Russia has responded to claims that keep appearing in western media outlets, including those made by ‘peegate’ dossier author Christopher Steele, that Vladimir Putin is dying of a terminal illness.
Lurid assertions about Putin’s health appear to be part of a black propaganda campaign to deflate the ‘masculine’ image Putin tries to portray, given that they appear to be backed by no actual evidence whatsoever.
Indeed, the much vaunted ‘fact-checkers’ seem to be AWOL on this one.
The claims, which are almost always made by anonymous intelligence officials, include;
– Putin has Parkinson’s disease.
– Putin has dementia.
– Putin has blood cancer.
– Putin is suffering from “chemo brain”, a cognitive impairment caused by cancer treatment.
– Putin recently underwent major surgery.
– Putin is taking steroids to hide his symptoms.
– Putin is “constantly” being followed around by doctors.
– Putin is fooling the word by using “pre-recorded appearances.”
– Putin is using “body doubles” and “actors” to fulfil his public appearances.
– Putin’s health woes have weakened his grip on power, which is now tenuous.
– Putin may even be dead already but that it won’t be admitted for “months” to avoid a Kremlin coup.
Of course, no one knows the true state of Putin’s health because NATO-aligned spies and corporate media outlets will always seek to play up the most dire speculation in an effort to undermine the Russian president.
One insight into the veracity of such reports is that the claims are being amplified by British spy Christopher Steele, who infamously authored the dubious Trump dossier which has been roundly debunked.
The report, which was funded by Hillary Clinton’s campaign in an effort to get dirt on Trump, ludicrously claimed that Trump had visited Moscow to have women urinate on him.
“It was later revealed that Trump did not go to Russia when Steele claimed he did, and that Steele’s primary source for the document was based in the United States, not Russia. That source later personally debunked the “pee tape” allegation while speaking to the FBI,” writes Tom Pappert.
Even the New York Times was forced to acknowledge that Steele’s work has been “discredited,” so his claims on Putin’s health should be taken with a grain of salt.
Russia has now officially responded to the claims in the form of a statement made by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who stressed that Putin makes daily appearances in public.
“You can see him on TV screens, read, and listen to his speeches. I don’t think that a sane person can suspect any signs of an illness or ailment in this man,” said Lavrov.
“I’ll leave it on the conscience of those who disseminate such rumors despite daily opportunities for everyone to see how he and others look like,” he added.
ATHENS – Greek largest opposition party, Coalition of the Radical Left – Progressive Alliance (SYRIZA), on Tuesday asked the Greek government to clarify the legal grounds for the confiscation of Iranian oil from a former Russian-flagged tanker at the request of the United States.
“What was the legal basis for the US request for legal assistance in confiscating oil from the tanker? Was the proposal of the [Greek] anti-money laundering authority to continue the detention of the Russian ship contrary [to the US request]? On what legal basis did the ship remain detained during the time between the cancellation of the original decision about its arrest by the anti-money laundering authority and the decision of the one-judge trial court of Chalcis to grant the US request?” the party said in a statement.
The party added that initially, the anti-money laundering authority decided not to confiscate Iranian oil or detain the tanker. US sanctions against Iran are not considered legal by the EU and Greece, the party noted.
The party also asked what actions had been taken for the immediate release of the crew, and why Greece did not receive significant support from the US, which initiated the process of confiscation.
Last Friday, Iran’s armed forces captured two Greek-flagged oil tankers — the Delta Poseidon and the Prudent Warrior — in Persian Gulf waters, reportedly in response to the seizure of the Iranian-flagged tanker Lana in Greek waters in mid-April on suspicion that it was avoiding EU sanctions. The US claimed that the vessel was carrying Iranian crude, subject to US sanctions, and requested that the cargo be handed over to it, despite later reports that it was a Russian-flagged tanker Pegas that had changed its ownership before entering Greek waters.
One recalls that when war fever surged demanding intervention by Imperial Britain in the Russo-Turkish War of 1877, a song became popular in the music halls which included “We don’t want to fight, But by Jingo if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, we’ve got the money too.” If the refrain sounds familiar, it should as the United States has been experiencing extreme “jingoism” since 2001. Any rejection of the “rules based international order” established and policed by “leader of the free world” Washington has resulted in immediate punishment by sanctions followed by threats of military intervention. In some cases, as in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, the actual armed intervention seeking regime change has been the end result. And it is all done to spread “freedom” and “democracy,” a claim that might be disputed by the millions of dead mostly Muslims who have had to suffer the consequences.
So the United States of America has been a country, like its best friend Israel, that seems to be perpetually at war… so what else is new? What’s new is that under President Joe Biden there has been zero diplomacy and almost reflexive reliance on wielding the “big stick.” To quote another bon mot from one of my favorite authors Raymond Chandler, creator of private eye Philip Marlowe, “… when in doubt, have two guys come through the door with guns.”
Don’t worry, Chandler’s two guys and many more like them are now in Ukraine under cover and in mufti training Ukrainians to use all the nifty Raytheon and Lockheed toys Uncle Joe has sent them. They are working together with the largely neocon advisers coaching Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is guarded by British and US special forces, on what to say and do during his increasingly strident international calls to widen the war. If they are successful and manage to sink another Russian ship or two using harpoon missiles, which Zelensky is threatening to do, the proxy US war with Russia could quickly become for real. Zelensky’s family meanwhile is reportedly safely ensconced in an $8 million villa in Israel. He also has a multi-million dollar villa property near Miami and another in Tuscany. Who would have thought that being president of the poorest country in Europe could bring such material rewards?
Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone, who has a huge worldwide audience, opines that Biden is possibly the worst US president ever, worse even that his consistently denigrated predecessor and media punching bag Donald Trump. Her recent article succinctly addresses what makes Biden’s egregious failure both different and incredibly dangerous. She writes “Preventing nuclear war is a US president’s single most important job. It’s so important you shouldn’t even really have to talk about it, because it’s so self-evidently the number one priority. And this administration is just rolling the dice on nuclear conflict with increasing frequency every day. Even if humanity survives this standoff (and the one with China that’s next in line), Biden will still have been an unforgivably depraved president for allowing it to get this close. There’s no excuse whatsoever for just casually rolling the dice on all terrestrial life like this.”
Indeed, Joe Biden’s latest tricks include declaring that the US will go to war with China to protect Taiwan if Beijing should prove so bold as to want to take control of its wayward province. But the US established policy is to maintain “strategic ambiguity” about China/Taiwan, a diplomatic solution crafted in 1979 to help prevent any provocations by either party that would lead to the situation developing into a shooting war. Joe seems to have missed that point, if he ever understood it in the first place, and certainly his advisers appear to be no more savvy than he is, though the White House quickly issued a correction on the apparent gaffe in the form of a statement that automatic defense of Taiwan is not official policy. Yet.
But my favorite move by the Biden Administration, if one might be so bold as to suggest that it is actually capable of administering anything more kinetic than a hot dog stand, is the latest pander to Israel. The recent murder by military sharpshooter of Palestinian/American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh followed by a humiliating spectacle of police violence at the funeral as well as subsequently at a second Palestinian funeral, actually found some administration flunkies and congress critters calling for a full investigation by Israel. The Israeli government and army refused to do so and the White House has pretended that there is no longer anything to see or consider. Israeli Defense (sic) Minister Benny Gantz recently visited Washington but the issue of a murdered American was not even raised as top officials tried to outdo each other in expressing both their love for and fealty to the Jewish state, which Biden will soon be visiting. The US president will ignore the fact that Israel is celebrating his visit with its greatest eviction of Palestinian residents in twenty years.
That the United States has been a major source of money, weapons and political cover for Israel since 1967 if not before is indisputable, the result of corruption of America’s government at all levels by the groups and billionaires euphemistically described as the “Israel Lobby.” War criminal Israeli leaders like Ariel Sharon and Benjamin Netanyahu have boasted about their control over Congress and the White House as well as the media and every time Israel does something atrocious the only US response has been to give it more money. Israel would sorely love to have the United States fights its wars, most prominently by attacking Iran, but somehow that military intervention and regime change, apart from a number of assassinations, has not yet taken place.
But now all of that might be changing due to a combination of the Biden regime’s recklessness and Israel’s genuine contempt for the American people, who they have been parasitically feeding off of since their settler state was founded. The US has, for the first time, participated in a large-scale military exercise with Israel on May 18th which was designed to simulate an attack on Iran using American Air Force refueling planes to enhance the ability of Israel to keep its jets flying to maintain air superiority over the Persians. It was a war game in the most literal sense even though the tanker aircraft did not actually refuel any Israeli planes and it basically commits the United States to be a dedicated participant if the Israelis should throw the dice and chance on a military attack on Iran’s presumed nuclear and air defense sites.
I also smell a possible false flag if the exercise is repeated, as it surely will be. What if one of the US planes taking part in a future exercise were to be shot down in an incident staged by Israel that might plausibly be attributed to Iran? As the exercises will presumably take place over the Mediterranean Sea in the coastal waters part of which Israel has inter alia stolen from Gaza and controls, bringing Iran into the equation would be difficult but possible to manage with enough cleverness combined with hubris, which the Israelis have in plentiful supply. That Israel would without hesitation shed American blood if it were to advance its own perceived interests should not be doubted by anyone. Look only at the two Israel false flag attacks against the US, the Lavon bombing incident in 1954 and the bloody assault on the USS Liberty in 1967, which killed 34 American sailors and injured more than a hundred others in an attempt to sink the ship and kill all its crew. That is the Israel America has grown to love and nourish, a viper in one’s bosom, always willing to strike the body that feeds it.
But to return to Caitlin Johnstone’s observation, America is in deep trouble. Its economy is visibly sinking while standards of living are dropping and will decline further as military spending grows while both the increasingly “woke” educational system and industrial base are no longer competitive. We have a plausibly psychopathic government that is bringing us to the brink of war with several nuclear powers. What we Americans need is not another war, but rather an end to war, particular those wars that can somehow kill most or even all of us. Instead, help build pressure to wind down the Ukraine war through negotiations, stop feeding Zelensky with weapons and money. Leave China alone and stop being Israel’s patsy against Iran and inside Syria. Try to get along with competitors. It would indeed be a Brave New World, wouldn’t it? A country at peace with itself and working to benefit the American people – something that we have rarely seen since 1945.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Russia is not preventing ships from transporting grain out of Ukraine, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Tuesday, and Western claims to the contrary are part of a smear campaign that will do nothing to solve the global food crisis.
The only party actually preventing ships from using Ukrainian ports and exporting grain by sea is Ukraine itself, he added, because it deployed sea mines that have made navigation unsafe.
“If the demining problem is solved, then in the open sea… the Russian Navy will ensure unrestricted movement of ships to the Mediterranean,” Lavrov said during a press conference.
“Russia had made all the guarantees it could make a long time ago,” he added.
