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UK must be ready to strike Russian Arctic – ex-PM

RT | November 15, 2026

Britain must be prepared to strike Russian military bases in the Arctic in case of a full-scale war, former UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said. This comes as NATO countries significantly escalate their military activities on Russia’s doorstep.

In an op-ed for The Times published on Saturday, Sunak argued that it is “Britain’s duty to prove [Russian President Vladimir] Putin can’t rule the Arctic,” claiming that threatening Russia in the region is one of the few ways to deter it from conflict.

Sunak singled out Russia’s Kola Peninsula, home to the powerful Northern Fleet and a major concentration of nuclear forces, as a potential target. “If Russia knows we could threaten its military infrastructure there, it is far less likely to escalate any conflict,” he wrote.

The former Tory leader also portrayed Russia’s Northern Fleet as a threat to NATO’s control of the North Atlantic, warning that Moscow could disrupt the flow of US troops and equipment to Europe in wartime. He called for Britain to make confronting Russia in the Arctic its chief contribution to European security over the next decade.

The remarks come after an agreement on Tuesday by the UK-led Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), which includes ten northern European nations, to expand naval cooperation across the Arctic, North Atlantic, and Baltic Sea. Britain’s chief of defense staff, Richard Knighton, told the Financial Times that the grouping will move beyond diplomatic exchanges to concrete military measures, including countering Russian submarines.

The EU’s military ambitions in the Arctic are also growing. In late October, foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas called the region the “frontline of global power competition,” accusing Russia of militarization while outlining plans for closer NATO cooperation, expanded military logistics, and greater icebreaker capacity.

Britain’s ambitions in the region, however, face serious obstacles. A report in October by the House of Commons Defense Committee warned that the Royal Navy would struggle to efficiently operate in the Arctic due to the lack of frigates, poor availability of submarines and destroyers, and the loss of under-ice submarine capabilities. The problem also extends to icebreakers. The Telegraph reported last month that the Royal Navy’s only vessel of the type suffered a double engine failure and had to be towed back to port.

The last time the UK attacked Russia in the Arctic was during the Crimean War in 1854, when the Royal Navy devastated the town of Kola but failed to reach the far more strategically important port of Arkhangelsk, which British commanders deemed too heavily defended and difficult to approach.

Russia has rejected claims that it intends to attack NATO. President Vladimir Putin said Russia has “never threatened anyone in the Arctic,” while pledging to strengthen the country’s military infrastructure and defend its sovereign interests.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has accused NATO of deliberately transforming the region into an arena of confrontation, warning in August that the bloc’s military buildup near Russia’s northern borders is increasing the danger of a direct conflict.

November 15, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on UK must be ready to strike Russian Arctic – ex-PM

Ukraine Settlement and New European Security Architecture Must Go Hand in Hand – Kremlin

Sputnik – 15.11.2026

MOSCOW – The settlement of the conflict in Ukraine and the shaping of a new security architecture in Europe cannot be handled separately from one another, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.

“It is obvious that, one way or another, the settlement in Ukraine will be linked to a new security architecture on the European continent. These are two component parts, and neither can exist without the other,” he told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.

At some point this “certainly will have to be discussed with Europe,” he continued.

“The other thing is if they do not actually want peace, then it [discussions] will be useless. Then we will need to achieve this in the absence of negotiating potential, we will need to do this by force,” Peskov said.

Negotiations between the delegations of Russia, the US and Ukraine took place in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11. Russian presidential aide Vladimir Medinsky, who headed the Russian group, said that the topic of the European security architecture became central at the meeting.

November 15, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Comments Off on Ukraine Settlement and New European Security Architecture Must Go Hand in Hand – Kremlin

Book review: Boiling Point, How America Brought War to Ukraine

By Tim Kirby | Strategic Culture Foundation | November 14, 2026

Did Vladimir Putin just wake up one day on the wrong side of the bed and decide to invade Ukraine in February of 2022 or is there a lot more to this single decision that has been reshaping the 21st century geopolitical landscape? Obviously, from the way that I just posed the question you can see that I am on the side that views the causes for the war in Ukraine to be very deep, long-term, historical and consciously nefarious, and most importantly, not from within the halls of the Kremlin. So it was a pleasure to take a look at the book “Boiling Point, How America Brought War to Ukraine” by author Stephen Kinzer, who like myself, also believes that the real reasons behind military conflicts around the world are not what CNN and the BBC have been telling you. The main thesis of this book was stated clearly by its creator; the war “may have been illegal, but it was definitely not unprovoked.”

Financing terror with American wealth since 1945

The thing that unites terrorists, journalists, and activists is that they all have to be financed by ‘someone’ in order to keep their activities going. Kinzer rightfully points out that the terror acts of Stepan Bandera, and others of his ilk, right after WWII, used for the vague goal of destabilizing the USSR, were only worth the American money if one wanted to usher in a Cold War. It is true that at the time communist revolutionary action was still a hot commodity. Right after the big war ended there would be a whole wave of mid-century red revolutions, and thus the USA did need to defend itself from a similar fate. But did financing Bandera actually provide this defense, or instead did it only justify commie terror against the capitalists even more so?

It is important to note that the Russians often refer to the post Maidan regime in Kiev as the “Banderite Regime” because this one particular mass murderer of civilians sits atop the pantheon of Ukrainian heroes. Bandera could have been left to history as one of many ugly faces that sided with Hitler and committed atrocities, but sadly, Washington chose to keep the PR campaign for this figure going for nearly a century now. Ukrainian nationalism has always been a well-financed tool to be used against Russia, and that is why old murderous Stevie gets a lot of hype and peaceful poets do not. Ukrainian nationalism that is not to be used as cannon fodder against the Kremlin has no value to Washington.

This doubling down on celebrating Hitler’s terrorists as national heroes is one of the reasons why, beyond pragmatic ‘demilitarization’, the Kremlin has wanted ‘denazificiation’ of Ukraine since the very beginning of the Special Military Operation.  This is not a factor of “everyone I don’t like is a Nazi” but an actual core factor in Putin’s decision making. It is critically important that the author of Boiling Point put major focus on the financing of terror against Russia for generations without any long-term logic that could be justified to the American people who paid for it.

The Cold War should have ended in 1991

Boiling Point exceptionally sheds light onto the fact that NATO expansion was a cause for the war in Ukraine that almost everyone saw coming, even in the West. Since the end of the Cold War in 1991 all of the Kremlin’s pleas to keep NATO far from its borders were ignored. And, by 2008 it had already been mostly decided that Ukraine and Georgia were going to be prepped to become alliance members.

If one views the West as the benevolent bringer of prosperity, democracy, puppies and rainbows then NATO expansion should not have been seen as a threat. However, the Russians saw Serbia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya etc. all being blown to bits by the benevolent ones for dubious reasons. Kinzer does a good job of expressing how the Kremlin saw all of these NATO expansions as a massive growing threat that was being designed to ultimately and finally destroy Russia and Russians entirely. The whole ‘Biolab’ network and now ‘Torture Chamber’ scandal are very strong evidence that the Russians were correct on this point. The fact that numerous Western politicians have claimed that the war in Ukraine is good because Russia is being weakened while NATO troops are not dying (in large numbers) is a great thing from a cost/benefit analysis standpoint, only proves Kinzer’s point completely.

All color revolutions are stained by foreign influence

Perhaps 30 years ago in a pre-internet world we could be logically so naïve as to see color revolutions as being as natural of a phenomenon as rain or a sunset, but the times have changed. As I often say in my public speeches, “people don’t rise up themselves, they are risen up by outside forces” and the various revolutions in Ukraine are no exception. Oliver Stone’s “Ukraine on Fire” provides an excellent break down of just how the ironically named Revolution of Dignity, or in common parlance The Maidan, was orchestrated and executed by the West including Washington.  Boiling Point also includes material about this critical aspect of why the War in Ukraine started, if there wasn’t money being pumped into a nationalist anti-Russian revolution in Kiev, things would have remained the way they were; calm and neutral. But then again, over time perhaps a ‘Resurgent Russia’ could have begun to drag Ukraine back home with soft power. That was something the Russophobes in the West could not accept under any circumstances. Supposedly, one criticism of Boiling Point is that it gives the Ukrainian side themselves, including the masses, no agency in these broad historical events. This criticism must come from a highly biased or extremely naïve schmuck, for countries do not commit suicide and act in direct contrast to their national interest when they have agency.

Biden could have negotiated, but didn’t

In December of 2021 the Russians submitted a list of demands for consideration in terms of how to redraw the security architecture of Europe. This was done in theory to make everyone happy and avoid war. As history notes Team Biden and their mighty Autopen unilaterally rejected every one of the Kremlin’s points without even discussing them or providing an explanation. The global hegemon does not negotiate with oil-pumping aboriginals, and thus the final chance for peace was thrown into the dumpster of history thanks to our good old friend hubris. Ironically, it looks like the exact same Kremlin security talking points are at least being humored and discussed by the American side as we speak. Potentially two million lives have been lost and many more millions displaced all for this whole theatre of the absurd to come full circle, right back to the discussions that should have happened in December, 2021.

A good thorough read

Boiling Point, How America Brought War to Ukraine by Stephen Kinzer presents a well-organized autopsy of the terrible foreign policy decisions that have led us to the bloody war in Ukraine and verge of nuclear apocalypse, especially from the American side. This book really explains to the reader what the media consciously does not. Give it a try.

November 15, 2026 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Comments Off on Book review: Boiling Point, How America Brought War to Ukraine

Armando Mema: Finland Used as New Frontline Against Russia

Glenn Diesen | November 13, 2026

November 13, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Video | , , | Comments Off on Armando Mema: Finland Used as New Frontline Against Russia

Europe, US face higher heating bills amid Iran war fallout

Al Mayadeen| November 11, 2026

Europe is paying a heavy price for the US war on Iran. Natural gas prices have risen almost 200% since February and topped €100 per megawatt-hour at the end of October, the highest level in four years.

The European Commission estimates the continent’s energy import bill has grown by more than €127 billion since the war began, and gas storage is running well below normal ahead of winter, with Germany’s stocks possibly running empty by March.

Bloomberg reported that diesel prices have hit a record, kerosene has nearly doubled, and German power prices already exceed even the 2022 average for the start of winter. The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has exposed how dependent the continent remains on global energy markets, leaving governments, industries, and households in their second major energy crisis in under five years.

