The UK High Court ruled on Friday that the government’s proscription of Palestine Action under the Terrorism Act was unlawful.
On Friday, three judges led by Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division, concluded that the decision to ban the group was unlawful. However, the ban will remain temporarily in place to allow the government time to appeal.
From July 5 last year, membership of or public support for Palestine Action became a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The group had been placed on the list of proscribed organisations, categorizing it alongside internationally recognized armed groups.
The court upheld the challenge on two of four grounds. Judges found that the proscription represented “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and association. They also ruled that Yvette Cooper’s decision was inconsistent with her own stated policy.
Sharp described Palestine Action as an organisation “that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality”, but continued, “The court considered that the proscription of Palestine Action was disproportionate. A very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism within the definition of section 1 of the 2000 Act.”
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale, and persistence to warrant proscription,” Sharp added.
Legal and political repercussions
The judgment marks the first time an organisation banned under the Terrorism Act has successfully challenged its proscription in court.
According to the campaign group Defend Our Juries, more than 2,700 people have been arrested since the ban took effect, most under section 13 of the Terrorism Act. More than 500 individuals, including clergy, pensioners, and military veterans, have been charged.
If the proscription order is ultimately quashed, the charges could be dropped. For now, those charged remain in legal uncertainty while the ban stays in force pending appeal.
Government to appeal decision
Current home secretary Shabana Mahmood said she would challenge the ruling.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori described the decision as a “monumental victory” and said the ban was based on property damage rather than violence against individuals.
“We were banned because Palestine Action’s disruption of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, cost the corporation millions of pounds in profits and to lose out on multibillion-pound contracts.
“We’ve used the same tactics as direct action organisations throughout history, including anti-war groups Keir Starmer defended in court, and the government acknowledged in these legal proceedings that this ban was based on property damage, not violence against people.
“Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism … Today’s landmark ruling is a victory for freedom for all, and I urge the government to respect the court’s decision and bring this injustice to an end without further delay.”
The case is likely to intensify debate in the United Kingdom over the balance between national security powers and civil liberties.
People in key NATO nations are reluctant to tighten their belts to fund increased defense spending, despite believing that the world is “heading toward global war,” according to a Politico poll published on Friday.
The poll, which surveyed at least 2,000 people from the US, Canada, the UK, France, and Germany each, found that majorities in four of the five countries think “the world is becoming more dangerous” and expect World War III to break out within five years.
Nearly half of Americans (46%) consider a new world war ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ by 2031, up from 38% last year. In the UK, 43% share this belief, up from 30% in March 2025.
French respondents matched British levels at 43%, and 40% of Canadians expect war within five years. Only Germans remain skeptical, with a majority believing that a global conflict is unlikely in the near term.
The survey suggested a stark disconnect, however, between the growing alarm and willingness to pay for a defense buildup. While respondents support increased military spending in principle, support fell dramatically when specific trade-offs were mentioned.
In France, support dropped from 40% to 28% when those being surveyed were told about the potential financial and fiscal consequences. In Germany, it fell from 37% to 24%, with defense spending ranking as one of the least popular uses of money.
The survey also suggested significant skepticism about creating an EU army under a central command, with support at 22% in Germany and 17% in France.
While the poll suggests that Russia is perceived as the ‘biggest threat’ to Europe, Canadians view the administration of US President Donald Trump as the greatest danger to their security. Respondents in France, Germany, and the UK rank the US as the second-biggest threat – cited far more often than China.
The findings come after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte urged members states in December to embrace a “wartime mindset” amid the stand-off with Russia. This also comes amid Western media speculation that Russia could attack European NATO members within several years. Moscow has dismissed the claims as “nonsense,” while accusing EU countries of manufacturing anti-Russia hysteria to justify reckless militarization.
The Ukrainian authorities are preparing a draft law to take all Russian and Russian-language books out of circulation, Ukrainian Culture Minister Tatyana Berezhnaya told Interfax-Ukraine in an interview published on Thursday.
Moscow maintains that Kiev’s discriminatory policies against ethnic Russians in Ukraine, as well as its persecution of the Russian language and culture are some of the fundamental causes of the current conflict.
According to Berezhnaya, Ukraine’s media authority is working on a bill to ban Russian books with the support of her ministry. She did not specify whether the measure would only remove them from store shelves or include confiscations from private collections.
