Western news media have given up the pretense of being independent and impartial sources of information. American and European mainstream outlets are nothing but propaganda services for the NATO proxy war against Russia.
That observation is hardly new. Since the NATO-backed coup in Kiev in 2014, the Western media have systematically and relentlessly whitewashed the NeoNazi regime and its strategic purpose as a cat’s paw to embroil Russia in conflict. Russia’s inevitable military response to the decade-long proxy war has been distorted as “unprovoked aggression” against “democratic” Ukraine.
The Western “news media” have now outed themselves for the propaganda functionaries that they are. The veil is shredded.
Last weekend, the NATO-backed Kiev regime deliberately attacked a civilian passenger train in Russia’s Bryansk region. Seven people were killed and over 100 were injured after a bridge was blown up, crashing down on a train passing underneath. The death toll could have been much higher, given the hundreds on board.
Within hours of that heinous act, a second train was derailed when a bridge it was traveling over in Kursk was blown up. Mercifully, there were no deaths in the second attack despite several injuries.
Three more explosions have been reported on Russia’s railways this week: another in Bryansk and two in the Voronezh and Belgorod regions.
These calculated acts to cause maximum civilian casualties by the Ukrainian regime and its NATO enablers are nothing short of state terrorism. They are war crimes of the first magnitude.
Yet the Western media, like the Western governments, have maintained a shameful and damning silence on these crimes. One can imagine the outpouring of condemnation if Russia were to carry out such attacks, deliberately targeting civilians in Ukraine.
Instead, the Western “news” outlets gave prominent coverage of the drone attacks on Russia’s airfields. Certainly, the targeting of five airbases where Russian nuclear-capable bomber aircraft are stationed was big news.
However, Western media reports let their colors show by being ecstatic in tone about an “audacious” operation, amplifying unverified Ukrainian claims that 40 aircraft were destroyed. Britain’s Daily Telegraph and other Western outlets shared video of one plane exploding, headlining with glee that “Putin’s bombers” were knocked out.
For its part, the Russian military said that most of the drones were intercepted and only a few aircraft were damaged.
None of the Western outlets reported on the obvious role that NATO intelligence must have played in such a recklessly provocative attack on Russia’s strategic defenses. As such, the Western media is covering up for what could be deemed an act of war on Russia.
The gloating propagandist reporting on the airfield raids was in stark contrast to the relative silence over the terrorist attack on the passenger train.
U.S.-based ABC headlined with “Ukraine targets Russian airfields in major drone attack” and relayed dramatic details of the operation. It was only much further down in the report that ABC mentioned the deadly train explosion, as if it were a minor incident.
It reported: “Elsewhere, at least seven people were killed and 66 injured when a railway bridge collapsed and a train derailed in Russia’s western Bryansk region overnight.”
Note how ABC makes out that a bridge collapsed as if by gravity without explosive sabotage. It goes on to distort the terror attack by quoting a Ukrainian regime propagandist who insinuates that the wreckage was somehow carried out by Russia. The warped logic dignified by ABC was that the Russians carried out a fiendish false-flag ploy to scuttle negotiations that were due to take place the following day in Istanbul between Russian and Ukrainian delegates.
The British BBC deployed the same reprehensible disinformation. Its headline was: “At least seven dead after two Russian bridges collapse.”
Again, according to the BBC, bridges just collapse on passenger trains. Like ABC, the BBC buries important Russian information implicating Ukrainian responsibility for detonating explosives in the mass murder of civilians.
Significantly, the BBC also quotes the same Ukrainian regime propaganda source, Andriy Kovalenko, aired by ABC, who is described as “head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council’s Centre for Countering Disinformation.” He is also permitted by the British outlet to accuse Russia of self-inflicted terrorism, allegedly “laying the groundwork to derail the negotiations” in Istanbul.
With blatant distortion, Western media are minimizing what are outrageous acts of terrorism by the NATO-weaponized regime. Sickeningly, deliberate acts of murdering civilians by the NATO-backed regime are twisted upside down as Russian dirty tricks.
Of course, Western media are obliged to tell lies to cover up crimes by their governments and their proxies. In that case, they have lost their pious and pretentious claims of being “independent media”. They are abject propaganda tools, dressed up with self-ordained virtue. And still they have the arrogance to accuse other nations’ media of being state-run propaganda. This charade by Western media has been running for a long time, decades and indeed centuries. It has always been a charade. It’s now flagrantly obvious. No wonder so many Western citizens have contempt for their mainstream media.
The peace talks in Istanbul – the second round was held earlier this week – to try to find an end to the proxy war in Ukraine have largely come about because of Moscow’s initiative. American President Donald Trump’s declared wish to end the conflict has brought the Kiev regime to the table. It is not clear if the talks will succeed.
In the meantime, it is abundantly clear that the NATO axis on both sides of the Atlantic wants the proxy war to continue.
Carrying out provocations and terrorist crimes against civilians is aimed at sabotaging any diplomatic effort.