Storage falls short before winter

Gas storage stands at about 15 percentage points below its recent average and far from the EU’s 90% target.

Under a scenario developed by the European Network of Transmission System Operators for Gas, a cold winter combined with tight global LNG supplies would leave stocks barely 10% full by the end of winter. Even then, Europe would need to cut energy demand by 15%.

Weather models point to a mostly mild winter, helped by a potentially record El Niño, but the British forecaster MetDesk warned that a disrupted polar vortex could bring a colder spell to northern Europe in December. Cold in Asia would also intensify competition for LNG cargoes and push prices higher.

The pressure would not end with winter. The International Energy Agency cautioned that refilling record-low reserves next summer could keep markets tight well into next year, and contracts for summer 2027 already trade above those for the following winter.

Russian LNG ban, a shifting dependency

A full EU ban on Russian LNG takes effect on January 1 and will remove around 15% of the bloc’s supplies, roughly one cargo every two days according to Bloomberg’s calculations. Energy Commissioner Dan Jorgensen insisted the ban stands, leaving member states to buy replacement cargoes on international markets at a premium.

Much of that replacement comes from the United States, and Swedish Energy Minister Ebba Busch said Europe is “just switching our dependency.”

US President Donald Trump threatened earlier this year to ban diesel exports, which would have endangered half of Europe’s imports, and any deal to reopen Hormuz would take up to six months to feed through to European diesel prices.

Governments struggle to cushion the blow

EU governments have more than tripled their emergency spending since June to nearly €35 billion, according to the Bruegel think tank, with Spain accounting for a third. Bruegel said much of the support is poorly targeted and even encourages fossil fuel consumption.

France, after spending an estimated €70 billion after the 2022 shock, is now limiting aid to those in greatest need, a shift Budget Minister David Amiel described as cutting spending instead of raising it.

Italy, which imports about three-quarters of its energy, saw inflation reach 5.6% in October. Truckers blocked roads around Naples and the Messina port for five days until Rome allocated over €100 million in diesel tax credits and about €70 million for agriculture and fisheries.

Rome is also negotiating with the Commission to cap the gas price used in power generation, and it clashed with Berlin over Germany’s slow storage filling, which it said drove panic buying.

Poland, where a fifth of this year’s budget goes to defense, has little room to respond. State Secretary for Energy Wojciech Wrochna said Europe is not doing enough and warned the situation leaves “space for populists to win the elections.”

The Commission has pushed responsibility back to national capitals, unlike in 2022 when Brussels rushed through emergency legislation.

Politics, industry feel the strain

Protests over living costs have spread from Berlin to Milan and Paris. More than half of Europeans are set to vote within the next year.

In France, where presidential elections come in April, National Rally leader Marine Le Pen leads first-round polls and proposes cutting VAT on fuel and energy at a cost her party puts near €11 billion. Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon calls for price caps and limits on refiners’ margins.

The chemical industry warns of lasting damage. Norwegian chemical company Yara International expects its energy costs to rise by $450 million year on year between October and December if gas prices stay high, and Greece’s Metlen Energy & Metals said further closures are hard to rule out without looser state aid rules.

Kahla Porzellan, a Thuringian porcelain maker that survived both world wars, will shut down by the end of the year and lay off 100 workers. Monthly gas bills reached as much as €180,000, or 70% of operating costs.

US households also face higher bills

American households face the strain too, with home heating costs projected to rise more than 7% on average this winter, The New York Times reported, citing the National Energy Assistance Directors Association.

Households that heat with oil, almost five million nationwide and mostly in the Northeast and Alaska, could pay up to 70% more than last winter, or about $2,977 for the season. Electric heating is set to climb about 6% to $1,215, and propane about 5% to $1,350.

The association’s executive director, Mark Wolfe, said uncertainty over global oil supplies makes prices hard to predict and urged states to prepare for them to stay high. Heating oil is close to diesel, whose supplies have tightened after refinery shutdowns in West Asia.

Data from the Energy Information Administration in April showed that as many as one in six US households had fallen behind on gas and electricity bills.

November 11, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia, Wars for Israel | , | Comments Off on Europe, US face higher heating bills amid Iran war fallout

France’s ‘Cold War’: Paris blames Tehran for supermarket fridge hacks

RT | November 10, 2026

The French government has accused Iran of hacking refrigerators in hundreds of supermarkets, claiming that the “cyber campaign” was the work of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The attack, which took place in October, affected fridges and freezers at nearly 700 distribution sites across France. Hackers reportedly targeted the fridges’ internet-connected control units and forced them to overheat, destroying tons of food and forcing several stores to temporarily close. A wave of similar attacks took place in Belgium, Ireland, Sweden, and at least six other EU countries three weeks later.

“This was a cyber campaign of unprecedented scale and aggression,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot said on Monday. “Today, thanks to the work of government agencies, we know who is responsible: the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Iran’s ambassador has been summoned, Barrot said, adding that France will “sanction those responsible and take all measures we deem necessary and proportionate to respond.”

Paris prosecutor Laure Beccuau said that investigators discovered the hackers used Farsi and IP addresses linked to Iran, and that three IRGC members are suspected of carrying out the operation “to serve the interests of a foreign power – in this case, Iran.”

Although Beccuau’s accusation is stronger than that of British Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who stated “we can confirm our belief that we believe Iran” was behind a bungled “terror plot” at an RAF airbase in September, it is still not entirely watertight. WikiLeaks’ 2017 ‘Vault 7’ disclosures confirmed that the CIA had developed sophisticated hacking tools capable of leaving behind false digital ‘fingerprints’ in foreign languages, including Russian, Chinese, and Farsi, to implicate other countries in cyberattacks.

The accusations mark a dramatic turnaround from the climate of mid-October. Then, despite it taking place at a time of daily riots and anti-government demonstrations, almost every commentator speaking to European media outlets accused Russia of committing the attack. “We strongly believe this activity could be attributed to a Russian state-sponsored threat actor,” cybersecurity executive Xavier Bellekens told Politico last week, in an article that portrayed the hack as something straight from the pages of “the Kremlin’s hybrid playbook.”

“When we pull on the thread it does look like it could well be Russia. So, that is basically where we’re at,” Bellekens told Euronews – which, like Politico, is funded by the EU – two days later. Russia is “looking into where the weaknesses in the systems lie,” former Dutch intelligence officer Tim Bosch told NU.nl. “Right now it concerns refrigeration, but next time it might be a hospital.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed the claims as “baseless,” “absurd,” and “backed up by no reasoning.”

Neither Iran’s Foreign Ministry nor the IRGC has commented on Tuesday’s accusation. However, Iran’s state Mehr News agency has dismissed it as “baseless and unsupported by evidence.”

November 10, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , | Comments Off on France’s ‘Cold War’: Paris blames Tehran for supermarket fridge hacks

Sunset on the Quality of Western Propaganda: Arrival of the Dr Strangelove Moment

By Greg Simons | Propaganda In Focus | September 30, 2026

Propaganda has a complicated history and relationship with the West, shaped by ideological presumptions, moral and ethical evaluations, definitions, and assumptions. These frameworks have the effect of producing dilemmas and contradictions within an idealised conception of society. In part, this is due to embedded assumptions about identity and the cultural myths that accompany idealised notions of a morally and socially superior Western society. Such myths function to construct the façade of a value- and ethics-based consensus, reinforcing in-group identity and cohesion as a means of generating political unity. At the same time, they define and contrast this in-group against an oppositional out-group perceived as lacking the ‘desired’ mythical attributes of a ‘good’ society.

One of the enduring myths of Western propaganda, which virtue signals the assumed values and ethical principles of a so-called democracy as an in-group, is that democracies do not engage in propaganda. This myth is based on the assertion that the values and virtues of free human will are cherished, where facts and reality prevail in a rational and informed society. Conversely, non-democracies are presented as the idealised out-group that regularly engages in heavy-handed and overt propaganda to prime and manipulate their ‘unfree’ population. The in-group is often thought to be virtuous and ethical while the out-group is subversive to the free human will and spirit: emotional logic dictates loyalty and empathy for the in-group, suspicion and fear of the named out-group.

This fear, of something bad happening and the personal aspect of it happening to you, is driven by mainstream politics and media. Fear is the first step toward compliance. A false sense of unity is driven by the façade of an external threat to an idealised projection of democracy in Western society and the notion that it is under threat from the propaganda of authoritarian forces seeking destroy the presumed cultural and identity foundations of ‘our’ society. See, for example, recent hyperbole about “anti-democratic propaganda” taking over the world.

However, does this cognitively nice and neat image reflect reality? Far from it. There are those who admit propaganda was an invention of the West, that it is a ‘necessary’ tool for the effective governing of democratic society, and that it is the very foundation of liberal democracy. Adolf Hitler admired the ‘quality’ and effects of British propaganda in the First World War to such an extent he praised its excellence in a chapter of his autobiography Mein Kampf. Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels also admired the quality of Western propaganda, such as Hollywood Westerns. He also infamously quipped that the West accuses its opponent of that which they are guilty of doing.

However, in the wake of the Cold War and the general march into the era of what some term as the New Cold War, there is a distinct decline in the quality and effectiveness of Western propaganda. The New Cold War concerns the growing geopolitical tensions between the in-group ‘democracies’ of the Global North and the out-group ‘autocracies’ of the Global South (especially China, Iran and Russia). The motivation is to justify and legitimise a desperate, reckless, and increasingly militarised foreign policy of the West, one which requires political capital and public consent, or at least no significant resistance. Western mainstream political leaders from the liberal democracies lack public approval and consent and are the most unpopular generation according to opinion polls. The propaganda used by Western leaders to justify and legitimise an increasingly aggressive stance against China, Iran and Russia, as a means to contain and weaken these three pillars of the Global South, is ever more heavy handed and overt.

In its current iteration of desperation and decline of operational standards and effects, Western propaganda now seems akin to the satirical anti-war masterpiece Dr Strangelove. Unfortunately, the stakes are increasingly high for the world as compromised and incompetent political leaders seek to maintain an idealised public image and retain their political office, and the Western geopolitical hegemony desperately seeks to cling to its 500 years of a leading global role. Both of these aspirations have run out of time and talent, but the show must go on!