Vladimir Zelensky’s predecessor, Pyotr Poroshenko, banned the import of books from Russia and Belarus in 2016, long before the escalation of the Ukraine conflict six years later. Kiev has since systematically purged Russian literature from state curricula, and intensified a purge of cultural monuments, memorials, and inscriptions to remove historical links to Russia.
Kiev has also steadily cracked down on the use of the Russian language in public life, restricting or banning its use in media and in professional spheres. Nevertheless, it remains the first and primary language for many people in Ukraine, especially in metropolitan areas and in the east of the country.
In December, the Ukrainian parliament stripped Russian of its protection under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. Berezhnaya at the time proclaimed that the move would “strengthen Ukrainian” as the state language.
Moscow has noted that this crackdown has largely been ignored by Kiev’s Western backers.
“Human rights – ostensibly so dear to the West – must be inviolable. In Ukraine, we witness the comprehensive prohibition of the Russian language across all spheres of public life and the banning of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday, accusing the EU and UK of not addressing the issue in their peace proposals.
Russia has long said that stopping the persecution of Russians in Ukraine is one of its core peace demands, which it is ready to continue pursuing through military means if Kiev resists diplomacy.
A bloc of 40 state and territorial attorneys general is urging Congress to adopt the Senate’s version of the controversial Kids Online Safety Act, positioning it as the stronger regulatory instrument and rejecting the House companion as insufficient.
The Act would kill online anonymity and tie online activity and speech to a real-world identity.
Acting through the National Association of Attorneys General, the coalition sent a letter to congressional leadership endorsing S. 1748 and opposing H.R. 6484.
Their request centers on structural differences between the bills. The Senate proposal would create a federally enforceable “Duty of Care” requiring covered platforms to mitigate defined harms to minors.
Enforcement authority would rest with the Federal Trade Commission, which could investigate and sue companies that fail to prevent minors from encountering content deemed to cause “harm to minors.”
That framework would require regulators to evaluate internal content moderation systems, recommendation algorithms, and safety controls.
S. 1748 also directs the Secretary of Commerce, the FTC, and the Federal Communications Commission to study “the most technologically feasible methods and options for developing systems to verify age at the device or operating system level.”
This language moves beyond platform-level age gates and toward infrastructure embedded directly into hardware or operating systems.
Age verification at that layer would not function without some form of credentialing. Device-level verification would likely depend on digital identity checks tied to government-issued identification, third-party age verification vendors, or persistent account authentication systems.
That means users could be required to submit identifying information before accessing broad categories of lawful online speech. Anonymous browsing depends on the ability to access content without linking identity credentials to activity.
A device-level age verification architecture would establish identity checkpoints upstream of content access, creating records that age was verified and potentially associating that verification with a persistent device or account.
Even if content is not stored, the existence of a verified identity token tied to access creates a paper trail.
Constitutional questions follow. The Supreme Court has repeatedly recognized anonymous speech as protected under the First Amendment. Mandating identity verification before accessing lawful speech raises prior restraint and overbreadth concerns, particularly where the definition of “harm to minors” extends into categories that are legal for adults.
Courts have struck down earlier efforts to impose age verification requirements for online content on First Amendment grounds, citing the chilling effect on lawful expression and adult access.
Despite this history, state officials continue to advocate for broader age verification regimes. Several states have enacted or proposed laws requiring age checks for social media or adult content sites, often triggering litigation over compelled identification and privacy burdens.
The coalition’s letter suggests that state attorneys general are not retreating from that position and are instead seeking federal backing.
The attorneys general argue that social media companies deliberately design products that draw in underage users and monetize their personal data through targeted advertising. They contend that companies have not adequately disclosed addictive features or mental health risks and point to evidence suggesting firms are aware of adverse consequences for minors.
Multiple state offices have already filed lawsuits or opened investigations against Meta and TikTok, alleging “harm” to young users.
At the same time, the coalition objects to provisions in H.R. 6484 that would limit state authority. The House bill contains broader federal preemption language, which could restrict states from enforcing parallel or more stringent requirements. The attorneys general warn that this would curb their ability to pursue emerging online harms under state law. They also fault the House proposal for relying on company-maintained “reasonable policies, practices, and procedures” rather than imposing a statutory Duty of Care.
The Senate approach couples enforceable federal standards with preserved state enforcement power.
The coalition calls on the United States House of Representatives to align with the Senate framework, expand the list of enumerated harms to include even suicide, eating disorders, compulsive use, mental health harms, and financial harms, and ensure that states retain authority to act alongside federal regulators. The measure has bipartisan sponsorship in the United States Senate.
The policy direction is clear. Federal agencies would study device-level age verification systems, the FTC would police compliance with harm mitigation duties, and states would continue to pursue parallel litigation. Those mechanisms would reshape how platforms design their systems and how users access speech.
Whether framed as child protection or platform accountability, the architecture contemplated by S. 1748 would move identity verification closer to the heart of internet access.
Once age checks are embedded at the operating system level, the boundary between verifying age and verifying identity becomes difficult to maintain.
Col Douglas Macgregor argues that Trump ran on ending “endless wars” and prioritizing America First, yet instead presides over a massive, unaccountable $1.5 trillion defense budget and a widening set of military confrontations. Rather than reducing foreign interventions, U.S. policy is escalating tensions—especially with Iran and Russia—while failing to end the war in Ukraine.
They criticize U.S. seizures of Russian, Iranian, and Venezuelan oil tankers as symbolic, economically trivial, and strategically pointless actions that risk provoking Russia without meaningfully weakening its war effort. These moves are framed more as political theater and economic self-interest (boosting U.S. oil exports) than serious strategy.
The discussion rejects claims—circulating in European media and think tanks—that Russia would quickly attack NATO or the Baltics after a Ukraine ceasefire, calling such scenarios absurd fear-mongering designed to justify perpetual conflict and sustain Cold War–era institutions. The argument is that Russia lacks both the interest and incentive to expand westward and would prefer normalized economic relations.
Overall, the segment contends that Washington, European leaders, and influential think tanks are more invested in maintaining hostility and ongoing wars than in pursuing negotiated settlements. Trump’s instincts may lean toward ending conflicts, the speaker concludes, but he has failed to act decisively, allowing wars and tensions to continue despite campaign promises to the contrary.
Most mega-donors buy influence quietly. Jewish oligarch Haim Saban prefers to explain exactly how it works.
The question came from the stage at the 10th annual Israeli-American Council National Summit, held in Hollywood, Florida in January 2026. Shawn Evenhaim, the IAC’s board chairman emeritus, turned to the two most powerful Jewish, pro-Israel megadonors in American politics and asked them, simply, how they gain influence over politicians.
Miriam Adelson declined to answer, saying she wanted to “be truthful” but “there are so many things I don’t want to talk about.”
Haim Saban had no such reluctance.
“It’s a system that we did not create,” he said. “It’s a legal system and we just play within the system. Those who give more have more access and those who give less have less access. It’s simple math. Trust me.”
Moments earlier, when asked whether Jewish community influence in the United States was weakening, Saban dismissed the anxiety with characteristic confidence. “I can tell you,” he told the 3,500 assembled Israeli-Americans, “that my influence is not weakening.”
To understand why Saban could say that with a shrug, you must go back to where he started.
Haim Saban was born on October 15, 1944, in Alexandria, Egypt. In 1956, amid anti-Jewish hostility following the Suez Crisis, the Saban family fled Egypt and immigrated to Israel, settling in a rough Tel Aviv neighborhood where they shared a communal bathroom, as Saban frequently recounts, “with a hooker and her pimp.” A school principal told the young Saban he was “not cut out for academic studies.” He served in the Israel Defense Forces during both the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War.
In 1966, he became bassist for the Israeli rock band The Lions of Judah despite not knowing how to play bass, conditioning his work booking their gigs on becoming their musician. The band signed with Polydor and appeared on the BBC, but money ran dry. By the early 1970s, Saban had relocated to France, where he and partner Shuki Levy built a niche creating theme music for American TV shows broadcast overseas, providing the music free while retaining the rights.
The business generated 15 gold and platinum records and $10 million annually within seven years. But the empire rested on a fault line. A 1998 Hollywood Reporter investigation revealed that Saban had not actually composed all 3,700 works credited to his name. Ten composers threatened legal action, and Saban quietly settled out of court.
Saban moved to Los Angeles in 1983 and founded Saban Entertainment in 1988. His breakthrough came after eight years of failed pitches when Fox agreed to buy his Americanized adaptation of a Japanese children’s show. The result was Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which debuted in 1993 and generated over $6 billion in toy sales.
The franchise’s success came with costs. In 1998, the Screen Actors Guild declared Saban Entertainment “unfair to performers” and accused the company of “economic exploitation of children,” ordering members not to work for his shows. Power Rangers was produced non-union, with child actors denied residuals and subjected to hazardous conditions. In 2001, Fox Family Worldwide sold to The Walt Disney Company for $5.3 billion.
In 2003, Saban led a consortium acquiring a controlling stake in ProSiebenSat.1 Media, Germany’s largest commercial television company. He reportedly received the call confirming the deal while standing in the Dachau crematorium with his son. The consortium sold its stake in 2007 for roughly three times what they paid.
In 2006, Saban Capital Group led a consortium acquiring Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-language broadcaster in the United States, for approximately $13.7 billion. It sold in 2020 for around $800 million for a 64% stake, making the investment one of the most expensive failures in media history.
What Saban lost in money, he appeared to gain when it came to consolidating pro-Zionist narratives In Spanish-speaking media. Critics at Al Jazeera noted that Univision’s 2011 documentary “La Amenaza Iraní” (The Iranian Threat), examining Iran’s alleged ties to Latin American governments, “regurgitate[d] all the pro-war right’s by now familiar talking points about nefarious Islamists acting in concert with leftist Bolivarians to bring Terror to the US’ doorstep.” It was screened for English-speaking audiences at the Hudson Institute, a neoconservative Washington think tank that routinely pushes a hardline Zionist agenda. The SourceWatch project characterized Univision’s channels as having “been used to broadcast pro-Israeli propaganda” under Saban’s ownership.
The Univision-Clinton entanglement deepened the scrutiny. A 2014 early childhood initiative between Univision and the Clinton Foundation featured Hillary Clinton’s face in five of seven promotional slides on Univision’s website. When the network later reported on allegations that foundation donations had influenced Clinton as Secretary of State, Univision did not disclose its own foundation partnership.
Across both business and politics, Saban operated under a single guiding principle: advancing what he believed to be in Israel’s best interests. “I’m a one-issue guy,” he said publicly, “and my issue is Israel.”
His three-pronged strategy, outlined at his own Saban Forum, is to fund political campaigns, bankroll think tanks, and control media. He gave the Democratic National Committee a single gift of $7 million in 2002, at the time the largest donation in DNC history. His total giving to Clinton causes exceeded $27 million, including a $13 million founding grant to establish the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings, then the largest donation in Brookings history. He recruited Martin Indyk, former U.S. Ambassador to Israel and former AIPAC deputy research director, to run it.
He funds the Saban National Political Leadership Training Seminar through AIPAC, providing up to 300 college students with pro-Israel advocacy training annually. He was an early donor to the IAC beginning in 2008, briefly partnered with Sheldon Adelson on Campus Maccabees, an anti-BDS initiative, from 2013 to 2015, then quietly pulled out to preserve his standing with Clinton.
Notably, Saban played a behind-the-scenes role in the Abraham Accords, advising UAE Ambassador Yousef Al Otaiba to publish an op-ed warning against Israeli annexation of the West Bank, helping him place and translate it into Hebrew, and privately urging UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed to normalize relations with Israel. Jared Kushner credited that op-ed as a catalyst for the normalization talks.
As mentioned before, Saban is a flexible strategist when it comes to dealing with Left and the Right. He has forged close ties with Ariel Sharon, who moved him in a more hawkish direction on security matters. “History proved that Sharon was right and I was wrong,” Saban has said. “In matters relating to security, that moved me to the right. Very far to the right.”
When Saban decided in 2014 that Obama might strike a bad deal with Iran, he did not mince words at the Israeli American Council. “I would bomb the living daylights out of these sons of bitches.” Despite being a reliable donor to the Democratic Party, Saban has shown a willingness to attack people in the party who deviate from the Zionist consensus. He labeled DNC chair candidate Keith Ellison “clearly an anti-Semite.” When Joe Biden conditioned weapons shipments to Israel in 2024, Saban sent an angry email calling it a “bad,,,bad,,,bad,,,decision” and arguing there were “more Jewish voters, who care about Israel, than Muslim voters that care about Hamas.”
Saban’s fierce advocacy for Israel is inseparable from his identity. Haim Saban currently holds dual Israeli-American citizenship. The Jerusalem Postranked him number one on its list of the 50 Most Influential Jews in 2016. Israeli TV host Dana Weiss once called him “our rich uncle.”
