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French presidential hopeful pushes to end Russia sanctions

RT | May 11, 2026

French presidential hopeful Florian Philippot has called for lifting sanctions against Russia and restoring Russian energy imports. In an interview with RT, the politician claimed that Brussels-driven EU policies run counter to France’s national interests.

A former vice president of the National Front (now National Rally) and ex-member of the European Parliament, Philippot announced on Saturday that he will run in the 2027 election. He leads the sovereigntist movement ‘Les Patriotes’ and is a longtime critic of the EU, the euro, and NATO. He advocates restoring French sovereignty, reducing dependence on supranational institutions, and ending French military and financial aid to Ukraine.

“I want, and it is in my program, for France to regain its independence by leaving all the supranational globalist structures: the EU, the euro, NATO,” Florian Philippot told RT France on Sunday. “And I want a policy of dialogue and friendship with Russia, and not, as today, one of mistrust, war, and insults. All of this is absurd for our national interests.”

The politician said Paris should “take back control” by withdrawing from free trade agreements such as Mercosur, which he said “condemn French farmers to death.” He added that sanctions on Russia imposed by Brussels should be ended in order to restore the flow of Russian gas and oil.

Philippot also called for France to regain control over immigration and migration flows while pursuing a broader reindustrialization strategy. He said the country’s industrial base had been weakened under the euro and advocated restoring a national currency better suited to the French economy.

In addition, the politician pledged to expand the use of referendums, including citizen-initiated votes, as part of strengthening popular sovereignty. He also called for reducing France’s dependence on the EU, which he said is largely shaped in Berlin and Washington rather than in Paris. Philippot stressed that leaving the EU would allow France to lower energy and electricity costs.

France is heading toward a highly fragmented presidential race, with around 30 people already expressing interest in being on the 2027 ballot. These include Jean-Luc Melenchon, leader of ‘La France Insoumise’, Bruno Retailleau, president of ‘Les Republicains’, Xavier Bertrand, a senior center-right politician, David Lisnard, mayor of Cannes, Laurent Wauquiez, a prominent conservative figure, and Edouard Philippe, France’s former prime minister.

May 11, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on French presidential hopeful pushes to end Russia sanctions

Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War

By Prof. Glenn Diesen | May 8, 2026

NATO was always destined to be a temporary military alliance, united by a common enemy and threat during the Cold War. Once that threat disappeared with the end of the Cold War and thereafter the collapse of the Soviet Union, the main question asked in the 1990s was: What would be NATO’s new reason to exist? The answer to this question was to pursue unipolarity / collective hegemony in the post-Cold War era through NATO expansionism and military interventionism (“out of area or out of business”).

Russia was implicitly given the ultimatum: be a compliant civilizational student or a counter-civilizational force. Russia could accept NATO’s hegemonic role as a “force for good,” or it could resist, and then NATO would return to its former role of confronting Russia. The NATO-backed regime change in Ukraine—aimed at transforming the country from a Russian partner into a frontline state aligned against Russia— triggered the war in 2014. NATO thus began reverting to its former role of confronting Russia, yet it happened as the hegemonic era had come to an end.

Now that the former collective hegemony has been balanced and a multipolar world has emerged, NATO has yet again lost its purpose and will disintegrate. European leaders want to restore NATO’s original purpose: containing Russia. This will fail because it is based on the fraudulent narrative that Russia wants to restore the Soviet Union, rather than balancing NATO expansionism and military interventionism.

The US will, however, not return to the original purpose of NATO as the distribution of power has shifted, and will therefore not play along with the fake narratives of Europeans leaders. The US is in relative decline and cannot sustain simultaneous strategic dominance in Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, and the Western Hemisphere. The US cannot be everywhere in a multipolar world, and it will pivot to the Western Hemisphere and East Asia. A US presence in Europe consumes too many resources and pushes Russia toward China, its main rival. However, the US is happy to outsource the conflict with Russia to the Europeans. Europe remains obedient, and Russia is weakened.

If Europe had rational leaders, they would have adjusted to the new international distribution of power by shutting this war down, making peace with Russia, establishing a common pan-European security architecture (35 years too late) that also saves Ukraine by removing it from the front lines of a re-divided Europe, and diversifying their economic ties to avoid excessive dependence on any one foreign power. However, Europe does not have rational leaders, and even arguing that weapons are not the path to peace or arguing in favour of diplomacy is smeared and censored as “pro-Russian” treason. Europe’s political class remains committed to Russophobic narratives and policies that intensify confrontation and prolong the conflict.

The trajectory now appears increasingly clear: NATO will continue to disintegrate, and the Europeans will compensate by further escalating the war against Russia. This will happen at a time when Russia is desperate to restore its deterrence by retaliating against Europe (most predictably against Germany), while the US commitment and protection of Europe are waning. The predictable consequence is that European leaders will eventually provoke a powerful response from Russia, which will rapidly escalate to what will hopefully only be a limited nuclear strike.

