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Moscow accuses Bloomberg of spreading ‘fake news’

RT || December 26, 2025

Bloomberg is spreading “fake news” by claiming to have inside access to Kremlin information, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Thursday.

The senior diplomat criticized the news agency after it relayed what it claimed to be Moscow’s attitude toward a 20-point peace proposal presented this week by Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky. The story cited an anonymous source described as “a person close to the Kremlin.”

“This purported news outlet has no reliable sources close to the Kremlin. Only unreliable ones. And the wording ‘close to the Kremlin’ serves only as a cover up for fake news,” Zakharova said on Telegram.

Kiev’s proposal, which Zelensky claimed was discussed with US officials as part of President Donald Trump’s efforts to resolve the ongoing conflict, envisions an 800,000-strong Ukrainian army backed by NATO members and an immediate ceasefire with the current front line frozen.

Moscow has declined to make its position public, saying sensitive diplomacy must be conducted privately. Publicizing one’s negotiation stance is “inadvisable” under the circumstances, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said.

Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian presidential envoy involved in normalization talks with the US, suggested a “US/UK/EU deep-state-aligned fake media machine” is waging a pressure campaign to undermine Trump’s agenda, including on Ukraine.

Previously, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accused Reuters of peddling “propaganda” about Russia after the agency alleged that a US intelligence assessment had reported that Moscow sought to “capture all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire.” Russia said the claim was false regardless of whether or not such a US document exists.

December 26, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

Next year’s election is a choice between peace and war, warns Hungarian PM Orbán

By Thomas Brooke | Remix News | December 23, 2025

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has said that recent anti-war rallies in Hungary serve to explain to the public what he described as decisions being taken behind closed doors as Europe prepares for war.

Speaking on TV2’s Tények program, he said European leaders at a summit over the weekend had effectively convened a “war council,” with speeches focused on defeating Russia, and argued that a growing divide has emerged between the United States and Europe since the inauguration of Donald Trump in January.

“Previously, it was unthinkable within NATO that the United States would say no to something and European states would still go ahead and do it,” the prime minister said.

Orbán warned Europe is much closer to war than most Hungarians realize, noting what he described as a German war plan to seize Russian currency reserves held in Western Europe, a move he claimed that would openly turn Europe into Russia’s enemy.

According to the prime minister, Hungary will now have a war-free Christmas, but the danger has not passed. He said the European Union wants to provide Ukraine with €90 billion over two years, despite having no funds of its own, and is therefore seeking loans from banks that he claimed would never be repaid. Orbán said Slovakia, the Czech Republic, and Hungary refused to provide guarantees for the borrowing. “This would have cost Hungarian families 400 billion forints. We will not pay that — full stop,” he said.

Orbán argued that Europe has more private-sector assets in Russia than the value of the funds it would have seized, adding that Hungary also holds significant corporate assets there. He expressed hope that U.S.-Russian negotiations would succeed despite what he called counter-campaigning by Europe’s political elite. He claimed that anti-war views now dominate Western public opinion as the economic costs of the conflict rise.

“From a Hungarian perspective, war is the most horrific thing that can happen,” he said. “We know how a war consumes a nation’s future and decades of hard work.”

The prime minister also argued that financial interests are pushing politicians toward conflict. He said bankers were driving Europe toward war, as they did before World War I, and claimed that within months the divide between Hungarian and European politics would become even clearer. Germany, he said, is pro-war, as is the European People’s Party, while his administration in Budapest represents what he called the party of peace.

“We will not allow ourselves to be dragged into war,” Orbán said, adding that Europe’s stated aim of being ready for war with Russia by 2030 turns Hungary’s upcoming elections into a choice between peace and war. “We — and I personally — will succeed in keeping Hungary out of the war,” he said.

Turning to domestic policy, Orbán spoke of what he described as a “tax revolution,” saying the government had launched fixed-rate home-ownership and business loan programs, restored the fourteenth-month pension, and introduced lifetime tax exemptions for mothers with two or three children. “By the end of the year, every program was launched. Only we are doing this in an era preparing for war,” he said.

On the opposition Tisza Party, Orbán said, “The Tisza Party’s program is Brussels’ program. But Hungary must not take the Brussels path — we must stay on the Hungarian path.” He added that Hungary’s low household energy prices could only be maintained through agreements with Russia, the United States, and Turkey, warning that EU plans to scrap the policy would amount to “brutal austerity” for families.

December 24, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Leave a comment

Ukraine: Does Europe Work for a Stalled Conflict?

Why negotiations are blocked and why a long, managed conflict is becoming the default outcome.

By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – December 23, 2025

Negotiations to end the conflict in Ukraine appear stalled not because of a lack of diplomatic encounters, but because there is no shared understanding of what the proxy war is about, nor of what a settlement should address. The Berlin meeting illustrated this structural deadlock.

Russia continues to restate a limited and stable set of core demands, above all, Ukrainian neutrality and the rollback of NATO’s military footprint, while Europeans and Ukrainians advance proposals that explicitly negate these demands. This is not a negotiation gap; it is a conceptual incompatibility.

The American role exacerbates this problem. The United States oscillates between mediator and belligerent, without committing to a coherent diplomatic line. Instead of deploying professional diplomatic teams with a clear mandate, Washington relies on ad hoc envoys and transactional approaches. Trump’s inclination towards deal-making, inspired by business logic rather than diplomatic craft, leads to contradictory signaling: reassurance to Moscow followed by alignment with European and Ukrainian maximalist positions. This reinforces Russian perceptions that talks are performative rather than substantive.

From a European perspective, the refusal to listen to Russia’s security concerns is justified through a normative framing of the conflict: Ukraine is the victim, Russia the aggressor, and therefore only Ukrainian security deserves guarantees. This position, articulated explicitly by EU figures such as Kaja Kallas, forecloses any bargaining space.

Russia is delegitimised as a security actor, and empathy, understood here not as moral approval but as analytical capacity to understand the other side’s threat perception, is absent. The result is a strategy that implicitly accepts the continuation of the conflict until Ukraine collapses militarily or Russia concedes its defeat, a scenario that seems unrealistic.

Meanwhile, Russia senses that time is on its side. Battlefield dynamics, industrial mobilisation, and political cohesion reinforce Moscow’s assessment that it can achieve its objectives through attrition. In this context, concessions would be irrational from a realist standpoint.

As negotiations fail, Europe and Ukraine increasingly rely on asymmetric strategies, such as sabotage, attacks on Russian assets, and irregular warfare, openly endorsed by Western intelligence discourse, including references by the head of MI6 to Second World War–style special operations. This marks a shift from conflict resolution to conflict management.

Financing Ukraine: strategic risk without political consent

Europe’s approach to financing Ukraine reveals a second layer of contradiction. The decision not to confiscate Russian frozen assets, but instead to fund Ukraine through EU borrowing (€90 billion for 2026–2027) acknowledges the legal, financial, and systemic risks involved. Belgium’s concerns over Euroclear, the threat of credit downgrades by rating agencies such as Fitch, and the exposure of European pension funds and financial institutions underline the fragility of this strategy.

Yet this choice was made without a social pact with European citizens. There has been no democratic debate proportionate to the scale of financial commitment. At a time when European societies face mounting pressures on housing, welfare, pensions, and infrastructure, war financing is normalised as a moral and face-saving necessity rather than a political choice. This fuels domestic resentment and strengthens nationalist and far-right parties across the continent.

Strategically, European financing does not resolve the conflict. Money cannot substitute for manpower nor reverse battlefield dynamics. Ukraine’s primary constraint is not just liquidity but, above all, soldiers. Moreover, persistent concerns about corruption and weak accountability mechanisms undermine public support for continued transfers. Rather than bringing peace closer, European funding functions as a holding mechanism: prolonging the conflict to weaken Russia, buying time to rearm European militaries, and delaying political reckoning of the defeat.

In this sense, Ukraine increasingly functions as a proxy, absorbing the human cost of a broader confrontation while Europe avoids direct military engagement. This is a morally uncomfortable but analytically coherent reading of current policy.

The fear of a Russian “victory” and the erosion of Europe’s political core

The prospect of Russia being perceived as the winner is existentially threatening for European elites. It would symbolise not only Ukrainian defeat but also NATO’s limits and Europe’s strategic weakness. More profoundly, it would undermine the EU’s self-image as a political peace project and a normative power.

To prevent this outcome, European leaders and media have invested heavily in a simplified narrative: Russia as sole aggressor, Ukraine as pure victim, and Europe as moral defender. Yet two facts disrupt this narrative. First, the EU has not presented a concrete peace proposal of its own.

Second, dissenting voices are increasingly marginalised or silenced, contradicting Europe’s professed commitment to pluralism and freedom of expression. In several European countries, journalists, analysts, and former officials who question NATO strategy, the feasibility of a military victory, or the costs of prolonged war – such as George Galloway in the United Kingdom, former Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud, French analysts like Xavier Moreau or the online platform Euroactiv – have been systematically delegitimised, deplatformed, or labelled as disinformation vectors rather than engaged on the substance of their arguments. The closure of debate, whether through media pressure or formal and informal censorship, erodes Europe’s intellectual resilience.

As nuance becomes suspect and contradiction is framed as betrayal, Europe loses its capacity to think strategically. Political realism, understood as the ability to engage with power politics without moral illusion, has largely disappeared from mainstream European discourse. NATO expansion is no longer discussed as a variable in Russian threat perception but as an unquestionable good. The assumption persists that Russia will eventually weaken, accept European terms, and even relinquish frozen assets. There is no empirical basis for this belief.

Is there a way out?

A negotiated settlement remains theoretically possible but politically unlikely. European leaders seek a face-saving exit that preserves moral superiority while avoiding military escalation. Yet they are unwilling to make the concessions such an exit would require.

Europe will not send troops to fight Russia, but it will also not accept defeat. The most probable outcome is therefore a long, tense cold peace, akin to the Korean model: frozen frontlines, unresolved status, and continuous low-level confrontation.

This outcome will shape European–Russian relations for decades. It will also accelerate Europe’s internal fragmentation, as member states increasingly diverge in their strategic orientations, weaken its social model, and normalise permanent rearmament. Europe pays the bill, calls it principle, and postpones the hardest decisions at the cost of Ukrainian lives and its own political coherence.


Ricardo Martins, PhD in Sociology, specializing in International Relations and Geopolitics

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky Says Some US Security Guarantees to Ukraine Will Not Be Made Public

Sputnik – 23.12.2025

Volodymyr Zelensky has said that the United States will provide security guarantees to Ukraine, although some of them will not be made public.

“There are security guarantees between us, the Europeans, and the US – a framework agreement. There is a separate document between us and the US – bilateral security guarantees. These, as we see it, should be considered by the US Congress, with some classified details and additions,” Zelensky said during a press conference on Monday.

Last week, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that the European Union and the US had agreed to provide security guarantees for Ukraine, similar to NATO’s Article 5. At the same time, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that Moscow and Washington had reached an understanding that Ukraine must return to the non-aligned, neutral, and non-nuclear foundations of its statehood.

Since mid-November, the US has been promoting a new peace plan for Ukraine. On December 2, Russian President Vladimir Putin received US special presidential envoy Steve Witkoff and US president’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, at the Kremlin. The US representatives’ visit to Russia was related to the discussion of the US peace plan for Ukraine. The Kremlin stated that Russia remained open to negotiations and committed to the Anchorage discussions.

December 23, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

Reuters spreads lies and propaganda to prolong Ukraine conflict – Tulsi Gabbard

©  Alex Wong / Getty Images
RT | December 21, 2025

US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has accused European NATO states of trying to pull Washington into a direct confrontation with Russia and slammed Reuters for “fomenting hysteria” in order to sell war.

Russia has consistently rejected claims that it plans to attack EU countries, describing them as warmongering tactics used by Western politicians to justify inflated military budgets. This week, President Vladimir Putin once again dismissed such claims as “lies and nonsense.”

Yet in a report published on Friday, Reuters claimed that “Putin intends to capture all of Ukraine and reclaim parts of Europe that belonged to the former Soviet empire,” citing anonymous sources allegedly “familiar with US intelligence.”

“No, this is a lie and propaganda Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides,” Gabbard retorted in a post on X.

Dangerously, you are promoting this false narrative to block President Trump’s peace efforts and foment hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia.

According to Gabbard, US intelligence assessments instead indicate that Russia “seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO” and lacks the capacity to wage one even if it wanted to.

Moscow insists it is defending its citizens in the Ukraine conflict and has accused NATO of provoking hostilities and derailing US-backed peace initiatives. Putin, who has repeatedly dismissed any intention to restore the Soviet Union, has accused NATO countries of “preparing for a major war” by building up and modernizing offensive forces while “brainwashing” their populations with claims that a clash with Russia is inevitable.

Putin’s special envoy Kirill Dmitriev, who is currently engaged in Ukraine peace talks with US interlocutors in Miami, praised Gabbard as a rare voice of reason.

“Gabbard is great not only for documenting the Obama/Biden origins of the Russia hoax, but now for exposing the deep-state warmonger machinery trying to incite WW3 by fueling anti-Russian paranoia across the UK and EU,” Dmitriev wrote on X. “Voices of reason matter – restore sanity, peace, and security.”

December 21, 2025 Posted by | Deception, Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

Daniel Davis: Russia Preparing Retaliation – Oreshnik Deployed & Seizing Odessa

Glenn Diesen | December 20, 2025

Lt. Col. Daniel Davis is a 4x combat veteran, the recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling, and is the host of the Daniel Davis Deep Dive YouTube channel. Lt. Col. Davis discusses how Russia is preparing itself for the possibility of Europe attacking Russia by deploying a powerful arsenal of Oreshniks. The attacks on Russia’s civilian vessels will likely end with Russia seizing Odessa, which could also trigger the Europeans to send troops. We are rapidly going up the escalation ladder as diplomacy fails.

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December 20, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , | Leave a comment

Western media peddle Russia’s ‘abduction’ of Ukrainian children to prolong the proxy war

It is not Moscow, but rather the Kiev regime and its backers who are using children as “pawns of war”

By Finian Cunningham | RT | December 18, 2025

It’s not clear if the Trump administration wants to genuinely resolve the proxy war with Russia, or if it is merely trying to extricate itself from the mess Washington helped instigate. But one thing is clear: the major Western European capitals are desperate to keep the war going.

Various pretexts are being used to frustrate a diplomatic process. NATO-like security guarantees to Ukraine pushed by Berlin, London, and Paris are likely to be a non-starter for Moscow. So too are moves by the Europeans to use Russia’s seized wealth as a “reparations loan.”

Another issue that Europeans are dredging up is the allegation that Russia has abducted Ukrainian children. This emotive issue has support in Washington among the hawkish anti-Russia factions in the US establishment opposed to Trump’s diplomacy with Moscow.

Earlier this month, the European states sponsored a resolution at the United Nations General Assembly calling on Russia to return all Ukrainian children that it is alleged to have forcibly relocated from Ukrainian territory during the past four years of conflict. The president of the UNGA is former German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock.

An article published by the Washington DC-based Atlantic Council contended: “The issue of abducted Ukrainian children is especially relevant for Ukrainians as they debate painful political compromises, territorial concessions, and security guarantees premised on Western assurances. If world leaders cannot secure the return of the most vulnerable victims of Russia’s aggression, how could Ukrainians trust that those same leaders can prevent Russia from reigniting the war or committing new atrocities?”

In other words, the allegation of child abduction is being made into a condition for Russia to fulfill for the diplomatic resolution of the conflict.  The trouble is that the condition is impossible to fulfill because the allegation is so vague and unfounded. Russia has denounced the accusation that it forcibly relocated Ukrainian children as a “web of lies.”

In March 2023, the Hague-based International Criminal Court indicted Russian President Vladimir Putin, along with Russian Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova, of war crimes related to the unlawful deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia.

Moscow is not a member of the ICC and rejected the charges as null and void.

Still, however, the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors continue to level the accusations. The Western media, as usual, serve to amplify the narrative despite the lack of evidence.

At the recent UN General Assembly debate, British representative Archie Young stated: “Today is a moment to reflect on the plight of Ukrainian children who have become victims of Russia’s illegal invasion. We all have an obligation to protect children and must not allow Russia to use them as pawns of war. According to the government of Ukraine, corroborated by independent mechanisms, more than 19,500 Ukrainian children have been forcibly deported to Russia or within the temporarily occupied territories.”

Note how the British official peddles a series of disputable claims that are transformed into normative facts by the Western media’s repetition.

It is not Russia, but rather the Kiev regime and its Western backers who are using children as “pawns of war.”

Moscow has openly stated that up to 730,000 children have been relocated to the Russian Federation since hostilities erupted in February 2022. Most of the children are accompanied by parents and come from the territories that seceded from Ukraine in legally held referenda.

Of the nearly eight million people who fled Ukraine, the largest share of them – an estimated 35% – have taken shelter in Russia. The second and third biggest host countries for Ukrainian refugees after Russia are Poland and Germany. But the European governments and media are not accusing Warsaw or Berlin of “child abductions.”

In a war zone affecting millions of people, it is absurd to make out that displaced families and their children are being kidnapped. The vast majority of people have willingly sought shelter within Russian territory to escape the violence on the frontlines – violence that has been fueled by NATO states pumping hundreds of millions of dollars’ and euros’ worth of weapons into Ukraine.

Moscow points out that the figure of 20,000 to 35,000 that the Western governments and media claim for children “abducted by Russia” is never substantiated with names or identifying details.

Russian authorities say that the Kiev regime has provided the names of just over 300 individuals. Moscow has endeavored to return individuals where it is mutually requested, although some of the identities provided by the Kiev regime have turned out to be adults or they are not present in Russian territory.

In the chaos of war, it is all too easy to throw around vague numbers and exploit the imprecision for propaganda. The European governments and media are doing that and embellishing the emotive issue with dark claims that Russia is sending masses of Ukrainian children to “re-education camps” for “indoctrination.”

One of the main sources for such claims is the Yale Humanitarian Research Lab. It has produced unverified reports that Russia has sent 35,000 Ukrainian children to hundreds of brainwashing centers all across Russia to erase their national identity.

A major supporter of the Yale research group is former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. This association strongly suggests that the group is a CIA-sponsored propaganda tool. But the US and European media regularly cite the research and amplify its claims as reliable facts.

The exploitation of children for war propaganda is a staple of Western intelligence agencies and the media.

A classic case was in Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s when the Western media were replete with horror stories of the Viet Cong torturing Vietnamese children, as recounted by James Bradley in his book, ‘Precious Freedom’. The supposed communist guerrillas reportedly stabbed Vietnamese children with chopsticks in their ears so that they could not hear the Bible being preached. Such alleged atrocities were widely published by the Western media to whip up public support for the US military deployment “to save Vietnam from evil communists.” But it was all CIA-orchestrated lies. More than three million Vietnamese were killed in a war based on American intelligence and media lies.

A re-run of the psychological operation today is the lurid claims that Putin’s evil Russia has kidnapped tens of thousands of children for brainwashing in detention camps. Some reports even claim Russia has sent the children to North Korea.

The Western media are doing their usual service of peddling war propaganda and ensuring diplomacy is rendered impossible because Russia is portrayed as monstrous.

Finian Cunningham is an award-winning journalist and co-author of Killing Democracy: Western Imperialism’s Legacy of Regime Change and Media Manipulation. For over 25 years, he worked as a sub-editor and writer for The Mirror, Irish Times, Irish Independent and Britain’s Independent, among others.

December 19, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Russophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

No More Ukraine Proxy War? You’re a Traitor!

Glenn Diesen & Lt Col Daniel Davis
Glenn Diesen | December 16, 2025

I had the pleasure of speaking with Lt. Col. Daniel Davis about how Europe has trapped itself in ideological narratives of good versus evil

December 18, 2025 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Czech–Slovak alignment signals growing dissatisfaction with Brussels’ authoritarianism

By Lucas Leiroz | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 18, 2025

The recent visit of Czech parliamentary representatives to Slovakia marked an important step in the consolidation of a sovereignty-oriented axis in Central Europe. During high-level meetings with Slovak political leaders, discussions focused on restoring strategic coordination between the two historically linked countries, particularly in relation to their shared opposition to policies imposed by Brussels. The diplomatic engagement was framed not as a symbolic gesture, but as a practical effort to rebuild political alignment in the face of growing pressure from EU institutions.

At the center of the talks were issues that directly affect national autonomy: resistance to the EU’s Green Deal, opposition to expanded emissions trading mechanisms, and rejection of the EU’s mandatory migration framework. Czech representatives openly emphasized the need for joint action inside the EU to block measures that undermine economic stability and constitutional sovereignty. Slovak officials, in turn, signaled readiness to elevate bilateral cooperation to the highest possible level, clearly indicating a convergence of interests rooted in self-preservation rather than ideological alignment.

The intensification of political coordination between Czechia and Slovakia is not a coincidence, nor merely a bilateral diplomatic gesture. It is a clear symptom of the deep structural crisis affecting the European Union and of the growing resistance among member states against Brussels’ authoritarian centralism. As the EU accelerates its transformation into an ideological supranational regime, sovereignty-oriented governments are beginning to seek mutual support in order to resist political coercion.

Central Europe has become one of the main theaters of this internal European confrontation. Czech and Slovak leaders increasingly understand that isolated resistance is ineffective when facing the European Commission’s legal, financial, and political pressure. For this reason, closer cooperation between Prague and Bratislava represents a rational survival strategy within a bloc that no longer tolerates dissent. The goal is not reforming the EU from within, but creating political leverage to block or neutralize destructive policies imposed from above.

The issues around which this cooperation is forming are revealing. Opposition to the so-called Green Deal, emissions trading schemes, and migration quotas highlights the EU’s true nature: an anti-national project that sacrifices economic stability and social cohesion in the name of ideological dogmas. Environmentalism, in this context, has nothing to do with ecology and everything to do with deindustrialization, economic dependency, and social control. Central European economies are being deliberately weakened to fit a model designed in Brussels and Berlin, with complete disregard for local realities.

Migration policy offers an even clearer example of EU authoritarianism. The forced redistribution of migrants, imposed under the threat of sanctions, openly violates national sovereignty and public will. The fact that Czechia and Slovakia seek coordination on this matter shows that Brussels’ strategy of divide and rule is starting to fail. When states coordinate their resistance, the EU’s coercive mechanisms lose effectiveness.

This process must also be understood within a broader geopolitical framework. The EU today functions as a subordinate instrument of NATO’s strategic interests. Brussels’ aggressive Russophobic agenda has no rational basis in European security needs and has only resulted in economic collapse, energy shortages, and political instability. Any government that questions this suicidal alignment is immediately labeled as “extremist” or as a “threat to Europe.”

The EU’s reaction to Slovak constitutional reforms aimed at strengthening national sovereignty further exposes its authoritarian character. Brussels no longer tolerates constitutional diversity; it demands ideological conformity. Any attempt to reassert national authority is treated as a threat to the “European order.” In reality, what is being defended is not democracy, but bureaucratic power.

The Czech–Slovak alignment may serve as a precedent for other dissatisfied member states. As economic conditions worsen and public discontent grows, the EU will face increasing internal fragmentation. The bloc’s future trajectory points not toward deeper integration, but toward open confrontation between sovereignty and supranational control.

Ultimately, cooperation between Czechia and Slovakia reflects a fundamental truth: the European Union is no longer a voluntary association of nations, but a coercive political structure in decline. Resistance is no longer ideological – it is existential. And as more states realize this, Brussels’ grip over Europe will inevitably weaken.

December 18, 2025 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Malthusian Ideology, Phony Scarcity | , , , | 1 Comment

The Map Is Not the Territory: Ukraine, Manufactured Consent, and Europe’s War of Attrition

By Gerry Nolan | Ron Paul Institute | December 16, 2025

Western headlines are screaming that Ukraine has “encircled” Kupyansk city… a glorified town, selling it as a nightmare for Moscow. But this is not a battlefield report. It is narrative management, timed precisely to negotiations in Berlin. Kupyansk is not Stalingrad. It is not Kursk. It is not even a decisive urban fight. It is a ruined settlement on the Oskol, a former logistics node reduced to rubble, where control is measured not in flags but in fire control, drone dominance, and whether men can be rotated without being killed.

And when even Reuters couches claims as “unverified,” you know what that means. When it hedges, pauses, and inserts distance between claims and confirmation, it is signaling that fog is being weaponised. What exists on the ground is block-by-block ruin fighting, contested neighbourhoods like Yubileynyy, clashes near Mirovoye and Radkovka, infiltration attempts, temporary interdictions. Battalion-scale collisions between exhausted units in a place that barely functions as a glorified town.

The unit scale tells the truth the headlines obscure. Kupyansk has never hosted a force capable of deciding a front. Within the urban core, the Russian presence has been limited and exposed, with little time to dig in deeper, the town’s ruins making sustained fortification difficult, relying on fire control rather than secured occupation. With thousands tied down protecting the flanks and barely a battalion inside the city itself, Ukrainian assaults are not sweeping counteroffensives but concentrated pushes by swarms of worn formations, often built from forcibly mobilised men with minimal training, starving and thin on ammunition, cannibalized from fronts like Sumy, and thrown into an urban graveyard to manufacture leverage.

This is not manoeuvre warfare. It is attritional contact deliberately framed as momentum to serve a media and political narrative rather operational gain. What matters is that the map is not the territory. In this war, a coloured overlay often marks a brief window of drone interdiction, hours, not control. Fire control can deny movement, but without sustainment it cannot secure ground. Fire control without sustainment does not produce breakthroughs. It produces graveyards. Ukraine has been forced by its Western patrons into too many of them already.

Kupyansk does not change the war unless it becomes part of a broader operational rollback and it won’t. Otherwise, it is a bad PR bargaining chip, paid for in blood.

While cameras fixate on Kupyansk, the real pressure story runs elsewhere, across a widening arc Western coverage fragments to prevent pattern recognition. West of Russian liberated Seversk, claims and denials continue, but the geometry is clear: Ukrainian forces are stretched thin, defending ground without strategic depth. Around encircled Lyman, the contest is about lines of communication and Ukranian reserve erosion, not symbolism.

Central to the Donbass arc, Pokrovsk and Mirnograd matter not because of names, but because they anchor logistics. Russian control here forces a stark contrast in how the war is being fought. Ukraine is expending irreplaceable manpower to manufacture moments, brief tactical actions designed to win optics for a day. Russia, by contrast, is trading space, fire control, and logistics denial for outcomes that compound over time. One side is managing headlines. The other is managing the war.

To the south, the picture is more dangerous still. Around Gulyaypole, pressure is persistent and cumulative, not theatrical. And beyond it lies the real anxiety Europe refuses to discuss openly, the slow, grinding push toward Zaporozhye city. This is not a sprint. It is a methodical march Westward. If current trends hold, Zaporozhye can be operationally threatened, even encircled in less than six months. That outcome would dwarf any skirmish in the small town of Kupyansk.

This is where time asymmetry becomes decisive. Russia is fighting a time-positive war: industrial scaling and real capacity that dwarfs the fiat, paper-tiger illusory capacity of NATO; deep manpower reserves; and a level of internal cohesion sufficient to sustain a long campaign. Ukraine, by contrast, is fighting a time-negative war, with catastrophic demographic collapse, mass emigration, forced conscription, and shrinking public consent. Every Ukrainian media counteroffensive now borrows against a future that no longer exists to replenish it.

This is one of the real reasons behind Trump’s push. Less sentiment. Not ideology. Geometry. Timelines. Arithmetic. Washington understands that delay only makes the endgame worse, militarily and politically for project Ukraine. Europe understands this too. But Europe cannot admit it without confessing its humiliation.

So Europe clings to suicidal optics. It inflates Kupyansk. It sells illusory leverage. And it sacrifices Ukrainians to buy time, not for victory, but for narrative survival.

Here is the truth Europe works hardest to bury beneath headlines and choreographed resolve: this war no longer reflects the will of the Ukrainian people, and, in truth, it only ever did through manufactured consent that has now collapsed. Not marginally. Not ambiguously. Overwhelmingly. Even after years of saturation messaging, censorship, emergency laws, and relentless narrative conditioning, roughly four-fifths of Ukrainians now demand peace. It is devastating precisely because it persists despite one of the most intensive information campaigns the modern West has ever mounted.

Instead, men are dragged from streets and their homes, beaten, bundled into vans, forced into uniforms, and sent to the front. Videos of violent conscription squads no longer shock because they are the tragic norm.

This is not mobilisation. It is cowardly and punitive coercion, the final refuge of elites who lack legitimacy but demand sacrifice. It is the politics of cowardice, where those who made the decisions never bear the cost, and those who pay the price were never given a choice. These wars are always fought with other people’s sons, for objectives that dissolve under scrutiny, while the architects retreat behind speeches, security details, and moral posturing.

When a state must kidnap its own citizens to sustain a war, it has crossed the final moral line: it is no longer defending a nation, because it never was, but cannibalising one, deliberately sacrificing its people as a tip of the spear against a stronger Russia, to shield the reputations, fortunes, and careers of elites who will never bleed, never fight, and never answer for the ruin they leave behind.

Washington shattered Europe’s strategic autonomy years ago and quietly handed the bill to the continent. NATO expansion without strategy. Economic warfare without insulation. Energy sabotage without a contingency secured. The result was inevitable… Accelerated deindustrialisation, inflation, social fracture, political fragility. Europe emerged poorer, weaker, and strategically irrelevant, yet still clinging to the language of moral authority.

Rather than confront this collapse, Europe chose the refuge of absolutism. Negotiation became heresy. Compromise became betrayal. Peace became appeasement. Diplomacy itself was criminalised, because diplomacy invites the most dangerous question of all. What was this for?

And that question cannot be answered without consequences. Because peace does something war cannot. War suspends politics. Peace resurrects accountability.

Europe does not fear losing the war as much as it fears surviving it with memory intact.

That is why the war must continue. Not to save Ukraine, but to postpone reckoning, at the hands of Europeans.

Which brings us back to Kupyansk.

Kupyansk is not a battlefield turning point. It is a tombstone. Not only for the men buried beneath its rubble, but for Europe’s moral credibility itself.

What will damn this war in the historical record is not how it began, but how long it continued after its flimsy justification collapsed. When even manufactured consent evaporated, when diplomacy was deliberately buried, when Russian defeat quietly gave way to arithmetic, the war did not stop. It hardened. Not because it could still be won, but because ending it would have forced admissions no ruling class was prepared to make.

Kupyansk is not remembered because it mattered militarily. It matters because it exposes the moment when the war ceased to be about territory at all. It marks the point where Europe chose blood over truth, coercion over consent, and narrative survival over human life. Not out of strength, but out of fear.

History is unforgiving toward wars waged without consent and prolonged without purpose. It does not care about intentions, speeches, or moral language. It records only what was done, who benefited, and who paid. And when the record is written, it will show that Ukraine was not denied peace because peace was impossible, but because peace would have ended the lie.

That is the real defeat.

December 17, 2025 Posted by | Fake News, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

AfD: “The German government is trying to create the conditions for war without the consent of the people”

AfD Co-chair Tino Chrupalla says the EU’s sanctions, militarism, and support for Israeli crimes are eroding Europe’s democracy and sovereignty.

By Tunc Akkoc | The Cradle | December 16, 2025

With western double standards laid bare by Israel’s war on Gaza, Germany’s political order is facing an unprecedented rupture. The ruling Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU), both staunch backers of Ukraine and Israel, have pushed Berlin into economic turmoil with self-destructive sanctions on Russia and unconditional support for Tel Aviv. Now, with the country in recession and the public burdened by soaring energy costs, Germany’s once-stable centrism is crumbling.

Trends in German politics point to a change unseen since World War II. The INSA poll conducted between 8 and 12 December shows the CDU/CSU has fallen to 24 percent, while the SPD has dropped to 14 percent. The rising force is the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party. In the INSA poll, its vote share reaches 26 percent. These figures are consistent with the Ipsos results from 7 to 9 November.

The AfD was founded in 2013, following the 2008 financial crisis. It is now the main opposition party and even a contender for power – that is, if they are allowed to participate in the elections. The party criticizes “mass migration, crime, high taxes, silenced opposition, and poverty.” It is labeled “far-right” by the ‘centrist’ neoliberal bloc. So what views do they defend to be considered “far-right”? What exactly are they saying about current issues in Europe, Germany, and the world?

Tino Chrupalla has co-chaired the AfD party with Alice Weidel since 2019. A Bundestag member since 2017, Chrupalla hails from East Germany and started his political journey in the youth wing of the Christian Democrats. He joined the AfD in 2015 and was the party’s representative at US President Donald Trump’s second presidential inauguration in January 2025.

In this exclusive interview with The Cradle, Chrupalla speaks out on the failures of the Ukraine and Gaza wars, the militarization of Europe, and why he believes Germany must break from Atlanticist subservience to pursue a future of peace, trade, and sovereignty.

(This interview has been edited for length and clarity)

The Cradle : How do you assess the geopolitical and geoeconomic situation in Europe? Is it possible to reverse the effects of the Ukraine crisis?

Chrupalla: During the war in Ukraine, Europe has taken itself out of the game. Those who are strong are those who have multiple options. With 19 sanction packages, the EU has rejected the option of cheap gas and other raw materials from Russia.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent put it aptly: if you have to do something 19 times, you have apparently made a mistake. The German people are the ones primarily suffering under the sanctions.

This policy has failed. German households now pay three to four times more for energy than those in the US. Our energy-intensive industries are relocating. Unemployment is rising. Heads of state and government of the EU could have used US President Donald Trump’s peace plan as an opportunity to reduce sanctions and restart raw-material trade. Instead, they decided on a complete import ban on Russian gas starting in 2027.

These politicians can delay the conclusion of peace. They can let their citizens suffer in order to punish Russia. But they cannot change the geography of the European continent. My goal is peace and free trade across the entire continent.

The Cradle : Germany and the EU are undergoing rapid militarization. Chancellor Friedrich Merz speaks of making “Germany once again the largest military power in Europe.” Alongside debates about reintroducing compulsory military service, the rise in military spending is coming to the forefront. What are the implications?

Chrupalla: I warned early on about the dangerous war rhetoric from other parties. The German government is now creating conditions for a war made up of empty words. Defense budgets have exploded. In 2022, the Bundeswehr received a special fund of €100 billion ($117.5 billion). Now it has ballooned to €1 trillion ($1.175 trillion).

Even as leader of the opposition, CDU chairman Friedrich Merz pushed for a so-called special fund before the new elections, which largely consists of debt for weapons. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius of the SPD wants to make Germany “fit for war” against Russia by 2029. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt of the CSU wants war instruction in schools. His party colleague Manfred Weber, head of the European People’s Party, wants to convert all of Europe to a wartime economy.

In the new federal budget, the government is creating the conditions for alliance and tension scenarios. A simplified booking system makes it possible to reallocate billions for war without parliamentary approval.

The opposition is sidelined. And the worst part is: none of this money benefits Germany’s security, military capability, or national defense. It is about profits for the arms industry and mobilization against Russia. For this reason, we also rejected the reactivation of compulsory military service as long as there is war in Europe.

The Cradle : The Gaza war has further exposed western double standards. How do you view Germany’s position?

Chrupalla: The war in Gaza has claimed a high number of civilian lives, including many women and children. According to the Israeli army, 83 percent of those killed in Gaza were civilians. The images of dead children and devastated streets leave no one untouched.

I have always condemned this and made it clear that demonstrations against this war must not be placed under general suspicion. Our program is clear: no arms deliveries to war zones. I have repeatedly insisted on this demand.

Chancellor Merz shifted to this position in August. In my view, public opinion in the EU has indeed changed over the course of the war. There is far more nuance on Gaza than there ever was on Ukraine.

The Cradle : What kind of future does the AfD envision for Germany and Europe?

Chrupalla: We want a sovereign Europe in a multipolar world. That starts with strengthening nation-states. Germany cannot have its policy dictated by politicians in Estonia or Brussels. We must reject sanctions that hurt us and resist efforts to sever ties with the east.

We are against economic wars fought for foreign interests. Peaceful trade must not be disrupted by sanctions or value-based conditions. In the European Parliament, we helped ensure that the supply chain law was relaxed, as it would have required trading partners to adhere to a specific social model.

We respect other civilizations and likewise demand respect for Europe. We oppose value-driven foreign policy with a policy of mutual respect. For Germany, we strive for a future of peace and prosperity.

The Nord Stream attack was an act of economic sabotage. It cut off our industrial lifeline and pushed us deeper into recession. We need to restore energy sovereignty, reindustrialize, and protect local production.

Corporate insolvencies are increasing. Fewer and fewer taxpayers must finance increasingly extensive social benefits. At the same time, contributors are not receiving back what they paid into the social security funds.

Federal governments have relied solely on renewable energies. We, however, want a broad energy mix, including fossil energy. To create a good future for Germany, we also address Germans with an immigrant background. Sovereignty and peace, freedom and prosperity are in all our interests.

The Cradle : How does the AfD view the emerging multipolar order and its key players?

Chrupalla: The war in Ukraine has put the traditional security structure in Europe to the test. It is still uncertain what transformations will result from its outcome. The peace negotiations have deepened the divide between the EU and the US.

Washington is at least attempting to reach an understanding. Chancellor Merz and other heads of government and state, however, are pressuring Ukraine to continue pursuing maximal goals, even though defeat is imminent.

In fact, it should be the other way around. Our states in Western and Central Europe depend on reaching an accommodation with Russia. We need raw materials and would be the first to be affected by a major war.

For us, Russia is part of Europe. We seek a peace order and security architecture that includes Russia. The People’s Republic of China is Germany’s top trading partner. Commonalities are more important than differences. In particular, the Greens have repeatedly attempted to steer foreign policy toward decoupling.

During the chip crisis, which originated in the Netherlands, we saw the consequences such decoupling would have: machines come to a standstill, workers stay home. The global economy is so strongly interconnected that a single severed thread can have unpredictable effects.

We want free and peaceful trade with the whole world. The Global South has a legitimate interest in prosperity and autonomy. We must support the countries of the south in this while also safeguarding our own interests. Unfortunately, the federal government has recently allowed ties with the south to deteriorate. Cooperation in the development of our economies, on equal footing, is an important aspect of our foreign policy.

The Cradle : What is your foreign policy approach to the Islamic world?

Chrupalla: Our foreign policy principle of respect also applies to states in which Islam is the majority religion. Islam is not a monolithic bloc. Despite unity in faith, these states pursue different interests. This becomes clear when looking at conditions in West Asia.

Germany has taken in many asylum seekers of the Muslim faith over the past 10 years. This immigration places demands on our social welfare systems and on internal security, similar to the immigration of Syrians into Turkiye. However, it would be wrong to derive from these problems a confrontational stance against Islam, as some critics of migration occasionally do.

We need peaceful cooperation. We need currency diversification in trade. We don’t want foreign troops on our soil. Religion must not divide us. Mutual understanding should be the foundation.

The Cradle : How should Germany approach relations with Turkiye?

Chrupalla: Turkiye is a strategic partner. We are both NATO members. We face shared challenges. Turkiye connects Europe and Asia. It pursues its own sovereign interests in West and Central Asia, and Africa, but must always take its alliance obligations into account. It resists adopting a strategy imposed from the outside.

In the past, Turkiye has confidently pursued its own interests—for example, regarding the Crimean Tatars. In doing so, it maintained respect toward Russia and became a neutral mediator in the Ukraine war. Germany should have done the same.

Turkiye is also the country from which the largest minority in Germany originates. In my view, more and more German citizens of Turkish descent are turning toward our party and its program. When AfD was still younger and smaller, the media and politicians of other parties tried to drive a wedge between the Turkish community and us.

They portrayed us as xenophobic. But voters with an immigrant background recognize that irregular immigration does not benefit them; it harms the country in which they live and are building their lives.

We all want security and prosperity. Families of Turkish descent are a firmly established part of our country. I invite them to join us in working for Germany.

December 17, 2025 Posted by | Economics, Islamophobia, Russophobia | , , , , | Leave a comment

NATO’s Red Pen on Ukraine: Jacques Baud and the Silencing of Dissent

By Freddie Ponton | 21st Century Wire | December 17, 2025 

On 15 December, the European Union took a step that few could have imagined: it sanctioned twelve individuals, including Swiss analyst and former intelligence officer Jacques Baud and French national Xavier Moreau, not for breaking the law, but for expressing views deemed politically inconvenient. Asset freezes, travel bans, and economic restrictions were imposed without any judicial process. While presented as an EU initiative, the fingerprints of NATO’s strategic communications and information-control apparatus are unmistakable, shaping both the targets and the justification. Europe is no longer simply countering disinformation; it is policing interpretation itself, turning independent analysis into a potential liability. The question now is not whether dissent will be punished, but how far these measures will go, and who will decide the boundaries of acceptable thought.

Baud, a Swiss national, is not a political activist, influencer, or anonymous online provocateur. He is a former Swiss intelligence officer and army colonel, trained in counter-terrorism, counter-guerrilla warfare, and chemical and nuclear weapons. Over the course of his career, he helped design the Geneva International Centre for Humanitarian Demining (GICHD) and its Mine Action Information Management System (IMSMA), served with the United Nations as Chief of Doctrine for Peacekeeping Operations in New York, worked extensively in Africa, and later held senior responsibilities at NATO, where he led efforts against the proliferation of small arms. He is also the author of multiple books on intelligence, asymmetric warfare, and terrorism,  texts widely read well before the Ukraine war.

Yet this résumé, once considered exemplary, has now been recast as suspicious. On 15 December, the EU placed Baud under sanctions, freezing assets and restricting travel, accusing him of acting as a “spokesperson of Russian propaganda” and of participating in “information manipulation and influence.” No criminal charges have been filed. No judicial process has taken place. No evidence has been publicly tested in court. The punishment is administrative, political, and immediate.

DOCUMENT: COUNCIL DECISION (CFSP) 2025/2572 of 15 December 2025 amending Decision (CFSP) 2024/2643 concerning restrictive measures in view of Russia’s destabilising activities (Source: EUR-Lex)

This is not an isolated case. Baud joins a growing list of European journalists, analysts, and commentators sanctioned or publicly stigmatised for expressing views that diverge from official EU and NATO positions. Germans living in Russia, independent journalists, and alternative media figures have already faced similar measures. What unites these cases is not proof of coordination with Moscow, but a shared refusal to reproduce the sanctioned narrative framework through which the war must be interpreted.

From Foreign Policy to Narrative Enforcement

Officially, these sanctions are justified as defensive measures against “foreign information manipulation and interference”, a phrase now deeply embedded in EU and NATO communications. The stated objective is to protect European democracies from destabilisation. In practice, however, the definition of “manipulation” has expanded so broadly that any analysis which echoes, overlaps with, or even partially aligns with Russian positions can be deemed suspect, regardless of sourcing, intent, or transparency.

The problem is not that governments counter disinformation. Every state does. The problem is how disinformation is defined, who defines it, and what instruments are used to combat it.

In Baud’s case, the EU does not allege clandestine activity, secret funding, or covert coordination with Russian authorities. Instead, he is held responsible for contributing to a narrative environment that, in Brussels’ view, undermines Ukraine and EU security. This is a crucial shift: The target is no longer falsehood, but interpretation.

Once interpretation itself becomes sanctionable, the boundary between security policy and censorship collapses.

France’s Role, and NATO’s Shadow

Several reports indicate that the initiative to sanction Baud and eleven others originated with France. French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot publicly announced that Europe would impose sanctions on what he described as “pro-Russian agents,” including individuals accused of repeatedly influencing French and European public debate. Among those named was Xavier Moreau, a French analyst long critical of NATO policy.

Barrot’s declaration on X was unambiguous:

“At France’s initiative, Europe is today imposing sanctions against Kremlin propaganda outlets and those responsible for foreign digital interference. Zero impunity for the architects of chaos.”

The language is revealing. “Architects of chaos” is not a legal category; it is a political one. It frames speech as an act of aggression and analysts as hostile operators.

Behind this framing lies a figure little known to the public but central to the architecture of Europe’s contemporary information policy: Marie-Doha Besancenot, Senior Advisor for Strategic Communications in the French Foreign Ministry. Prior to assuming this role, Besancenot served from 2020 to 2023 as NATO Assistant Secretary General for Public Diplomacy.

In an interview published in English by the French Ministry of the Armed Forces and Veteran Affairs, in March 2025, Besancenot openly described founding a task force in late 2023 dedicated to detecting and analysing what she termed “hostile narratives,” with the capacity to alert authorities “in real time” and propose political responses. The task force’s mission, she explained, was to detect, track, and report information threats against NATO in the information domain. In this interview, Besancenot articulates how “France understood what was happening in the information domain was a matter of national security”, and speaks of Viginum, a French agency created in response to these perceived threats, and that is responsible for monitoring and protecting the state against foreign digital interference that, according to them, affects the digital public debate in France.

The continuity is striking. The doctrine developed inside NATO’s strategic communications apparatus appears to have migrated almost seamlessly into national and EU-level policy, without democratic debate, parliamentary oversight, or public consent.

Strategic Communications as Political Power

NATO insists that it does not police speech and that it respects freedom of expression. Formally, this is true. NATO does not arrest journalists or pass laws. Instead, it develops conceptual frameworks, “hybrid threats,” “information laundering,” and “foreign information manipulation”, which are then adopted by member states and EU institutions.

Once a narrative framework is institutionalised, it becomes self-enforcing. Media outlets internalise red lines. Publishers hesitate. Platforms over-moderate. Governments justify extraordinary measures as technical necessities or national security. The perfect storm in which sanctions replace debate.

One of the most insidious concepts to emerge from this ecosystem is that of “information laundering”, the idea that domestic journalists or analysts can unwittingly “clean” foreign propaganda simply by engaging with it critically. Under this logic, intent becomes irrelevant. What matters is effect, as defined by strategic communicators.

This doctrine eliminates the possibility of good-faith analysis. To examine Russian claims, even to refute them selectively or partially, is to risk being accused of amplifying them. The only safe position is total dismissal, which appears to be NATO and the EU’s endgame.

The Democratic Cost

The danger of this approach extends far beyond Jacques Baud.

Sanctions are no longer being used to punish illegal acts, but to discipline discourse. They operate without due process and create chilling effects far wider than their immediate targets. An analyst does not need to be sanctioned to be silenced; seeing a peer sanctioned is often enough.

Moreover, these measures are imposed by non-elected bodies, EU councils, commissions, and advisory structures, drawing heavily on NATO doctrine, an alliance that itself is not subject to democratic accountability. National parliaments are largely absent from the process. Courts intervene only after the damage is done.

The precedent is dangerous. If today the target is analysts accused of being “pro-Russian,” tomorrow it could be critics of EU defence spending, sceptics of military escalation, or scholars questioning intelligence claims. Once the machinery exists, its scope inevitably expands.

History offers ample warning. Democracies do not usually collapse through sudden repression, but through the gradual normalisation of exceptional measures, each justified by urgency, each framed as temporary, each defended as necessary.

Security Without Freedom Is Not Security

The EU and NATO argue that they are facing unprecedented hybrid threats and that extraordinary responses are required. That claim deserves serious consideration. But security achieved by narrowing the space of permissible thought is a brittle security, one that ultimately undermines the democratic resilience it claims to protect.

A society confident in its values does not need to freeze bank accounts to win arguments. It does not need to conflate analysis with subversion. It does not need to outsource intellectual authority to strategic communications units.

Jacques Baud may be wrong in some of his assessments. He may be right in others. That is beside the point. What matters is that his arguments exist in the open, supported by sources, available for rebuttal. The appropriate response to analysis is counter-analysis, and certainly not sanctions. By choosing punishment over debate, Europe is not defending democracy. It is redefining it, quietly, administratively, and without asking its citizens whether this is the kind of polity they wish to inhabit.

The sanctions against Baud are therefore not merely about Ukraine, Russia, or NATO. They are about who gets to speak, who decides what is permissible to think, and whether Europe still trusts its citizens to judge arguments for themselves.

That question, once raised, cannot be easily swept away.

December 17, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment