Lawyers of Russia Sergey Stepashin.

The former Russian Prime Minister commented on the statement by the Russian Presidential Advisor Anton Kobyakov, who several days ago said that the Soviet Union “legally exists. ” Stepashin fully agrees that the procedure for dissolving the USSR was violated. According to Kobyakov, the USSR was formed at the Congress of People’s Deputies, which means that it should have been dissolved by the deputies, not Yeltsin, Shushkevich and Kravchuk.

We need to keep this legal collision in mind just in case, especially when we are fighting the Nazis in Ukraine, so that it is clear who we are fighting. From a legal point of view, Kobyakov is right. Ukraine was one of the first to slowly start crawling out of the Union, especially after the State Emergency Committee, Stepashin said.

Let us recall that the collapse of the Soviet Union was formalized on December 26, 1991 by the decision of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, which adopted a declaration on the termination of the existence of the USSR on the basis of the Belovezh Accords of December 8 and the Alma-Ata Declaration of December 21. Then the leaders of the Soviet republics decided to terminate the existence of the USSR and create the CIS.

However, according to the Constitution, Russia is the legal successor of the USSR, so the question of the possible legal existence of the Soviet Union is automatically removed.

Pravda

The USSR can only be restored by reviving socialism

The death of the Soviet Union: Our Moscow correspondent reports in 1991Members of the Soviet public marked the 74th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution by staging a protest on Red Square in Moscow, Nov. 7, 1991. They demanded the preservation of socialism and that the Soviet Union be saved from destruction. The writing on the placard featuring Mikhail Gorbachev reads: ‘You ruined the country, hell awaits you.’ | Boris Yurchenko / AP

Today, the Russian presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov made a very remarkable statement. He noted that the procedure for dissolving the USSR in 1991 was violated, so the Soviet Union legally continues to exist.

Kobyakov said:

If the Congress of People’s Deputies, also known as the Congress of Soviets, created the USSR in 1922, then it should have been dissolved by a decision of the Congress of these same deputies. And if the legal procedure was violated, then it turns out that the USSR legally exists, as constitutional law experts say.

We, communists, have long formulated this position. The USSR was created by the decision of the First All-Union Congress of Soviets, which brought together more than 2,000 delegates representing about 150 million people living not only in the RSFSR, Ukraine and Belarus, but also in Transcaucasia and Central Asia. Therefore, the decision to “dissolve the USSR”, made in Belovezhskaya Pushcha on December 8, 1991 by three not entirely sober subjects, is legal nonsense.

This is precisely why, having received powerful representation in the State Duma in the December 1995 elections, the CPRF achieved the denunciation of the Belovezh Accords in March 1996.

Of course, we welcome the fact that now a representative of the Russian executive power has supported the position of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation on the illegality of the destruction of the USSR.

But there is a very important point. In 1922, the USSR was created by representatives of the Soviet republics who decided to build a new, just society together – a socialist one. This was the great common cause that united hundreds of peoples in the area from the Baltic to Chukotka, from Taimyr to Pamir.

In order to bring these nations together again today, we must once again offer them the great idea of ​​social justice. There are no other options. Therefore, if you really want the revival of the USSR, it is not enough to recognize its dissolution as legally null and void. We must begin with the restoration of socialism in Russia.

Translated from an original post by Yuri Afonin

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2025/05/ ... ly-exists/

******

Does Putin want to restore the USSR?

Raphael Machado

June 1, 2025

The debates at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum sent liberals, neocons, and Ukraine supporters into a state of hysterical tension.

The debates at the St. Petersburg International Legal Forum sent liberals, neocons, and Ukraine supporters into a state of hysterical tension. According to them, Putin is launching an offensive aimed at “restoring the USSR” with a mere “stroke of a pen.”

The crux of the matter lies in the comments made by Anton Kobyakov, a Kremlin advisor, during the aforementioned Forum. He argued that the dissolution of the USSR occurred in a murky manner, without fulfilling basic legal requirements, such as active legitimacy. Kobyakov contends that since the USSR was created in 1922 by the Congress of Soviets (or Congress of People’s Deputies)—an entity later dissolved and replaced—it would have been necessary to reconvene the body (through elections) to denounce the treaty that established it and dissolve the Union.

Since this was not done, Kobyakov claims that, legally speaking, the USSR exists in a limbo, never having truly ceased to exist de jure. In this specific context, it could even be argued that the Ukrainian crisis is an internal USSR matter rather than an event under International Law.

The discussion is, of course, formalistic—as are most debates in legal conferences. Kobyakov is indeed a respected intellectual and expert in Russian official circles, but he does not “dictate” policy, nor did his statement intend to create a “political objective.” On the contrary, he acknowledged that it was undeniable the USSR had ceased to exist politically.

Russian legal scholar Vladimir Sinyukov agreed with Kobyakov, adding that it was necessary to “legalize” the dissolution of the USSR because the way events unfolded in the early 1990s had been—and continued to be—a source of political instability in Eurasia. This, too, is undeniable, as seen in the Ukrainian conflict, the Azeri-Armenian war, and other tensions around Russia’s periphery.

In other words, this is a formalistic and abstract legal debate (which is perfectly normal in the field of Law), twisted into a political soundbite by the usual opportunists.

To further clarify the matter, we can delve deeper into this discussion, given that Russia is indeed pursuing policies of integration, synergy, and coordination with some neighboring countries—which could be misused to “prove” a supposed Russian interest in restoring the USSR.

First, it is essential to distinguish between efforts to transcend the modern nation-state by constructing a broader geopolitical superstructure and a “restoration of the Soviet Union,” which is a specific political-ideological project rooted in a particular interpretation of human nature, economic relations, the foundation of truth, etc.

The push to move beyond the nation-state is a geopolitical imperative driven by the exhaustion of the Westphalian nomos of the Earth. Recognized as early as Carl Schmitt as heralding the possibility of a new geopolitical order, many experts today argue that contemporary challenges extend beyond the classical borders of nation-states, requiring—at the very least—continental or regional-scale solutions. For example, the threat of terrorist insurgencies in the Sahel cannot be resolved by each nation-state acting alone. The same applies to the pursuit of economic self-sufficiency to safeguard sovereignty.

Even the world’s largest country, the Russian Federation, would struggle to address the fundamental challenges of the 21st century without efforts to restore its “traditional” geopolitical weight (as it had during the Imperial and Soviet eras). Geopolitically, Russia has gradually recognized the need to pursue integration with neighboring states like Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan—countries that were indeed part of the USSR but were only a fraction of the Union.

The construction of the European Union, UNASUR, and even Trumpist efforts to annex or integrate Canada respond to similar imperatives, marking the transition from a planet-wide order based on nation-states to one founded on continental states or regional empires.

Indeed, Russia is moving in this direction through projects like the Eurasian Union. But this is not “restoring the USSR.”

To claim that Putin wants to restore the USSR, we would have to be discussing not just renewed integration with neighboring states but also a full ideological revival of the Soviet form of Marxism-Leninism by the Russian state.

In this vein, neocons point to “tanks with Soviet flags” in Ukraine, the restoration of Soviet monuments, etc. They even bring up the fabricated “deportation of Ukrainian children” (referring to Russia’s entirely legitimate rescue of orphans from Donbass).

Needless to say, all of this is circumstantial and, at most, speaks to the importance of reclaiming a heroic past in the Russian imagination, as well as the role of Soviet nostalgia as an emotional tone in contemporary Russia (especially among older generations).

Where are the mass expropriations? The persecution of religions and militant atheism? Or the enshrinement of materialist values? What about total economic planning? We could keep asking: Where is Putin’s “Sovietism”? Neocons, as usual, would resort to the myth of “communism’s fake death,” where communism “pretends” to die only to survive. But if communism is not defined by historical-dialectical materialism, class struggle as the engine of history, militant atheism, and economic planning, then what is it? There are no reasonable answers to this question.

To dispel these conjectures and consign them to oblivion where they belong, we need not even appeal to the renewed “symphony” between the State and the Church or the fact that Russia’s economy is mixed, with a strong private sector. It suffices to recall Decree No. 809, in which Putin enshrines sacrifice for the motherland, charity, the traditional family, and the supremacy of spirit over matter, among other things, as the country’s “official values”—almost as if they had constitutional weight.

A strange kind of “communism” and “USSR restoration” this would be.

Finally, we conclude with an extremely precise quote from President Putin himself:

“Anyone who does not regret the collapse of the Soviet Union has no heart. Anyone who wants to restore it has no brain.”

https://strategic-culture.su/news/2025/ ... tore-ussr/

The sumbitch who wrote the above is unfortunately correct but we can hope that his vulgar gloating over the current state of affairs will prove premature by and by.(and the sooner the better.)

******

Russia’s Military Build-Up Along The Finnish Border Will Likely Be The New Normal
Andrew Korybko
Jun 01, 2025

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This is a predictable response to Finland’s unnecessary and highly provocative decision to join NATO.

The New York Times (NYT) recently published an article about how “Russia Beefs Up Bases Near Finland’s Border”, which relied on satellite imagery to reach that conclusion. Russia’s northern military build-up is portrayed as ominous in their piece, with speculation abounding about its post-Ukraine plans among those who they interviewed. To their credit, the NYT’s authors did reference Russia’s perceptions about NATO expansion, but they didn’t take them to their logical conclusion with regard to Finland.

No mention is made about how unnecessary its decision to join NATO was. Prior to that, Finland was already a so-called “shadow member” of NATO in the sense of having closely integrated with the bloc and practically obtained interoperability with its forces after years of joint training. Nevertheless, it didn’t have Article 5 mutual defense guarantees, but they objectively weren’t needed since there was never any credible scenario where Russia would launch an unprovoked attack or all-out invasion of Finland.

Shortly after the special operation began over three years ago, Finland’s liberal-globalist elite fearmongered that their country might be next after Ukraine, which was the false pretext upon which they reversed their decades-long stance towards formal NATO membership. Far from joining out of sincere concerns for their security, they did so solely to expand NATO’s border with Russia, which could then be presented as a symbolic Western victory no matter the outcome of this ongoing proxy war.

Here are three background briefings about this to bring unaware readers up to speed:

* 8 February 2024: “Finland Is Opening Up NATO’s Arctic Containment Front Against Russia”

* 25 May 2024: “A New Iron Curtain Is Being Built From The Arctic To Central Europe”

* 1 October 2024: “Don’t Forget About How NATO’s Northeastern Flank Can Stir Up A Lot Of Trouble For Russia”

They’ll now be summarized and placed in the larger geostrategic context of the New Cold War.

In short, Finland’s NATO membership enables the bloc to divert a portion of Russia’s forces from other fronts like the Ukrainian one while also expanding the West’s capabilities to project force into Russia, thus making it a highly strategic but also extremely dangerous move. The new Iron Curtain that’s descending upon the region upon linking together Finland’s newly strengthened border defenses, the “Baltic Defence Line”, and Poland’s “East Shield” will guarantee that post-Ukrainian tensions persist.

Even in the scenario of the nascent Russian-US “New Détente” evolving into a full-fledged strategic partnership built upon resource cooperation like joint Arctic projects of the sort that Moscow has proposed, NATO’s European members could still unilaterally threaten Russia via these means. In other words, the same strategy that the prior US administration sought to employ against Russia could be used by its nominal allies to provoke a crisis for complicating the new one’s ties with Russia, which is ironic.

That said, the likelihood of this being attempted – let alone succeeding – would be greatly reduced if the aforesaid “New Détente” enters into force since the US might simply refuse to extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to any of its “rogue allies” that stir up trouble along this front, thus deterring them. That said, the possibility always remains that a future US administration isn’t so friendly towards Russia or “decouples” from it on whatever pretext, so Russia can’t ever let its guard down from here on out.

https://korybko.substack.com/p/russias- ... -along-the

*******

Here we have a premier example of 'propaganda by omission'. The bridges blew up in a war zone and civilians were killed and they can't figure out why....

Two bridges collapse in Russian regions bordering Ukraine, killing at least 7
Helen Regan
By Mariya Knight, Helen Regan, Svitlana Vlasova and Billy Stockwell, CNN

Updated 8:59 AM EDT, Sun June 1, 2025

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This photo provided by the Moscow Interregional Transport Prosecutor's Office shows the aftermath of a bridge collapse in Russia's Bryansk region late on Saturday. Moscow Interregional Transport Prosecutor's Office
CNN

Two bridges have collapsed in Russia’s western regions bordering Ukraine, killing at least seven people and injuring dozens, authorities said.

It was not clear on Sunday morning whether the two incidents — which both involved trains — in neighboring Bryansk and Kursk were related, or what exactly caused the separate collapses.

At least seven people were killed in Bryansk when a road bridge gave way onto a passenger train late Saturday, with railway authorities citing “illegal interference.”

The bridge came down in the region’s Vygonichi district, about 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the Ukrainian border, crushing the moving train and injuring at least 66 people, including three children, Russian authorities reported.

Bryansk’s regional governor Alexander Bogomaz blamed the collapse in his region on an explosion, saying the bridge had been “blown up,” according to state media.

Bogomaz said on Telegram that 44 people had been hospitalized, with three in serious condition, including a child. The train was carrying 388 passengers.

Among those killed in the incident was the train’s engineer, Russian state media outlet RIA Novosti reported.

The train was traveling from the town of Klimov to the capital, Moscow, when it was hit by the debris from the bridge and derailed, according to RIA.

Images of the wreckage from the Moscow interregional transport prosecutor’s office show fallen earth, debris and concrete on top of what appears to be the passenger train, and derailed carriages as emergency services attend the scene.

Moscow Railway said the collapse was caused by “illegal interference in transport operations,” without providing further details.

Passengers were evacuated from the wreckage and were taken to a temporary accommodation center at a nearby station, according to TASS.

Railway workers later discovered damage to another section of railway track also in Bryansk region, Bogomaz said, adding that there were no casualties.

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A damaged freight train is seen following a railway bridge collapse in the Kursk region of Russia, in this picture released Sunday. Acting Governor of Kursk Region/Reuters

In another incident overnight into Sunday, a bridge collapsed in Russia’s Kursk region – which also borders Ukraine – as a freight train was passing over it, injuring one of the drivers, according to the acting governor of the region.

“Part of the train collapsed onto a highway that was under the bridge,” acting governor Alexander Khinshtein said on Telegram. The incident caused the train to catch fire and emergency service personnel worked to extinguish the blaze, he added.

Putin received updates about the two incidents throughout the night from the Federal Security Service (FSB) and Russia’s emergencies ministry, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said Sunday, according to state media.

State media also reported that the Russian leader had discussed the incidents on the phone with Bogomaz and the head of Russian Railways, Oleg Belozerov.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky meets with US Sens. Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal in Kyiv, Ukraine on May 30, 2025.
Related article
US senators meet with Zelensky in Kyiv as doubt cast over upcoming Ukraine-Russia peace talks

In a third incident on Saturday night, a Russian military freight train was blown up near the occupied city of Melitopol in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, according to the Defense Intelligence of Ukraine.

“As a result of the explosion, the train with fuel tanks and freight cars derailed on the railway track,” the intelligence service said.

The freight train was moving towards Russian-occupied Crimea via a “key logistical artery” often used by Russian forces, the authority added.

Since Moscow launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Kyiv has responded to Russian aggression by launching attacks using drones, artillery and troops into the Bryansk, Kursk and Belgorod regions. Pro-Ukrainian agents and sympathizers inside Russia have also carried out acts of sabotage against Russian targets.

In 2023, a fire that ripped through a train as it traveled along a strategic rail tunnel in eastern Russia was attributed to the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), according to a Ukrainian defense source.

Early Sunday, Russia’s Investigative Committee described both incidents as being caused by explosions and labeled them “terrorist” acts, state media reported. Subsequent statements from the committee removed those references, saying only that investigators were working at the scene of the incidents to establish “all the circumstances of what happened.”

Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, part of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, dismissed Russia’s earlier claim, saying: “Once again, there is a temptation to portray us as a ‘terrorist country’ in order to avoid dialogue.”

“It seems that the Kremlin is preparing the ground for the collapse of the negotiations with a smear attack on Ukraine in the international media,” he said.

On Sunday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that Kyiv would send a delegation to the second round of planned peace talks with Russia in Istanbul on Monday.

The Ukrainian leader went on to list his country’s requirements in a post on X, which he said includes a full and unconditional ceasefire, the release of prisoners and the return of abducted children.

Zelensky also said that Defense Minister Rustem Umerov would once more lead the Ukraine delegation.

https://us.cnn.com/2025/05/31/europe/ru ... k-intl-hnk

As is usual the Russian sources are more honest.

******

Fairytale Sniper
May 31, 23:02

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Fairytale Sniper

An Armenian sniper decided to spend the $30,000 he earned as a mercenary in the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Russia. The Ukrainian mercenary was detained last fall at Domodedovo Airport while trying to enter the country.

A criminal case was opened against the foreign citizen under the article "participation of a mercenary in an armed conflict." Investigators managed to establish all the circumstances of his career in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Armen Balyan, a 60-year-old Armenian citizen, came to Ukraine in the fall of 2022 through Moldova and voluntarily joined the 124th Territorial Defense Brigade. The Russian Prosecutor General's Office reported this on its Telegram channel.

During his year of service in the Ukrainian Armed Forces, he was a shooter and scout-sniper, and then, having been wounded and shell-shocked, deserted.

In his homeland, Balyan was brought to criminal responsibility, after which he decided to go to the Russian Federation. He will be tried for mercenarism against the Russian army.

P.S. And we still have those who whine about filtration at airports, when such wonderful characters are caught there.
But this one will of course be nominated for the Darwin Award out of competition.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9872586.html

Beach frontline soldier
May 31, 21:07

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Beach frontline soldier

Former head of the Kerch administration Svyatoslav Brusakov, accused of abuse of office, tried to evade criminal prosecution and signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry, but was listed in the military unit formally and was detained by security forces on the beach. This was reported to TASS by a source in the region's law enforcement agencies.

Brusakov S.A., fearing criminal prosecution, signed a contract with the Defense Ministry at the end of 2024, while he was listed in the military unit formally , the agency's source said. He added that the former official was identified by security forces on the beach during the construction of houses for rent on the Black Sea coast. According to preliminary data, the daughter of the former official is engaged in the business related to the rental of real estate by the sea.

Earlier, it was reported that four criminal cases were initiated against Brusakov for abuse of office, they are related to the illegal disposal of land. On Friday, the Kerch City Court granted the investigation's motion and remanded him in custody for the duration of the preliminary investigation.

According to the preliminary version , as a result of the illegal actions in Kerch, the historical central part of the city was built up, residents lost their amusement park, the central part of the embankment was taken out of municipal ownership, and places for the construction of gas stations were illegally allocated in Kerch.

Brusakov resigned from his post in July 2024 after a meeting with the head of the Republic of Crimea, Sergei Aksenov.

https://tass.ru/proisshestviya/24098109 - zinc

But he probably also received money. The soldier is sunbathing - the service is in progress.
This is a real combo - it would seem that he should have laid low and not shown himself, but the character simply could not stop.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9872344.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 02, 2025 2:50 pm

ON THE FINN FRONT, WHY IS THE PRESIDENT OF FINLAND STUBBING HIS TOE ON RUSSIA?

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By John Helmer @bears_with

Born with a large Russia-hating chip on his shoulder, Cai-Göran Alexander Stubb has been the ideal US Government recruit to be president of Finland. And so, since March 1, 2024, he is.

No one in Finnish politics has done as much as Stubb to cancel Finland’s post-war neutrality, drive the country into the NATO alliance, and establish US bases to escalate the war against Russia on the northern front. Four weeks after taking power, Stubb announced his policy of deploying US forces, including missiles, drones, aircraft and heavy ground weapons at Finnish bases. “When American war materiel is placed on Finnish soil,” he said, “it strengthens Finland’s defence.”

In one of Stubb’s schemes, NATO’s regional Multi-Corps Land Component Command (MCLCC) has been established and expanded at Mikkeli — 256 kilometres from St Petersburg as the missile flies – and subordinated to US command-and-control at Norfolk, Virginia. US F-35As, newly purchased by the Finnish Air Force (FAF), will be based at Rovaniemi airbase, 24 minutes’ flying time from St. Petersburg; the air defences for the base will be led by the medium-range, Israel-supplied David’s Sling, recently beaten by Iran. US-supplied rocket and artillery systems, such as the HIMARS, which have been defeated by Russia in the Ukraine, are to be based at Rovajärvi, where the US Air Force has been coordinating B-52 bomber operations this year. Rovajärvi is within HIMARS shooting range of the Russian border bases in the Murmansk region, such as Alakurtti and Kamenka.

Loaded on board the USAF B-52 and the F-35As of the FAF, Stubb is also trying to draw US nuclear weapons on to Finnish territory by ending the current Finnish law banning storage of US air-dropped nuclear bombs and nuclear missile warheads or moving them into firing position there. “We in Finland must have a real nuclear deterrent,” according to Stubb, “and that’s what we have, because NATO practically gives us three deterrences through our membership.” For the time being, he is opposed on deployment in Finland of nuclear weapons by officials in the current coalition government.

The outcome already, according to an analysis by a Moscow think tank, is the opening of a new warfighting front against Russia from Poland to Finland, with a surge of US weapons paid for by the Europeans but directed by US commanders. “The entire northern and north-eastern flanks of the [NATO] bloc will be subordinated to a single command centre, which will significantly increase their military and operational connectivity and create a potential unified theatre of operations from the Baltic to the Barents Sea… Once all Nordic defence initiatives are implemented, the United States will be able to unimpededly project its force right at the Russian border, posing a significant security threat to Russia.”

On March 30, Stubb made an unscheduled trip to play golf with President Donald Trump in Florida. “The presidents met over breakfast, played a round of golf and had lunch together,” Stubb’s office said no more at the time. Trump tweeted: “I just played a round of Golf with Alexander Stubb, President of Finland. He is a very good player, and we won the Men’s Member-Guest Golf Tournament at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach County, with the Legendary Gary Player, Senator Lindsey Graham, and former Congressman and highly successful Television Host, Trey Gowdy…President Stubb told me, in the most powerful of words, that the United States is STRONG, and BACK, AGAIN. I AGREE!”