The propaganda of fear is being cultivated to maximum levels among publics throughout the Western world, and especially in the EU and US. This no longer concerns the positive propaganda of attraction, but the negative propaganda of fear and hatred. Furthermore, following Edward Bernays observation in 1947, there is no coincidence in terms of the timing and nature of this propaganda masquerading as news. The engineering of public consent as a means to prime and mobilise mass public audiences for an act that contradicts their objective interests is well under way.

There is a great deal of Orwellian influence in the language of vague wordings used to construct the Russian ‘threat’ – both in military and ideological terms. There is a “good” practical reason and desired outcome for this approach, which is that the sloppy, vague, and dishonest language actively corrupts the public’s ability to think clearly, which in turn enables political oppression and propaganda to be conducted. There are numerous examples of this, such as Russian “grey zone activities,” or “hybrid warfare,” and the threat of a Russian invasion of the whole of Europe should Ukraine lose the war. Here the propagandists refer to Ukraine as a “shield” for Europe, the same terminology used by Nazi Germany’s “crusade against Bolshevism”.

These propaganda constructions of the Russian ‘threat’ make use of fear, card stacking and bandwagoning – An information environment of selective information that is attempting to create a herd mentality, where emotional and knee-jerk decisions are engineered in the interests of the communicator. These desired emotional reactions are objectively against the audience being primed and mobilised. The basis of fear in the audience is to be operationalised to push the ‘solution’, a reckless and aggressive policy.

That policy is to prepare for war with Russia, even if the West is not in a financial or industrial position to effectively do so. Thus, the propaganda narrative is regularly repeated in the “speak with one voice spirit” by the political and media establishment. This includes a massive rearmament programme in an economy that is deindustrialising and running out of public funds, and where the standard of living is dropping and the cost of living rising. A war with Russia is presented as being imminent and inevitable, which among other things requires the public to be “psychologically ready” or, in other words, in an emotional state of fear and compliant to the state dictates. Even though citizens are not willing to fight and die for the vanity of the political establishment and a hegemon in severe decline, conscription is pushed as being necessary and a collective duty of citizens. Various countries are bringing back conscription amidst this massive propaganda campaign of fear, attempting to psychologically groom their citizens who lack the will to fight and lack trust in the political system. This is exemplified in the outrageous demand by politician Jacob Rees-Mogg that Britons need to do their duty to fight and die for the British government, a regime that has actively worked against the objective interests of its country and its people.

Every propagandistic accusation by the West regarding the alleged imminent and inevitable Russian threat reads more like a confession, as noted by Goebbels many years ago. The Western propaganda is not up to the same standards that it used to be when it was so much admired by Hitler; it has become everything that democracies have accused non-democracies of doing and being in terms of their idealised myths and notions of binary constructions of culture and identity between the in-group (liberal democracy) and the out-group (authoritarian). It comes at a time of Western political and geopolitical decline and, as the war in Ukraine seems to be in the process of decisively moving towards a Russian victory on the battlefield, this means that time is short and desperation is setting in to try and save imagined political reputations and a geopolitical hegemony that is all but lost.

November 5, 2026 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Comments Off on Sunset on the Quality of Western Propaganda: Arrival of the Dr Strangelove Moment

GOP’s Crushing Midterm Loss Could Reshape US Political Landscape – Analyst

Sputnik – 05.11.2026

The Republicans suffered one of their worst defeats in decades, driven by the US administration’s catastrophic decision to unleash aggression against Iran, says Dmitry Suslov, deputy director of the Center for European and International Studies at Russia’s Higher School of Economics, speaking to Sputnik.

He warns that the GOP’s midterm fiasco will have serious political blowback, chiefly by weakening Trump’s standing at home and abroad.

Domestically, the US is certainly in for an extremely fierce political struggle, Suslov cautions.

  • The US could be plunged into a series of never-ending government shutdowns, especially next year
  • A budget crisis could blow up as investigators launch probes into every corner of GOP activity
  • Secretary of War Pete Hegseth will “undoubtedly face impeachment proceedings,” and his future remains uncertain

Suslov suggests that US foreign policy as a whole will not change, though the Democrats will most likely try to throw a wrench in the works by passing bills to tie Trump’s hands.

When it comes to the Ukraine conflict, the GOP’s painful midterm rout will have far-reaching implications, the expert points out.

  • Ukraine and Europe will now see Trump as “a lame duck,” and Zelensky will undoubtedly grow ever more insolent, relying on Democrat backing
  • Trump’s ability to apply coercive measures on Ukraine will be far more limited
  • For Russia, a Democrat win spells rapidly fading hopes for better ties with the US once the Ukraine conflict ends — and a growing threat of fresh sanctions

That leaves Russia with no incentive to make concessions on Ukraine in exchange for future US economic cooperation — now appearing to be an increasingly remote prospect, Suslov concludes.

November 5, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Comments Off on GOP’s Crushing Midterm Loss Could Reshape US Political Landscape – Analyst

No Cossacks at the gates, fix Italy instead – opposition leader to Meloni

RT | November 3, 2026

Italy should spend money tackling real domestic problems rather than driving itself deeper into debt to defend against fictional threats like the “Cossacks from the Russian steppes,” right-wing leader and MEP Roberto Vannacci said on Monday.

Vannacci, who leads the right-wing Futuro Nazionale party, made the remarks at a press conference in Milan alongside his party’s mayoral candidate, Carmelo Burgio.

“Any defense system must be commensurate with a real threat… If we were to ask the people of Milan what the real threat is, they certainly wouldn’t point to Cossacks coming from the Russian steppes,” he told the press. “They would likely point to harassers, vandals who smash shop windows, or ‘youth gangs’ roaming the streets with knives.”

The right-wing politician criticized the EU’s €800 billion ReArm plan for its “excessive spending on weapons systems,” arguing that there was no “concrete threat” to justify such spending and borrowing.

Vannacci has previously argued that the EU’s €150 billion rearmament loan instrument under ReArm would drive Italy deeper into debt without addressing its domestic issues.

Italy’s public debt stood at nearly 140% of GDP in mid-2026, the second-highest ratio in the European Union, according to Eurostat.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni came to power in 2022 on a platform promising tax cuts, stronger border controls, support for Italian families, and responsible management of public finances. Her government has nevertheless continued to commit billions of euros to military assistance for Ukraine, while also backing increased defense spending.

Moscow has long accused European nations of using the pretext of an alleged threat from Russia to justify their accelerating militarization. Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly dismissed claims that Moscow intends to attack NATO as “nonsense.”

The Russian president has also blamed European governments’ economic and financial policies, including high public debt, for the riots and unrest sweeping EU countries since September. The reasons lie in “their own mistakes… in economics and finance,” he told Vesti last month, stressing that some EU countries have public debt exceeding 100% of GDP.

November 3, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , | Comments Off on No Cossacks at the gates, fix Italy instead – opposition leader to Meloni

Ukrainian air alert app hacked with fake nuclear warnings

RT | November 2, 2026

Ukraine’s government-backed mobile air alert app sent out false warnings of nuclear and chemical attacks on Sunday night, Ukrainian media reported.

At around 11pm, the Air Alert app sent notifications urging residents to seek shelter due to a “radiation threat” and a “chemical attack.” It also warned of “street battles” in Kiev.

According to screenshots shared by Ukrainian media, one of the messages read in Russian: “Don’t worry, Oreshnik is coming,” referring to Russia’s nuclear-capable intermediate-range ballistic missile.

The Ukrainian Air Force urged residents to rely only on official sources. “The Air Alert app may have been compromised by hostile actors. There is no radiation threat!” it said in a brief statement on Telegram.

Ukraine’s Digital Transformation Ministry later confirmed that the app had been temporarily disabled following a suspected cyberattack.

According to Russian Telegram news channel Mash, a hacker group calling itself Hitcore claimed responsibility for the intrusion. Mash reported that the hackers said they had tricked an employee of a Ukrainian company into giving them access to his computer.

Although Mash described the hackers as Russian, the group has not previously been linked to any known cyberattacks. Moscow has consistently denied allegations of involvement in such operations.

About three hours later, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said its mobile app had also been hacked and used to send “false information” to users. The ministry said it was working to restore normal operations.

The incident came days after an apparent glitch in Kiev’s automated air alert system on October 26, when air raid warnings were issued and canceled several times within just five minutes. Officials blamed a “technical malfunction” and apologized for the disruption.

Ukraine has stepped up requests for additional air defense interceptors from the US and its European partners in recent months as its own defenses have struggled to counter Russian missile barrages and jet-powered drones.

Relations with Washington have become strained, however, as Kiev has refused to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries, which US President Donald Trump has blamed for soaring fuel prices, and criticized his decision to lift sanctions on Russian diesel exports.

Ukraine was also caught off guard by sudden disruptions to Starlink and Starshield satellite services widely used by its military, which officials in Kiev linked to US efforts to pressure Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky.

November 2, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | | Comments Off on Ukrainian air alert app hacked with fake nuclear warnings

Poland Is the Symptom and Europe Is the Patient

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | November 1, 2026 

The midnight brawl at Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal is not a Polish problem. It is the local flare-up of a continental disease. Across Europe, when voters pick the wrong candidate, the establishment reaches for a judge, an intelligence service or the EU’s checkbook, and calls the result “defending democracy.” The Journal of Democracy wrote the textbook. Warsaw is the teaching hospital.

The article

In December 2023, two months after Donald Tusk’s coalition pushed Law and Justice (PiS) out of power, Jarosław Kuisz and Karolina Wigura of Kultura Liberalna published a how-to guide in the Journal of Democracy. The title says it all: “How to Dismantle an Illiberal Democracy.”

Consider the provenance. At the time, the Journal was the flagship publication of the National Endowment for Democracy, the outfit that does in daylight what the CIA used to do at night. It split from NED this year after DOGE cut off NED’s funding in 2025, and it is now independent and partnered with Stanford’s CDDRL. In 2023, though, this was the democracy-promotion establishment telling Warsaw how to clean house.

The argument, stripped of its footnotes:

  • Poland needs a “second wave” of transitional justice to deal with PiS “violations of the rule of law.”
  • Avoid vague treason charges. Prosecute specific acts: the 2015 Constitutional Tribunal appointments, the 2020 attempt at an all-mail presidential election and the 2023 visa-for-cash scandal.
  • Jarosław Kaczyński bears responsibility but will be hard to convict.
  • Parliamentary investigative committees are the main tool.
  • Expect resistance from the PiS-aligned presidency, Supreme Court and State Tribunal.
  • Stabilize the system without breaking it.

