Ukraine’s Drone Attack on Russia: Desperate Move or Calculated Provocation?

Sputnik – 11.03.2025
“This terrorist state [Ukraine] used its favorite terrorist policy to declare that it is not dead yet and can still do something,” Anatoliy Matviychuk, retired colonel of the Russian Armed Forces, states.
Here’s a closer look at what drove Kiev’s massive drone attack:
- Ukraine expects Russia to retaliate in order for Kiev to play the victim and to make it look like Moscow responded with aggression to Donald Trump’s peace initiatives, Matviychuk believes.
- The timing of the attack is directly tied to Ukraine’s recent battlefield defeats and the ongoing negotiations in Saudi Arabia, Mikael Valtersson, former officer of the Swedish Armed Forces, says.
- Kiev hopes it will strengthen its bargaining position and distract from Ukraine’s collapse in the Kursk salient, the analyst adds.
Earlier today, Ukraine launched a massive drone attack involving over 300 UAVs against Moscow – an attack that was ultimately thwarted by Russian air defenses.
Maine Lawmaker Censored: The Facebook Post That Sparked a Free Speech Showdown
By Regina Morrison | Reclaim The Net | March 11, 2025
You’re an elected official. You show up at the state house, ready to do what politicians do: discuss budgets and debate policy. But instead, you find yourself in the middle of a firestorm over a Facebook post. Not because it contains state secrets or classified intel, but because it features photos from a high school track meet.
This is exactly what happened to Maine Representative Laurel Libby, who now finds herself at the center of a storm that is less about sports and more about who gets to decide what speech is acceptable in a democracy.
A Championship, A Facebook Post, and a Political Crisis
It all started with a pole vaulting competition. Libby, a mother of five and a fierce advocate for women’s sports, posted photos from Maine’s Class B state championship in girls’ pole vaulting. The athlete who won had previously competed in the boys’ division, where they finished in fifth place. Now competing in the girls’ category, the athlete cleared 10 feet 6 inches, winning by a wide margin.

Libby’s post ignited a national conversation — the media ran with it, the White House took notice, and suddenly, a Maine high school sports event became ground zero for the larger battle over transgender athletes in women’s sports.
The Censure Vote and the Ultimatum
Democratic leaders in the Maine legislature quickly stepped in. They demanded she take the post down. Libby refused. The response was a censure vote, which passed 75-70 along party lines.
But that wasn’t enough. The House speaker then took things a step further: Libby would not be allowed to speak or vote on legislation until she deleted the post. In other words, her constituents would now go unheard in state government, all because their representative refused to edit her social media. Normally, removing a legislator would require a two-thirds vote or a recall election, but those formalities were apparently unnecessary when a majority party had other tools at its disposal.
Libby’s critics argue that she could have made her point without sharing the athlete’s photo. “Sharing images of kids online without their consent is a clear violation of the bond of trust and respect between citizens and their legislators,” said Majority Leader Ryan Fecteau. He accused Libby of using a minor to score political points and insisted that serious policy debates should not be waged through viral social media posts.
Libby, however, sees it differently. “Words don’t have the same impact. People need to see what’s happening to understand why it’s unfair,” she explained. Her stance is simple: if an athlete competes in a public championship, they should expect public attention. “If you don’t want attention, don’t put yourself in a public position to receive it.”
Libby’s post, whether you agree with it or not, falls squarely under the First Amendment. She wasn’t revealing state secrets or inciting a riot — she was commenting on a policy set by the Maine High School Principals Association, which allows student-athletes to compete in the gender category with which they identify.
In other words, she was doing exactly what elected officials are supposed to do: debate policies that affect the people they represent. The fact that her speech was met not with counter arguments but with an outright ban from legislative participation raises an uncomfortable question; if lawmakers can be silenced for discussing controversial policies, what does that mean for the rest of us?
US interested in direct talks with Hamas
Al Mayadeen | March 11, 2025
A leader in the Palestinian Resistance has divulged to Al Mayadeen that the United States is “interested in direct communication with Hamas, but within specific expectations,” as Americans do not want to allow the Palestinian Resistance to benefit from this direct communication with the current administration.
The Palestinian leader pointed out that the American envoys confirmed the ability of US President, Donald Trump, to “force Israel to stop the war and reach an agreement with Hamas.” They believe that Hamas’s release of the Israeli-American captive could change Trump’s convictions.
