The EU-funded International Federation for Human Rights (IFHR) has asked the International Criminal Court (ICC) to issue arrest warrants for several high-profile Russian media figures and officials, including former President Dmitry Medvedev and RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan, over alleged “hate speech.”
In a statement on Thursday, the IFHR called on the ICC to investigate what it called six “Russian propagandists,” including Medvedev, Simonyan, Russian journalist Dmitry Kiselyov, TV host Vladimir Solovyov, TV presenter Sergey Mardan, and Alexey Gromov, who serves as First Deputy to the Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office.
Like the US, Russia does not recognize the authority of the ICC, dismissing its rulings as “null and void.”
In its communication to the ICC, the IFHR alleged that Medvedev, Simonyan, Kiselyov, Solovyov, and Mardan “played a leading role in the dissemination of discriminatory hate speech targeting Ukrainians on the basis of their political views.”
The organization, which filed the document together with the Kharkov Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG), the Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), and an undisclosed Russian NGO, also accused Gromov of “personally shap[ing] core propaganda narratives.”
The IFHR has also claimed that the targeted figures were “spreading false and distorted narratives,” including “portraying Ukrainians as Nazis” and claiming that Ukrainian “state ideology is hatred for everything Russian.”
Moscow has for years voiced concerns about a resurgence of Nazi ideology in its neighbor, pointing in particular to ample evidence of the Nazi symbolism being used by Ukrainian nationalists.
It has also repeatedly denounced what it terms a long-running campaign to eradicate the Russian language from all spheres of life in Ukraine as well as a crackdown on Russian and Soviet cultural heritage. Officials in Moscow have named the “denazification” of Ukraine as one of the main goals of the military campaign against Kiev.
The IFHR is mostly funded by grants and donations. In 2022, its sponsors included the French Development Agency ($6.6 million), the European Commission ($6.4 million), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency ($3.6 million), and the Open Society Foundations ($1.1 million). The latter was founded by activist billionaire George Soros.
Last year, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and Commissioner for Children’s Rights Maria Lvova-Belova for allegedly participating in “unlawful” deportations of Ukrainian children to Russia. Moscow has said that the children were evacuated from the combat zone to ensure their safety, stressing that they could be returned to their parents or legal guardians upon request.
Commenting on the IFHR’s request, Medvedev called it an “acknowledgment of the effectiveness of our combined effort against the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.” He also said that such NGOs have essentially become accomplices of Ukraine’s attacks on Russian civilians.
In the opening days of this year’s St Petersburg International Economic Forum, there were a number of signs that the Kremlin is taking a much tougher line in its relations with the West than hitherto in response to the war mongering rhetoric that has come out of Western Europe in the past week. France, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States had publicly stated that the weapons they have supplied to Ukraine can be used as the Kievan authorities see fit, meaning that attacks on the Russian heartland with long range missiles coming from their factories and programmed by their specialists are permitted.
Meanwhile, in the run-up to the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landing commemorative activities in France yesterday, Emanuel Macron had done his very best to enrage the Kremlin by excluding Russians from the ceremonies and instead by warmly embracing the defender of the Bandera Nazi collaborators, President of Ukraine Zelensky. Macron compounded the insult to Russia by announcing that he will send Mirage 2005 all-purpose fighter jets to Ukraine before year’s end and that Ukrainian pilots are now in training in France.
The new hard line from Russia was evident already at the start of the week when deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov was allowed to speak his piece to the press, condemning the entry of West European powers into what is essentially co-belligerent status in the conflict. Ryabkov, you will remember, was the hard liner from the Ministry back in December 2021 demanding a voluntary roll back of NATO to its 1994 borders through negotiations over a draft document to that effect, lest Russia be compelled to push them back by force.
Then the tough condemnation by Ryabkov was repeated to the press by his boss, Foreign Secretary Sergei Lavrov.
At his meeting with representatives of the leading news agencies from 16 countries on Wednesday, Vladimir Putin sounded a tough note when he said that Russia’s response to a possible attack on critical Russian infrastructure in its heartland using the long-distance missiles supplied by the West would be met by an asymmetrical response, namely by Russia’s supplying similarly advanced weapons to armed forces that are in confrontation with the United States and are in a position to inflict significant damage on them if properly equipped. This sounded very much like a plan to arm the Houthis of Yemen, who could take good advantage of Russia’s hypersonic ship killing missiles to take revenge on the U.S. aircraft carrier force in their region. Or to give an assistance to Iraqi and Syrian militias who have been attacking U.S. military bases that are being maintained in their territories illegally.
Of lesser importance, but still valuable as indication of which way the wind is blowing in Moscow, at that meeting with the press Vladimir Putin allowed himself to use some vulgar terms that are out of character. These came in his answer to the Reuters journalist who asked about Russia’s possibly using tactical nuclear weapons against the West. Aside from saying that Western talk about Russia’s supposed plans to attack them were as dense as the wood of the desk before him, he called this all ‘bullshit’ (бред or чушь собачья). We also know that in the last day or two for the first time ever Putin alluded to the United States as an ‘enemy’ rather than using the now conventional term ‘unfriendly country.’
Then came the news yesterday, that Russia is dispatching the Admiral Gorshkov warship and task force to the Caribbean for exercises. The Gorshkov is not just any ship in the Russian fleet. It has been fitted with the latest Zircon nuclear capable hypersonic missiles. I imagine that from waters near Cuba its missiles could reach Washington, D.C. in five or ten minutes.
This looks as though the Kremlin is deliberately setting up a Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0, but basing its missiles in ships operating freely in international waters as is their right.
Apparently, the Biden administration has responded with feigned nonchalance to this development, saying that Russian exercises in the Caribbean are an innocent affair that take place periodically. Such is what Reuters reports.
However, I very much doubt that Pentagon officials are in fact so laid back.
All of the foregoing was the warm up. Today, at the Plenary Session of the St Petersburg Forum we saw that the hard line – soft line debates are still raging in the Kremlin. This was clear in the very odd decision to designate the political scientist Sergei Karaganov as moderator, pitching questions to Vladimir Putin and to the two honored guests on the podium with him, the presidents of Bolivia and Zimbabwe. Still more peculiar were the, shall we say, very unfriendly questions that Karaganov put to Putin, all of which hinted at a power struggle in Moscow over how best to respond to the West. This will be the subject of the segment below.
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In the past, before the start of the Special Military Operation, moderators for the Plenary Sessions of the St Petersburg Forum were uniformly chosen from among well-known American journalists. Usually these were people who knew little or nothing about Russia and were reading to Putin questions prepared for them by their editors. A perfect case in point was CNN anchor, pretty woman Megyn Kelly who held the position at the 2017 Forum. Her list of questions was repetitive to the point of hectoring. But she added glamor and could draw a Western audience. When relations already were becoming quite strained, the organizers of the Forum slotted in the Vesti journalist, anchor of the widely watched Saturday evening news Sergei Brilyov. Brilyov could be said to be a half-way compromise, because he was deeply embedded in the West, with his family residing in the U.K. while he was a dual national with British passport.
As late as a day before the opening of this year’s Forum, there was speculation that the moderator would be Tucker Carlson. In one sense, his taking that role would ensure a vast audience for the proceedings. On the other hand, his very American persona would be in contradiction with the dominant anti-Western current that I now see.
Instead, what we got was Sergei Karaganov, a political scientist whose name many in the West will find familiar because of the shocking call he made in June 2023 for Russia to put an end to Western provocations in and over Ukraine by striking one or another of its enemies in the West using tactical nuclear arms and forcing capitulation.
The article is worth re-reading because many of the points critical of Russian foreign and military policy that Karaganov made there, all indirectly deeply critical of Vladimir Putin’s softly-softly approach to managing international relations, were repeated face to face in his exchange with Putin on stage this afternoon. The key point he made is that Russia must quickly climb the escalatory ladder and win by its own ‘shock and awe’ behavior; that this, in the end, will save millions of lives by disrupting the present gradual ascent towards all-out nuclear war between the superpowers.
Whereas Putin had allowed himself to be subjected to unfriendly questioning from Western journalists on stage at previous Forums, this is the first time I have seen him subjected to unfriendly questioning by a leading member of Russia’s own foreign policy establishment.
The tension was visible in Putin’s face as he argued that so far Russia’s sovereignty and existence has not been threatened, so there is no reason to speak of using nuclear weapons in this conflict. Moreover, the Russian armed forces are daily pushing back the front line, gaining new territory and decimating the enemy’s manpower. Ukraine is losing 50,000 men a month and even the most drastic mobilization plans now being foisted on Kiev by Washington will, at best, only fill in the losses, not strengthen the Ukrainian positions for a counter-offensive.
Karaganov also probed Putin’s mentioning to the world press Russia’s planned ‘asymmetrical’ response to any attacks on its territory. Would Russia be sending hypersonic battleship killing missiles to the ‘enemies of our enemies’ in the Middle East, he asked. Putin demurred, saying that nothing has yet been shipped, and that every future move would be taken only after thorough study.
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Putin’s speech to the Plenary Session about the 9 structural reforms that Russia will be implementing in the period to 2030 was itself an odd address for an audience consisting of not only Russians but of businessmen and government representatives from a great many foreign states. The speech was almost entirely about economic development of the country and improvement of living standards.
Before getting to his questions about Russian foreign and military policy, Karaganov had put questions to Putin from the economic domain. However, his dry manner, utterly lacking in charm, could not have warmed the hearts of the audience. And even in this domain, the questions he put to Putin were unfriendly.
Karaganov spoke as a true son of the alienated Russian intelligentsia when he asked his President whether in the ongoing recentralization of economic management there would not be reexamination of the whole privatization process of the 1990s which was directed in a criminal manner.
Without wishing to plead the case of the oligarchs, Putin put the blame not on criminal intentions but on mistaken economic assumptions of those managing the economic transformation at the time, namely that they had assumed that whatever the business under examination may be it would be in better hands if privately owned than to remain as state property. As it turned out, said Putin, we have found that the state is entirely capable of managing businesses and its role is essential for industries requiring heavy capital investment.
No doubt there were many Russians in the audience who enjoyed the sparring on the dais. But there surely were others who shared my concern that there is a battle going on in the Kremlin for the direction of Russian foreign and military policy.
What we saw in the discussion on stage today was an indication of who will take the reins of power in Russia if Vladimir Vladimirovich is overthrown or assassinated, as the United States so fervently hopes: it will very likely be people thinking like Sergei Karaganov, like Vladimir Solovyov, like Dmitry Medvedev, who will have fewer qualms about taking risks, including dropping Russia’s 70 kiloton tactical nuclear weapons here and there to vanquish the West and their Ukraine proxy. By the way, each of these ‘tactical’ as opposed to strategic bombs is four times as powerful as those dropped by the Americans on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The US government-affiliated Ukrainian web publication “Data Journalism Agency” (TEXTY) has just released a report attacking hundreds of prominent American individuals and organizations as enemies for not supporting sending more US money and weapons to Ukraine.
The report, titled “Roller Coaster: From Trumpists to Communists. The forces in the U.S. impeding aid to Ukraine and how they do it,” intends to smear American politicians, journalists, and social media influencers as tools of Russia, writing:
Most of the people in our study do not have direct, proven ties to the Russian government or propagandists. However, the arguments they use to urge authorities to distance themselves from Ukraine echo key messages of Russian propaganda aimed at depriving Ukrainians of the ability to defend themselves with Western weapons and funds. (emphasis added)
Although the “enemies list” purports to correct disinformation about Ukraine spread by those on its list, the report itself is full of crude disinformation. For example this bit:
Even long-debunked myths continue to surface, such as claims of Nazi dominance and American Biolabs in Ukraine and the portrayal of the 2014 Revolution of Dignity as a coup.
The organization’s assertion that these claims are “long-debunked” may be wishful thinking, but back on planet reality even mainstream, pro-Ukraine media sites in the US wring their hands over the disturbing, extremist images coming out of the country. For example, NBC News wrote that, “Ukraine’s Nazi problem is real, even if Putin’s ‘denazification’ claim isn’t.” Newsweek wondered, “Why Have So Many Neo-Nazis Rallied to Ukraine’s Cause?” Even before the current conflict, mainstream pro-Ukraine publications such as Reuters worried in 2918 about “Ukraine’s neo-Nazi problem.”
As to the biolabs, none other than Mother of the Maidan Victoria Nuland admitted in a US Senate hearing that there were biolabs in Ukraine. Ah, but one may counter that these were not “American biolabs.” In fact with the authenticity of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop now absolutely confirmed during his trial, a report by the New York Post two years ago based on the laptop also must be considered accurate. According to the article, “Russia’s assertion that President Biden’s son Hunter was ‘financing . . . biological laboratories in Ukraine’ was based in truth, according to e-mails reviewed by The Post.”
And on whether the Maidan events of 2014 were a “Revolution of Dignity” or a coup, we again only need turn to Victoria Nuland’s infamous phone call with US Ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, for all the evidence needed that the US was micromanaging the removal of an elected leader and replacing him with hand-picked US puppets.
The report also includes such prominent American politicians and journalists as Sen. JD Vance, Sen. Rand Paul, Rep. Matt Gaetz, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Rep. Jim Jordan, and Col. Douglas Macgregor.
Even our friends at Antiwar.com… and your own correspondent (!) find ourselves appearing on the Ukrainian “enemies list”:
As the report states:
There are 391 individuals and 76 organizations in our list. These include politicians, political movements and groups, media and journalists, experts, and think tanks (some individuals appear in multiple categories).
Perhaps what is most shocking about this attack on American citizens is the fact that the Data Journalism Agency (TEXTY) has a long affiliation with the US Government itself! In fact, the founder of the publication Anatoly Bondarenko appears prominently on a US Government website as a participant in the US State Department’s “TechCamp” project.
The Data Journalism Agency (TEXTY) is listed as an “Implementing Partner” of the US Agency for International Development’s Transparency and Accountability in Public Administration and Services/ TAPAS Project.
The Ukrainians seemingly love to make lists of their “enemies.” One of their most notorious of these is the infamous “kill list” put out by the Mirotvorets Center in Kiev. From that list several have already been murdered by Ukraine, including prominent Russian journalist Daria Dugina.
One wonders how, for example, former US President Donald Trump and dozens of members of the US Congress will react when they hear that US tax dollars are being sent to Ukraine for US-backed Ukrainian organizations to make “hate lists” and “kill lists” of patriotic Americans like themselves.
Executive Director of the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity and co-Producer/co-Host, Ron Paul Liberty Report. Daniel served as the foreign affairs, civil liberties, and defense/intel policy advisor to U.S. Congressman Ron Paul, MD (R-Texas) from 2001 until Dr. Paul’s retirement at the end of 2012. From 1993-1999 he worked as a journalist based in Budapest, Hungary, and traveled through the former communist bloc as a human rights monitor and election observer.
At least 22 civilians have been killed in Ukrainian shelling targeting the village of Sadovoe in Russia’s Kherson Region, Governor Vladimir Saldo said on Friday. A nine-year-old child is among the victims, he added.
The attack hit a small shop in a residential area, Saldo said. When locals rushed to aid the victims of the first strike, a second one followed, striking the same area, he said. A total of 17 civilians were killed in the shop and near it and four more people living in the nearby houses lost their lives as well, according to the governor.
At least 15 people were also injured in the strike, Saldo said, adding that five of them are currently in “critical condition.” The shop was full of customers at the time and was destroyed, he stated, branding the attack a “bloody crime” and a “heinous murder.”
According to Saldo, Ukrainian forces first used a guided bomb to strike the shop before hitting the same area with a US-made M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) multiple rocket launcher. Kiev’s Western backers have supplied Ukraine with dozens of such systems, which have been extensively used by its troops throughout the conflict with Russia.
Ukraine has long touted HIMARS systems as high-precision weapons used to strike high-value assets. Russian officials have said they recovered debris from HIMARS munitions after strikes on purely civilian targets on multiple occasions.
Kiev’s troops have been actively targeting civilians in Russian regions throughout the conflict. In mid-May, one person was killed and “many” others injured in another Ukrainian attack in Kherson Region. On that occasion, Kiev’s forces struck a minibus carrying civilians with a drone.
The Russian city of Belgorod, located not far from the Ukrainian border, has become one of the main targets of Kiev’s attacks. Ukrainian forces bombarded it on New Year’s Eve, killing 25 civilians at a festive event.
The continued strikes targeting the civilian population in Russian border regions prompted Moscow to launch an offensive in Ukraine’s Kharkov Region in an effort to create a buffer zone to curb cross-border attacks.
President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said that if Ukraine continues to “shell residential areas in border territories,” then Russia “will be forced to create a security zone” to deprive it of the ability to make such strikes.
Is a “Three-Theater” war scenario both feasible and desirable for the US? Some think so. American analysts within the Establishment are in fact calling for war “in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.” This is what Thomas G. Mahnken (both a Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies professor and the CEO of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments) is urging Washington to do, in his most recent Foreign Affairspiece.
For Mahnken, Washington is “currently involved in two wars—Ukraine’s in Europe and Israel’s in the Middle East”, while also “facing the prospect of a third over Taiwan or South Korea in East Asia.” Moreover, “all three theaters are vital to US interests, and they are all intertwined.” Deprioritizing Europe and disengaging from the Middle East can only weaken American security, he argues: “The U.S. military drawdown in the Middle East, for instance, has created a vacuum that Tehran has filled eagerly.” Of course, such reasoning can only make sense if American “security” is equated with Washington’s unipolarity.
US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, during his recent speech at Shangri-la Dialogue (in Singapore), made it a point to stress that “despite historic clashes in Europe and the Middle East… the Indo-Pacific has remained our priority theater of operations.” According to Austin, the US is a Pacific nation (with a capital P, and with no pun intended, presumably), and added that “the US can be secure only if Asia is secure. That’s why… [we have] long maintained our presence in this region. And that’s why we continue to make the investments necessary to meet our commitments to our allies and partners.” As for the relationship with China, the Secretary was more ambiguous, claiming that “a fight with China is neither imminent nor unavoidable.”
While Lloyd Austin seems to differ from Mahnken (on emphasis), there is not necessarily a dilemma there. I’ve often described Washington’s ambitions as being all about having the cake and eating it too. Jerry Hendrix (retired Navy captain, formerly an adviser to Pentagon senior officials, and currently a senior fellow with the Sagamore Institute) has written that, in Mackinder terms (classic Geopolitics), the US has embarked on a quest for the “Heartland”, and this contradicts its true “sea power” nature. This is so because Washington, in recent times, has been “burdened” by mostly “land-based actions in Iraq and Afghanistan fought primarily by a large standing army operating far from home”.
