The Silence of the Bears
By Alastair Crooke | Strategic Culture Foundation | June 9, 2025
Russia’s leadership is in ‘conclave’ determining its riposte.
Trump has been silent for two days. Unprecedented. In the last days, Ukraine and its facilitators attempted a massive attack on Russia’s strategic nuclear bomber-force; succeeded in collapsing two bridges onto civilian trains heading to Moscow; attacking the Kerch Bridge; and assassinating a Russian general via explosive body bomb.
As Clausewitz noted two centuries ago, the point of military force is to compel an outcome: i.e. that an adversary finally does what is wanted of him. Thus, in respect to military adventures there is need for clarity of thought from the outset. It must have a realisable political objective that has a prospect to be implemented.
What then, was the objective behind these Ukrainian ‘irregular’ attacks? One certainly was demonstrative – PR exercises to say that Ukraine and allied services are still capable of mounting special forces style, innovative operations. And are therefore worthy of continued support. As Colonel Doug Macgregor cautions:
“For the most part it was a PR stunt to try and convey the impression that Ukraine is capable of carrying on the war. Anything you hear from the Western outlets … are probably untrue or at least grossly exaggerated … We damaged ourselves and our relationship – what there is left of it – with Moscow … that’s the real fallout from this”.
Okay. But PR stunts are no strategy, nor do the attacks hold any prospect for a shift in the overall strategic military paradigm. It doesn’t say that the West or Ukraine has suddenly discovered a political strategy towards Russia per se. That doesn’t exist. For the most part, the innumerable western declarations come as a hodge-podge of fantasies.
The second objective however, may indeed have had a clear strategic end-state – and has demonstrated feasibility and the possibility to compel a desired outcome: The various attacks have imposed on Trump the uncomfortable reality that he, as President, does not control U.S. foreign policy. The collective Deep State has just made that plain.
As General Mike Flynn has warned:
“The Deep State is now acting outside of the control of the elected leadership of our nation … These persons in our Deep State are engaged in a deliberate effort to provoke Russia into a major confrontation with the West, including the United States”.
In effect, the likes of Generals Keith Kellogg and Jack Keane, with their adolescent narratives that only through pressure, more pressure and pain will compel Putin (always presumed to be weak) to accept a frozen conflict in the hope that it can obvert from an American defeat in Ukraine.
The British during WW2 similarly believed that the Nazi regime was not strong, and could be overthrown by strategic bombing, intended to bring about the collapse of German society. Today, General Kellogg advocates ‘bombing’ Russia with sanctions – mirroring the British conviction that such tactics ‘must be bad for morale’.
Trump’s advice from his Generals either did not meet the criterion of political realism – because it was based on fantasies of incipient Russian collapse and a hopeless misreading of Russia and its Army. Or perhaps his Advisers, either inadvertently or deliberately, ‘shafted’ Trump and his agenda of normalising relations with Russia.
What will Trump say now to Putin? That he was indeed forewarned (recall his writing just days ago that “bad things – if it were not for me – I mean REALLY BAD things would already have happened to Russia” ) and claim that his advisers did not give him the full details; or will he candidly admit that they deceived him? Alternatively, will he take the line that the CIA was merely operating to an old Presidential ‘Finding’ that authorised attacks into the depth of the Russian hinterland?
All such putative answers would spell one thing – that Trump is not in control. That he and his European allies (such as Britain) cannot be trusted.
Either way, Trump’s advisers will have understood that Zelensky and by extension his NATO enablers, were exploiting the SALT/START Treaties’ vulnerability – in order to use concealed drones, hidden in civilian containers, to attack the very bombers covered by USA-Russia treaties: Article XII of the START treaty specifically requires “a display in the open of all heavy bombers within the airbase”. This provision was a confidence building act (visible monitoring) to guard against a surprise ‘first strike’ nuclear attack.
START 1 cut long-range or strategic nuclear arsenals by 30-40 percent. New START slashed accountable deployed strategic arms by another three-quarters. In 2021, Presidents Biden and Putin extended New START until February 2026.
Of course, these unidentified enablers understood the gravity of striking the strategic nuclear force of a major rival nuclear weapons power.
How would the U.S. respond if an adversary (perhaps a non-state actor) launched a strike against strategic long-range nuclear capable bombers in the USA using cheap and easily available drones hidden in containers? We are in a new era of risk – one in which pagers and cell phones can be weaponised as bombs – and of ‘sleeper’ drones that can be remotely activated to attack airfields, either civilian or military.
Larry Johnson has observed that after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941, intended to destroy the U.S. aircraft carriers berthed there, the Japanese Admiral Yamamoto reportedly said the following in the aftermath of Japan’s great victory at Pearl Harbour: “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve … We have won a great tactical victory at Pearl Harbour and thereby lost the war”.
The silence of the bears will soon be ended and we will know more about Russian resolve; but a relationship in which Trump is understood to ‘mean what he says, and does what he says’ likely is over. The Russians are furious.
What happens next is unknown.
Theodore Postol: Trump’s Golden Dome Missile Defense & Nuclear Escalation
Prof. Theodore Postol and Prof. Glenn Diesen
Glenn Diesen | June 6, 2025
MIT Professor and Pentagon advisor Ted Postol presents the dangers of Trump’s Golden Dome.
Ukrainian Forces Used All Kursk Churches as Military Bases, Violating International Law
Sputnik – 08.06.2025
KURSK, Russia – The Ukrainian armed forces used all the churches in the part of Russia’s Kursk Region as military objects during the period of occupation, Ivan Kopyl, the head of the human rights defense project Verum, told Sputnik.
“Absolutely all churches were used as military facilities, which is not accepted under international humanitarian law,” Kopyl said.
He said that, according to the 1954 Hague Convention, the occupying party need to protect the cultural objects of the occupied territory.
“The occupying country should avoid, as far as possible, deploying its armed forces in cultural sites such as churches, and moreover not only in the sites themselves but also near them, unfortunately the Ukrainian armed forces did not do it,” Kopyl said.
In March, Russian forces launched a large-scale offensive in the Kursk Region that was attacked by the Ukrainian forces in August 2024. On April 26, Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov announced that the Kursk Region was fully liberated, as the last of the settlements had been cleared of Ukrainian military presence.
Russia publishes names of fallen Ukrainian soldiers disowned by Kiev
RT | June 8, 2025
Russian officials have unveiled the identities of nearly 100 fallen Ukrainian soldiers who were among the more than 6,000 Moscow has offered to return to Kiev in a unilateral humanitarian gesture during the latest round of direct talks in Istanbul on Monday.
The governor of Russia’s Zaporozhye Region, Evgeny Balitsky, published the first six pages containing 97 names, identification documents, and places of death on Saturday evening, after Ukraine reportedly refused to receive the remains of thousands of its troops.
“We are beginning to publish lists of identified bodies so that relatives can find their dead,” he wrote. “We understand that Kiev has this data, but they are deliberately hiding it from the public.”
The Istanbul talks resulted in an agreement to exchange at least 1,000 prisoners on both sides, including critically ill and younger detainees. Russia also offered to return over 6,000 fallen Ukrainian soldiers for proper burial as part of a unilateral humanitarian initiative.
The first convoy, carrying the remains of 1,212 troops, arrived at the designated exchange point on Saturday – but the Ukrainian side failed to appear, according to Lieutenant General Alexander Zorin, a member of the Russian negotiating team.
“The Ukrainian side unexpectedly postponed both the acceptance of bodies and the exchange of prisoners of war for an indefinite period,” Zorin said.
Russia’s lead negotiator, Vladimir Medinsky, confirmed that Kiev had been handed a list of 640 wounded and young prisoners but did not show up at the exchange site. “The reasons provided were various and rather strange,” he said, urging Kiev to “adhere strictly to the schedule and agreements” and ensure the dead receive a proper burial.
Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters has denied the accusations, claiming that both sides have been preparing for the prisoner and body exchanges. Ukrainian media later reported that the process had been postponed until next week, though no official new date has been confirmed.
Balitsky accused Kiev of deliberately obstructing the return of the bodies, alleging that Ukrainian authorities are trying to conceal the scale of their military losses and avoid paying compensation to the families of the dead.
“As long as a Ukrainian soldier is listed as missing, his family will not receive a single hryvnia in aid,” the governor said. “This is a calculated attempt to hide the losses and save money.”
The refusal to retrieve the bodies is part of a broader pattern of violations by Ukraine, Balitsky argued, claiming Kiev “does not even attempt to honor agreements.” He also blamed Western countries for “derailing peaceful resolution efforts” by continuing to arm Kiev and escalate the conflict.
IAEA Board of Governors is 100% under control of collective West, Rosatom chief says
Press TV – June 7, 2025
Rosatom, Russia’s state atomic energy corporation, has voiced strong criticism over the subjective approach employed by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) Board of Governors in its nuclear-related reports, stating that the decision-making body’s impartiality is heavily influenced by Western interests.
Rosatom’s CEO Alexey Likhachev said on Friday that the corporation’s relations with the UN nuclear watchdog have not been trouble-free as its reports contain signs of “double standards.”
“Certainly, I must say that we do not have smooth relations with the IAEA on the whole, to put it mildly. Of course, we often see double standards among a number of IAEA documents,” Likhachev told journalists following talks with an IAEA delegation in Kaliningrad.
Stressing that there are “several camps” within the IAEA, Likhachev said only representatives from two European countries, Hungary and Switzerland, as well as IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi, were being “objective” on nuclear issues.
“There is the Board of Governors, where the controlling stake, as we say, by almost 100% belongs to the collective West, and completely different opinions are expressed there. And therein lies the problem,” the Rosatom CEO said.
“Hungary and Switzerland assess the security situation objectively and say that strikes on nuclear infrastructure are inadmissible regardless of their origin. But the lion’s share of the board’s members criticize only purported strikes in the direction of Ukrainian facilities,” he added.
According to a report by the Russian news agency TASS, Iran’s nuclear program as well as ensuring the safety of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) amid ongoing Ukrainian shelling, and the work of the IAEA mission at the plant were the central topics at the talks between Grossi and Likhachev in Kaliningrad.
ZNPP, Europe’s largest power plant, has been controlled by Russian troops since late February 2022, after Moscow launched its special military operation in Ukraine partly to prevent NATO’s eastward expansion.
Since then, Ukraine has targeted the power plant using drones, heavy artillery, and multiple launch rocket systems, raising concerns of a potential Chernobyl-style nuclear incident.
Moscow has announced that it is ready to work with the IAEA to agree on “non-politicized” solutions to problems at the facility.
According to Likhachev, the situation regarding nuclear and radiation safety at the ZNPP remains “totally manageable and stable,” but the military threat is worsening as Ukraine has intensified its shelling of civilian infrastructure and provocations.
“Unfortunately, this has affected the situation at the Zaporozhye NPP and the city of Energodar. The power system has sustained damage literally every night over the last four days.”
The Rosatom CEO underlined that the presence of IAEA specialists at the ZNPP is crucial for keeping the international community informed about the situation.
Cooperation with Iran
Rosatom confirmed at the meeting its readiness to resolve any technical aspects of the Iranian nuclear issue provided that political decisions are made and multilateral agreements are reached.
Earlier this month, the IAEA claimed in a confidential report to member states that Iran had failed to report its nuclear activities at three undeclared locations and raised concerns about the country’s stockpile of uranium enriched up to 60% purity.
The agency has over the past years levied multiple politically-tainted accusations against the Islamic Republic’s nuclear file despite its own reports that have on numerous occasions attested to the peacefulness of Tehran’s nuclear program.
Rosatom also said nuclear cooperation between Moscow and Tehran will continue in multiple areas, including the construction of nuclear power units and fuel supply for the first unit of the Bushehr plant.
It added that it was engaged in joint research and development with Iran in the peaceful use of nuclear energy.
Western media complicit in Kiev regime’s terrorism
Strategic Culture Foundation | June 6, 2025
Western news media have given up the pretense of being independent and impartial sources of information. American and European mainstream outlets are nothing but propaganda services for the NATO proxy war against Russia.
That observation is hardly new. Since the NATO-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, the Western media have systematically and relentlessly whitewashed the NeoNazi regime and its strategic purpose as a cat’s paw to embroil Russia in conflict. Russia’s inevitable military response to the decade-long proxy war has been distorted as “unprovoked aggression” against “democratic” Ukraine.
The Western “news media” have now outed themselves for the propaganda functionaries that they are. The veil is shredded.
Last weekend, the NATO-backed Kiev regime deliberately attacked a civilian passenger train in Russia’s Bryansk region. Seven people were killed and over 100 were injured after a bridge was blown up, crashing down on a train passing underneath. The death toll could have been much higher, given the hundreds on board.
Within hours of that heinous act, a second train was derailed when a bridge it was traveling over in Kursk was blown up. Mercifully, there were no deaths in the second attack despite several injuries.
Three more explosions have been reported on Russia’s railways this week: another in Bryansk and two in the Voronezh and Belgorod regions.
These calculated acts to cause maximum civilian casualties by the Ukrainian regime and its NATO enablers are nothing short of state terrorism. They are war crimes of the first magnitude.
Yet the Western media, like the Western governments, have maintained a shameful and damning silence on these crimes. One can imagine the outpouring of condemnation if Russia were to carry out such attacks, deliberately targeting civilians in Ukraine.
Instead, the Western “news” outlets gave prominent coverage of the drone attacks on Russia’s airfields. Certainly, the targeting of five airbases where Russian nuclear-capable bomber aircraft are stationed was big news.
However, Western media reports let their colors show by being ecstatic in tone about an “audacious” operation, amplifying unverified Ukrainian claims that 40 aircraft were destroyed. Britain’s Daily Telegraph and other Western outlets shared video of one plane exploding, headlining with glee that “Putin’s bombers” were knocked out.
For its part, the Russian military said that most of the drones were intercepted and only a few aircraft were damaged.
None of the Western outlets reported on the obvious role that NATO intelligence must have played in such a recklessly provocative attack on Russia’s strategic defenses. As such, the Western media is covering up for what could be deemed an act of war on Russia.
The gloating propagandist reporting on the airfield raids was in stark contrast to the relative silence over the terrorist attack on the passenger train.
U.S.-based ABC headlined with “Ukraine targets Russian airfields in major drone attack” and relayed dramatic details of the operation. It was only much further down in the report that ABC mentioned the deadly train explosion, as if it were a minor incident.
It reported: “Elsewhere, at least seven people were killed and 66 injured when a railway bridge collapsed and a train derailed in Russia’s western Bryansk region overnight.”
Note how ABC makes out that a bridge collapsed as if by gravity without explosive sabotage. It goes on to distort the terror attack by quoting a Ukrainian regime propagandist who insinuates that the wreckage was somehow carried out by Russia. The warped logic dignified by ABC was that the Russians carried out a fiendish false-flag ploy to scuttle negotiations that were due to take place the following day in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian delegates.
The British BBC deployed the same reprehensible disinformation. Its headline was: “At least seven dead after two Russian bridges collapse.”
Again, according to the BBC, bridges just collapse on passenger trains. Like ABC, the BBC buries important Russian information implicating Ukrainian responsibility for detonating explosives in the mass murder of civilians.
Significantly, the BBC also quotes the same Ukrainian regime propaganda source, Andriy Kovalenko, aired by ABC, who is described as “head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council’s Centre for Countering Disinformation.” He is also permitted by the British outlet to accuse Russia of self-inflicted terrorism, allegedly “laying the groundwork to derail the negotiations” in Istanbul.
With blatant distortion, Western media are minimizing what are outrageous acts of terrorism by the NATO-weaponized regime. Sickeningly, deliberate acts of murdering civilians by the NATO-backed regime are twisted upside down as Russian dirty tricks.
Of course, Western media are obliged to tell lies to cover up crimes by their governments and their proxies. In that case, they have lost their pious and pretentious claims of being “independent media”. They are abject propaganda tools, dressed up with self-ordained virtue. And still they have the arrogance to accuse other nations’ media of being state-run propaganda. This charade by Western media has been running for a long time, decades and indeed centuries. It has always been a charade. It’s now flagrantly obvious. No wonder so many Western citizens have contempt for their mainstream media.
The peace talks in Istanbul – the second round was held earlier this week – to try to find an end to the proxy war in Ukraine have largely come about because of Moscow’s initiative. American President Donald Trump’s declared wish to end the conflict has brought the Kiev regime to the table. It is not clear if the talks will succeed.
In the meantime, it is abundantly clear that the NATO axis on both sides of the Atlantic wants the proxy war to continue.
Carrying out provocations and terrorist crimes against civilians is aimed at sabotaging any diplomatic effort.
Russia responded in recent days to the terror assaults last weekend with massive bombardments on Ukraine’s military sites.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Trump in a phone call mid-week that retaliation was imminent.
Western media reported Russia’s air strikes by giving prominence to the deaths of five civilians, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia claims it is not deliberately targeting civilian centers. That is an important distinction compared with the NATO-backed regime.
As usual, the latest Russian strikes were reported without a single mention of the terrorist murders of civilians in Russia. It is an all-too-familiar and deplorable pattern of bias. Russian lives are worthless, evidently from the Western perspective.
The one-sided Western media dereliction of journalism is seen over and over again throughout the proxy war in Ukraine. In another notorious distortion this week, the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye – the biggest in Europe – came under drone attack from the Kiev regime. There were no reports in the Western media of this nuclear terrorism to contaminate Europe. When Western media reported on previous attacks on the ZNPP (by the Kiev forces), it absurdly claimed that Russia is doing the sabotage on a power plant under its control. Just like supposedly blowing up its own trains and citizens.
Western media silence and distortion are not merely disgraceful false propaganda. It is complicity in war crimes by giving cover and license for more.
Ukraine halts prisoner swap – Russian MOD
RT | June 7, 2025
Kiev has postponed a previously agreed prisoner swap with Moscow, according to Russian Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin, speaking for the Defense Ministry. The trade would also include the repatriation of over 6,000 bodies of deceased Ukrainian soldiers, he added in a statement published on Saturday.
“Russia handed over to the Ukrainian side a list of 640 names, but the latter is so far refraining from setting a date for the return of these individuals,” said Zorin, who was a member of Moscow’s negotiating team in Istanbul. He explained that the exchange agreement covers two groups of prisoners – an “all-for-all” swap of wounded and critically ill, and those under 25 years old.
According to Zorin, Moscow began the repatriation on Friday, with a convoy containing 1,212 bodies reaching the exchange point. He added that four other convoys, each carrying 1,200 sets of remains, are ready for transfer.
Russia decided to return the remains of over 6,000 slain Ukrainian soldiers in a unilateral humanitarian gesture during the talks in Istanbul on Monday. Both sides also agreed to exchange 1,200 prisoners each.
“We confirm our full readiness to implement the Istanbul agreements. We are prepared to transfer all bodies and proceed with the prisoner exchange as agreed,” Zorin stressed.
Earlier on Saturday, Moscow’s lead negotiator in the peace talks with Kiev, Vladimir Medinsky, also claimed that Ukraine would not accept the bodies of its fallen troops, and had given “strange reasons” for its decision. According to Medinsky, the Ukrainian team “did not even arrive at the exchange site.”
“We call on Kiev to strictly adhere to the schedule and all agreements that were reached, and to immediately begin the exchange” so that the wounded can return home and the dead receive a proper burial, he urged.
The Ukrainian side has denied Russia’s claims, stating that over the past week, teams from both sides have been working on the repatriation of bodies and the exchange of prisoners. “Unfortunately, instead of a constructive dialogue, we are once again faced with manipulation and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian topics for informational purposes,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on Sunday.
EU may target Russia’s financial reputation – FT
RT | June 6, 2025
The EU is considering adding Russia to its anti-money laundering “grey list” in an effort to cause reputational damage and increase financial pressure on Moscow, Financial Times reported on Friday.
The blacklist includes countries that Brussels considers to have inadequate regulations against shady financial activity. Inclusion on the list would impose extra compliance requirements on banks and financial institutions dealing with Russian individuals and entities, leading to higher costs in conducting business activity.
The European Commission is preparing to adopt a revised list of high-risk third countries next week, after postponing its release at the last minute for “administrative/procedural reasons,” FT reported.
”There is huge support for putting Russia on the list,” Markus Ferber, a German MEP with the center-right European People’s Party, the EU parliament’s largest grouping, told the outlet.
Typically, the EU aligns its blacklist with decisions from the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), a global intergovernmental body that combats money laundering and terrorist financing.
Although Russia’s FATF membership was suspended in 2023, several countries would likely block any attempt to formally add it to the FATF grey list, leading Brussels to consider unilateral action.
Despite its suspension from FATF, Russia continues to engage with the Eurasian Group (EAG), a regional body affiliated with FATF. In 2024, the EAG assessed Russia’s progress in strengthening its anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing measures. It acknowledged some improvements but urged further action, particularly in enforcing targeted financial sanctions and increasing transparency around beneficial ownership.
Ukraine has repeatedly pushed for Russia to be placed on the FATF blacklist, citing its connections with already blacklisted states and the potential risks it allegedly poses to the global financial system. However, these attempts have failed due to resistance from several FATF member states, including China, India, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa.
Despite being suspended, Russia remains obligated to comply with FATF standards and continues to fulfill its financial commitments to the organization.
Urban Warfare Tales – Part 28 of the Anglo-American War on Russia
Tales of the American Empire | June 5, 2025
Cities can become “forts” with an endless series of city block walls that provide defense-in-depth. Rather than fight a powerful, modern army on the field of battle, opponents may choose to fight man-to-man in cities. If large numbers of civilians remain in a city, using heavy firepower becomes a political matter and creates huge mounds of rubble passable only by foot infantrymen. Damage to religious and historical structures are another concern.
American and British propagandists claim the Russians are incompetent because they haven’t seized Kiev or other major cities. But that was never an objective since urban warfare is slow, bloody, and very destructive to civilians and infrastructure. The Russians set up a long frontline killing field in Eastern Ukraine lined with artillery supplied via rail directly from factories. Ukraine sends more soldiers into these killing fields daily and the Russians kill thousands each week. Russian forces will keep grinding forward in rural areas to decimate and demoralize the Ukrainian army.
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Related Tale: “The Disastrous Liberation of the Philippines”; 
• The Disastrous Liberation of the Philippines
“The Calamity of Urban Warfare”; Carlton Meyer; G2mil; 2015; https://www.g2mil.com/cities.htm
“Military Summary” channel; YouTube; daily war updates; / @militarysummary
Related Tales: “The Anglo-American War on Russia”; • The Anglo-American War on Russia
Ukraine’s most reckless attack: Was NATO behind it?
RT | June 6, 2025
While Western headlines celebrated Operation Spider’s Web as a daring feat of Ukrainian ingenuity, a closer look reveals something far more calculated – and far less Ukrainian. This wasn’t just a strike on Russian airfields. It was a test – one that blended high-tech sabotage, covert infiltration, and satellite-guided timing with the kind of precision that only the world’s most advanced intelligence networks can deliver. And it begs the question: who was really pulling the strings?
Let’s be honest. Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence didn’t act alone. It couldn’t have.
Even if no Western agency was directly involved in the operation itself, the broader picture is clear: Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, its military, and even its top political leadership rely heavily on Western intelligence feeds. Ukraine is deeply embedded within NATO’s intelligence-sharing architecture. The idea of a self-contained Ukrainian intel ecosystem is largely a thing of the past. These days, Kiev draws primarily on NATO-provided data, supplementing it with its own domestic sources where it can.
That’s the backdrop – a hybrid model that’s become standard over the past two years. Now, let’s look more closely at Operation Spider’s Web itself. We know the planning took roughly 18 months and involved moving drones covertly into Russian territory, hiding them, and then orchestrating coordinated attacks on key airfields. So how likely is it that Western intelligence agencies had a hand in such a complex operation?
Start with logistics. It’s been reported that 117 drones were prepped for launch inside Russia. Given that numerous private companies in Russia currently manufacture drones for the war effort, it wouldn’t have been difficult to assemble the necessary devices under that cover. That’s almost certainly what happened. Components were likely purchased domestically under the guise of supplying the “Special Military Operation.” Still, it’s hard to believe Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence could have pulled off this mass procurement and assembly alone. It’s highly likely Western intelligence agencies played a quiet but crucial role – especially in securing specialized components.
Then there’s the explosives. If the operation’s command center was located in the Ural region, as some suggest, it’s plausible that explosives or components were smuggled in via neighboring CIS countries. That kind of border-hopping precision doesn’t happen without outside help. In fact, it mirrors tactics long perfected by intelligence services in both the US and Western Europe.
Because make no mistake: this wasn’t just the CIA’s playground. European services – particularly those in the UK, France, and Germany – possess the same capabilities to execute and conceal such an operation. The NATO intelligence community may have different national flags, but it speaks with one voice in the field.
The real giveaway, however, lies in the timing of the strikes. These weren’t blind attacks on static targets. Russia’s strategic bombers frequently rotate bases. Commercial satellite imagery – updated every few days at best – simply can’t track aircraft on the move. And yet these drones struck with exquisite timing. That points to a steady flow of real-time surveillance, likely derived from signals intelligence, radar tracking, and live satellite feeds – all tools in the Western intelligence toolbox.
Could Ukraine, on its own, have mustered that kind of persistent, multidomain awareness? Not a chance. That level of situational intelligence is the domain of NATO’s most capable agencies – particularly those tasked with monitoring Russian military infrastructure as part of their day job.
For years now, Ukraine has been described in Western media as a plucky underdog using low-cost tactics to take on a larger foe. But beneath the David vs. Goliath narrative lies a more uncomfortable truth: Ukraine’s intelligence ecosystem is now deeply embedded within NATO’s operational architecture. Real-time feeds from US and European satellites, intercepts from British SIGINT stations, operational planning consultations with Western handlers – this is the new normal.
Ukraine still has its own sources, but it’s no longer running a self-contained intelligence operation. That era ended with the first HIMARS launch.
Western officials, of course, deny direct involvement. But Russian investigators are already analyzing mobile traffic around the impact sites. If it turns out that these drones weren’t connected to commercial mobile networks – if, instead, they were guided through encrypted, military-grade links – it will be damning. Not only would that confirm foreign operational input, it would expose the full extent of how Western assets operated inside Russia without detection.
At that point, no amount of plausible deniability will cover the truth. The question will no longer be whether NATO participated – but how deep that participation ran.
British Council Exposed: Soft Power and Spying Tool Disguised as Cultural Outreach
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.06.2025
The FSB has urged Russia’s foreign partners to investigate the subversive activities of the British Council in their countries. This is why.
Education and Culture Front Organization
Created in 1934 by the British government, the British Council’s public facing image is about the promotion of English language learning, recruitment for UK universities, educational support for teachers abroad, cultural and academic partnerships and exchanges.
In reality, as Russia’s FSB has revealed, Council activities include:
- targeting youth leaders and elites to try and sway them to support Western and British interests
- spying, from informal monitoring of the socio-economic situation inside Russia to military intel gathering in the conflict zone in Ukraine
NED’s Granddaddy
While Soros, USAID the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and other US soft power alphabet agencies were only able to set up shop in Eastern Europe in the 1980s or after 1991, the British Council had been active in the region since WWII. Expelled from the USSR in 1946, it returned in 1959 (restricted to Moscow).
After the USSR’s demise in 1991, the Council set up offices in as many as 15 Russian cities, and scores more in Ukraine, the Baltics, the Caucasus and Central Asia.
The Council terminated its activities in Russia in 2018, and was officially ruled an undesirable organization by the Russian Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday, but the FSB says it continued Russia operations long after its supposed exit, engaging in:
- recruiting staff at top Russian universities in at least four regions to spread propaganda to young people
- targeting Russians living abroad in influence ops, in the hopes that they will return home and influence policy once the Ukraine conflict ends
- collecting socio-economic and military intelligence on Kherson region using UK-based refugees
Global Spider’s Web
With a $1.7B budget and offices in over 100 countries, the Council is active:
- in Britain’s former colonial empire (especially India)
- in the EU as a British soft power tool post-Brexit
- among BRICS bloc nations
- Belarus kicked them out in 2000. Iran did so in 2009
“We would like to address partners from countries friendly to Russia: by flirting with the British and creating favorable conditions for organizations like the British Council, allowing it to work with youth, future leaders and politicians, such countries risk losing control over very important socio-political processes. Therefore, we recommend that you carefully look into the work of the British Council in your countries and, notwithstanding pressures from London, mitigate the negative consequences of its work at an early stage,” the FSB said in Thursday’s statement.
British Council’s Cousin: An Oligarch’s Private Soft Power Tool
Along with the British Council, the FSB also reviewed the subversive work of Oxford Russia Fund, a charity group which entered Russia in 2006, ostensibly funding “humanitarian programs” in education, and scholarships to Russian students studying in the UK.
In reality, it was a front for former Russian oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s push to create a new generation of pro-West “young leaders” in Russia. Khodorkovsky, notably, has long dreamed of a color revolution in Russia.
The Oxford Russia Fund was ruled undesirable in 2021.
Russian Foreign Intel Service Vet Blows the Lid Off Britain’s Secret Soft Power Recruitment Strategy
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 05.06.2025
Britain is a master in the use of public and non-profit organizations for intelligence, deploying them “for centuries,” and Russia a top target, SVR Lt. Gen. (ret.) Leonid Reshetnikov told Sputnik, commenting on the FSB’s warning to Russia’s foreign partners on Thursday about the British Council’s subversive activities.
“Russia has been the main focus of this work since the time of Ivan Grozny. I say this in all seriousness,” Reshetnikov said, adding that the British have had “many years, many centuries of experience” in indirect forms of intelligence collection.
How Are Agents Recruited? A Primer
“They actively use the scientific and teaching fields. When our educators go to the UK or other countries where the British are active, they should always keep in mind that they will be studied, that informal, friendly and trusting relationships will be formed with them,” the veteran ex-secret agent explained.
The task is “studying the mood in scientific, student and teaching circles, selecting people, not necessarily recruiting (i.e. you are an agent, we pay you and you act), but making offers, for example, to give lectures, publish a brochure or a book, visit London, give lectures there, etc.”
Actually recruiting agents is the most blunt approach, and often not necessary to extract the information, facts, assessments or intentions the British intel services are looking for.
“It’s enough to have a circle of agents of influence, a circle of people who are intellectually, ideologically, culturally attached to London, to the English way of life. It’s very easy to use them in a straightforward manner. That’s the job,” Reshetnikov said.
In this area, the veteran former spy emphasized that the British are even more capable than their transatlantic cousins in the CIA.
“It’s best to keep fewer British NGOs in your country. The fewer the better, especially British ones. This is one of the most challenging intelligence services in the world to face,” Reshetnikov emphasized.
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From the Archives
How Europe’s New Political Class Began Rejecting Reality
By Glenn Diesen | October 26, 2024
Russia considers NATO’s incursion into Ukraine to be an existential threat, and NATO has openly stated its intention to make Ukraine a member state after the war. Without a political settlement that restores Ukraine’s neutrality, Russia will therefore likely annex the strategic territories it cannot accept ending up under NATO control and then turn what remains of Ukraine into a dysfunctional rump state. As the war is being lost, the rational policy for the Europeans would therefore be to offer an agreement based on ending NATO’s eastward expansion to save Ukrainian lives, territory and the nation itself. Yet, no European leader has been able to even suggest such a solution publicly. Why? … continue
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