Hamas had previously announced its full commitment to the ceasefire agreement, implementing what was agreed upon, and its readiness to immediately begin negotiations for the second phase.
The movement rejected pressuring attempts, while the Israeli occupation is left without accountability despite evading its obligations.
“Blackmail and threats of war will not be of any use, and there is no way but negotiations and commitment to the agreement,” the leader told Al Mayadeen, emphasizing that any other option would be tampering with the fate of the remaining captives.
Adam Boehler, the US envoy who engaged in direct talks with Hamas, described the meeting as “very helpful” and expressed confidence that a deal to release Israeli captives held in Gaza could be reached “within weeks”.
In an interview for CNN, Boehler acknowledged the unusual nature of the talks, considering that Hamas has been designated a “terrorist” organization by the US since 1997. However, he did not rule out future meetings with the Palestinian group.
Boehler recognized “Israel’s” concerns over the US meeting with Hamas but emphasized his intent to revive “fragile” negotiations.
“In the end, I think it was a very helpful meeting,” he said, adding, “I think something could come together within weeks… I think there is a deal where they can get all of the prisoners out, not just the Americans.”
He hinted at the possibility of further talks, stating, “You never know. You know, sometimes, you’re in the area and you drop by.”
The first phase of a ceasefire concerning the release of some Israeli captives ended earlier this month, but the Palestinian Resistance and “Israel” are now in disagreement over when to transition into the second phase, which aims for a complete end to the war on the Gaza Strip.
While “Israel” wants to extend the first phase until mid-April, Hamas has insisted on moving to the second phase, which is aimed at achieving a permanent end to the war.
During this phase, the Resistance released 25 living captives and the bodies of eight others in exchange for approximately 1,800 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held in Israeli occupation prisons.
Of the 251 individuals taken captive on October 7, 2023, 58 remain in Gaza, including 34 whom the Israeli military has confirmed as dead.
Last week, US President Donald Trump issued a “last warning” to Hamas, threatening additional destruction in Gaza if all remaining captives were not released.
Boehler acknowledged the “consternation” “Israel” felt over the US’ engagement with Hamas, saying, “We’re the United States. We’re not an agent of Israel.”
A Muslims Zionism and the massacre of Syria’s minorities
By Robert Inlakesh | Al Mayadeen | March 11, 2025
The horrifying civilian massacres carried out across the Syrian coast are stupefyingly awful, on a scale reminiscent of the height of the ISIS insurgency in Iraq. Yet, there are still countless people identifying as Muslims who are trying to defend these actions. Their predominant ideology is not that of “Sunni Islam”, but rather of a nationalist identity rooted in a theological justification, in other words, a Muslims Zionism.
The Division of Syria
It has long been the agenda of the Zionist Entity to divide Syria into a number of weakened and defenseless Statelets, many of which it seeks to establish ties with and also of which justify its existence as a self-described “Jewish State”.
While the Zionist regime’s alliance with the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) has long been known, the Israelis doubled down on throwing their weight behind the group that controls Syria’s north-east on December 8, 2024. Simultaneously, the Zionists occupied the entirety of the Golan Heights and carried out their largest ever air campaign to destroy Syria’s military capabilities.
For years, the Zionist regime provided material and financial support, in addition to medical aid, to at least a dozen Syrian opposition groups, including Al-Nusra Front (Al-Qaeda in Syria). Al-Nusra would of course later become Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which now rules over Damascus with an iron fist. Its leader, Abu Mohammed al-Jolani, who now prefers to go by Ahmed al-Sharaa, was originally an MI6 (British intelligence) project and was a former commander of ISIS.
The Zionists understood that the groups they were backing, including what would later become “HTS”, were led by foreign intelligence operatives, but that their rank and file were fanatical militants. This worked well for the Israelis in two ways: while the leadership of the group can be manipulated, the fanatical takfiris who actually believe in their group’s ideology are left to commit atrocities against civilians that will drive them towards federalization.
Although this history is largely forgotten, significant portions of Syria’s minority groups were in support of the movement to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad in 2011, yet what changed their minds and made them rally around the former Syrian leader was the behavior of the sectarian death squads who ended up leading the Syrian opposition.
