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Peace in Ukraine: the easy way – or the hard way

Strategic Culture Foundation | October 23, 2026

Diplomacy, as the saying goes, is the art of the possible. A peaceful settlement to the war in Ukraine is possible if all sides were to engage in genuine diplomacy. That’s the easy, more civilized way.

If not, Russia will achieve peace the hard way through complete military victory.

Diplomacy is being prevented because European politicians, in particular, are held hostage by their own twisted ideology and false propaganda.

Ironically, the NATO proxy war in Ukraine was intended to “strategically defeat” Russia. It turns out, however, that it is the NATO axis that is staring at a historic defeat. The chaos surging across Europe is a manifestation of that failure, driven by higher energy prices and reckless, unsustainable militarism.

Thus, peace in Ukraine is concomitant with peace in Europe, and diplomacy would expedite that to obviate more instability and suffering.

But diplomacy is incompatible with parties who possess a diseased mentality of Russophobia.

Diplomatic engagement involves putting pragmatic interests first, ahead of ideological bias. The pragmatic interest of everyone surely should be to find an end to this nearly five-year war that has caused millions of casualties and runs the risk of escalating to a general war in Europe.

The Trump administration appears to be renewing peace efforts by dispatching a presidential envoy to Russia this week. Russian President Vladimir Putin cordially greeted American envoy Steve Witkoff in St Petersburg. It is unimaginable that any European politician or envoy would be capable of that rudimentary courtesy. Putin reiterated that Russia’s door is open for negotiations.

Diplomacy can create a path to peace sooner, as internationally renowned Professor Jeffrey Sachs advocated in an eminently reasonable presentation this week.

Key issues for a peace agreement include: 1) indivisible security for all; 2) permanent neutrality status for Ukraine; 3) an armistice, not a temporary ceasefire, based on current lines of conflict; and 4) a declaration by NATO to halt its eastward expansion.

The framework for peace proposed by Sachs is similar to Russia’s position. It addresses the causes of conflict rather than only its symptoms.

Professor Sachs points out that these are not new principles. They were recognized and agreed upon in the past by the United States, its European allies, and Ukraine. In the Helsinki Final Act of 1975, the U.S., Soviet Union, and European states accepted the principle that security is not a zero-sum game. All states must have a mutual right to security.

On the issue of permanent neutrality of Ukraine, that was declared in its constitution when it established independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. The seeking of NATO membership for Ukraine overturns that principle. It was the United States under President GW Bush that initiated the drive for NATO membership with the Bucharest Declaration in 2008, which was repudiated by Russia with the warning that it would inevitably lead to conflict, as history proves.

Sachs also points out that the United States and its NATO allies must return to the pledge made to the Soviet Union in 1989 that there would be no eastward expansion of the military bloc. It is basic common sense that the encroachment of NATO forces on Russia’s borders is destabilizing and a source of confrontation. The relentless expansion is a violation of the principle of indivisible security. Would the United States accept a situation where Mexico was installing Russian or Chinese military forces?

As for the cessation of hostilities and the drawing of territorial lines, that is a thorny issue. Moscow claims that it has a historical right to the territories east and south of the Dniper River, including Sumy, Kharkov, Kherson and Odessa, in addition to the Donbass and, of course, Crimea.

What is unrealistic is for Ukraine to claim the total return of territories that Russia has taken since 2022 (and 2014 in the case of Crimea). From Russia’s point of view, and many international historians would concur, the post-1991 composition of Ukraine was an artifice. It arbitrarily incorporated lands that were historically always part of Russia. These lands were donated to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Soviet leaders in dubious schemes of demographic manipulation that did not respect the antecedent cultural Russian ties.

In any case, a framework for a permanent peaceful settlement is feasible if all sides engage in honest discussions that recognize the historical background.

When U.S. President Donald Trump met Russia’s Putin in Anchorage back in August 2025, there seemed to be an acceptance by the American side of Russia’s perspective on addressing “root causes”. Subsequently, Trump failed to follow through on what appeared to be a breakthrough meeting in Anchorage. Part of the problem was the Europeans and the Kiev regime thwarting Trump’s initiative and throwing obstacles in the way of negotiations. European leaders insisted on a temporary ceasefire and NATO peacekeepers, and have persisted in treating Russia like a pariah.

The international context has shifted in a way that makes Trump more amenable. His disastrous war with Iran has blown fuel prices sky-high for American consumers. With the mid-term elections only weeks away, the White House needs some good news to prevent a political wipeout for the Republicans.

Trump made a deal with Putin two weeks ago for diesel supplies from Russia to ease the pain at the pump for American voters. Essential to that is for Ukraine to stop air strikes on Russian oil facilities. The corrupt puppet president in Kiev, Vladimir Zelensky, is defying Trump with churlish remarks and threats to keep striking Russian oil refineries and depots.

One positive thing from the rift with Zelensky is Trump viewing him as the obstacle to a peace deal. Trump is now openly castigating the Ukrainian former comedian and calling for a new president in that country.

The cocaine addict Zelensky, with his loathsome war racketeering, is hanging on to power by a thread, and only because of continuing support from European leaders. These elitist European politicians are driven by anti-Russian ideology and servility to the futile geopolitical agenda of strategically defeating Russia. Europe is witnessing a social upheaval bordering on revolution over the fallout from the soaring cost of living, which is, in turn, a consequence of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine. But the elites have no way to address the chaos because they are the problem.

For all his flaws, and there are many, at least Trump is willing to engage in diplomacy. He is not encumbered with hatred of Russia. His understanding of the root causes of the war may be limited. But at least his administration has the basic quality of respecting Russia as an equal and listening to Russia’s perspective. That is a modicum for negotiations and the art of the possible.

By contrast, the European elites and their pet regime in Kiev are incapable of engaging in any diplomacy. They are obsessed with unattainable and sinister ideological prejudices that hark back to Nazi Germany and the belief that Russians are “subhumans” to be conquered. They have no respect for Russia, nor are they capable of any intelligent, honest discussion about the causes of conflict.

Jeffrey Sachs contends that Trump could promptly end the war and create peace if he were to make a clear policy announcement that the United States is returning to a position whereby it respects indivisible security for all, including Russia, accepts permanent neutrality of Ukraine with no future as a NATO member, and declares that NATO ends its eastward expansion. A rational path to peace is possible.

There will be howls of condemnation from the Kiev regime and its European sponsors. There will be howls too from within the U.S. establishment who share the European ideology of demonizing and belligerence towards Russia. Trump may be so weakened by the mid-term elections that it is not politically possible for him to make such a policy announcement.

So be it. Russia will continue to win its military objectives and demand its rightful terms of peace. Diplomacy offers an easy way to peace. But if the West insists on the hard way, then Russia will deliver that way too. The Europeans and Kiev regime will pay an even higher price with their own implosion.

October 24, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia | , , , | Comments Off on Peace in Ukraine: the easy way – or the hard way

Trump & the Rrrrussians

By Patrick LAWRENCE | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 24, 2026

Given the gush of vitriol and condemnation since Oct. 9, when Donald Trump announced his deal to import 5 million metric tons of Russian diesel, roughly 37 million barrels, one would think the president had surrendered the United States’ sovereignty to the Kremlin, or handed over the Ukrainians to the Russian army, or rankly betrayed the Europeans or altogether renounced what we picturesquely call Western civilization.

This is, indeed, what we read daily in the corporate press these days and what we are supposed to think. It is 2016 redux, it seems. Another round of Russiagate may not be far off, given 16 House Democrats have introduced a Prohibit Corrupt Russia Oil Deals Act and 12 senators now attack the diesel accord as “a gift to our adversary.”

If there is one thing essential to recall about those dreary years it is that the wobbly-from-the-first Russiagate edifice, the whole of it, was made of mis– and disinformation, hyperbole, innuendo, extravagant abuses of office and propaganda incessantly disseminated in corporate media.

It was, in short, the Deep State’s attempt to scuttle any effort to advance beyond the poisonous Russophobia it had spent a decade cultivating (taking my date from Vladimir Putin’s era-defining speech to the Munich Security Conference in 2007).

It is the same again as Trump tries once more to end the war in Ukraine and refashion East–West relations, a project the old “MICIMATT”— the military-industrial, congressional, intelligence, media, academic and think tank blob — simply cannot abide.

Let us listen to this new round of rubbish with the recent past in mind.

“Donald Trump, meet Neville Chamberlain.” That is Tom Friedman, writing in The New York Times last week under the headline, “Trump’s Democracy–for–Diesel Deal Shames Us All.”

“When future students search online for ‘sellout,’ ‘appeaser’ or ‘traitor to his country’s core values,’” Friedman elaborates, “their two pictures will come up first, side by side.” There is no matching our Tom when it comes to overdrawn historical reference dressed up as intellectual gravitas.

Harold Meyerson, writing in The American Prospect Tuesday under the headline, “Why Putin Is Now Our Ally,” is unhappy that Americans are not angrier and more contemptuous than they appear to be in response to Trump’s latest démarche to Russia.

“We’ve grown so inured to Trump’s outrages,” he writes, “that his alliance with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s neo–Tsarist imperialist regime hasn’t yet stoked the level of horror and rage it deserves.”

Putin’s neo–Tsarist imperialist regime. We’re back to this, are we?

We’re also back to the good old Trump–Putin “bromance” bit, it seems, as in “Trump’s man-crush on the Russian dictator has been well documented and need not be recounted in all its unctuous detail.”

This bizarre suggestion of homophilia repeats a tiresome trope from the Russiagate years — never in the slightest documented, for the record — and this time comes from Tom Nichols, a neoliberal hack of long standing. Writing Oct. 18 in The Atlantic, Nichols wants us to see matters this way:

“Donald Trump has now abandoned pretense and is openly aiding the Kremlin in its war against a friend and partner of the U.S. The American commander in chief has abandoned the Western order, the most successful — and powerful — security arrangement in human history.”

Are we clear on all this? The corrupt, Nazi-infested regime in Kiev is America’s friend and partner, simple as that.

The Western order as we have it is the finest thing humanity has ever managed, and Donald J. Trump has forsaken this finest-ever order.

All because the Trumpster signed an agreement whereby the United States will purchase, all in, about two weeks’ worth of Russian diesel fuel.

Paranoia strikes deep, as should be plain to all as the imperium proceeds into its self-inflicted decline. Into the pages of The Atlantic it will creep whenever the topic is “Putin’s Russia” (as against “Russia”).

Trump’s ‘Simple’ Decision

How to account for this outpouring of nitwittery from all these pseuds? Why so suddenly does the world seem to be coming to an end? These are our questions.

Trump II has proven disastrously worse than Trump I, to state the obvious. He had a few good ideas the first time around: end the wars of adventure, bring the soldiers home, decommission NATO, a new détente with Moscow.

This time — and you have to credit the Trumpster for this, strange as it is to credit him with anything — he has only one. He still wants to restore relations with Russia to a working order of some kind, and this must begin with ending the war the Biden regime provoked very quickly after Trump was voted out of office.

Trump is a Manhattan property man for whom everything is transactional, we have to remember. Exploring “deals” does not figure at the higher end of statecraft — certainly not given all that is at issue between Russia and the West — but this is a question of method, not purpose. Let us not get lost in the former while losing sight of the latter.

Peaceful, constructive relations with Russia, based on an enduring settlement of benefit to all sides, are a good thing altogether to be welcomed, however often Americans and West Europeans are told any such eventuality would amount to the horror of horrors.

As everyone thinking about this has remarked, Trump’s immediate intent in striking his diesel deal is to get prices down as best he can before the midterm elections and to pretend the price crisis has causes other than the U.S.–Israeli assault on Iran.

I’m for setting the politics aside. A few days’ worth of diesel — all that can possibly arrive from Russian refineries before Nov. 3 — won’t make any difference, and Trump cannot but know this.

My mind goes to a remark Trump made on Truth Social, his digital bullhorn, at the beginning of this week in response to all the shrieking and shouting that followed his Oct. 9 announcement:

“My decision on Russia is a very simple one. I am in the process of negotiating Peace in the war between Russia and Ukraine, and don’t want to do anything that will drive, foolishly, Russia away from the bargaining table.”

It is important to read this together with other things the Trump regime has got up to lately. While the United States is in plausible-denial mode, Kiev reports that it has disrupted some of the early-warning satellite intelligence vital to Ukraine’s defenses.

Elon Musk, apparently after consultation with the White House, has restricted Ukraine’s use of Starshield, the military-grade version of the Starlink communications system.

These are day-to-day lifelines. So is the Prioritized Ukraine Requirement List, the arrangement whereby the United States sells arms to the Europeans, who send them on to Ukraine. To date the volume of shipments through the P.U.R.L. channel has come to $7 billion. Trump is reportedly threatening to end the program.

Atop all this he has suspended implementation of a sanctions bill he signed into law only a month ago. Concurrently, the Witkoff–Kushner duo presented Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian dictator, with a new settlement proposal that reads to me like a condensed version of the very creditable 28–point plan they presented a year ago next month.

Something is afoot, it seems to me. I see a thought-through strategy in all this. I see renewed determination on Trump’s part.

Trump is out of the closet at last — and perfectly accurate — as he asserts that Zelensky is the principal impediment to a settlement accord and, so, should be either removed from office or forced to accept defeat and recognize Russia’s legitimate interests.

Trump’s new push to bring the Ukraine crisis to a close, to be clear on this point, is not a betrayal of the Ukrainian people. It is just the opposite.

There are a lot of reasons to question how far Trump will get either in ending the war or restoring relations with Russia to a livable détente. But if he maintains the present momentum, we may be watching the beginning of the endgame in Ukraine.

This is a “may,” conditional verb required. But it is this prospect that has all the warmongers in the MICIMATT complex in a dither.

Strange it will be if a president so wrong about so much manages to achieve the peace he is after. But maybe the Tom Friedmans and the Tom Nichols and the rest of their kind are useful as a mirror.

Maybe the extent of their panic is a measure of the Trumpster’s chances of success this time around.

October 24, 2026 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on Trump & the Rrrrussians

US taxpayer money laundered back through Ukraine – Musk

RT | October 24, 2026

Billionaire Elon Musk has accused US politicians of putting Kiev’s interests ahead of their own country’s, alleging that American taxpayer money sent to Ukraine is being laundered back into political campaigns.

Writing on X on Friday, the SpaceX founder suggested that financial interests could explain why some American lawmakers remain staunch supporters of Kiev in its conflict with Russia.

“Some of that US taxpayer money comes back through multiple laundry machines to fund political campaigns in America, which is why you see some politicians caring more about Ukraine than America!” Musk wrote, without identifying the beneficiaries.

In March, US outlet Just the News cited a declassified intelligence summary describing a plan to divert hundreds of millions of dollars in American aid earmarked for clean-energy projects in Ukraine into then-President Joe Biden’s 2024 reelection campaign.

Trump shared the report on Truth Social, while then-US intelligence chief Tulsi Gabbard reportedly asked officials at the US Agency for International Development (USAID) to investigate whether the alleged scheme had been carried out.

Musk also accused Ukrainian elites of profiting from Western assistance while ordinary Ukrainians bear the human cost.

“The former have grown very rich off the hundreds of billions flowing to Ukraine, while the latter’s children are conscripted to die in trenches,” he wrote.

Kiev’s increasingly coercive mobilization campaign has been marked by numerous documented cases of forced detentions and violent confrontations involving recruitment officers. Corruption investigations have also exposed schemes allowing wealthier Ukrainians to evade military service.

Ukraine has been rocked by major corruption scandals involving figures close to Vladimir Zelensky. One centered on his longtime associate Timur Mindich and an alleged $100 million bribery and money-laundering operation at state nuclear energy company Energoatom. The scandal forced senior officials from office, including former presidential chief of staff Andrey Yermak, while Mindich fled Ukraine.

Ukrainian investigators have also uncovered what they say is fraud to the tune of $5.6 million involving military drones purchased at prices up to 90% above market rates.

Even Kiev’s staunchest European backers have criticized its failure to deliver promised anti-corruption reforms, warning that billions of euros in assistance could be withheld.

Zelensky is seeking at least €70 billion ($81 billion) in additional foreign assistance for 2027, estimating Ukraine’s total conflict-related spending needs for next year at €155 billion.

European Council President Antonio Costa said on Friday that the EU expects to cover roughly two-thirds of the additional funding, or around €46.7 billion, with a decision potentially coming in November. That sum would come on top of the €45 billion already earmarked for Kiev next year.

October 24, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Militarism | , , | Comments Off on US taxpayer money laundered back through Ukraine – Musk

BRITAIN’S WARNING: PREPARE FOR WAR

The HighWire with Del Bigtree | October 22, 2026

From military speeches to civil-defense drills, Europe’s leaders are openly preparing their countries for conflict. Jefferey looks at the warnings coming out of Britain and the polling that suggests the public may not be ready to answer the call.

October 24, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Russophobia, Video | , , | Comments Off on BRITAIN’S WARNING: PREPARE FOR WAR

“Historic Russia”: The Land Putin Will Not Give Back

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – October 23, 2026

October 23, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Video | , , | Comments Off on “Historic Russia”: The Land Putin Will Not Give Back

Easy fix for Europe’s chaos? Stop fueling war against Russia

By Finian Cunningham | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 23, 2026

There is a straightforward way to alleviate the social chaos sweeping Europe, as well as the war in Ukraine threatening to engulf the continent. It’s an easy fix – and it’s not shoving more white powder up Zelensky’s nose paid for by European taxpayers.

European leaders just have to find the resolve to stop fueling the war against Russia and engage in diplomacy with Moscow to establish an all-encompassing security architecture (as Russia had proposed back in December 2021). That, in turn, will salvage European nations from unsustainable debt driven by militarism and propping up a kleptocracy in Kiev, whose puppet leader is obviously degenerating from cocaine addiction.

Across Europe, cities are looking like battle zones with mass protests, public tensions, buildings burning, shops looted, riot police baton-charging crowds, and masked mobs running amok. France is bearing the brunt of street violence, but so too are Italy, Belgium, and others. Spain and Portugal are seeing their cities turned into tent camps in protests against a lack of affordable housing.

In the turmoil, it is easy to lose sight of the basic problem. People en masse are suffering from economic privation. Why can’t their individual and social needs be met in an efficient and effective manner? Why is there seemingly no money to fix broken societies?

Curfews are declared in Paris and cities across France while Italy moves to deploy soldiers in Milan to restore a semblance of order. Thousands of arrests have been made in recent days. Revolution is in the air, and so too is the sinister possibility of supposedly democratic governments flipping to become police-state dictatorships.

In this volatile, explosive situation, it is tempting to look for scapegoats.

French President Emmanuel Macron goes on national television to denounce “ultra-left groups” who he says are mindlessly trying to destroy France.

Even American President Donald Trump weighs in to claim that a once great nation (France) is being “conquered by immigrants, jihadists and communists.”

There were also predictable accusations in Western media that Russia is fomenting the unrest across Europe.

Another misdirection is to portray the European governments as cash-strapped and unable to deliver relief from the cost-of-living crisis and deteriorating public services. The governments and media tend to define the problem as one of balancing fiscal bookkeeping, overspending on social welfare, aging populations, or some other demographic factor.

European nations, we are told by pundits, are in massive debt and under pressure from bond markets to ramp up austerity by slashing public spending. The challenge for France and other governments is that they “no longer have the fiscal room to simply throw more money at these problems,” as one commentator put it.

Another commentator lamented that: “Hamstrung governments seem to have no answer to the public’s furious demands, making further discontent likely.”

In other words, we are told, “there is no alternative to austerity,” to paraphrase the late British leader Margaret Thatcher.

But that premise deceptively tells only part of the picture. The crucial part omitted is that the fiscal crunch of European governments is largely caused by the reckless funnelling of money to fuel the war in Ukraine and inordinately build up their own military forces. That wasteful misallocation of resources is “justified” by relentlessly and absurdly demonizing Russia as a “threat to Europe”. The news media play the role of amplifying the propaganda.

The media do not question, never mind expose, how Europe’s economies have been exhausted by a proxy war agenda against Russia that has involved cutting themselves off from Russian affordable energy, the lifeblood of industry, and on top of that racking up hundreds of billions in debt by propping up the endemically corrupt Kiev regime.

That regime is losing the war against Russia as it runs out of conscripts for the meat grinder. Yet, European governments are fixated on keeping the futile war going with ever more funding of the regime.

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, dissembled this week by claiming that “Ukraine would have surrendered a long time ago if not for European support”. This is a tacit admission that the EU and Britain are fueling the war.

She also accused the Trump administration of forcing Ukraine into a surrender. In her soulless view, diplomacy and peace are sneered at as surrender.

European societies are deprived of financial resources for vital public services and infrastructure all in the fraudulent name of “defending” Ukraine in a war that has gone on for nearly five years. There is no end in sight if the European leaders have their way.

The European Union’s unelected bureaucracy has donated €90 billion to the Kiev regime for 2026 and 2027 alone, in addition to over €200 billion already allocated. This largesse is still not enough. The Zelensky dictatorship is calling for an extra €70 billion to be doled out, and the EU Russophobic elites are clamoring to oblige.

No wonder that European societies are visibly falling apart from underinvestment and widespread hardship from the soaring cost of living. The social implosion is a direct consequence of a policy of militarism and war, a policy that the Euro elites are running with impunity and unaccountability. That’s dictatorship by any definition.

The depiction of fiscally constrained and helpless European governments is an illusion. The constraint is not a natural condition of societies. It is the consequence of a deliberate, criminal policy of warmongering.

So spare us the scapegoating and misdirection. Spare us the curfews and calls for emergency police state powers to curb “hooligans and extremists.” That misdirection is playing into the hands of the ruling class, which has delegitimized itself by its sponsoring of war in Ukraine, its support for American aggression against Iran and Yemen, and its complicity in Israeli genocide in Gaza and Lebanon.

Contrary to the politicians and pundits claiming that there is “no easy fix” to the chaos erupting in Europe, there is. It is for the European governments to stop fueling the war in Ukraine and actually manage societies according to democratic needs.

However, that rational and feasible solution is probably out of reach under the prevailing political system. The elites in control of the system are incapable of overseeing any meaningful reform. They will not engage in diplomacy to find a peaceful settlement in Ukraine with Russia.

And so the outcome seems to be either they consolidate the emerging dictatorship and quash the legitimate social demands of the people, or the people will prevail by sweeping away the corrupt regimes that masquerade as “democratic”.

October 23, 2026 Posted by | Economics, Militarism, Russophobia | , , | Comments Off on Easy fix for Europe’s chaos? Stop fueling war against Russia

Putin’s key remarks on peace talks and Europe’s ‘schizophrenia’

RT | October 23, 2026

Russia remains ready to negotiate a lasting settlement in Ukraine but will achieve its objectives regardless, Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalist Pavel Zarubin on Thursday. He also outright rejected “schizophrenic” claims in Western media that Moscow could be seeking a war with Europe.

Putin’s comments followed nearly three hours of talks with US envoy Steve Witkoff in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. Witkoff brought new peace talk proposals following his own discussions with Vladimir Zelensky, Finnish President Alexander Stubb, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen’s Chief of Staff Bjoern Siebert, and Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in Oslo.

The new diplomatic engagement comes after Putin’s October 9 agreement with US President Donald Trump on Russian diesel supplies, whereby Washington eased fuel export restrictions while engaging with Moscow on broader economic cooperation.

Lasting peace, rather than a temporary pause

Putin confirmed Russia’s readiness to resume trilateral contacts with the US and Ukraine, focusing on security arrangements for both countries after a final settlement. The goal is to achieve definitive peace agreements, rather than “a suspension of hostilities for some short period,” he stressed.

The Russian leader also stated that he agrees with Witkoff’s argument that such discussions would also need to address Europe’s wider security architecture.

Kremlin aide Yury Ushakov previously suggested the talks could resume around mid-November, potentially in Abu Dhabi.

Putin said an agreement was possible, but insisted that “all the goals of the special military operation will be achieved” one way or another.

Europe’s ‘political schizophrenia’

European claims that Russia poses a military threat and preparations for confrontation amount to “political schizophrenia,” Putin said, arguing that European populations do not want war with Russia and explicitly rejected suggestions that Moscow is preparing to attack them.

“We do not want, we are not preparing for any war with Europe,” he said.

Putin described inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia as unrealistic, expressing hope that its opponents would recognize that peaceful relations better serve their own populations.

‘Historic Russia’ and the territorial question

Asked about Zelensky’s recent comments to Fox News that he would be willing to give up 25% of his territories in order to freeze the conflict on the current battle lines, Putin rejected the premise.

“It is not their territory, it is the territory of historic Russia,” he said, citing residents’ votes for independence and subsequently for reunification with the Russian Federation.

He acknowledged that the issue remained disputed, but argued that describing these developments as Ukraine losing territory was inappropriate.

Fighting ‘to the last Ukrainian’

Putin called it “incomprehensible” that Kiev expects that “the entire world should pay them, fight for them, supply them with weapons, ammunition, equipment,” and stressed that Russia has no desire to fight Ukraine.

“If Ukraine’s current leadership wants to wage war, let them fight. But why do they think everyone should pay for it and supply them with weapons?” Putin questioned.

He noted that much of this desire for war can be attributed to foreign countries that want to fight against Russia in order to weaken it and have promised support to Kiev.

However, Putin stressed that these foreign entities are prepared to fight until “the last Ukrainian” and questioned whether Ukraine’s leadership similarly treats its citizens as expendable cannon fodder.

Putin accused Ukrainian authorities of rounding up men “like stray dogs” and forcibly sending them to the front, undermining motivation. He also argued that nationalist groups that carry out this so-called “busification” do not always bear the frontline burden themselves.

He recalled that, according to official figures, there have been half a million deserters in Ukraine and over 300,000 criminal cases opened, adding that the actual numbers could be significantly higher.

Shared history and missed opportunities

Putin said Moscow had sought a negotiated resolution with Kiev since 2014, including through the Minsk agreements intended to settle the Donbass conflict. He blamed Ukrainian authorities for repeatedly rejecting opportunities to reach an agreement before Russia’s military operation began in 2022.

He described Ukrainians as a people closely related to Russians, pointing to genetic research that has shown they are “one people.” However, he acknowledged that some wished to identify differently and said Russia accepted that reality.

“We are ready even now to negotiate and seek solutions to this difficult, complicated situation,” Putin said. “Everything can be agreed upon.”

October 23, 2026 Posted by | Russophobia | , | Comments Off on Putin’s key remarks on peace talks and Europe’s ‘schizophrenia’

Iran’s Next Strike May Not Explode. It Could Shut You Down /Col Doug Macgregor

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – October 21, 2026

October 21, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Comments Off on Iran’s Next Strike May Not Explode. It Could Shut You Down /Col Doug Macgregor

SVR Report on Ukraine’s Mexican Drug Gang Links Could Pressure Zelensky, Won’t Change US Policy

Sputnik – 20.10.2026

“It’s quite possible that these facts could serve as a tool to exert pressure on the Kiev regime,” but the US government “will never publicly acknowledge that they have leveraged drug cartels to further their own interests,” RAS Institute of Latin America senior researcher Alexander Stepanov told Sputnik.

Commenting on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service’s report that the US is looking into the deployment of 80+ cartel members to Ukraine for drone training, Stepanov said he suspects Washington won’t take any substantive measures “because the criminal networks and cartels operating in the Western Hemisphere are affiliated with the US intelligence community.”

“These groups serve as proxy instruments for the US, deployed when necessary to pressure opposing governments and act as a key destabilizing factor – thus creating opportunities for the US to exert influence over the region.”

US intelligence even “oversees the recruitment of individuals from these cartels, categorizing them based on technical proficiency, equipment, and intended use,” Stepanov pointed out, highlighting the historical use of American prisons for this purpose, and the fact that “virtually the entire leadership of Mexico’s cartels comes from security or military backgrounds, including the special forces.”

Possessing “the necessary skills, training and discipline,” gang members are “ideal mercenaries,” and deployment in Ukraine for drone training will allow them to transfer their skills back home as instructors at specialized paramilitary training centers affiliated with US intel agencies.

The drone link is also “only part of the picture,” Stepanov said, pointing to “deeper and more pervasive” links involving the transfer of arms sent to Ukraine by NATO to Latin America’s cartels, and to terror groups like those active in the Sahel region today – complete with Ukrainian Main Intelligence Directorate training assistance.

Ukraine is also “leveraging its capabilities, intelligence structures and affiliated networks of organized criminal groups that have taken root in Europe to facilitate the distribution of narcotics, with Mexican drug cartels serving as their primary suppliers,” Stepanov believes.

October 20, 2026 Posted by | Corruption, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , , , | Comments Off on SVR Report on Ukraine’s Mexican Drug Gang Links Could Pressure Zelensky, Won’t Change US Policy

Moscow blasts UN for ignoring torture of Russian POWs

RT | October 17, 2026

The UN should resist pressure from Kiev’s Western backers and finally address the issue of widespread abuse of captured Russian servicemen in Ukrainian secret prisons, Russian Ambassador-at-Large Rodion Miroshnik has said.

During a conversation with the chairman of the UN Committee Against Torture Claude Heller on Thursday, Miroshnik said that Moscow is aware of a whole network of such detention facilities, operating in Ukraine’s Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, and Sumy Regions as well as in the country’s capital, Kiev.

The Russian servicemen are “going through hell” in so-called “transit prisons,” which are set up at deployment points of Ukrainian military units and nationalist battalions, he said.

“The thugs, who hide their faces behind masks… and address each other only by their call signs, subject the captured Russian troops to inhuman abuse. Waterboarding, electrocuting, baiting with dogs and amputations performed without anesthesia are just a few examples of the techniques systematically employed by the Ukrainian tormentors,” the envoy, who is charged with documenting Kiev’s war crimes, stressed.

According to Miroshnik, captured troops are usually sent to those facilities in the early stages of their imprisonment, where they are held in cages, pits, and stone dungeons.

The Kiev government does not allow ombudsmen and human rights activists into those “torture chambers,” but the Russian authorities have gathered hundreds of accounts of survivors detailing what has been happening there, he said.

“This information had been passed on to the UN Secretariat on more than one occasion,” but no action followed, Miroshnik added.

By ignoring the existence of the secret prisons and systematic torture of Russian troops, the global body “encourages the spread of such criminal practices and disregard for the relevant UN Convention,” he added.

“Many experts are aware of this disgraceful phenomenon, yet there is a lack of political will to overcome the pressure from the foreign accomplices to the conflict, who shield the Kiev regime from accountability and prevent a thorough investigation of its conduct,” the envoy said.

While turning a blind eye to the torture of Russian troops, the UN published several reports accusing Russia of mistreating Ukrainian prisoners, based on accounts by POWs returned by Moscow to Kiev. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has labeled those accusations of abuse “disinformation.”

Last month, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the UN Secretariat was unable to properly perform its duties as most key positions are occupied by representatives of NATO countries.

The current team, led by [UN General-Secretary] Antonio Guterres, who is a Portuguese national, “promotes biased approaches and double standards, effectively serving the interests of a group of Western nations,” Lavrov insisted during a press conference on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

October 17, 2026 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture | , | Comments Off on Moscow blasts UN for ignoring torture of Russian POWs

US arms supplied to Ukraine found in war-torn Sudan – Moscow

RT | October 15, 2026

Weapons supplied to Ukraine from US military stocks have been found in the possession of Sudan’s paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a senior Russian diplomat has said, citing markings linking them to deliveries to Kiev.

Yulia Zhdanova, head of Russia’s delegation to the Vienna Negotiations on Military Security and Arms Control, made the statement on Wednesday at a meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe’s Forum for Security Co-operation.

Sudanese troops recovered MK19 automatic grenade launchers, M72 anti-tank weapons, and Swedish-made AT4 launchers during an operation near Bara, she said, according to TASS. “A preliminary examination of the markings revealed that these weapons were donated to the Ukrainian Armed Forces in December 2024 from US military stock,” Zhdanova said.

Sudan’s army and the RSF have been at war since April 2023, forcing millions from their homes and exposing civilians to bombardment, hunger, and widespread abuses. In June last year, Sudanese Foreign Ministry official Muhammad Al-Sirr told RT that Ukraine was supplying drones to the paramilitary forces at very low prices and helping its fighters use the technology to strike Sudanese infrastructure.

Sudan descended into chaos in April 2023 when fighting erupted between the national army, the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The conflict followed months of tension between their commanders, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, over a planned transition to civilian rule. What began in the capital, Khartoum, as a power struggle has devastated the country, killing tens of thousands, displacing millions, and pushing parts of Sudan into famine.

Regional and international peace efforts, including African Union mediation and Saudi-US talks in Jeddah, have repeatedly stalled. In September 2025, the Quad group – the US, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the United Arab Emirates – proposed a three-month humanitarian truce leading to a permanent ceasefire and a civilian-led political transition. Burhan rejected a subsequent US-led proposal that November, arguing it would dismantle state security institutions while leaving the RSF in place. The paramilitaries said they accepted the truce.

The UAE’s involvement has deepened mistrust of mediation. Sudan’s army-backed government severed diplomatic ties with Abu Dhabi in May 2025, accusing it of supporting the RSF. The UAE denies supplying weapons to the paramilitaries. Relations with Washington deteriorated further in September 2026 after the US questioned both factions’ legitimacy. Sudan rejected the remarks and called for peace efforts free from foreign dictates.

Meanwhile, rival administrations have entrenched Sudan’s divisions. Burhan’s government returned to Khartoum in January 2026 after the army recaptured the capital, having operated from Port Sudan during the fighting. In July 2025, the RSF-aligned TASIS coalition announced a rival government based in Nyala, Darfur, with Dagalo heading its governing council. The UN Security Council and African Union rejected the move.

Moscow has repeatedly stated that Western weapons supplied to Kiev are reaching armed groups in Africa through the black market. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova raised the alarm as early as 2022, warning that Stinger missiles, Javelin anti-tank systems, and grenade launchers could enter illicit trading networks worldwide.

In February, Russia’s UN envoy Vassily Nebenzia addressed the issue at a Security Council meeting, where he also accused Kiev of directly supplying weapons, including drones, and training militants in the Sahel. Zhdanova previously blamed corruption in Ukraine and failures to track Western-supplied military equipment for weapons reaching terrorists and criminal groups in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East.

Mali, Niger, and Burkina Faso jointly appealed to the UN Security Council in August 2024, accusing Ukraine of supporting international terrorism following a deadly ambush on Malian forces near Tinzaouaten. Mali severed diplomatic ties with Kiev after Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andrey Yusov said rebels received information enabling the ambush.

Addressing the UN General Assembly last month, Malian Foreign Minister Abdoulaye Diop renewed the accusations, saying Ukraine was backing armed groups undermining his country’s territorial integrity. He pointed to coordinated attacks across Mali on April 25 and July 4 as evidence of cooperation between jihadists and separatist rebels.

Last week, AFP reported that sources within the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA), a Tuareg-led separatist rebel coalition fighting Mali’s government, acknowledged receiving Ukrainian training, including instruction in operating drones.

October 16, 2026 Posted by | Corruption | , , , , , , | Comments Off on US arms supplied to Ukraine found in war-torn Sudan – Moscow

Larry Johnson’s Latest Presentation to the UN Security Council

By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | October 14, 2026 

I am back in NYC at the invitation of the Russian delegation to the United Nations. Unlike my previous appearance before the full UN Security Council, this was an Arria session. An Arria-formula meeting is an informal meeting called by one or more Security Council members to hear from people who normally can’t address the Council. These include NGOs, civil-society figures, experts, victims and witnesses, and non-state actors. It isn’t a formal Council meeting and has no basis in the Council’s rules of procedure.

All fifteen members of the Security Council were represented. Their response was quite revealing (I will reveal that below). Here was my statement:

Chair, Excellencies, distinguished delegates, thank you for the opportunity to address you.

My name is Larry Johnson. I served as an officer in the Central Intelligence Agency and later in the State Department’s Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism. I spent more than two decades working with United States Military Special Operations Forces. I come to this Council not as a spokesman for any government, but as someone who has spent a career studying how wars are fought and how civilians suffer in them and how hostilities are accompanied by disinformation campaigns.

For more than four years this Council has heard that Russia is waging a war against Ukraine and is targeting civilians. You do not need to come to the Security Council to hear this narrative, it is all over media and internet. I ask you to test that claim against the evidence.

Today we heard horrific stories of civilians targeted, of prisoners of war being tortured, and civilians held against their will by Ukrainian armed forces.

Ask yourselves a couple of questions: why are the civilians dying in Russia from drone attacks discounted and why are the civilians that were killed in Ukraine before February 2022 ignored? Based on my experience, the crisis in Ukraine has been accompanied by a sophisticated disinformation campaign designed to place all blame on Russia while exonerating Ukraine.

Begin with the scale of the fighting. By the Ukrainian government’s own figures, Russia has fired well over approximately two and a half million tons of munitions. This includes one hundred thousand glide bombs, attack drones, missiles and millions of artillery rounds since February 2022.

Now consider the human toll. The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has verified 16,431 civilian deaths through the middle of this year. Every one of those deaths is a tragedy, and I do not minimize any of them. However, the ratio of civilian deaths to munitions expended is extraordinarily low for a war of this intensity.

Compare those numbers with what the United States did in the Second World War, a war my country rightly regarded as just. Allied bombers dropped some 2.7 million tons of bombs on Europe and killed between half a million and three-quarters of a million civilians in Europe.

In the Pacific, the United States dropped about 160,000 tons of bombs on the Japanese home islands. In all, American air attacks on Japan killed somewhere between 330,000 and half a million civilians.

Put the figures side by side. In total, the United States killed somewhere between half a million and more than a million civilians in the Second World War. The verified toll in Ukraine, after more than four years, is a small fraction of that.

These numbers do not happen by accident. The record of Russia in Ukraine is consistent with a policy of not targeting civilians. These facts contradict the claim that Russia is waging a campaign of extermination against Ukraine’s civilian population.

The same standard must apply to Ukraine.

The killing of civilians in this conflict did not begin in February 2022. From 2014 through 2021, the OHCHR recorded at least 3,404 civilian deaths in the Donbass. From 2018 through 2021, the OHCHR found that 81 percent of civilian casualties from Ukrainian shelling, small-arms fire and drone attacks occurred in areas held by the Donetsk and Luhansk authorities. Those victims are forgotten by the world media and by the United Nations. Few call for any investigation or accountability.

Since February 2022, according to figures the Russian Foreign Ministry presented to the Human Rights Council last month, Ukrainian strikes have killed more than 9,000 civilians in the territories under Russian control and wounded more than 25,500. This Council has rarely discussed those victims. They deserve the same attention and the same investigation as every civilian killed on the other side of the line.

Today we heard some of the circumstances of their deaths. I hope that the United Nations will include those numbers in their reports in order to give an unbiased record of events…. At least 12,404 civilians have been killed by Ukrainian Armed Forces since 2014.

Thus, we come to the simple fact that the number of civilians killed on both sides of the front line are not that different even if we take numbers offered by OHCHR at their face value –12,404 compared to 16,431. And I know that the Government of Russia strongly challenges them, citing in particular the questionable OHCHR claim that Russia was responsible for Bucha.

Why is the focus exclusively on Russia while we hear nothing about Ukrainian Armed Forces committing crimes against civilians?

I am not asking this Council to excuse any unlawful act. Where a strike violates the principles of distinction, proportionality and precaution, it should be investigated, whoever carries it out. I am asking the Council to apply a single standard. The nations that sit in judgment of Russia should measure Russia’s conduct against the evidence and against their own history, not against a narrative.

False accusations and biased reports are not the most effective way to protect civilians in Ukraine. The key to protecting civilians is a negotiated end to this war. I urge the members of this Council to put their full weight behind that goal.

Thank you.

The biggest shock came from the US representative. Unlike my previous appearance before the Security Council when the US representative was aggressive and dismissive of my remarks, the guy sitting in the US chair today spoke as if the US had no role whatsoever in the war raging between Russia and Ukraine. He was quite subdued. A complete change in tone and attitude. This told me there is a definite change in the US policy towards Russia.

The Europeans on the other hand were out of their fucking minds. The representatives of Denmark, Latvia, France and Greece were aggressive and rude. They are boiling for a fight. The purpose of the meeting was to present evidence of Ukrainian attacks on civilians in territory now occupied by Russia. Instead of dealing with the facts, the European Lilliputians howled at the Russians.

Even the British representative took a low key approach. That also was surprising. The remaining eight members of the Security Council made measured, neutral remarks. My commentary was in support of Rodion Miroshnik, the Russian Ambassador tasked with investigating attacks on civilians. Rodion is a good man and an honest investigator. All in all, a fascinating day.

October 16, 2026 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Comments Off on Larry Johnson’s Latest Presentation to the UN Security Council

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