Trump revealed that he and Stubb had made a deal for “strengthening the partnership between the United States and Finland, and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed Icebreakers for the U.S.” The icebreaker deal is worth several billion Euros. “If confirmed,” the Helsinki press reported, “it would be a crucial shot in the arm for Finnish heavy industry, which has struggled to fill its order books.” The Finnish vessel price is several times cheaper than US shipbuilders propose to charge; the standing US Coast Guard contract for one Polar Security Cutter (PSC) is $1.3 billion. Trump’s Stubb deal violates existing US law and breaches the pact which the Biden Administration had signed with Canada and Finland on icebreakers on November 13, 2024.

In matching payback, what Stubb promised to do for Trump’s friends and constituents like Elon Musk, is suspected to be lucrative in the billions of dollars, but remains secret. Not quite, because Trump’s friends like to boast.

Why Stubb for US stooge? Russian sources answer.

According to Sergei Andreyev, an expert on Finland at Tass, the answer for Stubb “is due to the family history. His father Göran Stubb came from Priozersk, renamed Kyakisalmi after the Soviet Army withdrew at the end of the Soviet-Finnish War of 1939-1940. His paternal grandparents were ethnically Swedish and came originally from Vyborg, which has remained Russian. The family had moved to Helsinki before the war, and Alexander Stubb was born there [April 1, 1968]. He was sent to high school in Florida, then university in South Carolina on sports scholarships. He then gave up golf for academic studies in Paris, Bruges and the London School of Economics. Most of his salaried life has been paid for as a European Union functionary, then European parliament deputy, the European Investment Bank’s chief executive, and finally Finnish political posts.

Between Alexander Stubb’s start as Finland’s Foreign Minister in 2008, his promotion to Prime Minister in 2014-2015, and his election as president a year ago, there has been a steady shift of government policy towards membership of NATO. Documented in reports by the Moscow think tank Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), the Finnish government strategy papers have moved to identifying Russia and China as hostile threats. When the US putsch in Kiev triggered the Russian takeover of Crimea in February 2014 and the Special Military Operation followed in the Ukraine in February 2022, Stubb’s coalition argued that Finland’s protection required membership of NATO and integration with US and NATO forces.

“In politics,” Stubb said in a video interview in September 2022, “it is very difficult to admit mistakes, because mistakes must not be made. Still, many politicians, including me, make mistakes…I was wrong about visa freedom for Russians, Nord Stream, Rosatom, and about not being able to promote Finland’s NATO membership as Prime Minister… I thought that human interaction and travel would bring us [Finland and Russia] closer together. It didn’t happen, and you could say that’s fine, but it was one of the mistakes I made. I did raise security concerns and criticise the bilateral agreement between Russia and Germany, but when I was in office, I said that the pipelines would only have an environmental impact. I was wrong. Nord Stream should never have been built. The Baltic States were right, Poland was right, I was wrong…I was always an advocate of nuclear power. We tried to get two reactors in Finland. In the end, we only got one Russian with the help of Rosatom. Did I actively pursue the matter, not necessarily. But I was the prime minister and I should definitely have taken responsibility for it…I was unable to push forward Finland’s NATO membership. It was not easy, as only a small number were in favour of membership. But I work in a position where I should have been able to push the matter forward.”

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Stubb’s 20-minute interview is broadcast in English. He acknowledged that his failure to push Finland into NATO was “not easy when only 20% of the population was in favour.” The Russian reaction to Stubb’s admission of “mistakes” came recently from Alexei Pushkov, head of the Russian Senate Committee on Information Policy. “We have to admit that Russophobia breeds stupidity and a lack of realism in political assessments. Moreover, it is surprising that many Western politicians are not at all shy about exposing their stupidity to the public"

In Finnish politics, said Jon Hellevig, a Finnish expert on Russia, Stubb is “the hyena who comes along after the hunters have made their kill and feeds on the leftovers. Like the hyena, he also has one of the ugliest faces in Helsinki.”

The Russian assessment is that Stubb is a simple opportunist, a political vote-counter. He was keen on fighting Russia with the US on the Ukraine battlefield, but only so long as he counted on the US and NATO alliance to win. For his presidential campaign in 2023, Stubb was also counting on Finnish fear of the Russians and confidence they would be defeated in the Ukraine.

In Stubb’s mind, according to Andreyev, “Russia poses and will continue to pose a constant security threat to Europe and Finland; Finland will provide Ukraine with military assistance for as long as necessary. After Finland and Sweden joined NATO, the Nordic countries, the Baltic Sea region and the Far North formed a single geostrategic space, and the Baltic Sea region is of strategic importance to Finland.”

Win or lose in Ukraine, a series of Finnish General Staff papers between 2021 and 2025 claimed that Russia’s priority would be to accelerate the build-up and modernization of forces in the revived Leningrad Military District bordering Scandinavia. The Finnish military — the General Staff has written — does not believe in an early settlement of the situation in Ukraine and predicts a deterioration in relations between the Russian Federation and the West in the coming years; Russia’s struggle for navigation in the Baltic Sea “by any means”; “continued attacks on underwater infrastructure in the Baltic”; “the acceleration of the race of the West, Russia and China for the resources of the Far North”; and “strengthening the intelligence and sabotage activities of the Russian special services in Finland.”

The tough talk has reversed the decline of state budget spending on the Finnish military. While Stubb was Prime Minister and then Finance Minister (2015 and 2016), the government defence budget slipped downwards from 1.5% of GDP to 1.3%. Then between 2021 to 2023 military spending shot up to 2.4%. The money ultimately ended up in the US military-industrial complex.

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Source: https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS ... cations=FI

As it did, Stubb campaigned for the presidency by repudiating the criticism that he had been too soft on Russia in earlier years. Finland was again in danger from the Russian Empire, he claimed. “Putin is driven by nostalgia and legacy. Nostalgia of historic Russia with one language, one religion and one leader. A legacy of a leader who has made ‘Russia great again’. He thus sees Belarus and Ukraine as part of Russia. Won’t necessarily stop there.”

The Kremlin log shows regular meetings and frequent conversations between Putin and Sauli Niinistö, who was president from 2012 to 2024, and with the preceding Finnish president and prime minister. But Putin has ignored Stubb for his entire career. He snubbed Stubb’s election in 2024, refusing to send the customary congratulations which Putin had sent Niinistö in 2012 and in 2018.

Trump also ignored Stubb during his first term (2017-2021) when Trump discussed the construction of icebreakers with President Niinistö. The communiqué following their meeting in October 2019 carefully avoided mentioning Russia.

Soon after Trump had won re-election last November, Stubb saw his opportunity. On November 11, he telephoned Trump and “discussed Ukraine, Russia, China, security in Europe and the icebreaker cooperation between Finland, the United States and Canada.” He told Trump then and repeated at their subsequent meetings that Putin should not be trusted.

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November 11, 2024 -- https://x.com/alexstubb/status/1856053712176984329

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March 31, 2025: https://x.com/Gerashchenko_en/status/19 ... 2885715406

Following the start of Trump’s second term in January of this year, Stubb promoted his plan to lift military spending to 3% of GDP by 2029. This means allocating a fresh billion euros of the state budget each year, and begin planning for further spending on armament in the 2030s.

This new money is also intended by Stubb to buy the votes of Finnish military industry, its corporate owners and workers who are concentrated in the Baltic shore region of Uusimaa, where about half the established defence companies and many of the new military technology start-ups are located. In the 2023 parliamentary election Stubb’s National Coalition party was the largest vote-getter in this region. In the 2024 presidential vote in Uusimaa, Stubb won 55%. This was the second best regional score for Stubb whose Green Party opponent beat him in the big cities and in Lapland, on the northern Russian border.

MAPS OF FINLAND’S REGIONS AND MILITARY BASES
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Just weeks into his presidency and still counting on Russia’s defeat in the Ukraine, Stubb announced there was no need for Finland with its 5.6 million people and 1,340 kilometres of common border, to have a political dialogue with Russia. Instead, he claimed that military action was the only way to achieve peace, starting with his support for the defeat of Russia in the Ukraine. He also backed the building of a €380 million fence along the frontier with Russia for 200km. This began in April 2023; two years later, just 35km of fence had gone up. Stubb’s role has included pushing the idea that cross-border migration is a form of Russian hybrid war against Finland. To counter it, he promoted the enactment of legislation in mid-2024 to end Finland’s constitutional protections for asylum seekers and the laying of mines in the border areas after he arranged for Finland to withdraw from the mine ban convention of 1997.

On September 1, 2024, a defence cooperation agreement with the US came into force which, according to Andreyev’s report to RIAC of last month, “opens 15 of [Finland’s] military facilities for possible use by American troops, while Helsinki will not charge rent for the premises or territories made available to the United States. On September 27 of the same year, the Finnish Ministry of Defense announced the deployment of the NATO headquarters in Mikkeli in the southwest of the country, 140 km from the border with the Russian Federation and in the northern region of Lapland. On April 1, 2025, the Finnish authorities announced preparations to withdraw from the Ottawa Convention on the prohibition of anti-personnel mines (previously, a similar step was taken by the defense ministers of Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Estonia), noting that this was ‘a cost-effective way to complement the capabilities of the armed forces,’ but adding that the country would be ‘committed to the humanitarian objectives of the convention.’ after a possible exit.

On April 15, 2025, a Finnish serviceman took part for the first time in a flight on a NATO E-3A long-range radar detection and control aircraft as part of the Ramstein Alloy 2025 exercises in the Baltic region. “Representatives of 17 countries are involved in the NATO Airborne Early Warning & Control Force (NAEW &CF), in addition to them, Canada, France, Finland and Lithuania also provided their personnel. NATO noted that the E-3A is the first multinational flight unit created by the Alliance.”

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FAF Master Sergeant Aleksi after his first flight aboard a NATO E-3A AWACS, according to the NATO press release of April 17, 2025.

The windvane outside Stubb’s office window began to blow in a new direction during the first month after Trump’s inauguration. Stubb decided he needed to take the measure of Trump’s thinking, and if need be, take new running orders. He camouflaged this by proposing a weekend game of golf with Trump, alongside the US Senate’s chief Russia hater, Lindsey Graham.

There has been a “softening” in Stubb’s hardline stance towards Russia, Andreyev reports, “after the election of US President Donald Trump, who had a different view of the Ukrainian conflict after the extremely pro-Ukrainian administration of Joe Biden.. During his March 29, 2025, visit to Florida, Stubb attempted to dissuade Trump from cooperating with the Russian Federation, and also called for tougher sanctions against Moscow.The Finnish leader had to admit that Europe had begun discussing the resumption of contacts with the Russian Federation, and Finland needed to ‘prepare mentally’ for restoring relations with Russia at the political level, since ‘nothing cancels the fact that Russia is and always will be a neighbour’.”

At the same time, Stubb tried to promote himself as the Europeans’ and Ukrainians’ best go-between with Trump. “At the moment, I see Finland’s role more in being able to articulate the messages of Europeans to the United States and the messages of the Americans to Europeans,” Stubb told reporters the day after the golf game.

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Left to right, Stubb meets Trump in Paris, December 7, 2024; Florida, March 29, 2025; the Vatican, April 26, 2025.

Stubb has continued to promote himself. Briefing local reporters on May 18, he said he had “engaged in a lengthy phone conversation on Saturday with US President Donald Trump, followed by a call on Sunday morning with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. ‘Zelensky is patient, but Trump is starting to grow impatient… towards [Vladimir] Putin,’ Stubb claimed.”

Trump’s telephone and tweet log – when the President was in Saudi Arabia — reveals no conversation with Stubb on May 18. Instead, Trump disclosed that on the next day, May 19, he had included Stubb in a party call with “Zelenskyy, 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… immediately after the call with President Putin.”

In Trump’s report on his call with Putin, there is no sign of Stubb’s claim of Trump’s impatience with Putin. Instead, according to Trump, “I 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 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. The tone and spirit of the conversation were excellent.”

Politically, Stubb the opportunist, who had succeeded in winning the presidency on the line of war against Russia, is trapped by his own opportunism because the Finns are now saying they are more fearful for their security than before Stubb’s escalation.

“Confidence in NATO’s Security Guarantees Has Weakened During Trump’s Second Term,” reports the latest public opinion polling by the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), published on April 29. “Two out of three (66%) Finns have a positive attitude towards Finland’s NATO membership. Over six months, support for NATO has decreased by five percentage points. More than half (53%) now believe that NATO membership does not guarantee that other countries would ultimately assist Finland in a real crisis. Confidence in NATO support has seen a significant (-17 percentage points) decline compared to the previous survey conducted in autumn 2023.”

THE EVA POLL SHOWING FALL IN FINNISH CONFIDENCE IN NATO

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Source: https://www.eva.fi/wp-content/uploads/2 ... 47-eng.pdf

There are two reasons for the turn-around in Finnish attitudes. The first is that Russia has retaliated for the militarization of Finnish territory by the US and NATO by reactivating Soviet military bases along the Russo-Finnish frontier, and by matching in military capabilities and firepower, including nuclear arms, whatever Stubb and Trump plan to do.

This new Finnish apprehension reverses the shift in Finnish sentiment against Russia in 2022. “As recently as 2007, over one-third would have avoided taking positions that could have jeopardized relations with Russia. After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, only slightly more than ten percent still thought this way.”

The second reason is reported by EVA managing editor, Sami Metelinen: “trust in the security provided by NATO has taken a significant hit in the minds of many. The reason behind this shift in attitude lies in the changes Donald Trump has brought to U.S. foreign policy. Just five months ago, when Joe Biden was President of the United States, a clear majority [of Finns] regarded the United States as an important partner for Finland and a defender of Western values globally…Finns’ foreign policy views have in recent years shifted as rapidly as world politics itself. The majority of Finns turned in favor of NATO membership practically overnight when Russia launched its large-scale attack on Ukraine in February 2022.1 Finland joined NATO in April 2023, and at the same time, attitudes towards the United States — Finland’s key ally through NATO — became significantly more positive…Trump’s statements have clearly affected perceptions regarding the reliability of NATO’s security guarantees, as Finns’ trust in the deterrent power of these guarantees has collapsed. Now, only one-third (32%) believe that NATO’s security guarantees are such a powerful deterrent that no one dares to challenge its member states.”

To combat the rise of the opposition Social Democratic Party in the Finnish public opinion polls and preserve his re-election chances, Stubb is now selling pieces of the Finnish economy to Trump’s friends. According to research by the Athens-based writer Manos Tzafalias, Elon Musk is reported to be considering a large investment in a Finnish production chain for large electric car batteries and in high-volume electricity- consuming data centres for his Artificial Intelligence businesses. Hussain Sajwani, the Damac real estate group owner in Dubai and investor with Trump in UAE golf resort and other ventures, is considering a data centre project in the southwestern city of Kouvola.

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Left, Hussain Sajwani with Trump on January 7, 2025; centre, Sajwani at the White House with Elon Musk, April 21, 2025; right, Sajwani with Trump at the White House, April 21, 2025.

For Russian security analysts, Stubb’s Finn front is a fake front camouflaging a plethora of business transactions to profit Trump and Stubb who is “not an autonomous political figure. “

“The Russia-hating virus has penetrated deep into Finland’s military and political elite, prompting it to launch preparations for a war we can hardly fathom,” commented the Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova last week. “We have been keeping a close eye on the increasingly active military preparations and exercise drills in the countries of the so-called collective West. The fact that they have stepped up their activities in this domain confirms, among other things, that NATO has taken an aggressive posture and has set sight on the territories of its new member states. In this case, it is eying Finland…The manoeuvres include performing wartime tasks. I would like to stress that they have been talking about practicing wartime tasks rather than countering terrorists or providing emergency relief. This means that an ordinary Navy exercise, which used to be held at a national level without any foreign military forces, has suddenly evolved into yet another escalatory tool at NATO’s disposal along the Russian border, and the Finish authorities offered their full-throttle support to this initiative.”

“Maybe they could explain what they mean by that. All they do is focus on the objectives related to this war and spend billions from their national budgets on promoting this so-called narrative, as they say in the West. At the same time, the government of this country has been turning a blind eye to the domestic economic woes they are facing, primarily in terms of the social and economic situation there. This creates an impression that someone is pushing them off the cliff while they fail to understand where they are headed, let alone stop moving in this direction.”

“I think that it is up to the people of this country to assess these developments. On the other hand, we understand the extent to which the media space is blocked. Few people realise the scale of the all-out confrontation with Russia the collective West has been seeking to impose on them and the way this contradicts their national interests, as well as the fact that these steps can literally undermine their national security.”

The cordiality which Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had expressed with Stubb when he was Finland’s foreign minister, has now disappeared because he has become an American puppet. “The Americans have militarised all of Europe,” Lavrov said last November, “compelling it to finance the Nazi regime [in Kiev]. The veneer observed during the era of détente and peaceful coexistence has swiftly vanished. Formerly neutral countries – Finland and Sweden – have rapidly altered their stance. They previously maintained close ties with our border regions, frequently visiting and hosting families across the border. I have visited these regions; it was a tranquil frontier. Overnight, this façade dissipated. The current President of Finland, Alexander Stubb, whom I have known since his tenure as Foreign Minister, is now among the most fervent Russophobes. They are erecting walls and proclaiming to the world that Russia is poised to attack them. Essentially, they are misguiding their electorate.”

Stubb was becoming a neo-Nazi, Zakharova warned on April 24. “He went on to accuse our country of having imperialism as part of its DNA. Turns out, Mr Stubb is also an expert in genetics. If this is not the case, he must recall that those who used to talk about genetics and racial supremacy in Western Europe were not educated in this subject and ended their lives badly…there is only one thing Finland’s leadership has demonstrated. It showed that it is totally incapable and helpless when it comes to standing up for its national interests. Ordinary people in Finland will have to foot the bill – what a pity.”

https://johnhelmer.net/on-the-finn-fron ... more-91742

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ANTI-RUSSIA THROUGH THE YEARS
On May 20, 2025 By Patrick Armstrong

One of the things I’ve often heard and seen Russians say is that the West has always hated Russia and always will. When it needs Russia it will pretend friendship but when the emergency is over it’s back to the same. Britain is often named as the chief hater. I’ve filed this away as something Russians believe to be true but may be exaggerated; after all, every nation is the innocent hero of its own stories. And as Palmerston (of whom more below) said “Nations have no permanent friends or allies, they only have permanent interests“. Take Britain for example. At the moment London is the principal actor in the anti-Russia/pro-Ukraine camp; before that Cold War opponent; then ally against Hitler; then variable; then ally against Germany; then opponent in the Great Game; then enemy in the Crimean War; then ally against Napoleon and back and forth we go until the first and reasonably amicable trade contacts in Elizabeth’s time. From one to the other as interests dictated.

But a month ago I read something that made me wonder if maybe the Russians had a point. It was Orlando Figes’ book on the Crimean War and I was astounded to see the same anti-Russia tropes that we see today. (All page numbers from Kindle edition)

The first difficulty for the Allied propagandists in this very ostentatiously Christian age was to justify going to war against a Christian country in support of a Muslim country. For a French newspaper, it was about stopping “the Greek heresy [from being] imposed by Cossack arms on all of us”. (209) In Britain by the assertion that Christians in the Ottoman Empire were perfectly safe (with the British and French overlooking) while Russian dominance would see “their places of prayer either demolished, or converted into temples of a faith as impure, demoralizing, and intolerant, as Popery itself. What British Christian can hesitate as to the course proper for such a country as ours, in such a case as this? (223) Whew! Russia, “blessed by inhuman Priests” (368), isn’t really Christian after all. (But what an image! Cossack sotnyas galloping through Barsetshire to sabre Archdeacon Grantley!)
And they were as loathsome as their religion. The war was “the crusade of civilization against barbarism” (209) “The defence of mankind” against a “hopeless and degenerate people” bent upon the conquest of the world, a “religious war”. (224) “For the cause of right against injustice”. (223) Against “a country which makes no advances in any intellectual or industrial pursuits, and wholly omits to render her influence beneficial to the world”. (449) Insolence, arrogance and pride; a “bully”. (554) “A Holy War” against the Russians, “heathens”, “infidels” and “savages”. (650) An Anglican clergyman thundered that Russia’s offensive against Turkey was an attack “on the most sacred rights of our common humanity; an outrage standing in the same category as the slave trade, and scarcely inferior to it in crime”. (223)
These horrid people were unrelentingly expansionist. A popular pamphlet dating from 1828, On the Designs of Russia, written by a future Crimean War general, projected a desire to conquer all of Asia Minor and effect the collapse of British trade with India. (73) The foundation of this was the forged Testament of Peter the Great (102) which set out a plan to conquer Europe; it was widely quoted for years.
To return to Lord Palmerston. Tremendously influential for decades and Prime Minister for the last year of the Crimean War, he was very anti-Russian. As far as he was concerned, “The main and real object of the war was to curb the aggressive ambition of Russia.” (267) The fighting in the Crimea was just the start and his desired result was put forth in his memorandum to the British Cabinet in March 1854. The Crimea and Caucasus to the Ottoman Empire; Finland to Sweden, the Baltics to Prussia, Bessarabia to Austria, Poland independent. (540) Liberation movements against tsarist rule to be supported. (443) (Britain had already been providing weapons to Imam Shamyl’s forces in the long-running Caucasus war. (453)) Poland enthusiastically supported the idea (449) It was generally expected that the fall of Sevastopol would bring Russia to its knees and the Western powers could impose their conditions on the Russians. (269) But, when it finally fell in September 1855, Russia didn’t. Now what? France, which had done the heaviest fighting, was not sympathetic to Palmerston’s desires for more war in the Balkans or the Baltic. The Allies certainly weren’t about to commit the forces required to hold Sevastopol. And so they departed six months later. As the Emperor himself said “Sevastopol is not Moscow. The Crimea is not Russia. Two years after the burning of Moscow, our victorious troops were in Paris”. (535) And he was right: at the end the map hadn’t changed much.
And, of course, people who objected to this were “pro-Russian” and therefore “un-English” (204)
**************************************

Back then Russia was an autocracy ruled by a man ruling by Divine Right (and the Brits happily allied with the last of the series in 1914); then it became “the world’s first socialist state” (and the Brits happily allied with that in 1941 – earlier if Churchill had got his way) and now it’s Russia again but without a hereditary ruler and an all-encompassing ideology. None of these changes, apparently, have made a bit of difference: still expansionist, all round nasty, contributing nothing good to the world, contumacious, better broken up but very unstable and soon to collapse. Our side, of course, from its morally immaculate position, is ever in defence of the Right. If you disagree, you’re “pro-Russian” and therefore “un-English/American/Canadian/European/everything good”.

We dealing with something here that doesn’t seem to be very fact-based. Maybe the Russians do have a point.

https://patrickarmstrong.ca/2025/05/20/ ... the-years/

It occurs to me that there was no Polish state in the 19th century...'AI' again?

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NATO's war against Russia has no end in sight
May 30, 2025 , 2:11 pm .

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The Defender 25 military exercise is a U.S.-led exercise designed to strengthen NATO and demonstrate its rapid deployment capability (Photo: Atlantic Council)

At the beginning of the year, the international scene offered superficial signs of de-escalation: diplomatic gestures between Washington and Moscow, declarations of goodwill, and speculation about a possible strategic shift with Donald Trump's return to the White House. For months, rumors have circulated about a possible meeting between Trump and Putin as a symbol of this shift, but no meeting has taken place.

The Russian side has expressed its willingness to engage in dialogue on several occasions, but the necessary conditions for such dialogue have not been met. On the part of the United States, the signals have been ambiguous and lacking in concrete steps.

Parallel to this climate of expectation, the military machine continued its course. More than 90,000 NATO troops were deployed on Europe's eastern flank, in one of the largest war exercises since the Cold War. The maneuvers were not routine: they were detailed rehearsals for a high-intensity war against an " enemy of comparable strength ," a reference to Russia.

The facts on the ground
While public discourse clings to the idea of ​​a possible détente, NATO is conducting Defender Europe 25 , one of the largest and most complex military deployments since the Cold War. This series of exercises, divided into three phases (Swift Response, Immediate Response, and Saber Guardian), is essentially a dress rehearsal for a full-scale war against an adversary of the same strength: Russia.

The operation began in April with the transfer of US troops from the port of Charleston, South Carolina, to Europe. From there, more than 90,000 troops from 29 countries were activated, including non-US partners such as Georgia, Moldova, and Kosovo. The maneuvers extend from the Arctic to the Black Sea, in a geographic arc that borders virtually the entire western periphery of Russia. They practice simultaneous airborne jump operations, live fire with Himars—high-precision multiple missile launchers developed by the United States—logistical deployments by waterway, the use of new combat technologies, and protection against weapons of mass destruction.

The first phase took place in Finland, Norway, Latvia, Lithuania, and Sweden, where 6,000 troops, mostly Americans, carried out airborne operations with European support.
The second phase is taking place in Hungary, Romania, and the Czech Republic, and involves more than 9,000 soldiers practicing river crossings and long-distance tactical movements.
The third and final phase, Saber Guardian, involves 12,000 troops deployed across Albania, Bulgaria, Greece, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovakia.
Beyond the numbers and logistics, the message is clear: these are not defensive exercises but offensive simulations. In its design and scope, Defender 25 reflects a war doctrine that assumes a direct conflict with Russia as its primary scenario. The coordination between multinational brigades under a single command, the improvement of routes for the express transfer of US troops, and the integration of new technologies all point to complete readiness for real combat scenarios.

As the Scientific and Analytical Information Center of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences points out , the leading role of the United States reinforces the idea that the deployment aims to strengthen its geostrategic position. These exercises strengthen NATO's military infrastructure in Eastern Europe and consolidate a permanent war machine that remains operational.

Each phase is taking place in sensitive areas close to Russia's borders, which contributes to reinforcing the perception, both in Moscow and among any observer with a minimum level of clarity and attention to strategic language, that the Western bloc prioritizes offensive preparation over any serious commitment to diplomatic de-escalation.

From Biden to Trump: The war continues with a different face
Donald Trump's return to power fueled expectations in some quarters of a change in US foreign policy regarding the war in Ukraine. However, the course of events contradicts this illusion. So far, there has been no concrete sign of de-escalation: the flow of arms has not stopped, the US military infrastructure in Europe has not been dismantled, and the strategic narrative justifying the intervention has not changed. The war continues, and with it, Washington's political, economic, and military commitment.

In a recent post , Russians With Attitude —a Russian-based geopolitical analysis podcast —argued that Trump had a historic opportunity to cut the conflict and hold his predecessor accountable, but failed to seize it. According to their analysis, "history handed him a silver platter" by providing him with the opportunity to break out of the "Ukrainian quagmire" with a public speech that declassified information and distanced himself from previous decisions. But he chose not to do so.

The text notes that the war machine continues to operate uninterrupted: "Planes continue to land in Poland, the Wiesbaden base continues to direct the war," and every action on the ground, from Himars missiles to Starlink-guided drones, now operates under Trump's mandate.

The mention of Starlink, owned by Elon Musk, is not insignificant: its satellite network has been key to Ukrainian operations, facilitating secure communications and the remote control of drones in combat. Although Musk recently resigned from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), his involvement in the Trump II administration, coupled with the strategic role of his technological infrastructure in the theater of operations, reveals the depth of the intertwining between corporate power, military business, and state decisions.

The criticism goes beyond a specific complaint: it questions whether Trump truly intended to cease US involvement or whether, on the contrary, his pacifist rhetoric was merely an electoral device with no real political implications, leaving open the possibility that he and his team were simply incapable of executing a strategic shift.

This view coincides with the interpretation that has been consolidated in Moscow, where Russian authorities have reiterated that the outcome of the US elections does not substantially alter their position. Russian diplomacy has maintained a formally constructive tone, but without placing any real hopes for a fundamental change.

In effect, the interpretation is that war has ceased to be a matter for administrations and has become a structural expression of US state policy. But this is old history, not recent.

Diplomacy as spectacle
On February 12, Trump announced his first telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin. The Kremlin confirmed the call , describing it as a "substantive exchange," although no roadmap or security guarantees were revealed. Russia emphasized that, without written commitments, any ceasefire would be premature.

On March 18, what both sides described as their " most extensive " talks took place. Washington then proposed a 30-day ceasefire; Moscow responded that the idea was unworkable "until numerous nuances are clarified," including the status of the new Russian territories and the gradual lifting of sanctions.

On April 25, White House special envoy Steve Witkoff met with Putin in the Kremlin. According to Reuters , the US proposal included recognizing Crimea and opening a subsequent discussion on the remaining territories; however, Moscow considered the draft lacking legal guarantees and warned that Brussels and Kiev were "trying to torpedo" any progress. The meeting ended without a timeline or joint text.

Three days later, on April 28, Sergei Lavrov spoke by phone with Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Both sides agreed to "maintain contact," but the Russian Foreign Ministry emphasized that the United States had still not presented any concrete proposals regarding the root of the conflict.

On May 28, Lavrov announced that Moscow had developed a comprehensive memorandum and proposed resuming direct dialogue with Kyiv on June 2 in Istanbul, with Vladimir Medinsky leading the Russian delegation. That same day, Vladimir Zelensky declared his readiness for a trilateral summit with Trump and Putin; the Kremlin responded that a leaders' meeting "would only make sense after real progress" in the bilateral talks, without formally ruling out US participation.

The day concluded with a rhetorical shift from the White House: Trump said he was "very disappointed" with Putin and gave him "two weeks" to see if Moscow is seeking peace, hinting at retaliation if he doesn't see progress. The contrast is revealing: Russia presents memoranda, suggests dates, and demands substantive guarantees, while Washington strings together calls, trips, and media ultimatums that do nothing to alter the reality on the ground.

Another substantive element should be added to this sequence: the Trump administration shows no signs of wanting to modify the sanctions regime imposed on Russia. So far, it has not lifted or relaxed any of the current coercive measures, and although it avoided announcing new sanctions around the anniversary of the special military operation—a break from the practice of previous years—it allowed the provisions adopted at the end of Biden's term to go into effect , including the ban on US citizens providing services to the Russian oil sector, effective February 27.

It also extended the national emergency with respect to Ukraine until March 2026, thereby prolonging the legal framework that has underpinned much of the sanctions regime since 2014.

Meanwhile, Congress is preparing a legislative offensive with the Sanctioning Russia Act of 2025 bill , introduced by Lindsey Graham, which proposes massive new sanctions, including 500% tariffs on countries that buy Russian oil. It already has more than 80 co-sponsors, enough to override a presidential veto. Senate Republicans have begun to express their frustration with the lack of action and are seeking to advance the legislation without waiting for the executive branch's initiative.

The military deployment in Eastern Europe, the constant flow of weapons, and the lack of concrete agreements reflect a consolidated strategy of the Western bloc. Neither diplomatic gestures nor the presidential change in the United States have altered the current approach, which is focused on sustaining a prolonged conflict against Moscow through military, economic, and technological means. Added to this is the continued intact sanctions regime, which continues to function as a structural tool of pressure with no signs of easing.

The dynamics of the confrontation are advancing with their own logic, and the official narrative, initially based on declarations and promises of dialogue, is increasingly beginning to reflect the material confrontation taking place on the ground.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/la ... -horizonte

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What is the DPRK doing in the "imperialist conflict"?
June 1, 17:00

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On the participation of the DPRK in the SVO on the side of Russia from a Marxist point of view.

So, the socialist DPRK is a participant in the conflict on the side of the bourgeois Russian Federation. What can be said, understanding this fact?

Firstly, let us simply state the fact that if Vladimir Ilyich Lenin had not planted the “bomb” in the form of the communist movement in the countries of the East a hundred years ago, and Joseph Vissarionovich had not actively continued his work, bourgeois Russia would not have had such a reliable ally. And the situation with the shells could have been worse... A historical paradox, however!

Especially considering that quite recently, in 2017, Russia, together with the United States, introduced sanctions against the DPRK. And now it is even funny to watch how the Russian “patriotic” man in the street, for whom the DPRK was “horror-horror-horror” not so long ago, has now discovered a completely different Korea.

It should be noted that as far as the real DPRK is concerned, socialism in this country was initially marked by national characteristics, the cult of elders and other specifics. Then there were 40 years of the most brutal Japanese colonialism, then the liberation by the Red Army (not the people's revolution), an unsuccessful attempt at revolutionary unification of the country and the genocide committed by the USA, when in the 50s the good Americans literally bombed the north of the Korean Peninsula into the Stone Age.

Given this reality, nothing but super-social paternalism could have arisen there. Not everything in this is clear to us, bearers of a different culture, or maybe we like it, but such are the objective conditions of this country. We just need to respect the North Koreans for their resilience.

Does everyone understand that in the conditions of the blockade, in order to create our own space program, nuclear weapons and other "no analogues" it is necessary to have a large number of well-educated, talented and motivated scientists and engineers, and even more technicians and highly skilled workers. For which, in turn, a decent education system is needed, covering the entire population of this not very large country. That is, even in such difficult conditions, socialism works.

After all, despite all these specifics, despite some elements of the "NEP" that are also there, the DPRK is a socialist country that remained from the world system of early socialism.

And here a question arises for some adherents of the "1914 tracing", fixated on the feeling of their own "Marxist" infallibility and collecting donations. The question is simple: should the recognition of the fact of the participation of a socialist country in the SVO not change your assessment of this "purely imperialist" conflict?

Of course, you can commit violence against reality and try to stuff the observed facts into the reinforced concrete templates of your ideas about the situation. You can simply declare the DPRK, Cuba and many other different communist parties in the world evil "imperialists". However, such attempts look pathetic and counterproductive. In addition, the instructive example of the pseudo-left clown and foreign agent Rudoy clearly shows where all this ultimately leads.

Yes, after 24.02.2022, a serious split occurred in the communist environment, and in different organizations. And for many people it happened rather on emotions, under the influence of manipulations of famous pseudo-Marxist "gurus". It happens, we all have the right to make mistakes.

But now it should be clear to everyone that now is not the First World War, as, incidentally, not the Second, not the Great Patriotic War. The situation in the world and in Russia is completely new, the classics of Marxism did not describe it for us in advance and did not leave precise instructions. That is why all attempts by left-wing "reenactors" to repeat that historical experience ended in complete failure (See Three Years of the SVO. What's Next?). After all,

if the participation of a socialist country in the SVO does not fit into your picture of what is happening, it needs to be adjusted. A rationally thinking person does exactly this. After all, Marxism teaches you to think, teaches you to analyze specific processes and all the new facts that appear. Isn't that right?

(c) Alexander Stepanov

https://rkrp.rus/2025/04/27/if-konflikt ... listiches/ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9873563.html

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 04, 2025 5:43 pm

John Wight: Russia at a Crossroads
June 3, 2025 natyliesb
By John Wight, Consortium News, 6/3/25

Russian President Vladimir Putin now finds himself at a monumental crossroads when it comes to his stewardship of Russia at a time when nuclear Armageddon has never been closer.

Ukraine’s devastatingly successful and audacious strike against Russia’s long-range strategic bomber aircraft stock marks a major inflection point in a conflict that evidences no sign of ending.

But let us not lose sight of the salient fact that Russia is not engaged in a conflict with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine. This is instead a conflict pitting the Russian Federation against NATO, with Ukraine a proxy of the latter. And NATO is taking advantage of Putin’s caution.

No consequential conflict has ever been won by half-measures. General William Sherman’s “March to the Sea” arguably did more to break the Confederacy than President Abraham Lincoln’s famed Emancipation Proclamation. The Allies firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 and the Soviets arrival on the outskirts of Berlin on April 25, 1945, did more to break the back of the Germans than Hitler’s suicide nine days later. The Vietnamese won their national liberation with the fully-committed and symbolically important Tet Offensive of 1968 rather than all of the diplomatic machinations that came thereafter.

Russia’s military campaign at Putin’s direction has placed a priority on avoiding escalation. But it is a posture that has invited escalation, evidenced by this latest major turn of events.

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Vasyl Malyuk, head of Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, viewing satellite images of Russian military airfields, clockwise — Olenya, Ivanovo Severny, Ukrainka, Belaya, and Dyagilevo — and photos of strategic bombers Tu-95MS, left, and Tu-22M3, right. (Ssu.gov.ua/ Wikimedia Commons /CC BY 4.0)

Russia has been fighting the West diplomatically but not militarily, while Ukraine under Zelensky has been waging its conflict with Russia in the name of the strategic aims of NATO, rather than the interests of Ukraine and its people.

Russia is at a decisive point. Does it continue its war carefully to avoid confrontation with NATO, while encouraging its continued provocations, or does it take the hardline approach of Yevengi Prigozhin, the late outspoken leader of Russia’s Wagner Group, who made repeated demands for national mobilization in the name of a speedy victory dictated by Russia’s far superior mass and weight of industrial potential.

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Ukraine’s June 1 drone attack ona Russian airfield. (Ssu.gov.ua / Wikimedia Commons / CC BY 4.0)

Putin is a deft leader. Even his adversaries in the corridors of power in the West would grudgingly admit this given his long record in power in the Kremlin. It was he who dragged Russia out of the free market abyss into which the country and its people were plunged in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Putin’s Rebuilding of Russia

In the process, Putin succeeded in restoring the primacy of the state over a new rising Russian economic oligarchy — one that had been happy to allow the masses of the Russian people into the arms of destitution and despair because of its own greed and corruption.

The Russian leader then set about rebuilding state institutions that had been destroyed in the name of the religion of free market capitalism, with the result that slowly but surely a new state emerged from the ashes of the old. Russia regained pride in a new identity embraced the indispensable role of the Soviet Union in defeating the Nazis in World War II with respect for the pre-Bolshevik role of the Russian Orthodox church as a pillar of spiritual stability and social cohesion.

From the Russian standpoint, this is why Putin is credited as their historical version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. president who likewise saved his country from the abyss during the 1930s, when the Great Depression was at its terrible and destructive zenith and then went on to lead the bulk of the U.S. war effort during World War II.

But Putin has, it appears, misread the West’s resolve in this period of the rapidly shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics. Putin’s reasoning has been the avoidance of escalation to direct military conflict with the collective Western powers. However those powers are already heavily involved in the arming, training and direction of Kiev’s war effort.

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Zelensky at a meeting with Jens Stoltenberg, the former NATO secretary general, in Kiev in April 2024. (President of Ukraine/Flickr)

So where now and what now?

Ukraine’s devastating drone strike deep into Russian territory is a gauntlet thrown down. Will Russia under Putin’s leadership ever be able to persevere to the point of claiming a clear victory? Or has Ukraine under the leadership of Zelensky just changed the dynamic to the point of proving to the collective West that he is a leader worthy of continued support to the point of victory at all cost?

President Donald Trump’s dressing down of the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office back in March was driven and motivated by the belief that Ukraine’s war effort was faltering. Zelensky in this context appeared isolated, adrift and weak.

Well, not anymore.

As these words are being written, reports of heavy Russian air and missile strikes against targets across Ukraine are emerging. The famous quote of the French revolutionary thinker and agitator, Louis Antoine de Saint-Just springs to mind: “Those who make revolution halfway only dig their own grave.” Substitute the word “war” for revolution and this is the point at which Putin and the Kremlin have arrived. But how far can Russia go before all-out war with NATO and its potential, dreadful consequences?

Beware of small states, as throughout history it is they who have dragged the world into major conflict. Zelensky, when viewed in this light, knows that Ukraine cannot forever stand against Russia’s superior manpower and mass. He knows that to stand any chance of emerging from this conflict with a result at the end, he must drag the West into direct conflict with Moscow sooner rather than later.

World War III is the only road to victory that lies open to him. For the rest of us, it is the road to hell.

https://natyliesbaldwin.com/2025/06/joh ... rossroads/

*******

Fighter against Stalin and Putin will not perform at Yeltsin Center
June 3, 13:07

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Yeltsin Center Cancels Visit of Foreign Agent Who Called Putin a "Cannibal"

The founder of the foreign agent international society "Memorial"* Yan Rachinsky — and a foreign agent himself — will not be able to speak in Yekaterinburg.

Following public outrage, the Yeltsin Center not only cancelled the radical's visit, but also removed him from the organizing committee of the conference "History of Stalinism."

Earlier, Rachinsky** shocked the public ( https://t.me/urallive/31001 ) with his statements, which were made public on the eve of the 80th anniversary of the Great Victory. The foreign agent called for Stalin to be tried for allegedly unleashing World War II, and also called the presidents of the Russian Federation and Belarus "cannibals."

photo_2025-06-03_10-48-02 (2).jpg

Despite all this, the Yeltsin Center held on to Rachinsky**, who regularly visited the EC. However, on May 23, the Ministry of Justice recognized the radical as a foreign agent ( https://t.me/urallive/31573 ), so it was impossible to resist any longer.

However, Rachinsky's fans** should not be upset yet — the "History of Stalinism" conference will still take place as announced (June 19–22, 2025). This is the center's most promoted "scientific event," and for good reason — the cult of the "dashing nineties" can only be built on the denigration of the Soviet period (as in the center's "museum").

The "Yeltsin Center" desecrated the Victory anniversary by inviting a traitor ( https://t.me/urallive/31001 )

* Foreign agent organization
** Foreign agent

https://t.me/urallive/31917 - zinc

Dig into almost any modern anti-Stalinist, and a brown Nazi odor will immediately emerge.
The "Yeltsin Center" must be closed. As a purely hostile and subversive structure.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9877214.html

Fifth Column Against Stalin on Taganka
June 3, 21:09

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Foreign agents calling for the overthrow of the current regime in the Russian Federation and the dismemberment of Russia are calling for support for the Yabloko party's fight against Stalin's bas-relief at the Taganskaya metro station. It is immediately obvious how comrade Stalin does not let our fifth column sleep peacefully. An excellent trigger. Now you know that Yabloko is fighting Stalin together with those who are calling for the destruction of the Russian Federation.

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Whether Yabloko is acting as a legal front for advancing the goals of the masters of our fifth column is a rhetorical question.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/9878131.html

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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blindpig
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Re: Russia today

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 05, 2025 2:48 pm

WHAT IS PUTIN TO DO NOW

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By John Helmer, Moscow @bears_with

Lenin hasn’t been a favourite of President Vladimir Putin’s. He’s derided him: “Ukraine appeared in 1922…Now the grateful descendants are smashing monuments to Lenin, the founder of Ukraine.”

The second last time he mentioned Lenin, in February 2024, Putin blamed him. “For some unknown reasons, he transferred to that newly established Soviet Republic of Ukraine some of the lands together with people living there, even though those lands had never been called Ukraine; and yet they were made part of that Soviet Republic of Ukraine. Those lands included the Black Sea region, which was received under Catherine the Great and which had no historical connection with Ukraine whatsoever.”

The last time Putin spoke of Lenin he said he was in favour of burying him, but not of going against public opinion on preserving him in Red Square. Last December he said “The same goes for the burial of Lenin’s body. Someday, society will probably come to this. But today, especially today, we must not take a single step that would split the society in Russia. That’s how I see it.”

Putin has had less to say about Lenin’s method for deciding what to do at crisis moments for the survival of the country and himself. When Lenin asked in his 1902 book, What is to be Done? he described the choice to be faced this way. “We are marching in a compact group along a precipitous and difficult path, firmly holding each other by the hand. We are surrounded on all sides by enemies, and we have to advance almost constantly under their fire. We have combined, by a freely adopted decision, for the purpose of fighting the enemy, and not of retreating into the neighbouring marsh, the inhabitants of which, from the very outset, have reproached us with having separated ourselves into an exclusive group and with having chosen the path of struggle instead of the path of conciliation. And now some among us begin to cry out: Let us go into the marsh! And when we begin to shame them, they retort: What backward people you are! Are you not ashamed to deny us the liberty to invite you to take a better road! Oh, yes, gentlemen! You are free not only to invite us, but to go yourselves wherever you will, even into the marsh. In fact, we think that the marsh is your proper place, and we are prepared to render you every assistance to get there. Only let go of our hands, don’t clutch at us and don’t besmirch the grand word freedom, for we too are “free” to go where we please, free to fight not only against the marsh, but also against those who are turning towards the marsh!” .

Now that Putin agrees that in the present war Russia is surrounded by enemies on all sides, and he must make the choice between the “path of struggle” – since Sunday, June 1, this is now war at the point of nuclear arms — and the “path of conciliation” – that’s President Donald Trump’s peace terms – what will Putin decide to do?

Moskovsky Komsomolets, a mass circulation newspaper and tribune of popular opinion, has called for the same “determination and harshness” against Ukraine as Israel has shown against Hamas. Boris Rozhin, speaking for the Russian military opinion and editor-in-chief of the widely read military blog, Colonel Cassad, said: “I hope that the military-political leadership will find a way to adequately respond. The blow should be painful… As long as we are waging a limited war, the enemy is waging a total war, the purpose of which is the destruction of our country and people. And no peace talks will change this. The longer it is in coming, the more unpleasant surprises.”

The circle of advisors around Putin urge him to downplay the attack as “terrorism” and ignore the “terrorists” as European, not American proxies in the attack. Vzglyad, a Kremlin platform for strategy, has editorialized that “all this is being done with the connivance of Ukraine’s European partners. But such actions are not capable of intimidating Moscow. Now the initiative in the conflict belongs to Russia.” Vzglyad added: “Maybe our new successes will still be able to bring Ukraine to reason. We openly demonstrate the ability to show mercy, which says a lot about the sincerity of the Russian authorities in their aspirations for peace.”

A well-informed Russian military source says Putin has decided not to retaliate for the moment. The launch of the Oreshnik is unlikely now, the source believes; perhaps later “only if there is certainty that Trump will not deliver. But [now] maybe a measured one [strike] to help him focus.”

The source explains Putin’s decision-making. “The political functionaries [Kremlin, Foreign Ministry] have their focus on the Memorandum and expect it will be signed. Now we wait for Trump to deliver. Rubio sent [Senator Lindsey] Graham to [Vladimir] Zelensky to accept it. He talks best with Zelensky. Our side has some more patience before replying to the ‘terror attacks’ [sarcastic laughter]. This is because all the assurance we have from the Americans is that the outcome of discussions will be positive. A Russian military response of large proportions can wait. We have patience. It will happen if [emphasis] Trump will not deliver Ukraine on Memorandum-1.” How long will the Kremlin give Trump? the source was asked. “Several weeks, not months.”

Several hours after the source said this, Putin confirmed this at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and other officials. Putin did so by ignoring the Ukrainian attacks on the five nuclear bomber airfields. Focusing only on the bridge and railway attacks in Kursk and Bryansk, he called them “a targeted strike against civilians, and for all international standards such actions are called terrorism. All crimes that were committed in relation to civilians, including women and children, on the eve of the next round the proposed peace talks in Istanbul were certainly aimed at disrupting the negotiation process. [This was a] strike on the civilian population intentionally. This only confirms our fears that the illegitimate regime in Kiev, which once it had seized power, has gradually degenerated into a terrorist organization, and its sponsors become Accomplices of terrorists.”

Lavrov responded at the meeting, also by avoiding explicit mention of the airfield strikes: “Despite all this, Vladimir Vladimirovich, and despite the new major criminal provocations in the last few days, I would consider it important not to succumb to these provocative actions, clearly aimed at disrupting negotiations and continuing to receive weapons from European countries.”

Russian retaliation, it has been decided and now announced publicly, waits on the Trump Administration to respond to the Russian terms which have been tabled in Istanbul. Read Sections I, II, and III of the Russian Memorandum here.

Over the 72 hours since the Kiev regime claimed credit for planning and executing the successful attack on Russia’s nuclear bomber fleet, Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth have kept silent. Asked for Trump’s reaction, the White House press spokesman was evasive, saying instead: “Well, look, the reaction is this war needs to come to an end. And this war has been, uh, brutal from both sides. Too many people have died and the president wants this war to end at the negotiating table. And he’s made that very clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.”

That the June 1 attack may have removed the point for Putin to continue at the negotiating table is not accepted at the White House because the Kremlin has denied it. Putin’s message for Trump was conveyed Lavrov in a telephone call to Rubio eight hours after the attacks. Rubio’s “read-out” on the conversation was the shortest in the State Department history of crisis communications with the Russians.

The White House negotiator for peace terms, General Keith Kellogg, is, until now, the only senior US official to acknowledge that the Ukrainian strike was strategic warfare. “The risk levels are going up”, Kellogg told Fox News late on June 3. “Any time you attack the [nuclear] triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad itself, the delivery vehicles, the bombers, it’s the psychological impact you have… it shows Ukraine is not lying down on this. We can play this game too.”

Kellogg added an apparent qualifier to his admission the Kiev regime has not been engaging in terrorism. “We [the Ukrainians] can raise the risk levels that are, to me, basically unacceptable”.

Listen to the discussion with Nima Alkhorshid and Ray McGovern. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQrQGI_Y6hc

The June 1 attack on the Tupolev nuclear-capable bomber fleet targeted five airbases which are located apart from each other by distances of 3,000 kilometres north-south and 5,000 kms west-east, simultaneously coordinating the launch of 117 drones – Zelensky’s number. The operation was planned and executed by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) under the direct supervision of Zelensky. “ ‘Thirty-four percent of strategic cruise missile carriers at the main airfields of the Russian Federation were hit,’ the SBU said on the Telegram messaging app. President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, writing on Telegram, expressed delight at the ‘absolutely brilliant outcome…This is our longest-range operation.’”

In Russian terms, this is a a clear breach of the red line in the government’s nuclear warfighting and deterrence doctrine, issued last December, of Articles 11 and 19( c).

HOW RUSSIA DEFINES THE NUCLEAR WARFARE RED LINES

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Source: https://www.mid.ru/en/foreign_policy/in ... y/1434131/

The published policy paper identifies “potential adversaries” as “individual states and military coalitions (blocs, alliances), that consider the Russian Federation as a potential adversary and possess nuclear and (or) other types of weapons of mass destruction or significant combat capabilities of general purpose forces”. No distinction is made between nuclear states, non-nuclear states, and terrorist formations.

The Russian law defining terrorism, enacted in 2006, refers to the ideology or purpose of “terrorist activities”, lists six types of “terrorist activity”, and defines a “terrorist act” as “making an explosion, arson or other actions connected with frightening the population and posing the danger of loss of life, of causing considerable damage to property or the onset of an ecological catastrophe , as well as other especially grave consequences.”

Terrorist organizations are defined in circular form as “an unlawful armed unit, criminal association (criminal organization) or an organized group for implementation of an act of terrorism”. For this reason, the Russian law fails to address the role of adversary states in financing, arming, training, and directing such units against Russia.

Also omitted from Russian law is the distinction between acts of terrorism and acts of war. Accordingly, in the official announcement of the June 1 attack by the Russian Ministry of Defense it was not claimed that the Kiev regime had carried out an act of war, but rather that “the Kiev regime carried out a terrorist attack using FPV drones against airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions. All terrorist attacks were repelled at the military airfields in the Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur regions.”

In no other state, either allied with Russia in the present war such as China, Iran and North Korea, or allied with the US and NATO against Russia, is there a law differentiating between state acts of war and state acts of terrorism. They are one and the same, a retired Indian general comments. He points out that following the latest war between India and Pakistan, “India has treated terrorists as state proxies and established the norm that Pakistan will be punished for any act of terror against India starting yesterday. That is any acts of terror against civilians will mean Field Marshal [Army chief of Staff Asim] Munir and his generals will be culpable and they will be hit hard. Russians are doing the opposite. They are calling an act of war by a state against its strategic military infrastructure as an act of terror. Why is that?”

During Wednesday in Moscow Putin described terrorism as attacks targeting civilian populations; he also described the Zelensky regime as a terrorist organization. The Bryansk and Kursk attacks were “a targeted strike against civilians, and for all international standards such actions are called terrorism. All crimes that were committed in relation to civilians, including women and children, on the eve of the next round the proposed peace talks in Istanbul were certainly aimed at to disrupt the negotiation process…This only confirms our fears that the illegitimate regime in Kiev, which once it had seized power, has gradually degenerated into a terrorist organization, and its sponsors have become accomplices of terrorists.”

The Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova amplified the point in a briefing for the press held at the same time as Putin’s meeting with ministers. “The terrorist nature of the Kiev regime”, she began. “The Kiev regime and its European, Western sponsors have made a lot of efforts to disrupt another round of talks in Istanbul and thereby torpedo the emerging peace process. They have loved the terrorist methods.”

Zakharova was then asked whether “the West was involved in attacks on Russian air bases and infrastructure that occurred over the weekend? If so, what countries are we talking about? What will Russia’s response be?”

She replied: “The West is involved in the terrorist activities of the Kiev regime. Firstly, the countries of the ‘collective West’ supply weapons precisely in order to carry out terrorist attacks. They do not impose any conditions or restrictions. To questions of how appropriate it is to supply weapons and to the extent, from a legal point of view, to supply weapons that are used for terrorist activities, they have long ceased to respond. Secondly, they act as gunners, provide coordinates. Only Western countries and Western companies have such opportunities. Thirdly, no terrorist attack, which was substantiated with all the facts, has ever received any condemnation. No one in Western countries (at the official level) has even tried to knock’ the Kiev regime…Fourth, the West provides political support and politically motivates the Kiev regime to such steps.”

HOW THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION HAS REACTED

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Since the Sunday, June 1, operation in Russia, which took place in the early morning Washington time, the official schedule of the President has listed a golf game on Sunday, a lunch with Vice President JD Vance on Monday, and an intelligence briefing on Wednesday.

On Tuesday, the White House press spokesman was asked “what’s the president’s reaction to that Ukrainian drone attack, stunning drone attack on Russian air bases? I’m sure he saw that. What’s his reaction?” The spokesman’s answer was: “Well, look, the reaction is this war needs to come to an end. And this war has been, uh, brutal from both sides. Too many people have died and the president wants this war to end at the negotiating table. And he’s made that very clear to both leaders, both publicly and privately.”

There have been no comments or briefings at the State Department and Pentagon. The only press release from Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, was reported on June 2: “Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard is considering a major overhaul of President Trump’s daily intelligence briefing, which includes a version making it more like a Fox News show.”

On June 3, in an interview with Fox News, General Kellogg made the only explicit official statement on the airbase attack. “The risk levels are going up because you are not sure what the other side is going to do,” Kellogg said. “Any time you attack the triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad, it’s not so much the damage you do to the triad itself, the delivery vehicles, the bombers, it’s the psychological impact you have… it shows Ukraine is not lying down on this. We can play this game too. We can raise the risk levels that are, to me, basically unacceptable”. — on Min 3:00 .

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Source: https://x.com/generalkellogg/

Kellogg also claimed that “what really concerned me” was that the Ukrainians “attacked the Northern Fleet headquarters in Severomorsk. If that’s the case, if we knew it [the attack] had two legs of the triad, first of all it’s a very bold attack, and when you do that it’s very clear the risk levels go up. And I think that’s what we are trying to avoid. We’re trying to get to a position when the risk levels are going so high, that this thing will expand, and that’s where we don’t want to be.”

Kellogg’s mention on June 3 of an alleged drone attack on the Russian nuclear submarine base at Severomorsk is surprising because the initial reports circulating in the afternoon of June 1 had mistaken the smoke and explosion noise at the Olenya airbase nearby for an attack at Severomorsk. The confusion was quickly clarified by the Russian authorities in the region. US military intelligence, to which Kellogg had access, had also ruled out the claim.

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Source: https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/1929154421897752916

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Source: https://gcaptain.com/russias-northern-f ... l-reports/

Two days later, however, Kellogg knew there had been no attack at Severomorsk. According to the maritime publication gCaptain, which is close to US Navy intelligence, “unlike Russia’s Black Sea assets – which have suffered substantial losses at around 40 percent – the Northern Fleet’s surface ships and submarines have thus far not been successfully targeted by Ukrainian drone attacks. In September 2024 a number of long-range drones reached the Olenya Airbase to the south, where they were subsequently shot down, though unverified sources say some drones reached the airfield. It is unclear if those previous Ukrainian attacks targeted the Northern Fleet located 90 kilometers to the north of Olenya or were intended for the airbase.”

If Kellogg had been ordered to put distance between Trump and Zelensky, between the US Administration and the Kiev regime, on the strategic threats of the June 1 operation, it is unclear who is giving the orders, while Kellogg himself appears to be uncertain what Trump’s policy will be if Putin retaliates.

The uncertainty in Moscow does not appear to be Putin’s. “Why has Russia deliberately ignored the aggressive attacks of the Ukrainian side during the [June 2 Istanbul] negotiations?” asked Vzglyad. Promoting the policy of turning-the-other-cheek, the publication has been told by its Kremlin sources to support “stretching the peace process to the limit” in order to test how Trump will respond.

According to the Russian military source, “political functionaries [the Kremlin, Foreign Ministry] have their focus on Memorandum and expect it will be signed. Now we wait for Trump to deliver.”

https://johnhelmer.net/what-is-putin-to ... more-91782

*******

Russian Military to Decide Response to Ukrainian Strike, Kremlin Says

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Dmitry Peskov. X/ @Shadi_Alkasim

June 5, 2025 Hour: 8:36 am


Peskov confirmed that President Putin discussed this issue during a phone call with Donald Trump.

On Thursday, Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that the military will determine how and when to respond to the recent Ukrainian strike on Russia’s strategic aviation.

He also confirmed that President Vladimir Putin discussed this issue on Wednesday during a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump.

This marked the first official Russian comment on the matter after the U.S. president said Wednesday that Putin had told him he plans to respond to the recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian territory.

“It was a good conversation, but not one that will lead to immediate peace. President Putin stated very firmly that he will have to respond to the recent strike on the airfields,” Trump wrote on the social media platform Truth Social.


Shortly after posting the message, the Republican deleted it for unknown reasons before reposting it later without any changes. During the call, Trump told Putin that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had not informed him in advance of the strike on Russia’s strategic aviation bases.

Meanwhile, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Russia would repair the equipment damaged in the attacks on the airfields, which took place over the weekend.

“The equipment in question, as already stated by the Defense Ministry, was not destroyed, but damaged. And it will be restored,” he said, urging the public not to trust information released by Kyiv about the consequences of the attack, including claims that around 40 Russian strategic aircraft were hit.

According to Russian military bloggers, a dozen strategic aircraft were damaged in the weekend drone strike on military airfields in Murmansk, in northern Russia, and in Siberia.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/russian- ... mlin-says/

******

Trump Calls Putin Again: Comment by Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov
Karl Sanchez
Jun 04, 2025

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As soon as I published Medinsky’s report I learned of this note by the Kremlin: “Comment by Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov following Vladimir Putin's telephone conversation with US President Donald Trump.” Apparently, Trump has issued his own interpretation of the call; given his penchant for prevaricating about most everything, what Ushakov reveals is likely correct.
Ushakov: Good evening, colleagues!

About an hour ago, the fourth telephone conversation between our President and US President Donald Trump ended. If you are interested, the conversation this time lasted about one hour and ten minutes.

How did the conversation start? Naturally, with a discussion of the situation around Ukraine. Vladimir Putin spoke in detail about the results of the second round of direct Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul.

These negotiations, as it was emphasized, Ukraine tried to disrupt by carrying out targeted attacks on purely civilian targets, on the civilian population, on the direct instructions of the Kiev regime. This is clearly qualified as terrorism by international law, and, in our opinion, the Kiev regime has essentially degenerated into a terrorist organization. The Russian side did not succumb to provocations–-and the second round, as you know, was held in Istanbul.

I would like to emphasize once again that our President elaborated on the content of the talks and their results and stressed that in general these talks were useful. The relevant memoranda submitted to each other will be analyzed in the capitals—in Moscow and in Kiev—and then, as we hope, the parties can continue negotiations.

As for the strikes on military airfields, this topic was also raised. Moreover, Donald Trump reiterated that the Americans were not informed about this in advance.

Naturally, the leaders agreed to continue contacts on the Ukrainian issue, including at the highest level, as well as at other levels and through other channels.

But apart from that, in addition to Ukraine, a number of international issues were discussed, I would say, with an emphasis on the somewhat stalled situation in the negotiations between the United States and Iran on the Iranian nuclear program.

Donald Trump believes that Russian assistance may be needed here, and he would be grateful if Russia could work with the Iranian side accordingly.

In addition, the Middle East was also touched upon, as well as the armed conflict between India and Pakistan, which was stopped with the personal participation of President Trump.

In addition, the Presidents exchanged views on the prospects for restoring Russian-American cooperation in various areas, which, according to the two presidents, have a huge potential.

At the end of the meeting, the two leaders described the exchange of views as positive and very productive. Both President Trump and our President have confirmed their readiness to remain in constant contact with each other. I would also like to note that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin highly appreciated the efforts of the representative of the US President, Stephen Whitkoff.

That's about what I could say after the conversation that took place. {My Emphasis]
Interesting choice of words on the airfield strikes: “Donald Trump reiterated that the Americans were not informed about this in advance.” Which Americans? Team Trump or the planners from Team Biden? Trump himself said Russia would be hit by something very soon just before the terror attacks. A very large proportion of Russians have no trust in Trump and see him as no different from all the previous lie-soaked US presidents and their administrations. There was no report of Trump offering condolences for the deaths in the terror attacks. IMO, the call was a CYA exercise (Cover Your Ass). I’m surprised no discussion was mentioned about the upsetting of the New START Treaty by the airfield attacks.

https://karlof1.substack.com/p/trump-ca ... comment-by

(I'll re-post Medinsky’s report later today, quite long.)

*****

The growing challenge of the "ghost fleet" to illegal sanctions
June 4, 2025 , 7:28 am .

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Tankers continue to transport hydrocarbons on the global market despite illegal U.S. sanctions (Photo: File)

Venezuelan oil exports remained stable through May 2025, despite increased pressure from the United States.

According to vessel tracking data published by Reuters , some 30 vessels departed from Venezuelan ports that month, carrying an average of 779,000 barrels per day (b/d) of crude oil and refined products, as well as 291,000 metric tons of derivatives and petrochemicals.

Although this figure represents a slight contraction compared to the 783,000 b/d recorded in April , a marginal reduction of just 4,000 b/d, it is part of a process of strategic reconfiguration of Venezuelan oil trade.

The decline in shipments to the United States was offset by a marked increase in shipments via Asia, particularly to China, amid a progressive decline in authorized sales from Washington.

The gradual decoupling of the US market as a destination for Venezuelan oil has been met with a proactive market diversification strategy. China has emerged as the main destination, receiving 584,000 barrels per day in May, compared to 521,000 barrels per day in April.

In contrast, the United States received just 140,000 barrels per day, a slight increase from the 130,000 barrels per day the previous month, but far from the volumes handled during the full term of Chevron's license.

At the same time, scheduled trade with European players such as Switzerland's Vitol and France's Maurel & Prom—which operate as a joint venture in Venezuela—was maintained, a relationship that demonstrates the persistence, even under restrictions, of authorized or "tolerated" forms of trade within the sanctions framework.

Venezuela, in turn, significantly increased its imports of heavy naphtha, a key input for diluting the extra-heavy crude from the Hugo Chávez Orinoco Oil Belt. Imports rose from 94,000 barrels per day in April to 159,000 barrels per day in May, indicating an effort to secure export flows in the event of potential logistical or contractual disruptions with Western suppliers.

This trade dynamic is accompanied by a logistics phenomenon that has been consolidating in recent years: the emergence and expansion of the so-called "brave fleet," also known as the "dark fleet" or "ghost fleet."

These are vessels that deactivate their AIS tracking systems, operate under flags of convenience, or are registered in opaque jurisdictions to evade illicit sanctions imposed by the United States and its partners. In fact, in 2023 , there were nearly 7,500 tankers in the global fleet, of which more than 1,600 had participated in the transport of sanctioned oil.

Between May 13 and 25, 2025, the number of active tankers of this type grew from 1,172 to 1,223, according to data from the specialized portal TankerTrackers.com. Of these vessels, 576 are sanctioned by the US, 330 by the European Union, and 263 by the United Kingdom. Despite this, they continue to conduct regular operations in ports in China, India, and other countries in the Global South that maintain strategic energy relations with Venezuela, regardless of US pressure.

This phenomenon is yet another manifestation of the transformation of the global oil market under sanctions. 61% of the world's crude oil is transported by sea. When certain routes are restricted by coercive measures, the market reacts by adapting its mechanisms: logistics chains are redrawn, new maritime corridors emerge, and players diversify.

According to data provided by Executive Vice President and Minister of Hydrocarbons, Delcy Rodríguez, 26% of the world's daily oil production is the target of unilateral sanctions, primarily US sanctions.
Countries like Russia have acquired hundreds of foreign-flagged vessels to secure their exports; Iran has perfected offshore transshipment operations; and Venezuela has persuaded a growing number of legally insured tankers to accept reputational or legal risks in order to keep trade flowing.

This reorganization has increased costs: higher freight rates, high insurance premiums, and legal risks associated with the transport and financing of sanctioned crude. However, it has also fostered the emergence of new intermediaries, shipbrokers, and insurers , primarily throughout Asia , occupying the space previously dominated by London and New York.

In short, the more attempts are made to restrict access to the global market for certain producing countries, the more the processes of creating alternatives accelerate, with a tendency to become systemic.

Illegal sanctions have failed to paralyze hydrocarbon trade but have instead stimulated a reconfiguration of the international energy ecosystem, consolidating a new trade network that openly challenges the dollar-centric architecture of global control and the Western monopoly on insurance, ports, and routes.

https://misionverdad.com/venezuela/el-c ... s-ilegales

Google Translator
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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