However, after 2018, as the Syrian economy went into steep decline and the civil war became a frozen conflict, the vision that many Syrians had adopted for their future had faded. The US and EU sanctions strangled the country and plunged the people of Syria into poverty.
By the time al-Jolani came to launch his assault on Aleppo, the entire State ended up crumbling and this occurred without any major fighting. On top of this, it appeared briefly as if the HTS militants were not going to carry out the kinds of massacres many had long feared they would.
Yet, after two months, the sectarian field executions did not stop, the Israelis were essentially at the gates of Damascus and the new government was still incapable of getting its affairs in order. The real question here is whether Jolani is part of a conspiracy to commit civilian massacres with the aim of dividing Syria, or if he is just a useful idiot that is behaving as a murderous dictator.
When the rebellion occurred on the Syrian coast, the instant response was the mass deployment of paramilitary forces and security services, while sectarian demonstrators chanted for the blood of the Alawites. The official justification for the massacres that followed – including civilians who had even been opponents of Bashar al-Assad’s rule – was that “remnants of the regime” were to be hunted down.
What followed was the largest gift to the Israelis that could ever have been given, sectarian gangsters burst into civilian homes and murdered men, women, and children. Even babies were not spared from the brutality of the new regime. Elderly men were tossed around, humiliated and shot in the streets, teenagers taken into the open and executed. When their Sunni neighbours tried to intervene to stop the massacres, they were murdered too.
It is clear that these actions were carried out with genocidal intent, and no reasonable person can deny the mass slaughter of innocent civilians. On a personal note, it is so bad that Sunni Syrian contacts of mine in Hama and Homs have told me that they are too scared to share their opinions on social media for fear of being targeted.
While it is certainly the malicious agenda of the Zionists to divide Syria, the blame cannot now be placed upon the reactions of the minority communities who seek to preserve their own livelihoods, but instead on the new administration in Damascus that has committed the atrocities. If the country continues on its current trajectory, there won’t be a country called Syria any more and this is the fault of the sectarian death squads who worked to divide the country.
The Israelis are now grinning, waiting for the opportunity to seize more territory and use collaborators to carve out a series of regimes that will work in their favour. Meanwhile, not a single bullet from Jolani’s men has been directed at the occupying entity.
Russian defenses down 337 Ukrainian drones – MOD
RT | March 11, 2025
Russian air defenses have intercepted 337 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Defense Ministry in Moscow said on Tuesday morning. One [now updated to three] civilian is reported to have been killed by the attack.
The drone wave launched from Ukrainian territory was primarily aimed at Moscow, information provided by the military suggests. The largest number of interceptions occurred in the heavily fortified border Kursk Region, where 126 drones were destroyed. An additional 91 UAVs were taken down in Moscow Region, surrounding the capital.
Moscow Mayor Sergey Sobyanin provided multiple updates throughout the night, with his latest message stating that 74 drones had been downed on their approach to the city, in what he called the largest such Ukrainian attack to date.
Moscow Region Governor Andrey Vorobyov reported casualties across three municipalities, including a fatality in Domodedovo. A 38-year-old night guard was killed and two more people died in hospital later after a drone crashed into the parking lot of a food plant, damaging approximately 20 vehicles. In total, more than a dozen people have been injured in the region, including a four-year-old child, according to the governor.
The raid was one of the largest conducted by Ukraine to date, although its scale is not without precedent.
Kiev claims that low-cost long-range kamikaze drones are effective at striking deep within Russian territory. Moscow has accused the Ukrainian government of resorting to terrorist tactics due to setbacks on the battlefield. The Russian Investigative Committee is treating the latest attack as terrorism, it said on Tuesday.
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky recently proposed a limited air truce, suggesting a halt to long-range drone attacks in exchange for Russia ceasing its strike on Ukrainian energy infrastructure – operations that Moscow argues are crippling Kiev’s arms production and military logistics. Russia insists on a comprehensive truce, arguing that Ukraine would use any pause to regroup its forces and continue hostilities.
Zelensky is facing pressure from US President Donald Trump, who is seeking a swift resolution to the Ukraine conflict and has criticized Kiev for undermining his efforts.
Europe faces a MAGA ‘vibe-shift’ as Trump moves to his primordial objective – The Global Reset
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | March 11, 2025
President Trump wants Ukraine settled, full stop. This is so that he can move ahead quickly – to normalise with Russia, and begin the ‘big picture’ project of setting a new World Order, one that will end wars and facilitate business ties.
The point here – which Europe feigns to not understand – is that the end to the Ukraine conflict simply is Trump’s ‘gateway’ to the entire rationale and platform on which he stood: The Great Reset of the Geo-Political landscape. Ukraine, simply said, is the obstacle to Trump’s pursuit of his primordial objective: The Global Reset.
Starmer, Macron and the eastern wing of the Euro-élites are blind to the sheer scale of the global vibe-shift towards traditionalist U.S. politics and ethics. They miss too, the barely concealed fury in the Trump world that exists behind this nascent revolution. “The Maga Right has none of the inhibitions of its predecessors. It is planning to leverage the power of a recaptured state to annihilate its enemies”, Allister Heath writes.
The European Ruling Class is in desperate trouble and increasingly isolated, in a world shifting ‘Rightward’ at breakneck speed. “The U.S. is now the enemy of the West”, the FT proclaims. European leaders wantonly won’t understand.
The reality is that the U.S. is engaged now in rolling up Europe’s foreign policy. And, is about to start exporting U.S. traditional Republican values to roll up the European wokeist belief-system. The European Ruling strata – far removed from its base – has failed to grasp the threat to its own interests (a scenario outlined here).
The Trump administration is trying to rebuild the ailing Republic, and Americans in this new era do not care for the European obsession with ancient feuds and their entailing wars.
Trump reportedly views with utter disdain the UK and European boast that should the U.S. not do it, then Europe will. The Brussels class claims to be able still – after three years of losing in Ukraine – to be able to inflict a humiliating defeat on President Putin.
More profoundly, however, Team Trump – committed to the task of taking down the American Deep State as the ‘inexorable enemy’ – perceives (rightly) the British security state to be co-joined at the hip with their American counterparts, as a part of its global meta-structure. And its oldest and deepest component has always been the destruction of Russia, and its dismemberment.
So when Macron, in an address to the nation this week, rejected a ceasefire in Ukraine and declared that “peace in Europe is only possible with a weakened Russia”, calling the country a direct threat to France and the continent, many in ‘Trump world’ will interpret this defiant declaration (that ‘Ukraine defeating Russia is preferable to ‘peace’’) is nothing more than Macron and Starmer ventriloquising the aims of the Meta Deep State.
This notion is lent substance by the sudden plethora of articles appearing in the European-(managed) MSM to the effect that Russia’s economy is much weaker than it appears and might collapse in the next year. Of course it is nonsense. This is about managing the European public to believe that keeping the war going in Ukraine is a ‘good idea’.
The absurdity of the European position was perhaps best captured, as Wolfgang Münchau notes, in its full hubris last year by the historian and writer Anne Applebaum when she won a prestigious German peace prize. During her acceptance speech, she maintained that victory was more important than peace, asserting that the West’s ultimate goal should be regime change in Russia: “We must help Ukrainians achieve victory, and not only for the sake of Ukraine,” she said.
Zelensky and his European fans want ‘to negotiate’ – though later, rather than sooner (perhaps in a year, as one European Foreign Minister reportedly told Marco Rubio privately).
“This”, Münchau writes, “is what the very public disagreement in the Oval Office [last week] was all about. Peace through untrammelled victory — essentially the Second World War model — as the lens through which virtually all European leaders, and most commentators view the Russia-Ukraine conflict”.
America sees things differently: It views almost certainly the European Deep State to be putting a spoke into Trump’s ‘normalisation with Russia’ wheel – a normalisation to which they are viscerally opposed. Or, at the very least, as the Europeans chasing a “mirage that no longer exists, stubbornly hiking ‘tax and spend’, whilst doubling down on mass immigration and overpriced energy, oblivious to the flashing red lights in the [financial markets] as government debt yields rocket to their highest levels since 1998”, as Allister Heath outlines.
In other words, the suggestion is that Friedrich Merz, Macron and Starmer are talking about how they are going to turn around their countries – via a massive infusion of debt – into defence superstates. Yet, at some level of consciousness, they must realise that it is not doable, so they settle instead for presenting themselves as ‘world leaders on the international stage’.
The European élites are deeply unstable ‘leaders’ who are risking the prosperity and stability of the continent. It is clear these countries do not have the military capacity to intervene in any concerted manner. More than anything, it is the European economy circling the drain that is the reality at the gates.