May 8, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , , | Comments Off on Prediction: NATO’s Collapse & Nuclear War

UAE received $80m in EU farming subsidies as calls grow for sanctions over Sudan genocide

MEMO | May 7, 2026

The United Arab Emirates’ ruling Al Nahyan family has benefited from more than €71 million (US $80 million) in European Union farming subsidies, even as campaigners intensify calls for sanctions against senior Emirati officials over Abu Dhabi’s alleged role in the Sudan genocide.

A cross-border investigation by DeSmog, shared with the Guardian, found that subsidiaries controlled by the Al Nahyan family collected more than €71 million over six years through farmland in Romania, Italy and Spain. The payments were made under the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), which distributes around €54 billion (US $60 billion) a year to farmers and rural areas across the bloc.

The investigation traced 110 subsidy payments between 2019 and 2024 to a network of companies and subsidiaries controlled by the UAE ruling family and Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth fund ADQ. The largest payments were linked to Agricost, a Romanian agricultural company which owns what the Guardian described as the EU’s single largest farm, covering 57,000 hectares.

The findings have raised fresh questions about how European public funds are being channelled to foreign state-linked investors and ultra-wealthy landowners. The UAE’s European agricultural holdings form part of Abu Dhabi’s wider food security strategy, aimed at securing crops and animal feed for a country which imports most of its food.

The revelations come as pressure grows in the UK for greater scrutiny of the UAE’s role in Sudan. Human rights organisation FairSquare has asked the British government to investigate links between Sheikh Mansour Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the UAE deputy prime minister and owner of Manchester City Football Club, and Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF).

FairSquare’s sanctions submission alleges that the UAE has been the “prime external driver” of the Sudan conflict and cites evidence, including from the UN Panel of Experts, that Abu Dhabi has supplied weapons, ammunition and other support to the RSF since June 2023, in violation of a UN arms embargo. The UAE has repeatedly denied arming the RSF.

The RSF has been accused of mass atrocities in Sudan, including in Darfur. FairSquare’s submission notes that the UN has described RSF violence in El-Fasher as “shocking in its scale and brutality” and bearing “the hallmark of genocide”. The group argues that the UK should examine whether Sheikh Mansour’s alleged role meets the threshold for sanctions.

May 7, 2026 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite | , , | Comments Off on UAE received $80m in EU farming subsidies as calls grow for sanctions over Sudan genocide

West losing leadership position to Global South: Russia’s president

Press TV – April 28, 2026

‎Russian President Vladimir Putin says the West is losing its economic and political leadership position in the world, giving way to the countries of the Global South.

‎A more complex, multipolar architecture of global development is taking shape as Western countries lose their dominance and yield to new growth centers in the Global South, the Russian president said on Tuesday in a video message to participants of the Open Dialogue Forum.

‎“States that truly understand and appreciate the importance of national sovereignty in the political, economic, cultural and social spheres are playing an increasingly important role, and they can determine the vector of their own development based on their own values, resources and priorities, identity and sovereign worldview,” he stated.

‎Prior approaches and established norms of business and international relations are steadily losing their efficacy, partly due to the actions of Western countries, which are relinquishing their leadership positions, he noted.

‎“The events of recent years show that all elements of global growth, from economics and finance to technology and demography, are changing irreversibly,” Putin added.

‎The global development model, he argued, will only be sustainable if it is built on the principles of equality and takes into account the interests of all countries. No nation can develop alone, at the expense of others or to their detriment.

‎“It is important to focus the entire global development platform so everyone, anywhere on Earth can have the right to a successful future, choose their own path, and put their choice into practice step by step,” the Russian president concluded.

‎The Global South emerged in part to help countries in the southern hemisphere collaborate on political, economic, social, environmental, cultural, and technical issues. Since 1995, exports within the Global South have surged by 1,300 percent, double the growth rate of exports to the North.

‎Countries of the Global South are no longer merely suppliers for the West; they are increasingly fueling each other’s economic and financial development.

‎More than 40 percent of exports from developing countries now remain within the Global South, twice the share in 2000, indicating deepening interdependence.

‎Benefiting from expanded South-South trade relations, developing economies today account for about 45 percent of global GDP, up from 25 percent in 2000.

April 28, 2026 Posted by | Economics | , , | Comments Off on West losing leadership position to Global South: Russia’s president

Iran says EU’s insistence on sanctions hastens its ‘embarrassing descent into irrelevance’

Press TV – April 28, 2026

Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson says the EU’s insistence on inhumane sanctions against Iran demonstrates Europe’s double standards and hastens its “embarrassing descent into irrelevance.”

On Monday, European Commission President Ursula Vonder Leyen said at a press brief in Berlin that “it is too early to talk about lifting sanctions on Iran.”

In a post on X late Monday, Esmaeil Baghaei strongly criticized the European Commission president’s insistence on maintaining sanctions against Iran under the guise of human rights, calling the stance hypocritical and disgraceful.

“The EU’s inhumane sanctions on Iran were never about ‘human rights’ — they were designed to trample the basic rights of ordinary Iranians,” Baghaei wrote. “No one is buying this tired moral theater.”

He added that such posturing will not earn Europe or its constituency “an ounce of credibility on the world stage.”

“If anything, it only further demonstrates Europe’s ruling class’ double-standard & hypocrisy, and hastens Europe’s embarrassing descent into irrelevance,” the spokesperson further said.

Iranian officials have consistently condemned EU sanctions, arguing they are not about human rights but are a form of collective punishment designed to harm ordinary citizens and serve the political interests of Western powers.

April 28, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Progressive Hypocrite, Wars for Israel | , , | Comments Off on Iran says EU’s insistence on sanctions hastens its ‘embarrassing descent into irrelevance’

When a Train Ticket Costs Your Passport: The Eurail Breach and the Digital ID Problem

By Ken Macon | Reclaim The Net | April 25, 2026

Eurail wanted people’s passport number to let them ride a train. Now that data is for sale on the dark web, and some of the 308,777 people caught up in the breach are being told to cancel their passports and pay for replacements out of their own pocket.

The Dutch company, which sells the Interrail passes used by young travelers across 33 European countries, confirmed this week that a sample of the stolen dataset has already surfaced on Telegram.

“We can confirm that data copied during the security incident has been offered for sale on the dark web and a sample dataset has been published on Telegram,” a spokesperson said. “Customers whose personal data was included in the sample dataset are being informed directly where contact details are available to us.”

The full haul contains exactly the material identity thieves dream about, including passport numbers, passport expiry dates, full names, home addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and dates of birth. For users of the EU’s DiscoverEU program, which hands out free travel passes to young people, the exposed records also include photocopies of passports, bank account details, and some health data.

The breach happened on December 26, 2025. Eurail only began notifying affected individuals on March 27, 2026, three months after hackers walked out with the files and a full month after the data appeared on a cybercrime forum.

In February, a hacker claimed responsibility publicly, saying they had stolen roughly 1.3 terabytes of data from Eurail’s AWS S3, Zendesk, and GitLab instances, including source code, database backups, and support tickets. The same hacker said negotiations with Eurail had failed, which is why the files were being dumped.

None of this was information Eurail needed to sell a train ticket. Rail operators ran Europe’s networks for decades without demanding scanned passports and dates of birth from every customer. The identity-verification stack that now sits behind a simple rail pass exists because identity checks have become the default business model, not because anyone can explain why selling a seven-day Interrail pass requires a permanent copy of someone’s government-issued ID.

The Eurail breach is a working demonstration of what happens when governments treat identity collection as the default setting for ordinary life. The UK is moving toward a mandatory digital ID scheme. The EU is rolling out its European Digital Identity Wallet.

Online Safety Act compliance in Britain now requires “age verification” across huge swathes of the web, with platforms demanding government IDs, face scans, or credit card details before users can access content that was freely available a year ago.

Every one of these systems rests on the same assumption that sank Eurail’s customers, which is that identity data can be collected safely, stored securely, and kept out of the wrong hands indefinitely.

That assumption has never held up. The pattern is consistent enough now to be predictable. A government or regulator decides identity verification should be mandatory for some activity, whether that is buying a train ticket, watching adult content, opening a bank account, or posting on social media. Private companies build the verification infrastructure, because governments rarely build their own.

Those companies then hold databases of passport numbers, biometric scans, and home addresses, secured according to whatever corporate security practices happen to be in place. The databases get breached, because databases always get breached, and the consequences fall on the people whose data was collected rather than the entities that insisted on collecting it.

April 26, 2026 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance | | Comments Off on When a Train Ticket Costs Your Passport: The Eurail Breach and the Digital ID Problem

EU economic sanctions ramp up NATO war plan on Russia

Strategic Culture Foundation | April 24, 2026

The European Union announced its 20th round of economic sanctions against Russia this week. The bloc of 27 nations began imposing sanctions on Moscow when the conflict in Ukraine erupted in February 2022. Every six months, the EU has been extending these economic measures, which Brussels claims is support for Ukraine to “deter Russian aggression.”

The 20th round of sanctions unveiled this week attempts to go much further in inflicting damage on the Russian economy. It was flagged as the biggeset package yet and a “multi-layered targeting of key sectors” of the Russian economy, primarily its energy industry.