The foreign minister suggested that Western politicians who have expressed concerns over surging food prices should do something to address the problem. After all, Western sanctions have disrupted the logistical and financial infrastructure that Russia uses to export its own grain, he said.
“They should have some thought and decide what is more important to them: Milking publicity from the issue of food security or solving this problem.”
Lavrov was responding to criticism from the US and its allies, who claim that a Russian naval blockade is preventing grain exports from Ukraine. The Russian military says a corridor in the Black Sea is available for civilian traffic every day.
The first of the 64 US-made F-35 fighter jets that will arrive in Finland in 2026 will be placed at a new air base in Lapland, its northernmost county. Its construction will begin this year and will cost the Nordic country 150 million euros ($161 million), the national broadcaster Yle reported.
According to the commander of the Lapland air base, Colonel Tuukka Karjalainen, the location was chosen based on its proximity to Norway, a NATO member which already uses F-35s. As of now, Finland’s northernmost air force base, in Rovaniemi, stages regular training missions with the Swedish and Norwegian air forces. To begin with, the new base will receive two to six new aircraft.
“The hope is that this will create opportunities for cooperation and facilitate the implementation of the technology,” Tuukka Karjalainen told Yle. “We are very pleased. We are proud to be adopting new equipment. The jobs at the Lapland air base will certainly attract many,” he added.
According to Karjalainen, auxiliary buildings, fences and roads will be built by the end of this year. The main construction will begin in the first half of 2023. Over the past two years, the cost estimate has soared by tens of millions of euros, with Karjalainen blaming stricter technical requirements and increased prices.
Pilots, mechanics and maintenance personnel will be trained in the US. According to Karjalainen, 18 pilots and about 50 technicians will go to the US for training in 2025. Later, they themselves will train specialists in Finland.
The Finnish Air Forces announced the purchase of 64 Lockheed Martin F-35 multi-role fighters back in February in an 8.4 billion euro ($9 billion) deal with the US defence contractor. The new fighters will replace Finland’s ageing fleet of F-18 Hornets, which is planned to be phased out by 2030.
Previously, Finland’s neighbours Norway and Denmark opted to make the F-35 the backbone of their air forces, procuring 52 and 27 fighter jets respectively.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has announced he will submit a draft bill to parliament giving special status to Poles in Ukraine. It mirrors and reciprocates a similar bill recently endorsed by Poland. The unprecedented bill grants Ukrainians almost the same rights as Polish citizens, regarding social benefits, education, residence, and so on. Zelensky’s announcement was made during the Polish President Andrzej Duda’s visit to the Ukrainian Parliament on May 22.
In his speech, Zelensky also announced plans for bilateral agreements pertaining to joint border and customs control. Interestingly, he had this to say about Poland: “Our nations are also brothers (…) and there should be no borders or barriers between us.” He added: “The unity of our nations must last forever”. Given the complex Warsaw-Kiev history, these dramatic statements have certainly raised eyebrows. Andrzej Duda in turn said in his own speech that “the Polish–Ukrainian border should unite, not divide.” On May 3, Duda had already stated that he hopes one day “there will be no border” between the two countries.
Considering these statements and previous Russian intelligence reports, it is no wonder Maria Zakharova, official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has described Zelensky’s plan as “legalizing the Polish takeover of Ukraine.”
Since the beginning of the Russian military operation in Ukraine in February, Polish authorities in Warsaw have been providing Kiev with support and there has been a lot of cooperation. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict has projected Poland – NATO’s largest state member in Eastern Europe – as a strategic player in the region, as it is no stranger to great-power confrontations.
It is thus not far-fetched at all to interpret the initiatives discussed and the rhetoric employed by the two leaders as a kind of first step towards a future Ukrainian-Polish confederation. Such a “merging” scenario, in a very creative way, could thereby “hack” the long process of bringing Kiev into the EU and the Western bloc, a goal which the West clearly pursues by whatever means necessary – as has been indicated by Macron’s recent proposal to create a new and more inclusive European political organization, for instance.
Interestingly, this possible future development would accomplish the same thing a military “annexation” would – and even so might also pave the way for a future Polish peace mission. On April 28, the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s director claimed Poland was secretly planning to employ its troops to partly take over Western Ukraine, with American support. The justification for that would be “to defend” the neighboring country from “Russian aggression”. According to Russian intelligence, in late April, this so-called peace mission was being discussed with Biden’s officials and was still under preliminary agreements.
Moreover, Polish officials were supposedly negotiating with members of the Ukrainian elite to change Kiev’s policies by making them more “democratic” and pro-Warsaw, so as to counterbalance its nationalist elements. These data have been reported by the Russian press and such coverage has often been labeled as Russian “propaganda” and “disinformation” by Western media. The Russian intelligence also worried that such a development, if it came to fruition, would actually pave the way for a kind of future “reunification”.
Historically, Western Ukraine was ruled by Poland a number of times, including after the 1921 Riga peace treaty, and anti-Polish feelings are part of Ukrainian nationalism today. While Warsaw has been supporting Kiev in key strategic issues since the 2014 Maidan revolution, the very way both countries perceive and politicize 20th century history has hampered their bilateral relations. During World War II, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) cooperated with the Nazi Waffen-SS and several war crimes were commited against Poles. Today’s post-Maidan Ukraine glorifies UPA leader Stepan Bandera and this fact is not well received in Poland.
Here, some older history is relevant. A large part of today’s Ukraine was once dominated by the then Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. After 1349, then Ruthenia, which largely corresponds to today’s Western Ukraine, was subjected to foreign domination. By 1569, most of it became Polish territory. The pressures for Polonization, which included converting to Roman Catholicism, the ongoing enserfment of the peasantry by Poland, and the persecution of the Orthodox Church alienated peasants and Cossacks. In 1648, the Cossack leader Bohdan Khmelnytsky led an uprising against the Polish King, founded the Cossack Hetmanate, and was hailed a liberator of the people. In 1654, with the Pereyaslav agreement, this new Cossack state pledged its loyalty to the Russian Tsar. To this day, Khmelnytsky is hailed by some as a Ukrainian national hero and a precursor of nationalism because of his fight against Polish domination – even though some criticize him for his alliance with the Tsar.
Dmytro Yarosh, adviser to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Valerii Zaluzhny, stated in an interview on May 27, 2019 that Zelensky would “lose his life” and “hang on a tree on Khreshchatyk” if he “betrayed” Ukrainian nationalists by negotiating an end to the civil war in Donbass. Yarosh is a co-founder of the Right Sector and former commander of the far-right Ukrainian Volunteer Army. Therefore, considering Kiev’s persistent problem with extremist violence and the blatant neo-Nazism of its key Azov battalion, not to mention the complicated Polish-Ukrainian relations historically, one can conclude that Zelensky and Duda’s plans will face some challenges, and could escalate internal tensions dramatically.
To understand the war in Ukraine, you have understand the events that led up to it. And no preceding event is more important than the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych’s government in February of 2014.
Officially known as the ‘Revolution of Dignity’, it was denounced by Vladimir Putin as an “unconstitutional coup”. And while most Western media stick to the official nomenclature, some prominent voices dissent. John Mearsheimer has referred to “the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president”, while George Friedman has described what happened as “the most blatant coup in history”.
A recap of the basic facts is in order.
In November of 2013, Yanukovych’s government suspended plans for signing an Association Agreement with the EU, and decided to renew talks with Russia. This decision sparked protests in Ukraine’s capital city, Kiev. By December, the number of protestors had reached the tens of thousands, and a permanent encampment had been established on Maidan square. Although most of the protesters were ordinary Ukrainians, far-right groups were also present.
Beginning in December, there were violent clashes between protesters and the police. On 23rd January, protestors succeeded in occupying various buildings around Maidan square. The situation came to a head on 18–20th February when protestors were fired upon by snipers, leaving scores dead and hundreds wounded. A dozen police offers were also killed in the clashes. From November 2013 to February 2014, 112 protestors and 18 police officers lost their lives; though most of the killings happened on 20th February.
On 21st February, Yanukovych signed an agreement with the parliamentary opposition calling for reforms and new elections. But the next day, he was impeached by the Ukrainian parliament. This impeachment process was in several respects unconstitutional, and Yanukovych declared he was still “the legitimate head of the Ukrainian state elected in a free vote by Ukrainian citizens”. However, he subsequently fled to Russia and a new government was formed.
The ‘Revolution of Dignity’ led immediately to Russia’s annexation of Crimea, and the outbreak of civil war in Donbas – so its geopolitical importance can hardly be overstated. Yet despite huge international attention, one question remains shrouded in mystery: who ordered snipers to fire at protestors on 18–20th February?
The ‘official’ narrative is that the snipers were from the Berkut – a special police unit loyal to Yanukovych. On the other hand, Russia has long maintained they were deployed by the Ukrainian far-right as part of a false flag operation to bring down Yanukovych’s government.
What is true is that more than eight years after the massacre – which took place amid a giant demonstration at the centre of Ukraine’s capital in front of dozens of television cameras – not a single person has been convicted. The perpetrators of one of the deadliest mass shootings in European history remain at large.
Why don’t we have an answer? Well, perhaps we do.
Away from the limelight, one Canadian academic has been poring over the evidence for the last eight years. And he’s convinced the ‘official’ narrative is wrong. Ivan Katchanovski (a political scientist at the University of Ottawa) believes the Maidan massacre was a false flag operation carried out by the Ukrainian far-right.
Professor Katchanovski cannot be dismissed as some fringe commenter or stooge of the Kremlin. He has published his arguments in scholarly books and journals, and has presented them at academic conferences. His latest article, which can be accessed for free, reviews all the evidence he’s collected to date – including witness testimonies, weapon ballistics and medical forensics. It’s based on hundreds of hours of footage of the Maidan massacre trials, as well as synchronised video segments of the massacre itself.
As Katchanovski explains, the ‘false flag theory’ first gained credence in March of 2014, when a phone call between two European officials was leaked online. During the call, the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet tells the EU’s Catherine Ashton about a conversation he’d had with someone called Olga:
What was quite disturbing, the same Olga told, all the evidence shows that people who were killed by snipers from both sides among policemen and then people from the streets – that they were the same snipers, killing people from both sides. She also showed me some photos. She said that as medical doctor, she can, you know, say that it is the same handwriting, same type of bullets. And it’s really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don’t want to investigate what exactly happened. So that there is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind snipers it was not Yanukovych but it was somebody from the new coalition.
‘Olga’ was later identified as Olga Bohomolets, a doctor who had treated wounded protestors on Maidan square. When quizzed by the press, she said she had not told Paet that somebody from the new coalition was behind the snipers. Likewise, the Estonian Foreign Ministry said, “We reject the claim that Paet was giving an assessment of the opposition’s involvement in the violence” (though they acknowledged the recording was authentic). It is still unclear why Paet would divulge such shocking revelations if he did not believe they had some basis in fact.
