Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

Thomas Massive Introduces Bill to Withdraw from NATO

By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | December 11, 2025

Representative Thomas Massive has introduced legislation that will end US membership in the North Atlantic Alliance.

“NATO is a Cold War relic. The United States should withdraw from NATO and use that money to defend our country, not socialist countries,” the Republican Congressman wrote. “Today, I introduced HR 6508 to end our NATO membership.”

In a statement, Massie argued NATO is a relic of the Cold War and an outdated pact. “NATO was created to counter the Soviet Union, which collapsed over thirty years ago. Since then, U.S. participation has cost taxpayers trillions of dollars and continues to risk US involvement in foreign wars,” he said. “Our Constitution did not authorize permanent foreign entanglements, something our Founding Fathers explicitly warned us against. America should not be the world’s security blanket—especially when wealthy countries refuse to pay for their own defense.”

Massie’s bill has companion legislation in the Senate, introduced by Mike Lee. “America’s withdrawal from NATO is long overdue. NATO has run its course – the threats that existed at its inception are no longer relevant 76 years later.” The Utah Senator continued, “If they were, Europe would be paying their fair share instead of making American taxpayers pick up the check for decades. My legislation will put America first by withdrawing us from the raw deal NATO has become.”

NATO was formed in 1949 to protect Western Europe from the Soviet Union. After the fall of the USSR, NATO has expanded to 32 states, including former Soviet states and Warsaw Pact members.

The US attempted to make Kiev a member of the alliance, provoking Russia to invade Ukraine in 2022. Russia has demanded that Ukraine agree to never join NATO as a condition for ending the war.

December 11, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

EU backers of Russian asset theft are ‘psychologically at war’ – Belgian PM

RT | December 11, 2025

The EU states pushing hardest to tap Russia’s frozen assets are acting as if they are “psychologically at war” with Moscow, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever has said.

Speaking after condemning the latest EU proposal to use the frozen Russian sovereign funds to help finance Ukraine, De Wever labeled the plan “very unwise and ill-considered.” He also warned that the plan backed by European Commission President Ursula von Der Leyen would amount to “stealing” and would open the bloc up to potential legal action.

Von der Leyen last week proposed providing Ukraine with €90 billion over the next two years, anchored by a so-called “reparations loan” backed by the frozen assets, or by debt financed by EU member states, deemed politically unworkable by most.

Belgium, which hosts the financial clearinghouse Euroclear, where the bulk of Russia’s immobilized central bank assets are held, has long resisted such efforts. Brussels argues that forcing Euroclear to make the funds available could carry severe legal, financial and geopolitical risks.

De Wever also argued that the strongest supporters of the proposal are EU states geographically closest to Russia, claiming they “mentally are almost in a state of war” with Moscow. He stressed that Belgium is “not at war” with Russia and doesn’t want to “have a war with Russia.”

The Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) and Poland have become the EU’s most vocal advocates of a hard line toward Russia, warning of what they claim is an imminent threat.

Meanwhile, Politico has reported that EU leaders are considering politically sidelining De Wever if he continues to block the plan. Belgium could be treated like Hungary – frozen out of key talks, ignored in negotiations and given little influence over future EU decisions – unless it backs down, the outlet claimed, citing a source.

“The Belgian leader would be frozen out and ignored, just like Hungary’s Viktor Orban has been given the cold shoulder over… his refusal to play ball on sanctioning Russia,” one diplomat told the outlet, adding that Belgium’s views on EU proposals would no longer be sought and phone calls would go unanswered.

December 11, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

European Leaders ‘Willing to Pay for Their Hubris With Ukrainian Lives’

Sputnik – 10.12.2025

Ukrainians “who are being used as cannon fodder for Europeans pushing a failing narrative” have become the “greatest victims of this conflict,” London-based foreign affairs analyst Adriel Kasonta tells Sputnik while commenting on Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent statements to the Russian parliament.

“Thus far, these leaders are willing to pay for their hubris with Ukrainian lives,” Kasonta laments.