Zelensky is accomplice to the European insistence that defeating Russia takes priority over achieving peace in Ukraine, in spite of lacking any strategic rationale as to how it may be achieved after three years of a worsening military situation. Both plans – crushing the Russian economy with sanctions and attrition of the Russian military to the point of collapse – have failed. Why then does Zelensky resist Trump’s peace proposals? On the surface, it makes no sense.
The explanation likely goes back to the post-Maidan era when the western ‘Meta Security State’ (principally, the British and the Americans) entrenched hardline Banderites (then a tiny minority) into the Ukrainian Police, Intelligence and Security State. They are still today the controlling force. Even were this faction to acknowledge that their war cannot be won, they understand what happens if they lose:
Russia will not deal with them. They view them as extremists (if not war criminals) who are in no way ‘agreement capable’ and must be replaced by a leadership who is actually capable of compromise. Russia would likely pursue and bring these men to trial. Zelensky has to be frightened at what the Banderites might do to him (despite his British team of bodyguards).
Well, Trump is not entertaining these European ‘games’: He is administering a slap-down to Zelensky and European leaders, perhaps bringing Zelensky into line; or perhaps not … Team Trump, Politico reports, has now entered into direct talks with the Ukrainian opposition on holding early elections to unseat Zelensky – who is on his way to being removed, members of Team Trump say.
Zelensky may be finished, but interestingly Zaluzhniy wasn’t discussed either. He is being groomed by the British as a replacement – it looks like the Americans are going to make this decision independently of the British, too.
President Trump has ordered intelligence sharing with Ukraine stopped. What he technically did was to stop allowing Ukraine to use exclusive U.S. targeting systems controlled by U.S. Intelligence, the CIA, the National Reconnaissance Office and the U.S. National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. What has been suspended is the exchange of so-called ‘lethal’ data, including information for HIMARS targeting. However, the defensive information needed for protection is still being provided to Ukraine.
“The extent of the intelligence-sharing freeze, which appears to have been imposed alongside the halt in military aid Mr Trump announced on Monday, initially appeared to be somewhat limited … But by Wednesday afternoon it became clear that the Trump administration, ignoring overtures from Mr Zelensky the previous evening, had gone much further. A military intelligence officer in Kyiv told The Telegraph that the freeze amounted to “more or less a total blackout””.
Put bluntly, the earlier munitions freeze will undoubtedly affect Ukraine’s military abilities over time, however the impact might not be felt for some weeks. The loss of vital intelligence, however, will make its mark immediately. It will – simply put – blind Ukraine. In Ukrainian command posts, the battle tracking and satellite online feeds on tablets and TV screens have indeed been disconnected.
What Trump’s slap-down has done is to puncture the fiction that Ukraine is able to defend itself with a little substitute of European support. That has always been nonsensical bravado. NATO, the CIA and the global Intelligence Community have been in control of the war fighting from the outset. And that, for now, has been switched off.
So, Europe wants to shoulder the U.S. burden? Bloomberg reports that European bond markets are in meltdown. If Europe pretends to replace the U.S., it is going to be extremely expensive, very politically costly, and it will fail.
Brussels ‘must take position’ on Romanian presidential election controversy one way or another: Slovak PM Fico
By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | March 11, 2025
The European Commission is under increasing pressure to address the unfolding political crisis in Romania after Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico called for clarity on the rejection of Calin Georgescu’s presidential candidacy.
Fico’s remarks, shared on social media, warn that the Commission’s silence would further undermine trust in the European Union.
Fico emphasized that the European Commission “must take a position” on the situation one way or another, asserting that either Georgescu, a nationalist and NATO-skeptic, is right, or the Romanian authorities’ decision to bar him from running is justified.
“The European Commission (EC) must take a position on the presidential elections in Romania — and take responsibility for it. If Mr. Georgescu is being wronged simply because he has a different opinion, he must be given European protection. If the EC is convinced that the Romanian authorities are doing the right thing, it must stand up for them. The only thing the EC cannot do is to remain silent,” Fico declared.
The controversy erupted after Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau (BEC) rejected Georgescu’s candidacy for the upcoming presidential elections on Sunday evening. The decision, taken with 10 votes in favor out of the 14-member committee, sparked protests in Bucharest, where demonstrators clashed with police, waving national flags and chanting slogans calling for “revolution.” Riot police used tear gas to disperse the crowd, and multiple arrests were made.
The BEC cited a missing signature on an annex of Georgescu’s declaration of wealth as the reason for his disqualification. Former Constitutional Court judge Tudorel Toader clarified that the annexes are a mandatory component of the documentation and that both substantive and procedural requirements must be met.
Georgescu, who had previously won the first round of the presidential elections before they were annulled, condemned the decision as a political maneuver. “A direct blow to the heart of democracy worldwide! I have one message left! If democracy in Romania falls, the entire democratic world will fall! This is just the beginning. It’s that simple! Europe is now a dictatorship, Romania is under tyranny!” he wrote on social media.
Fico drew parallels between Georgescu’s case and his own experiences in Slovakia, where he claims he faced politically motivated efforts to imprison him as an opposition leader between 2020 and 2023. He accused the European Commission, particularly then-justice commissioner Didier Reynders, of turning a blind eye to alleged democratic backsliding in Slovakia because the country’s government at the time was aligned with Brussels.
“The EC at that time did not give a damn about Slovakia. They had an obedient government, and nobody cared about the rights of the leader of the opposition and the nature of democracy in Slovakia,” Fico wrote.
The rejection of Georgescu’s candidacy has drawn sharp criticism from several political figures and observers, including Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini, leader of Spain’s Vox party Santiago Abascal, and U.S. billionaire Elon Musk.
George Simion, president of Romania’s right-wing Alliance for the Union of Romanians (AUR) party, insisted the decision was overtly political. “It was rejected without any reason. All the papers were in good order. We live in a dictatorship. Please help us. Please be on our side to restore democracy in Romania,” Simion stated.
Fico warned that the EU’s credibility is on the line, warning that if it does not take a view, “a dangerous precedent is being set where, in a free democratic election, it will be possible to remove a successful candidate simply because he does not hold a favorable opinion.”
Baerbock will be remembered as the most ignorant, arrogant and useless German FM
The German Foreign Minister leaves behind her a series of gaffes and humiliation
By Ahmed Adel | March 11, 2025
Outgoing German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock resigned as co-chair of the Greens. In a letter to her parliamentary group and the Brandenburg provincial branch, Baerbock stated that she decided to step down from the political leadership after intense years of engagement and a recent divorce from her husband.
“After years at high speed,” Baerbock wrote in the letter that she wanted to take some time to think about “what this moment means for my family and me.”
“In all this time, I have always given my all. At the same time, these intensive years also had a private price. For personal reasons, I have therefore decided to take a step back from the glare of the spotlight and not apply for a leading position in the parliamentary group,” she added.
Baerbock’s rise to the position of foreign minister demonstrates the postmodern political dominance in Germany and how the European country is an economic giant but a political dwarf. What is particularly paradoxical and tragic is that the next German foreign minister could be banal but seen as better since Baerbock has set the standard so low.
The transformation of the German Greens from an anti-war and anti-nuclear party into warmongers is due to the fact that the entire left, whether it has been converted into a green agenda or left-wing market liberalism, is led by a single radical ideology.
Europeans in leading positions of power like incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Baerbock have gone through the ideological schools of George Soros and Klaus Schwab and with the help of their bosses’ ownership of the media, managed to climb to the very top of the state.
Yet, Baerbock was somehow more imprecise, paradoxical and grotesque in her actions and statements than others.
It is recalled that at the beginning of her ministerial career, Baerbock published her biography, which was full of lies about her academic career and titles. Then, at the beginning of the Special Military Operation in Ukraine, she declared that Europe was at war with Russia, after which she awkwardly explained that she did not really think that was the case. Her statement that she would only negotiate with Russia when President Vladimir Putin makes a “360-degree turn” (instead of a 180) is also a legendary gaffe.
Baerbock’s democratic capacities are evidenced by her statement that the government she heads will support the war in Ukraine regardless of the position of the majority of German citizens and the economic crisis that this support has led to.
She also made a name for herself by declaring that her ministry would pursue “feminist diplomacy,” without specifying what that meant, which was followed by the cancellation of Otto von Bismarck. The foreign minister removed the portrait of the first chancellor and founder of German diplomacy to performatively claim she broke the power of men in German diplomacy.