The authors close with a disclaimer worth framing: “There is no clear roadmap… One should therefore not expect miracles.”

The critique

The defenders of democracy have written a manual for dismantling one. They don’t see the irony, and that is the most instructive thing about the essay.

Start with the word “illiberal.” It is not a legal category. It is a label handed out by people with conference budgets to governments they dislike. PiS won the 2015 and 2019 parliamentary elections outright. Yet the article treats its officials less like a defeated party and more like the communist nomenklatura of 1989, in need of a “transitional justice” process.

In fairness to Kuisz and Wigura, they are more careful than their cause. They warn against show trials and vague charges, and they admit nobody knows how to do this. But manuals are not read for their caveats. Politicians skip the footnotes and go straight to the chapter on tools.

Here is the core contradiction. PiS stands accused of capturing the courts, ignoring rulings and stacking institutions with loyalists. The cure prescribed is to purge the courts, ignore rulings and install the right loyalists. The sin becomes a sacrament when the right people commit it.

Poland, three years later: the manual in action

This week the manual left the library and went to the streets of Warsaw, escorted by riot police.

Since 2023, Tusk’s government has refused to recognize the Constitutional Tribunal and has ignored its rulings. Starting in March, parliament elected eight new judges. President Karol Nawrocki refused to swear in five of them. They held their own oath ceremony and mailed the oaths to the presidential palace, which is a new one even by Central European standards.

Then came October 30. According to Notes from Poland and ProtoThema :

  • Judge Anna Korwin-Piotrowska suspended Chief Justice Bogdan Święczkowski and declared herself acting head of the Tribunal.
  • Justice Minister Waldemar Żurek moved to strip Święczkowski’s immunity.
  • Riot police blocked Święczkowski from entering his own court. His supporters cut through the fence with power tools.
  • Nawrocki turned his plane around on the way to Senegal and, around 1 a.m., pushed his way past judges into the building. Each side accuses the other of physical aggression. Protesters outside called it a coup.

Tusk’s response, per Euronews : “In certain matters there can be no compromise.” He also warned about Russian bots, because no European crisis is complete without them.

Not everyone in the coalition is cheering. Szymon Hołownia said Poland should be ashamed and that forcing a fix only deepens the decline. Hołownia and the PSL are now attending Nawrocki’s talks. When your own partners start taking meetings with the other side, the roadmap has a pothole.

Kuisz and Wigura told us not to expect miracles. This isn’t a miracle. It’s a mirror.

The disease, not the symptom

Poland is just the case where the patient is thrashing hardest. Look at the rest of the ward and the same pathology shows up everywhere: elections treated as advisory, with the final say reserved for institutions nobody voted for.

  • Romania. On December 6, 2024, the Constitutional Court annulled the first round of a presidential election after Călin Georgescu, an outsider polling in single digits, came in first. The grounds were declassified intelligence about “aggressive hybrid Russian attacks” and alleged illegal campaign financing. In March 2025 the electoral commission barred Georgescu from the rerun, while he was “the favourite in all the polls,” and the court unanimously agreed. That is one way to fix an election: hold it again without the winner.
  • France. In March 2025 a Paris court convicted Marine Le Pen of embezzling EU parliamentary funds and banned her from office for five years, effective immediately. The frontrunner for 2027 was gone with one gavel. In July the appeals court upheld the conviction but cut the ban to 45 months, 30 of them suspended, so she can run after all. The judges giveth, and the judges taketh away. Either way, the judges decide.
  • Germany. In May 2025, the BfV, Germany’s domestic intelligence service, branded the AfD a “confirmed right-wing extremist” party. The AfD polls at 24 to 26 percent. In February a Cologne court suspended the label, ruling the conditions for it “are not met.” Lawmakers are still pushing to have the Constitutional Court ban the party outright. Banning the party a quarter of your voters support is certainly one way to win an argument. In my old business, we called a spy agency monitoring the main opposition party something else.
  • Brussels’ checkbook. The European Commission froze about €137 billion for Poland under PiS. On February 29, 2024, eleven weeks after Tusk took office, it released the money. One of its own officials conceded, “That does not mean the rule of law is fully restored and everything is fine,” and the reform plan was “still a draft ambition.” The rule of law, it turns out, is measured by who sits in the prime minister’s office. Hungary got the same treatment. Its new prime minister, Péter Magyar, promised to go to Brussels “to have EU funding released.” Message received in Budapest.

Put the cases side by side and the illness has a clear set of symptoms. Courts annul or narrow the choices on the ballot. Intelligence services rate which parties are fit to compete. Brussels pays for good behavior, defined as the right government. All of it is done in the name of protecting democracy from the people who vote in it.

That is why the Kuisz and Wigura essay matters beyond Poland. It isn’t a Polish policy paper. It is a clinical protocol for treating a voter who votes wrong, written for a continent whose elites have concluded the electorate can’t be trusted with the keys. Tusk is just the first surgeon to try it without anesthesia.

What this means for NATO

An alliance is only as strong as the governments that have to say yes. Right now several of NATO’s key European members are too busy fighting their own voters, courts and presidents to launch any foreign venture. In some cases they couldn’t if they tried.

Start with Poland, the country Washington holds up as NATO’s model member and the frontline state on Belarus and Ukraine. Under Poland’s constitution the president is the supreme commander of the armed forces. Poland’s president and its prime minister are currently accusing each other of a coup. Ask yourself who gives the order to deploy in that situation. Then ask whether a Polish soldier knows whose order to follow. A country with two constitutional courts and a commander-in-chief shoving past judges at 1 a.m. is not preparing to project power. It is trying to hold itself together.

The rest of the ward is no healthier:

  • Germany is debating whether to ban the opposition party that a quarter of its voters support, and that party wants nothing to do with a war against Russia. Any German government that sends troops east hands the AfD its next election.
  • France faces a 2027 presidential race in which Le Pen, whose party has long been skeptical of NATO’s integrated command, is back on the ballot. No French president facing that race will gamble on a foreign adventure.
  • Romania, home of NATO’s base at Mihail Kogălniceanu on the Black Sea, is still governed under the shadow of an election its own court cancelled. Its political class has a legitimacy problem it cannot afford to aggravate with a war.

NATO runs on consensus. Every one of these governments is now weighing a foreign deployment against a domestic electorate it has spent years managing rather than persuading. When the elite’s grip at home depends on courts, intelligence services and Brussels’ money, asking voters to send their sons east is the one request it can’t risk. Sooner or later, the bill for treating the voter as the enemy comes due.

The irony is hard to miss. The project was sold as protecting democracy from the barbarians at the gate. What it has produced is an alliance whose members cannot agree with their own voters, let alone with each other. Moscow didn’t have to lift a finger. Europe’s “defenders of democracy” are doing the job for it.

The Globalists refuse to go away

Strip away the vocabulary of “rule of law” and “transitional justice” and you find a project aimed at Polish nationalism itself. PiS’s real offense was not packing a court. Plenty of governments pack courts. Its offense was putting Polish sovereignty, Catholic identity and the nation-state ahead of Brussels.

The record is consistent. Poland refused the EU’s 2015 migrant relocation quotas, and in April 2020 the European Court of Justice ruled that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic had broken EU law by refusing. That July, the Commission denied twinning grants to six Polish towns over their “LGBT ideology-free” resolutions. Then came the €137 billion freeze. The message from Brussels never varied: national identity is welcome as folklore, not as policy.

To the globalist wing of the Western establishment, meaning NED, Brussels and the foundations and think tanks that orbit them, nationalism is a disease to be treated, not a view to be debated. A nation that insists on deciding what it believes, whom it admits and how it runs its own courts is “illiberal” by definition. Kuisz and Wigura simply gave that attitude a legal procedure.

Now look east, because the same people take the same attitude toward Russia, with fewer manners. NED has funded Russian civil-society groups for decades, which is why Moscow made it the first “undesirable organization” under its 2015 law. In June 2022, the U.S. Helsinki Commission held a briefing titled “Decolonizing Russia: A Moral and Strategic Imperative.” The title says the rest. Russian nationalism, like Polish nationalism, is treated not as a fact to be dealt with but as a pathology to be cured, by sanctions, regime change or, if the seminar circuit gets its way, partition.

Here is the irony I find most delicious. Washington and Brussels spent years cheering Polish nationalism when it was pointed at Moscow. Poland’s hostility to Russia was the alliance’s favorite asset. Point the same nationalism at Brussels and it suddenly becomes a threat to democracy requiring riot police. Polish patriotism, it turns out, is a weapon to be aimed, not a conviction to be respected. Poles should notice that the people eager to dismantle Russia’s sense of nationhood are the same people dismantling theirs.

That is my assessment, not the article’s. Kuisz and Wigura frame everything as restoring the rule of law, and insist that the PiS started this. Its 2015 Tribunal appointments were a power grab, and in its 2021 Xero Flor ruling the European Court of Human Rights found that a bench including an improperly appointed judge violated the right to a fair trial.

Nawrocki’s refusal to swear in the new judges is hardball too. Both camps have real legal arguments. That is exactly why riot police at midnight are the wrong way to settle it.

Even if you set motive aside entirely, judge the project by its adverse effects: a country with two rival constitutional courts and a president shoving past judges in the dark.

On NATO, a caveat. Domestic turmoil makes an offensive or expeditionary venture far less likely, but it does not mean these countries would refuse to defend their own territory. Both camps in Warsaw back heavy defense spending, and a direct attack on a member tends to unite even the most divided parliament. My argument is about appetite for adventure, not the willingness to fight at the border.

None of these caveats changes the central point. The fight in Warsaw isn’t really about judges. It is about whether a European nation may still define itself, or whether that right now belongs to Brussels, NED and the people who write manuals on dismantling democracies. Moscow got that answer years ago. Warsaw is getting it now.

November 1, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Russophobia | , , , , , , | Comments Off on Poland Is the Symptom and Europe Is the Patient

Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War

Glenn Diesen | October 31, 2026

Thomas Fazi is an Italian journalist and author focusing on economics and geopolitics.

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October 31, 2026 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Video | , | Comments Off on Thomas Fazi: NATO’s Hybrid Warfare – Deception & Permanent War

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