He also observes that, while European economies “are declining, and the cost-of-living crisis continues to worsen,” European elites refuse to acknowledge their mistakes – as it could discredit them politically – and instead opt to “double down on their hostile posture toward Moscow.”

In the meantime, Donald Trump essentially acknowledged the previous US administration’s “miscalculation” and had a change of heart on the Ukrainian conflict issue.

For his part, French geopolitical analyst Come Carpentier de Gourdon adds that the EU policy of fighting for Ukraine is part of a strategy aimed at stripping Russia of much of its land and power, and that “and it is not likely to change unless it becomes totally impossible for the Europeans to continue.”

Even if the powers that be in Ukraine agree to a peace deal, the European leadership believes that there will be a confrontation with Russia in the future, he warns.

Globalization Shaped Entirely by West is No Longer Effective

Western-led globalization is a no-goer as it is increasingly “dominated by factors that are outside Europe and to an extent outside the West, because even the U·S now has to make major concessions to China,” French geopolitical analyst Come Carpentier de Gourdon tells Sputnik.

He further speculated that there may be “some sort of reconnection between Russia, America, and Europe,” and that “an understanding or an agreement reached between the United States and Russia in the coming months or years would be the first step in bringing together the West again in a defense of its general interest.”

Global institutions like BRICS and their architects created “an alternative to the predatory institutions of the Bretton Woods system,” allowing nations to trade “on an equal footing” instead of suffering from exploitation, London-based foreign affairs analyst Adriel Kasonta adds.

“China has demonstrated that an alternative model of development is possible — one that is more beneficial for sustainable growth,” he notes.

This model, Kasonta explains, promotes a “win-win situation rather than the debt enslavement of weaker nations by Western powers,” whereas the dynamics imposed by the West “keep countries dependent and perpetually indebted, rendering the idea of genuine decolonization little more than a façade.”

The West Fears ‘Alternative Views That Challenge Their Narrative’

Europe is “becoming increasingly intolerant of and afraid of outside information channels that provide very distinct viewpoints and open minds to other perspectives,” Come Carpentier de Gourdon tells Sputnik.

The European leadership, he suggests, is especially fearful Russian media like RT and Sputnik, which “project a very different perspective and show facts that Europeans, are generally left to ignore.”

One such example of the information Europe was keen to suppress was the warnings about the risks of NATO’s expansion to the east and “the circumstances of the Ukraine conflict” that did not fit into the official Western narrative.

“The fact that Russian media are exposing a lot of these facts and also are exposing a lot of the things that are very wrong in the structure of the European Union and in American policy, in the American society and in the American political system, that is what generates a very hostile reaction with the attempt to ban any such information which is regarded as hostile propaganda,” De Gourdon says.

For his part, Adriel Kasonta adds that the West’s fear of alternative views “manifests as hostility toward free speech,” which drives Europeans “to engage” with outlets like RT and Sputnik.

“Western leaders adopt a paternalistic attitude toward their citizens, believing they cannot discern between truth and falsehood,” he remarks.

December 10, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Europe needs to heed the invitation in the U.S. National Security Strategy and return power to its nation states

By Ian Proud | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 9, 2025

The publication of America’s new National Security Strategy has sent many European commentators into a collective rage. It is perhaps not surprising that those who are most enraged are the same people in favour of maintaining the war in Ukraine. The cold truth is that European citizens want their nations to focus on their national interests. The European Commission would sooner drag them into a war.

Despite the uproar on X and other social media, the U.S. National Security Strategy says relatively little about Europe, precisely because it focuses on U.S. core national interests. And, indeed, that is the core point made about Europe; that in trying to create a unified geopolitical role, it has neglected the core interests of its Member States.

The Strategy expresses a desire to see Europe regain its self-confidence and reestablish strategic stability with Russia. That aspiration appears driven by a desire to maintain Europe as an open market for U.S. goods and investment, and also to avoid it continuing to be a chaotic continent that diverts U.S. resources from its main peer competitor, which is China. There is also an underlying though unstated sense of Europe and Russia maintaining a healthier relationship in part to resist Chinese domination of both.