In Saban’s political universe, the traditional left-right spectrum is little more than a convenient vehicle—to be boarded or abandoned depending on which direction best serves the project of Israeli dominance in the Middle East.
Germany has called for the resignation of UN Special Rapporteur for the Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese, following remarks she made about the Israeli occupation regime during a forum organized by the Al Jazeera network in Doha.
German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said on Thursday that Albanese was no longer fit to continue in her mandate, citing what he described as repeated inappropriate statements.
“I respect the UN system of independent rapporteurs. However, Ms Albanese has made numerous inappropriate remarks in the past. I condemn her recent statements about Israel. She is untenable in her position,” Wadephul wrote on X.
Germany calls for Albanese’s resignation one day after France issued a similar demand, escalating diplomatic pressure on the UN official.
France calls for Albanese’s resignation
On Wednesday, France formally urged Albanese to step down over the same remarks.
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot told lawmakers: “France unreservedly condemns the outrageous and reprehensible remarks made by Ms Francesca Albanese, which are directed not at the Israeli government, whose policies may be criticised, but at Israel as a people and as a nation, which is absolutely unacceptable,” arguing that the comments went beyond criticism of Israeli government policies and instead targeted “Israel” as a state and people.
Albanese’s Remarks at the Forum
Speaking via videoconference at the Doha forum on Saturday, Albanese criticized what she described as global complicity in the war on Gaza.
“The fact that instead of stopping Israel, most of the world has armed, given Israel political excuses, political sheltering, economic and financial support is a challenge. The fact that most of the media in the Western world has been amplifying the pro-apartheid genocidal narrative is a challenge. And here also lies the opportunity. Because if international law has been stabbed in the heart, it is also true that never before has the global community seen the challenges that we all face. We who do not control large amounts of financial capital, algorithms, and weapons now see that we, as humanity, have a common enemy, and that freedoms, the respect of fundamental freedoms, are the last peaceful avenue, the last peaceful toolbox that we have to regain our freedom.”
Following the controversy, Albanese posted the full video of her speech on X, writing:
“My full AJ Forum speech last week: the common enemy of humanity is THE SYSTEM that has enabled the genocide in Palestine, including the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it and the weapons that enable it.”
My full AJ Forum speech last week: the common enemy of humanity is THE SYSTEM that has enabled the genocide in Palestine, including the financial capital that funds it, the algorithms that obscure it and the weapons that enable it. pic.twitter.com/PzTQFFybsG
— Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt (@FranceskAlbs) February 9, 2026
Albanese has denied that her remarks described “Israel” as the “common enemy of humanity.”
In an interview with France 24, she denounced what she called “completely false accusations” and “manipulation” of her words.
“I have never, ever, ever said ‘Israel is the common enemy of humanity’,” Albanese told the broadcaster.
She contended that her comments were being misrepresented and maintained that she was referring to broader systemic structures enabling violations of international law in Gaza.
Mounting Diplomatic Pressure on the UN Mandate
The coordinated calls from Germany and France add to a growing campaign of political pressure surrounding Albanese’s mandate as UN special rapporteur for the Palestinian territories.
Her tenure has increasingly drawn opposition from Western governments, particularly following her reports on Gaza and her calls for accountability mechanisms, including action at the International Criminal Court. The US sanctions imposed in July 2025 marked an unprecedented step against a UN mandate holder and signaled Washington’s direct challenge to her work.
Osama Hamdan, a leader in the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), said on Wednesday that the joining of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is wanted by the International Criminal Court, to the so-called “Peace Council” represents “the farce of the era.”
In remarks broadcast by Al Jazeera, Hamdan said the movement had not received from mediators any draft or official proposals concerning the weapons of the resistance.
He stressed that Hamas has not officially adopted any decision regarding freezing its weapons, and that its national position is firm in considering resistance a legitimate right as long as the occupation exists.
Hamdan stressed that the Palestinian people reject any form of external guardianship and cannot accept international forces replacing the Israeli army inside the Gaza Strip.
He added that the movement had contacted the Indonesian government and made clear that the role of any international force should be limited to deployment along the borders of the Gaza Strip to separate it from the occupation.
He said that any international stabilisation force, if established, should work to prevent attacks against the Palestinian people, in line with the plan proposed by US President Donald Trump.
Israel says it will attack Iran if Tehran does not agree to a deal that includes restricting the range of its missiles to 300 kilometers (186 miles).
According to Ynet, Israel is demanding that any deal the US makes with Iran include Tehran eliminating its uranium enrichment program, limiting the range of its ballistic missiles to 300 kilometers, and cutting ties with its allies in the region.
President Donald Trump has suggested he will order an attack on Iran if Tehran does not make a deal with the US. Tel Aviv says any deal between Washington and Tehran must include missile range restrictions or Israel will attack Iran.
Iranian officials have stated that Tehran is unwilling to place restrictions on its missile program. Limiting the range of its missiles to 300 kilometers would prevent Iran from having a meaningful retaliatory capability.
Israeli officials, according to Ynet, do not believe that Iran will accept limitations on its missile program.
Trump met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday about Iran. Officials said that Washington and Tel Aviv would continue to prepare for war with Iran, and an immediate attack is unlikely.
On Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump had ordered a second aircraft carrier strike group to prepare for deployment to the Middle East.
Since the war started, voices in the alternative media have said that Ukraine cannot win a war against Russia. Indeed, John Mearsheimer has been saying this since 2014.
Four years into this devastating war, those voices feel at one and the same time both vindicated and unheard. Ukraine is losing yet western leaders in Europe appear bent on continuing the fight.
Nothing is illustrative of this more than Kaja Kallas’ ridiculous comment of 10 February that Russia should agree to pre-conditions to end the war, which included future restrictions on the size of Russia’s army.
Comments such as this suggest western figures like Kallas still believe in the prospect of a strategic victory against Russia, such that Russia would have to settle for peace as the defeated party. Or they are in denial, and/or they are lying to their citizens. I’d argue that it is a mixture of the second and third.
When I say losing, I don’t mean losing in the narrow military sense. Russia’s territorial gains over the winter period have been slow and marginal. Indeed, western commentators often point to this as a sign that, given its size advantage, Russia is in fact losing the war, because if it really was powerful, it would have defeated Ukraine long ago.
And on the surface, it might be easy to understand why some European citizens accept this line, not least as they are bombarded with it by western mainstream media on a constant basis.
However, most people also, at the same time, agree that drone warfare has made rapid territorial gains costly in terms of lost men and materiel. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that since the second part of 2023, after Ukraine’s failed summer counter-offensive, Russia has attacked in small unit formations to infiltrate and encircle positions.
Having taken heavy losses at the start of the war using tactics that might have been conventional twenty years ago, Russia’s armed forces had to adapt and did so quickly. Likewise, Russia’s military industrial complex has also been quicker to shift production into newer types of low cost, easy build military technology, like drones and glide bombs, together with standard munitions that western providers have been unable to match in terms of scale.
And despite the regular propaganda about Russian military losses in the tens of thousands each month, the data from the periodic body swaps between both sides suggest that Ukraine has been losing far more men in the fight than Russia. And I mean, at a ratio far greater than ten to one.
Some western pundits claim that, well, Russia is advancing so it is collecting its dead as it moves forward. But those same pundits are the ones who also claim that Russia is barely moving forward at all. In a different breath, you might also hear them claim that Russia is about to invade Estonia at any moment.
Of course, the propaganda war works in both directions, from the western media and, of course, from Russian. I take the view that discussion of the microscopic daily shifts in control along the line of contact is a huge distraction.
The reality of who is winning, or not winning, this war is in any case not about a slowly changing front line. Wars are won by economies not armies.
Those western pundits who also tell you that Russia will run out of money tomorrow – it really won’t – never talk about the fact that Ukraine is functionally bankrupt and totally dependent on financial gifts which the EU itself has to borrow, in order to provide. War fighting for Ukraine has become a lucrative pyramid scheme, with Zelensky promising people like Von der Leyen that it is a solid investment that will eventually deliver a return, until the day the war ends, when EU citizens will ask where all their tax money disappeared to.
Russia’s debt stands at 16% of its GDP, its reserves over $730 billion, its yearly trade surplus still healthy, even if it has narrowed over the past year.
Russia can afford to carry on the fight for a lot longer.
Ukraine cannot.
And Europe cannot.
And that is the point.
The Europeans know they can’t afford the war. Ukraine absolutely cannot afford the war, even if Zelensky is happy to see the money keep flowing in. Putin knows the Europeans and Ukraine can’t afford the war. In these circumstances, Russia can insist that Ukraine withdraws from the remainder of Donetsk unilaterally without having to fight for it, on the basis that the alternative is simply to continue fighting.
He can afford to maintain a low attritional fight along the length of the frontline, which minimises Russian casualties and maximises Ukraine’s expenditure of armaments that Europe has to pay for.
That constant financial drain of war fighting is sowing increasing political discord across Europe, from Germany, to France, Britain and, of course, Central Europe.
Putin gets two benefits for the price of one. Europe causing itself economic self-harm while at the same time going into political meltdown.
That is why western leaders cannot admit that they have lost the war because they have been telling their voters from the very beginning that Ukraine would definitely win.
Europe’s leaders are hiding from the political reckoning that they will face, as their voters wake up to the fact that they were lied to.
Who will want to vote for Merz, Macron, Tusk, Starmer and all these other tinpot statesmen when it becomes clear that they have royally screwed the people of Europe for a stupid proxy war in Ukraine that was unwinnable?
What will Kaja Kallas do for a job when everyone in Europe can see that she’s a dangerous warmonger who did absolutely nothing for the right reason, and who failed at everything?
Zelensky is wondering where he can flee to when his number’s up, my bet would be Miami.
So if you are watching the front line every day you need to step back from the canvas.
When the war ends, Putin will reengage with Europe but from a position of power not weakness.
The German government is wasting taxpayers’ money by continuing to fund Ukraine, veteran politician Sahra Wagenknecht has said.
European nations have largely compensated for the sharp reduction of American support to Kiev under the administration of US President Donald Trump, according to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW). EU military and financial aid to Ukraine grew by 67% and 59% respectively in 2025, it said in a report this week.
Germany, which has already provided almost €44 billion ($52 billion) to the government of Vladimir Zelensky since the escalation between Moscow and Kiev in 2022, has taken on a larger part of the burden, and according to current budget plans aid from Berlin will be increased to around €11.5 billion ($13.7 billion) this year.
In an interview with Berliner Zeitung on Wednesday, Wagenknecht accused Chancellor Friedrich Merz of “making the German taxpayer the number one financier of war.”
Instead of substantively working on a peace plan and “demanding compromises” from Zelensky, the German government is “issuing a blank check after a blank check to Ukraine,” she said.
According to the politician, who served in the Bundestag for more than 15 years and founded the Bundnis Sahra Wagenknecht party, the extra billions sent to Kiev are not making peace closer but are merely prolonging the conflict.
Financing Zelensky’s government has become an “embezzlement of German taxpayer money” that only increases the suffering of the Ukrainian population, Wagenknecht stressed.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said earlier this week that a settlement of the Ukraine conflict had been “entirely feasible” after the summit between Russian President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, in Anchorage last August, but Kiev and its European backers have since acted to sabotage the efforts to end the fighting.
Lavrov previously called the Europeans “the main obstacles to peace,” saying they have been “blinded” by their fruitless desire of “inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia.”
Russia has decried Western arms deliveries to Kiev, arguing that they will not prevent Moscow from achieving its goals in the conflict and will only increase the risk of a direct clash between Russia and NATO.
MOSCOW – Russian soldiers are tortured in secret prisons of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, being kept in cages, beaten, and denied food and water, Russian Foreign Ministry Ambassador-at-Large on the Ukrainian regime’s crimes Rodion Miroshnik told Sputnik.
“The greatest amount of abuse and torture occurs in secret prisons – dungeons, basements, concrete boxes, often in cages. And it’s there, when no one knows about them, when they are not included in prisoner-of-war lists, when international organizations know nothing about them, that the worst abuse begins,” Miroshnik said.
He said the Ukrainian Armed Forces are trying to extract military information from them in these torture chambers.
“This is a conveyor belt that involves beatings at the entrance, a marathon of torture for these people – electric chairs, psychological pressure, coercion, denial of food and water. Meanwhile, representatives of the security services arrive to try to break people. Representatives of the SBU [Security Service of Ukraine] and GUR [Main Directorate of Intelligence] come, including for staged videos where people are beaten and subjected to severe psychological pressure,” the ambassador said.
Russia has been conducting its special military operation since February 24, 2022. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said the operation aims to “protect people subjected to genocide by the Kiev regime.” According to the president, the ultimate goal of the operation is to completely liberate Donbas and create conditions that guarantee Russia’s security: Ukraine must undergo demilitarization and denazification.
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