It is tempting to dismiss the EU sanctions policy as feeble and a form of insanity. The bloc keeps repeating an action expecting a different result each time, when the record shows that the action of sanctions is having little detrimental impact on Russia. If anything, it is the EU that has suffered an economic downturn as it unilaterally cut itself off from Russian oil and gas, the traditional source of affordable energy feedstock for European industries. Russia’s economy has not crashed as was anticipated when the sanctions were first imposed more than four years ago. In fact, the Russian Federation has maintained a robust economic performance as it finds alternative markets in Asia for its oil and gas products. The soaring price for a barrel of crude due to the reckless U.S.-Israeli aggression on Iran has given Russia a further boost.

However, it would be a mistake to simply brush off the EU sanctions as futile and self-defeating.

There is a more blatant and sinister aspect to the new round of sanctions. Brussels is nakedly showing its war agenda. The new measures aim to restrict all sectors of Russian energy production, including “exploration, extraction, refining and transportation.” The EU is endeavoring to tighten restrictions on “third countries” to prevent Russia from circumventing existing embargoes on shipping, port access and trade. Whether these new measures achieve their objective of “crippling the Russian economy” is debatable. But it is the belligerent intention – stated now with more determination – that is significant. The EU is brazenly laying out a plan to strangle Russia in conjunction with upping the military threat.

It is the accompanying developments that are ominous and which give full meaning to the economic measures.

This week the EU hailed that its €90 billion ($105 bn) loan to Ukraine had finally been approved. That financial aid was blocked by Hungary since December. But with the recent election loss for Viktor Orbán’s government, Budapest’s veto has been lifted under the new prime minister, Péter Magyar. EU leaders were ecstatic that the financial transfer to Ukraine can now go ahead.

Two-thirds of the EU loan – some €60 bn – is reportedly allocated for military aid. Ursula von der Leyen, the European Commission president, said that the first tranche worth €45 bn will be transferred to Ukraine within weeks and that it would be used to increase the production of aerial combat drones. “Drones from Ukraine for Ukraine,” she said by way of trying to give the impression that the EU is not a party to the war.

An EU leaders’ two-day summit held in Cyprus on April 24-25 was reported with a celebratory mood. Von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa, along with the EU’s Foreign Affairs Commissioner, Kaja Kallas, were cock-a-hoop at the “breakthrough” of releasing the largest single financial package to Ukraine so far in combination with the new economic sanctions aimed at drilling down on Russia’s economic core. Attending the summit in Cyprus was Ukraine’s nominal president, Vladimir Zelensky, who reportedly joined the EU leaders for dinner to discuss new developments.

It gets even more sinister. The Kiev regime has been stepping up deep air strikes on Russian energy and other industrial infrastructure. There is no doubt the regime is being assisted with NATO expertise in finding such wide-ranging targets in Russia’s vast territory. This week, for example, a drone strike hit an industrial facility in Novokuybyshevsk in the central Samara region, nearly 900 kilometers southeast of Moscow and nearly 2,000 kms from the warzone in Donbass.

Clearly, the EU’s economic strikes are designed to reinforce the damage that NATO is trying to inflict with drones and missiles on Russia’s industrial base. These are not separate initiatives but an integral war strategy.

In announcing the latest round of sanctions Kaja Kallas could hardly contain her Russophobic glee. “Today we have broken the deadlock. On top of the €90-billion loan for Ukraine, we have adopted the 20th sanctions package,” she said.

Deceptively, the sanctions were billed as “increasing pressure on Russia to stop its brutal war of aggression and engage in meaningful negotiations towards a just and last peace.”

That’s a cynical con – a con that is betrayed by the EU’s own stated objective of “crippling” the Russian economy. How can one have a “just and lasting peace” by crippling a country?

The real purpose of the funds that EU citizens will have to pay through decades of indebtedness is to escalate NATO’s war in Ukraine against Russia. The economic sanctions are war measures aimed at maximising the impact of military attacks.

Other developments this week raise the stakes to even more sinister levels.

French President Emmanuel Macron and Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk discussed joint nuclear weapons “scenarios” in a bilateral summit in Gdansk. The French leader wants to share his country’s nuclear weapons capabilities with other European countries. It is reported that French and Polish warplanes will begin joint exercises on flying nuclear weapons in the Baltic region. This is evidently meant as a threat to Russia. It amounts to Paris and Warsaw carrying out training exerises for nuclear strikes on Russia.

In yet another provocative development, it is reported that Britain is leading a NATO Joint Expeditionary Force to formulate a naval plan to blockade the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad located between Poland and Lithuania. Kaliningrad provides Russia with vital port access to the Baltic Sea.

The European NATO leaders are concerned that U.S. President Donald Trump has lost interest in the “Ukraine project” against Russia owing to his reckless war with Iran. That is why they are ramping up the war effort against Russia while telling barefaced lies about wanting to achieve “lasting peace.”