Europe’s supposed decline is framed in the context of its reduction in economic stature from 25% of global GDP to 14% now. European economic growth has never fully recovered from the shock of the Global Financial Crisis. With the economic centre of gravity shifting to Asia, the continent is being left behind.

Pundits have taken most offence to the notion that Europe faces civilisational erasure, driven by: ‘European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty.., censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.’

Right at the heart of this critique is the idea that the current ‘trajectory of Europe’ which the U.S. wants to ‘cultivate resistance to’, is eroding national sovereignty and the value of the nations within Europe. The Strategy is shot through with bemusement that culturally rich and diverse Europeans nations, which are the well spring of America’s citizenry, are abandoning their interests in favour of an inchoate supranational identity that is simultaneously unattainable self-harming.

In the aftermath of World War II and centuries of conflict, the European project emerged as a way to allow for the peaceful coexistence of very different nations, linguistically, politically and historically. The adrenalin running through the veins of unprecedented levels of peace and stability until 2014 was the dismantling of economic social and cultural barrier nations, that did not erode their unique sense of self of any nation.

It may well be true that a U.S. security shield avoided the domination of Europe by a hostile Soviet Union until 1991, and for that we should be thankful. But the reason why European states learned to live in peace with each other after that period was largely because politics and security were largely left out of the conversation.

The reason European nations spent less on defence after the Soviet Union collapsed was not because their security was underwritten by American troops in Europe, but because they faced no external threat of invasion either in military terms of through unchecked migration.

The irony, of course, is that the factors that precipitated Europe’s contemporary decline, the ever greater weight and importance given to undemocratic transnational groupings such as NATO – were U.S. led. Impetus from the U.S. to keep expanding NATO gradually reintroduced very real risk to Europe as Russia felt increasingly left out in the cold and threatened. Needing to justify a role for itself, the European Institutions have grabbed ever more competence from Member States to resist so-called Russian aggression.

Once and for all, at least it is hoped, the Strategy attempts to kill ‘the perception… of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance’. That is being interpreted by the usual pro-war commentators as a sop to Russia. In fact, it is an invitation to European nations to refocus on their national interests, for the benefit of the European continent as a whole.

Without digging over again the history of NATO expansion, the key point is that neither NATO nor the institutions of Europe are states. They have no core interests beyond the bureaucratic need to exist, grow and accrete ever greater powers. You will never see the European Commission or NATO advancing recommendations on how they might reduce in size or hand power back to their members.

At this time of unprecedented threat of a reemergence of continent-wide conflict in Europe, the Americans are simply suggesting that nation states start to wrest back control. Both NATO and the European Commission, in my opinion, have both undermined the national and inflamed the international, while contributing to the stagnation of Europe as an idea of community, rather than a confederation.

A core principle of the U.S. Strategy is to ‘seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories’.

How Trump seeks to coexist with other nations of the world is exactly how European states sought to coexist peacefully with each other after World War II. The European Economic Community, as it was called for a while, didn‘t seek to erode the primacy of the nation state, focussing instead on the economic, social and cultural features to create the idea of common purpose, without the shackles of common identity.

Yet, the European Commission’s concept of expansion – which in any case Europe cannot afford – is rooted in a desire to homogenise states under a fictious notion of common European values, and to prioritise conformity over identity.

Any existing European Member that seeks to raise a hand is called out by the collective as a back-slider, a quisling and a Putin stooge, taking Hungary, as a prime example.

Yet, European nations that focussed first and foremost on their economic wellbeing and the maintenance and protection of their industrial bases would buy Russian gas because it made good economic sense to do so.

A Europe that focussed on the protection of its citizens would seek a negotiated end to the war in Ukraine as soon as possible, instead of rejecting every possibility of dialogue, and raising the spectre of a future war that would kill and displace millions of their citizens.

A Europe that focussed on good neighbourly relations would seek a way to live on good terms with Russia and for Russia and Ukraine to live on good terms with each other, however long it may take to recreate that balance.

And in my experience of engaging with the Russians, they reciprocate with friendship as vigorously as they do with hostility, so the possibility of peace is far less of a mirage than people would have you believe.

Of course, war with Ukraine is used as a reason for why this is neither possible nor desirable. But then, unfortunately, the arguments in favour of perpetual conflict with Russia become self-reinforcing, with both Europe and Russia arguing to their quite separate allies about who is to blame, and no one seeking reconciliation, through the cutting off of contact.

So the European Commission has increasingly sought to dominate continent-wide diplomacy and marshalled the tools of its willing legions of media talking heads who insist that nothing must change, that talking to Russia is tantamount to treason. The bellicose response to the U.S. National Security Strategy is proof of that. Moscow’s signalling of their alignment with its principles offered as further evidence that Trump is selling us out.

Yet, restoring strategic balance between Europe and Russia, which the U.S. strategy claims to want, requires restoring the primacy of the individual Member States of Europe over its institutions, and handing back control to capitals in how to govern their relations with Russia and other countries.

The European institutions have succeeded in defining Europe as something distinct from Russia, when in fact, Russia is a part of Europe. Calls by Defence Commissioner Kubilius to develop a common European geopolitical strategy, is merely another effort to grasp more competence from the nation states of Europe. These should be roundly rejected. The common foreign and security policy has been an abject failure and should be dismantled.

It is the institutions of Europe who are blocking the door of efforts to restore some normality in relations with Russia, most notably in the form of rabid Russophobes such as Kaja Kallas. She would happily take Europe to war from the comfort of a safe distance. I’d invite more European citizens to heed the invitation of the Americans to seek a way out with the implication that she, and other unelected war-mongers, are stripped of their powers.

December 9, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine jails priest for supporting Russia

RT | December 8, 2025

The government in Kiev has sentenced an Orthodox priest to prison over alleged pro-Russia remarks, as it continues a widening campaign against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).

Archpriest Ivan Pavlichenko, a cleric at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Odessa, was handed a five-year jail term after the local Court of Appeal overturned his earlier suspended sentence, according to the Center for Public Investigations and reported by regional media over the weekend.

Investigators said Pavlichenko was convicted of “justifying Russia’s armed aggression” and “inciting religious and national hatred.” The trial court found him guilty but handed down a suspended term, which prosecutors appealed as being too light.

The case was built on recordings of the priest’s private phone conversations collected by security services inside his car. Investigators say he criticized Ukraine’s leadership, discussed the conflict, quoted Russian politicians, and questioned Kiev’s official position.

Prosecutors also pointed to comments about Russian strikes on Odessa. Pavlichenko allegedly said the attacks were aimed at drone-production sites and blamed Ukraine for placing military equipment in residential areas.

The appeals court also ordered the confiscation of his property and barred him from holding positions in state institutions for three years.

Local outlets claimed Pavlichenko attended pro-Russian events before 2014 and visited Crimea with his family in 2016. Supporters in Odessa called the verdict politically motivated persecution for his views and past civic activity.

The ruling comes as Kiev intensifies its pressure on the UOC, which officials accuse of maintaining ties to Russia despite the church’s declaration of independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022. The campaign has included raids on parishes and arrests of clergy, as well as a search of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery.

Last year, Vladimir Zelensky signed legislation allowing the state to ban religious organizations affiliated with governments that Kiev deems “aggressors,” effectively targeting the UOC. Kiev has openly supported the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which the UOC and Russian Orthodox Church view as schismatic.

Moscow has said it will not abandon Orthodox believers in Ukraine and vowed to ensure that “their lawful rights are respected.”

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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.”

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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.

December 8, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

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.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

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.

December 7, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

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.

Follow Prof. Glenn Diesen:

Substack: https://glenndiesen.substack.com/

X/Twitter: https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen

Support the research by Prof. Glenn Diesen:

PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/glenn…

Buy me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/gdieseng

Go Fund Me: https://gofund.me/09ea012f

Books by Prof. Glenn Diesen: https://www.amazon.com/stores/author/…

December 6, 2025 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia, Video | | Leave a comment

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.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »