EU criminalizes sanctions busting by member states
RT | April 12, 2024
The Council of the European Union adopted a law on Friday that criminalizes the violation and circumvention of EU sanctions.
According to a press release published on the council’s website, the law covers bloc-wide minimum rules for the prosecution of sanctions evasion.
“Certain actions will now be considered criminal offences in all member states, for example helping to bypass a travel ban, trading in sanctioned goods or performing prohibited financial activities,” the statement reads. Inciting, aiding and abetting these offences can also incur penalties.
According to the report, the directive will enter into force on the 20th day following publication in the Official Journal of the EU. Member states will have 12 months to incorporate the provisions into national legislation.
The European Commission proposed the directive in December 2022 in order to limit sanctions circumvention and tighten enforcement. The press release noted that the EU has adopted an “unprecedented number of restrictive measures” against Russia over the Ukraine conflict.
In February, Brussels adopted its 13th package of sanctions against Moscow ahead of the second anniversary of the beginning of the Ukraine conflict. The new sanctions restrict trade in dual-use goods, as well as technologies and electronic components that could be used by Russia’s defense industry.
The previous measures target a broad range of sectors and include trade embargoes, travel bans, and individual sanctions against Russian businessmen and public officials.
Many reports have indicated that EU sanctions on Russia are being “massively circumvented” via third countries. Nations friendly to Russia have reportedly been re-exporting high-priority items to the country.
Brussels Fears “Disinformation” Campaign Before EU Elections
By Zoltán Kottász | The European Conservative | April 9, 2024
In a bid to protect this year’s European election campaign from “disinformation” and “foreign interference,” the European Commission has asked the European political groups to sign a code of conduct. By pressuring them to “commit to maintaining the integrity of the 2024 European Parliament elections. Brussels seems to be preparing to pursue sovereigntists, whose campaign messages are often labelled as “Russian disinformation.”
Nevertheless, the document was signed on Tuesday, April 9th, by all the European umbrella groups, including the right-wing Identity and Democracy Party (ID), whose members―such as the German Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party―are regularly accused of spreading “false Russian narratives.” The ID party may have agreed to the code of conduct, as it is non-binding and does not apply to national parties, who are responsible for their respective national campaigns before the EU elections in June.
According to the document, “by following this code, the signatories uphold key election values like integrity, transparency, privacy, safety, fairness, and a level playing field.” The groups are urged, among other things, to abstain from disseminating misleading content, using artificial intelligence to deceptively manipulate audio or video content, and sharing “content created and disseminated by actors from outside the EU” that seek to “erode European values and principles.” This conveniently ignores controversies about the actual meaning and content of “European values,” usually defined by Eurocrats as aligning with their values, regardless of the opinions of individual states or parties.The new rule on content sharing is, of course, a reference to Russian interference, a recurring theme of Brussels’ anti-propaganda rhetoric. The EU’s Values and Transparency Commissioner Věra Jourová, who brokered the agreement, recently warned that democracy is in danger from Russian proxies throughout the EU. In response, she has therefore embarked on a “democracy tour” of EU capitals to promote action against alleged Russian disinformation. The commissioner claimed that many of Europe’s populist right-wing parties are part of the Kremlin’s propaganda network, and that her “biggest concern” was Germany’s AfD.
The AfD has been riding high in opinion polls in Germany, and is set to win all three regional elections to be held in Eastern German states in the autumn. The party’s success has come mainly from its tough line on immigration, but also its criticism of the German federal government’s sending military aid to Ukraine. Cutting off the country from much-needed Russian gas supplies has sparked a cost-of-living and energy crisis. Calls for peace instead of EU military intervention have also resonated with Hungarian and Slovakian voters, yet Jourová insists that the message of peace comes from the Kremlin, and is the equivalent of appeasing Russia.
The new code of conduct aligns with the Commission’s so-called Defence of Democracy package, intended as a tool to tackle the threat of foreign interference by requiring groups working for foreign countries outside the EU to self-record in a transparency register. “Foreign interference in our democratic systems is a serious problem that needs to be addressed. It is high time to bring covert foreign influence to light,” the Commission wrote in December.
The code of conduct also lines up with a resolution recently adopted by the European Parliament, which seeks to punish hate crime and hate speech, but has been criticised by conservative parties for eroding freedom of speech. The code stipulates that the signatories shall refrain “from producing, using or disseminating discriminatory statements and biases against specific groups based on their gender, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, age or sexual orientation.”
Hungary refuses to submit to EU’s migration pact
MAGYAR HÍRLAP | April 11, 2024
The European Parliament approved on Wednesday the EU’s controversial New Pact on Migration and Asylum, but Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Péter Szijjártó was quick to reiterate Budapest’s opposition to its implementation and vowed to maintain existing border restrictions.
“This pact would give the green light for tens and hundreds of thousands of migrants to come to European countries and would extend to Central Europe the problem of Western Europe, which started when they gave up the protection of their own identity, their own culture, and their own society, letting in illegal migrants, creating a double society, and increasing the threat of terrorism,” Szijjártó warned.
“We will not allow this in Central Europe. We Hungarians, no matter what pressure we are under, no matter what kind of migration pact the MEPs vote for, we will not give up on the physical border. We will protect the border,” he added.
The new asylum and migration package was passed largely with votes from lawmakers affiliated with the European People’s Party, the Socialists and Democrats (S&D), and Renew Europe, with MEPs being urged to swallow their criticisms of the scheme and vote for the compromise legislation.
Szijjártó stressed that Hungary has been protecting the external borders of the European Union and the Schengen Area from illegal immigrants for nine years now, for which the government has not only received no support from Brussels, but has also been under constant pressure to abandon the borders and thus the protection of Hungarian culture and identity.
“Today in Brussels, there is a pro-war and pro-migration leadership that is putting pressure and launching attacks against any country that wants to preserve its own security, its own identity, and stand up for peace,” he said.
The minister expressed his regret that the most important issues for the future of Europe are now being debated on ideological grounds, including migration.
“Today, the vast majority of debates are politicized, ideologically based, and dogmatic, and it is difficult to have a normal discussion on important issues,” he said.
German democracy index claims Hungarian democracy worse than Ukraine’s despite Kyiv canceling elections and operating under martial law
By Denes Albert | Remix News | April 10, 2024
Ukraine, which no longer holds elections, is ahead of Hungary in terms of democracy, according to a major German media group index that references 10 experts, nine of whom are directly funded by billionaire oligarch George Soros and his Open Society Foundations.
The results were produced by the German Bertelsmann Foundation’s democracy index, which was published in the print edition of the media group’s Frankfurter Allurement Zeitung.
Despite Hungary having a functioning and vibrant democracy that includes actual elections, the index claims that the country is less democratic than Ukraine, which is under martial law, has banned opposition parties, and has no elections.
According to the paper’s analyst, the new EU member states have made huge political and economic progress since 2004, with only Poland and Hungary representing or still representing a “politically authoritarian tendency.”
“Despite the country’s EU membership, Fidesz, led by Viktor Orbán and in power since 2010, has seriously undermined Hungary’s initially well-functioning democracy,” claims Ralph M. Wrobel, who argues that without pressure from Brussels, Poland and Hungary would have become fully authoritarian states.
It is worth noting, however, that the Bertelsmann Foundation’s biannual ranking is based on the opinions of country experts, not on facts.
“Nine of the ten ‘independent experts on Hungary’ are from Political Capital. Political Capital, founded by a former SZDSZ member, which received contracts worth hundreds of millions of forints from the previous Socialist governments of Ferenc Gyurcsány and Gordon Bajnai for communications consultancy, and of course among its supporters we find the Open Society Foundations led by George Soros,” government spokesman Zoltán Kovács pointed out earlier.
Kovács added that the Bertelsmann Group is the owner of RTL Television, among others. In a previous analysis, Hungarian news portal Mandiner pointed out that the group had woven its way into the EU institutions by hiding behind pro-Europeanism.
See also:
Desperados… NATO cranks up false-flag mode
By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | April 9, 2024
It’s open season for false-flag provocations in NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Russia is winning the war – now in its third year – and the NATO weapons laundering scam with its NeoNazi regime in Ukraine is coming apart. So what to do?
Only two weeks after a terror attack near Moscow that killed 144 civilians, which the Western media roundly attributed to Islamist jihadists and Western governments categorically asserted had nothing to do with the Ukrainian regime it sponsors, there now follows a spate of other false flags.
Russia is being accused of dropping chemical weapons on Ukrainian soldiers while also trying to blow up Europe’s biggest civilian nuclear power plant.
Over the weekend, Western media reports bore the hallmark signs of disinformation campaigns by peddling lame claims that the Russian military was dropping gas grenades on Ukrainian troops.
It was reported that chemical weapons were being used daily to target Ukrainian positions near Lyman and Chasiv Yar in Donetsk Oblast. The source of this information was purportedly an “American combat medic” serving in the ranks of the Ukrainian armed forces. That detail alone raises suspicion of planted disinformation.
The second realm of cloying propaganda is the sudden reappearance of reports that the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) is coming under constant artillery fire from drones. Those attacks had gone into a lull since last year. Now they are back, as if by clockwork.
Western media have repeated their earlier pattern of trying to make out that it is not clear whether it is the Ukrainian or the Russian side that is firing on the ZNPP – thereby risking a nuclear catastrophe that would engulf Europe from radioactive fallout.
Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, is again shamefully indulging the Western media disinformation. Grossi confirmed that the ZNPP was hit at least three times in recent days and he warned of “a significant risk of a major nuclear accident” adding that “this cannot happen”. But Grossi feigns to be agnostic about who is carrying out the attacks. He did not specifically call out the Ukrainian side as the perpetrator.
The Western media affects the ambiguous notion that it could not confirm Ukrainian or Russian claims, thereby giving the impression that it could have been Russian strikes on the ZNPP.
That is ludicrous. Russian forces control the nuclear plant having taken it in March 2022 soon after intervening in Ukraine to halt the aggression of the NATO-backed regime. Russia has provided documented evidence to the UN that the Ukrainian side has been targeting the ZNPP repeatedly with US-supplied artillery and NATO logistics.
Yet the Western media and the UN’s IAEA indulge in the risible charade that Russian forces might be shelling a nuclear plant that they are in possession and control of.
The Western media claims that Russia is resorting to chemical weapons are also absurdly illogical. Why would Russia need to use such a weapon when it is already gaining the strategic upper hand in the war? Besides, Russia has verifiably destroyed all of its chemical weapons years ago as mandated by the 1997 CW Convention.
The same illogical scenario was seen when the Syrian Arab Army was in full control of the battlefield against NATO-backed mercenaries. It was the Western-sponsored cut-throat jihadists of Al Nusra Front and so on that were the ones who contrived chemical weapons attacks and the Western media would reflexively and wrongly blame the Syrian state forces. The provocation succeeded in Syria in triggering the United States, Britain and France to launch air strikes against the Syrian army.
Russia has no need – even if it had chemical weapons – to use them when it is decimating NATO’s proxy army of the NeoNazi Ukrainian regime.
Likewise, Russia commandeered the Zaporozyhe Nuclear Power Plant at an early stage in the conflict knowing that the NATO regime would otherwise use it as a terror card. How right Russia was. The NATO forces are once again stepping up efforts to bomb the ZNPP in an attempt to create a crisis that would presumably justify an escalation by NATO.
Just like the atrocious mass murder at the Crocus City Hall near Moscow on March 22, the NATO proxy war is shifting to all-out hybrid terrorism. The NATO axis has lost conventional warfare on the battlefield due to Russia’s superior firepower and military tactics.
The NATO powers are becoming desperate from the historic defeat. They have invested an unprecedented huge amount of political and financial capital in winning a proxy war to defeat Russia – and they stand to now lose with devastating losses.
This is the feverish context for French leader Emmanuel Macron mouthing off about sending NATO troops into Ukraine and other NATO leaders issuing desperate pleas for more weapons supplies and compulsory military conscription. Their insane proxy war is a monumental debacle that spells calamity for the political establishments in the West, including the lying propaganda news media.
Amid this desperation on a sinking ship of Titanic proportions, the NATO powers are going into full false-flag mode to create some frenetic distraction.
The trouble for them is that we have been here many times before, and the whole world can see through their sordid playbook.
Pellegrini’s Win in Slovakia’s Won’t Allow EU to Drag It Into Conflict Against Russia

Peter Pellegrini (L) and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico (R) after the announcement of Pellegrini’s victory in the Slovak presidential elections, April 6, 2024.
By Svetlana Ekimenko – Sputnik – 07.04.2024
Slovak parliamentary speaker Peter Pellegrini, who shares prime minister Robert Fico’s staunch opposition to continued arms supplies to Ukraine, won the second round of Slovakia’s presidential election. Pellegrini and Fico’s left-wing opposition to the Russo-Ukraine war proved to be a winning formula.
In Peter Pellegrini Slovakia will finally have a president who does not support the pro-Western position and was not “installed by the Americans,” political observer Peter Marcek told Sputnik.
“There will be coordination between the government of the Slovak Republic [led by] Robert Fico and President Peter Pellegrini, because they have one program, one direction,” he remarked.
According to Marcek, “both Fico and Pellegrini share the idea that no Anglo-Saxons should be able to dictate to us what we should do.”
Washington pursued its own goals by pushing Pellegrini’s main rival, former foreign minister Ivan Korcok, for the presidency, argued the expert, in an effort “to subordinate our will exclusively to their hegemony.”
Pellegrini, an ally of Fico, won the presidential election with 53.26 percent of the vote versus Korcok’s 46.73 percent, following declarations from 99.66 percent of voting districts.
Pellegrini said his victory meant the government would not have to face an “opposition, opportunistic power centre.” He vowed that he would “be a president who will support the government in its efforts for improving people’s lives.”
Pellegrini, 48, has Italian ancestry. He previously served as Slovakia’s prime minister from 2018 to 2020 and Minister of Health from 2019 to 2020. He also had a two-year stint as speaker of the National Council from 2014 to 2016. Pellegrini, formerly a member of Direction – Social Democracy, left that party to found Voice – Social Democracy in 2020.
The politician returned to the position of Speaker of the National Council after the 2023 parliamentary election. His Voice – Social Democracy party came third and became part of the three-party ruling coalition with PM Robert Fico’s SMER-SSD (Direction-Slovak Social Democracy) and the Slovak National Party.
Pellegrini announced his intention to run for president in January. He came second in the first round of voting in March, with 37.03 percent, trailing former Korcok who won 42.52 percent of the vote. But Pellegrini scooped up the floating voters to clinch the second round.
Commenting on the Fico and Pellegrini long-standing political alliance, Marcek pointed out that “When the government passes laws and the president can veto them, it creates problems.” But now the president and the prime minister will be on the same page.
“Pelligrini will be a president who will work well with Fico. They said at a press conference after the elections that they would support each other. They will cooperate very well this way,” said the pundit.
In Slovakia, the government holds most of the executive powers, such as picking the prime minister after parliamentary elections, swearing in the new government, and appointing Constitutional Court judges. The role of president is largely ceremonial, but includes ratifying international treaties, appointing top judges and acting as commander-in-chief of the armed forces — and has the power to veto new laws.
Bratislava can no longer support the West’s anti-Russian course, noted Marcek, who welcomed the “clear victory of Pellegrini.”
“I think that many relations, for example, with the Russian Federation, can improve. We need to develop our mutual relations,” stated the former deputy of the Slovak parliament.
“I am grateful to Russia because it is not just fighting for itself, to prevent NATO from approaching the borders of the Russian Federation,” Marcek stressed. “Russia is fighting for us all, for the traditional family values, for improving the economic situation in the world. For good relations, and most importantly — for peace and justice.”
Fico’s government has been determined to chart an independent course against NATO’s proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.
Echoing his Hungarian counterpart Victor Orban’s stance, Fico has opposed confrontation with Russia, and urged an end to military aid to Kiev. Hungary and Slovakia are the only two EU and NATO members to refuse to send arms to Ukraine.
“Peter Pellegrini hails from Robert Fico’s party, he is a social democrat, and shares the PM’s ideas and views. This means that he is in favor of ending the conflict in Ukraine and starting negotiations between Kiev and Moscow,” Marcek said. “He is against sending weapons to Ukraine, opposes such vast quantities of EU aid being sent to Kiev.”
Pellegrini stated in an interview in March that the Slovak government had a realistic position on the conflict, and voiced surprise that some countries refuse to respect Slovakia’s approach. He added that Slovakia is ready to help the Ukrainian side in demining territories and implementing civilian projects.
The president-elect believes that the conflict in Ukraine has no military solution, advocates early peace negotiations and believes that arming Ukraine could ultimately lead to disaster.
Most Slovaks want “a president who will defend Slovakia’s national interests, who will not drag Slovakia into a war but will talk about peace, who… will put Slovakia’s interests first,” Pellegrini said.
In contrast, Pellegrini’s opponent Korcok, said: “I do not think Ukraine should give up part of its territory to achieve peace.” He told reporters that “Peace cannot mean capitulation,” and could only be achieved “immediately” on the condition that Russian troops withdraw.
Fico responded by calling Korcok a “warmonger” on video ahead of the run-off. He claimed Korcok “will support everything the West tells him without hesitation, including dragging Slovakia into the war.”
But both Pellegrini and Korcok have reiterated that they would not allow the Slovak military to be sent to Ukraine.
“Slovakia has made a decision that it will not send a single soldier to Ukraine in any event. And this is despite the criticism of this sovereign position of ours. On the contrary, we will insist that the only way to end the bloodshed is to have courage to begin peace talks between the warring parties,” Pellegrini said after a meeting with Orban.
On issues such as NATO membership for Ukraine, however, the two rivals took opposing stances. Korcok insisted that the final decision on Ukraine’s membership in NATO will be made by members of the alliance if the Ukrainian side meets the necessary requirements.
But Pellegrini was adamant that there is no place for Ukraine in NATO, giving an unequivocal “no” to the question during a pre-election debate on the Markiza TV channel.
“NATO, in my opinion, is the most aggressive group of armies, that only exist to foster wars all over the world, spearheaded by the United States. And Peter Pelligrini will absolutely not agree with this,” Marcek said.
Asked how Pellegrini’s victory could affect European Union policies and if Slovakia might use its veto on issues such as aid to the Kiev regime, the political analyst said that Slovakia now had “new opportunities.”
“We will not give up the veto power to anyone,” Marcek insisted. “This is our right, even though we are a small country. Together with Viktor Orban, 100 percent we will not cede this to anyone.”
Marcek slammed European governments that were “pro-American, pro-Brussels,” adding that “They are for war against Russia.”
“Macron still wants to send soldiers to Ukraine. The government in the Czech Republic wants to continue the war, but the citizens do not,” he said. “We say, ‘We shall have none of this’.”
New hacking allegations against China aren’t what they seem
By Timur Fomenko | RT | April 5, 2024
In March, the UK, in conjunction with the US and other members of the Five Eyes intelligence alliance, accused China of engaging in a state-sponsored hacking campaign against them. In response to the alleged ‘attack’ they launched coordinated sanctions against a small group of hackers and their associated businesses.
The sanctions were particularly big news in Britain, where the government suddenly decided that Beijing had been behind a hack on the electoral commission three years ago. Notably, the country’s Conservative party-aligned newspapers all pushed this narrative in an aggressive fashion.
These accusations by the Five Eyes nations are not so much genuine concerns as they are a deliberate and opportunistic act of political theatre which, largely driven by the US, seeks to slander China for diplomatic and political gain. The sanctions, although narrow in scope and thus meaningless, are designed to try and send a message to and about China. It is essentially a fearmongering campaign, which seeks to both undermine Beijing’s engagement with other countries and serve domestic political purposes in the US.
The rhythm of US escalation and de-escalation with China
The US has an adept foreign policy whereby it intentionally chooses to escalate and de-escalate tensions with China at opportune moments, which is precisely why calls for “engagement” with Beijing coming from Washington D.C. cannot be trusted. The US does not change its goals or its policies, only its tactics in consideration of what suits it at that particular moment. Hence it has always alternated between overtures and deliberate provocations. It usually does so by having a certain report or development leaked to the media at an opportunistic time, in order to craft a particular narrative which mandates a certain set of reactions and policy responses.
To give some examples of such, the Trump administration played down tensions with China directly in 2019, even amidst the Hong Kong crisis, in order to secure a “trade deal” with Beijing. Once it got what it wanted by 2020, and the Covid-19 pandemic struck, it deliberately unleashed a full-on crusade against Beijing on every front. Similarly, the Biden administration came into office and then immediately upped tensions with China on the Xinjiang issue in order to damage China’s ties with Europe in a build-up to coordinated sanctions as a display of transatlantic unity.
After this was done, it then decided it wanted to “cool” things down for a bit and establish “guardrails” so the rhetoric guns went silent for a few months as Washington reached out to Beijing. Then, as the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics came, it took the “Xinjiang card” off the shelf again with a number of timed leaks and publications geared towards supporting a Winter Olympics boycott, as well as a sweeping ban on all Xinjiang goods under the premise of “forced labour” at that time.
What we see is that the US does not truly de-escalate with China, it “blows hot and cold” and essentially manipulates the media cycle to pursue its policy preferences as it sees fit. This means that major issues pertaining to China only tend to appear when there is an agenda serving it.
The newest phase
Now, the Biden administration has made a political design to escalate tensions with China by accusing it, in coordination with the Five Eyes, of state-backed hacking and cybercrime. The fact that the British government would sit on such an accusation for three years suggests both clear political purpose and timing. The question is, why? First, we are approaching a Presidential election in the US. It was always an inevitability that the administration would want to appear “tough” on China to prevent the issue from being used as an attack point by Biden’s rival, Donald Trump. As seen in 2020, an election year tends to become a year of very aggressive rhetoric and extreme theatrics.
Secondly, there is the goal of undermining China’s engagement with Europe. It has been publicly announced that Xi Jinping will visit a number of European countries in May, including France. As stated above, the US, with the support of the Five Eyes countries, actively seeks to damage Chinese diplomacy with Europe by weaponizing negative publicity in order to narrow political space for engagement.
What we see from this is that the US engages China on its own terms, but seeks to prevent those it deems as “allies” from doing the same, and thus resorts to psychological warfare through the manipulation of mass media.
In conclusion, when one sees these strategies being utilised, one recognises that the Western media has far less independence and impartiality than it claims to have, but is indirectly subject to the preferences of US policy. When the White House says “jump”, reporters ask, “how high?” and thus we see that a new propaganda campaign has been cultivated against Beijing, but of course, we should not be blind to the reality that there is no greater weaponisation of cyberspace and espionage in the world than the system created by the Five Eyes. And are we really going to pretend the CIA doesn’t hack anyone?
Trump warns: “lunatic” Biden could start World War III
By Ahmed Adel | April 5, 2024
Former US leader and current Republican Party presidential candidate Donald Trump warned in Michigan on April 2 that US President Joe Biden could trigger World War III. Trump’s comments come as he surges in the polls while Biden’s policy on Ukraine is continuously scrutinised. The former president also criticised the way his successor handled the nuclear issue, questioned his mental condition, and claimed that other foreign powers respected the US during his presidency.
“This guy has no clue,” the former president said about Biden. “He can’t put two sentences together, and he’s dealing with Putin, and he’s dealing with President Xi, and he’s dealing with Kim Jong-un. All people I know very well. We were under no threat from anybody until this guy got in office. Now they’re talking nuclear all the time. We didn’t talk nuclear.”
Trump recalled that, during his term, he rebuilt “nuclear power” to a level that “no one has” and that, in this context, it was “four safe years.”
“You were safe because they respected your president, and they respected the United States of America. And now you’re not safe. I will tell you we could end up in World War III with this lunatic,” he stressed.
According to a new Wall Street Journal poll published on April 3, Trump leads Biden in six of the seven closest swing states. Although Biden won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2020, Trump now holds a two-point lead in Michigan and a three-point lead in Pennsylvania. Biden also won Georgia, Nevada, and Arizona in the last election, but now the three states have stronger support for Trump, with the former president leading Georgia by three points, Nevada by four points, and Arizona by five points.
In a recent statement to USA Today, Trump spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said: “There are more than 100 polls showing President Trump crushing Joe Biden, including recent polling that has him leading in every key battleground state and winning independents by double digits.”
The prospect of Trump’s return has triggered an increase in debate among NATO allies about what Europe should do to ensure Washington continues to invest in transatlantic security. The Republican’s possible return also raised concerns among European officials that Trump could withdraw US aid to Ukraine because of comments that he would try to end the war in one day.
Reuters, citing five diplomats, reported on April 2 that NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg has proposed a $107 billion, five-year package of military aid to Ukraine so the Western alliance could have a more direct role in supporting Kiev. The NATO chief said the plan is in part “to shield against winds of political change,” but Trump is foremost on the minds of many, a senior NATO diplomat told the British agency.
The diplomats said that discussions were only at an early stage and that it was still unclear whether the $107 billion would be accepted by all 32 members—since a consensus must be reached—or how it would be financed.
“It goes some way to protecting in case of Trump. But it is impossible to create something Trump-proof,” said another diplomat. “A fund of 100 billion looks very optimistic, knowing how difficult it was to agree on a smaller amount at EU level.”
As part of the proposed package, NATO could also take over the operational functions of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, which coordinates arms deliveries from around 50 countries to Kiev and is now led by the US. With NATO’s Europe Supreme Allied Commander, General Chris Cavoli, in office, such a move could protect the Group from any political changes after the November US elections.
In effect, NATO recognises that there is a high possibility that Trump could return to the White House and is already preparing for a post-Biden scenario. Biden has supported most initiatives for Ukraine, but as his cognitive decline deepens and his numbers suffer in the polls, a Trump victory would almost certainly result in the retraction of support and force Kiev to negotiate with Moscow.
As Trump highlighted, Biden is a “lunatic” who is fanning the flames of a Third World War. Although it is unlikely the US would escalate with Russia to the extent of World War III for the sake of Ukraine, the former president highlights that global tensions were not as intense as they have been since Biden came to power, and he aims to return to this scenario. This prospect frightens NATO and much of Europe.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
World War III Isn’t Preordained (No Matter What They Say)
By Brad Pearce | The Libertarian Institute | April 4, 2024
A recent survey from YouGov found that 61% of Americans think a world war within the next five to ten years is “very likely” or “somewhat likely,” while only 21% say that such a scenario is “not very likely” or “not likely at all.”
It’s notable that Democrats, who are much more likely to view Russia as the source of the world’s evils, are less likely than Republicans to believe a world war is coming by a strong margin; although it is still only 28% of Democrats in the two “unlikely” categories. At the same time, Republicans who may want rapprochement with Russia mostly see this as a way to free up resources to fight China. The reality is that our ruling class has decided that a global conflict is inevitable and as such are doing nothing to stop it. Further, they are actively hostile to anything which could reduce hostilities with Russia while also proactively antagonizing China.
Our ruling class is far along in creating a simplistic good vs evil narrative which they hope to get into the history books—should anyone survive to write them—but for those of us living through it, it’s obvious the only cause would be the madness of today’s rulers. The most devastating of wars do not commonly arise out of unsolvable problems, but from rulers who refuse to solve them. Further, the drive towards oblivion is usually obvious to many observers, even if the rulers and much of the public are caught in a jingoistic mania. Things are just the same today.
There is a modern perception that World War I took the powers of Europe by surprise and that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand was a spark which made war inevitable. Perhaps this is believed because of the human need to understand the degree of devastation from a war which more than others lacks a clear meaning. However, author Rebecca West, in her landmark text Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, which was written in the 1930s, tells a different story. West explains that all of Europe expected that the Central Powers were preparing for an aggressive war, writing, “It is said that both France and Russia were for some reason convinced that Germany and Austria would not make war until 1916, and certainly that alone would explain the freedom with which Russia announced to various interested parties in the early months of 1914 that she herself was not ready to fight.”1
According to West’s account, Austria then worked quite hard to make the assassination their pretext although the plot had almost no connection to the Kingdom of Serbia. This isn’t a perfect parallel to our moment, but it’s notable that no one was trying to stop the war; they simply wanted time to arm themselves. Similarly, Germany and other countries in Europe have not hidden their current lack of preparedness, but made it clear their interest isn’t avoiding war, but fighting one. In the classic satirical antiwar novel The Good Soldier Svejk by Jaroslav Havec, the author repeatedly includes the line “an empire this stupid shouldn’t exist” in regards to the Austro-Hungarian ruling class; because of the war they, launched it soon wouldn’t.
The closest parallel to the dangers arising from the war in Ukraine comes from the first book of Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War. The most immediate cause of the war was civil dissension within a colony leading to conflict with the mother city, and ultimately seeking the protection of that city’s enemy. However, what has gotten more notice recently about this text is one passage that is applied to China, which is now known as the Thucydides Trap. Thucydides wrote, “The real cause however, I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.” For all that people have commented on this, it is not that incisive to say that one country’s power growing would alarm another country. What is more commonly missed is that no one forced Athens to expand recklessly to the extent that it caused war with Sparta. It was an unforced error which caused them the briefest moment of greatness followed by utter devastation. On the other side, no one forced Sparta to respond with war, and Sparta’s post-war supremacy was also short-lived. Unfortunately the leaders on both sides chose conflict over co-existence, and in many ways Greece never recovered from that war and the ones which followed.
In America it is part of our founding mythology that War of Independence against the United Kingdom was inevitable because of conflicting interests between the Americans and the British. However, if one reads key British authors of the time, it is clear that the wiser men of the era knew that the British government was barreling towards a devastating and pointless war for no good reason. The reality is that the volume of trade in the British American colonies was growing so rapidly that peaceful reconciliation at any cost was in Britain’s self-interest; The Wealth of Nations was published in 1776 and contains some incredible statistics in this regard. Directly taxing the American public instead of levying taxes from their colonial governments was in no way a point worth proving, especially given the profitability of peace and trade.
Edmund Burke was a leader of the peace faction in the British Parliament and his timeless words about avoiding war should be remembered. Burke wrote, in March 1775, “The proposition is Peace. Not Peace through the medium of War; not Peace to be hunted through the labyrinth of intricate and endless negociations; not Peace to arise out of universal discord…not Peace to depend on the Juridical Determination of perplexing questions… it is simply Peace; sought in its natural course… laid in principles purely pacific”2 It is obvious in our current times that peace could be preserved with Russia and China if it was approached with this principle, but that is considered out of the question by our rulers.
The world is currently a tinderbox and every day we watch our rulers pour on more gasoline and throw out extinguishers. I have to wonder what our descendants will think of us and the war which seems to be coming. There is certainly no chance that they can create a clear World War II sort of narrative about this. I often think of the European Union Commission President Ursula von der Leyen saying, “Ukrainians are ready to die for the European perspective,” a statement which should only exist as a parody of the vapid state of Western “values.” They want us to believe Vladimir Putin is obsessed with rolling his tanks across Europe, but that makes no sense and clearly isn’t possible. They certainly can’t admit the lengths they went to in order to provoke Russia into war in Ukraine.
There is absolutely no justification for not doing the work necessary for a lasting and equitable peace with Russia and China. When all is said and done, if there are people left to comment on the causes of the Third World War that so many think we are about to experience, perhaps people will say the same as the famous character Captain Edmund Blackadder said of World War I, “the real reason for the whole thing was that it was too much effort not to have a war.” The majority of the American public thinks countless millions will die in a new world war, and if that comes to pass, it will be because our rulers found going to war easier than making peace.
The West hates Serbia almost as much as Russia
By Timofey Bordachev | RT | April 3, 2024
Modern international politics, as practiced by Western countries, sometimes take on a completely absurd character. Recently, the Political Committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) approved the membership of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo in the Council of Europe. Let us remember that we are talking about a territory that is not a state recognized by all members of the international community, including many of PACE’s own participants. Additionally, its leaders are rightly suspected of cross-border criminal activity of the worst kind.
But should we be surprised?
It has long been no secret that all the so-called pan-European organizations have effectively become instruments of the United States and the European Union, whose sole purpose is to promote some of their policies towards the rest of the world. It can be security, in which case the OSCE is involved, or human rights, for which the Council of Europe is used. Even environmental policy is in the hands of the West – that, too, is a purely political story.
In other words, absolutely everything is used to create endless pressure on those with whom the US and the EU are currently facing off against. We recall, for example, a case in which one of the European Parliament’s resolutions on the elections in Russia included a reference to the need for Moscow to lift sanitary restrictions on vegetable products from an EU country.
It is not surprising that all institutions and agreements in which the West has a dominant position lose their original meaning over time. No-one in Washington, Brussels, Berlin or Paris really remembers why the OSCE or the Council of Europe were created. This may seem like a joke, and an exaggeration. However, many years of experience in dealing with our American and Western European colleagues have make it abundantly clear that they have such a distorted perception.
This is partly due to the almost total impunity with which the West has operated since the Cold War. It is also due to the fact that all these institutions were created to serve the very specific selfish goals of the US and EU. We in Russia, like many others, once genuinely believed that international politics could develop along the lines of new principles after the Cold War. But it turned out that this was not the case.
Where the West is aware of its irresponsibility, it acts as if we are not even in the 19th century, but in the 17th or 18th century. Moreover, the Balkans are indeed a very special topic for Brussels and Washington. If the West was cynical about its post-Cold War “legacy”, it was doubly so about the former Yugoslavia.
In relations with Russia, and even with the rest of the former Soviet Union, the US and Western Europe still tried, or pretended to try, to maintain a certain ceremonialism, to make a show of the relative equality of their partners. At one stage, Russia was even invited to participate in the G8, the main body for coordinating Western policy towards the outside world. Of course, we are well aware that all these ritualistic actions meant very little in practice. In the mid-1990s, for example, no one in the West hid the fact that the activities of the Council of Europe were nothing more than a nice backdrop for putting pressure on Russia and other “post-Soviet” countries. From the point of view of formalities and ritual declarations, however, everything looked civilized for a long time. Russia was even able to use certain instruments of the Council of Europe – very limitedly, of course, and where it did not interfere with the US, EU or the nationalist regimes in the Baltic republics under their tutelage.
We should hardly be surprised that a gang of organ traffickers has been admitted to the Council of Europe. This is quite natural, after all the support the Baltic regimes have received from Brussels and Washington. Their policies towards minorities and freedom are basically similar to the most radical examples of 100 years ago.
Serbia’s prime minister responded by saying that his country might withdraw from PACE. But there are serious doubts that Belgrade will ultimately decide to do so.
First, if a Serbian politician openly opposes Western dictates, he puts the lives of his citizens directly at risk from the same Kosovar militants and religious fanatics. We have already seen time and time again how even minor manifestations of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo have been met with an immediate armed response. This was followed by the strongest warnings from Brussels and Washington. Secondly, a formal expression of discontent with the EU by Belgrade would likely immediately lead to open or undeclared sanctions against Serbia. We do not know the structure of the country’s foreign trade well enough, but even the obstruction of transport and logistics routes would probably cause irreparable damage to it.
So with the republic surrounded on all sides by NATO countries, the consequences for the Serbian economy and population would be very dramatic. Despite the fact that the vast majority of Serbs believe that Kosovo is part of their sovereign territory, the ruling party would be doomed to lose the next elections. This is for two reasons: first, because of the worsening economic situation, and then because of the new concessions to the West that it would have to make in order to achieve a softening of the pressure from Washington and Brussels. In the same case, if Belgrade decided to do what it wants, everything would end very tragically for it.
After all, past experience tells us that the US and EU are unlikely to mind if another failed state appears in Europe.
For all the mistakes and ambiguities of Prime Minister Alexander Vucic government’s position on Russia, it has so far done relatively well at the only task it can really control – which is prolonging the uncertain state of affairs. Moreover, it has generally been quite neighborly in its dealings with us, especially given Belgrade’s geopolitical position.
The state of Western attitudes towards Serbia and its people is really interesting, because it reflects an irrational hatred that is not easy to explain. Perhaps it is a matter of psychology and perception – Americans and Western Europeans may see the Serbs as “Russians” who are weaker and can be defeated. They are much smaller than Russia, disproportionately weaker, and surrounded by zones of total NATO influence.
In this case, what is happening in the Balkans is a very pertinent, if tragic, example for Russia of what would happen to us if we were forced to surrender. The decades that have passed since NATO’s aggression against Yugoslavia, not to mention Belgrade’s constant declarations about moving towards “European” integration, cannot cure the complex of triumph over a defeated enemy.
Serbia, of course, is not likely to join the EU or NATO. But it is very possible that it will survive the pressure from these extremely aggressive blocs. That is what we will have to see in the next decade.
Timofey Bordachev is the Program Director of the Valdai Club.




