Aletho News

ΑΛΗΘΩΣ

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

US warns Europe of ‘civilizational erasure’

RT | December 5, 2025

Europe is facing potential “civilizational erasure” as the continent’s policymakers encourage censorship, crack down on political opponents, and turn a blind eye to mass immigration, the new National Security Strategy released by the administration of US President Donald Trump warns.

The landmark and strongly worded document released on Friday says that while the EU is showing worrying signs of economic decline, its cultural and political unraveling poses an even greater threat.

The strategy cites EU-backed immigration policies, suppression of political opposition, curbs on speech, collapsing birthrates, and “loss of national identities and self-confidence,” warning that Europe could become “unrecognizable in 20 years or less.”

The document argues that many European governments are “doubling down on their present path,” while the US wants Europe “to remain European” and abandon “regulatory suffocation” – an apparent reference to America’s stand-off with the EU over its strict digital market guidelines, which Washington claims discriminate against US-based tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, and Meta.

One of Washington’s key goals is “cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations,” the paper adds.

Trump’s strategy notes that the rise of “patriotic European parties” offers “cause for great optimism,” in a reference to growing bloc-wide support for right-wing Euroskeptic parties calling for strict immigration limits.

The document proclaims that “the era of mass migration is over.” It argues that large inflows have strained resources, increased violence, and weakened social cohesion, adding that Washington is seeking a world in which sovereign states “work together to stop rather than manage” migration flows.

The strategy also comes amid Trump’s push to convince European NATO members to spend more on defense. At one point, he threatened not to defend “delinquent” countries in an attack if they fail to meet his demands. At a summit earlier this year, the bloc endorsed a new plan to move toward combined defense-related spending of up to 5% of GDP, far above NATO’s longstanding 2% benchmark.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

US puts normalizing relations with Russia among ‘core interests’

RT | December 5, 2025

The US has placed the restoration of normal ties with Russia and a rapid end to the Ukraine conflict at the center of its newly released National Security Strategy, presenting both aims as among America’s core interests.

The 33-page report outlining President Donald Trump’s foreign-policy vision was released by the White House on Friday.

”It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine,” the paper states, “in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia.”

It notes that the Ukraine conflict has left “European relations with Russia… deeply attenuated,” destabilizing the region.

The report criticizes European leaders for “unrealistic expectations” regarding the outcome of the conflict, arguing that “a large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy.”

America, it says, is ready for “significant diplomatic engagement” to “help Europe correct its current trajectory,” reestablish stability, and “mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.”

In contrast with the US national strategy during Trump’s first term, which emphasized competition with Russia and China, the new strategy shifts the focus to the Western Hemisphere and to protecting the homeland, the borders, and regional interests. It calls for resources to be redirected from distant theaters to challenges closer to home and urges NATO and European states to shoulder primary responsibility for their own defense.

The document also calls for an end to NATO expansion – a demand that Russia has repeatedly made, calling it a root cause of the Ukraine conflict, which Moscow views as a Western proxy war.

Overall, the new strategy signals a shift away from global interventionism toward a more transactional foreign policy, arguing that the US should act abroad only when its interests are directly at stake.

The strategy is the first of several major defense and foreign-policy documents the Trump administration is expected to release. These include an updated National Defense Strategy, the Missile Defense Review, and Nuclear Posture Review, which are expected to echo the strategy’s direction.

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

Scott Ritter: New US National Security Strategy Marks Death Blow to NATO Expansion

Sputnik – December 5, 2025

The Trump administration’s new National Security Strategy has sent shockwaves across the globe, dropping ‘Russian threat’ language completely and crossing out the vision of NATO “as a perpetually expanding alliance.” Sputnik asked prolific geopolitical analyst Scott Ritter to break down the document and its implications.

The new US National Security Strategy is based on “the reality that Russia is not a threat to Europe or the United States, recognition that Russia has been artificially cast as such a threat now for decades, and [that] the consequences of this miscasting” have been an unmitigated “disaster for Europe and a threat to the national security of the United States,” the former Marine Corps intelligence officer told Sputnik.

The document signals that the White House has been “able to free itself… from the legacy of post-Cold War-era Russophobia” seeking to weaken and “strategically defeat” Russia, Ritter said.

“The Trump administration recognizes that this is an inherently destabilizing policy,” not to mention “extraordinarily dangerous,” since confrontation with Russia “ultimately means nuclear war,” the observer stressed.

In this new geopolitical calculus, Europe in its current trajectory is far more of a threat to itself, the US, and international peace and security than Russia, Ritter argues, reiterating that European Russia hawks’ policy is “incompatible” with US national security objectives.

No More NATO Expansion

The new NSS also “puts an end and drives a stake through the heart of the beast of Ukraine’s unrealistic expectations regarding NATO membership, and Europe’s equally unrealistic expectations that at some point in time, Ukraine could become a member of NATO,” Ritter says, commenting on the NSS’s prioritization of “ending” NATO’s status “as a perpetually expanding alliance.”

The document effectively signals “the end of the European enterprise” and the idea that Europe is a geopolitical equal of the US, and one able to “dictate” policy outcomes to Washington, Ritter says. “That’s over. The United States says no, you’re done. Moreover, we say the trajectory that you’re on is incompatible with the national security of the United States.”

Behind the scenes, things get even more interesting, Ritter believes, pointing to “whispers from people who are knowledgeable” about the intent behind the document to the effect that the US will not bail out Europe if it starts a war with Russia.

“This is an extraordinarily important document because it literally represents a divorce of decades of legacy policy that postured the United States and Russia as opponents who should be preparing to fight each other,” Ritter emphasized.

Beyond that, the NSS’s point on ‘no NATO expansion’ and lack of positioning Russia as a threat effectively means “there’s no legitimate reason for NATO to exist,” unless it can transform into a genuinely defensive alliance.

“NATO, as it currently exists, will no longer exist. If [it] is to continue to survive, it must re-identify itself as a defensive alliance focused on securing a reasonable and rational Europe, and not this alliance capable of standing toe-to-toe with Russia, expanding… ever eastward towards confrontation with Russia, and a NATO that embraces a strategy of the strategic defeat of Russia. That NATO is dead. That NATO will never be resurrected,” Ritter summed up.

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

EU Fines X $140 Million Amid Free Speech Clash

By Cindy Harper | Reclaim The Net | December 5, 2025

The European Union pulled the trigger on Elon Musk’s social media platform X. On Friday, Brussels fined X a massive $140 million for what it described as “transparency failures” under its censorship law, the Digital Services Act. In plain terms, the EU is angry that X is not policing speech the way it wants.

Of course, officials insist the penalty is not about censorship. It is about “accountability.” Yet every part of the fine print points to the same thing: a government demanding more control over what people say and see online.

The European Commission called X’s blue check system “deceptive” because Musk turned what used to be a verification badge into a paid feature anyone can buy. In the eyes of Brussels, that is chaos, a marketplace where speech is treated like a right, not a licensed activity.

Henna Virkkunen, the Commission’s executive vice president for tech sovereignty, summed up the mood. “Deceiving users with blue check marks, obscuring information on ads, and shutting out researchers have no place online in the E.U.,” she said. “We are holding X responsible for undermining users’ rights and evading accountability.”

European regulators also accuse X of not sharing advertising data and refusing to give researchers access to its user information. The law says platforms must open up to “independent research.” In reality, that means academics and NGOs, often with pro-censorship political affiliations, getting privileged access to social data, exactly the kind of surveillance the DSA claims to prevent.

Officials call this “transparency.” It is a transparency that flows one way, upward, toward the state. Musk’s decision not to hand over user data now counts as a punishable offense.

When asked to explain how they calculated the €120 million penalty, the Commission offered a masterpiece of vagueness about “proportionality” and “the nature of the infringements.” The only clear metric seems to be how defiant a company is about following orders.

From Washington, the outrage came fast. “The EU should be supporting free speech, not attacking American companies over garbage,” said Vice President JD Vance. Musk responded with his usual brevity: “Much appreciated.”

In the same breath that Brussels punished X, it closed an investigation into TikTok without a fine. TikTok, after all, promised to “cooperate” and adjust its design. “If you comply with our rules, you don’t get a fine,” Virkkunen told reporters.

That sentence could serve as the EU’s motto. Compliance equals peace. Free speech costs money.

The European Union has moved beyond suggesting rules for online speech and is now issuing orders. American social media platforms are facing a steady increase in censorship demands from Brussels, framed as “transparency” and “safety” obligations.

Each new regulation adds another layer of political oversight, turning what used to be private platforms into instruments of European policy.

The DSA sits at the center of this system. The law forces companies like Meta, Google, and X to remove “harmful” content, grant access to internal data, and submit regular reports on how they handle information deemed risky by regulators.

None of these terms have clear definitions, which gives officials the freedom to decide what speech is acceptable after the fact. In effect, the EU has built a structure that allows censorship by procedure rather than decree.

US companies are learning that “transparency” now means constant surveillance from European regulators and activist groups. The enforcement process rewards compliance, not innovation. Platforms that fail to align with the EU’s preferred moderation standards face public scolding and multi-million-dollar fines. Those who comply end up filtering speech to avoid further punishment.

This has turned into a quiet export of European political culture. The EU’s rhetoric about “accountability” and “responsibility” conceals a growing ambition to shape global online discourse.

December 5, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , | Leave a comment

The missing ‘If’ that could get us killed: How Western media distorted Putin’s words about war with Europe

The message was rather simple: Russia is ready to respond to aggression. But you wouldn’t know it if you read the headlines

By Timur Tarkhanov | RT | December 4, 2025

A depressing pattern has taken hold in the way parts of the Western press cover Russia: take a volatile subject, strip it of the conditional language that contains it, and then act surprised when the public grows more fearful, more hardline, and less able to distinguish deterrent rhetoric from an intent to attack.

The latest example is the frenzy around Vladimir Putin’s remark about Europe and war. In Russian, his meaning is not subtle: “We are not going to fight Europe, I’ve said it a hundred times already. But if Europe suddenly wants to fight and starts, we are ready right now.” A refusal paired with a threat of readiness if attacked. Many headlines flattened that into “Russia is ready for war with Europe.”

In news reporting, headlines aren’t neutral labels. They are the main event. They set the emotional temperature for millions who will never read beyond the first line, especially on mobile feeds where nuance is a luxury and outrage is a business model. So when a headline drops the words “we are not going to” and discards “if Europe starts,” it’s not just a shortening – it reverses the reader’s perception. The public walks away believing Putin signaled readiness to launch a war against Europe, not readiness in response to one. In a moment when misperception can harden policy and policy can harden into escalation, that is reckless.

Worse, this kind of framing does real political work. It amplifies the narrative long championed by certain European officials – that Russia is poised to attack the EU next, regardless of evidence. If you swallow the headline alone, those officials sound validated. If you read the quote, at minimum you have to admit the claim is not what was said. Maybe you’ll even start asking questions. That difference is the hinge between journalism and propaganda.

This pattern didn’t start this week. Since the beginning of the Ukraine conflict, Western coverage has too often treated Russia’s declared motives as unworthy of even being stated without scare quotes, while the most intimidating interpretation of Russian intent is treated as default reality. “Imperial ambition.” “War of conquest.” “Russia wants to reconstitute an empire.” The public is denied the basic reporting function of hearing why Russia is doing what it’s doing. Instead we get a morality play with prewritten roles: one side’s motives are analyzed in paragraphs; the other’s are assumed in headlines.

The same sloppiness shows up in claims that Putin “stalled” peace talks. Negotiations are not a TikTok trend; they are an exhausting grind of sequencing, verification, backchannels, domestic politics, and face-saving. Many major conflicts have required long, ugly diplomatic marathons before anything moved. The Vietnam peace talks, for example, dragged on for years. To declare “stalling” because a meeting ended without a breakthrough is to confuse diplomacy with customer service: “Where is my peace deal? I ordered it an hour ago.”

And if we’re going to talk about “stalling,” we should at least look honestly at which actors have been most allergic to acknowledging battlefield realities. The Russia-US channel – whatever one thinks of it – is the only vector that has shown any capacity to force trade-offs into the open, because it involves the parties with the leverage to make and enforce them. By contrast, the EU and the UK’s public posture has often resembled a maximalist wish list: demands unmoored from the war’s trajectory, presented as prerequisites rather than negotiating positions. It has hardened expectations so thoroughly that any compromise looks like betrayal, and any diplomacy looks like surrender. That is the worst kind of stalling – not merely delaying talks, but by making talks politically impossible.

It didn’t have to be like this, and it isn’t universal. Some outlets have demonstrated that integrity is still possible: they lead with the full quote and include the conditional. They are at least honest with the readers about what was said and what was implied, allowing them to distinguish threat from intent. Far from being “soft on Putin”, this is basic journalistic competence. In a climate where fear sells and escalation eats, and the Doomsday Clock is at 89 seconds to midnight, faithful quotation is a mandatory public safety measure.

Timur Tarkhanov is a journalist and media executive.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

EU covering up Ukraine corruption – member state

RT | December 4, 2025

The EU is ignoring rampant corruption in Ukraine because drawing attention to it could expose the bloc’s own corruption, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told journalists on Monday.

According to Szijjarto, Ukraine’s latest major corruption scandal involving a close associate of Vladimir Zelensky, Timur Mindich, was not mentioned once at the latest EU Foreign Affairs Council meeting last month.

Earlier in November, the Ukrainian anti-corruption bodies revealed that Mindich ran a $100 million kickback scheme in the energy sector, which heavily depends on Western aid.

Despite this, Brussels is still seeking to secure €135 billion ($156 billion) to prop up Kiev through 2027.

“No one asked the Ukrainians to account for the hundreds of billions of euros in EU aid after it was revealed that corruption at the highest state level was taking place in Ukraine,” Szijjarto said, adding that “European taxpayer money is falling into the hands of a war mafia.”

The EU does not want to expose the Ukrainian corruption network “because Brussels is also riddled with a similar corruption network,” the minister said, pointing to recent charges against former top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini.

Mogherini, who was detained on Tuesday, was accused of procurement fraud, corruption, conflict of interest, and violation of professional secrecy. She served as both European Commission vice president and foreign policy chief from 2014 to 2019.

Last week, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov also said EU officials could be benefiting from corruption in Ukraine. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain the bloc’s determination to continue funding Kiev despite the repeated graft and embezzling scandals, he added.

December 4, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , | Leave a comment

European leaders welcome in Moscow for talks – Kremlin

RT | December 3, 2025

Russia is open to resuming dialogue with European nations, presidential aide Yury Ushakov told journalists on Wednesday. Western European leaders are the ones who have shunned contact, not Moscow, he added.

“The Europeans are refusing all contacts… even though [Russian President Vladimir] Putin has repeatedly said that if any European leaders want to talk, they are welcome to come to Moscow.”

“For our part, we have nothing against resuming contacts,” Ushakov told a news briefing.

The EU and the UK have taken a hardline stance on the Ukraine conflict and have virtually severed all contacts with Moscow since the escalation of hostilities in February 2022.

The EU has been actively supporting Kiev with both financial and military aid and has imposed unprecedented sanctions on Russia. The bloc has also been seeking to seize Russian sovereign assets frozen at the Euroclear clearing house in Belgium to fund Ukraine. Moscow has warned that it would regard any such move as outright “theft.”

The bloc has de facto rejected a Ukraine peace plan presented by the administration of US President Donald Trump last month, and has put forward its own set of conditions, which Moscow dismissed as “unconstructive.”

On Tuesday, Putin said the EU is still living under the illusion that it can inflict a “strategic defeat” upon Russia through the Ukraine conflict. He stated that the concept was unrealistic from the very beginning, but Brussels cannot bring itself to admit that it has been wrong all along.

The bloc “does not have a peaceful agenda. They are on the side of war,” Putin told journalists on the sidelines of the ‘Russia Calling!” business forum.

December 3, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , | Leave a comment

Europe is driving the continent toward war: Putin

Al Mayadeen | December 2, 2025

Russian President Vladimir Putin accused European leaders of steering the continent toward confrontation, saying Moscow has repeatedly tried to avoid escalation while European governments continue to inflame the situation.

Speaking to journalists on Tuesday, Putin said that Russia is not the party seeking a clash. “We don’t intend to go to war with Europe, I’ve said this a hundred times, but if Europe suddenly wants to fight us and does, we are ready right now. There can be no doubt about that,” he said, placing responsibility for rising tensions squarely on the West.

Russia reports encirclement of Ukrainian forces as European states expand military involvement

Putin said Russian troops have locked a sizeable Ukrainian contingent in a difficult position near Kupyansk, describing the frontline situation as the result of relentless Western pressure on Kiev to continue a war it cannot win. “Let me remind you that, on the left bank of the river [in the town of Kupyansk], an enemy group numbering 15 battalions is trapped. And Russian troops have begun eliminating it,” he noted.

He said ongoing battles in Kupyansk-Uzlovoy are moving in Russia’s favor and predicted that the settlement will soon be fully brought under Moscow’s control. According to Putin, Russian units control both banks of the broader Kupyansk area and hold hundreds of buildings in the settlement.

These battlefield developments come as European governments accelerate weapons deliveries and publicly reject discussions of compromise. Russian officials argue that the political leadership in the EU, rather than Kiev, is pushing this phase of the war, ignoring humanitarian costs and attempting to prolong hostilities for geopolitical purposes.

Black Sea tensions rise as Moscow calls Ukrainian strikes ‘piracy’

Putin sharply criticized recent Ukrainian attacks on tankers  in the Black Sea, attacks that Russian officials say are carried out with Western backing. The president said these operations took place in another country’s exclusive economic zone, calling the strikes a criminal act. “I know that this happened. Attacks on tankers in neutral or even non-neutral waters. But in a special economic zone of another state, a third state, this is piracy. Nothing else,” he said.

He also signaled that Russia would respond not just to Ukraine, but potentially to vessels belonging to countries that enable Kiev’s maritime operations. “The most radical way is to cut off Ukraine from the sea. Then it will be genuinely impossible for it to engage in piracy,” he said, suggesting that Russia may take stronger measures to secure the region if European powers continue encouraging naval escalation.

Moscow to widen its target set as Ukraine intensifies attacks on ports

Putin said Russian forces will now strike a broader list of port infrastructure and shipping linked to Ukrainian operations. “We will expand the range of our strikes against port facilities and ships that enter Ukrainian ports,” he said, arguing that Kiev, supported by European governments, has repeatedly attempted attacks on Russian seaports and supply routes.

Russian officials say many of Ukraine’s naval strikes are coordinated with European advisers and intelligence services, and that Europe’s growing involvement has directly contributed to instability in the Black Sea.

Putin hopes that Russia’s response to piracy by the Ukrainian forces in the Black Sea will force Kiev to consider whether it is worth continuing such actions.

European leaders accused of sabotaging peace efforts while the US seeks dialogue

The president also pointed to Europe’s obstruction of diplomatic efforts, saying EU governments walked away from negotiations long before Moscow or Washington did. “They [the Europeans] are offended that they were allegedly excluded from the negotiations. But I want to point out that no one excluded them. They excluded themselves… They withdrew themselves from this process,” he said.

Putin argued that European governments cling to the idea of a “strategic defeat” for Russia, even as the facts on the ground shift. He said their behavior now threatens US attempts to revive dialogue under President Donald Trump. “Even when they try to make some changes to Trump’s proposals, these changes are aimed at only one thing: to block the entire peace process,” he warned.

According to Putin, Europe’s goal is to present Moscow as the obstacle to peace despite Europe being the one rejecting realistic terms. “Their goal is to then blame Russia for the curtailing of this peace process. We see this clearly,” he said.

Putin concluded that Europe could return to negotiations only when it abandons ideological hostility and starts recognizing the actual balance of forces on the battlefield.

December 3, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Brussels Prolonging Ukraine War to Forge Military Alliance — EU MP

Sputnik – 03.12.2025

Some leaders in the European Union are seeking to prolong the conflict in Ukraine in order to turn the EU into a military alliance and make the European Commission look like the government of a united European federal state, Luxembourg member of the European Parliament Fernand Kartheiser told RIA Novosti.

Luxembourg MEP Fernand Kartheiser accused EU leaders of deliberately blocking a peace deal in Ukraine to advance their own political integration agenda.

“In fact, the EU is doing everything to block the peace agreement, not to promote it. It prefers to ignore reality on the ground and supports the most radical demands of the Ukrainian government. On territorial issues, it defends principles it disregards in other situations. For example, the territorial integrity of Serbia or the Republic of Cyprus is apparently less important to it than the integrity of Ukraine,” Kartheiser said.

In his opinion, some European leaders seek to prolong the conflict in order to turn the EU into a military alliance.

“Some European leaders are seeking to prolong the conflict in order to transform the EU into a military alliance and turn the Commission into something akin to the government of a unified European federal state without any consent from the member states. The Ukraine conflict is thus being deliberately prolonged, to the detriment of Ukraine, in order to complete European integration without changing the treaties,” Kartheiser added.

December 3, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

Scott Ritter: War Has Been Won & Russia Faces a Dilemma

Glenn Diesen | December 2, 2025

Rumble

Scott Ritter is a former Major, Intelligence Officer, US Marine, and UN Weapons Inspector. Ritter argues Russia has defeated NATO and Ukraine, and now faces a dilemma about what kind of peace it wants.

Follow Prof. Glenn Diesen:
Substack: https://glenndiesen.substack.com/
X/Twitter: https://x.com/Glenn_Diesen
Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/glenndiesen

Support the research by Prof. Glenn Diesen:
PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/glenndiesen
Buy me a Coffee: buymeacoffee.com/gdieseng
Go Fund Me: https://gofund.me/09ea012f

Books by Prof. Glenn Diesen

December 2, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , , | Leave a comment

EU central bank rejects von der Leyen’s asset-theft plan

RT | December 2, 2025

The European Central Bank has refused to support a proposed €140 billion payout to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian assets held at Belgium’s Euroclear, the Financial Times reported on Tuesday, citing officials familiar with the discussions.

The ECB determined that the European Commission’s scheme falls outside its mandate, the newspaper reported.

The EU has spent months trying to tap frozen Russian central bank reserves to back a €140 billion ($160 billion) “reparations loan” for Kiev. Belgium, where around $200 billion of the assets is held at the privately owned Euroclear clearing house, has repeatedly warned of potential litigation as well as financial risks if the EU goes through with the scheme.

Under the European Commission’s plan, EU nations’ governments would provide state guarantees to share the repayment risk on the loan for Ukraine.

Commission officials, however, have warned that member states might be unable to mobilize cash quickly in an emergency, risking market strains.

EU officials reportedly asked the ECB whether it could act as a lender of last resort to Euroclear Bank, the Belgian depository’s lending arm, to prevent a liquidity crunch. ECB officials told the commission this was not possible, the FT reported, citing sources familiar with the talks.

“Such a proposal is not under consideration as it would likely violate EU treaty law prohibiting monetary financing,” the ECB said.

Brussels is now reportedly working on alternative ways to provide temporary liquidity to backstop the €140 billion loan.

“Ensuring the necessary liquidity for possible obligations to return the assets to the Russian central bank is an important part of a possible reparations loan,” the FT quoted an EC spokesperson as saying.

Euroclear CEO Valerie Urbain warned last week the move would be seen globally as “confiscation of central bank reserves, undermining the rule of law.” Moscow has repeatedly warned it would view any use of its sovereign assets as “theft” and respond with countermeasures.

The push comes as the cash-strapped EU faces pressure to finance Ukraine for the next two years amid Kiev’s cash crunch, with efforts to tap Russia’s assets intensifying as the US promotes a new initiative to settle the conflict. Economists estimate Ukraine is facing a budget gap of about $53 billion a year in 2025-2028, excluding additional military funding.

The country’s public and government-guaranteed debt ballooned to unseen levels of over $191 billion as of September, the Finance Ministry said. The IMF last month raised its debt forecasts for Ukraine, now predicting public debt at 108.6% of GDP.

December 2, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Economics | , , | Leave a comment

« Previous Entries     Next Entries »