Kremlin responds to Zelensky’s energy ceasefire proposal
RT | December 10, 2025
Russia is seeking a durable, legally binding peace agreement with Ukraine rather than a limited ceasefire, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. His remarks came after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky proposed a moratorium on energy strikes as the country faces worsening power outages.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Peskov weighed in on Zelensky’s signal that Kiev was prepared to discuss a halt to energy-related attacks, which he said “is important for the people.”
According to Peskov, Russia remains focused on reaching a legally binding settlement rather than a temporary pause. “I’ll leave out some nuances, but we are working on peace, not on a ceasefire. A stable, guaranteed, long-term peace, achieved through the signing of appropriate documents, is an absolute priority,” the spokesman stressed.
In March, Russia and Ukraine agreed to a 30-day energy infrastructure ceasefire, which was reached after a phone call between President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump. Russian officials, however, accused Ukraine of constantly violating the truce, including by targeting oil refineries and other energy facilities. Moscow said at the time that it had opted not to retaliate as a goodwill gesture toward the US and its mediation efforts.
Zelensky’s latest proposal comes as Russia has targeted Ukraine’s military and energy infrastructure in recent weeks, prompting officials in Kiev to impose rolling blackouts.
Moscow has said the strikes are in response to Ukrainian “terrorist acts” deep into Russia, targeting critical infrastructure and residential areas. Russia maintains that its forces never target civilians and strike only military-related facilities.
Ukraine jails priest for supporting Russia
RT | December 8, 2025
The government in Kiev has sentenced an Orthodox priest to prison over alleged pro-Russia remarks, as it continues a widening campaign against the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (UOC).
Archpriest Ivan Pavlichenko, a cleric at the Church of St. Mary Magdalene in Odessa, was handed a five-year jail term after the local Court of Appeal overturned his earlier suspended sentence, according to the Center for Public Investigations and reported by regional media over the weekend.
Investigators said Pavlichenko was convicted of “justifying Russia’s armed aggression” and “inciting religious and national hatred.” The trial court found him guilty but handed down a suspended term, which prosecutors appealed as being too light.
The case was built on recordings of the priest’s private phone conversations collected by security services inside his car. Investigators say he criticized Ukraine’s leadership, discussed the conflict, quoted Russian politicians, and questioned Kiev’s official position.
Prosecutors also pointed to comments about Russian strikes on Odessa. Pavlichenko allegedly said the attacks were aimed at drone-production sites and blamed Ukraine for placing military equipment in residential areas.
The appeals court also ordered the confiscation of his property and barred him from holding positions in state institutions for three years.
Local outlets claimed Pavlichenko attended pro-Russian events before 2014 and visited Crimea with his family in 2016. Supporters in Odessa called the verdict politically motivated persecution for his views and past civic activity.
The ruling comes as Kiev intensifies its pressure on the UOC, which officials accuse of maintaining ties to Russia despite the church’s declaration of independence from the Moscow Patriarchate in May 2022. The campaign has included raids on parishes and arrests of clergy, as well as a search of the Kiev-Pechersk monastery.
Last year, Vladimir Zelensky signed legislation allowing the state to ban religious organizations affiliated with governments that Kiev deems “aggressors,” effectively targeting the UOC. Kiev has openly supported the rival Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU), which the UOC and Russian Orthodox Church view as schismatic.
Moscow has said it will not abandon Orthodox believers in Ukraine and vowed to ensure that “their lawful rights are respected.”
As former CIA chief joins board of Ukraine’s Fire Point, more questions need answered
By George Samuelson | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 8, 2025
With a closet full of skeletons to his name, Mike Pompeo has joined a major Ukrainian defense company that produces weapons capable of targeting Moscow. Is it time to end the ‘revolving door’ between the world of politics and business, especially now with World War III on the line?
Michael Pompeo is the ultimate Washington insider. His decades-long stint on Capitol Hill has seen him serve under Donald Trump as both the Secretary of State (2018-2021) and CIA Director (2017-2018). Before that, he served for six years in the U.S. House of Representatives (2011-2017). His multilevel experience and vast contacts give him tremendous sway over Washington DC to this day. In other words, he is the perfect candidate to sell his connections to a defense contractor.
In November, Pompeo joined the advisory board of Ukrainian defense company Fire Point, which develops long-range missile systems that allow Ukraine to strike deep into Russian territory. Pompeo’s new position represents a dangerous conflict of interest since his extremely hawkish views on the Ukrainian conflict are already well known. In 2023, he advised the Biden administration to “reverse its policy of denying weapons and adequate weapons supplies” that would help Ukraine. The Biden administration responded to the plea with billions of dollars’ worth of expenditures, which served to enflame the situation on the ground in Ukraine.
The move by Pompeo to join Fire Point, reflective of America’s well known “revolving door” phenomenon, which sees opportunistic individuals move effortlessly between public service and the commercial sector, should raise some major red flags. Unfortunately, the tradition is too deeply embedded in the U.S. political system to end anytime soon. That’s because the defense industry revolving door pays rich dividends. In 2019, a government watchdog reported that the Pentagon’s 14 largest contractors had hired 1,700 former Department of Defense senior civilian and military officials. That same year, the six largest defense contractors reported $18.4 billion in profits. To many taxpaying Americans, this reeks of blatant corruption.
The problem with Pompeo working for a foreign agency, however, is rather new and very problematic. On the one hand, we see the Trump administration attempting to broker a peace agreement between Moscow and Kiev, while on the other hand, we have a powerful former American official working on behalf of the pro-war lobby. Pompeo is the face of those hawks in Washington, DC and Kiev who stand to be handsomely rewarded if war continues to drag on indefinitely in Ukraine. It’s a hard truth to swallow, but no defense contractor wants to see the end of hostilities in Ukraine. And let’s not forget Pompeo’s sinister background. As the former CIA Director, he once admitted that “We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.”
Ah, yes. Another “American experiment,” this time smack on Russia’s border. With no loss of irony, bringing Pompeo on board with Fire Point could be an effort to whitewash the reputation of the company, which is currently under investigation for its alleged price gouging practices, and for its connections to Tymur Mindich, a Zelensky associate being investigated for corruption charges. NABU, Ukraine’s Western-backed anti-corruption bureau, exposed a money laundering scheme in the energy sector of Ukraine, through which some $100 million passed, leaving the Zelensky regime deeply red-faced in the process. Pompeo cannot magically make these problems disappear, however, as his own history is a deeply stained one.
In the summer of 2024, Pompeo co-wrote an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal where he commented: “Ukraine joins NATO as soon as possible so all European allies assume the burden of protecting it. NATO should establish a $100 billion fund for arming Ukraine, with the U.S. share capped at 20%, as is the case with other alliance common budgets. The European Union should swiftly admit Ukraine and help it modernize and develop its economy.”
Surely the pompous Pompeo is aware that Russia views the admission of Ukraine into NATO as a clear red line, not to mention the militarization of its Western neighbor. Yet in full-blown CIA style he is actively fomenting the situation to the peril of the Russian and Ukrainian people. And now that Pompeo is sitting on the board of advisors of one of Ukraine’s most profitable defense companies, he will obviously see no reason to tone down the pro-war rhetoric in favor of corporate profit. That would certainly not make the company’s stockholders pleased. Pompeo is sitting many miles away from the battle zone and has no reason to view his blatant self-interest as a personal risk.
In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned that the influence of the military-industrial complex could “endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” We have reached the point when personal self-interest trumps what is best for the nation, with America’s standing on the international stage disregarded. It’s time to end the revolving door between public service and corporate interests before it’s too late.
EU summit to decide Zelensky’s fate
By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | December 8, 2025
There is an EU document in which it is stated there “is a problem with the financing of Ukraine”. No shit. The real problem actually comes with a new lack of confidence from EU member states in this “financing” following recent unconfirmed reports that Donald Trump has told the EU in blunt terms that they can’t dip into the supposed 300 bn USD in Russian “frozen” assets held by the West.
When the war started, Russia’s central bank held around $207 billion in euro assets, $67 billion in U.S. dollar assets and $37 billion in British pound assets.
It also had holdings comprising $36 billion of Japanese yen, $19 billion in Canadian dollars, $6 billion in Australian dollars and $1.8 billion in Singapore dollars. Its Swiss franc holdings were about $1 billion.
And so out of 355 bn USD of so-called “frozen” Russian money around the world, the EU only holds a little over a half of it, despite the EU talking as though they have it all. Yet despite this, much hope was placed on the EU to use this cash to continue to fund the Ukraine war. But even if Trump hadn’t have told the EU to keep their hands off the cash, under international law the case for the EU to seize even the 207 bn euros is a very shaky one, which is likely to be the final nail in the coffin for the project which keeps the war going. On December 18th in Brussels EU leaders will meet and will have to be forced to recognise a reality: if this cash cannot be used, then it will be EU member states themselves which will have to scrape together a rescue package to underwrite Ukraine’s 80bn USD 2026 budget. Recently, the EU announced another 2 billion “loan” but such payments aren’t going to sustain any kind of normality faced with the enormous black hole which needs to be filled. The real problem that the EU has is that it doesn’t put its mouth where its Russian money is. Faced with an ultimatum by ECB figures like Christine Lagarde, EU member states won’t offer their own cash as a guarantee when things go wrong with the cash, if it were to be used to fund the war. This lack of confidence might prove to be detrimental to the West’s support for Zelensky who is currently dealing with his own political demise in Kiev following corruption scandals and key allies resigning and even in some cases fleeing the country.
And with a 28 point peace plan, which most experts agree was “dead on arrival”, the popular narrative now from western commentators is that his time is up. He can’t himself offer a peace deal as it is feared that the moment he signs such a paper he will be assassinated and then a ceasefire is broken and both sides return to fighting. The only hope for the West is to invest their political and financial capital in a new leader who is familiar and respected by the Russians, whose signature will come with real guaranties – but this will have to come with assurances that their own troops won’t pile into Ukraine when the deal is signed. EU leaders can’t get this idea in their heads straightened out, that the whole war started because Ukraine was ushered towards EU and NATO membership and its troops have been equipped and trained by the West, in particular under Trump in 2017 during his first term in office.
Another idea which is unpalatable for all EU leaders – including the UK – is that these countries’ economies are on their knees. The Belgian primes minister recently hinted at a press conference that while he was against using Russian cash to fund the war, for a whole host of reasons he pointed out, it was preferable that if the EU were to go ahead into this unchartered legal area, it would be advisable that the EU had a non-EU partner to join it. He was hinting that this could be London. But someone needs to tell him that the British economy is about to collapse under its own debt interest of 120 billion pounds a year, based on reckless decisions after years of borrowing to resolve problems of its own making. It is inconceivable that the UK could be a partner in underwriting or providing guaranties to using Russian frozen assets to continue the war racket. But in the La-la land of the EU, such BS makes good press fodder for the following day’s copy.
Trump’s orders to lay off the Russian cash comes with a sobering wake-up call to EU leaders that they have run out of cash to throw into the black hole of the Ukraine war, which in private, they know is funding Zelensky’s own network of money-grabbing cronies whose only real occupation is looking at how to syphon off international money and stay in office. The resignation of his chief of staff recently, which followed his own business partner and friend fleeing the country after investigators were about to arrest him for his part in a 100m USD energy firm embezzlement, is the clearest indicator to date what the business model is in Kiev. It’s getting harder and harder for western leaders to close their eyes to the sheer level of corruption, how far it goes, and what figures are when such scandals obviously only represent the tip of the iceberg.
And now for EU leaders to meet on the 18th of December, in many ways, their decision is not to keep on finding more and more ingenious ways to scam their own taxpayers out of hard earned money, but whether they can continue to back Zelensky and his formula. With a corruption scandal now in Brussels with top EU officials making headlines, to add to the graft allegations hanging over the head of Ursula von der Leyen, it seems inconceivable that EU leaders will not be sensitive to the cries of disbelief back home from ordinary people whose main worry is that they will freeze to death in their own homes this Christmas. The priority of the summit will be political survival. Theirs, not Zelensky’s.
Ukrainians ‘with spy equipment’ arrested in Poland
RT | December 8, 2025
Police in Poland have detained three Ukrainian nationals allegedly found in possession of spying and hacking equipment.
The suspects were apprehended during a routine traffic stop in Warsaw, police said in a statement on Monday. The three men claimed they had been “traveling Europe” and had arrived in Poland just a few hours previously, and were next set to drive to Lithuania. Officers saw that the men were agitated and opted to search the vehicle, the statement noted.
“Suspicious items that could even be used to interfere with the country’s strategic information systems” were discovered, police said, adding that the men were in possession of a large number of SIM cards, antennas, laptops, routers, cameras, advanced hacking equipment, and a “spy device detector.”
The suspects were reportedly unable to explain the nature of the hardware and refused to cooperate with the police. “They claimed to be computer scientists, and when asked more precise questions, they forgot English and pretended not to understand what was being said to them,” the force stated.
The group were taken into pre-trial detention on suspicion of “fraud, computer fraud, and the acquisition of devices and computer programs adapted to commit crimes.” Investigators are currently trying to establish why exactly the suspects had traveled to Poland.
The incident comes less than a month after the Polish authorities accused two Ukrainian nationals of sabotaging a railway line between Warsaw and Lublin, detonating an explosive device on tracks and installing a derailment clamp in two separate incidents. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk claimed the suspects had been working “with the Russian intelligence for a long time” and had fled to Belarus after the incidents.
Moscow has rejected the accusations, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov stating that “it would be really strange if Russia wasn’t the first one to be blamed” for the sabotage.
“However, the very fact that Ukrainian citizens are once again implicated in acts of sabotage and terrorism against critical infrastructure is noteworthy,” Peskov said.
NATO Is a Menace, Not a Benefit, to America
By Ted Galen Carpenter | The Libertarian Institute | December 8, 2025
Since its creation in 1949, NATO has been the keystone of U.S. foreign policy in Europe. Indeed, the alliance has been the most important feature of Washington’s overall strategy of global primacy. America’s political and policy elites have embraced two key assumptions and continue to do so. One is that NATO is essential to the peace and security of the entire transatlantic region and will remain so for the indefinite future. The other sacred assumption is that the alliance is highly beneficial to America’s own core security and economic interests.
Whatever validity those assumptions may have had at one time, they are dangerously obsolete today. The toxic, militaristic views toward Russia that too many European leaders are adopting have made NATO into a snare that could entangle the United States in a large-scale war with ominous nuclear implications. It is urgent for Donald Trump’s administration and sensible proponents of a U.S. foreign policy based on realism and restraint to eliminate such a risky and unnecessary situation.
Throughout the Cold War and its immediate aftermath, NATO’s European members followed Washington’s policy lead on important issues with little dissent or resistance. That situation is no longer true. The governments and populations in the alliance’s East European members (the countries that the Kremlin held in bondage during the Cold War but that eagerly joined NATO once the Soviet Union collapsed) have adopted an especially aggressive, uncompromising stance toward Russia as the USSR’s successor. They have lobbied with special fervor in favor of admitting Ukraine to NATO, despite Moscow’s repeated warnings over the past two decades that such a step would constitute an intolerable provocation. The East European states also have been avid supporters of the proxy war that NATO has waged against Russia following Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Their toxic hostility toward Russia has inexorably made inroads even among the previously more restrained, sensible members of the alliance. With a few partial exceptions, such as Hungary and Slovakia, NATO governments now push for unrealistic, very risky policies with respect to the Ukraine-Russia war. Washington’s volatile, ever-changing policy under President Trump regarding that armed conflict has not helped matters.
The Trump administration’s latest approach has been to try to inject some badly needed realism into the position that Ukraine and its NATO supporters pursue. Realities on the battlefield confirm that Russia is winning, albeit slowly and at considerable cost, the bloody war against its neighbor. Moscow’s forces are gradually expanding the amount of territory they control. Kiev’s propaganda campaign to portray Ukraine as a stalwart democracy and a vital symbol of resistance to an authoritarian Russia is collapsing as well. Corruption scandals now plague the government of President Volodymyr Zelensky, as does growing evidence of his regime’s authoritarianism. Proponents of NATO’s continuing military intervention now seek to downplay the once-dominant “moral case” for the alliance’s involvement and try to stress Ukraine’s alleged strategic importance to both the United States and its allies.
Stubbornness and lack of realism on the part of NATO’s European members (as well as too many American policy analysts and media mavens) is worrisome and dangerous. They have launched a concerted effort to torpedo the Trump administration’s latest peace initiative. Proponents of continuing the alliance’s proxy war insist that no peace accord include territorial concessions by Ukraine. They also demand that Kiev retain the “right” to join NATO. Finally, they insist that any settlement contain a NATO “security guarantee” to Ukraine, and that a peacekeeping force that includes troops from alliance members enforce that settlement. Britain and France have explicitly made the demand to send troops.
Such demands amount to a poison pill designed to kill any prospect of an agreement that Moscow might accept. The insistence on a security guarantee to Kiev and a peacekeeping contingent especially fits that description. Any accord that puts NATO military personnel in Ukraine would make the country a protectorate of the alliance, even if Kiev did not receive an official membership card. The commitment itself would have NATO’s military might perched on Russia’s border. That is precisely the outcome that Moscow has sought to prevent for decades.
Extremely inflammatory and combative rhetoric on the part of high-level European officials increasingly accompany such provocative, anti-Russia policy stances. Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone, the chair of NATO’s Military Committee, even mused that the alliance should consider the option of launching a “preemptive” military strike against Russia. Other officials in NATO member governments have asserted that the alliance (or “Europe”) must be prepared to wage war against Russia, if relations continue to deteriorate.
NATO’s European hawks are flying high, and the irresponsible options they toy with put the United States in grave danger. The NATO alliance is no longer even arguably a security asset for the American people. Instead, it has become an increasingly worrisome, perilous liability – a loose cannon that poses a grave danger to our country.
NATO was created so that the United States could protect a collection of weak democracies in Western Europe still suffering from the aftermath of World War II against a strong, menacing totalitarian state: the Soviet Union. That world no longer exists. Today, a much larger, stronger collection of democratic and quasi-democratic European states confronts Russia – a weaker, non-totalitarian power. Even without the United States, the European countries are capable of building and deploying whatever forces they deem necessary to sustain their security interests. NATO’s European contingent also has its own, extremely assertive (indeed, aggressive) policy agenda toward Moscow. That agenda endangers rather than benefits the United States and the American people. It is now imperative for America to sever the transatlantic security tie and say farewell to NATO.
IAEA issues new Chernobyl safety warning
RT | December 7, 2025
The protective shelter over the reactor at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant can no longer guarantee radiation containment, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has said. The agency added that urgent major repairs are now required.
The warning follows an inspection prompted by a drone strike in February, which marked the first major attack on the shelter. Moscow said the strike was a provocation orchestrated by Kiev, while the Ukrainian government blamed Russia.
The strike had pierced the outer shell of the massive steel arch known as the New Safe Confinement (NSC) and triggered a fire. While the initial damage did not cause a radiation leak, the new assessment shows the structural breach has degraded the shelter’s ability to contain nuclear material.
The IAEA confirmed on Friday that the NSC, a 36,000-tonne steel structure built over the destroyed Unit 4 reactor at Chernobyl, “had lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability.”
Completed in 2019 at a cost of around €1.5billion (about $1.6 billion), the NSC was designed to contain radioactive material and seal the original concrete “sarcophagus” installed after the 1986 disaster.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said that although the shelter’s loadbearing framework and monitoring systems remain intact, “limited temporary repairs have been carried out … comprehensive restoration is urgently required.” IAEA inspectors have now dispatched additional nuclear safety experts to the site to assess the full extent of the damage.
Russia has accused Ukraine of repeatedly targeting the Zaporozhye (ZNPP) and Kursk nuclear power plants, describing the attacks as acts of “nuclear terrorism.”
A Ukrainian drone struck an auxiliary building at the Kursk NPP in late September, during a visit to Moscow by IAEA chief Rafael Grossi.
Just days earlier, power lines supplying the ZNPP were reportedly damaged by Ukrainian artillery, forcing the plant to switch to backup generators. Russia took control of the ZNPP in March 2022, and the region later held a referendum to join the country. Kiev denies involvement in the Kursk incident and has accused Moscow of attacking the ZNPP.
Speaking in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Ukraine was “playing a dangerous game” by attacking nuclear sites.
Ukrainians mob vehicle to free men captured by draft officers
RT | December 7, 2025
Ordinary Ukrainians came to rescue people from conscription officers trying to force young males into a minibus in the middle of the day, a video that began circulating on social media on Saturday shows.
Reportedly filmed in the city of Odessa, the footage shows a crowd surrounding a vehicle belonging to military conscription officers and throwing tires at it, smashing its windows with a metal bar. In the clip, passersby can be heard saying, “The people have had enough!” and appears to show young men being pulled out through the shattered windows.
In response to a conscription officer’s objections, people shouted back that he should go to the front himself.
The video is the latest in a series of clips that have emerged online showing Ukrainian males being violently snatched from the streets by draft officers as Kiev experiences military setbacks and manpower shortages at the front. The term ‘busification’ has become widespread in the country, in reference to the minibuses used to transport involuntary recruits.
There have also been reports of injuries, torture, and deaths among those subject to forced mobilization, fueling public outrage and sparking protests. In October, the Ukrainian authorities urged people not to film or share videos of press gangs forcibly detaining men.
The exodus from Kiev’s armed forces is mounting. More than 21,000 soldiers deserted without leave in September alone – the highest monthly total since the start of the Ukraine conflict. According to a report by BBC Ukraine in October, this marked the largest single-month spike, based on the most recent data from the Prosecutor General’s Office.
In July, the Council of Europe’s commissioner for human rights, Michael O’Flaherty, sounded the alarm over “systematic and widespread” abuse by Ukrainian draft enforcers, urging the authorities in Kiev to properly investigate the incidents and prevent further human rights violations.
New NSS Signals US Ready to ‘Forget’ Ukraine, Snubs ‘Weak’ EU – Analyst
Sputnik – 07.12.2025
Donald Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) sketches a future in which the US is “ready to throw the current political leadership in Ukraine under the bus, much as several NATO countries and EU leadership expect,” believes retired US Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski.
The US signals in the document, where Ukraine is downgraded to just four mentions, that it expects peace and some form of a “viable sovereign state” afterward, Karen Kwiatkowski, a former analyst for the US Department of Defense, tells Sputnik.
“This is a practical US acceptance that the cost of the US/NATO proxy war is not worth it,” stresses the analyst.
The NSS reflects a realization that “no NATO army or combination of armies can stop Russia’s advance or the achievement of its goals,” which include the end of the current neo-Nazi regime in Ukraine, she underscores.
NSS Puts Europe on Notice
Unprecedentedly, the NSS “directly alienates and demeans the current political leadership of the EU and many key NATO countries,” says the pundit.
The strategy depicts the EU as economically frail, politically fractured, and dependent on US support “for a price.”
The message to the EU hawks is: the US will not assist the European establishment in “holding off the new generation of nationalists and populists from taking power.”
According to Kwiatkowski, it is unlikely that the US deep state will “tactically and strategically aid European elites, through money, deals, and color revolutions, or even help with NATO expansion, as they have for the past 30 years.”
As for Europe’s policy toward Ukraine—if determined by the populist movements likely to prevail in coming European elections, it will “settle for a smaller, possibly landlocked Ukraine, and investment in Ukraine will not be charitable but geared primarily to recoup European economic losses.”
Zelensky allies flee to Israeli-occupied territories as $100-million graft scandal erupts: Probe
Press TV – December 7, 2025
A damning investigation has revealed that the Ukrainian government under President Volodymyr Zelensky “systematically sabotaged” anti-corruption oversight across key state-owned companies, clearing the way for graft to proliferate during conflict with Russia.
The findings were collected as part of an investigation by The New York Times, which the paper published on Friday.
The results emerged just as two of Zelensky’s closest associates abruptly fled to the occupied territories amid accusations of a $100-million embezzlement scheme inside Energoatom, Ukraine’s state-owned nuclear power company.
According to the report, Zelensky’s administration repeatedly undermined the independent supervisory boards responsible for monitoring state spending and vetting major contracts.
The investigation showed that officials in Kiev “stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all,” even rewriting corporate charters to limit external oversight.
These moves, the paper wrote, allowed hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without scrutiny from experts.
The same pattern was documented across Energoatom, the electricity transmission operator Ukrenergo, and the Defense Procurement Agency, which oversees military acquisitions.
The NYT report landed amid a fast-moving scandal in which members of Zelensky’s inner circle were accused by anti-corruption prosecutors of stealing $100 million from Energoatom.
Rather than acknowledging responsibility for weakening oversight, the government shifted blame onto the very supervisory boards it had sidelined.
The scandal triggered the resignation of Zelensky’s controversial chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, late last month.
Hours before police raided his home, Yermak quietly departed for the occupied territories, where he holds “citizenship,” according to the Ukrainska Pravda outlet.
Yermak has long been regarded as Zelensky’s most influential advisor, shaping domestic politics, security decisions, and foreign policy.
A second key figure, businessman Timur Mindich, co-founder of Zelensky’s entertainment company Kvartal 95, was identified by investigators as the alleged main figure leading the embezzlement scheme.
Mindich also escaped to the occupied territories before authorities raided his luxury apartment, Ukrainian media reported.
A former Ukrainian government official told Fox News that Mindich maintained “an apartment with golden toilets in the same building as Zelensky.”
European officials acknowledged they were aware of the persistent corruption risks, but continued providing billions in aid.
“We do care about good governance, but we have to accept that risk,” said Christian Syse, Norway’s special envoy to Ukraine, “because it’s in our own interest.”
Theft of Russian wealth is tying the entire EU bloc to a sinking ship, or worse, all-out war
Strategic Culture Foundation | December 5, 2025
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is pushing ahead with a reckless plan to confiscate over €200 billion in Russia’s sovereign wealth for the purpose of propping up the corrupt NeoNazi Kiev regime and prolonging a futile proxy war.
It is hard to imagine a more crass course of action. Yet the so-called European leadership around Von der Leyen is zealously steering towards disaster. At least the hapless captain of the Titanic tried to avert collision with an iceberg. The Euro captains are heading full steam ahead.
Von der Leyen’s proposed scheme is fancifully called a “reparations loan” and pretends, through legalistic rhetoric, not to be a confiscation of Russia’s assets. But it boils down to theft. Theft to continue the bloodiest war in Europe since the Second World War, which marked the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Von der Leyen, a former German defense minister, is supported by other obsessively Russophobic Euro elites. The EU’s foreign minister Kaja Kallas, a former Estonian prime minister, asserts that the seizure of Russian money and pumping it into the Kiev regime is aimed at forcing Moscow to negotiate a peaceful end to the nearly four-year conflict. Such twisted logic is an Orwellian distortion of reality.
Belgium and other European states are extremely wary of the unprecedented and audacious move. Belgium, which holds the majority of frozen Russian wealth – some €185 bn – in its Euroclear depository, is anxious that it will be financially ruined if Moscow holds the EU liable for illegal seizure of wealth. Other EU members, like Hungary and Slovakia, are concerned that the Russophobic leadership is undermining any diplomatic initiatives by the U.S. Trump administration and the Kremlin to negotiate a peace settlement.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that any confiscation of Russian assets by the EU leadership – regardless of financial rhetorical packaging – will be viewed by Moscow as theft of sovereign wealth. Russia has vowed it will respond robustly with legal challenges under existing treaties to exact compensation. This is what Belgium is fearful of and why it is resisting von der Leyen’s loan reparation scheme.
The European leaders are to hold a summit on December 18-19 to decide on the proposal. So desperate are the Russophobic elites that they have been assiduously piling political pressure on the Belgian government to relent in its opposition to go along with the scheme. In trying to get Belgium onboard, von der Leyen has written legal guarantees that all EU members will share any legal and financial repercussions. Thus, the unelected European Commission president is taking it upon herself to write a suicide note for the whole of Europe.
Essentially, the proposed loan reparation scheme is based on using Russian immobilized investments in EU banks as a guarantee to give €140 bn in an interest-free hand-out to Ukraine. The financial life-line is necessary because Ukraine is bankrupt after four years of fighting a proxy war on behalf of NATO against Russia.
Ukraine and its NATO sponsors have lost this conflict as Russian forces gather momentum with superior military force. But rather than meeting Russia’s terms for peace, the Euro elites want to keep on “fighting to the last Ukrainian”. To sue for peace would be an admission of complicity in a proxy war and would be politically disastrous for the European warmongers. In covering up their criminal enterprise and lies, they are compelled to keep the “defense of Ukraine” charade going.
Given the rampant graft and embezzlement at the core of the Kiev regime as indicated by the recent firing of top ministers and aides, it is certain that much of the next EU loan will end up in offshore bank accounts, foreign properties and being snorted up the noses of the corrupt regime.
Von der Leyen’s artful deception of theft claims that the Russian assets are not confiscated permanently but rather will be released when Moscow eventually pays “war damages” to Ukraine. In other words, the scheme is a blackmail operation, one that Russia will never comply with because it is premised on Russia as a guilty aggressor, rather than, as Moscow and many others see it, as acting in self-defense to years of NATO fueled hostility culminating in the CIA coup in Kiev in 2014 and weaponizing of a NeoNazi regime to provoke Russia. Therefore, under von der Leyen’s scheme, Russia’s frozen funds will, in effect, never be returned and, to add insult to injury, will have been routed through to the benefit of Kiev mafia.
Such a criminal move is highly provocative and dangerous. It could be interpreted by Moscow as an act of war given the huge scale of plunder of the Russian nation. At the very least, Russia will pursue compensation under international treaties and laws that could end up destroying Belgium and other EU states from financial liabilities. How absurd is that? Von der Leyen and her Russophobic ilk are setting up Europe for bankruptcy by stealing Russia’s wealth for propping up a corrupt NeoNazi regime that has already sacrificed millions of Ukrainian military casualties?
Alternatively, if the EU leadership does not get away with its madcap robbery scheme at the summit on December 18-19, the “Plan B” is for the EU 27 members to take out a joint debt from international markets to carry the Kiev regime through another two years of attritional war.
The insanity of the EU leaders is unfathomable. It is driven by ideological, futile obsession to “subjugate” Russia. Von der Leyen, as well as Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, are descendants of Nazi figures. For these people, there is an atavistic quest to defeat Russia and assert European “greatness”.
They lost their proxy war in Ukraine with much blood on their hands. But instead of desisting from their destructive obsession, they are desperately trying to find new ways to keep it going.
The criminal, irresponsible Euro elites like von der Leyen, Kallas, Merz, Macron, and NATO’s Rutte, are lashing the EU financially to a sinking ship. They are bringing the entire European bloc down with them, splintering as they go.
What these elites are doing is destroying the European Union as we know it, and they profess to uphold. Ironically, it is they, not Russia, that is the biggest enemy to democracy and peace in Europe.
Trump files for divorce from NATO over Ukraine
By Larry Johnson | RT | December 6, 2025
It is one thing to produce a written national security strategy, but the real test is whether or not US President Donald Trump is serious about implementing it. The key takeaways are the rhetorical deescalation with China and putting the onus on Europe to keep Ukraine alive.
The 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS) of the US, released by the White House on December 4, 2025, marks a potentially profound shift in US foreign policy under Trump’s second administration compared to his first term as president. This 33-page document explicitly embraces an ‘America First’ doctrine, rejecting global hegemony and ideological crusades in favor of pragmatic, transactional realism focused on protecting core national interests: Homeland security, economic prosperity, and regional dominance in the Western Hemisphere.
It critiques past US overreach as a failure that weakened America, positioning Trump’s approach as a “necessary correction” to usher in a “new golden age.” The strategy prioritizes reindustrialization (aiming to grow the US economy from $30 trillion to $40 trillion by the 2030s), border security, and dealmaking over multilateralism or democracy promotion. It accepts a multipolar world, downgrading China from a “pacing threat” to an “economic competitor,” and calling for selective engagement with adversaries. However, Trump’s actions during the first 11 months of his presidency have been inconsistent with, even contradictory of, the written strategy.
The document is unapologetically partisan, crediting Trump personally for brokering peace in eight conflicts (including the India-Pakistan ceasefire, the Gaza hostage return, the Rwanda-DRC agreement) and securing a verbal commitment at the 2025 Hague Summit for NATO members to boost their defense spending to 5% of GDP. It elevates immigration as a top security threat, advocating lethal force against cartels if needed, and dismisses climate change and ‘net zero’ policies as harmful to US interests.
The document organizes US strategy around three pillars: Homeland defense, the Western Hemisphere, and economic renewal. Secondary focuses include selective partnerships in Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
Here are the major rhetorical shifts in strategy compared to the previous strategies released during the respective presidencies of Trump (2017) and Biden (2022):
- From global cop to regional hegemon: Unlike Biden’s 2022 NSS (which emphasized alliances and great-power competition) or Trump’s 2017 version (which named China and Russia as revisionists), this document ends America’s “forever burdens” abroad. It prioritizes the Americas over Eurasia, framing Europe and the Middle East as deprioritized theaters.
- Ideological retreat: Democracy promotion is explicitly abandoned – “we seek peaceful commercial relations without imposing democratic change” (tell that to the Venezuelans). Authoritarians are not judged, and the EU is called “anti-democratic.”
- Confrontational ally relations: Europe faces scathing criticism for migration, free speech curbs, and risks of “civilizational erasure” (e.g., demographic shifts making nations “unrecognizable in 20 years”). The US vows to support the “patriotic” European parties resisting this, drawing Kremlin-like rhetoric accusations from EU leaders.
- China policy: Acknowledges failed engagement; seeks “mutually advantageous” ties but with deterrence (e.g., Taiwan as a priority). No full decoupling, but restrictions on tech/dependencies.
- Multipolar acceptance: Invites regional powers to manage their spheres (e.g., Japan in East Asia, Arab-Israeli bloc in the Gulf), signaling US restraint to avoid direct confrontations.
The NSS represents a seismic shift in America’s approach to NATO, emphasizing “burden-shifting” over unconditional alliance leadership. It frames NATO not as a values-based community but as a transactional partnership in which US commitments – troops, funding, and nuclear guarantees – are tied to European allies meeting steep new demands. This America First recalibration prioritizes US resources for the Indo-Pacific and Western Hemisphere, de-escalating in Europe to avoid “forever burdens.” Key changes include halting NATO expansion, demanding 5% GDP defense spending by 2035, and restoring “strategic stability” with Russia via a Ukraine ceasefire. While the US reaffirms Article 5 and its nuclear umbrella, it signals potential partial withdrawals by 2027 if Europe fails to step up, risking alliance cohesion amid demographic and ideological critiques of Europe. When Russia completes the defeat of Ukraine, the continued existence of NATO will be a genuine concern.
The strategy credits Trump’s diplomacy for NATO’s 5% pledge at the 2025 Hague Summit but warns of “civilizational erasure” in Europe due to migration and low birth rates, speculating that some members could become “majority non-European” within decades, potentially eroding their alignment with US interests.
Trump’s NSS signals a dramatic change in US policy toward the Ukraine conflict by essentially dumping the responsibility for keeping Ukraine afloat on the Europeans. The portion of the NSS dealing with Ukraine is delusional with regard to the military capabilities of the European states:
We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation… This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons.
As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant US diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.
It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.
The Ukraine War has had the perverse effect of increasing Europe’s, especially Germany’s, external dependencies. Today, German chemical companies are building some of the world’s largest processing plants in China, using Russian gas that they cannot obtain at home. The Trump Administration finds itself at odds with European officials who hold unrealistic expectations for the war perched in unstable minority governments, many of which trample on basic principles of democracy to suppress opposition. A large European majority wants peace, yet that desire is not translated into policy, in large measure because of those governments’ subversion of democratic processes. This is strategically important to the United States precisely because European states cannot reform themselves if they are trapped in political crisis.
Not surprisingly, this section of Trump’s NSS has sparked a panicked outcry in Europe. European leaders, including former Swedish PM Carl Bildt, called it “to the right of the extreme right,” warning of alliance erosion. Analysts at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) praise its pragmatism, but flag short-sightedness, predicting a “lonelier, weaker” US. China views reassurances on sovereignty positively, but remains wary of economic pressures. In the US, Democrats, such as Rep. Jason Crow, deem it “catastrophic” for alliances, i.e. NATO.
Overall, the strategy signals a US pivot inward, forcing NATO allies to self-fund security while risking fractured partnerships with Europe. It positions America as a wealthy hemispheric power in a multipolar order, betting on dealmaking and industrial revival to sustain global influence without overextension.
Larry Johnson is a political analyst and commentator, former CIA analyst and member of the US State Department’s Office for Counterterrorism.
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‘Conspiracy Theory’ Now Fact: Greater Israel Has Arrived
By Kit Klarenberg | Mint Press News | January 28, 2025
Ever since Tel Aviv’s 1948 creation, much has been said and written about ‘Greater Israel’ – the notion Zionism’s ultimate end goal is the forcible annexation and ethnic cleansing of vast swaths of Arab and Muslim lands for Jewish settlement, based on Biblical claims this territory was promised to Jews by God. The mainstream media typically dismisses this concept as antisemitic conspiracy theory, or at most the fringe fantasy of a minuscule handful of extremist Israelis.
In reality … continue
Blog Roll
Aletho News- Pro-Israel terrorist arrested before assassination of pro-Palestinian activist
- Bombing Hitler’s Hometown
- German journalist threatened with homelessness as German court upholds EU sanctions in landmark free speech case
- US Tells Allies That Ukraine-Bound Arms Could be Sent to Middle East
- Organized terrorism: Iran condemns killing of its diplomats in Lebanon
- Why could Gaza enter the regional war?
- Hamas official rejects Mladenov Plan linking disarmament to Gaza reconstruction
- Two Primary Elections for the Soul of ‘America First’
- Japan Clings to US Vassalage Despite Energy Crunch Caused By Iran War
- US Seeks Control Over Global Energy Infrastructure – Kremlin
- If Americans Knew
- Researchers at Human Rights Watch Resign Over Blocked Report on Palestinian Refugee Return
- Jewish Groups Are Backing a War Americans Don’t Want
- Eric Fingerhut Thinks He’s the President of the Jews
- Top Jewish Philanthropists, Rabbis Urge Israeli President to Take Action Against ‘Jewish Extremists’
- Don’t Be Fooled. Zionist Leaders Have Always Wanted to Control Southern Lebanon
- Israel’s widespread use of torture is a core element of its genocide against the Palestinian people
- In Israel’s War on Iran, Many Middle East US Bases Rendered “All But Uninhabitable”
- ‘Burn the lawn’: Israel pursues ‘Rafah model’ in southern Lebanon
- A genocide here, an amputation there
- Reports: Iran mobilizing 1M fighters, Israel-US run low on ammo, Israeli army faces shortage – Not a ceasefire Day 168
- No Tricks Zone
- Devastating Assessment Of Comirnaty Vaccine By Former Senior Pfizer Europe Toxicologist
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- Former Pfizer Toxicologist Dr. Helmut Sterz Tells Bundestag Hearing Pfizer Vaccine Should Have Never Been Approved
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- New Research: South Australia’s Mid-Holocene Sea Surface Temperatures Were 4°C Warmer Than Today
- Storing Green Energy To Last Germany 10 Days Would Require A 60-Million Tonne Battery
- New Studies: UK Sea Levels Were 4 Meters Higher Than Today During The Mid-Holocene
- Destructive Green New Deal: German Energy And Metal Group Warns Of Drastic Crisis
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- Wake-up Call: Survey Shows Majority Of Germans Now Favor Postponing Climate Targets!
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