Two member states to sue EU over Russian energy ban – Szijjarto
RT | December 8, 2025
Hungary will seek to overturn the EU’s RePowerEU Russian energy ban at the European Court of Justice once the plan is adopted next week, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto has said.
Brussels launched the initiative in 2022 after the escalation of the Ukraine conflict, aiming to eliminate all Russian fossil fuel imports by the end of 2027.
A provisional agreement between the European Council and the European Parliament was announced last week, setting a halt to Russian liquefied natural gas imports by the end of 2026, with pipeline deliveries to be phased out by November 2027.
Hungary and Slovakia, which remain heavily dependent on Russian supplies, have objected to the plan, arguing that the measures would jeopardize their energy security.
In a post on X on Sunday, Szijjarto said Budapest and Bratislava will file an “annulment request to the European Court of Justice” as soon as the regulation is adopted and will ask for the suspension of the rules while the case is under review.
“We are taking this step because banning Russian oil and gas imports would make the secure energy supply of Hungary and Slovakia impossible and would lead to dramatic price increases,” he wrote, describing the regulation as “massive legal fraud.”
The minister argued that the regulation is a “sanctions measure” that requires the unanimous approval of all 27 member states. The European Commission bypassed the Hungarian and Slovak vetoes by shifting the decision to EU trade and energy laws that only require a qualified majority.
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has repeatedly warned that cutting off Russian supplies would raise costs and undermine long-term energy stability. Slovakia has taken a similar position, with Prime Minister Robert Fico saying on Wednesday that his country has “sufficient legal grounds to consider filing a lawsuit.”
NATO Is a Menace, Not a Benefit, to America
By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | December 8, 2025
Since its creation in 1949, NATO has been the keystone of U.S. foreign policy in Europe. Indeed, the alliance has been the most important feature of Washington’s overall strategy of global primacy. America’s political and policy elites have embraced two key assumptions and continue to do so. One is that NATO is essential to the peace and security of the entire transatlantic region and will remain so for the indefinite future. The other sacred assumption is that the alliance is highly beneficial to America’s own core security and economic interests.
Whatever validity those assumptions may have had at one time, they are dangerously obsolete today. The toxic, militaristic views toward Russia that too many European leaders are adopting have made NATO into a snare that could entangle the United States in a large-scale war with ominous nuclear implications. It is urgent for Donald Trump’s administration and sensible proponents of a U.S. foreign policy based on realism and restraint to eliminate such a risky and unnecessary situation.
Throughout the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, NATO’s European members followed Washington’s policy lead on important issues with little dissent or resistance. That situation is no longer true. The governments and populations in the alliance’s East European members (the countries that the Kremlin held in bondage during the Cold War but that eagerly joined NATO once the Soviet Union collapsed) have adopted an especially aggressive, uncompromising stance toward Russia as the USSR’s successor. They have lobbied with special fervor in favor of admitting Ukraine to NATO, despite Moscow’s repeated warnings over the past two decades that such a step would constitute an intolerable provocation. The East European states also have been avid supporters of the proxy war that NATO has waged against Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Their toxic hostility toward Russia has inexorably made inroads even among the previously more restrained, sensible members of the alliance. With a few partial exceptions, such as Hungary and Slovakia, NATO governments now push for unrealistic, very risky policies with respect to the Ukraine-Russia war. Washington’s volatile, ever-changing policy under President Trump regarding that armed conflict has not helped matters.
The Trump administration’s latest approach has been to try to inject some badly needed realism into the position that Ukraine and its NATO supporters pursue. Realities on the battlefield confirm that Russia is winning, albeit slowly and at considerable cost, the bloody war against its neighbor. Moscow’s forces are gradually expanding the amount of territory they control. Kiev’s propaganda campaign to portray Ukraine as a stalwart democracy and a vital symbol of resistance to an authoritarian Russia is collapsing as well. Corruption scandals now plague the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, as does growing evidence of his regime’s authoritarianism. Proponents of NATO’s continuing military intervention now seek to downplay the once-dominant “moral case” for the alliance’s involvement and try to stress Ukraine’s alleged strategic importance to both the United States and its allies.
