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Why USAID was kicked out of Russia

By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 03.02.2025

President Trump has promised to “make a decision” on USAID’s future after getting rid of the “radical lunatics” running it after DOGE chief Elon Musk said it was time for the “criminal” agency “to die.” Russia banned Washington’s long-favored soft power tool in 2012. Here’s why.

Russia knew about the US Agency for International Development’s “criminal” nature long before Elon Musk’s epiphany.

USAID was expelled from the country after post-election street protests in Moscow verging on an attempted color revolution, with the agency accused of using its grant network to try to influence politics and civil society after the 2011-2012 Russian parliamentary and presidential elections.

USAID’s mission in Russia was narrowed to political influence operations in the 2000s, including funding for civil society groups like the Golos election watchdog, the Memorial and Moscow Helsinki Group rights organizations, and others.

These organizations engaged in increasingly sharp criticism of the Russian government prior to the US aid agency’s ouster, helping to radicalize a portion of the population toward more pro-Western opposition views through the popularization of their positions.

20 Years of ‘Democracy Promotion’

USAID first entered Russia in 1992, immediately after the USSR’s collapse, and spent nearly $3 bln over 20 years on ‘democracy, human rights and civil society promotion’ programs.

In reality, USAID’s work in the 90s was aimed at cheerleading the gutting of Russia’s social and economic system during the painful transition to a market economy, and meddling in politics in support of liberal, pro-West politicians against conservative, populist and neo-communist forces.

Nowhere was this more evident than during the 1993 constitutional crisis and the 1996 elections, which saw radical opposition to liberal reforms crushed and the voting rigged, with USAID-backed “independent media,” publishing houses and NGOs cheering on the processes.

The US amassed a literal journalistic empire during its stay in Russia. Up to the year 2000 alone, its National Press Institute held 2,300 briefings and seminars attended by over 57,000 journalists, provided training for 2,700 media specialists, management and consulting services for 84 newspapers, and support for other print, TV and internet media.

On the economic front, USAID provided “technical advisory services and material support” for the infamous voucher privatization scheme. This program cemented immense wealth transfers worth hundreds of billions of dollars from the state to private and foreign coffers.

In the 90s, USAID ambitiously outlined 14 “strategic objectives” for Russia, from fiscal, monetary, social service and energy reforms to US “joint ventures,” civil and legal training, environmental programs and even women’s reproductive health.

Political stabilization and the maturing of the modern post-Soviet Russian state ultimately sealed USAID’s fate.

But perhaps the greatest damage done by USAID to Russia has been in its backyard, where billions of dollars spent over the past 35 years helped to put neighbors on a path to NATO and EU membership, and literally rewrite history books to cast Russia as an enemy. Nowhere has this effort paid off more than in Ukraine.

February 3, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Russophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

Romania’s Voided TikTok Election Story

By Alexander Zaitchik | Drop Site News | January 28, 2025

On Nov. 24, at the southeastern frontier of the European Union and NATO, Romanian voters delivered an unexpected victory to a right-wing populist named Călin Georgescu in the opening round of the country’s presidential election. Always considered a longshot, Georgescu had been polling in the single digits just weeks before surging to claim first place with 23 percent of the vote. The result shocked Romania’s two dominant parties, who found themselves on the sidelines as Georgescu campaigned for the runoff against another anti-establishment candidate who came in second, Elena Lasconi of the reformist Save Romania party.

Then, on Dec. 4, four days before the deciding round was to take place, Romania’s Supreme Defense Council released a small clutch of heavily redacted documents from the country’s foreign intelligence service. The documents outlined allegations of a Kremlin-backed social media campaign that supported Georgescu in violation of national election laws. “Data were obtained,” the accompanying government statement read, “revealing an aggressive promotion campaign that exploited the algorithms of some social media platforms to increase the popularity of Călin Georgescu at an accelerated pace.”

Within hours, the U.S. State Department expressed its “concern” over the allegations. Two days later, on Dec. 6, Romania’s Constitutional Court unanimously ruled the Nov. 24 vote invalid. “The entire electoral process for electing the President of Romania is annulled,” the court announced, citing government claims of irregularities on social media. Six weeks passed before a redo date of May 4 was announced on Jan. 16.

Thus did Romania become the first member state in the history of the European Union to cancel an election. The government had not called into question the legitimacy of the votes or vote-counting process. At issue is social media activity, primarily on TikTok, that boosted Georgescu’s profile and amplified his Euro-skeptical, far-right campaign in the final days before the tally. The cancellation of an election on these grounds marks a milestone in the development of Internet-age information war — one that underscores the fragility of the West’s collective commitment to democracy.

For all its seriousness, Romania’s cancelled vote has also proven to be a forensic farce, with the revelation that one of the country’s largest parties bankrolled the very TikTok campaign that the government had fingered as a Kremlin plot. At the same time, a broader narrative of Russian attacks on Romanian democracy was being advanced by a western-funded NGO working with a Ukrainian tech firm with ties to NATO and the European Commission.

“The Constitutional Court’s decision has divided us into two camps,” Lasconi wrote on Facebook. “Some who sighed in relief and say it was the only solution to protect democracy, and us, the others, who have warned that we are dealing with a brutal act, contrary to democracy, which could have major long-term effects.”

The declassified documents released on Dec. 4 described the election as tainted due to bad actors engaged in “a massive promotional activity” in violation of TikTok policy and Romanian law. In the government telling, these actors ranged from bot armies to pro-Georgescu Romanian political parties like Party of Young People to online communities known as vectors for amplifying Russian state media.

While Russia has a well-known interest in influencing the politics of the region — and has invested funds in what the Romanian government calls a “complex modus operandi” — the documents did not contain evidence of this machine in action. Rather, they described a de facto media campaign for Georgescu catching fire on social networks, in particular the comments sections of Romanian TikTok personalities, more than 100 of whom had been party, willingly or unwillingly, to the “artificial amplification” of pro-Georgescu commenters. Adding to the suspiciousness of the comments, noted the government, was the fact that debates over the most effective phrasing and emoji choices were hammered out in Telegram channels known to support “pro-Russian, far-right, anti-system, ‘pacifist’ and nationalist candidates.”

Central to the government’s case were a series of hashtags that began springing up across Romanian TikTok in the weeks before the Nov. 24 vote. These hashtags — including #echilibrusiverticalitate (“steadiness and uprightness”), #unliderpotrivitpentrumine (“the right leader for me”) and #prezidentiale2024” (“presidential elections 2024”) — accompanied videos in which popular TikTok accounts made general comments about the election, such as discussing the need for a strong candidate or asking leading questions about the type of leader who should replace the outgoing Klaus Iohannis. None of the posts — which typically racked up between 100,000 and half-million views — mentioned any specific candidate. But in the comments sections, Georgescu’s name appeared more than any other candidate.

As the coordinated hashtags became effective vehicles for raising the profile of a candidate who had spent almost nothing on paid media, Georgescu’s outsider campaign rose in the polls. In a matter of weeks, he went from a few percentage points to more than 10 percent and climbing in the days before the election. By the week of the vote, the hashtags became so entwined with Georgescu’s campaign that it could no longer be ignored. On Nov. 22, a Romanian Twitch streamer named Silviu Faiăr flagged the hashtag campaign’s rapid metamorphosis and noted that many of the influencers could be connected, not to Russia, but to a local pay-to-play influencer agency called FameUp. Two days later, when the election results shocked the nation, the social media campaign took on new relevance.

Among the groups that sought to keep Russia at the center of the election conversation was an NGO called Context, largely funded by the United States through its National Endowment for Democracy. On Nov. 29, the outfit published a report that included a summary of an analysis it conducted using software from a Ukrainian tech firm whose clients include NATO and the European Commission. In other words, five days after the election, a U.S.-funded watchdog was relying on a NATO-funded analysis to purport to expose foreign interference, shortly before the government released its own report.

When the government declassified its “top secret” documents on Dec. 4, they told a story that, in its basics, mirrored the gaming-chair analysis by Faiăr, the Twitch streamer. Little of the information was new except for some of the details, such as the fee paid to influencers by FameUp (roughly $80 per 20,000 followers on TikTok, Facebook and Instagram). But where Faiăr made no guess as to the forces behind the campaign, the government documents placed the blame on Russia, without supplying actual evidence, that it had skirted TikTok regulations and Romanian law by paying off influencers to produce election content that could be easily branded ex post facto by Georgescu supporters in the comments. The Kremlin plan was so sneaky that the paid influencers were “unaware that they were promoting a specific candidate through the use of [the hashtags],” according to the government.

Two days later, on Dec. 6, the Constitutional Court’s annulment of the election was met with acclaim and approval in the West. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty reported Romania had become the latest victim of an “aggressive hybrid war” waged by the Kremlin. Four U.S. senators issued a statement condemning “Vladimir Putin’s manipulation of Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-controlled TikTok to undermine Romania’s democratic process.” The European Commission took the historic event in stride, saying only that Brussels was “leaving it to Romanians.” Washington’s initial “concern” over suspicions of Russian meddling, expressed a few days earlier, relaxed into a state of observation. “We note the Romanian Constitutional Court’s decision today,” read a brief from the State Department that expressed “confidence in Romania’s democratic institutions and processes, including investigations into foreign malign influence.”

In Romania, the cancelled vote was more controversial. And the backstory, it turned out, was far from settled.

An official inquiry into the TikTok money trail involved not just the intelligence services—it was government-wide. Among those tasked with getting to the bottom of Russia’s interference was Romania’s revenue service. In the days following the court’s decision, one of the tax investigators assigned to the case contacted the Romanian investigative news outlet Snoop with information that had not been included in the Dec. 4 cache of declassified documents.

On Dec. 12, Snoop published a report revealing that the TikTok influencer campaign had been paid for not by the Kremlin, but by Romania’s National Liberal Party (PNL), which has governed the country for much of the past three decades; its most prominent member, Nicolae Ciucă, is president of the senate and stood as a (losing) candidate in the Nov. 24 election. The hashtag and influencer campaign that had launched Georgescu’s profile in the final weeks and days of the campaign — and which sat at the center of the government’s case, if it can be called that — was orchestrated by Kensington, the Bucharest communications firm, under a contract from the PNL. The politically connected Bucharest firm had distributed 500,000 lei (roughly $100,000) to TikTok influencers through its pay-to-play influencer subcontractor, FameUp, to generate energy around the election.

Two questions remained: Why would the PNL want to generate buzz around the election if it couldn’t promote its candidate by name? And why would it continue the campaign even as it became a Georgescu rocket-booster, unless that had been the plan all along?

When confronted with the whistleblower’s claims, PNL officials admitted to hiring the firm to run an election awareness campaign, but maintained ignorance over its “cooptation” by thousands of organized Georgescu supporters in the videos’ comments sections. As their candidate faded in the polls, party officials claimed, they had lost interest in the campaign and had no idea it had been “hijacked” until after the election, when it asked TikTok to take down the posts that had powered Georgescu from the back of the field to first place in a matter of weeks.

Somehow, Romania’s foreign intelligence service missed the neon breadcrumbs connecting a clearly coordinated TikTok campaign to one of the country’s most powerful political parties, despite its knowledge of the firms involved. The documents released on Dec. 4 contained no mention of the PNL; the word “Kensington” had been redacted.

“Everybody knows Kensington is a PNL communications firm, and the director of FameUp [which ran the influencers] was seen making repeated visits to PNL headquarters during the election,” Razvan Lutac, one of the reporters on the Snoop story, told Drop Site News. “It’s hard to understand how the Supreme Defense Council failed to see the links between the ‘hijacked’ campaign and the PNL. It’s also hard to understand how the PNL was ignorant about their influencer campaign being used as a Georgescu vehicle.”

Few in Romania buy the idea that the PNL was ignorant. Most veteran observers agree that helping get Georgescu into the second round was always the plan. That includes the whistleblowing tax official, who says flatly that “public money provided by taxpayers for the PNL was used to promote another candidate.”

“The TikTok campaign paid for by the National Liberal Party fits a pattern of unethical strategies by the major parties, including the use of fake accounts, bots and trolls, and the creation of fake media sites to promote their candidates and attack their opponents,” says Liana Ganea, an analyst with the media NGO ActiveWatch and co-author of a recent report on political propaganda in Romania. “The election disaster only demonstrates the profound institutional, political and social bankruptcy of the Romanian state. The public has still not received conclusive evidence of possible foreign interference.”

The PNL is not the only mainstream party suspected of advancing Georgescu’s candidacy as part of an electoral strategy, reminiscent of the Clinton campaign’s support of Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries. In early December, mayors from small villages reported receiving regular calls from leaders of Romania’s ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD), telling them to quietly support George Simion, leader of a far-right party called Alliance for Uniting Romanians, and on election day to support Georgescu. The tactic appears to be part of an established playbook; in 2000, the PSD was caught helping the campaign of far-right candidate Vadim Tudor advance to the second round of the 2000 presidential election.

“Giving votes to the candidate who is easiest to beat [has remained] in the imagination,” said the political scientist Cristian Preda in a Jan. 19 interview with a Romanian news outlet. In the recent election, “the PNL wanted a controlled sharing of power. Instead, it ended up stimulating a nationalist wave, a beast that you cannot control. Beyond the lack of honesty, we are slipping into absurdity. You enter politics, you fight for your own camp, not for that of others.”

Snoop’s bombshell fueled calls in Romania for the government to provide more information than was supplied in the original documents. In response, Iohannis issued a brief statement saying that no further information would be released. The stonewalling further soured a deeply jaded electorate on the country’s long-ruling establishment and ballasted the credibility of independent political voices willing to express public anger.

“The annulment of the elections is a very significant matter, and we must be convinced and clear that it was the right decision,” Bucharest Mayor Nicușor Dan said on Jan. 5. “For now, we do not have that clarity.”

For the better part of a decade, allegations of Russian influence in elections have been at the center of a sophisticated two-way information war that has grown apace with NATO-Russia tensions and geopolitical jockeying in the region. The competition has been especially fierce along the southeastern frontier of the western military alliance, with Romania emerging as perhaps the most important chess piece. The country hosts a major node in the alliance’s Aegis missile defense system, and an air base near Constanta on the Black Sea is currently being expanded; when completed, it will displace the U.S. Air Force-NATO Ramstein base as the largest U.S. military outpost in Europe.

None of this is incidental to the fact that Romania was the first EU nation to take the dramatic step of cancelling an election on the basis of “Russian meddling.” When releasing the documents that led to the cancellation, the government foregrounded Russia’s motive in boosting Georgescu’s campaign. “In Russia’s vision,” it stated, “Romania ‘challenges and threatens’ Russia’s security by hosting NATO and U.S. military potential.” Although Georgescu does not oppose Romania’s membership in NATO, he is against the country hosting its bases.

Of course, the U.S. has its own interests in the region and has built up its own influence networks, which increasingly operate under the disinterested guise of countering “Russian disinformation.” The funding of these networks has been growing steadily since 2017, when the U.S. Congress created a $1.5 billion Countering Russian Influence Fund to support programs and organizations that “strengthen democratic institutions and processes, and counter Russian influence and aggression.” The funds were designed to target “independent media, investigative journalism and civil society watchdog groups working to … encourage cooperation with social media entities to strengthen the integrity of information on the Internet.” The dollar-spigot was loosened following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, allowing more media-related grants to flow through the USAID’s Strengthening the Foundations of Freedom Development Framework (formerly known as the Countering Malign Kremlin Influence Development Framework.)

Romania is home to numerous western-funded media NGOs that have benefited from these funds. Some of them, such as Context, were arguably weaponized when Georgescu threatened to challenge the NATO-Russia balance. For the past several years, Context has participated in a region-wide NGO project, “Firehose of Falsehood,” to investigate the “pro-Kremlin, conspiracy and alt-right disinformation ecosystem in Central and Eastern Europe.” The participating groups often have similar funding streams and various western institutional connections. In the case of Context, its budget is overwhelmingly covered by funding from the State Department-funded National Endowment for Democracy, and its executive director, Mihaela Armaselu, spent 20 years working in the press office of the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest. (Context is also a member of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, a global reporting network also heavily funded by the U.S. government.)

On Nov. 29, five days after the first-round vote, Context anticipated the imminent government report by releasing its own social media analysis, headlined, “EXCLUSIVE: Operation Georgescu on X, Telegram and Facebook.” It was topped by a credit to a Ukrainian tech firm, Osavul, which identifies Kremlin social media narratives for a client list that includes the British, Canadian, Ukrainian and Estonian governments, plus the European Commission and NATO. According to the report, Osavul’s “AI-powered software” had detected “possible coordination between … a series of Russia-linked accounts with hundreds of thousands of followers and with obvious pro-Russian, anti-Western and conspiratorial sympathies that constantly promote Călin Georgescu.” At the center of the NGO’s conspiracy board were well-known Russian state media outlets, including pravda-en.com and pravda-es.com.

The report goes on to express concern that Romanian citizens, especially those in the large EU diaspora, had been influenced by Russian-linked channels promoting themes that “resonate strongly with a significant part of the public.” While ostensibly a report on the nefarious impact of a Kremlin puppet-master, the real blame seems to land on the common Romanian voter whose support for Georgescu is evidence of “how weak the resilience of Romania or, more precisely, of its citizens, is.”

Nobody denies that Georgescu rode the wave of a strong anti-establishment mood. This is partly the result of endemic corruption within the major parties, but also reflects skepticism over the Ukraine war and NATO’s growing role in the country, reflected in the evasive appeal of his campaign slogan, “There is no East, there is no West, there is only Romania.” Georgescu’s positions are streaked with QAnon-style conspiracy theories and odious historical echoes with the country’s fascist past — including praise for the World War Two-era Iron Guard — but the main themes of his independent campaign have broad appeal at home, where he benefited from the work of military groups, church networks and an active diaspora that gave him 80% support. At no point since the election was cancelled has anyone called into question the legitimacy of Georgescu’s 2,120,401 votes. Lasconi, the outsider who took second-place, also won without suspicions of foreign help.

“Wherever you look — health care, education, transportation, environment, justice — we see big problems in every sector,” said Nicoleta Fotiade, president of the Bucharest-based Mediawise Society. “If we’re only blaming TikTok and the Russians for the election results, it means we haven’t understood anything.”

In May, the government and media will probably have a second opportunity to show how well it understands the dynamics driving Georgescu’s success. On Jan. 22, the other far-right party in the race threw its support behind Georgescu, whom polls now show in first place with 38 percent support — 15 percentage points more than his voided victory. Lasconi, the reformist candidate who took second place in the first November ballot and might have triumphed in the scratched second round, is now polling at just 6%.

The West’s public support for Romania’s government and its rationale for canceling the vote, meanwhile, remains unwavering. It was re-stated at the U.S. Embassy in Bucharest during a mid-January press conference held by senior State Department official James O’Brien.

“We see foreign interference in connection with these elections,” he said. “If I were Romanian, I would ask who is paying for what, and who will benefit from a certain outcome. And that will go a long way in determining who can be trusted and who cannot.”

Fair and important questions. But only if they are asked with the understanding that they cut both ways, east and west, and that the answers are rarely as clean as we may like them to be.

Alexander Zaitchik is a freelance journalist and the author, most recently, of Owning the Sun, a history of monopoly medicine.

February 2, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO nation clears Russian-crewed ship in sabotage probe

RT | February 1, 2025

Norwegian police have released a Russian-crewed vessel after finding no evidence linking it to recent damage to an undersea fiber optic cable connecting Latvia and Sweden.

The Norwegian-owned Silver Dania, which operates between St. Petersburg and the northern Russian port of Murmansk, was detained on Thursday night following a request from Latvian authorities and a ruling from a local court.

Norwegian police said that the ship, which was escorted to the northern port of Tromso, could have damaged a critical fiber optic link belonging to Latvia’s state broadcaster and connecting the Baltic nation and Sweden’s Gotland island. It added that the law enforcement is “conducting an operation on the ship to search, conduct interviews, and secure evidence.”

However, less than a day later, the police stated that Silver Dania “will be able to leave Tromso already on Friday evening.” They added that while the investigation will continue, “no findings have been made linking the ship to the act,” and the crew had been cooperative.

The cable sabotage case is the latest in a string of incidents involving damage to critical infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, with speculation rife that Russia could have played a role. Short of any proof, however, Western officials have refrained from leveling direct accusations.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov dismissed allegations of Moscow’s involvement. “It is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any reason.”

The Washington Post, citing Western intelligence sources, reported earlier this month that the damage to Baltic Sea infrastructure likely stemmed from maritime accidents involving poorly maintained ships and inexperienced crews rather than deliberate sabotage.

NATO has launched a mission dubbed “Baltic Sentry” to enhance surveillance and protection of critical undersea infrastructure in the area and address concerns about possible sabotage.

February 1, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | Leave a comment

FBI Acted Like Modern-Day Gestapo

Sputnik – 31.01.2025

US President Donald Trump’s purge of the FBI’s leadership comes as no surprise – the agency has been acting more like a political enforcer than a law enforcement body.

Here are just a few examples of its (mis)conduct:

  • August 2022 – The FBI stormed Trump’s Mar-a-Lago to seize classified documents while Biden faced zero consequences for doing the same.
  • 2020 – The FBI actively suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story, labeling it “Russian disinformation”, despite knowing it was real.
  • August 2024 – FBI agents raided the homes of ex-UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter and journalist Dimitri Simes without announcing charges. Their crime? Challenging the official US narrative.
  • 2024 – The House Judiciary Committee exposed the FBI for spying on Americans’ private transactions, targeting conservatives rather than criminals.
  • 2022 – Congressmen Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson revealed the FBI has been investigating parents critical of their local school boards, using threat tag employed by the agency’s counterterrorism division.
  • 2016 – The FBI used the debunked Steele dossier as a pretext to spy on Trump’s election campaign, despite knowing the allegations of Trump-Russia collusion were false.

Trump’s crackdown on the agency was inevitable – the real question is how deep the rot goes.

January 31, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

John Helmer and spitting out the red, white, and blue Skripal pills

Gorilla Radio with Chris Cook and John Helmer January 15, 2025 

In today’s podcast from Canada, Chris Cook and I discuss the reasons for the failure of Novichok to kill anyone, and its success at brainwashing everyone, or almost everyone.

The contrast with other media campaigns of resistance to western information warfare is a glaring one. For example, the campaign to defend Julian Assange and free him from a British prison and trial in the US has turned out to have been a popular success. However, Assange himself, his Wikileaks platform, and his London advocates have done nothing to expose the Novichok deception operation. They are good men who have done nothing — their media success has failed to deter or stop the Anglo-American march to war in the Ukraine; Assange’s lawyers are supporters of the war against Russia. Assange’s alt-media reporters have pretended they are the only truth-tellers in the present discontents; their war is against their media competitors.

For their names; for the truth of the Novichok story; and for the after-life of the Novichok poison in the coming war against Russia, click to listen.

John Helmer and spitting out the red, white, and blue Skripal pills in the second half. Begin at Minute 31:00. Source: https://gradio.substack.com/

January 27, 2025 Posted by | Audio program, Deception, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US Arms Ukraine, Europe Pays the Bill

Sputnik – 23.01.2025

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said on Thursday that European taxpayers would have to pay for US military supplies to Ukraine if the new US administration agreed to provide them.

“On Ukraine, we need US also to stay involved and to do as much as possible to get Ukraine in a position of strength, whenever peace talks start. But I can tell the Europeans, if this new Trump administration is willing to keep on supplying Ukraine from its defense industrial base, the bill will be paid by the Europeans,” he said at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos.

The NATO chief said during the annual Ukrainian Breakfast event he was convinced that Europeans needed to be willing to pull their weight because, in his view, Americans were paying more despite being farther away from Ukraine than Europe.

Rutte also added that the alliance should increase its support for Ukraine in order to change the “wrong direction” in which the conflict is moving.

“We have to step up, not scale back, the support for Ukraine, we have to change the trajectory of the war which is ongoing, and so far we know the frontline is moving in the wrong direction,” Rutte said.

The annual WEF forum takes place from January 20-24 in the Swiss resort of Davos.

Russia believes arms supplies to Ukraine hinder the settlement process and directly involve NATO countries in the conflict. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said the United States and NATO not only supply weapons to Kiev but also train personnel in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy and elsewhere, which he argues is not conducive to peace.

January 23, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

It’s Official: US Abandoning Ukraine

By Kit Klarenberg | Global Delinquents | January 22, 2025

On January 19th, TIME magazine published an astonishing article, amply confirming what dissident, anti-war academics, activists, journalists and researchers have argued for a decade. The US always intended to abandon Ukraine after setting up the country for proxy war with Russia, and never had any desire or intention to assist Kiev in defeating Moscow in the conflict, let alone achieving its maximalist aims of regaining Crimea and restoring the country’s 1991 borders. To have a major mainstream outlet finally corroborate this indubitable reality is a seismic development.

The TIME article’s brief first paragraph alone is rife with explosive revelations. It notes when the proxy war erupted in February 2022, then-President Joe Biden “set three objectives for the US response” – and “Ukraine’s victory was never among them.” Moreover, the phrase oft-repeated by White House apparatchiks, that Washington would support Kiev “for as long as it takes”, was never meant to be taken literally. Instead, it was just “intentionally vague” newspeak, with no implied timeframe or even desired outcome in mind.

