Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The longer that Ukraine refuses to agree to peace on Russia’s terms, the more land that it stands to lose, which might ultimately be much more than anyone expects if the US soon abandons Ukraine in order to cut its losses.

Putin warned in March 2024 that Russia might set up a “security zone” inside Ukraine in response to cross-border strikes and raids, which it then began to do two months later that May after Russian troops made a fresh push into Kharkov Region at the time. Regrettably, the incursion didn’t penetrate too deeply, and later that summer Ukraine launched a sneak attack against Russia’s Kursk Region. It was only earlier this year that Russia finally expelled all Ukrainian troops from there with North Korean assistance.

Nevertheless, Putin just announced late last week that “a decision has been made to create a buffer security zone along the Russian border” with Belgorod, Kursk, and Bryansk Regions, thus meaning inside the corresponding Ukrainian regions of Kharkov (once again), Sumy, and Chernigov. Unlike last year’s attempt, this latest one might be more successful due to the very different context within which it’s being pursued, particularly as regards the conflict’s new diplomatic and military dynamics.

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

Examples from other wars | If you can point to the other person and give a good reason to say He started it!, you can get away with war, even if it's based on an outright lie. In international law, it is forbidden to start a war unless someone has attacked you first. To some however it is so imperative to start one, that they would create a false attack against themselves to legitimize it.

When we look at the USA's wars after the Second World War, this is a recurring pattern. All of the wars for which the US has been responsible were started because of false, self-created events, and all were probably illegal under international law.

Examples include the Vietnam War, the Iraq War in 1990, Afghanistan in 2001, Iraq again in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria in 2011, to name but a few. As long as it looks credible, we buy it. And in hindsight, we forgive our friends, no matter how horrible what they did was. Love is blind, especially when a lot of money is involved.

The war between Israel and the Palestinians has the same problem, but that's for another article. For the war in Ukraine, there are two theories that dominate.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Russia considers it to be a series of military logistics projects sold to the public as economic ones.

The 10th Summit of the “Three Seas Initiative” (3SI), which refers to the jointly Polish- and Croatian-founded platform for fostering Central European integration, concluded in Warsaw in late April. Their joint statement, the Ukrainian-relevant paragraphs of which Hungary disassociated itself from, declared that Spain and Turkiye will join the European Commission, Germany, Japan, and the US as strategic partners while Albania and Montenegro will join Moldova and Ukraine as associated participating states.

Paragraph 13 reaffirmed the member states’ commitment to implementing six Three Seas Priority Projects: BRUA (Bulgaria-Romania-Hungary-Austria gas pipeline), expanding the capacity of Croatia’s LNG terminal on Krk island, Rail Baltica, Rail2Sea, Via Baltica, and Via Carpatia This link here from the 3SI’s official site lists all their other projects and helpfully displays them on a map too. Upon completion, these projects will strengthen economic and military integration, which will shape post-conflict Europe.

Harold Turner
Hal Turner Show

[Former] Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky just COMPLTELY destroyed any hope for Peace talks, or for a continued existence for Ukraine. Less than one hour after Presidents Putin and Trump spoke by phone, Zelensky said this:

● Kiev will not accept any sort of ultimatum by Russia
● Ukraine will not withdraw its troops from anywhere or give up any territory
● Ukrainian NATO aspirations are not up for debate, there will be no neutrality
● He expects new European sanctions against Russia soon
● He asks Trump not to make any decisions about Ukraine without Ukraine

There is no rational hope for putting together a plan for either a ceasefire or for peace, as long as Volodymyr Zelensky has anything to do with negotiations over the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Zelensky's term as President of Ukraine EXPIRED last May. The Ukraine Constitution only makes provisions for the Legislature, the Verkhovna Rada - to remain in office during Martial Law. It does NOT make any such provision for the President to remain in power.

For Zelensky to be able to scuttle legitimate peace efforts, and thereby cause the continuation of a war that is killing more than 5,000 troops a week, is obscene to me.

If we take Zelensky at his word, then it seems to me this conflict will not be resolved until all of Ukraine is destroyed by Russia and most Ukrainians are dead from that conflict.

Harold Turner
Hal Turner Show

US President Donald Trump will have a phone conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin today at about 10:00 AM eastern US time, which is about 5:00 PM Moscow time.

The two leaders will discuss the ongoing Russia-Ukraine Conflict and international trade.

President Trump has been working very hard toward brining that conflict to a logical, peaceful, conclusion, but there are severe roadblocks along the way.

The reason the conflict began is primarily the expansion of NATO east of Germany back in the 1990's under then-President Bill Clinton.

This expansion violated a promise given by US Secretary of State James Baker, to then-Soviet General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, at a meeting in the Kremlin, on February 9, 1990. In that meeting, Baker promised that if the Soviet Union agreed to allow East and West Germany to re-unify, and removed 300,000 Soviet troops from East Germany, that NATO "will not move one inch eastward."

Pravda-EN/tsargrad.tv

In February 2025, the American defense research organization RAND* released a large document on scenarios of a possible war between the United States and China. Scenarios of direct war and confrontation in Africa were taken into account, but the most unusual is the war between two states on the territory of the Russian Federation. The Americans believe that both biological and nuclear weapons will be used.

The RAND organization was established in 1948 and collaborated with the American Air Force. Since the 1950s, despite its non-profit orientation, it has been working directly with the American government. All funding comes exclusively from the American government. By the way, most of the research is classified because of its focus, but the rest is in the public domain. A document on the war between China and the United States has been published, and everyone can view it. Here we will leave a link so that the reader can verify the truthfulness of all the information. The RAND* organization has been deemed undesirable in the Russian Federation, so we will leave the link solely to confirm the information.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The mixed signals that he sent on Friday suggest that he hasn’t made up his mind about what to do.

The first bilateral Russian-Ukrainian talks in over three years were held in Istanbul on Friday after Zelensky agreed, likely under pressure from Trump, to Putin’s proposal from the week prior. They didn’t result in the unconditional 30-day ceasefire that Ukraine demanded nor did Ukraine agree to withdraw from the entirety of the disputed regions like Russia demanded, but they did agree to a prisoner swap and to hold another round of talks sometime in the future. They therefore weren’t for nothing.

Most importantly, Russia and Ukraine were able to show Trump that they’re interested in peace after he signaled his increasing impatience with the US’ hitherto unsuccessful mediation between them, which could result in him either “escalating to de-escalate” or simply walking away from the conflict. Prior to making his fateful choice about the future of American involvement, Trump will likely hold talks with Putin, at the very least over the phone but ideally in person sometime in the coming weeks.

Humaira Ahad / PressTV

“Like the torment of the afterlife. They burned me with boiling water,” reads the heart-wrenching testimony of a Palestinian detainee held illegally in an Israeli prison.

Hot water and sewage | A recent report by the Palestinian Prisoners Society and the Palestinian Prison Club sheds light on the systematic torture and brutal treatment faced by Gaza detainees in the regime’s prisons.

“Since my arrest, I was subjected to severe beatings, causing fractures in my body, in an attempt to extract confessions from me. I remained in a camp in the Gaza Strip for 58 days, which was like the torment of the afterlife -- being shackled and beaten constantly, humiliated and insulted,” a 45-year-old Palestinian detainee was quoted as saying.

“Upon my transfer to Negev Prison, I was burned with hot water, doused with boiling liquid from an electric kettle. The scars from that torture remain etched on my body,” he added, revealing grim details.

Palestinian prisoner advocacy groups gathered this harrowing evidence between January 6 and January 8, interviewing 23 detainees across Negev Prison and Nafha Military Camp.

In a statement released on Monday, the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas strongly denounced the inhumane treatment of Palestinians in Israeli jails and demanded an end to "the terrible violations they are subjected to by the extremist Zionist junta.”

“They are ongoing war crimes, a violation of all international laws on prisoners. We also call on international human rights institutions to highlight the suffering of our families in prisons, raise their voices, and put pressure in all forums to release them,” the statement noted.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The lessons from Trump’s Yemeni debacle could inform his future decisions on Ukraine.

Five New York Times (NYT) journalists collaborated to produce a detailed report earlier this week about “Why Trump Suddenly Declared Victory Over the Houthi Militia”. It’s worth reading in full if time permits, but the present piece will summarize and analyze its findings. To begin with, CENTCOM chief General Michael Kurilla proposed an eight- to -10-month campaign for degrading the Houthis’ air defenses before carrying out Israeli-like targeted assassinations, but Trump decided on 30 days instead. That’s important.

The US’ top regional military official already knew how numerous the Houthis’ air defenses were and how long it would take to seriously damage them, which shows that the Pentagon already considered Houthi-controlled North Yemen to be a regional power, while Trump wanted to avoid a protracted war. It’s little wonder then that the US failed to establish air superiority during the first month, which is why it lost several MQ-9 Reaper drones by then and exposed one of its aircraft carriers to continued threats.

The $1 billion in munitions that were expended during that period widened preexisting divisions within the administration over whether this bombing campaign was worth the mounting costs.

James Howard Kunstler
James Howard Kunstler's Substack

"Fascism is when Dad says 'no'" —Aimee Terese on "X"

It’s vain and futile to suppose that the disordered minds of Western Civ’s entrenched Wokester Jacobins might ever be subject to polite persuasion about anything they believe. They believe only in the power of pushing their fellow citizens around, and so, alas, the only persuasion that might conceivably work to stop their infantile assaults on liberty, truth, and decency is to push back harder until they suffer and break.

This is something that most parents with young children instinctively understand. You don’t negotiate with two-year-olds. You tell them how things are and what sort of behavior is required of them, as plainly and simply as possible. Mr. Trump, having been the father of many two-year-olds over time, appears to get this. It has been apparent for years that Mr. Trump’s symbolic role as a father figure is the most deeply resented feature of his role in US politics.

It also appears that many men in this country likewise get this, perhaps because nature conditions them early on to understand that some day they might have to play the role of father, meaning they will have to push back hard against emotional disorder, hysteria, illogic, and untruth, and violence.

Video Rebel
Video Rebel's Blog

"America is Great because America is Good. If America ever ceases to be Good, America will cease to be Great."

The above quote did not originate with Alexis de Tocqueville who wrote Democracy in America. But I think it describes the choice Americans must make in their very near future. We cannot continue on this path, supporting a Genocide in Gaza that is far worse than the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943.

From a practical perspective, we have a $2 trillion deficit, because we allow Wall Street and the Federal Reserve Bank to rob taxpayers by the trillions.

Next year we will raise our military spending from $1.51 trillion to more than $1.6 trillion. The US hides $621 billion in 6 agencies other than the DOD. This is according to the CBO (Congressional Budget Office.) One example would be the Department of Energy which handles nuclear weapons. Other examples would be the CIA, the DIA and the State Department also Veterans Affairs, the Treasury Department and Social Security.

I do not regard Israel as an ally. Sam Cohen went to Israel and gave them the Neutron bomb which they sold to China. The US gave the Israelis our Patriot missile defense system. They did not like it, so they sold it to China. China crossed the US Patriot system with the Russian S-300 and created the HQ 9 which Pakistan is using to shoot down Indian jets. The US gave Israel our advanced avionics which they sold to China. The Chinese incorporated that American research into their J-10 fighter jet. Pakistan is using the Chinese J-10 against India. And we expect our military personnel to defend Taiwan against American weapons Israel sold to China.

There is so much corruption in the US government that our weapons are inferior to Iran’s. Iran has the S-400 and elements of the S-500. The US and Israel combined cannot bring down a solitary Yemeni missile. And we are expected to go to war against Iran for Israel while dodging S-500 missiles?

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Trump is about to be placed into a dilemma due to his unwillingness or inability to coerce Ukraine into Russia’s demanded concessions.

The US’ mediation between Russia and Ukraine captivated the world due to the hopes that many observers had of it leading to a breakthrough, but expectations have since been tempered, including on the American side as evidenced by the toughening of its negotiating stance towards Russia. The latest developments saw Ukraine and the West demand Russia’s compliance with an unconditional ceasefire, to which Putin reacted by offering the unconditional resumption of bilateral talks with Ukraine instead.

Zelensky’s response was to declare that he’ll visit Istanbul on Thursday, the place and day that Putin suggested for resuming bilateral talks, though it’s unclear whether the Russian leader will go. The spring 2022 peace process that Putin mentioned in his video address early Sunday morning only involved their delegations, not direct talks between their presidents, plus Putin considers Zelensky to be illegitimate now. He’s also unlikely to meet him unless Zelensky agrees to significant concessions ahead of time.

Therein lies the problem because Zelensky refuses to budge on Putin’s demands that Ukraine restore its constitutional neutrality, demilitarize, denazify, and cede the disputed territories, and Trump won’t coerce him into doing so either.

The only outcome from the US’ mediation efforts thus far has been talk of a strategic partnership with Russia, likely built upon energy and rare earth cooperation, that’s it. From Russia’s perspective, it looks like the US wants to buy it off, not resolve the core issues of this conflict.

Dr. Michael Yeadon
Dr. Michael Yeadon's Substack

These foul preparations have never in history prevented any disease and they are all necessarily unsafe, to varying degrees, some being overtly and deliberately harmful.

Mistakes were not made—My understanding of the whole Covid fraud has moved on a lot since my early critique article of the Corman-Drosten “test”. Included in the data set was the “high proportion of false positives” arising from the design and use of the technique. In reality, ALL the positive results are false.

Viruses are (currently) pure fiction—This is the case, since there is no scientific evidence for the existence of the claimed new virus or indeed any virus. I look with interest to see what happens with the Virus Confirmation Fund to which I have pledged £1000.

Viral Contagion is deliberate fiction—In addition, I now know what i didn’t then: that the claim that illnesses attributed to (non-existent) viruses are contagious is a lie. Not a mistake.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

That would be a nightmare scenario from the perspective of Israeli interests.

A report circulated last week alleging that Trump cut off all direct contact with Bibi after feeling manipulated by him. For as sensational as it sounds, the larger context suggests that it might be true. For starters, there was bad blood between them since late 2020 after Trump reportedly felt betrayed by Bibi recognizing Biden’s electoral victory while Trump was still challenging it in the courts. This is a very personal issue for him seeing as how he continues to insist that he won so it wouldn’t be surprising.

More recently, Bibi has been pressuring Trump to bomb Iran, which Trump doesn’t want to do since a large-scale war in West Asia would offset his planned “Pivot (back) to Asia” for containing China. In connection with that, Trump reportedly dismissed former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz due to him supposedly coordinating too closely with Israel. Also of relevance are the rumors that Israel was caught off guard by the US’ resumption of talks with Iran and is against any agreement between them.

Then there’s the US’ recent deal with the Houthis that excludes Israel, reports that the US will delink Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, and even speculation that Trump might recognize Palestine during his attendance at next week’s Gulf-US Summit in Riyadh. Altogether, it’s self-evident that US-Israeli ties are newly beset with a host of problems, thus lending credence to the earlier cited report about Trump cutting off all direct contact with Bibi.

Their rift might even be irreconcilable depending on Trump’s next steps. It was already bad enough from Israel’s perspective that the US reached its own deal with the Houthis right after they announced their plans to impose an air blockade on Israel but delinking Saudi recognition of Israel from their civil nuclear talks, let alone recognizing Palestine, could cross the Rubicon. In that scenario, Israel and the US would remain at odds during the rest of Trump’s term, and perhaps even afterwards if Vance succeeds him.

Jeffrey Silverman
New Eastern Outlook (Part 1)

The West’s attempts to politicize and rewrite the memory of Victory in World War II threaten historical truth and deepen divisions in Europe, where some countries follow the EU’s dictates while others defend their sovereignty and the right to honor the past without geopolitical filters.

It’s true that many European countries have distanced themselves from the 9th of May celebrations, allegedly as a direct result of the geopolitical context—Russia Bad, West Good, supposedly because of Russia’s SMO in Ukraine. But for many in the former Soviet space (and even beyond), that day is still sacred, a commemoration of immense sacrifice and the defeat of Nazi Germany and its likeminded minions.

Unfortunately, Europe itself, is acting more and more like the hundreds of thousands of willing collaborators and executioners who served as volunteers, mostly in the infamous SS.

Divergence in perspective is what’s creating these political and symbolic clashes. There is a deeper worry here: when the remembrance of historical events is shaped more by present-day alliances than by historical truth, the danger is that history gets rewritten—or forgotten. That’s a point scholars like Tony Judt, Timothy Snyder, and others have discussed in their writings on “memory politics” and the weaponization of history.

The memory of WWII, fascism, and communism shaped postwar Europe’s political structures—but these memories are deeply contested and selectively used. It must be remembered that the “Great Patriotic War” is burned into Soviet and now Russian memory and identity as a heroic and sacrificing people, who saved humanity. But it has different meaning for different nations, and some would like to rewrite their own histories.

Sonja van den Ende
Strategic Culture Foundation

Fascism has resurged in Europe, with neo-Nazis masquerading as nationalists – most notably in Ukraine, where a far-right regime tightens its grip.

Today, Russia commemorates the liberation and defeat of the Nazis, who ruled Germany and Austria (following the 1938 Anschluss) from 1933 to 1945. During this time, they invaded numerous European countries and launched the horrific Operation Barbarossa – an attempt to conquer the Soviet Union.

Beyond their pursuit of Lebensraum, the Nazis sought to “cleanse” occupied territories of Jews, Roma, non-Aryans, communists, and political opponents. This was ethnic cleansing, but the Nazis pioneered industrialized methods for their atrocities. Initially relying on mass shootings, they later introduced gas chambers using Zyklon-B, claiming this was more “efficient” and spared their soldiers psychological trauma. Yet, mass shootings still claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, primarily Jews, in Ukraine, Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic states.

One of the most infamous sites is Babi Yar near Kiev, where Ukrainian collaborators murdered approximately 34,000 Jews on September 29–30, 1941. As recent documentaries reveal, the Nazis lacked sufficient manpower to carry out such massacres alone.

By the war’s end, 8,500 members of the SS Galizien Division – Ukrainian soldiers implicated in heinous crimes – were granted refugee status in the UK, with many later emigrating to Canada. The recent honoring of Nazi veteran Yaroslav Hunka in Canada’s parliament underscores how Nazism persists in the West.

eugyppius
eugyppius: a plague chronicle

The pervasive belief in the eternal progress of mankind has been a crucial, driving element of Western liberalism for generations. It is starting to break down.

[Extract:] The most powerful force in Western politics today is a cultural virus that is always chewing away at our instincts for self-preservation. It is why millions of people support infinity wind turbines and infinity solar panels, even if these make their electricity more expensive and less reliable. It is related to out-group identification and the cultural fetish for victim minorities, and thus explains the popular impulses that permit mass migration.

At the broadest level, this force accounts for an important phenomenon in modern politics, whereby millions of people support policies that make their lives objectively worse, while parties responsible for these policies appear utterly immune to their own failures, if they are not actively rewarded for them.

You might call this force “expectant progressivism.” It is the quiet, unstudied belief that things are always getting better, more just, more abundant, more enlightened, more advanced and more human-rights. Expectant progressives view the past teleologically, as one massive Whig-historical fable, and they regard their political preferences as investments in moral futures.

They aim to put their names on the next brave innovations in social and economic justice while these are still culturally cheap – that is to say, controversial and disputed. Once these innovations become new cornerstones in the liberal consensus, the expectant progressives will be able to cash in on their far-sighted, humanitarian convictions. They will enjoy the privilege of proclaiming that they were, once again, on the right side of history.

Martin Jay
Strategic Culture Foundation

Chay Bowes’ arrest and deportation is alarming as it signals a new low on the scumline of EU totalitarianism.

The European Union continues to sink deeper and deeper in its own political excrement as it not only believes its own manufactured consent by its Brussels cabal of wasters who call themselves journalists but is also tightening down its grip on its 400 million citizens. The EU never pretended to be a democracy but these days it is surpassing even the Stalinist period of the Soviet Union in its determination to control every thought of its citizens, which, of course means hunting down and persecuting any journalists who even simply question the narrative.

The latest example – as there are many – is good ‘ol Chay Bowes, an RT presenter-come-journalist who was sent to Romania to cover the presidential elections – second time around, as the original result in March, which didn’t please the EU, was cancelled. It’s what the EU does quite frequently. It simply cancels democratic processes which don’t come up with the results it prefers. Ireland and France experienced the same with their own referendums which had to be done a second time to get the right result. These days the EU simply calls any results which it doesn’t like ‘Russian interference’ and everyone just rolls over and accepts it, amazingly.

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

Ideological fundamentalism refers to when ideology convinces the public that politics is a struggle between good and evil. People no longer assess states based on what they do in the international system but on the political identities assigned to them.

Kenneth Waltz, the godfather of neorealist theory, observed that Western democracies had a proclivity toward ideological fundamentalism. Waltz wrote:

💬 “Citizens of democratic states tend to think of their countries as good, aside from what they do, simply because they are democratic... democratic states also tend to think of undemocratic states as bad, aside from what they do, simply because they are undemocratic.”

Citizens of democracies also think of their countries as being more peaceful because they are democratic. Because it is believed that democracies are more peaceful and less likely to start wars, it has laid the foundation for “democratic wars” as invading non-democracies to make them democratic is believed to make the world more peaceful. Western democracies have subsequently committed themselves to perpetual war with the promise of delivering Kant’s perpetual peace.

Ideological fundamentalism is to some extent embedded in human nature as human beings are social animals that have organised in groups for tens of thousands of years for security and meaning. Human beings instinctively organise into the in-group (us) versus the diametrically opposite out-groups (them). The out-group as our opposite reaffirms our own identity – we can only identify as white if there is black, only west if there is east, only civilised if there are barbaric, only democratic if there are authoritarians, and only good if there is evil.

Pierre Assouline

Incroyable que Churchill et De Gaulle n’aient jamais été statufiés en situation d’écrire! Car si l’un et l’autre continuent à dominer leur siècle en héros absolus, ils le doivent aussi à leur qualité d’écrivain. Au sens plein du terme qui exclut l’hypothèse de l’auteur de circonstance porté par des événements si grands et si hauts qu’ils ne pouvaient inspirer de médiocres écrits. De véritables écrivains. Sauf que l’un a été fait prix Nobel de littérature en 1953 et pas l’autre. Cherchez l’erreur. La récente publication du premier tome des Mémoires de guerre (440 pages, 29 euros,Tallandier) de Winston Churchill est l’occasion d’y revenir.

Dans sa présentation, François Kersaudy rappelle qu’ils sont le fruit d’un travail d’équipe. En cinq temps: des assistants ont effectué des recherches, puis ils ont interwievé le grand homme avant de décrypter ses souvenirs pour les lui présenter afin qu’il les churchillise en y mettant sa patte à coups de rature, de paperolles et d’allongeails où l’on reconnaît parfois un souffle, un humour et une cadence qui lui ressemblent; et le tout fut envoyé à une quarantaine d’officiers, diplomates, historiens, parlementaires pour correction puis à des proches et des royals pour censure. C’est à un atelier de nègres qu’il eut fallu décerner le Nobel!

On a longtemps dit que dans le choix des cadémiciens suédois, la politique l’avait emporté sur la littérature; mais depuis quelques années, il est de bon ton, des deux côtés de la Manche, de redresser la barre afin de placer le mémorialiste Churchill, également auteur il est vrai de nombreux volumes historiques, au même niveau que le mémorialiste De Gaulle, en lui empruntant jusqu’à son titre dans l’édition française (The Second World War était le titre original).