Russia responded in recent days to the terror assaults last weekend with massive bombardments on Ukraine’s military sites.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Trump in a phone call mid-week that retaliation was imminent.
Western media reported Russia’s air strikes by giving prominence to the deaths of five civilians, according to Ukrainian officials. Russia claims it is not deliberately targeting civilian centers. That is an important distinction compared with the NATO-backed regime.
As usual, the latest Russian strikes were reported without a single mention of the terrorist murders of civilians in Russia. It is an all-too-familiar and deplorable pattern of bias. Russian lives are worthless, evidently from the Western perspective.
The one-sided Western media dereliction of journalism is seen over and over again throughout the proxy war in Ukraine. In another notorious distortion this week, the nuclear power plant in Zaporozhye – the biggest in Europe – came under drone attack from the Kiev regime. There were no reports in the Western media of this nuclear terrorism to contaminate Europe. When Western media reported on previous attacks on the ZNPP (by the Kiev forces), it absurdly claimed that Russia is doing the sabotage on a power plant under its control. Just like supposedly blowing up its own trains and citizens.
Western media silence and distortion are not merely disgraceful false propaganda. It is complicity in war crimes by giving cover and license for more.
Kiev has postponed a previously agreed prisoner swap with Moscow, according to Russian Lt. Gen. Alexander Zorin, speaking for the Defense Ministry. The trade would also include the repatriation of over 6,000 bodies of deceased Ukrainian soldiers, he added in a statement published on Saturday.
“Russia handed over to the Ukrainian side a list of 640 names, but the latter is so far refraining from setting a date for the return of these individuals,” said Zorin, who was a member of Moscow’s negotiating team in Istanbul. He explained that the exchange agreement covers two groups of prisoners – an “all-for-all” swap of wounded and critically ill, and those under 25 years old.
According to Zorin, Moscow began the repatriation on Friday, with a convoy containing 1,212 bodies reaching the exchange point. He added that four other convoys, each carrying 1,200 sets of remains, are ready for transfer.
Russia decided to return the remains of over 6,000 slain Ukrainian soldiers in a unilateral humanitarian gesture during the talks in Istanbul on Monday. Both sides also agreed to exchange 1,200 prisoners each.
“We confirm our full readiness to implement the Istanbul agreements. We are prepared to transfer all bodies and proceed with the prisoner exchange as agreed,” Zorin stressed.
Earlier on Saturday, Moscow’s lead negotiator in the peace talks with Kiev, Vladimir Medinsky, also claimed that Ukraine would not accept the bodies of its fallen troops, and had given “strange reasons” for its decision. According to Medinsky, the Ukrainian team “did not even arrive at the exchange site.”
“We call on Kiev to strictly adhere to the schedule and all agreements that were reached, and to immediately begin the exchange” so that the wounded can return home and the dead receive a proper burial, he urged.
The Ukrainian side has denied Russia’s claims, stating that over the past week, teams from both sides have been working on the repatriation of bodies and the exchange of prisoners. “Unfortunately, instead of a constructive dialogue, we are once again faced with manipulation and attempts to use sensitive humanitarian topics for informational purposes,” Ukraine’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said in a statement on Sunday.
Cities can become “forts” with an endless series of city block walls that provide defense-in-depth. Rather than fight a powerful, modern army on the field of battle, opponents may choose to fight man-to-man in cities. If large numbers of civilians remain in a city, using heavy firepower becomes a political matter and creates huge mounds of rubble passable only by foot infantrymen. Damage to religious and historical structures are another concern.
American and British propagandists claim the Russians are incompetent because they haven’t seized Kiev or other major cities. But that was never an objective since urban warfare is slow, bloody, and very destructive to civilians and infrastructure. The Russians set up a long frontline killing field in Eastern Ukraine lined with artillery supplied via rail directly from factories. Ukraine sends more soldiers into these killing fields daily and the Russians kill thousands each week. Russian forces will keep grinding forward in rural areas to decimate and demoralize the Ukrainian army.
While Western headlines celebrated Operation Spider’s Web as a daring feat of Ukrainian ingenuity, a closer look reveals something far more calculated – and far less Ukrainian. This wasn’t just a strike on Russian airfields. It was a test – one that blended high-tech sabotage, covert infiltration, and satellite-guided timing with the kind of precision that only the world’s most advanced intelligence networks can deliver. And it begs the question: who was really pulling the strings?
Let’s be honest. Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence didn’t act alone. It couldn’t have.
Even if no Western agency was directly involved in the operation itself, the broader picture is clear: Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, its military, and even its top political leadership rely heavily on Western intelligence feeds. Ukraine is deeply embedded within NATO’s intelligence-sharing architecture. The idea of a self-contained Ukrainian intel ecosystem is largely a thing of the past. These days, Kiev draws primarily on NATO-provided data, supplementing it with its own domestic sources where it can.
That’s the backdrop – a hybrid model that’s become standard over the past two years. Now, let’s look more closely at Operation Spider’s Web itself. We know the planning took roughly 18 months and involved moving drones covertly into Russian territory, hiding them, and then orchestrating coordinated attacks on key airfields. So how likely is it that Western intelligence agencies had a hand in such a complex operation?
Start with logistics. It’s been reported that 117 drones were prepped for launch inside Russia. Given that numerous private companies in Russia currently manufacture drones for the war effort, it wouldn’t have been difficult to assemble the necessary devices under that cover. That’s almost certainly what happened. Components were likely purchased domestically under the guise of supplying the “Special Military Operation.” Still, it’s hard to believe Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence could have pulled off this mass procurement and assembly alone. It’s highly likely Western intelligence agencies played a quiet but crucial role – especially in securing specialized components.
Then there’s the explosives. If the operation’s command center was located in the Ural region, as some suggest, it’s plausible that explosives or components were smuggled in via neighboring CIS countries. That kind of border-hopping precision doesn’t happen without outside help. In fact, it mirrors tactics long perfected by intelligence services in both the US and Western Europe.
Because make no mistake: this wasn’t just the CIA’s playground. European services – particularly those in the UK, France, and Germany – possess the same capabilities to execute and conceal such an operation. The NATO intelligence community may have different national flags, but it speaks with one voice in the field.
The real giveaway, however, lies in the timing of the strikes. These weren’t blind attacks on static targets. Russia’s strategic bombers frequently rotate bases. Commercial satellite imagery – updated every few days at best – simply can’t track aircraft on the move. And yet these drones struck with exquisite timing. That points to a steady flow of real-time surveillance, likely derived from signals intelligence, radar tracking, and live satellite feeds – all tools in the Western intelligence toolbox.
Could Ukraine, on its own, have mustered that kind of persistent, multidomain awareness? Not a chance. That level of situational intelligence is the domain of NATO’s most capable agencies – particularly those tasked with monitoring Russian military infrastructure as part of their day job.
For years now, Ukraine has been described in Western media as a plucky underdog using low-cost tactics to take on a larger foe. But beneath the David vs. Goliath narrative lies a more uncomfortable truth: Ukraine’s intelligence ecosystem is now deeply embedded within NATO’s operational architecture. Real-time feeds from US and European satellites, intercepts from British SIGINT stations, operational planning consultations with Western handlers – this is the new normal.
Ukraine still has its own sources, but it’s no longer running a self-contained intelligence operation. That era ended with the first HIMARS launch.
Western officials, of course, deny direct involvement. But Russian investigators are already analyzing mobile traffic around the impact sites. If it turns out that these drones weren’t connected to commercial mobile networks – if, instead, they were guided through encrypted, military-grade links – it will be damning. Not only would that confirm foreign operational input, it would expose the full extent of how Western assets operated inside Russia without detection.
At that point, no amount of plausible deniability will cover the truth. The question will no longer be whether NATO participated – but how deep that participation ran.
A group of US lawmakers has been using Ukraine to enrich themselves, retired CIA intelligence officer and State Department official Larry Johnson tells Sputnik, citing whistleblowers.
About 23 members of the US Congress, including Senator Lindsey Graham, helped themselves to the money coming from Ukraine, the whistleblowers claim.
“We’re not talking a few thousand dollars. We’re talking much more than that,” Johnson remarks.
He does point out, however, that these are just allegations at the moment, and that it is up for US authorities to properly investigate these claims.
“It’s not going to take six months to do this investigation, it can be done in a much shorter time frame. So we’ll see what comes of it,” Johnson predicts.
He also argues that it will be easier to make the results of this investigation public “once this whole debacle that is the war in Ukraine, comes to fruition, as the total defeat of NATO becomes apparent.”
The picture of Lindsey Graham, US Senator for South Carolina, and Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, grinning into a camera in Brussels on June 2, is worth a thousand words.
Graham is one of the most extreme hardcore warmongers in Washington DC, and the competition is pretty stiff. Ever since he first became a member of the US Congress over 30 years ago – once in, American politicians are rarely voted out – he has devoted his career to arguing vehemently for war.
His remarks are often not just belligerent but also sadistic, such as when he recently posted that he hoped ‘Greta could swim’, meaning that he hoped her Gaza aid ship would be torpedoed. Joking about an attack on a civilian aid ship carrying a young female civilian activist is sick – and typical of Graham.
Like his old friend, the late Senator John McCain, Lindsey Graham is obsessed with the idea of war with Russia. He has been pushing for this since at least 2014. In 2016 he told Ukrainian soldiers, “Your fight is our fight.”
Graham’s presence in Brussels is therefore significant. Ever since von der Leyen’s appointment in 2019, she has pushed herself forward as the principal public face of the Brussels institutions. Six years ago, she said she wanted to make the European Commission into a ‘geopolitical’ body – even though it has no role in foreign or military policy.
Since then, she has done little else than parade on the international stage. She is among the most hawkish and anti-Russian European figures, absurdly claiming, like French Foreign Minister Bruno Lemaire, that EU sanctions have brought the Russian economy to its knees.