Eric Green, a member of Biden’s National Security Council who oversaw Russia policy, states the US “deliberately…made no promise” to President Volodymyr Zelensky to “recover all of the land Russia had occupied” since the conflict’s inception, “and certainly not” Crimea or the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. He said the White House believed “doing so was beyond Ukraine’s ability, even with robust help from the West.” It was well-understood such efforts were “not going to be a success story ultimately” for Kiev, if tried.

According to TIME, the Biden administration’s three key objectives in Ukraine were all “achieved”. Nonetheless, “success” on these fronts “provides little satisfaction” to some of the former President’s “closest allies and advisers.” Green was quoted as saying Washington’s purported victory in Ukraine was “unfortunately the kind of success where you don’t feel great about it,” due to Kiev’s “suffering”, and “so much uncertainty about where it’s ultimately going to land.”

‘Direct Conflict’

One objective was “avoiding direct conflict between Russia and NATO.” Miraculously, despite the US and its allies consistently crossing Moscow’s clearly stated red lines on assistance to Kiev, providing Ukraine with weaponry and other support Biden himself explicitly and vehemently ruled out in March 2022, on the grounds it could cause World War III, and greenlighting hazardously escalatory strikes deep inside Russian territory, so far all-out hot war has failed to materialise. On this front perhaps, the former President can be said to have triumphed.

However, another “was for Ukraine to survive as a sovereign, democratic country free to pursue integration with the West.” This prospect dwindles daily, as the proxy war’s frontline teeters constantly on total collapse. Kiev is facing an eventual and seemingly inevitable rout of some magnitude, with the conflict likely settled solely on Russia’s terms, and Zelensky – or whoever replaces him – having no negotiating position to speak of. In December 2024, Empire house journal Foreign Policy even openly advocated cutting Kiev out of eventual peace talks.

Biden also “wanted the US and its allies to remain united.” It is this objective that most obviously failed, and quite spectacularly. As this journalist has repeatedly documented, British intelligence has consistently sought to escalate the proxy conflict into all-out war between the West and Russia, and encouraged Kiev in its maximalist aims, to the extent of covertly plotting grand operations for the purpose, and training Ukrainians to execute them. London’s overriding ambition, per leaked documents, is “to keep Ukraine fighting at all costs.”

The Western media has acknowledged Ukraine’s calamitous August 2024 invasion of Russia’s Kursk region was to all intents and purposes a British operation. London provided a vast welter of equipment to Kiev “central” to the effort, and “closely” advised their Ukrainian counterparts on strategy. The aim was to draw Russian forces away from Donbass and boost Kiev’s bargaining position, which has proven a staggering embarrassment on both fronts. But there was a wider, more insidious goal behind the incursion.

Britain openly and eagerly advertised its fundamental role in the Kursk misadventure to bolster public support at home for continuing the proxy war, and “persuade key allies to do more to help.” In other words, to normalise open Western involvement, and create the “direct conflict” the Biden administration was so keen to avoid. London was also at the forefront of pressuring NATO member states to permit Ukraine to use foreign-supplied weaponry and materiel inside Russia, which could likewise produce their long-sought hot war against Moscow.

Several Western countries – including the US – have offered such authorisation. Yet, Russia has consistently responded to strikes deep inside its territory with heavy duty counterattacks, which Kiev has been unable to repel. Meanwhile, London’s invitation to its allies to become more overtly involved in the proxy war was evidently rebuffed. In November 2024 too, pro-government outlet Ukrainska Pravda published a startling investigation, documenting in forensic detail how the October 2023 – June 2024 Krynky operation was, à la Kursk, essentially British.

Never spoken of by Ukrainian officials today, the nine-month effort saw wave after wave of British-trained and equipped marines attempt to secure a beachhead in a river-adjacent village in Russian-controlled Kherson. Poorly prepared, many died attempting to reach Krynky, due to relentless artillery, drone, flamethrower and mortar fire. Of those that survived the nightmarish journey, most were then killed under a constant and ever-intensifying blitz, in marsh conditions. Russia’s onslaught grew so inexorable, evacuating casualties or providing forces with even basic supplies became borderline impossible.

Survivors of the Krynky catastrophe – one of the absolute worst in military history – who spoke to Ukrainska Pravda revealed it was hoped the beachhead would be a “game-changer”, opening a second front in the conflict, allowing Kiev’s invading marines to march upon Crimea and all-out victory in the proxy war. They hoped to recreate the June 1944 Normandy landings – D-Day. It is all too easy to envisage British intelligence filling the heads of their Ukrainian trainees with such fantasies.

‘Settle Up’

Fast forward to today, and Britain and France are openly discussing sending “peacekeepers” to Ukraine, to “help underpin” whatever “post-war settlement” emerges between Kiev and Moscow. This is after in February 2024, French President Emmanuel Macron suggested formally deploying his country’s forces to Ukraine to halt Moscow’s advance. The proposal was summarily dropped and forgotten when Russian officials made abundantly clear each and every French soldier dispatched to the frontline would be killed without hesitation, and Paris could become a formal belligerent in the war.

It appears the “peacekeeping” plan is likely to suffer the same fate. On January 20th, coincidentally or not the day of Donald Trump’s inauguration, CIA-created Radio Free Europe published an explainer guide on why sending European troops to Ukraine is “a nonstarter”. Among other things, as the Russians are unambiguously winning, they are unlikely to offer many concessions, particularly allowing foreign soldiers to occupy Kiev’s territory. Furthermore, “as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, Moscow can block any peacekeeping mission.”

As if the message to London and Paris wasn’t emphatic enough, two weeks earlier, at a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort, Trump made numerous comments reiterating his commitment to ending the proxy war. “We’re going to have to settle up with Russia,” he declared. Notably, the President sympathised with Moscow’s “written in stone” determination Kiev not be enrolled into NATO, warned the situation “could escalate to be much worse,” and stated his hope the conflict could be wrapped up within six months.

Markedly, Zelensky was not invited to Trump’s inauguration. In a January 6th interview with Newsweek, the Ukrainian President – typically never one to shy away from international jollies – said he was unable to attend, as it wasn’t “proper” to do so “during the war”. Amusingly, Trump’s son Donald Jr. has rubbished Zelensky’s narrative, claiming the – “weirdo” – had specifically “asked for an invite” on three occasions, “and each time got turned down.”

For Berlin, Kiev, London, Paris, and NATO more widely, the writing couldn’t be on the wall any more plainly. Whatever reveries they may have of maintaining the proxy war any longer – Britain recently signed a 100-year-long partnership with Ukraine, under which London will “explore” building military bases on Kiev’s soil – they all ultimately remain imperial vassals, wholly dependent on US financial and military support to exist. Save for a major false flag incident, Trump’s message can only be received among the military alliance.

January 22, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine Was Always Just Anti-Russian ‘Battering Ram’ to US – Ex-Pentagon Analyst

Sputnik – 21.01.2025

The Trump administration has little interest in wasting money on Ukraine, retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, former analyst for the US Department of Defense, tells Sputnik while commenting on Trump’s decision to suspend US foreign aid programs.

Withholding monies to Ukraine is a “starting point in explaining to Zelensky that the gravy train is over,” the expert thinks.

It has become increasingly obvious that the United States “doesn’t care for Ukraine,” regarding the latter merely as a “battering ram,” a “tool” to be used against Russia, Kwiatkowski remarks.

“So if Ukraine is a tool, it’s now a tool that is no longer very useful. It’s a tool that is hard to maintain. It’s not worth it. So we’re going to throw that tool away,” she says.

US Senator Lindsey Graham’s declaration about fighting Russia “to the last Ukrainian,” however heartless it may sound, “reflects how the Senate and how the politicians and the oligarchy in the United States really feel about Ukraine,” she added.

January 22, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Trump’s Second Act: What it means for Russia and the global order

By Andrey Ilnitsky | Kommersant | January 16, 2025

The idea of inflicting “strategic defeats” on Russia has been a cornerstone of US policy for a long time. It transcends party lines and is implemented regardless of which administration occupies the White House. The only real differences lie in the methods used to achieve this objective. In this era of global transformation, it is critical for Moscow to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of its opponents. By understanding the nuances of US President Donald Trump’s administration – now back in power – Russia must craft its own strategy of resilience and development, rooted in sovereign interests.

This is not a new game. In 2014, Foreign Affairs published an article by John Mearsheimer, the renowned American political scientist behind the theory of offensive realism. In his piece, Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault, Mearsheimer argued that NATO’s strategic ambitions in Eastern Europe provoked Russia’s actions in Crimea and Ukraine. His insights, dismissed at the time, have since been vindicated by events.

Fast forward to December 2024: Mearsheimer’s skepticism resurfaced in an interview with Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, published by UnHerd. Mearsheimer doubted that Trump, despite his unconventional rhetoric, would bring meaningful change to US policy. “Trump is surrounded by hawks with deeply entrenched Russophobia,” he observed. While Trump’s personal views might differ from Washington orthodoxy, the forces shaping his administration remain aligned with America’s long-standing ambitions of hegemony.

Trump’s first term demonstrated this paradox clearly. Despite his campaign promises to “get along with Russia” and even consider recognizing Crimea, little changed. While Trump and President Vladimir Putin met six times and engaged in what seemed like constructive dialogue, US policy continued to push Russia out of global energy markets, impose sanctions, and arm Ukraine. At a 2023 rally, Trump himself dismissed accusations of being “soft on Russia,” boasting that he had sent “hundreds of Javelins” to Ukraine while the Obama administration sent “pillows.”

Expecting Trump’s second term to usher in a multipolar and equitable global order would be naive. The real power behind Trump’s administration – interest groups, corporations, and donors – has little incentive to pursue peace. His 2023-2024 campaign received significant backing from military-industrial giants like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, as well as Silicon Valley’s venture capital elite. These forces thrive on perpetual conflict, where war is repackaged as “peace through strength.”

Trump’s geopolitical priorities are clear: undermine China’s rise as an economic and technological powerhouse while maintaining pressure on Russia. Elbridge Colby, a key figure in Trump’s foreign policy team, has articulated this strategy bluntly. Writing in May 2024, Colby argued that America must prioritize Asia – specifically China – over Europe and Russia. “The logic of Cold War strategy,” he wrote, “once led America to Europe; today it suggests that America should focus on Asia. China is the main rival.”

The inclusion of Marco Rubio in Trump’s foreign policy apparatus reinforces this anti-China focus. Rubio, a staunch critic of Beijing, has long warned of China’s ambitions to become the world’s dominant power “at the expense of everyone else.” Trump’s pivot to Asia is clear, but his strategy remains rooted in American exceptionalism and hegemony.

Domestically, Trump’s team envisions America as a “subcontinental fortress,” invoking a modernized Monroe Doctrine. This vision includes greater control over Canada, Greenland, and Panama, and a tighter grip on Central and South America. The goal? To secure America’s dominance in the Western Hemisphere while sidelining external powers like China and Russia.

Technology and military innovation are central to this vision. Trump’s administration aims to leverage artificial intelligence and cutting-edge dual-use technologies to maintain global superiority. This requires a complete reboot of the US military-industrial complex and a closer alignment between civilian industries and defense objectives. However, the question remains: can Washington, with its internal divisions and waning influence, successfully implement such an ambitious strategy?

For Russia, this geopolitical landscape poses serious challenges but also offers opportunities. The unipolar world order led by the US is undeniably weakening. Multipolarity is no longer just an aspiration; it is becoming a reality. However, the US and its allies are not retreating quietly. Instead, they are intensifying hybrid warfare against nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea – countries labeled as “revisionist regimes.”

Trump’s rhetoric may appear bold and unconventional, but his administration’s actions are predictable. The MAGA doctrine of 2024 is less about genuine transformation and more about reasserting US dominance at any cost. Whether through economic coercion, military intervention, or ideological posturing, the goal remains the same: enforce a world order dictated by Washington.

For Russia, the path forward is clear. We must remain steadfast in defending our sovereignty and values. Unlike the West, which prioritizes hegemony, Russia stands for a multipolar world where nations have the right to determine their own destinies. The challenges are immense, but so are the opportunities. In this new era of great power competition, Russia’s resolve will be tested, but our commitment to our people and our principles will guide us through.

Andrey Ilnitsky is a member of the Council for Foreign and Defense Policy and senior research fellow at the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation.

This article was first published by the newspaper Kommersant and was translated and edited by the RT team.

January 22, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Sinophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Western intelligence believes Baltic cable damage was not Russian sabotage – WaPo

RT | January 19, 2025

The recent damage to underwater power and communications cables in the Baltic Sea was likely the result of “maritime accidents” rather than Russian sabotage, the Washington Post reported on Sunday, citing several US and European intelligence officials.

A consensus over the string of incidents that plagued the underwater infrastructure over the past few weeks is now emerging in the Western intelligence community, with no evidence of malicious activities found, the newspaper reported.

The “intercepted communications and other classified intelligence” collected by the Western nations indicated that inexperienced crews and poorly maintained ships were behind the accidents, officials from the three countries involved in the investigations suggested.

Unnamed US officials told the newspaper that “clear explanations” have emerged in each case, suggesting the damage was accidental. One European official said the initial claims that Russia was involved are now met with “counter evidence” indicating otherwise.

The investigations have focused on three incidents involving vessels traveling to and from Russian ports that occurred over the past 18 months in the Baltics, including the rupture of a natural gas pipeline in the Gulf of Finland in October 2023 attributed to the Newnew Polar Bear container ship, and damage to two cables allegedly inflicted by the Yi Peng 3 bulk carrier in November.

The latest incident occurred in late December with a supposedly Russian-linked oil tanker, the Eagle S, which allegedly dragged its anchor across the EstLink 2 power cable connecting Finland and Estonia. The ship was boarded and seized by the Finnish authorities, with investigators claiming the ship was missing one of its anchors.

Moscow dismissed suggestions that it was to blame for the incidents in the Baltics. “It is quite absurd to continue to blame Russia for everything without any reason,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said in November.

January 19, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Exposed: How US Fumbled Chance to Buy Russia’s Best-in-the-World Waterbombers to Fight LA Infernos

© Sputnik / Roman Denisov / Go to the mediabank
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 17.01.2025

From budget cutbacks and DEI hiring to giving away much-needed “surplus equipment” to Ukraine, the fires devastating wide swathes of Los Angeles have turned into an unmitigated $250 billion disaster. But it didn’t have to be this way.

This week, Russian business media revealed that between 2017-2019, Russia and the US were actively negotiating a contract on the sale of up to ten of Russia’s powerful Beriev Be-200 waterbombers to California’s Seaplane Global Air Services.

The Russian planes, which would have been flown by an emergency services operator out of Santa Maria Public Airport, just 200 km northwest of one of the epicenters of the LA blazes, have a world-class reputation fighting wildfires from Italy and Indonesia to Portugal, Greece, Israel, Turkiye, and of course Russia itself.

Be-200s can carry 12 tons of water or fire retardant, swooping down on reservoirs, lakes or oceans to fill up in 14 seconds flat. Flying at speeds up to 700 km/h and featuring a 2,100 km range (3,300 km ferry range), Be-200s fighting the LA fires would have been able to make multiple sorties, dropping over 50 tons of water before needing to refuel.

What happened?

Beriev was reportedly ready to sell the Be-200s with Russian PowerJet SaM146 turbofans, but the US side insisted on the D-436TP, an engine manufactured by Ukraine’s Motor Sich.

In 2020, the US Federal Aviation Administration insisted on separate certification for the planes and their engines. Motor Sich refused, having banned the delivery of the engines to Russia, and so the contract was scrapped.

Rostec, Beriev’s parent company, confirmed Friday that an agreement on the sale of Be-200s was lined up, with all ten of the planes to have been handed over by late 2024.

“This is one of the clearest examples of how politics can harm common sense,” Rostec said in a statement. “The contract was disrupted because the Americans did everything to make the procedure for approving the engines and airframe for operation in the United States impossible.”

“Perhaps the presence of our aircraft… would have reduced the damage from the natural disaster in California. But intrigues have done their job. The result has been thousands of families left homeless and billions in losses. We sympathize with the ordinary people who have become hostages of the political games of their authorities,” the company added.

January 17, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Skripal poisoning victim disputed UK narrative, official inquiry reveals

By Kit Klarenberg · The Grayzone · January 13, 2025

An official inquiry into a notorious 2018 Novichok poisoning case has found the victim briefly emerged from a coma, revealing information which wholly undermined the British government’s narrative. While the medical professional she told was muzzled, mainstream media has ignored the new finding.

On March 8, 2018, just four days after being hospitalized for having allegedly been contaminated with novichok, which is said to be the world’s deadliest military grade nerve agent, Yulia Skripal was roused from her coma. Upon waking up, she communicated to an intensive care consultant that she and her father, the turncoat former Russian spy, Sergei, had been “sprayed” with an uncertain substance while dining at a restaurant, before their collapse — and not at their home, as claimed by the UK.

The revelation, which runs completely contrary to widespread reports that Yulia spent almost a month in critical condition before regaining consciousness, stems from recently-disclosed transcripts of an official British inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess, who supposedly died after having inhaled novichok from a sealed perfume bottle.

For several years, British authorities have stonewalled, prevaricated, and connived to prevent an inquest into the Sturgess case, and perhaps now it is clear why.

According to the British government, Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were poisoned by two GRU assassins who snuck into Britain using false identities with Russian-produced Novichok, which was supposedly smeared on the doorknob of Sergei’s MI6-furnished home in Salisbury. The Skripals ultimately survived, but in the intervening years, this story has been repeatedly retold by legacy media outlets to hype up the threat Russia poses to the British public.

That narrative is substantially undermined by the recent revelation that Yulia briefly awoke from her coma and countered the official story through a form of visual communication.

The Sturgess inquiry also revealed that after Yulia awoke from her coma and interacted with a doctor, high-ranking officials at Salisbury hospital forbade the healthcare professional from divulging details of his interchange with Yulia with anyone or having any further contact with the Skripals, and warned him not to discuss the poisoning case with anyone.

The Russian government’s supposed involvement in the Salisbury poisoning has proven pivotal in igniting a new Cold War. Moscow was universally depicted as a dastardly pariah in the media, precipitating a British-instigated expulsion of Russian diplomats, dramatically escalating a conflict that eventually erupted in the Ukraine proxy war.

Even if Yulia’s hospital bed claims were inaccurate, they still undermine the British government’s official narrative, while raising serious questions about which substance was used to poison the Skripals, and who was actually responsible. The public is also left to ponder whether the silencing of the healthcare professional who received Yulia’s testimony resulted from state pressure on Salisbury hospital.

Meanwhile, the Dawn Sturgess investigation has closely emulated past British government coverup inquiries, such as the questionable 2016 probe into FSB defector Alexander Litvinenko’s strange death a decade before. In an effort to validate the preordained conclusion that Sturgess was poisoned with the same Novichok that purportedly nearly killed the Skripals almost ten miles away, the inquiry’s chair and counsels have routinely relied on stultifying illogic, highly gymnastic legalistic arguments, speculative claims, and anonymous security and intelligence personnel testimony, while ignoring or outright dismissing inconvenient evidence.

Skripals ‘sprayed’ with poison at restaurant?

Over six weeks from late October 2024, a formal inquiry probed the July 2018 death of Dawn Sturgess resulting from alleged Novichok nerve agent poisoning. The investigation had been rigged to prevent the truth about that tragic incident from reaching the public, and to to suppress inconvenient details about the poisoning of GRU defector Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia three months earlier. However, the inquiry nonetheless yielded a number of important findings.

That there has been any official investigation into the death of Dawn Sturgess — even a flagrant whitewash — is miraculous. Under English law, a coroner’s inquest is typically completed within six to nine months of an individual’s passing. But as independent journalist John Helmer has exhaustively documented, British authorities have stonewalled, prevaricated and connived to prevent an inquest. This was after an inquest was opened, then immediately adjourned pending further police investigations, on the very same day in July 2018.

After heavy legal tussling between British authorities and Sturgess’ grieving family, British authorities finally authorized a public inquiry in November 2021, with no date for commencement given. This was a highly suspect maneuver. Inquests are legally-mandated to establish how, when and why someone died, and the wider circumstances surrounding it. They have sweeping powers to subpoena documents and witnesses, evidence is given under oath, and absolutely any member of the public, the British government, and its national security apparatus can be called to testify.

Previous high-profile inquests have shed important light on potential MI6 assassinations, and exposed major scandals involving British police.

By contrast, as one law firm explained, inquiries are little more than “highly emotive” public relations exercises, intended to “attract large scale media coverage”. Their terms — who can be interviewed and what evidence will be considered — are sharply limited by direct government decree, and they have no power to compel anyone or anything to turn over evidence.

That authorities exerted so much energy to avoid holding an inquest before opting for a toothless PR stunt should be an obvious source of concern. While some testimony was publicly broadcast and transcribed, the BBC reports that many inquiry sessions were held in secret, with some witnesses’ “names, faces and even voices hidden.” Meanwhile, “only three accredited journalists” were allowed to report directly on proceedings, prohibited from using any electronic devices throughout, and reduced to making notes on whatever was said using “old fashioned pen and paper.”

Still, despite the veil of obfuscation, important public testimony emerged during the inquiry’s six-week-long span. It was Dr Stephen Cockroft, an intensive care consultant who treated the Skripals upon their admission to hospital, who revealed Yulia had awoken after just four days. Cockroft told the inquiry he “never thought [Yulia] would be capable of having a conversation” again, having “suffered a catastrophic brain damage.”

However, he noted that she seemed mentally competent, nodding and crying in response to questions he asked, while looking “absolutely terrified.”

He quizzed her about what happened prior to her collapse, to which she responded with a series of blinks — .

Among Dr Cockroft’s queries was whether she and her father were “sprayed” with a substance at a restaurant called Zizzi. This was where Yulia dined with Sergei on the afternoon of March 4 2018. She responded in the affirmative to the doctor’s question.

When asked if she knew who was responsible for spraying her, Yulia burst into hysterical tears. At that point, Cockroft stopped pushing his subject for answers.

Despite Yulia’s stunning responses, a senior British counter-terror police forensics expert who participated in the probe of the Skripals’ poisoning, Keith Asman, apparently decided not to interview her at all, and attached no credibility to her post-coma declarations.

 

During his inquiry testimony, Asman acknowledged he was informed that Yulia had indicated Zizzi was the site of her poisoning. But the revelation ultimately had zero bearing on his team’s probe. This, they said, was due to forensic investigators finding relatively “low-level” traces of Novichok at the restaurant compared to other sites, and suspicions Yulia may have “wittingly or unwittingly been involved” in the incident that landed her and her father in hospital.

Asman claimed his misgivings about Yulia were due to her crying “when asked who did it” by Dr Cockroft. “I did wonder… if she was crying because she felt maybe she had been identified,” he claimed. This doubt, combined with the Skripals having allegedly “eaten and drank different things” at Zizzi, led British police forensic masterminds to conclude it was “unlikely one particular item of food or drink was the source of the contamination,” and they therefore formally ruled out the restaurant as the site of their poisoning.

Shockingly, when inspectors from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Salisbury on March 21 2018 to investigate the incident, the Skripals were physically prevented from speaking to them. The inquiry has revealed that on the very same day the OPCW inspectors arrived, Skripals’ doctors unilaterally decided to simultaneously tracheotomize both him and his daughter. Yulia’s tracheostomy tube was removed March 27, two days after OPCW representatives left. Sergei had to wait until April 5 for his tube to be dislodged.

Hospital whistleblower silenced

Another deeply strange detail divulged by Dr. Cockroft was that his interaction with Yulia apparently caused significant consternation at the highest levels of Salisbury hospital. Following this incident, Dr. Christine Blanchard, the institution’s then-medical director, not only removed him from the intensive care rota, but “warned” him he “should not discuss any aspect of the poisoning with colleagues… or other individuals.” Cockroft was outright “forbidden to discuss any aspect of the presentation, recognition or initial treatment of Yulia or Sergei Skripal,” even at regular ICU hospital meetings.

Asked by inquiry counsel if Blanchard believed it hadn’t “been wise” for him to speak to Yulia “about these matters,” Cockroft concurred, though he said that based on his 24-year-long career in healthcare, he didn’t believe he’d done anything wrong. “I always talk to my patients… even when I think they can’t hear me,” he explained, opining, “the worst intensive care doctors… ignore the patients.” Describing the attitude of Dr Blanchard, who had no experience of working in intensive care, as “a little difficult,” he stated:

“I genuinely was concerned that if [Yulia] had some knowledge that somebody had assaulted them… that might be something she would be concerned about. I do feel this was a lost opportunity to discuss with my colleagues what I observed in those first few hours and how I recognized that the Skripals had been poisoned.”

“If [my colleagues] were having a conversation [about the Skripals] they would stop talking about it in front of me,” Cockroft revealed, adding: “it was odd. It was very odd.”

The inquiry made very little of Cockroft’s testimony on this point. Still, his declarations suggest a code of omertà was imposed by the British state around the facts of the Salisbury incident. Whether pressure of some kind was brought to bear on Salisbury hospital to prevent Cockroft’s interactions with Yulia emerging publicly may never be known.

However, it is clear the British government has been committed to preventing inconvenient facts about Salisbury from ever entering the public domain. The narrative of Russian culpability for the Skripals’ poisoning had to be sustained, even before a clear motive was established, perpetrators were identified, or other elementary facts were ascertained.

In the days immediately after the poisoning, a substantial slice of the British public expressed serious doubts about Moscow’s responsibility for the purported poisoning among Britons, and even entertained the possibility that the MI6 had carried out the operation. Battering down that skepticism has apparently necessitated some extreme measures at every level.

January 16, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Russophobia | Leave a comment