Nothing better demonstrates Baerbock’s failed “feminist diplomacy” than when she arrived in Damascus after the takfiri leader of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, Ahmed al-Sharaa, took power and he refused to shake her hand and left her awkwardly and humiliatingly shaking her own hand.
The less than favorable reputation she enjoyed as the head of German diplomacy is also evidenced by the fact that when she arrived on an official visit to China and India, her hosts did not wait for her at the airport, and in India, even the German ambassador was late to greet her.
Making her time as foreign minister more sufferable is her evident detachment from reality, as seen when she said on March 1 that Europe must show leadership against Trump’s “ruthlessness” and “must defend the rules-based international order and the strength of law more than ever against the power of the strongest.” Rather, a “rules-based international order” has never existed and was just a mantra repeated by Washington to impose its will against enemies and allies alike, including the European Union. In fact, it is alarming that European leaders still believe in a supposed “rules-based order.”
Baerbock also issued a direct warning to Washington, claiming that Russia is a perpetrator and Ukraine a victim. According to her, straying from this narrative would mark “the end of international law—and with it, the security of most states” and that, in the long run, “it would also be fatal for the future of the United States.”
The German foreign minister has not accepted that her country and the EU collective are political dwarfs, and that the world system has always operated on Great Power politics, not a “rules-based international order.” It is precisely for this reason that the EU and Berlin are on the sidelines of a peace settlement for Ukraine and why Baerbock will only be remembered as Germany’s most ignorant, arrogant, and useless foreign minister.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
USAID funded Ukraine group that smeared Vance

Protesters gather outside USAID headquarters, February 3, 2025 © Bill Clark / CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
RT | March 10, 2025
The US Agency for International Development (USAID) has been implicated in funding a Ukrainian organization, Molfar, which labeled Vice President J.D. Vance and other US officials and public figures as “foreign propagandists” aligned with Russia, according to an investigation by The Grayzone.
Molfar, established in 2019, describes itself as an open-source intelligence community platform which “collects lists of Ukrainian enemies to bring war criminals to justice.” The group’s website identifies USAID and the US Civil Research and Development Fund (CRDF) as partners, indicating financial and operational support from US government agencies.
The group’s online blacklist not only targeted Vice President Vance for his statements opposing continued US financial support for Kiev and his stance against Ukraine’s NATO membership, but also targeted other American figures, including US Counterterrorism Director Joe Kent and Representative Thomas Massie. Molfar’s website advocated for their “removal from public positions, the introduction of sanctions, and investigations into personal involvement in crimes.”
In addition to political figures, Molfar has targeted American journalists, including Max Blumenthal, editor-in-chief of The Grayzone. The organization accused Blumenthal of disseminating Russian narratives and threatened to expose his personal information, including home addresses and family details.
Other notable figures targeted by Molfar include billionaire tech entrepreneur Elon Musk, journalists Glenn Greenwald and Tucker Carlson, and award-winning American economist and public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs.
A report published by Ukraine’s National Coordination Cybersecurity Center (NCSCC), bearing USAID’s logo, highlighted that Molfar assisted in training thousands of Ukrainian government employees in cyber warfare techniques and psychological operations. The report stated that over 2,000 public workers participated in practical assignments covering topics such as open-source searches, contact search, using Telegram bots, psyop as a method of information warfare, human intelligence and social engineering.
According to The Grayzone, Molfar’s activities are part of a broader network of Ukrainian organizations involved in Kiev’s information war efforts at the expense of US taxpayer money.
Another self-styled “fact-checking” outfit, VoxUkraine, has received substantial funding from the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and USAID. Its VoxCheck project has been involved in censoring Americans’ social media posts deemed pro-Russian. Similarly, the Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD), an official body under Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, has collaborated with both Molfar and VoxUkraine to combat “disinformation,” often labeling US public figures as promoters of Russian propaganda, including smearing now-Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.
Immediately upon assuming office, President Donald Trump suspended most US foreign assistance pending a three-month review to determine whether programs should continue based on their alignment with the new administration’s “America First” goals.
USAID, Washington’s primary mechanism for funding political projects abroad, has seen tens of billions of dollars’ worth of approved grants frozen as a result. The NED’s government funding was also frozen. Officially a US State Department-funded nonprofit for distributing grants to pro-democracy causes abroad, the NED has long faced allegations of acting as a CIA cutout for toppling foreign governments.