Stubbornness and lack of realism on the part of NATO’s European members (as well as too many American policy analysts and media mavens) is worrisome and dangerous. They have launched a concerted effort to torpedo the Trump administration’s latest peace initiative. Proponents of continuing the alliance’s proxy war insist that no peace accord include territorial concessions by Ukraine. They also demand that Kiev retain the “right” to join NATO. Finally, they insist that any settlement contain a NATO “security guarantee” to Ukraine, and that a peacekeeping force that includes troops from alliance members enforce that settlement. Britain and France have explicitly made the demand to send troops.
Such demands amount to a poison pill designed to kill any prospect of an agreement that Moscow might accept. The insistence on a security guarantee to Kiev and a peacekeeping contingent especially fits that description. Any accord that puts NATO military personnel in Ukraine would make the country a protectorate of the alliance, even if Kiev did not receive an official membership card. The commitment itself would have NATO’s military might perched on Russia’s border. That is precisely the outcome that Moscow has sought to prevent for decades.
Extremely inflammatory and combative rhetoric on the part of high-level European officials increasingly accompany such provocative, anti-Russia policy stances. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, even mused that the alliance should consider the option of launching a “preemptive” military strike against Russia. Other officials in NATO member governments have asserted that the alliance (or “Europe”) must be prepared to wage war against Russia, if relations continue to deteriorate.
NATO’s European hawks are flying high, and the irresponsible options they toy with put the United States in grave danger. The NATO alliance is no longer even arguably a security asset for the American people. Instead, it has become an increasingly worrisome, perilous liability – a loose cannon that poses a grave danger to our country.
NATO was created so that the United States could protect a collection of weak democracies in Western Europe still suffering from the aftermath of World War II against a strong, menacing totalitarian state: the Soviet Union. That world no longer exists. Today, a much larger, stronger collection of democratic and quasi-democratic European states confronts Russia – a weaker, non-totalitarian power. Even without the United States, the European countries are capable of building and deploying whatever forces they deem necessary to sustain their security interests. NATO’s European contingent also has its own, extremely assertive (indeed, aggressive) policy agenda toward Moscow. That agenda endangers rather than benefits the United States and the American people. It is now imperative for America to sever the transatlantic security tie and say farewell to NATO.
Baltic MP warns of potential winter gas shortages
RT | December 7, 2025
A major Latvian gas storage facility is only 58% full ahead of the winter heating season, local lawmaker Andris Kulbergs has warned. The MP said that the stocks may not even be enough to see the Baltic nation through three months.
The EU, of which Latvia is a member, drastically reduced imports of Russian oil and gas following the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in February 2022. Moscow, in turn, redirected a significant part of its energy supplies to Asian countries, particularly China and India.
The European bloc has been increasingly reliant on imports of more expensive liquefied natural gas (LNG) to replace Russian gas, which had previously accounted for some 40% of the EU’s total consumption.
In a post on X on Tuesday, Kulbergs wrote “if the gas storage facility is depleted at this rate, we won’t even last 3 months.”
He noted that at present, “there is no sign of additional supply from LNG terminals.”
The low levels of gas stored at the Conexus Inčukalns facility could have long-term adverse effects on Latvia’s energy security, the lawmaker warned.
Late last month, Russian energy giant Gazprom warned that “with several months of winter weather ahead, insufficient gas reserves in storage could put the reliable supply of gas to European consumers at risk.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin has similarly stated that the EU’s decision to source its energy elsewhere has resulted in lower industrial production and reduced competitiveness across the bloc.
Toward the end of November, gas inventories in Germany and the Netherlands, Europe’s first and third largest consumers by storage capacity, reportedly stood at just 76% and 72%, respectively. This was far below the 90% level mandated by EU regulations.
In October, EU energy ministers backed a European Commission proposal to completely phase out remaining Russian oil and gas imports by the end of 2027.
Hungary and Slovakia, two landlocked nations still heavily reliant on Russian pipeline gas, opposed the plan.
Amendments in US’s New Security Doctrine Largely Align With Russia’s Vision – Kremlin
Sputnik – 07.12.2025
The adjustments made to the new US National Security Strategy are largely consistent with Moscow’s vision, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Sunday.
“The adjustments that we are seeing, I would say, are largely consistent with our vision,” Peskov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.
On Friday, the White House published a new US national security doctrine that calls on Europe to take responsibility for its own defense. The document also suggests that the White House disagrees with European officials on their stance regarding the conflict in Ukraine.
Responsibility for the possible seizure of Russian assets will be shared by individuals and entire countries, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov also said.
“Listen, we will have both national responsibility and personal responsibility, personal and legal responsibility for these actions,” Peskov told Russian journalist Pavel Zarubin.
Peskov also recalled that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) opposed the seizure of Russian assets and urges caution to avoid negative repercussions on the international financial system.
“We hear that the International Monetary Fund has issued a statement addressing this issue with great caution and calling for such measures to avoid any negative impact on the international financial system. That is, even the IMF [opposes], and what is the IMF? It is what they created, it is the foundation of monetary policy in the monetary world. So it turns out that this foundation is now turning against its progenitors, saying ‘Come to your senses,’” he said.
Theft of Russian wealth is tying the entire EU bloc to a sinking ship, or worse, all-out war
Strategic Culture Foundation | December 5, 2025
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is pushing ahead with a reckless plan to confiscate over €200 billion in Russia’s sovereign wealth for the purpose of propping up the corrupt NeoNazi Kiev regime and prolonging a futile proxy war.
It is hard to imagine a more crass course of action. Yet the so-called European leadership around Von der Leyen is zealously steering towards disaster. At least the hapless captain of the Titanic tried to avert collision with an iceberg. The Euro captains are heading full steam ahead.
Von der Leyen’s proposed scheme is fancifully called a “reparations loan” and pretends, through legalistic rhetoric, not to be a confiscation of Russia’s assets. But it boils down to theft. Theft to continue the bloodiest war in Europe since the Second World War, which marked the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, is supported by other obsessively Russophobic Euro elites. The EU’s foreign minister Kaja Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister, asserts that the seizure of Russian money and pumping it into the Kiev regime is aimed at forcing Moscow to negotiate a peaceful end to the nearly four-year conflict. Such twisted logic is an Orwellian distortion of reality.
Belgium and other European states are extremely wary of the unprecedented and audacious move. Belgium, which holds the majority of frozen Russian wealth – some €185 bn – in its Euroclear depository, is anxious that it will be financially ruined if Moscow holds the EU liable for illegal seizure of wealth. Other EU members, like Hungary and Slovakia, are concerned that the Russophobic leadership is undermining any diplomatic initiatives by the U.S. Trump administration and the Kremlin to negotiate a peace settlement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any confiscation of Russian assets by the EU leadership – regardless of financial rhetorical packaging – will be viewed by Moscow as theft of sovereign wealth. Russia has vowed it will respond robustly with legal challenges under existing treaties to exact compensation. This is what Belgium is fearful of and why it is resisting von der Leyen’s loan reparation scheme.
The European leaders are to hold a summit on December 18-19 to decide on the proposal. So desperate are the Russophobic elites that they have been assiduously piling political pressure on the Belgian government to relent in its opposition to go along with the scheme. In trying to get Belgium onboard, von der Leyen has written legal guarantees that all EU members will share any legal and financial repercussions. Thus, the unelected European Commission president is taking it upon herself to write a suicide note for the whole of Europe.
Essentially, the proposed loan reparation scheme is based on using Russian immobilized investments in EU banks as a guarantee to give €140 bn in an interest-free hand-out to Ukraine. The financial life-line is necessary because Ukraine is bankrupt after four years of fighting a proxy war on behalf of NATO against Russia.
Ukraine and its NATO sponsors have lost this conflict as Russian forces gather momentum with superior military force. But rather than meeting Russia’s terms for peace, the Euro elites want to keep on “fighting to the last Ukrainian”. To sue for peace would be an admission of complicity in a proxy war and would be politically disastrous for the European warmongers. In covering up their criminal enterprise and lies, they are compelled to keep the “defense of Ukraine” charade going.
Given the rampant graft and embezzlement at the core of the Kiev regime as indicated by the recent firing of top ministers and aides, it is certain that much of the next EU loan will end up in offshore bank accounts, foreign properties and being snorted up the noses of the corrupt regime.
Von der Leyen’s artful deception of theft claims that the Russian assets are not confiscated permanently but rather will be released when Moscow eventually pays “war damages” to Ukraine. In other words, the scheme is a blackmail operation, one that Russia will never comply with because it is premised on Russia as a guilty aggressor, rather than, as Moscow and many others see it, as acting in self-defense to years of NATO fueled hostility culminating in the CIA coup in Kiev in 2014 and weaponizing of a NeoNazi regime to provoke Russia. Therefore, under von der Leyen’s scheme, Russia’s frozen funds will, in effect, never be returned and, to add insult to injury, will have been routed through to the benefit of Kiev mafia.
Such a criminal move is highly provocative and dangerous. It could be interpreted by Moscow as an act of war given the huge scale of plunder of the Russian nation. At the very least, Russia will pursue compensation under international treaties and laws that could end up destroying Belgium and other EU states from financial liabilities. How absurd is that? Von der Leyen and her Russophobic ilk are setting up Europe for bankruptcy by stealing Russia’s wealth for propping up a corrupt NeoNazi regime that has already sacrificed millions of Ukrainian military casualties?
Alternatively, if the EU leadership does not get away with its madcap robbery scheme at the summit on December 18-19, the “Plan B” is for the EU 27 members to take out a joint debt from international markets to carry the Kiev regime through another two years of attritional war.
The insanity of the EU leaders is unfathomable. It is driven by ideological, futile obsession to “subjugate” Russia. Von der Leyen, as well as Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are descendants of Nazi figures. For these people, there is an atavistic quest to defeat Russia and assert European “greatness”.
They lost their proxy war in Ukraine with much blood on their hands. But instead of desisting from their destructive obsession, they are desperately trying to find new ways to keep it going.
The criminal, irresponsible Euro elites like von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Macron, and NATO’s Rutte, are lashing the EU financially to a sinking ship. They are bringing the entire European bloc down with them, splintering as they go.
What these elites are doing is destroying the European Union as we know it, and they profess to uphold. Ironically, it is they, not Russia, that is the biggest enemy to democracy and peace in Europe.
Patrik Baab: War Propaganda Destroyed Media & Freedom of Speech
Glenn Diesen | December 6, 2025
Patrik Baab is a German journalist and best-selling author who reported on both sides of the frontline in Ukraine. Baab argues that war propaganda has destroyed the credibility of the media and freedom of speech.
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POLITICO’s Delusion Cracks: Belgium Isn’t Helping Russia — It’s Trying to Save Europe From Itself
By Gerry Nolan | The Islander | December 5, 2025
The great farce of late-imperial Europe is that every time Brussels stumbles into another historic blunder of its own making, it immediately searches for a foreign hand to blame. And so the EU’s court chronicler, Politico, delivers its latest fever dream: that Belgium, the most indecisive, over-medicated country in the bloc, has somehow transformed into “Russia’s most valuable asset.” In reality, the only asset Russia needed was the EU’s own arrogance.
Belgium merely did the unthinkable, it told the truth.
What Politico dresses up as geopolitical intrigue is actually a confession of EU derangement. The EU are trying to engineer the largest state-sanctioned theft of sovereign wealth in modern history, a direct raid on the Russian Central Bank’s reserves and expected applause, unity, and moral ecstasy. Instead, Belgium asked the only sane question left in Europe: “Are you all completely out of your minds?” For this, Politico paints De Wever as eccentric, impulsive, unstable, the same labels always deployed when someone refuses to bow to the imperial autopilot. But the deeper scandal is that Brussels expected him to sign off on detonating the post-war financial order for the sake of one more photo-op with Zelensky.
Politico can hide behind metaphors of summit dinners and langoustines, but the legal reality is brutal: raiding another nation’s central bank is not a policy disagreement. It is a declaration of financial war on the entire world. It would obliterate sovereign immunity, destroy the neutrality of reserve holdings, and instantly signal to the global South that their assets in EU banks are hostage to EU’s emotional spasms. One act, one reckless stroke of a pen, and the euro collapses as a safe currency, capital flees to Asia, and the West loses its last functional pillar of power. Belgium saw the cliff’s edge, Brussels mistook it for a (perverse) moral leap of faith.
Politico’s narrative stumbles further when it pretends the only danger lies in Moscow’s retaliation. It does not. Russia’s symmetric countermeasures are well-known, lawful, and devastating: nationalization of Western corporate assets, seizure of industrial infrastructure, liquidation of bond holdings, and the dismantling of Western financial footprints inside Russia. The value of Western assets exposed inside the Russian Federation rivals what sits in Euroclear. Brussels knows this. Euroclear knows this. Investors know this. Only the EU pretends the ledger is irrelevant. But the real threat is not Russia’s response , it is the irreversible collapse of trust in Western custodianship. Once the EU steals central bank reserves, no nation with self-respect will ever again store wealth in Europe. The theft of Russian reserves would be remembered not as an isolated act, but as the day the West proved it cannot be trusted with global money, let alone soverign assets.
This is the part Politico is terrified to articulate. Belgium wasn’t protecting Russia. Belgium is trying to protect the very system the EU purports to defend. Yet instead of portraying De Wever as the only adult in the room, Politico stages a melodrama about a Flemish nationalist gone rogue, supposedly spoiling the EU’s grandiose plan to hurl another €140 billion onto the Ukrainian funeral pyre. The reality is simpler, Belgium refused to mortgage its own future so Europe could continue its cosplay as a geopolitical superpower utterly detached from material reality. The EU elite wanted to play empire with someone else’s risk. Belgium refused to be the guarantor of their delusion.
What makes Politico’s narrative even more absurd is that it accidentally reveals the deeper rot, Europe’s elite caste are incapable of unity, incapable of strategic thought, incapable of honesty. Merz shoots from the hip. Von der Leyen improvises legal fantasies. Orbán holds a veto the size of a continental fault line. Trump instinctively knows he needs an offramp via peace talks and is happy to download project Ukraine’s corpse along with the humiliation onto Western Europe. Zelensky arrives in Brussels begging for cash while European governments fight over whether the money should be spent on their own weapons factories. This is not a union. This is a collective suicide pact.
And through all this chaos, Politico clings to the illusion that Russia must somehow be “laughing.” But Russia isn’t laughing. Russia is watching. Watching as Europe destroys its own energy security, its own industrial base, its own strategic autonomy, its own diplomatic credibility, its own financial reputation, and finally — with this proposed asset raid — the very legal foundations of the Western economic system. If Moscow appears calm, it is because it doesn’t need to act. Europe is demolishing itself at a pace Russia could never have engineered.
Belgium’s “no” was not an act of betrayal. It was the last flicker of European rationality. The EU’s hysteria and psychosis, not Russia, created the crisis. Europe is trying to violate international law, sabotage its own financial institutions, and torch what remains of the bygone postwar order to salvage the illusion of a war it has already lost. Belgium simply refused to join the ritual suicide.
So let us rewrite Politico’s headline as history will record it: “How the EU Became Russia’s Greatest Strategic Gift.” Not because Russia manipulated Europe, but because Europe manipulated itself, into hysteria, into decay, into legal nihilism, into economic ruin. Belgium didn’t hand Russia an asset. It denied the EU the final act of self-destruction… for now.
The tragic irony of the entire Politico piece is that its authors still cling to the fantasy that Europe can recover simply by shaming Belgium into compliance. But history will not be kind to this moment. When future scholars study the collapse of the Western financial empire, this attempted seizure of Russian assets and Belgium’s lonely refusal, will stand as the point where the veil fell, revealing a Europe that could no longer distinguish faux moral posturing from strategic insanity.
Belgium didn’t break with Europe, it broke with Europe’s delusions. The EU convinced itself that tearing down the last pillars of the post-war order was an act of courage. Belgium saw it for what it was, a death rite dressed as morality. And when this era ends, when capitals move eastward, when trust evaporates, when the euro cracks under the weight of its own blind arrogance, historians will look back on this moment. They will not ask why Belgium said no. They will ask why Europe said yes.
US warns Europe of ‘civilizational erasure’
RT | December 5, 2025
Europe is facing potential “civilizational erasure” as the continent’s policymakers encourage censorship, crack down on political opponents, and turn a blind eye to mass immigration, the new National Security Strategy released by the administration of US President Donald Trump warns.
The landmark and strongly worded document released on Friday says that while the EU is showing worrying signs of economic decline, its cultural and political unraveling poses an even greater threat.
The strategy cites EU-backed immigration policies, suppression of political opposition, curbs on speech, collapsing birthrates, and “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” warning that Europe could become “unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”
The document argues that many European governments are “doubling down on their present path,” while the US wants Europe “to remain European” and abandon “regulatory suffocation” – an apparent reference to America’s stand-off with the EU over its strict digital market guidelines, which Washington claims discriminate against US-based tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta.
One of Washington’s key goals is “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” the paper adds.
Trump’s strategy notes that the rise of “patriotic European parties” offers “cause for great optimism,” in a reference to growing bloc-wide support for right-wing Euroskeptic parties calling for strict immigration limits.
The document proclaims that “the era of mass migration is over.” It argues that large inflows have strained resources, increased violence, and weakened social cohesion, adding that Washington is seeking a world in which sovereign states “work together to stop rather than manage” migration flows.
The strategy also comes amid Trump’s push to convince European NATO members to spend more on defense. At one point, he threatened not to defend “delinquent” countries in an attack if they fail to meet his demands. At a summit earlier this year, the bloc endorsed a new plan to move toward combined defense-related spending of up to 5% of GDP, far above NATO’s longstanding 2% benchmark.
US puts normalizing relations with Russia among ‘core interests’
RT | December 5, 2025
The US has placed the restoration of normal ties with Russia and a rapid end to the Ukraine conflict at the center of its newly released National Security Strategy, presenting both aims as among America’s core interests.
The 33-page report outlining President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy vision was released by the White House on Friday.
”It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” the paper states, “in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”
It notes that the Ukraine conflict has left “European relations with Russia… deeply attenuated,” destabilizing the region.
The report criticizes European leaders for “unrealistic expectations” regarding the outcome of the conflict, arguing that “a large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy.”
America, it says, is ready for “significant diplomatic engagement” to “help Europe correct its current trajectory,” reestablish stability, and “mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.”
In contrast with the US national strategy during Trump’s first term, which emphasized competition with Russia and China, the new strategy shifts the focus to the Western Hemisphere and to protecting the homeland, the borders, and regional interests. It calls for resources to be redirected from distant theaters to challenges closer to home and urges NATO and European states to shoulder primary responsibility for their own defense.
The document also calls for an end to NATO expansion – a demand that Russia has repeatedly made, calling it a root cause of the Ukraine conflict, which Moscow views as a Western proxy war.
Overall, the new strategy signals a shift away from global interventionism toward a more transactional foreign policy, arguing that the US should act abroad only when its interests are directly at stake.
The strategy is the first of several major defense and foreign-policy documents the Trump administration is expected to release. These include an updated National Defense Strategy, the Missile Defense Review, and Nuclear Posture Review, which are expected to echo the strategy’s direction.
Scott Ritter: New US National Security Strategy Marks Death Blow to NATO Expansion
Sputnik – December 5, 2025
The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy has sent shockwaves across the globe, dropping ‘Russian threat’ language completely and crossing out the vision of NATO “as a perpetually expanding alliance.” Sputnik asked prolific geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter to break down the document and its implications.
The new US National Security Strategy is based on “the reality that Russia is not a threat to Europe or the United States, recognition that Russia has been artificially cast as such a threat now for decades, and [that] the consequences of this miscasting” have been an unmitigated “disaster for Europe and a threat to the national security of the United States,” the former Marine Corps intelligence officer told Sputnik.
The document signals that the White House has been “able to free itself… from the legacy of post-Cold War-era Russophobia” seeking to weaken and “strategically defeat” Russia, Ritter said.
“The Trump administration recognizes that this is an inherently destabilizing policy,” not to mention “extraordinarily dangerous,” since confrontation with Russia “ultimately means nuclear war,” the observer stressed.
In this new geopolitical calculus, Europe in its current trajectory is far more of a threat to itself, the US, and international peace and security than Russia, Ritter argues, reiterating that European Russia hawks’ policy is “incompatible” with US national security objectives.
No More NATO Expansion
The new NSS also “puts an end and drives a stake through the heart of the beast of Ukraine’s unrealistic expectations regarding NATO membership, and Europe’s equally unrealistic expectations that at some point in time, Ukraine could become a member of NATO,” Ritter says, commenting on the NSS’s prioritization of “ending” NATO’s status “as a perpetually expanding alliance.”
The document effectively signals “the end of the European enterprise” and the idea that Europe is a geopolitical equal of the US, and one able to “dictate” policy outcomes to Washington, Ritter says. “That’s over. The United States says no, you’re done. Moreover, we say the trajectory that you’re on is incompatible with the national security of the United States.”
Behind the scenes, things get even more interesting, Ritter believes, pointing to “whispers from people who are knowledgeable” about the intent behind the document to the effect that the US will not bail out Europe if it starts a war with Russia.
“This is an extraordinarily important document because it literally represents a divorce of decades of legacy policy that postured the United States and Russia as opponents who should be preparing to fight each other,” Ritter emphasized.
Beyond that, the NSS’s point on ‘no NATO expansion’ and lack of positioning Russia as a threat effectively means “there’s no legitimate reason for NATO to exist,” unless it can transform into a genuinely defensive alliance.
“NATO, as it currently exists, will no longer exist. If [it] is to continue to survive, it must re-identify itself as a defensive alliance focused on securing a reasonable and rational Europe, and not this alliance capable of standing toe-to-toe with Russia, expanding… ever eastward towards confrontation with Russia, and a NATO that embraces a strategy of the strategic defeat of Russia. That NATO is dead. That NATO will never be resurrected,” Ritter summed up.
Revealing Information on 2016 Election May Help Restore US-Russia Ties: Ex-Trump Advisor
By Lenka White – Sputnik – 05.12.2025
Once the full investigation records on Russia’s alleged 2016 election interference are declassified, Americans will stop viewing Russia as an enemy — potentially opening the door to restoring bilateral ties, George Papadopoulos, former Trump campaign adviser, told Sputnik.
Papadopoulos was one of the central figures in the investigation into alleged Russian interference in the US presidential election of 2016. In 2018, the ex-adviser was sentenced to 14 days in prison and a fine of $9,500 for allegedly giving false statements to the FBI. In 2020, US President Donald Trump granted Papadopoulos full pardon.
“I think as long as all information is declassified, people speak about the truth, and the judges and the court system abide by the law, then people will finally understand what really happened. People in America will not see Russia as an enemy, hopefully, anymore, and this will foster a new era for both peoples and the globe, which I think is desperately needed in today’s very unstable world,” he said.
Papadopoulos expressed belief that there is a lot more sensitive information that has to come out, including regarding the involvement of other foreign governments that were working with the Democrats in the Obama administration.
“But as of right now, I think it is a very good first step. We have seen indictments, and credibility in the justice system is being restored, and this is a very big boost, I think, to people like myself, President Trump, and others who were involved in this fake scandal,” Papadopoulos added.
A CIA review concluded in July that the 2016 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on the alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election campaign was conducted with anomalies, such as excessive involvement of agency heads.
The Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in August that the ICA was based on false information, including the Steele Dossier, as part of a smear campaign against Trump. The claims led to politicized investigations, arrests, and heightened tensions between the US and Russia.
The missing ‘If’ that could get us killed: How Western media distorted Putin’s words about war with Europe
The message was rather simple: Russia is ready to respond to aggression. But you wouldn’t know it if you read the headlines
By Timur Tarkhanov | RT | December 4, 2025
A depressing pattern has taken hold in the way parts of the Western press cover Russia: take a volatile subject, strip it of the conditional language that contains it, and then act surprised when the public grows more fearful, more hardline, and less able to distinguish deterrent rhetoric from an intent to attack.
The latest example is the frenzy around Vladimir Putin’s remark about Europe and war. In Russian, his meaning is not subtle: “We are not going to fight Europe, I’ve said it a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to fight and starts, we are ready right now.” A refusal paired with a threat of readiness if attacked. Many headlines flattened that into “Russia is ready for war with Europe.”
In news reporting, headlines aren’t neutral labels. They are the main event. They set the emotional temperature for millions who will never read beyond the first line, especially on mobile feeds where nuance is a luxury and outrage is a business model. So when a headline drops the words “we are not going to” and discards “if Europe starts,” it’s not just a shortening – it reverses the reader’s perception. The public walks away believing Putin signaled readiness to launch a war against Europe, not readiness in response to one. In a moment when misperception can harden policy and policy can harden into escalation, that is reckless.
Worse, this kind of framing does real political work. It amplifies the narrative long championed by certain European officials – that Russia is poised to attack the EU next, regardless of evidence. If you swallow the headline alone, those officials sound validated. If you read the quote, at minimum you have to admit the claim is not what was said. Maybe you’ll even start asking questions. That difference is the hinge between journalism and propaganda.
This pattern didn’t start this week. Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, Western coverage has too often treated Russia’s declared motives as unworthy of even being stated without scare quotes, while the most intimidating interpretation of Russian intent is treated as default reality. “Imperial ambition.” “War of conquest.” “Russia wants to reconstitute an empire.” The public is denied the basic reporting function of hearing why Russia is doing what it’s doing. Instead we get a morality play with prewritten roles: one side’s motives are analyzed in paragraphs; the other’s are assumed in headlines.
The same sloppiness shows up in claims that Putin “stalled” peace talks. Negotiations are not a TikTok trend; they are an exhausting grind of sequencing, verification, backchannels, domestic politics, and face-saving. Many major conflicts have required long, ugly diplomatic marathons before anything moved. The Vietnam peace talks, for example, dragged on for years. To declare “stalling” because a meeting ended without a breakthrough is to confuse diplomacy with customer service: “Where is my peace deal? I ordered it an hour ago.”
And if we’re going to talk about “stalling,” we should at least look honestly at which actors have been most allergic to acknowledging battlefield realities. The Russia-US channel – whatever one thinks of it – is the only vector that has shown any capacity to force trade-offs into the open, because it involves the parties with the leverage to make and enforce them. By contrast, the EU and the UK’s public posture has often resembled a maximalist wish list: demands unmoored from the war’s trajectory, presented as prerequisites rather than negotiating positions. It has hardened expectations so thoroughly that any compromise looks like betrayal, and any diplomacy looks like surrender. That is the worst kind of stalling – not merely delaying talks, but by making talks politically impossible.
It didn’t have to be like this, and it isn’t universal. Some outlets have demonstrated that integrity is still possible: they lead with the full quote and include the conditional. They are at least honest with the readers about what was said and what was implied, allowing them to distinguish threat from intent. Far from being “soft on Putin”, this is basic journalistic competence. In a climate where fear sells and escalation eats, and the Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds to midnight, faithful quotation is a mandatory public safety measure.
Timur Tarkhanov is a journalist and media executive.
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Israel authorises electronic tracking of Palestinians
MEMO | January 7, 2026
Israel has authorised the use of electronic tracking devices on Palestinians in the occupied West Bank, formalising real-time surveillance of civilians who have not been charged, tried or convicted of any crime, according to a new directive issued by the Israeli army.
The order allows Israeli authorities to compel Palestinians placed under administrative movement restrictions to wear or carry electronic monitoring devices and criminalises any attempt to tamper with them. The measure embeds electronic tagging within Israel’s system of military rule over the occupied territory, further expanding the regime of surveillance imposed on the Palestinian civilian population.
Significantly in another example of the Israel’s apartheid rule, defence minister, Israel Katz, has explicitly excluded illegal Jewish settlers in the West Bank from the directive, underscoring the discriminatory nature of the policy and its application along ethnic and national lines. The order was issued following coordination between the Israel Defense Forces, the Israel Security Agency, Israel Police, the Ministry of Justice and the military’s legal authorities responsible for the occupied West Bank.
Human rights observers note that the policy applies to civilians subjected to Israel’s system of administrative control, a framework that routinely denies Palestinians due process and relies on secret evidence. Palestinians placed under such measures often face severe movement restrictions, prolonged surveillance and the constant threat of detention without trial.
The new directive reflects what journalist and filmmaker Antony Loewenstein has described as Israel’s “Palestine Laboratory”, a system in which Palestinians are used as testing grounds for advanced military and surveillance technologies later exported abroad. In his work, Loewenstein argues that Israel exports not only weapons but a comprehensive model for controlling what it labels “difficult populations”, combining military force, mass surveillance and spatial domination.
This model is explored in Al Jazeera’s latest documentary How Israel tests military tech on Palestinians, part of The Palestine Laboratory series. The film documents how Israeli checkpoints function as experimental sites for so-called “frictionless” technologies, including AI-enabled remotely operated weapons that fire stun grenades, tear gas and sponge-tipped bullets. These systems are deployed at checkpoints where Palestinians are routinely subjected to intrusive searches and data collection. … continue
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