So far, the EU’s economic sanctions against Russia have been an abject failure. But the failure of economic measures is no longer the point. It is what they reveal about an intensifying NATO war plan against Russia.

Moscow has repeatedly called for a negotiated end to the conflict while the EU and NATO accuse Russian leader Vladimir Putin of “not wanting peace.”

People can make their own minds up about who the aggressors are. NATO is at war with Russia and is not interested in negotiations. Criminally, the NATO aggressors are creating a boiling frog situation for Russia. The European russophobic leaders seem to want war at any cost.

April 25, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Comments Off on EU economic sanctions ramp up NATO war plan on Russia

Wired for War: Israel’s Black Cube and the infiltration of Europe

Israeli spies-for-hire interfered in elections in Cyprus and Slovenia

RT | April 23, 2026

Political hit-jobs in Cyprus and Slovenia are just the tip of an election interference iceberg in Europe, involving a dark nexus of Israeli spies, defense chiefs, and tech companies. The threat is real, but the EU is staying silent.

Targeting the EU: Israeli spy firm’s open admission

A week after Cyprus assumed the EU’s rotating presidency in January, a video appeared on social media – from a relatively obscure account named ‘Emily Thompson – showing President Nikos Christodoulides’s brother-in-law, a former energy minister, and a major construction magnate discussing influence-peddling arrangements between Christodoulides and foreign investors. Across a series of surreptitious recordings, the three also allege that Christodoulides took cash bribes during his 2023 campaign, and was taking cash to block EU sanctions against Russian business figures.

Cypriot authorities immediately declared that the video bears all “the characteristics of organized Russian disinformation campaigns.” Anonymous EU diplomats told Euractiv that Brussels viewed Moscow as the prime suspect, and authorities in Nicosia said that they had reached out to the US and Israel for assistance in identifying the video’s source. AP and Euronews headlined likely Russian involvement.

The release of the video undermined Christodoulides – triggering the resignations of his most senior aide and his charity director wife – and put a black mark on Cyprus’ stint at the helm of the EU.

The ‘Videogate’ scandal simmered in the background until last week, when Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence agency, admitted that it had recorded and edited the video. The company said that it had compiled the video on behalf of a private client – not a state actor – and that it “has cooperated with the Cypriot authorities and expresses confidence that they will establish the truth and bring those responsible to justice.”

What is Black Cube?

A screenshot from Black Cube’s website

Founded in 2011 by “veterans of Israel’s elite intelligence units,” Black Cube describes itself as “the world’s leading human intelligence firm,” capable of finding “hard evidence otherwise impossible to obtain” in support of “high-profile litigations, arbitrations, and white-collar crime cases.”

The term ‘Human Intelligence’, or ‘HUMINT’, is key here. Unlike open-source intelligence (OSINT), which relies on uncovering publicly-available information, HUMINT is gathered through covert surveillance, interrogation, and the management of sources and informers through bribery, blackmail, or intimidation. It is the kind of illegal or quasi-legal tradecraft usually practiced by state intelligence agencies.

Black Cube co-founders Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus are veterans of this underworld. Zorella served in the Israel Defense Forces’ (IDF) military intelligence directorate, and Yanus was a strategic planning officer in the IDF. The company’s board is a who’s who of the Israeli intelligence and defense establishment, and includes:

  • Meir Dagan (now deceased), former Mossad director
  • Efraim Halevy, former Mossad director
  • Yohanan Danino, former Israeli Police commissioner
  • Major General Giora Eiland, former Israeli National Security Council chief
  • Asher Tishler, dean of the College of Management Academic Studies, and consultant to the IDF

Black Cube’s international advisory board

Black Cube’s client list is long and controversial. The company was hired by US President Donald Trump’s aides in 2018 to undermine the Iran Nuclear Deal; worked for then-president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Joseph Kabila, to spy on his political opponents; and spied on journalists investigating NSO Group – another Mossad-linked Israeli tech company, best known for its ‘Pegasus’ spyware.

Disgraced movie mogul Harvey Weinstein hired Black Cube in 2016 to silence and discredit numerous women accusing him of sexual abuse. Weinstein was encouraged to hire Black Cube by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, a close associate of Jeffrey Epstein who co-founded Paragon Solutions, yet another spyware and surveillance company.

Israeli spy-tech infiltration of EU?

These examples illustrate the web of ties between Israel’s tech sector and its military, political, and intelligence establishment. Black Cube’s client list suggests that it will work for anyone willing to pay, but its recent activity in Slovenia points to a deeper alignment between the company and the goals of the Israeli state, and demonstrates the danger foreign clients face when they hire the company and others like it to do their dirty work.

Zorella, Eiland, and two other Black Cube employees arrived in Ljubljana in late December, where they met with former Prime Minister Janez Jansa, according to a report by the 8 March Institute, a liberal Slovenian NGO. Jansa, a conservative, was running for election against liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob at the time.

The purpose of the visit became clear in early March, when – just like in Cyprus – a series of covertly-recorded audio and video files hit social media. They showed associates of Golob’s Svoboda party discussing penny-ante corruption within the Slovenian government with undercover Black Cube employees posing as foreign investors. The officials bragged about their influence over the media, their connections to Golob, and their ability to offer access to the prime minister for a fee.

Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) held the videos up as proof of corruption within Golob’s government, and the scandal almost won him the election. Ultimately, Svoboda beat SDS by a margin of only 0.67%.

Jansa initially denied, but later admitted to, meeting with Black Cube. He has not admitted to hiring the company, however. Slovenia’s Intelligence and Security Agency (SOVA) has since determined that Black Cube “intended to discredit individuals politically, which may pose a threat to national security and influence democratic elections.” SOVA added that “this interference was most likely commissioned from within Slovenia,” but it is still not completely clear by whom.

The Israeli government had a stake in the election. Under Golob, Slovenia has recognized the State of Palestine, banned the import of goods from illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and weighed joining South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Jansa, on the other hand, is a close ally of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and has equated recognition of a Palestinian state with “supporting the terrorist organization Hamas.”

Does Black Cube work for Israel?

Nobody has accused Israel of ordering Black Cube to intervene in the Cypriot election, but in this case, Netanyahu’s interests and the interests of the Cypriot opposition overlap.

Black Cube is one of many defense and intelligence startups filled with ‘former’ Israeli spooks and security chiefs. Although these companies are private, profit-making enterprises, their leaders are often more loyal to Israel than to the bottom line, as another example from Slovenia demonstrates.

Two weeks before the election, Golob’s government chose not to join the ICJ genocide case against Israel. Slovenian Foreign Minister Tanja Fajon told reporters that the government had no other option: “Many of the country’s cyber defense systems are of Israeli origin,” she explained, adding that to join the lawsuit “would jeopardize Slovenia’s national security.”

Fajon confirmed that she had been pressured into making this decision. “It is clear that these pressures exist, we are all subjected to them by superpowers, and ultimately this must be taken into account when deciding,” she said.

It is unclear whether the continuation of Black Cube’s campaign against Golob was a part of the pressure campaign, or whether Fajon was threatened by the Israeli state or the companies responsible for the country’s cyber defense systems. Regardless, the message is clear: Israeli companies are willing to interfere in EU elections, and by relying on Israeli technology, EU countries are trading sovereignty for security – neither of which they will get.

What is the EU doing about Israeli interference?

EU officials have used the most spurious claims of “Russian interference” to justify their own election meddling. RT has covered cases where Brussels-aligned actors have alleged, without basis, interference in Romania, Hungary, and Bulgaria.

However, when it comes to the activities of Black Cube in Cyprus and Slovenia, Brussels has stayed silent.

Slovenian authorities urged European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to probe the company’s work in the runup to last month’s election, arguing that “such interference by a foreign private company poses a clear hybrid threat against the European Union and its Member States,” according to a letter published by Politico.

The commission has not even publicly acknowledged receiving the letter.

Yet there are far more cases of Black Cube and its ilk interfering in European elections. RT will look at these cases in depth over our ‘Wired for War’ series and ask, why is the EU so willing to ignore blatant meddling happening within its own borders?

April 23, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Comments Off on Wired for War: Israel’s Black Cube and the infiltration of Europe

Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone

Inside China Business | April 20, 2026

The Iran War and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz have taken Qatari energy supplies completely off the market. Russian natural gas fields were shut out of Europe beginning in 2022, and energy giants there invested massively into new pipelines to Asia. China was a ready buyer for Russian oil and natural gas, and also invested heavily into huge strategic stockpiles of crude and natural gas storage. Now Russian energy production flowing East, and China is already well-supplied. Liquefied Natural Gas of Russian origin is offered at 40% discount to spot, to induce long-term supply relationships. As a result, Asian economies are shifting their supply chains from the Persian Gulf to Russia-China. Meanwhile, EU countries are unable to get LNG at all. 

Resources and links:

Bloomberg, Russia Offers Sanctioned LNG to Energy-Hungry Asia at a Discount https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

S&P Global, Russia crude oil pipeline capabilities to mainland China—The ESPO crude oil pipeline https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/re…

Power of Siberia 2 reshapes China’s energy security calculus https://eastasiaforum.org/2025/10/31/…

Reuters, Russia’s Gazprom supplied 38 bcm of gas to China via Power of Siberia pipeline in 2025 https://www.reuters.com/business/ener…

Russia’s Oil Windfall From Middle East War Keeps Growing https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articl…

Reuters Exclusive: Iran attacks wipe out 17% of Qatar’s LNG capacity for up to five years, QatarEnergy CEO says https://www.reuters.com/business/ener…

April 20, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , | Comments Off on Iran War fallout: Russia and China quietly take over natural gas markets in Asia, with Qatar gone

EU spied on Orban for years – former Slovak minister

RT | April 16, 2026

The EU spy campaign that helped bring down Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is a lesson to anyone who defies Brussels, former Slovak Interior Minister Vladimir Palko has warned. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow,” he told the outlet Marker on Monday.

Orban’s Fidesz party suffered a landslide defeat to Peter Magyar’s Tisza on Sunday, with Tisza outperforming even the most one-sided polls to win a 54% to 38% over Fidesz. Magyar’s party now holds 137 of 199 seats in parliament, giving the incoming PM power to rewrite the country’s constitution as he – and his allies in Brussels – see fit.

That the EU wanted this result was obvious. Orban had been a thorn in Brussels’ side for 16 years and was an insurmountable obstacle to the bloc’s plans to approve a €90 billion loan package for Ukraine. Throughout the election, evidence of interference by the EU, Ukraine, and opposition-friendly Hungarian media trickled out of Budapest. With the election over, the full extent of the EU’s intelligence campaign against Orban – and its implications for populists across Europe – is slowly becoming apparent.

“The defeat of Viktor Orban after 16 years of rule is not surprising at all,” Palko told Marker. “However, the tragedy is what happened in the election campaign.”

The EU spied on Orban for years

“Orban and his foreign minister were wiretapped by European intelligence for six years,” he continued. “Not Russian, not American. The secret service provided the content of phone calls to some journalists from several EU member states, and the members of the EU establishment used the content against Orban. This was an intervention into Hungarian elections.”

Palko, who served as deputy director of Slovakia’s SIS intelligence agency in the 1990s and interior minister between 2002 and 2006, confirmed information that had already surfaced in the runup to the election: namely that opposition journalist Szabolcs Panyi gave Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto’s contact details to an unnamed EU intelligence agency, that then wiretapped Szijjarto and leaked details of six years’ worth of his calls with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov back to Panyi and other pro-opposition reporters. Panyi’s outlet, Direkt36, derives 80% of its project costs from the EU.

EU spies also fed the Hungarian and international media stories of Russian “election fixers” attempting to swing the election for Orban, and of plots by Russian military intelligence agents to stage an assassination attempt on Orban for publicity. The claims were unfounded, but were seized upon by Magyar, who worked chants of “Russians, go home!” into his campaign rallies.

The EU in turn used these reports to justify the activation of its ‘Rapid Response System’ (RRS): a suite of online censorship tools that allowed Brussels’ “fact checkers” to remove supposed “disinformation” from social media platforms in the runup to the vote. In every election in which it has been activated, the RRS “almost exclusively targeted” right-wing and populist candidates like Orban, the US House Judiciary Committee found in an investigation last year.

“Only one thing is shown from the recorded phone calls: The Hungarians were friendly towards the Russians,” Palko noted. “But this already is a mortal sin for the EU establishment. This is the new European Union that is coming.”

The new European Union

The EU’s pre-election attempts to influence the campaign offered a glimpse into a campaign that Orban alleges has been underway ever since he took a stance against Brussels on migration policy and support for Ukraine. However, Europe’s few populist leaders have largely stayed silent on the issue.

The Hungarian election ultimately came down to kitchen-table economic issues. Roads, healthcare, public safety, and public transport were the leading issues among voters in all 19 of Hungary’s counties, and the electorate chose Magyar’s promises of cash injections for underfunded public services over Orban’s geopolitics-heavy platform. Magyar will depend on the EU to fund his economic plan to the tune of €20 billion, and as such will be easily leveraged by Brussels, giving further incentive for the bloc to back his campaign.

Yet the role of EU intelligence in the result has been ignored, even by Orban’s ideological allies on the continent. This, Palko reckons, is a mistake. “All those who were not bothered by it should be warned,” he said. “What they did to Orban yesterday, they can do to you tomorrow.”

As RT reported, the EU has rolled out its same censorship playbook in Bulgaria, where elections this weekend pit a veteran center-rightist against a populist, Euroskeptic challenger on the left. Robert Fico in Slovakia, a left-wing populist and vocal opponent of the EU’s Ukraine project, will likely face the same treatment when he seeks another term in office next year.

April 16, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , | Comments Off on EU spied on Orban for years – former Slovak minister

EU Defense Agency head says compulsory military service could be necessary

RT | April 13, 2026

Compulsory military service could be reinstated in the EU, Andre Denk, the head of the European Defense Agency (EDA), has said, citing a lack of volunteers.

Several EU countries have reintroduced the draft since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, citing the perceived ‘Russian threat’.

President Vladimir Putin has dismissed claims that Russia harbors aggressive intentions against its Western neighbors.

In an interview with Spain’s El Pais published on Monday, Denk said, “we have a human resources problem, and one of the ways to solve it will be through mandatory military service” – adding that his home country of Germany will likely go down this path eventually.

Denk also urged EU nations to invest more in domestic arms production, with a particular focus on drones and anti-drone systems.

Last year, Finland announced plans to raise the upper age limit for rank-and-file military reservists by 15 years, from 50 to 65, starting in 2026.

The country, which shares a 1,340-km (830-mile) land border with Russia, abandoned its long-standing policy of military neutrality and joined NATO in April 2023.

Around the same time, Lithuania unveiled an expanded conscription plan that would run year-round from 2026 on. It reinstated compulsory military service in 2015 after a seven-year suspension.

In neighboring Latvia, Defense Minister Andris Spruds stated last September that his party, the Progressives, would seek mandatory military service not only for men, but also for women, starting from 2028.

Several months earlier, Denmark announced that it would begin drafting women this year.

In Germany, a new law that took effect on January 1 and introduces a voluntary model has sparked protests, with critics warning that it could open the door to reinstating conscription, which was suspended in 2011.

April 14, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on EU Defense Agency head says compulsory military service could be necessary

Brussels cannot say where its own pipeline inspectors are as Hungary’s oil lifeline remains shut

Will they magically reappear after the election?

By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | April 10, 2026

With just days until Hungary’s parliamentary election, questions are mounting over whether the European Union’s apparent inaction on a stalled oil pipeline investigation is politically motivated to avoid strengthening Viktor Orbán.

The controversy centers on the Druzhba, or “Friendship,” pipeline, which has not delivered Russian oil to Hungary since the end of January. Ukrainian authorities insisted that the halt was caused by Russian attacks damaging the infrastructure, but initially refused to grant access to inspection teams from both Hungary and the European Union.

The European Commission eventually announced its intention to deploy a team to the region to inspect the pipeline, in part due to Hungary’s refusal to sign off on any further financial assistance to Kyiv until the matter was resolved. However, no updates on the inspection have been forthcoming, and Brussels itself now appears unable to account for the status — or even the whereabouts — of its own delegation.

Speaking at a press conference on Tuesday, European Commission spokesperson Anna-Kaisa Itkonen confirmed that a small EU expert team had been deployed to Ukraine following correspondence between Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. However, she admitted she could provide no update on the mission’s progress.

“I cannot provide any new information on developments since that exchange of letters,” Itkonen said, adding that she had no details about the team’s itinerary or current location.

“At the time of sending the letter, they were in Ukraine. At that time, we indicated to Volodymyr Zelensky that we were ready and willing to launch such a fact-finding mission, but at present, I have no information about the team’s whereabouts or where exactly they might be,” she added.

The lack of clarity has persisted for weeks. The European Commission first announced on March 12 that it was ready to dispatch a fact-finding mission to assess damage to the pipeline and determine repair timelines and costs. Yet, according to sources in Brussels and Kyiv, EU experts have still not been granted permission to inspect the affected section.

Reports from Ukrainian media at the end of March suggested the team was prepared to travel but remained blocked by authorities who had yet to approve access.

The episode has drawn criticism from Hungarian officials, who say the situation is wholly unacceptable. Máté Kocsis, leader of the Fidesz parliamentary group, mocked the situation, saying it was “absurd” that the EU could not say where its own delegation was, adding sarcastically, “A delegation simply disappeared. This happens to anyone in Ukraine,” as cited by Magyar Nemzet.

The pipeline dispute has become a central issue in Hungary’s election campaign. Orbán’s government argues that Kyiv is deliberately withholding oil supplies to damage Hungary’s economy ahead of the vote, while also accusing Brussels of failing to intervene.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó has gone further, describing the shutdown as “a purely political decision,” and accusing Ukraine of refusing to engage in talks to resolve the situation. A planned trilateral meeting with Slovak and Ukrainian officials collapsed after Kyiv declined to attend, despite Hungarian efforts to organize negotiations in recent weeks.

The Hungarian government has also alleged broader coordination between European and Ukrainian actors aimed at harming the current administration’s chances in Sunday’s election. Viktor Orbán has accused Brussels of seeking to install its own “puppet” in the shape of opposition leader Péter Magyar. Governing Fidesz claims that Magyar will be subservient to Brussels on major issues, including further military and financial assistance to Kyiv and the controversial EU Migration Pact.

As the election approaches, the unresolved pipeline issue — and the EU’s lack of visible progress in investigating it — has intensified scrutiny of Brussels’ intentions. Whether the radio silence is bureaucratic inertia or a calculated effort to depose the government, the impact it is having on the election is undeniable.

April 11, 2026 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, Economics | , , | Comments Off on Brussels cannot say where its own pipeline inspectors are as Hungary’s oil lifeline remains shut

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