Rather than doing that, Hendrix urges the Atlantic superpower to, once again, “think and act like a seapower state”, that is, with a focus on deriving its might from “seaborne trade”, employing “instruments of sea power” to advance its interests. The expert describes the post-World War II period as an exceptional “free sea” period, marked by a “secure environment” which has supposedly allowed free trade to flourish in a globalized planet – this being the rather gleeful manner in which he describes the US-led world order, in spite of the fact that Washington has always weaponized protectionism.
In any case, as Hendrix notes, the American superpower acts both as a “continental power” and as a “sea power”. I’ve described its foreign policy as resembling the swing of a pendulum. Give or take, all Great Powers engage to some extent in proxy conflicts amid their geoeconomic and geopolitical disputes with other powers. In terms of regional disputes, whether one likes or not Moscow’s foreign policy today, one can at least concede that historically Russia and neighboring Ukraine have an intertwined and complicated shared history, and the same applies to China-Taiwan relations. But America is something quite different. To keep things in perspective, one should keep in mind, for example, that, amazingly, the only place in the entire world China has an overseas military base is Djibouti, in the Horn of Africa. In contrast, depending on how one counts it, Washington, in 2015, had about 800 military bases in over 70 countries.
Moreover, the US has in fact invaded 84 out of the 194 nation-states recognized by the United Nations, and has been militarily involved with no less than 191 of those, according to Christopher Kelly and Stuart Laycock, the authors of “America Invades: How We’ve Invaded or been Militarily Involved with almost Every Country on Earth”. The hard truth is that the United States of America is the only nation today (and arguably ever) to potentially engage in warfare across three continents – a scenario, keep in mind, that is cheered by prominent mainstream American commentators and scholars.
Other analysts, such as Andrea Rizzi, writing for El Pais, have described the possibility of war fronts in the Middle East, Europe and the Asia-Pacific becoming connected as a “nightmare” scenario – although not so convincingly, in Rizzi’s case, who seems to believe the political West has necessarily something to do with “democracy”, a historically controversial premise to say the least. Rizzi, however, makes the very valid point that “in geopolitics — and in life — high-stress situations lead to a greater margin for unforeseen events, errors in calculation and communication, uncontrolled actions by minority factions and escalations that are unintended, at least by the key players.” Even the main actors have an interest in keeping stability, at some point someone (or one’s proxies) may indeed make “a daring movie”, in Rizzi’s words, and thus bring about an escalation and unpredictable outcomes.
A series of Ukrainian and Western actions arguably represented precisely such a red-line crossing, in Moscow’s perspective. While some worry about the same thing happening in the Pacific, thus inadvertently igniting yet another war, others call for and crave for precisely such a war – not just in the Indo-Pacific region, but also in Europe and the Middle East, simultaneously. It is hard to describe such a call in any way other than as a will to set the world on fire – after all, one cannot literally desire war between Great Powers in three continents and not expect everything else that often comes with it (call it apocalypse in disguise, if you will).
Unbelievably, such bellicose calls, rather than being confined to the hate speech of extreme and fringe individuals and organizations, pass as reasonable and mainstream discourse, produced as it is, by respectable experts with impeccable credentials. And, mind you, Foreign Affairs will even publish it. It is no wonder: Washington foreign policy itself is, after all, largely built on the premise of American unipolarity and global war if need be.
This series began two years ago as the war in Ukraine progressed. Over time, interesting video clips surfaced that were ignored by our corporate media but posted at small, independent sites like “December1991”, which is linked below. These appeared after relevant episodes in this series were posted so I’ve grouped them in this episode.
Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has rejected a peace plan by Indonesia aimed at settling the conflict with Russia, the Antara news agency reported on Thursday, citing Indonesian President-elect and Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto.
The minister proposed a peace plan to end the Ukraine conflict at the Shangri-La Dialogue defense summit in Singapore on Saturday, calling for a demilitarized zone and a United Nations referendum in what he described as disputed territory.
Speaking to reporters following his meeting with incumbent President Joko Widodo on Thursday, Subianto said he had met Zelensky in Singapore and outlined Indonesia’s plan to achieve a ceasefire with Russia.
“[Zelensky] did not agree [with the initiative], however, we will continue to try,” he said.
The proposal formulated by Indonesia includes a ceasefire and the establishment of a demilitarized zone that would see each party withdraw 15km from their current forward positions.
The zone would be observed and monitored by a UN peacekeeping mission, Subianto said. A UN referendum would then be held “to ascertain objectively the wishes of the majority of the inhabitants of the various disputed areas.”
Jakarta, which pursues a policy of non-aligned diplomacy, had previously attempted to mediate peace between Russia and Ukraine.
Earlier this week, Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oleg Nikolenko dismissed the plan, claiming that “there are no disputed territories between Ukraine and the Russian Federation to hold referendums there.”
Commenting on the Ukraine “peace summit” due to take place at Burgenstock Resort in Switzerland on June 15 and 16, Subianto said the president had yet to decide about Indonesia’s participation but added that “all relevant parties” should attend the event.
Russia has not been invited to the summit, which is expected to address Zelensky’s so-called ‘ten-point peace plan’. The proposal demands a complete withdrawal of Russian forces from all territories that Ukraine considers its own, for Moscow to pay reparations, and for Russian officials to present themselves to war crimes tribunals.
US President Joe Biden may end up destroying the world in a nuclear conflict, his election rival Donald Trump has claimed.
Speaking to Fox News host Sean Hannity on Wednesday, the former president warned that “we have a chance of going into World War III because of our leader.”
The remark came after Hannity suggested that Biden was in a state of mental decline, showing several clips of the president appearing distracted or fumbling his words during public appearances. Hannity and Trump were discussing a report published in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, which said the incumbent was showing “signs of slipping” behind closed doors.
Trump suggested that, unlike the leaders of Russia, China and North Korea, Biden is “not at the top of his game” and “was never the brightest bulb” among American politicians – even when he was younger. It is currently the “most dangerous time in the history of our country,” he warned, citing the destructive potential of nuclear weapons.
In the event of a nuclear exchange, “nothing will matter because practically nothing will be here anymore,” he warned. “This is obliteration. Maybe world obliteration. And we have a man that is incapable of even discussing it.”
Trump pointed to the Ukraine conflict as a major source of danger. Russian President Vladimir Putin “is talking about nuclear weapons,” he said.
The Biden administration has recently granted Kiev permission to strike targets outside of what Washington recognizes as Ukrainian territory with US-donated weapons.
When asked on Wednesday how he would react to possible attacks deep inside Russia using Western arms, Putin said Moscow may “supply our weapons of the same class to parts of the world, where strikes would be delivered against sensitive assets of the nations that act like that against Russia.”
The US and its allies are getting “directly involved in the war against us,” he added, and this path of escalation “leads to very serious problems.”
Asked directly whether Moscow would consider using nuclear weapons, Putin said he’d rather stay clear “not only from the use, but even from the threat of use” of such arms. However, he warned people in the West not to delude themselves that such a scenario was impossible.
Russia is considering “asymmetric” measures against Kiev’s sponsors due to Ukraine’s use of Western-supplied weapons against its territory, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.
The Russian leader’s remarks came at a meeting with heads of international news agencies on Wednesday, on the sidelines of the St Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF).
“We have no illusions in this regard,” Putin added, repeating his prior comments that Ukrainian troops might be pulling the trigger but the US and its allies are providing the intelligence and targeting information.
Russia will respond by boosting air defenses and destroying these missiles, Putin said.
“Secondly, if someone deems it possible to supply such weapons to the war zone, to strike our territory… why shouldn’t we supply similar weapons to those regions of the world, where they will be used against sensitive sites of these countries?” the Russian president added. “We can respond asymmetrically. We will give it a thought.”
If the West continues to escalate, such actions “will completely destroy international relations and undermine international security,” Putin noted.
“If we see that these countries are being drawn into a war against us, and this is their direct participation in the war against Russia, then we reserve the right to act in a similar way. This is a recipe for very serious problems,” he warned.
The Russian president also brought up the fact that some military instructors and advisers from NATO countries have already been deployed to Ukraine, and that a number of them were killed in Russian strikes.
The US and its allies have insisted that providing weapons and equipment to Ukraine does not make them party to the conflict with Russia, and maintained certain restrictions on their use to preserve that perception. Last month, however, as Russian troops began advancing towards Kharkov, Ukraine began to demand the relaxation of those rules. A British-led pressure campaign eventually resulted in Washington complying with Kiev’s wishes.
US President Joe Biden’s vision of peace for Ukraine does not mean having that country as part of the US-led military bloc, according to his interview with Time magazine, published on Tuesday.
Biden sat down with Time’s editor in chief and Washington bureau chief at the White House on May 28, speaking about his policy on Ukraine, China, Israel and election-related matters.
“Peace looks like making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine. That’s what peace looks like. And it doesn’t mean NATO, they are part of NATO,” Biden said, when asked about the endgame in Ukraine.
“It means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries, where we supply weapons so they can defend themselves in the future,” he added. “But it is not, if you notice, I was the one when – and you guys did report it at TIME – the one that I was saying that I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine.”
Biden then argued that the West is “on a slippery slope for war if we don’t do something about Ukraine,” and that if Kiev falls then “you’ll see Poland go, and you’ll see all those nations along the actual border of Russia, from the Balkans and Belarus, all those, they’re going to make their own accommodations.”
According to Biden, he approved the release of intelligence about the Russian “invasion” of Ukraine “to let the world know we were still in charge. We still know what’s going on.”
“We are, we are the world power,” the 81-year-old Democrat told Time. As proof, he pointed to the June 2021 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Switzerland, where the Russian leader allegedly said he wanted to see “the Finlandization of NATO.”
“I told him, he’s gonna get not the Finlandization [of NATO but], the NATOization of Finland. And everybody thought, including you guys, thought I was crazy,” Biden said. “And guess what? I did it. I did it. And we’re now the strongest nation.”
In December 2021, Russia sent the US and NATO two draft security treaties, seeking a pledge that Ukraine would never join the US-led bloc, among other things. In January 2022, Washington and Brussels snubbed Moscow’s proposal, insisting that NATO has an “open door” policy not subject to outside veto. The Russian military operation in Ukraine began a month later.
In an interview with UK media, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made the claim that if former US President Trump gets reelected and cuts off aid to his country, he will become a “loser president” responsible for the US losing its spot as the World’s leader, but that has already happened and it was the US support of Ukraine that hastened it.
Since Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine, the United States and NATO bet hundreds of billions of dollars that they could propel the Kiev regime to victory by outfitting it with some of the best weapons in NATO’s arsenal.
Despite Russia’s larger economy, population size and military, Ukraine could win, the thinking went, by using the vastly superior NATO weaponry and training. Of course, the US and NATO didn’t hand over their very best weapons right away, but it would surely be enough to defeat the Russian army that was portrayed as ill-equipped and untrained in Western media outlets.
When that didn’t work, NATO and the US upped the stakes, giving newer and ostensibly even more invincible weapons to Ukraine, they too failed.
Now, armed with the best weapons NATO could afford to give away, and full permission to strike inside Russia despite the risk of escalation, Ukraine is still being defeated on the battlefield. The whole world has seen for itself that NATO weapons are not equipped with force fields; they can be destroyed and are being destroyed at an alarming rate.
Last year, Trump claimed that he would end the conflict in Ukraine “within 24 hours” though he did not specify how he intended to accomplish that. When asked who he wants to win, Trump would only say that he wants “everyone to stop dying.”
In his interview with the Guardian, Zelensky admitted that he had not developed a strategy to deal with Trump should he become elected, and seemingly admitted that his country would collapse without US support.
“Ukraine, barehanded, without weapons, will not be able to fight a multimillion army,” he said.
“Does he [Trump] want to become a loser President? Do you understand what can happen?” he added, then saying that if Ukraine loses, it means the US will lose its power in the world as well.
“This is not about him as a person, but about the institutions of the United States. They will become very weak. The US will not be the leader of the world anymore. Yes, it will be powerful, first of all, in the domestic economy because it has a powerful economy without a doubt. But in terms of international influence it will be equal to zero,” the Ukrainian President who has utilized Martial Law to stay in office past his term said.
Of course, the opposite is true. The longer NATO and the US remain involved in Ukraine, the more thoroughly the veneer of NATO invincibility will be shattered. If they continue to increase their involvement and escalate things against Russia, it will only expedite the fall of Western hegemony.
“This is a decisive defeat of NATO, the European Union and the United States” former UN weapon inspector Scott Ritter told Sputnik’s Fault Lines last month. “It’s as decisive as you can get without them being directly involved, and they can’t become directly involved because that is a suicide pill.”
Over the last few weeks, NATO nations started giving the Kiev regime permission to strike inside Russia, culminating in the United States agreeing to it last week, but that too has failed to result in any meaningful change of the battle lines.
“But [Kremlin spokesman Dmitry] Peskov pointed out, you start using long-range missiles against Russia, we’re just going to have to take more of Ukraine [to build a bufferzone]. That’s what he said and he specifically mentioned Kiev,” international relations and security expert Mark Sleboda told Fault Lines.
Peskov also told reporters that the United States is already involved in targeting and aiming their weapons at Russia. “[The weapons] are directly controlled by military personnel of NATO countries,” adding that constituted not just military assistance but “participation in a war against us.”
While Ukraine is not the only factor eating away at Western hegemony, it has played a large role, along with the US support of Israel and general economic trends.
“The world is changing indeed, not only because of the war on Russia in Ukraine but also the war in Gaza… the development of BRICS countries [and] the increase of the Shanghai Cooperation,” explained war correspondent Elijah Magnier on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour. “All these indicators lead to one reality, the beginning of the end of US hegemony.”
While Russia has shown that NATO’s weapons are not superior, it’s the Ansar Allah movement, also known as the Houthis, who proved they are ill-equipped for modern war.
“The US and UK are failing in front of non-state actors in the Red Sea… So how can we understand that the Americans are ready to start a war against Russia and then against China?” Magnier added.
Still, with no other hopes or lifelines, Zelensky wants the US to embarrass themselves further by continuing to fund his government, saying that the US losing will encourage other countries to act aggressively. However, Russia and Ukraine were close to signing a peace deal in Istanbul at the start of the conflict. According to Ukrainian officials close to the negotiations, former UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson was sent to Ukraine to sabotage the deal at the behest of the United States.
Ironically, Zelensky says he recently asked Johnson to speak to Trump on his behalf.
Zelensky said he wanted to bring Trump to Ukraine to “see the results of what he brought to Ukraine.” Although Zelensky was referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin “he”, it would have been more accurate if he were referring to US President Joe Biden and/or Johnson, who really brought that destruction to Ukraine and Western hegemony.
“Fifty nations gathered to defeat Russia and they failed… Ukraine has been defeated and Europe is defeated,” Magnier concluded.
Since the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine in 2014, there has been repeated talk of NATO’s expansion to the east and the advance of Western strategic missile systems.
At that time, the head of the Russian Institute for Strategic Research, General Leonid Reshetnikov, also mentioned this when he gave an interview for Austrian media.He spoke of the possibility that one day there could be American missiles in Kharkov. He also mentioned Ukraine’s possible accession to NATO.
We are currently seeing how Ukraine is successfully attacking several targets in Russia, which are located far behind the front, using Western weapon systems. This increases the radius of the zone that can be assessed as a conflict area. More and more new weapons with longer ranges are now being used. This development is very dangerous because Russia must respond to this situation. Russia cannot possibly accept this.
The deployment of long-range weapons in Ukraine reminds us of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in the Cold War. At that time, the USA also could not accept the stationing of soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba. There are red lines in matters of national security interests and these must be observed by all participants in a conflict.
At that time, the crisis was resolved through the clear and deliberate actions of statesmen from the United States and the Soviet Union. Today, with the Biden administration, we have a completely different prerequisite. Since Obama and the Maidan coup, the flag has been pointing to escalation and President Biden is continuing this course.
It can be assumed that the West will supply all weapons to Ukraine that are requested. Now it is clear to everyone that Ukraine is being used as a battering ram against Russia. The attacks of the last few weeks have clearly shown that it is also about destroying strategic targets in Russia. The attack on the early warning system is the best example of this. Such an attack is unacceptable in the age of nuclear weapons.
Of course, the legitimate question arises as to whether this specific attack was carried out on Ukraine’s own initiative or on the orders of someone else. And if it was really Ukraine’s initiative, there should be clear consequences from the West, as this created a very dangerous situation.
It is always important to monitor the Western media, as political wishes and ideas are always discussed there. There has been repeated talk of the possible use of tactical nuclear weapons, especially since 2022. The Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin also called for the delivery of nuclear weapons to Ukraine. This was, of course, an absurd request, but it was discussed for a long time in the media. So you can say that the smell of nuclear war has been in the air for at least 2 years. Since then, many reports on the topic of nuclear conflict have been produced in the German media. This is how Western societies are preparing for the possible use of these weapons.
The situation is really dangerous and, at the latest after the attack on the Russian early warning system, one should really consider ending this conflict as quickly as possible. Let’s think about what the next level of escalation is. If things continue to develop like this, we will be very quick to use tactical nuclear weapons. This point gets closer and closer with each passing week.
By continuing to support Ukraine and, above all, by supplying weapons with a longer range, it cannot be ruled out in the long term that the conflict could also affect other states in Europe.
There is currently discussion as to whether Russian military targets in Belarus should be attacked. This would of course also clearly drag Belarus into this conflict.
Particularly due to the threat to the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad, an extension of the conflict to the Baltics can no longer be ruled out. But then there would be a direct confrontation between NATO and Russia.
The greatest danger at the moment is that there is less and less inhibition to use larger and more far-reaching weapons. This spiral of escalation must be stopped by the West, otherwise the nuclear component of this conflict will become increasingly likely.
This development and the fact that we have already reached such a point also shows the inability of European politicians, who have not been able to freeze this conflict or find another solution since 2014.
It started with an uprising in Kiev and now we are on the brink of nuclear war.
Patrick Poppel, Center for Geostrategic Studies, Belgrade.
By Khalid Amayreh, in occupied East Jerusalem | The People’s Voice | October 18, 2010
A major Jewish religious figure in Israel has likened non-Jews to donkeys and beasts of burden, saying the main reason for their very existence is to serve Jews.
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, spiritual mentor of the religious fundamentalist party, Shas, which represents Middle Eastern Jews, reportedly said during a Sabbath homily earlier this week that “the sole purpose of non-Jews is to serve Jews.”
Yosef is considered a major religious leader in Israel who enjoys the allegiance of hundreds of thousands of followers. … continue
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