Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

How Policies From The Bi-Parisian Foreign Policy Establishment Led To Trump’s Venezuela War

Trump’s Escalation In Venezuela Is Just A Continuation Of A Longstanding Regime Change Campaign

The Dissident | December 18, 2025

Trump is currently escalating a regime change war with Venezuela to overthrow its president, Nicolas Maduro. He has sent what Julian Assange described as “the largest U.S. pre-invasion buildup since the Iraq war” to the Caribbean and and has killed 95 people in strikes on boats in the Caribbean, under the false pretext of fighting drug traffickers, but with the real intention- as Trump’s chief of staff, Susie Wiles, admitted– of “blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle”.

The Trump administration has also authorized covert CIA action to overthrow Maduro and announced a “complete blockade of all sanctioned oil tankers going in and out of Venezuela”, which amounts to siege warfare on the people of Venezuela, given the fact, as Economists Jeffery Sachs and Mark Weisbrot have noted, that “nearly all of the foreign exchange that is needed to import medicine, food, medical equipment, spare parts and equipment needed for electricity generation, water systems, or transportation, is received by the Venezuelan economy through the government’s revenue from the export of oil”.

While this has been widely reported, what has been mostly ignored is the fact that Trump’s policy is nothing new and is only an escalation of a bipartisan regime change policy in Venezuela that has been ongoing since 1999.

In this article, I will document the longstanding regime change campaign from the U.S. foreign policy establishment that led to Trump’s current escalation.

The Bush Administration’s Regime Change Campaign Against Hugo Chavez.

The regime change campaign in Venezuela did not start with the current Venezuelan president, Nicolas Maduro, but with his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, who was elected president of the country in 1999, and whom the Bush administration repeatedly tried to overthrow.

According to leaked documents, the U.S. gave $15 million to USAID and instructions to carry out a program to undermine Hugo Chavez when he first got elected, which included “penetrating Chavez’s Political Base”, “dividing Chavismo”, and “isolating Chavez internationally”.

This ramped up in 2002, when the International Republican Institute (IRI), a subsidiary of the CIA cutout NED, was given $300,000 from the Bush administration to train opposition politicians to carry out a coup against Chavez.

As Mother Jones reported, “In April 2002, a group of military officers launched a coup against Chavez, and leaders of several parties trained by IRI joined the junta. When news of the coup emerged, democracy-promotion groups in Venezuela were holding a meeting to discuss ways of working together to avoid political violence; IRI representatives didn’t attend, saying that they were drafting a statement on Chavez’s overthrow. On April 12, the institute’s Venezuela office released a statement praising the ‘bravery’ of the junta and +commending the patriotism of the Venezuelan military.”

The coup was briefly carried out against Chávez after members of the U.S.-backed Junta began firing snipers on pro-Chávez protestors and then manipulated the footage to make it look like Chávez’s forces were firing on opposition protestors.

As CounterPunch documented:

On April 11th, 2002, the Venezuelan opposition activated snipers who fired on a largely pro-Chávez crowd that had gathered near Miraflores Palace to defend the president from the threat of an approaching and aggressive opposition march. Film footage from the ensuing gun battle was inserted into a pre-fabricated media strategy which sought to convince the Venezuelan population that government supporters were responsible for the deaths, and that they had acted directly on the orders of Chávez himself

That the opposition planned to slaughter innocents is clear from the fact that the public statement by members of the high military command, which cited a specific number of casualties and urged Chávez to resign, had been filmed long before the deaths had even taken place. That the role of the media was paramount is clear from the revelation that this pre-filmed statement was recorded at the house of opposition journalist and host of 24 Hours, Napoleón Bravo.

According to CNN journalist Otto Neustadtl, the opposition planned the false flag massacre before carrying it out, saying, “On the night of the 10th (of April 2002, one day before the coup), they phoned me and told me Otto, a video of Chavez is coming tomorrow, the 11th, the demonstrators will be diverted to Miraflores (presidential house) there will be some dead, and there will be a statement from a group of 20 military high command, asking the president to resign. In the morning of the 11th (of April 2002), they told me everything goes as planned, a video is coming, some dead are coming, and the military will speak out. I was there with the military that was giving the statement against President Chavez. I was there at least two hours before the first death occurred. In that rehearsal, they talked about the dead when the first death had not occurred”.

Strangely, as journalist William Van Wagenen has documented, false flag sniper massacres were again carried out during several future U.S. regime change operations.

The coup against Chavez was soon reversed when his supporters took to the streets and demanded he be reinstated as president.

After the coup was reversed, the Guardian reported that the Bush administration knew of and supported the coup in advance, noting that the Bush administration official Elliot Abrams, “gave a nod to the attempted Venezuelan coup” and added that, “officials at the Organisation of American States and other diplomatic sources, … assert that the US administration was not only aware the coup was about to take place, but had sanctioned it, presuming it to be destined for success.”

The Guardian reported that the Bush administration “immediately endorsed the new government under businessman Pedro Carmona”, adding “visits by Venezuelans plotting a coup, including Carmona himself, began, say sources, ‘several months ago’, and continued until weeks before the putsch last weekend. The visitors were received at the White House by the man President George Bush tasked to be his key policy-maker for Latin America, Otto Reich”.

After the 2002 coup, the Bush administration tried to force a referendum against Hugo Chavez in 2004 through its paid assets on the ground.

The referendum was pushed for by the U.S. asset María Corina Machado, and her NGO, Sumate, which was, “financed by the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI), all three of which are known across Latin America for their attempts to destabilize progressive governments under the guise of ‘democracy promotion’.”

In a recent profile on Machado, CNN noted, she “gained widespread attention in 2004 after participating in a failed effort to recall Venezuela’s then-President Hugo Chávez”.

The regime change attempt again failed, with Hugo Chavez winning by 59 percent, but the U.S.-funded opposition apparently faked exit polls to make it look like Chavez lost the referendum.

The U.S. Carter Centre, which monitored the referendum, noted at the time that, “the opposition cited the exit poll contradicting the official results and expressed their deep skepticism” and “the opposition rejected the results, primarily because opposition’s exit polls carried out throughout voting day suggested the Yes vote (to remove Chavez) would prevail” but noted that, “the machines were extremely accurate. Only one-tenth of 1 percent variation between the paper receipts and the electronic results was found, and this could be explained by voters taking the paper receipts or putting them in the wrong ballot box,” and concluding that, “the Carter Center has found no evidence of fraud”.

Obama Administration Continues Regime Change Against Maduro

After Hugo Chavez died in 2013, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, was elected, and the Obama administration continued the regime change attempt through a paid propaganda campaign to swing the Venezuelan national assembly to the opposition, funding violent riots and putting crushing sanctions on the country.

Leaked documents reported on by Jacobin magazine show that the Obama administration gave $300,000 to the National Democratic Institute, the democratic wing of the CIA cutout NED, in order to, “mobilize a voter database that identified and targeted swing voters through social media” in the run-up to the 2015 national assembly elections.

Jacobin noted that, “indeed, in December 2015, the opposition won a majority in the Venezuelan National Assembly for the first time since Chávez came to power in 1999” and noted, “the NDI claims credit for the opposition’s success, writing that this strategy ‘ultimately played an important role in their resounding victory in the 2015 election’ and that a ‘determining factor in the success of the coalition in the parliamentary elections of 2015 was a two-year effort prior to the elections”.

Under the Obama administration, the U.S. asset María Corina Machado and her U.S.-funded Sumate helped stir up riots in the country that lasted for years.

As journalist Michelle Ellner reported, “Machado was also one of the political architects of La Salida, the 2014 opposition campaign that called for escalated protests, including guarimba tactics. Those weren’t ‘peaceful protests’ as the foreign press claimed; they were organized barricades meant to paralyze the country and force the government’s fall. Streets were blocked with burning trash and barbed wire, buses carrying workers were torched, and people suspected of being Chavista were beaten or killed. Even ambulances and doctors were attacked. Some Cuban medical brigades were nearly burned alive. Public buildings, food trucks, and schools were destroyed. Entire neighborhoods were held hostage by fear while opposition leaders like Machado cheered from the sidelines and called it ‘resistance.’

In 2015, Obama absurdly labeled Venezuela a “threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States” and placed crushing sanctions on Venezuela, which eventually killed at least tens of thousands of people, if not hundreds of thousands.

Trump’s First Term Sanctions and Coup Attempts.

The sanctions on Venezuela increased under the Trump administration, killing at least tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Venezuelans.

Economist Mark Weisbrot noted in the LA Times that:

In Venezuela, the first year of sanctions under the first Trump administration took tens of thousands of lives. Then things got even worse, as the U.S. cut off the country from the international financial system and oil exports, froze billions of dollars of assets and imposed “secondary sanctions” on countries that tried to do business with Venezuela.

Venezuela experienced the worst depression, without a war, in world history. This was from 2012 to 2020, with the economy contracting by 71% — more than three times the severity of the Great Depression in the U.S. in the 1930s. Most of this was found to be the result of the sanctions.

Weisbrot and Jeffrey Sachs revealed that the sanctions killed 40,000 people from 2017 to 2019, and in 2020, the UN expert Alfred de Zayas found that the sanctions had killed 100,000 people since 2015.

Also in 2020, the UN documented that, “the economic blockade of Venezuela and the freezing of Central Bank assets have exacerbated pre-existing economic and humanitarian situation by preventing the earning of revenues and the use of resources to develop and maintain infrastructure and for social support programs, which has a devastating effect on the whole population of Venezuela, especially those in extreme poverty, women, children, medical workers, people with disabilities or life-threatening or chronic diseases, and the indigenous population”.

Along with Trump’s continuation of Obama’s starvation sanctions on Venezuela, he also attempted multiple coup attempts in the country.

The Trump administration recognized Juan Guaido- an unelected U.S. asset in Venezuela- as the official president of the country and sent him $52 million through USAID to set up a fake “interim government” intended to force Maduro from power.

Trump also appointed the aforementioned Elliott Abrams- one of the architects of the 2002 coup- as the Special Representative for Venezuela, and Abrams attempted to funnel weapons to the opposition in Venezuela disguised as humanitarian aid, a repeat of a strategy he enacted in Nicaragua under the Reagan administration.

In 2020, the Trump administration ran another failed coup against Maduro, this time by training defectors from the Venezuelan military in Colombia for a coup attempt.

Describing the Trump administration’s regime change policy during his first term, U.S. Senator Cris Murphy admitted, “First, we thought that getting Guaidó to declare himself president would be enough to topple the regime. Then we thought putting aid on the border would be enough. Then we tried to sort of construct a kind of coup in April of last year, and it blew up in our face when all the generals that were supposed to break with Maduro decided to stick with him in the end”.

Biden’s Attempt To Kidnap Maduro.

A recent AP investigation found that in 2024, a U.S. DHS agent named Edwin Lopez, with “permission from his superiors” in the Biden administration, attempted to bribe Maduro’s pilot, Bitner Villegas, to kidnap Maduro and bring him to the U.S.

Reportedly, Lopez told Villegas that, “in exchange for secretly ferrying Maduro into America’s hands, the pilot would become very rich”.

Lopez apparently offered Villegas a “$50 million reward” to kidnap Maduro and bring him into U.S. custody.

When Villegas responded to the proposal, saying, “We Venezuelans are cut from a different cloth, the last thing we are is traitors,” Lopez made thinly veiled threats against his children, with the AP reporting that, “Lopez tried one last time, mentioning Villegas’ three children by name and a better future he said awaited them in the U.S.” saying that Villegas added, “The window for a decision is closing, soon it will be too late”.

While Trump is carrying out a serious escalation of the regime change policy, it is worth remembering that it is an escalation of a longstanding regime change policy that has continued through the Bush, Obama, first Trump, and Biden administrations.

December 19, 2025 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | Leave a comment

For Israel, The Terrorist Attack At Bondi Is An Opportunity To Push For War With Iran

The Dissident | December 14, 2025

Today, a horrific terrorist attack was committed against Jewish Australians who were celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, killing 16 people and sending 40 to the hospital.

But for Israel, the terrorist attack is an opportunity to manufacture consent for a war with Iran.

There is no evidence that Iran has anything to do with the terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, and all evidence so far that has emerged shows that it almost certainly was not.

The Iranian foreign ministry condemned the attack, saying, “We condemn the violent attack in Sydney, Australia. Terror and killing of human beings, wherever committed, is rejected and condemned”, and evidence released so far suggests the attacker identified so far, Naveed Akram, was a follower of Wahhabi Salafist ideology, which is openly hostile to Shia Islam and Iran.