The Graham-von der Leyen alliance is therefore a natural one – against Donald Trump. European politicians are often quite explicit in their view that Trump is now the enemy.
The same goes for Lindsey Graham. In Kiev last week, Graham explicitly challenged Trump’s authority to decide US foreign policy. He lambasted the very notion of negotiations with Russia – just as Zelensky did to Vance in the Oval office in February – and said that the president of the US is not the boss. “In America, you have more than one person at the card table. We have three branches of government,” – meaning that the Senate would soon impose its own sanctions on Russia, whatever the executive does. Graham’s budget bill from February is intended to spend even more money on the US military – as if that were possible – which means that he is marshalling the US deep state to fight back after initially reeling from the re-election of Trump.
Meanwhile, the Europeans’ determination to continue the war is existential. Their Russophobia, which goes back at least to the 2012 Russian presidential election, when Putin came back into the Kremlin, is extreme because their “Europe” is defined by its hostility to Russia. Russia is “the other Europe” which the EU does not want to be and which it defines itself against.
Von der Leyen and others want to use the war against Russia to federalise Europe and create a single state. Meanwhile, Trump’s Russia policy is based on sidelining Europe. When he first announced talks with the Russians, EU leaders demanded a seat at the table. They failed. US-Russia talks took place outside Europe – in Riyadh – while the Russia-Ukraine talks the EU vehemently opposed are taking place without the EU, in Istanbul.
Let us not forget how furiously EU leaders opposed talking to Russia. When Viktor Orban travelled to Kiev and Moscow last July, Ursula von der Leyen denounced Orban’s “appeasement”. The EU’s then chief diplomat said in an official statement that the EU “excludes official contacts between the EU and President Putin.”
The French foreign minister said in February that if Sergey Lavrov telephoned him he would not answer the call. Now these very same people claim they want to “force” the Russians to come and talk!
EU policy on Russia is now in ruins. That is why, like Graham, they are determined to stop Trump. Their attempts have been ever more desperate and ridiculous. On May 12, Kaja Kallas and other EU leaders said Russia “must agree” to a ceasefire before any talks. Three days later, those talks started anyway. Britain also tried to scupper them by saying it was “unacceptable” for Russia to demand recognition of the “annexed” regions, which is odd considering Britain is not a participant.
European credibility is therefore at zero. In March, the British prime minister had said that the plans to send British and French troops to Ukraine had entered “the operational phase.” They were ready, he claimed, to protect Ukraine’s security by directly entering the war zone. By April, these plans had been dropped.
On May 10, European leaders threatened Russia with “massive sanctions” if it did not agree to a ceasefire immediately. Russia did not agree to a ceasefire and yet there have been no more “massive sanctions.” A 17th package of sanctions was indeed announced on May 14, but it was so weak that Hungary and Slovakia, who oppose the EU’s overall policy, let it pass. In any case, the 17th package clearly had nothing to do with the ultimatum because such sanctions take a long time to prepare. Instead, that is what Lindsey Graham was in Brussels to discuss.
The EU and the UK have thus sidelined themselves with their meaningless braggadocio. They cannot operate without the Americans. But which Americans? The claim that the White House did not know about the recent Ukrainian drone attack on Russian airfields might well be true: the US deep state, embodied by people like Graham, is clearly trying to undermine the executive. Both Lindsey Graham and former CIA director Mike Pompeo were in Ukraine just days before the attack.
The political goal of the drone attack was obviously to scupper the talks scheduled for the following day in Istanbul, or to provoke Russia into a massive response and drag the US into the war. Even if the attack does not succeed in these goals, it clearly sets the tone for the future Ukrainian insurgency which, American and European officials hope, will turn that country into an ‘Afghanistan’ for Russia. The US deep state is in for the long game.
So are the Europeans. On May 9, ‘Europe Day’, European leaders confirmed their intention to set up a Special Tribunal for the crime of aggression, to prosecute Russia for invading in February 2022.
Western European states are already the primary financers of the International Criminal Court, whose prosecutor is British. The ICC indicted Russian leaders, including Putin, in 2023 and 2024, on various very surprising charges. (Ursula von der Leyen continued to lie about “20,000 abducted children,” the day after the Ukrainians gave the Russians a list of 339 missing children.) Now the Europeans intend to open a new front in their ‘lawfare’ against Russia.
Such a Special Tribunal, if it comes into existence, will tear the heart out of any peace agreement – just as Ukraine’s acceptance of the jurisdiction of the ICC in 2014 and 2015 rendered the Minsk agreement of February 2015 null and void. With one side of its mouth, Ukraine asked the ICC to prosecute Russian officials and Donbass “terrorists”; with the other side, it agreed at Minsk that the Donbass insurgency was an internal Ukrainian problem and ruled out any prosecution or punishment (Article 5 of the February 2015 Minsk agreement).
It is not possible to agree a peace agreement with a country and at the same time to set up a Special Tribunal whose sole purpose is to criminalize it. So the creation of this Tribunal, which will presumably remain in existence for over a decade like the ad hoc tribunals for Yugoslavia and Rwanda, is nothing but a Euro-American institutional time bomb designed to blow up in the future any agreement which the two sides might reach in the short term. The future of “Europe” depends on that.
John Laughland, who has a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Oxford and who has taught at universities in Paris and Rome, is a historian and specialist in international affairs.
Hungary is now the target of covert actions from Ukraine, and with a national election approaching within a year, Ukraine is increasingly portraying its neighbor as an enemy, warns Hungarian security expert József Horváth. However, beyond covert operations, Ukraine may even begin to launch sabotage attacks or other direct actions against Hungary, a threat that has risen since Ukraine’s successful attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet.
In recent weeks, Hungary and Ukraine have claimed to have uncovered spies and arrested them on their respective territories. Horváth, who is the head of the Sovereignty Protection Research Institute in Hungary, told Hungarian news outlet Mandiner that Hungary is essentially being treated as an “enemy” not just by Kyiv but also by other Western intelligence services.
“The news in Hungary in recent days and weeks confirms that the activities of the Ukrainian intelligence services must be taken very seriously. The disinformation and destabilization efforts they have seen in Hungary so far, and the recent action carried out in Russia, indicate that the threat has increased,” said Horváth.
The security expert even warned of a potentially major action from Ukrainian forces against Hungary.
“Hungary has been drawn as a kind of enemy on the country’s western horizon. In light of this, we cannot rule out the possibility that they could carry out an action like the one that was successfully carried out against Russian strategic bombers after a year and a half of preparation. Given this long and professional preparation, we must also be very alert in the coming months,” he said.
Such an attack against Hungary, which is a member of NATO, may produce little more than a shrug from many of Hungary’s NATO allies, many of which see Hungary as an enemy as well. Although Horváth does not mention what such an attack could look like, it could include actions against Hungary’s power grid, oil refineries and other critical infrastructure, as well as even targeting military infrastructure. Other false flag actions could occur as well.
When asked whether it could really be possible that Ukraine could attack Hungary, Horváth responded that it is not only realistic, but could even be supported by NATO members.
“To paraphrase Lord Palmerston’s famous quote, ‘Ukraine has no friends, Ukraine has interests,” he responded. “Yes, I think they would dare to do so, and I can even imagine that several NATO member states would look on with gloating.”
Ukrainian services are well-versed in sabotage operations on foreign soil and many on the left-liberal establishment would not blink an eye if Ukraine carried out attacks against Hungary, especially if Ukraine could obscure where these attacks are coming from. While Ukraine may not end up attacking Hungary, Kyiv will almost certainly run covert and influence operations against Hungary, all with the goal of ousting Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán from power.
“The simple answer is that they want to punish Hungary, and the more detailed one is that they would like to have a government in power that would oppose the current pro-peace, sovereignist policy and create a federal system that would stretch the nation-state framework of the union, because they would see this as an opportunity to break the resistance against them,” he said.
The Ukrainian population is also being primed for an attack, with Horváth saying that Ukraine is also increasingly viewing Hungary as a direct enemy amongst the Ukrainian populace.
“Ukrainian communication in the past year has been, with a slight exaggeration, nothing more than that Hungary is not supplying them with weapons, and therefore Ukraine cannot win. Both the soldiers and the civilians living in the hinterland have formed the image in their minds that we are preventing the Ukrainian victory,” said Horváth. “It doesn’t matter that we are providing humanitarian aid, supporting them with fuel, food, medicine, and electricity. This doesn’t add up in their minds. However, they have no chance of regaining the territories occupied by the Russians by force or in any other way, so their anger may turn towards us.”
The rhetoric coming from Ukraine at the moment is especially relevant given that the EU is pushing to make Ukraine an EU member state. Horváth notes that this push is coming despite an ongoing war.
“Unfortunately, I have to say that the Germans, the French, the British and to some extent the Poles are also determined on this issue. A ‘coalition of the determined’ has been created, and these countries agree not only on the need to support Ukraine ‘to the last Ukrainian’ in the war against the Russians, but also on the need to admit them to the union. From this perspective, the political elite in Brussels and the self-determining Western states seem to want to force Ukraine to become a member of the European Union, even against the common sense of two plus two, and thus pay for the fact that they will ‘defend Europe’ against a virtual Russian threat,” he said.
The EU is not only bending or breaking all the rules to fast-track Ukrainian membership, but they also want to admit another problematic country, Moldova.
“There is no such thing as speeding up the process of EU accession, and it has always been the case. However, the EU leadership is trying to create a precedent regardless of the rules. So far, they have intervened in the lives of nation-states in quite a few areas that they had no right to, but they have started to create those unique closures through which they later pretend that the given step was completely natural. There is one more thing that is not being talked about in Brussels: This is a package, and this package includes not only Ukraine, but also Moldova. By including Moldova, the EU would import another – albeit currently dormant – conflict, since part of the country, Transnistria, is controlled by Russian separatists,” he stated.
If Ukraine does join, it will present major problems for all of Europe.
“What will 800,000 severely traumatized, armed Ukrainian soldiers do, whose salaries are not paid overnight? What if only one 100,000 of them head west?” he asked.
As for peace, Horváth sees little chance now, especially after Ukraine’s massive drone strike against Russia’s bomber fleet.
“I think the time has passed (for peace) because the Ukrainian secret service has just recently caused a very painful loss by blowing up Russian strategic bombers, so I see no chance of a ceasefire at the moment. Not least because it seems that the current Ukrainian leadership is not interested in concluding a ceasefire, since then elections would have to be held, in which Zelensky would have no chance. Ergo, they jumped on the Brussels train because they know that they are in power as long as the EU gives them money, and until then they want to continue this war,” Horváth said.
President Donald Trump had a difficult week. No, this isn’t about Elon Musk or Harvard University. On Wednesday, his call to Russian President Vladimir Putin didn’t go well. It turned into a ‘conversation’, as Trump wrote on Truth Social, lasting only an hour and 15 minutes, which means, setting aside the time for interpretation, it left no room for substantive discussions.
The call took place against the backdrop of the attack on Russia’s nuclear force on June 1. Trump acknowledged in his Truth Socialpost later that Putin spoke “strongly” about Russia’s response to come. The post was notable for its subdued tone.
We wouldn’t know whether Putin brought up Western involvement. The Kremlin merely noted that “Donald Trump reiterated that the Americans had not been informed about this [attack] in advance.”
Zelensky’s version is that the attack was in the pipeline for the past 18-month period. Yet, we are to believe, neither the CIA nor MI6 whose operatives run the show in Kiev got an inkling of it. Trump’s Truth Social post simply omitted this crucial part of the conversation with Putin, which is highly significant — and consequential.
Especially, as Kremlin-funded RT had already carried one report citing the assessment of an ex-French intelligence officer that the Ukrainian targeting couldn’t have been possible without US satellite inputs.
Earlier, Tass also had carried a similar report citing a former US naval officer who estimated that the 18 month-period was when the Biden administration was virtually on auto-pilot (due to the president’s dementia). An interesting thought in itself?
Tass quoted the American source who actually said on a War Room podcast: “So, who was it on the American side that either gave the greenlight to this or provided the initial intelligence targeting? Hey, where is William Burns and Jack Sullivan, the neocon whizkids in Biden’s team?
Again, on the same day as Trump spoke to Putin, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned at a news conference in Moscow, “The fact that certain circles in the United States have been and are still hatching plans to move towards eradicating Russia as a state is also undeniable… We should not underestimate the consequences of such a mindset… Russian society should remain in a state of high readiness for any intrigues.”
Interestingly, Ryabkov called on Washington and London specifically to speak up on the attack on Russian airfields. As he put it, “We demand that both London and Washington respond in a manner that stops this recent round of escalation of tensions.”
When asked about the Ukrainian attack on Wednesday in Brussels, NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte came up with an ingenious argument: “Let’s not forget that the capabilities they hit were the capabilities the Russians were using to attack innocent people going about their daily lives in Ukrainian cities and communities. So I think we should take note of that.” Clearly, the poor chap was in the loop! Rutte refused to speak further.
Equally, the social media is awash with the assessments by some prominent American experts, especially ex-CIA analysts, pointing a finger directly at the agency’s involvement. Of course, Russia has the experience and technical expertise to dig deep.
There are comparable situations. What comes to mind is the famous U-2 spy plane incident on May 1, 1961. Perhaps, Trump is finding himself in the same embarrassing situation as President Dwight Eisenhower.
Do we give the benefit of the doubt to Trump that he too was unaware of the strike on Russia’s nuclear force on June 1? To my mind, the analogy of the U-2 incident holds good — a rare cold-war era confrontation over the US’ blatant violation of Russian sovereignty and territory at a critical juncture just when the White House was navigting an improvement of relations with Russia.
Eisenhower was kept in the dark about the full details of the U-2 although countdown had begun for his planned summit meeting with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet leader, in Paris to discuss a Soviet-American detente (just what Trump is attempting with Putin.) The following excerpts from the archives of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial, Eisenhower National Historic Site are most insightful:
“[U-2 spy plane pilot Gary] Powers did have a contingency in the form of a concealed needle with the poison Saxitoxin. If injected, this would have killed him and prevented his capture. Powers did not utilize this and was surrounded by Soviet citizens very soon after he touched down. Soviet citizens soon found his United States issued firearm, and other items bearing the flag of the U.S., turning him over to Soviet officials. Powers, and what was left of his spy plane, were shipped to Moscow be researched and documented. In a matter of hours, Khrushchev was informed of the captured pilot and the wrecked U-2.
“When Powers was overdue to land at Norway [U-2 had taken off from its base in Peshawar], the CIA started to consider what might have happened. As a result, their contingency plan went into action. To prevent the public and the Soviets from learning the true nature of the U-2 aircraft, a misinformation campaign began. A NASA press release stated one of their high-altitude weather research U-2 aircraft had gone missing over Turkey, and that it may have drifted into Soviet airspace because of an unconscious pilot. A U-2 was shown off in NASA colors as well to help sell the story. Khruschev learned of this story from the Americans and decided to lay a trap for the United States and for Eisenhower.
“The Soviets released information that a spy plane was shot down but did not include any other information on the status of the aircraft or Powers. The U.S. believed it could shape the narrative further and kept releasing “reports” of oxygen difficulties in the aircraft and that the auto pilot may have sent the plane into Soviet territory. Once the deception from the United States grew large enough, on May 7th, Khruschev sprung his trap by stating the pilot was alive, and that the Soviets had captured the remains of the aircraft, which contained a camera and film of Soviet Military Installations. This destroyed the cover story and was a public embarrassment for the United States and for President Eisenhower. The President learned of this at the office of his Gettysburg residence, where he got a phone call informing him the Soviets had captured Powers. This shattered the peace and tranquility of his stay in Gettysburg, and he knew that he would be held responsible in the eyes of the Soviet Union. In a remark to an aide, Eisenhower reportedly said, “I would like to resign.”
While Eisenhower did not resign, the U-2 incident and the acute embarrassment so close to the end of his second term defined his Cold War legacy.Khrushchev cancelled the Paris summit and Soviet-American detente had to wait until Henry Kissinger consolidated his grip over US foreign policy strategies. Nonetheless, the Deep State, which loathed detente, booby-trapped Richard Nixon’s presidency!
Eisenhower’s sense of betrayal is reflected in his farewell address when he bitterly called out the Deep State and prophesied that it will someday wreck America’s democracy.
History is repeating. Look at the cascading turbulence already around Trump presidency. Eighty two out of 100 members of the Senate are co-sponsoring a bill by Senator Lindsey Graham (whose affiliation to the Deep State is legion), forcing Trump’s hands to impose “bone-breaking” sanctions against Russia, whose sole objective is to stall any improvement of US-Russia relations. Meanwhile, a call for impeachment of Trump is already in the air.
The EU wants Ukraine in the European Union, and they are willing to use underhanded methods in violation of the founding treaty, including cutting Hungary out of the process and ignoring the country’s veto.
Marta Kos, the European Commission’s commissioner for enlargement, spoke to the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday, where she made it clear that they want to complete the enlargement process for Ukraine by the end of the next EU term, which is 2029.
“We must and will succeed in the next phase of European unification. We have a realistic chance of bringing one or more candidate countries to the finish line in this cycle,” said Kos.
To speed up the process, Brussels is also working on introducing an “alternative” decision-making mechanism. This is intended to ensure that bilateral disputes – such as Hungarian vetoes – can no longer hold back EU enlargement.
“Together with EU member states, the commission is exploring options to simplify access procedures so that bilateral issues do not hinder enlargement in this very sensitive geopolitical situation,” she said.
Kos also specifically addressed the accession process of Ukraine and Moldova, stating: “Now we absolutely have to take the next step with Ukraine and Moldova. Both countries have done their homework.” She also emphasized that all preparations have been made, so it is now up to the Council of Member States to open the first negotiation cluster.
According to the commissioner, enlargement is not only an economic opportunity, but also a key security guarantee for the European Union. To this end, the EU commission is already starting to open up the internal markets to the countries concerned — in particular in the areas of defense and security, energy and connectivity.
“To complement the accession negotiations, the commission is stepping up its efforts to accelerate the integration of the internal market: now in the areas of defense and security, and then in connectivity, energy and other areas, together with EU member states,” she added.
Kos said: “Ukraine’s access to the EU is a key security guarantee. We must make it happen. We must move forward to maintain the momentum of reforms in Ukraine, to help our member states address their concerns and, ultimately, to respond to the greatest security challenges since the Second World War.”
It is worth remembering that it was Marta Kos who recently admitted that accession negotiations with Ukraine would begin in June, and also spoke of doing everything she could to accelerate Ukraine’s accession.
She even said that a thousand people are already working in the Brussels institutions to accelerate the accession. This is interesting because it was EU Commissioner Marta Kos who showed Alex Soros that Ukraine could not meet a single EU accession condition.
Ukraine is considered the most corrupt country in Europe, a point that many top officials and organizations have acknowledged repeatedly in the past. The EU has already sent tens of billions to the country, but if EU membership occurs, European taxpayers can expect to be on the hook for many tens of billions more. The EU agriculture sector is also expected to experience even more losses if markets are opened up to cheap Ukrainian products, which is not just a concern of Hungary, but of countries across the bloc.
Indian Ambassador M.K. Bhadrakumar argues that Trump’s words do not match his actions. It is extremely unlikely that the US was not involved in the attack on Russia’s nuclear forces, and Bhadrakumar argues that the failure by Russia to respond would be profoundly irresponsible. Ambassador Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat for 30 years in the Indian Foreign Service, and is now a columnist for Hindu and Deccan Herald Indian newspapers.
President Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Ukraine conflict said that recent Ukrainian attacks on Russian air bases have created a significant risk of escalation in the war.
“I’m telling you, the risk levels are going way up – I mean, what happened this weekend,” Trump’s envoy, Keith Kellogg, told Fox News. “People have to understand in the national security space: when you attack an opponent’s part of their national survival system, which is their triad, the nuclear triad, that means your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side is going to do. You’re not sure.”
On Sunday, the Ukrainian intelligence service, the SBU, launched a major attack on Russian airbases thousands of miles from the front lines. Kiev claims to have disabled one third of Moscow’s fleet of strategic bombers.
Washington and Moscow each possess the ability to conduct nuclear attacks via bombers, submarines, and land-based ballistic missiles, known as the nuclear triad. The White House claims that it was not informed of the attack by Kiev. However, the CIA is deeply tied to the SBU.
The SBU has conducted other provocative attacks in recent days, hitting Russian railways and bridges and reportedly killing seven civilians.
Trump said he spoke with Russian President Vladimir Putin about the attacks on Wednesday. “I just finished speaking, by telephone, with President Vladimir Putin, of Russia. The call lasted approximately one hour and 15 minutes,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “We discussed the attack on Russia’s docked airplanes, by Ukraine, and also various other attacks that have been taking place by both sides. It was a good conversation, but not a conversation that will lead to immediate Peace. President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”
Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has refused to seriously consider Russia’s latest peace proposal, dismissing it as an unacceptable “ultimatum”.
Russian and Ukrainian delegations exchanged their respective roadmaps for peace at their second meeting in a month, in Istanbul on Monday. In its proposal, Moscow proposed that Ukraine recognizes the loss of five of its former regions that joined Russia in public referendums, withdraws its forces from them, commit to neutrality, and limit its own military capabilities.
Russia also floated a “package proposal” for a ceasefire, in which Kiev would halt deploying its troops, suspend mobilisation, stop foreign weapons shipments, and hold a presidential election.
Zelensky rejected the peace memorandum out of hand. “This is an ultimatum, and it will not be taken seriously by the Ukrainian side… This memorandum is a misunderstanding,” he said on Wednesday.
The Ukrainian leader claimed that any territorial concessions to Russia would contravene Ukraine’s constitution.
Russia’s lead negotiator at the Istanbul talks, Vladimir Medinsky, defended the memorandum, describing it as an opportunity to end the conflict. “This is not an ultimatum. It’s a proposal that will truly allow for achieving real peace — or at least a ceasefire — and make a huge step towards achieving long-term peace,” he said.
Zelensky also criticized the diplomatic process itself, saying, “To continue diplomatic meetings in Istanbul at a level that decides nothing — it’s meaningless.”
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, however, suggested that Zelensky dismissed the outcome of the talks because they were focused not on financial aid or weapons supplies, but on people.
Zakharova was referring to Moscow and Kiev’s agreement to carry the largest prisoner exchange to date, which is expected to take place this weekend and involved 1,200 people on each side.
… As Netanyahu meets with Trump to push new lies to justify a new war in Iran, it is well worth remembering Israel’s previous role in pushing lies and pushing for the war in Iraq. – Read full article
This site is provided as a research and reference tool. Although we make every reasonable effort to ensure that the information and data provided at this site are useful, accurate, and current, we cannot guarantee that the information and data provided here will be error-free. By using this site, you assume all responsibility for and risk arising from your use of and reliance upon the contents of this site.
This site and the information available through it do not, and are not intended to constitute legal advice. Should you require legal advice, you should consult your own attorney.
Nothing within this site or linked to by this site constitutes investment advice or medical advice.
Materials accessible from or added to this site by third parties, such as comments posted, are strictly the responsibility of the third party who added such materials or made them accessible and we neither endorse nor undertake to control, monitor, edit or assume responsibility for any such third-party material.
The posting of stories, commentaries, reports, documents and links (embedded or otherwise) on this site does not in any way, shape or form, implied or otherwise, necessarily express or suggest endorsement or support of any of such posted material or parts therein.
The word “alleged” is deemed to occur before the word “fraud.” Since the rule of law still applies. To peasants, at least.
Fair Use
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more info go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
DMCA Contact
This is information for anyone that wishes to challenge our “fair use” of copyrighted material.
If you are a legal copyright holder or a designated agent for such and you believe that content residing on or accessible through our website infringes a copyright and falls outside the boundaries of “Fair Use”, please send a notice of infringement by contacting atheonews@gmail.com.
We will respond and take necessary action immediately.
If notice is given of an alleged copyright violation we will act expeditiously to remove or disable access to the material(s) in question.
All 3rd party material posted on this website is copyright the respective owners / authors. Aletho News makes no claim of copyright on such material.
Aletho News 