Aside from TV recordings and media reports, much of Katchanovski’s evidence comes from the trials of five Berkut police officers, who were charged with the murder of protestors on 20th February, 2014. Various other state actors, including Yanukovych himself, were also charged, but they were not brought to trial as they had already fled the country. (Recall that none of those put on trial were convicted.)
What, then, is Katchanovski’s evidence?
The majority of wounded protestors who testified at the trail said they were shot by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings. Remarkably, even many witnesses for the prosecution said this. Their testimony is consistent with video footage of journalists and protestors pointing to snipers in buildings like the Hotel Ukraine, which were under Maidan control at the time.
Police snipers testified that they had been ordered to locate and neutralise snipers firing from Maidan-controlled buildings. And Yanukovych himself, who appeared at the trial via video-link, testified that he had received reports of snipers firing from those buildings.
Several Georgian ex-military personnel who testified at the trail actually confessed they were among the snipers, and had been given orders by specific Maidan leaders to fire upon the protestors. They also testified that they had witnessed other snipers shooting from Maidan-controlled buildings. By contrast, no police officers or other state actors confessed to having fired upon protestors.
In the majority of cases where wounded protestors testified that they had been shot by snipers from police-controlled areas, other evidence contradicted their testimony. For example, synchronized video segments showed the exact times they were hit did not coincide with the exact times police officers were discharging their weapons. Other videos showed that several protesters were killed before police officers had even taken up their positions.
Forensic examinations by government experts revealed that the majority of protestors were shot from the side or back, and from top to bottom, strongly suggesting they had been hit by snipers from Maidan-controlled buildings. Only one protestor had a horizontal entry wound. Experts also determined that several protestors were killed by bullets that did not match those used by the police.
An American architecture company created a 3D model of the killing of three protestors, which was used as evidence that those protestors were in fact killed by the police. (This 3D model was covered in a 2018 New York Timesarticle.) However, the wound locations in the model did not match the wound locations from forensic medical examinations.
A screenshot from the video appendix to Katchanovski’s latest paper.
Aside from what Katchanovski calls “overwhelming evidence” that protestors were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings, he believes there was a cover-up by the post-Maidan authorities.
On 21st February, the Ukrainian parliament passed an amnesty law granting blanket immunity to Maidan protestors for serious crimes that had taken place during the protests. This law also prohibited investigation of the protestors for such crimes, and ordered that existing evidence be destroyed.
Two of the Berkut police officers who had been charged with murdering protestors were released by trial judges due to lack of evidence, suggesting the charges against them were trumped up. And all remaining defendants were released in a prisoner exchange within several months of the expected verdict.
Public statements made by various Maidan participants concerning the far-right’s involvement in the massacre were never investigated. One politician said she saw Maidan leaders bringing snipers into a building and then saw snipers firing from that building. Several activists said they witnessed snipers being evacuated by Maidan leaders. And another politician said that Maidan leaders had “arranged” the massacre.
There were unexplained reversals of testimony on the part of wounded Maidan protestors. Key pieces of evidence went missing or were destroyed. Several trees with bullet holes in them were cut down; all helmets and shields used by those who were shot disappeared, as did security camera footage from Maidan-controlled buildings.
Finally, two far-right politicians stated in separate interviews that a Western government official told them killings of a few protestors would not be enough for Western governments to stop recognising Yanukovych, and for that to happen the number of victims would need to be 100. The protesters who lost their lives subsequently became known as the “Heavenly Hundred”, even though some of those ‘hundred’ were not killed in the massacre itself (and in fact simply died of illness.)
On the basis of all the evidence he’s gathered, Katchanovski concludes that the Maidan massacre was “a false flag operation” which involved “elements of the Maidan leadership”.
If true, the implications are immense. It would mean the event that marked the turning point of Euromaidan – that set in motion Yanukovych’s removal from power – was in fact orchestrated by his political opponents. And aside from implicating those individuals in a brutal act of mass murder, it would remove any doubt that the that the ‘Revolution of Dignity’ was illegitimate.
Is it true?
I have been unable to track down any serious criticism of Katchanovski’s work, and when I reached out to him, he told me “there is no other scholarly study” that disputes his findings. What’s more, the political scientist Gordon Hahn reached similar conclusions in his bookUkraine Over the Edge: Russia, the West and the “New Cold War”.
So why haven’t Western governments shown more interest in investigating the massacre? I put this question to Katchanovski. He said that such an investigation would be “politically inconvenient” because it would “upend the narrative that the Western backed overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014 by the pro-Western Maidan opposition was peaceful and democratic”. He added that a definitive answer could be obtained by consulting relevant documents once they are declassified.
As I mentioned above, Katchanovski has published his arguments concerning the ‘false flag theory’ in scholarly books and journals, and has presented them at academic conferences. All the germane papers are available for free online. You might therefore expect for his work to have received significant media attention – particularly in the last few months.
Yet with the exception of a few ‘non-mainstream’ outlets, it hasn’t. Major Western media have ignored his studies “for political reasons”, he told me. This is despite the fact that Katchanovski’s other work on Ukraine (unrelated to the massacre) has received ample media attention, including from the Associated Press, Reuters and the Washington Post.
Katchanovski knows that certain media outlets are aware of his work because he’s brought it to their attention. Following the New York Timesarticle on the 3D model of killings at Maidan, he sent a letter to the editor pointing out they had “misrepresented the wound locations”. But his letter wasn’t published. In another case, “Open Democracy accepted a popular version of my Maidan massacre study, but then did not publish it.” Katchanovski said he gave “long interviews concerning the Maidan massacre to several major TV and Radio networks” but “none of them were broadcast”. In every single case “there was no reason given”.
The only time Katchanovski’s work on the massacre has been put under the spotlight was in Oliver Stone’s 2019 documentary Revealing Ukraine. This film is available on Rumble, and the relevant segment begins at 20:00.
What about everything that’s happened since? In our email exchange, Katchanovski clarified that the Maidan massacre “does not justify the Russian invasion and other actions in Ukraine”. Equally, however, Russia’s invasion does not justify ignoring – in his words – “overwhelming and undeniable evidence” of Maidan snipers.
If others believe that Katchanovski is mistaken, they must come forward and present their arguments. In the meantime, I would strongly recommend reading his papers: they make a compelling case that what’s been labelled a “conspiracy theory” is, in fact, true.
In December 2021 Norman Fenton, Martin Neil, Clare Craig, Josh Geutzkow, Joel Smalley, Scott McLachlan and Jonathan Engler published an article casting doubt on the vaccine efficacy implied by the UK’s official mortality statistics as they related to vaccination status, raising miscategorisation of vaccinated deaths soon after injection as unvaccinated as a possible significant factor.
The authors — as expected — were unable to publish this article in any mainstream journal, as anything which counters the government’s official position on anything related to the pandemic, especially vaccinations, has effectively been suppressed or censored throughout the last 2 years.
Despite repeated FOI requests by several parties, no UK government agency has ever released sufficiently granular data broken down into the necessary categories to permit any meaningful analysis of the extent (if any) of this miscategorisation issue.
Now, however, it appears that an FOI request to the Swedish Public Health Agency by 29 doctors and scientists has been successful in obtaining such data (for Sweden). They have written an article about it (in English) here.
The data is revelatory. It essentially shows that individuals dying within 2 weeks of vaccination have been classed and counted as unvaccinated. Incredibly, this applies to the 14 day period after the second as well as the first dose. The numbers involved are certainly non-trivial. In a substack blog, Jessica Rose has re-run the implied vaccine efficacy statistics in light of the new data categorizations.
In conclusion, the correct categorization turns the vaccine efficacy calculation totally on its head, suggesting a significantly increased risk of death in the vaccinated compared to the unvaccinated, rather than the vice-versa conclusion the authorities had originally touted. Whilst there is no age-breakdown, the magnitude of the reversal in the conclusions is nonetheless stark enough to conclude that there has been very serious and likely deliberate misrepresentation of what the mortality statistics truly imply about the efficacy of the vaccines against mortality.
One wonders how many other countries have played similar tricks with their data?
Post-script:
A further – anonymous – author has published an articleclaiming to build on Jessica Rose’s piece by calculating the mortality rates in the vaccinated and unvaccinated and comparing them to flu.
The author acknowledges the possible effect of age-confounding in the text, but in referring to it as having only a “slight” effect this understates its potential to interfere with his analysis; to draw the conclusions he /she does would in fact require a proper age breakdown of deaths month-by-month. However, if the analysis might lead to a misinterpretation of vaccine effectiveness because of the age bias then it is up to those with access to the data by age to refute the analysis.
The main take-away from the episode around this FOI is not that the vaccines are or are not efficacious (vs death), but rather that there has been a systematic miscategorization error which (1) seems likely to have been deliberate and (2) resulted in an extremely misleading picture of what the data suggests.
Such incidents – which now appear all too common in many countries – are likely to shatter the public’s trust in the institutions upon which we are supposed to rely.
Far, far away in the distant reaches of Earth’s atmosphere, scientists have finally homed in on a possible cause of the sudden rise in heart attacks around the world: space chemicals.
According to an article from Daily Mail, scientists have identified an entirely new class of chemical compounds that form in Earth’s atmosphere called hydrotrioxides.
Even though scientists believe that the chemical compounds needed to form hydrotrioxides have always existed in the atmosphere, they say that the compound may be able to penetrate aerosols, which can lead to respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, including heart attacks.
“They will most likely enter aerosols, where they will form new compounds with new effects,” said Professor Henrik Kjærgaard.
“It is easy to imagine that new substances are formed in the aerosols that are harmful if inhaled. But further investigation is required to address these potential health effects.”
“These compounds have always been around — we just didn’t know about them. But the fact that we now have evidence that the compounds are formed and live for a certain amount of time means that it is possible to study their effect more targeted and respond if they turn out to be dangerous,” added Prof. Kjærgaard.
PhD student and co-author Jing Chen concurred, adding that the compounds are “surprisingly stable.”
“It’s quite significant that we can now show, through direct observation, that these compounds actually form in the atmosphere, that they are surprisingly stable and that they are formed from almost all chemical compounds. All speculation must now be put to rest,” said Chen.
Even more frightening, not only do scientists believe the newly discovered compound could be responsible for causing respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, but it may also be spurring climate change!
“As sunlight is both reflected and absorbed by aerosols, this affects the Earth’s heat balance – that is, the ratio of sunlight that Earth absorbs and sends back into space,” said PhD student and co-author Eva Kjærgaard.
“When aerosols absorb substances, they grow and contribute to cloud formation, which affects Earth’s climate as well.”
Billionaire Bill Gates says there’s a 50 per cent chance the next pandemic will be caused by man-made climate change or be deliberately released by a bio-terrorist.
The Microsoft founder made the comments during an interview with Spanish news outlet El Diario.
Asserting that the next major pandemic is likely to occur within 20 years, Gates said, “It could be a virus made by man, by a bioterrorist who designed it and intentionally circulated it. That is a very scary scenario because they could try to spread it in different places at once.”
“Or it could be something that makes the leap from the natural world. The human population is growing and we are invading more and more ecosystems. That is why I calculate that there is a 50% chance that we will have a pandemic of natural origin in the next 20 years, as a consequence of climate change,” he added.
The prediction that climate change will cause a virus which will then require another global vaccine rollout is somewhat convenient for Gates given that he is heavily invested in both areas.
Gates reiterated the call made in his recent book to pump billions of dollars into researching future pathogens by creating a 3,000-strong team of specialists under the control of the World Health Organization, which would require a 25% budgetary increase.
Commenting on the recent outbreak of monkeypox, Gates said “there is very little chance” it will have an impact anything like coronavirus, although he cautioned that it could mutate into something significantly nastier.
Gates infamously warned of a coming super-virus five years before the emergence of COVID-19 during a 2015 TED talk.
As we highlighted earlier this month, Gates warned that COVID was not over and that there is likely to be an “even more fatal” variant of the virus coming.
During an event at the Munich Security Conference back in February, Gates said that “sadly” Omicron is a “type of vaccine” and has “done a better job getting out to the world population than we have with vaccines” by providing natural immunity.
Israel’s Supreme Court has decided that the Palestinian region of Masafer Yatta in the southern hills of Hebron is to be appropriated entirely by the Israeli military and that the local population of more than 1,000 Palestinians is to be expelled. The court’s decision on 4 May was hardly surprising. Israel’s military occupation is not only enforced by soldiers with guns, but also elaborate political, military, economic and legal structures, all of which are dedicated to the expansion of illegal Jewish settlements and the slow — and sometimes not-so-slow — expulsion of the Palestinians.
When Palestinians say that the Nakba (“Catastrophe”), which led to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 and the establishment of the state of Israel on its ruins, is an ongoing unfinished project, they mean exactly that. The ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from East Jerusalem and the endless torment of Palestinian Bedouins in the Naqab, and now in Masafer Yatta, are all testament to this reality.
However, Masafer Yatta is particularly unique. In the case of occupied East Jerusalem, for example, Israel has made a fallacious, ahistorical claim that the city is the eternal and undivided capital of the Jewish people. It combined its unsubstantiated narrative with military action on the ground, followed by a systematic process to increase the Jewish population and eject the native inhabitants of the city. Such notions as ‘Greater Jerusalem‘ and legal and political structures, like that of the Jerusalem Master Plan 2000, have all contributed towards turning the once absolute Palestinian majority in Jerusalem into a constantly shrinking minority.
In the Naqab, Israel’s objectives were put into motion as early as 1948, and again in 1951. The process of ethnically cleansing the natives remains in effect to this day.
Although Masafer Yatta is part of the same colonial scheme, its uniqueness stems from the fact that it is situated in Area C of the occupied West Bank. In July 2020, Israel purportedly decided to postpone its plan to annex nearly 40 per cent of the West Bank, perhaps fearing a Palestinian rebellion and unwanted international condemnation. However, the plan went ahead in all but name.
The wholesale annexation of large swathes of the West Bank would mean that Israel would become responsible for the welfare of entire Palestinian communities living therein. As a settler-colonial state, though, Israel wants the land, but not the people. In Tel Aviv’s calculation, annexation without the expulsion of the population could lead to a demographic nightmare, hence Israel’s need to reinvent its annexation plan. De jure annexation may have been “postponed”, but it has continued in de facto terms, which has attracted very little international political and media attention.
The Israeli court’s decision regarding Masafer Yatta, which is already being carried out with the expulsion of the Najjar family on 11 May, is an important step towards the annexation of Area C. If Israel can evict the Palestinian residents of twelve villages, more than 1,000 people, unhindered, more such expulsions can be expected, not only south of Hebron, but across the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Palestinian villagers of Masafer Yatta and their legal representation know very well that no real “justice” can be obtained from the Israeli court system. Nevertheless, they continue to fight the legal war in the hope that a combination of factors, including solidarity in Palestine and pressure from outside, can ultimately succeed in compelling Israel to delay its planned destruction and Judaisation of the whole region.
However, it seems that Palestinian efforts, which have been underway since 1997, are failing. The Israeli Supreme Court decision is predicated on the erroneous and utterly bizarre notion that the Palestinians of that area could not demonstrate that they belonged there prior to 1980, when the Israeli government decided to turn the area into “Firing Zone 918”.
Sadly, the Palestinian defence was based partly on documents from the Jordanian era and official UN records that reported on Israeli attacks on several Masafer Yatta villages in 1966. The Jordanian government, which administered the West Bank until 1967, compensated some of the residents for the loss of their “stone houses” — not tents — animals and other properties that were destroyed by the Israeli military. Palestinians tried to use this evidence to show that they have existed, not as nomadic people but as rooted communities. This was unconvincing to the Israeli court, which favoured the occupation army’s argument over the rights of the native population.
Israeli firing zones occupy nearly 18 per cent of the total area of the West Bank. It is one of several ploys used by the Israeli government to lay a pseudo-legal claim on Palestinian land and, eventually, to claim legal ownership as well. Many of these firing zones exist in Area C, and are one way that Israel appropriates Palestinian land officially with the support of the courts.
Now that the Israeli military has managed to acquire Masafer Yatta — a region covering 32 to 56km2 — based on completely flimsy excuses, it will become much easier to ensure the ethnic cleansing of many similar communities in various parts of occupied Palestine.
While discussions and media coverage of Israel’s annexation scheme in the West Bank and the Jordan Valley have largely subsided, the settler-colonial state is now preparing for gradual annexation. Instead of taking 40 per cent of the West Bank all at once, Israel is now annexing smaller tracts of land and regions, like Masafer Yatta, separately. Tel Aviv will eventually connect all these annexed areas through Jewish settler-only bypass roads to larger Jewish settlement infrastructures in the West Bank.
Not only does this alternative strategy allow Israel to avoid international criticism, but it will also permit the settler-colonial state to annex Palestinian land while incrementally expelling Palestinians. Thus, demographic imbalances will be prevented before they can even occur.
What is happening in Masafer Yatta is not only the largest ethnic cleansing scheme to be carried out by Israel since 1967, but the move should also be considered as the first step in a much larger scheme of illegal land misappropriation, ethnic cleansing and official mass annexation.
Israel must not be allowed to succeed in Masafer Yatta. If it does, its original, mass annexation scheme will become a reality in no time at all.
Israel’s bombardment of the biggest agrochemical warehouse in the besieged Gaza Strip by incendiary artillery shells last year amounts to chemical warfare, a rights group report finds.
On May 15, 2021, the Israeli military launched an artillery attack on the Khudair Pharmaceuticals and Agricultural Tools Company, considered as the largest agrochemical warehouse in the north of the blockaded enclave, setting fire to tons of pesticides, fertilizers, plastics and nylons.
The shelling attack occurred in the midst of the 11-day Israeli war against Gaza Strip, after weeks of violence against Palestinians in Al-Quds and a brutal crackdown on worshipers at the al-Aqsa Mosque, as well as attempts to steal their land in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
The results of a new investigation in the attack and its consequences by the West Bank-based Palestinian human rights NGO Al-Haq showed that Israel deliberately employed highly flammable munitions in the targeted attack, which burned tons of dangerous pesticides and set off an unfolding environmental disaster.
The FAI Unit built a 3D model of the warehouse after interviewing the locals, consulting international experts and analyzing data obtained from dozens of videos, including CCTV and drone footage, in a bid to establish the circumstances of the blaze, and determine the effects of the release of toxic chemicals.
“Our findings reveal that Israeli forces illegally employed highly flammable munitions in a targeted attack on the warehouse, whose location and contents are known to Israel, setting on fire over 50 tons of hazardous chemicals stored on the site,” said al-Haq.
The report is the first publication by Al-Haq’s newly-established Forensic Architecture Investigation Unit (FAI Unit), a first-of-its-kind collaboration in the Middle East with Forensic Architecture, a research agency based at Goldsmiths, University of London, which conducts spatial and media analysis for NGOs and in international human rights cases.
The shelling created a toxic plume, which engulfed an area of nearly six sq km, leaving local residents struggling with health problems.
“Within the first hour, the toxic plume had affected an area of approximately 5.7 square kilometers — spanning Beit Lahiya and its agricultural zones, as well as the densely populated Jabaliya refugee camp — placing approximately 3,000 homes in its shadow,” the report said, adding that the six-hour-long fire at the warehouse destroyed most of the facility and consuming the majority of its contents.
Al-Haq said that a toxic plume produced by the attack is tantamount to the indirect deploying of chemical weapons.
“Israeli occupation forces’ shelling of the Khudair Agrochemical Warehouse, with knowledge of the presence of toxic chemicals stored therein, is tantamount to chemical weapons through indirect means. Such acts are clearly prohibited… and prosecutable under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court,” the group said in a legal report based on the findings of the investigation.
The probe determined that the Israeli military used several M150 Smoke HC 155mm shells in its attack against the warehouse.
“The dimensions and the smoke tail match the M150 Smoke HC 155mm ammunition developed by the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems: an ‘advanced smoke projectile’ and a new type of shell designed to splinter into five separate canisters, all of which emit high-density smoke,” the report said.
It also stressed that the attack on the Khudair agrochemical warehouse was the first in an apparent string of similar attacks by the Tel Aviv regime, intentionally hitting civilian economic infrastructure and the industrial sector.
“On 17 May, two days after the Khudair Warehouse was destroyed, the Fomco Sponge Factory near Jabaliya camp was attacked in a similar manner, causing a large-scale fire. On the same day, over half a dozen other factories and warehouses, located in the industrial zone east of Gaza’s Shejaiyyeh neighborhood, were also bombed,” it stated.
In the latest bombardment campaign of Gaza by Israel in May last year, at least 260 Palestinians, including over 60 children, were killed in a time span of 11 days that began on May 10. The Gaza-based resistance movements retaliated.
The regime was eventually forced to announce a ceasefire, brokered by Egypt, which came into force in the early hours of May 21.
The Gaza Strip, home to some two million people, has been under a blockade imposed by Israel since June 2007.
By Maryanne DemasiMaryanne Demasi | Brownstone Institute | June 15, 2026
For decades, vaccines have been treated as the sacred cow of modern medicine. I was taught that they were the holy grail. To question them was heresy. To raise concerns about safety was to risk professional exile.
“No child should be sacrificed on the altar of the religion of vaccines,” Siri writes, as he turns his focus to America’s overcrowded childhood immunisation schedule.
I assumed little in this book would surprise me. I’ve spent years reporting on drug safety, regulatory capture, and the corruption of science. But Siri showed me how wrong I was.
Siri is not a doctor or a scientist. He is an attorney, and this, he says, is his advantage. In court, rhetoric won’t save you. Evidence does. As he puts it, he doesn’t get to say “trust me” the way many doctors do. “I need to prove claims with real data.”
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