Despite the lack of evidence and evidence showing it was not Iran behind the attack, Israel is using the horrific terrorist attack to manufacture consent for war with Iran.

Israel Hayom, the mouthpiece of Israel lobbyist and pro-Iran war hawk Miriam Adelson, published an article quoting an anonymous “Israeli security official” who claimed -without evidence- that “there is no doubt that the direction and infrastructure for the attack originated in Tehran”.

The Israeli newspaper Times of Israel, reported that Australia is “investigating if Sydney attack was part of larger Iranian plot” at the behest of the Israeli Mossad.

Previously, Israel pressured Australia to repeat baseless claims from the Mossad that Iran was behind anti-Semitic attacks in Australia.

As veteran journalist Joe Lauria reported, in August “Australian intelligence said the Iranian government was behind the firebombing of a Jewish temple in Melbourne last year as well as other ‘anti-semitic’ attacks in the country”, “days after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly humiliated Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a post on X for being ‘a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’ after Albanese said Australia would follow several European nations and recognize the state of Palestine.”

As Lauria noted, “The Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) did not provide any evidence to prove Iran’s involvement last December in the Adass synagogue attack, which caused millions of dollars of damage but injured no one. It simply said it was their assessment based on secret evidence that Iran was involved”.

Australia’s ABC News reported that, “The Israeli government is claiming credit for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and intelligence agencies publicising Iranian involvement in antisemitic attacks on Australian soil,” adding that “in a press briefing overnight, Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer effectively accused Australia of being shamed into acting”.

Mencer boasted that “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu has made a very forthright intervention when it comes to Australia, a country in which we have a long history of friendly relations”, implying that Israel pressured the Australian government to repeat their baseless claim about Iran being behind the attacks.

ABC reported that the move came days after, “Netanyahu labelled Mr Albanese a ‘weak’ leader who had ‘betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews’” and “Israel announced it would tear up the visas of Australian diplomats working in the West Bank in protest against the Albanese government’s moves to recognise a Palestinian state”.

Israel’s evidence-free claims are already being used by the Trump administration to manufacture consent for war with Iran.

The Jerusalem Post reported that, “A senior US official told Fox News that if the Islamic Republic ordered the attack, then the US would fully recognize Israel’s right to strike Iran in response.”

Israel’s weaponisation of the terrorist attack in Bondi is reminiscent of how Benjamin Netanyahu weaponised the 9/11 attacks to draw America into Middle Eastern wars for Israel.

After the 9/11 attacks, Benjamin Netanyahu admitted that they were “very good” for Israel, because they would “strengthen the bond between our two peoples, because we’ve experienced terror over so many decades, but the United States has now experienced a massive hemorrhaging of terror”.

This, in effect, meant using 9/11 to draw the U.S. into endless regime change wars in the Middle East against countries that had no ties to Al Qaeda but were in the way of Israel’s geopolitical goals.

The top U.S. general, Wesley Clark, said that after 9/11, the U.S. came up with a plan to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran”.

Years later, on Piers Morgan’s show, Wesley Clark said that the hit list of countries came from a study that was “paid for by the Israelis”, which “said that if you want to protect Israel, and you want Israel to succeed… you’ve got to get rid of the states that are surrounding” adding that, “this led to all that followed” (i.e. regime change wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria etc.)

Yet again, Israel is weaponising a terrorist attack to manufacture consent for the final regime change war on their hit list.

December 14, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

The Algorithm of Escalation: How Ukraine Turned Poland into an Operational Theatre

By Adrian Korczyński – New Eastern Outlook – December 14, 2025

November 15, 2025, 21:00. An explosive charge detonated on the railway tracks between Miki and Gołąb. The blast was so powerful that windowpanes shook for kilometres, and residents felt the tremor in their walls. The flash left a metre-long gash in the rail, shattered sleepers, and destroyed the overhead power lines. The very next day, the two Ukrainian citizens responsible for the detonation legally crossed the border at Terespol and departed for Belarus.

Border Guard cameras recorded their departure – nothing raised suspicion at the time. They escaped before investigators could link the fingerprints and phone left at the scene.

Within hours of the explosion, Polish media and politicians almost unanimously pointed to “Russian sabotage.” Meanwhile, those familiar with Ukrainian sabotage operations immediately noticed something else: a plastic charge attached at three points to the rail, nighttime detonation on a key supply line, no civilian casualties – the exact modus operandi Ukraine’s SBU security service had used repeatedly in Crimea.

The difference was only one: this time, the target lay on Polish territory.

Thus, contrary to the public narrative, the blast near Lublin became a piece of a larger puzzle – a quiet campaign Ukraine had been conducting on Polish soil for years, with one overriding objective: to drag Poland, and thereby NATO, into an open confrontation with Russia. This mechanism had a beginning and a defined logic. Its algorithm was activated much earlier.

The Beginning of the Algorithm

In the summer of 2022, Mykhailo Podolyak – a former opposition journalist expelled from Belarus, now one of Zelenskyy’s closest advisors – introduced a simple formula: “Either Europe hands over weapons to Ukraine, or it prepares for a direct clash with Russia”. It was not a request. It was the seed of a mechanism that later grew into Kyiv’s entire communications strategy: framing every Western decision as a choice between supporting Ukraine or facing its own catastrophe.

November 15, 2022, Przewodów. A missile struck, killing two Poles. Before any official investigation could clarify the matter, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy publicly declared it a “Russian missile” and an attack on NATO.

His words instantly shaped a media narrative about the potential triggering of Article 5.

Chaos reigned for crucial hours. Only later did the USA and NATO confirm it was a Ukrainian S-300 air defence missile.

This, however, was revealed only after the version of a Russian attack had circled the globe and fulfilled its political purpose.

The incident did not change the course of the war, but it changed the rules of the game: from then on, any similar event could serve as a pretext for immediately blaming Russia and forcing a Western response.

There were no apologies. Silence fell – though, as time later showed, it was only temporary.

The game had moved to new tracks – both figuratively and literally.

Operations in the Shadows – Poland as a Proving Ground

The years 2024–2025 brought a series of incidents too coherent to be coincidental. Warehouses, logistics centres, and storage halls burned – facilities with a profile strikingly similar to the infrastructure Ukrainian services had previously attacked in Russian-controlled areas. The same kind of locations, the same target logic, the same failed attempts at explanation – the pattern repeated itself like clockwork.

Warsaw, May 2024. Marywilska 44, the largest commercial and warehouse centre in Masovia, a key hub of regional logistics, goes up in flames. Weeks later, the prosecutor’s office announces: the perpetrators are Ukrainian citizens, allegedly acting on orders from Russian intelligence. Half a year on, the picture is telling: in Poland, “small fry” are convicted for belonging to a criminal group, but the verdicts contain not a word about a Russian directive. The sentences are low, simplified, with no appeal, covering mainly arson and obstruction of the investigation. The group’s leaders remain at large outside Poland – Interpol red notices, European Arrest Warrants – no extradition. The investigation stalls, with materials classified.

July 2024, Warsaw. Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW) intercepts a courier parcel containing a ready-to-use explosive device – nitroglycerin, detonators, and a shaped charge. The sender is a Ukrainian citizen, Kristina S.

The blueprint was identical. Immediate reports appeared about an alleged Russian sponsor, based on “supposed contacts” of some detainees with citizens of the Russian Federation. The indictment reached court in 2025, yet the case – like the one concerning Marywilska – ground to a halt.

It is worth noting the recurring motif. The nature of the targets, timing, and type of devices used strongly resemble operations Ukrainian services conducted in Russian-controlled territories – in Melitopol or Tokmak. There, too, logistic infrastructure burned; there, too, improvised devices and the element of surprise were used, often at night. Juxtaposing the facts, the pattern of actions in Poland appears remarkably similar.

And yet, all such events in Poland are described with one sentence:

“Russian sabotage carried out by Ukrainians.”

Network and Backdrop: Unique Operational Capability

Poland hosts a network to which no other actor has comparable access: hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens with legal rights of residence, work, and free movement. These are not just migrants – they constitute a ready-made, perfectly embedded operational environment. Its representatives appeared in the case files of every major sabotage incident.

In February 2025, activist Natalia Panczenko, commenting on Polish proposals to cut social benefits for Ukrainians, uttered a sentence that, in the context of these case files, sounded different from a mere warning: “There could be fights, arson of shops, houses.”

When a few months later Karol Nawrocki won the elections, combining these social benefit proposals with a ban on OUN-UPA symbolism, Kyiv responded on two tracks. On the street, a wave of arson broke out, matching the earlier pattern of sabotage. In diplomacy, the Ukrainian embassy issued an official note threatening retaliation over the draft law.

This synchronisation – violence in the shadows and a threat in the spotlight – shattered the narrative of “Russian sabotage by Ukrainians.” It revealed something more dangerous: that behind the attacks could be an actor possessing not only the unique capability but also the political will to use them openly as a tool of pressure.

Key Testimony

September 1, 2025. Outgoing President Andrzej Duda gives an interview to Bogdan Rymanowski. When asked if Zelenskyy pressured him to immediately blame Russia after Przewodów, Duda replies simply:

“You could say that.”

And when asked if it was an attempt to drag Poland into the war, Duda states plainly:

“That’s how I perceived it. They have been trying from the very beginning to drag everyone into the war. Preferably a NATO country.”

These words were not an accusation. They were an unveiling of the hidden logic of events. In one laconic answer, Andrzej Duda – the politician who for years embodied the course of “unconditional support for Ukraine” – cast a new, grim light on all prior incidents. Suddenly, all incidents – Przewodów, the arsons, the rail explosions – fell into one coherent, terrifying context: Ukraine is playing a game with Poland where the goal is escalation, not security.

Finale of the Operation – Explosion on the Tracks

In November 2025, the ABW detains another group of saboteurs – Ukrainian and Belarusian citizens – in possession of weapons, explosives, and maps indicating planned actions against critical infrastructure.

This was no ordinary “criminal group.” It was an operational cell.

A few days earlier, an explosion ripped through railway tracks near Lublin.

The operation mirrored the earlier incidents with precision: the perpetrators were the same, the method characteristic of Ukrainian special services, and the target – critical infrastructure. The media narrative immediately pointed to Russia as the culprit, while the real objective was more subtle and political: to force Warsaw’s hand. As if someone was replaying the same blueprint step by step.

“But What If It Is Russia?” – Dismantling a Convenient Lie

For the sake of completeness, one must examine the narrative repeated like a mantra after every sabotage act: But what if it is Russia?

At first glance, it makes sense. For years, Poland built its image as Ukraine’s most ardent ally and the loudest critic of the Kremlin. Donald Tusk spoke of “our war”. Szymon Hołownia promised, “we will grind Putin into the ground.”

Karol Nawrocki called the Russian president a “war criminal”, and Russia a “post-imperialist and neo-communist country” – and these are just statements from the highest level.

This was not ordinary rhetoric – it was doctrine. A state that programmes its public opinion in this manner should expect the risk of a reaction. The scenario of a Russian “warning shot” – a precise strike meant to remind Warsaw of the limits of patience – would be strategically rational.

This scenario, however, collapses the moment it is laid over the sequence of facts from 2022–2025. It is demolished by the very pattern of all events.

Who, after the Przewodów blast, immediately, without evidence, pressured for blaming Russia?

Who regularly communicated to Poland that “war will come to your home if you stop supporting us”?

Who possessed a unique, massive logistical and operational network within Poland?

Who had a direct interest in escalating tension and forcing specific decisions on Warsaw?

And finally: who – as President Duda admitted – had been trying from the start to “drag a NATO country into the war”?

The answer to each of these questions is the same. And it does not lead to Moscow.

The Russian lead is a convenient lie. Convenient for Warsaw, which does not want to admit it became a target of its ally. Convenient for the media, which prefers a simple story. And most convenient for Ukraine, whose leaders knew perfectly well that every plume of smoke in Poland would be automatically attributed to Russia.

Epilogue

The issue has long ceased to be about who physically plants the charges.

The issue is about who builds their position on the roar of those explosions.

In this calculus, Russia plays only one role: the omnipresent villain of the narrative, upon whom blame can always be laid. Poland is merely the operational terrain.

The main beneficiary turns out to be the party for whom destabilisation in Poland is a strategic tool: Ukraine – a state on the brink of military catastrophe, which for years has consistently transferred the burden and risk of its war onto the territories of its allies.

Therefore, today, in the echo of the blast near Lublin, it is finally time to ask the question the Polish political class avoided for three years, and to answer it openly:

Whose strategic interest was being pursued on Poland’s turf?

The answer leads directly to Kyiv.

Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research

December 14, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Ukrainians ‘with spy equipment’ arrested in Poland

RT | December 8, 2025

Police in Poland have detained three Ukrainian nationals allegedly found in possession of spying and hacking equipment.

The suspects were apprehended during a routine traffic stop in Warsaw, police said in a statement on Monday. The three men claimed they had been “traveling Europe” and had arrived in Poland just a few hours previously, and were next set to drive to Lithuania. Officers saw that the men were agitated and opted to search the vehicle, the statement noted.

“Suspicious items that could even be used to interfere with the country’s strategic information systems” were discovered, police said, adding that the men were in possession of a large number of SIM cards, antennas, laptops, routers, cameras, advanced hacking equipment, and a “spy device detector.”

The suspects were reportedly unable to explain the nature of the hardware and refused to cooperate with the police. “They claimed to be computer scientists, and when asked more precise questions, they forgot English and pretended not to understand what was being said to them,” the force stated.

The group were taken into pre-trial detention on suspicion of “fraud, computer fraud, and the acquisition of devices and computer programs adapted to commit crimes.” Investigators are currently trying to establish why exactly the suspects had traveled to Poland.

The incident comes less than a month after the Polish authorities accused two Ukrainian nationals of sabotaging a railway line between Warsaw and Lublin, detonating an explosive device on tracks and installing a derailment clamp in two separate incidents. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed the suspects had been working “with the Russian intelligence for a long time” and had fled to Belarus after the incidents.

Moscow has rejected the accusations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that “it would be really strange if Russia wasn’t the first one to be blamed” for the sabotage.

“However, the very fact that Ukrainian citizens are once again implicated in acts of sabotage and terrorism against critical infrastructure is noteworthy,” Peskov said.

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , | Leave a comment

Mi5 and CIA Whistleblowers Expose Israel’s Deadly Tactics in Western Countries

The CJ Werleman Show | October 10, 2025
YouTube Demonetized Our Channel Because We Expose Israel
Please HELP me expose Israel and injustices in Muslim world via Patreon HERE: ▶   / cjwerleman  
One-time donations can be made here: ▶ https://www.paypal.me/cjwerleman
We can’t sustain, improve and grow this program without your help via Patreon membership. Thank you for your support and understanding.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | , , | Leave a comment

IAEA issues new Chernobyl safety warning

RT | December 7, 2025

The protective shelter over the reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant can no longer guarantee radiation containment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said. The agency added that urgent major repairs are now required.

The warning follows an inspection prompted by a drone strike in February, which marked the first major attack on the shelter. Moscow said the strike was a provocation orchestrated by Kiev, while the Ukrainian government blamed Russia.

The strike had pierced the outer shell of the massive steel arch known as the New Safe Confinement (NSC) and triggered a fire. While the initial damage did not cause a radiation leak, the new assessment shows the structural breach has degraded the shelter’s ability to contain nuclear material.

The IAEA confirmed on Friday that the NSC, a 36,000-tonne steel structure built over the destroyed Unit 4 reactor at Chernobyl, “had lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability.”

Completed in 2019 at a cost of around €1.5billion (about $1.6 billion), the NSC was designed to contain radioactive material and seal the original concrete “sarcophagus” installed after the 1986 disaster.

IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that although the shelter’s loadbearing framework and monitoring systems remain intact, “limited temporary repairs have been carried out … comprehensive restoration is urgently required.” IAEA inspectors have now dispatched additional nuclear safety experts to the site to assess the full extent of the damage.

Russia has accused Ukraine of repeatedly targeting the Zaporozhye (ZNPP) and Kursk nuclear power plants, describing the attacks as acts of “nuclear terrorism.”

A Ukrainian drone struck an auxiliary building at the Kursk NPP in late September, during a visit to Moscow by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi.

Just days earlier, power lines supplying the ZNPP were reportedly damaged by Ukrainian artillery, forcing the plant to switch to backup generators. Russia took control of the ZNPP in March 2022, and the region later held a referendum to join the country. Kiev denies involvement in the Kursk incident and has accused Moscow of attacking the ZNPP.

Speaking in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was “playing a dangerous game” by attacking nuclear sites.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Nuclear Power | | 1 Comment

Final SIGAR report finds decades of US corruption, waste in Afghanistan

Press TV – December 5, 2025

The final audit from Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) paints a stark portrait of how tens of billions of dollars ostensibly earmarked for nation‑building were diverted, misused or wasted.

According to SIGAR’s report, from 2002 to 2021 the United States appropriated about $148.21 billion purportedly for Afghan reconstruction. Of that sum, roughly $88.8 billion went to security‑sector projects, while other enterprises disguised as development, humanitarian assistance, governance and institution‑building consumed the rest.

But the watchdog estimates that between $26 billion and $29.2 billion of those funds were lost to waste, fraud and abuse—red flags that preceded the Afghan government’s collapse and the rapid Taliban takeover in 2021.

The report logged 1,327 separate cases of misuse, mismanagement, or corruption tied directly to US‑funded programs.

Among the failures major investments in the Afghan security forces were undermined by inflated troop rolls, ghost‑salary schemes, and an inability to maintain complex gear.

As SIGAR’s acting inspector general put it, “the government we helped build… was essentially a white collar criminal enterprise.”

SIGAR’s acting inspector general, Gene Aloise, told reporters that the project was undermined by “early and ongoing US decisions to ally with corrupt, human-rights-abusing power brokers.”

This strategy, he continued, strengthened insurgent networks and eroded hopes for stable governance in Afghanistan.

Large‑scale hardware and infrastructure also went to waste. The United States funded planes, bases, and military assets, many never used or deteriorating rapidly post‑contract.

One instance involved transport aircraft bought for tens or hundreds of millions of dollars that were later scrapped or abandoned when maintenance systems collapsed.

Despite almost $90 billion spent on training and equipping army and police forces, Afghan troops disintegrated quickly when US support ended, added the report.

Moreover, even broader cost estimates for the war paint an even more sobering picture.

Estimates put the total US cost — including military operations, veteran care, interest on borrowed funds and other long-term liabilities — at more than $2.3 trillion over the two decades, according to the Costs of War project at Brown University.

Based on the SIGAR’s final judgement, the much-hyped mission to purportedly build a stable, democratic Afghanistan delivered neither stability nor democracy.

In September, President Donald Trump sparked a fresh geopolitical firestorm with his calls to reclaim Afghanistan’s Bagram Air Base, signaling a willingness to re-establish a US military presence in a country that has warned against any return of foreign troops.

Trump said the United States was “trying to get [Bagram] back” and described it as “one of the biggest air bases in the world,” highlighting its strategic runway and location to contain China.

Two days later, he posted on social media that if Afghanistan does not return the base, “BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN.”

US military officials warn that retaking Bagram would require “tens of thousands” of troops along with massive logistical and air-defense support to hold the facility, a scenario that could mirror the pitfalls of the long Afghan war.

The United States had invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 in response to the September 11 attacks, even though not a single Afghan national was among the hijackers.

Over the course of the 20-year US occupation of the Asian nation, hundreds of thousands of Afghans lost their lives.

When Washington and its allies deployed troops in 2001, they claimed their mission was to dismantle al-Qaeda under what became known as the US “war on terror.” Yet two decades later, in August 2021, the Taliban quickly retook multiple provincial capitals and then entered Kabul with virtually no resistance.

The rapid collapse of the US-backed government forced Washington into a rushed and chaotic evacuation of diplomats, citizens, and Afghan partners — a scene that drew intense criticism for the US government’s mismanagement of its own exit.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

National Guard shooter a former CIA asset: why Rahmanullah Lakanwal case is typical

Trump points finger to Biden, but the deeper scandal is about America’s “terror fabric”

By Uriel Araujo | December 3, 2025

Last week, Afghan national Rahmanullah Lakanwal allegedly shot two National Guard officers near the White House, killing one and injuring the other. Authorities swiftly detained him, treating it as an isolated security breach, but the incident predictably fueled national debates on immigration and Islamic extremism.

President Donald Trump and CIA Director John Ratcliffe have pointed fingers at former President Joe Biden, claiming his policies enabled the attack. Interestingly, Ratcliffe himself acknowledged that Lakanwal was resettled in the US due to his prior collaboration with the CIA as part of a partner force in Kandahar, which ended amid the chaotic 2021 evacuation.

That detail alone — linking a suspect in an attack near the nation’s capital to its own intelligence apparatus — barely registered in the news cycle. In most countries, it would spark parliamentary inquiries, mass resignations, and nonstop media scrutiny, especially given the fact that clandestine operations and political assassinations are some of the CIA specialties.

The shooting itself followed a now-familiar script: a sudden act of violence, an almost immediate tightening of security, and official assurances that there was “no broader threat” or plot. Yet the most significant fact remains unexplored. Who exactly is this shooter? Under what circumstances did he work with US intelligence? When did he cease to do so? And more importantly, how does an American intelligence asset end up opening fire in the heart of the capital? Not to mention (in the context of Trump’s new War on Drugs): is this intelligence asset connected to the Afghan dope trade?

In any case, we are not looking at an isolated anomaly. Each time a political assassination attempt, mass shooting, or terrorist threat incident captures national attention in the US, investigators often concede that the suspect had some form of prior contact or connection with federal agencies. Sometimes it is the CIA. At other times the FBI. Thus far, the pattern has been acknowledged only in fragments, but rarely examined as a systemic problem, conspiracy theories aside.

American intelligence agencies (like those of other countries) do not recruit from convents. They often operate in war zones, criminal markets, and militant networks. The question is: are American agencies simply gathering intelligence, or are they also shaping (to some degree) the very threats they claim to prevent?

Back in 2021, I wrote that any  American withdrawal from Afghanistan was likely to stay incomplete, with special forces and covert presence expected to remain, partly due to Afghanistan’s strategic importance and the resurgence of massive opium/heroin production under the US-backed government after 2001.

One may recall that Afghanistan has been a hub for CIA activity for over 40 years, and, as I recently noted, warlords, traffickers, militias, and fixers there were not accidental byproducts of intervention but often operational tools. With American “withdrawal”, these networks did not vanish, but rather scattered. This troubling legacy remains underreported, especially its most profitable pillar: narcotics.

Washington did not just fail to stop the Afghan drug trade. It is fair to say it maintained it. Opium financing sustained armed groups, secured loyalty, and lubricated covert operations long after public rhetoric focused on reconstruction. US intelligence has become structurally entangled with drug revenues during the occupation and the very collapse of this system triggered economic and security chaos inside Afghanistan itself. Considering all of this, I’ve recently written that the Taliban’s sudden shutdown of most the world’s largest illicit heroin supply this year was likely to provoke serious blowback

Thus, when Afghan-linked personnel surface in a national security scandal, American indignation is conveniently selective.

The same logic applies domestically. The FBI has an extensive record of infiltrating extremist groups on US soil, and, in multiple documented cases, actively encouraging or facilitating crimes that otherwise might never have occurred. FBI agents and informants have funded operations, provided materials, and pushed vulnerable individuals toward violence just in time for dramatic arrests (and sometimes not in time for that). Evidence can be thin enough in any single case, but overwhelming in accumulation.

The 2009 Newburgh case is emblematic, when a paid FBI informant induced impoverished Black Muslims from New York to plot a terrorist plan, even providing them cash, and orchestrating the entire plot to bomb Bronx synagogues.

The same can be said of the Fort Dix Five (2007) episode; of the Liberty City Seven case (2006); of the Rezwan Ferdaus affair (2011); of the Cleveland Bridge Plot (2012), and many others, with a clear pattern emerging: studies (like those of award-winning journalist Trevor Aaronson) even estimate federal informants drove nearly half of post 911 terror convictions, in what has been described as a “terror fabric”. This means domestic terrorism in America is largely a product of its own security apparatus.

No wonder public confidence in federal institutions has collapsed. Americans are asked to accept an absurd contradiction: that the intelligence community can monitor global communications in real time but cannot detect local radicals already on its payroll.

Thus, the fact that the Utah Valley University (where the Charlie Kirk assassination took place) is a key intelligence hub triggered a lot of conspiratory speculation. One may also recall, in the context of Trump’s so-called war against the “deep state”, that there were links between federal agencies and two Trump assassination attempt suspects (Thomas Crook and Ryan Routh).

So much for the notion that political violence in America is always the work of random loner shooters. Of course sociological, cultural and psychological factors play a role and much has been written from that angle. But sometimes “deep state” intrigues are also a factor that should not be overlooked.

Uriel Araujo, Anthropology PhD, is a social scientist specializing in ethnic and religious conflicts, with extensive research on geopolitical dynamics and cultural interactions.

December 3, 2025 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | , , | Leave a comment

Iran Army says Australia’s designation of IRGC serves US-Israeli interests

Press TV – November 30, 2025

The General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces has strongly condemned Australia’s “unwise decision” to label the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as a “state sponsor of terrorism.”

In a statement on Sunday, the Armed Forces said the unwise decision by the “dependent” Australian government against the IRGC is in line with the sinister goals of the arrogant system, led by the terrorist United States.

It added that the move aims to serve the terrorist Israeli regime’s interests in the continuation of oppression and crimes and has no meaning other than “baseless and spiteful” claims under the pressure of the US and Israel.

According to the statement, the move demonstrates a lack of proper understanding of international and global realities.

The Army, however, emphasized that such moves will strengthen the will of the heroic Iranian nation to boost its defense prowess and will result in nothing but greater support of Iranians and the free nations across the world for the Armed Forces, especially the powerful and anti-terrorism IRGC.

The Australian government listed the IRGC as a “state sponsor of terrorism” on Thursday over baseless accusations that the elite force had orchestrated attacks against Australia’s Jewish community.

In a statement released on Thursday, the Iranian Foreign Ministry strongly condemned the decision.

“The political move by the Australian government is a dangerous and criminal precedent, designed under the influence of the Zionist regime to divert public attention from the genocide in Gaza,” the ministry said.

November 30, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , | Leave a comment

Polish railway ‘sabotage’ runs on time for Europe’s military Schengen plan

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 19, 2025

The European Commission is proposing to make the European Union of 27 nations a seamless territory for NATO transport across national borders. The concept is to create a “military Schengen” in analogy to the free movement of civilians across the bloc.

The controversial idea is strongly advocated by pro-NATO European leaders. The proxy war in Ukraine against Russia and the escalating tensions of a wider war have helped push the sweeping militarization of the EU as a single bloc.

This week, as the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen makes her pitch for an EU-wide military Schengen zone, there were suspicious sabotage attacks on Poland’s railway network.

Von der Leyen is leading the calls for coordination of military forces to have free access to the EU’s transport links. The idea for a military Schengen-type arrangement for the EU has been around for several years, but there has been resistance from nations giving up control of their borders. The last time Von der Leyen’s German compatriots did that by marching across Europe did not go down too well.

What the proponents of the concept would like is for military forces from one country to be able to cross over several others with minimal inspection. The idea brings closer to realization the formation of an “EU army.” It also blurs the lines between NATO and the EU to the point where all 27 members of the EU become de facto members of the military alliance.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Von der Leyen were quick to blame Russia for “shocking sabotage” of Poland’s railway after trains were disrupted by an explosive attack on Sunday. No one was injured. And, as usual, no evidence was provided. Russia was not openly blamed by name, but the media reporting implicated Russian involvement. Moscow has previously denied accusations of carrying out hybrid war attacks on transport and communication infrastructure across Europe, including the use of drones to disrupt air traffic.

Questions arise about the latest railway incidents in Poland. The affected rail line was from Warsaw to Lublin, and onwards to Ukraine. Tusk described the rail link as “crucially important for aid to Ukraine.” Indeed, the rail line is a major vector for munitions flowing to Ukraine. If it is such a vital supply route for NATO military equipment to Ukraine, one wonders why the rail line was not better guarded.

The railway damage was reported by a train driver on Sunday morning, yet the government and security authorities did not act until Monday. The delay in response caused anger among Polish citizens who remonstrated with officials at public gatherings. Were the authorities deliberately being negligent in ensuring the rail line was made safe, to contrive an accident?

The BBC reported local people claiming that they heard a massive explosion whose impact could be felt several kilometers away. The strange thing is that the reported railway damage did not appear to be extensive. One would expect from such a powerful blast that whole sections of the rail would have been destroyed, making the line impassable. However, it was reported that several trains were able to traverse the damaged section on Monday before the authorities acted. The traversing trains incurred shattered windows. But if they were able to traverse, then the tracks could not have been blown apart.

We might reasonably speculate, therefore, that the explosion was not the actual cause of the relatively limited rail damage. Perhaps the blast was detonated to bring the public’s attention to a separate act of sabotage to derail the trains (without causing a calamitous loss of life). The purpose was to conflate the perception of explosion with railway sabotage. And as Tusk, Von der Leyen, and the media have all dutifully followed suit, the convenient upshot is to level accusations implicating Russian hybrid warfare.

Poland’s Army Chief of Staff, General Wieslaw Kukula, articulated the narrative as quoted by Euronews : “The adversary has started preparations for war. They are building a certain environment here to bring about an undermining of public confidence in the government and bodies such as the armed forces and the police… [creating] conditions that are convenient for the potential conduct of aggression on Polish territory.”

Week after week, European politicians, military, security, and bureaucratic chiefs are claiming with shrill rhetoric that Russia is preparing to attack member states imminently. Earlier this year, Poland’s Tusk even accused Russia of intending to blow up civilian cargo airplanes. How easy it is to plant incendiary devices to blame someone else and report “suspects” arrested without court cases. The European public is browbeaten into consenting to increased military budgets, air defenses, anti-drone walls, and tens of billions of Euros more to prop up the corrupt Kiev regime. All to “defend” Europe against an evil aggressor.

Moscow has repeatedly dismissed claims that it intends to attack European states. But the war propaganda continues relentlessly to project Russia as a drooling barbarian.

A cruel irony is that passenger trains have been sabotaged in Russia in recent months, with the loss of lives, acts which have been attributed to NATO and Ukrainian covert operations. The Western media hardly reports on those atrocities.

But an apparently contrived false-flag operation in Poland is given maximum Western media coverage with the choreographed narrative that Russia is the villain. As with the flurry of mysterious drones suddenly invading European airspaces.

The proposal for a European military Schengen is very much aimed at bringing rail networks across Europe under a seamless command to enable the rapid mass movement of NATO forces over national borders. No questions asked. Just do it.

A false-flag sabotage on Polish railways reinforces the messaging that Europe’s transport network has to be turned over for military logistical control.

The militarization of Europe and its “NATO-ization,” entails an unprecedented and mind-boggling shift in public money to military corporations, the financial elite, and their political puppets. The corruption in the Kiev regime is a microcosm of the bigger war racket that Europe has become. False flags to scare European citizens into passive acceptance of the rip-off are running like clockwork.

It used to be joked about Mussolini and Hitler that at least the old fascists made the trains run on time. The new fascists make the trains come off the rails on time.

November 19, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Ukrainians blew up Polish rail line – Tusk

RT | November 18, 2025

Two Ukrainians have been identified as the suspected perpetrators behind two acts of sabotage targeting a railway line between Warsaw and Lublin on Monday, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told the parliament on Tuesday. According to him, the suspects sought to provoke a train crash.

The prime minsiter accused the suspects of working “with the Russian intelligence for a long time.” According to Tusk, both alleged perpetrators fled to Belarus after the incidents.

A military-grade C4 explosive charge was used in a least one of the incidents, Tusk said, adding that a 300-meter-long cable was used to detonate it. The National Prosecutor’s Office also confirmed that a cable “that was most likely used to set off the explosive” was discovered.

Another incident involved a steel clamp on a track to cause a derailment, Tusk said. The alleged perpetrators also left a smartphone with a power bank at the scene to record a potential incident, he added.

The prime minister called the two incidents “the most serious” security situation over the past years. “A certain line has been crossed,” he said.

Warsaw’s statements show that Russophobia is “flourishing” in Poland, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, commenting on the developments on Tuesday. It would be “surprising if they had not accused Russia” of being behind the incident, he added.

Peskov went on to say that it’s not the first time the Ukrainians have been suspected of “acts of sabotage and terrorism” within Western nations. Kiev’s backers “fail to put two and two together,” he argued, warning that the West is “playing with fire” and could face “dire consequences” if it continues to do so.

The C4-like explosives were originally developed by the British during World War II and reintroduced as Composition C family by the US military. The C4 variant was developed in the US in 1950s. Russia does not produce C4 explosives and relies on its own types of plastic explosives known as PVV family that were developed back in the USSR.

In September, Moscow warned that Kiev could be planning false-flag operations in Romania or Poland to frame Russia for them. The attacks could escalate into a third world war, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova warned at the time, citing reports in Hungarian media alleging that Ukraine intended to stage acts of sabotage in neighboring NATO nations.

November 18, 2025 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Russophobia | | 2 Comments

Ukraine slaughters civilians, then blames Russia – again

By Eva Bartlett | RT | November 5, 2025

A shocking video recently published on Russian media and in Telegram channels shows the last moments of two civilians before they were killed by Ukrainian drones in Kupyansk region east of the city of Kharkov.

The drone observed the first man, carrying a white flag – a universal sign for surrender, or in the case of civilians, that they pose no threat – before flying right at him, blowing him apart and injuring the dog walking beside him, who presumably died as well.

The second civilian, upon reaching the body of the first, crossed himself and walked on. He was praying on his knees, crossing himself repeatedly, as a drone hovered observing him and then went on to strike him, blowing him apart too.

Ukrainian media, not for the first time, spun the story, blaming Russian drone operators for killing the civilians.

Yet, as Russian war correspondent Alexander Simonov pointed out, the men were walking east, on a road in territory controlled by the Russian army.

“There are no targets for our drones on our rear roads. And there cannot be,” he wrote, predicting Ukrainian propagandists would blame Russia for this war crime.

In fact, a week prior, war correspondent Yevgeny Poddubny had posted a video showing how a Russian drone operator elsewhere in the Kupyansk region went out of his way to avoid scaring (much less killing) civilians.

“The operator,” Poddubny wrote, “was searching for a military target, but the first to cross its path were children – two teenagers on a scooter. In a second, the drone stops moving to avoid frightening the children. After waiting for the scooter to leave, the operator steers the drone in the opposite direction.”

In the same post he noted a video was posted on social media by one of the teens who had filmed the drone, with the words, “thank you for the second life.”

In September, RIA Novosti published a video of the Ukrainian army killing a woman with a drone in the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) village of Shandrigolovo. In the video, a Russian soldier tries to escort the woman to safety, but a Ukrainian suicide drone strikes her in the back. Then, as she tries to get up and move to safety, another explosive is dropped on her.

Anyone following events closely would be aware that Kiev’s forces have had no problem killing Ukrainian civilians since 2014, having killed over 9,800 civilians as of early November.

Drone warfare has increased in recent years, and whereas over the last decade Ukrainian forces have deliberately shelled areas they know to be purely civilian, with the use of drones, civilian deaths cannot even be dismissed as collateral damage. They are precise and deliberate assassinations.

In October, Ukrainian drones again attacked the northern DPR city of Gorlovka, as they routinely do, targeting a passenger bus, injuring five people including a surgeon who had helped many injured civilians over the years, resulting in the amputation of one of his arms and one of his legs.

Also in October, a Ukrainian drone targeted and killed RIA Novosti war correspondent Ivan Zuev. He is one of over 30 Russian journalists deliberately murdered by Ukraine in violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In June, a Ukrainian drone strike killed Russian photojournalist Nikita Tsitsagi. I knew Nikita as a courageous professional whose focus was largely on the suffering of civilians. When he was murdered, he was preparing to do another report from St. Nicholas Monastery near Ugledar – a monastery heavily targeted by Ukrainian shelling over the years which still shelters civilians.

Also in June, a Ukrainian drone targeted Russian NTV journalists filming in the extremely hard-hit village of Golmovsky, east of Gorlovka, killing cameraman Valery Kozhin and seriously injuring war correspondent Alexey Ivliyev.

These are by no means the only instances of Russian journalists and civilians targeted and killed or injured by Ukrainian drones. So, the notion that – as Ukrainian media have spun it – Russian drones targeted the two civilians fleeing towards the Russian military presence is not only illogical, it has been preceded by a long list of Ukrainian drone terrorism incidents and murders of civilians.

Aiden Minnis, a UK citizen fighting on the Russian side, told me, “They also routinely attack our evacuation teams the same way here. They don’t discriminate when they attack with drones. If civilians are walking towards Russian lines, they are perceived to be collaborators and will be hit.”

As for Ukrainian and Western media blaming Russia for Ukraine’s war crimes, the list is long: think Bucha, the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, and the many instances of Western media using footage from Donbass cities targeted by Ukraine and depicting them as Ukrainian cities targeted by Russia.

Eva Bartlett is a Canadian independent journalist. She has spent years on the ground covering conflict zones in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Palestine (where she lived for nearly four years).

November 6, 2025 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries