Manlio Dinucci
voltairenet.org

Faced with the dominant political and media narrative that portrays Russia as belligerent and aggressive—while the US, NATO, the EU, and Ukraine want to end the war—we present excerpts from recent episodes of Grandangolo. They contain irrefutable evidence, erased by the mainstream media, that the reality is the exact opposite of what they have been told. Below is a thread through the preparatory phase of the war, taken from the book L’altra faccia della Storia (“The Other Side of History”) published by Byoblu.

Since 1991, the year Ukraine became an independent republic after the dissolution of the USSR, NATO has been building a network of ties within the Ukrainian armed forces. Simultaneously, through the CIA and other intelligence services, neo-Nazi militants are recruited, funded, trained, and armed. Photographic documentation shows young Ukrainian neo-Nazi militants from UNO-UNSO being trained in Estonia in 2006 by NATO instructors, who teach them urban combat techniques and the use of explosives for sabotage and attacks. This neo-Nazi paramilitary structure came into play on February 20, 2014, in Maidan Square in Kyiv, during a political demonstration where supporters and opponents of Ukraine’s accession to the EU clashed. While armed and organized groups stormed government buildings, "unknown" gunmen (who later turned out to be snipers recruited in Georgia) fired with the same sniper rifles at both protesters and police officers, causing dozens of deaths. On the very day of the Maidan Square coup, the NATO Secretary General addressed the Ukrainian armed forces in a commanding tone, warning them to "remain neutral" under penalty of "serious negative consequences for our relations." Abandoned by the top brass of the armed forces and by a large part of the government apparatus, President Yanukovych was forced to flee.

Jonathan Azaziah
Mask of Zion

From the bantustan goes the donkey into the den of vipers...

While purchasing weapons from the occupier to murder our friends with snipers...

Collaborating with the beast on a rabid basis but you expect us to believe that you will end the crisis...

The two-state solution was born dead...

Palestine is bleeding and fleeting is more red...

You can’t resuscitate, reinvigorate, manipulate or bend the lifeless...

You and your clowns are stammering in defense of it...

Clamoring while the tyrannical attach strings, hammered to your appendages...

You are not Palestinian, you are from the house of treason...

You are from a gaping hole where spies and traitors flow from, worth less than the phlegm spit from the mouth of demons... The same demons you welcome into Bethlehem and Nablus...

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

Our Leaders Couldn't Fix Our Problems If They Wanted To (And They Don't Want To)

Our leaders are not going to fix the worst problems in our world. They couldn’t if they wanted to. And they don’t want to.

Our leaders are not wise or insightful. They’re not even particularly intelligent. Our society is led by plutocrats who only know how to make more money, by unelected empire managers who only know how to dominate and control, and by elected politicians who only know how to say the right words and make the right bargains in order to get themselves elected.

These people are not capable of curing our civilization of its dysfunction. They don’t have the necessary skills or attributes. Even if they weren’t a bunch of evil sociopaths who are only in the positions they’re in because of their willingness to collaborate with the agendas of oligarchy, war, militarism, imperialism, ecocide, exploitation, oppression and planetary domination, they don’t even have the personal characteristics necessary to do things like end poverty, rescue our biosphere, bring about world peace or give rise to human thriving. They’d have no idea where to start.

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

President Dwight D. Eisenhower delivers his farewell
address to the nation on January 17th, 1961 (YouTube)

What would the world look like if states spent a fraction of their GDP on PEACE?

The US has a finger in everything | There is no doubt that the US has played a central role in most, if not all, wars since World War II. Here, we will examine the two most recent ones.

The US has equipped Israel with weapons, ammunition, bombs, money, and diplomatic backing so that Israel has been able to carry out mass murder, war crimes, and genocide. The US is therefore directly complicit in mass murder, war crimes, and genocide. Some media outlets have discussed whether Israel controls the US or the US controls Israel. What is certain is that they are closely linked.

Through NATO, the US has equipped Ukraine for war against Russia and, with impressive planning, has managed to provoke a war between Russia and NATO. There is also no doubt that the US controls NATO economically, ideologically, politically, and militarily, and thus has good control over Europe. When you look at NATO, there is no doubt that they have worked hard to ensure that Ukraine, which is NOT a member of NATO, finds its place in the sun. Where does this concern come from? Some say: from the arms industry, as if it were all about money.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The timing amidst continued US-mediated talks between Russia and Ukraine suggests that the US expects this ramped-up pressure to raise the chances of coercing concessions from Russia.

Vice President JD Vance’s trips to Armenia and Azerbaijan were aimed at advancing several interconnected strategic goals. The most immediate was making progress on implementing the “Trump Route for International Peace & Prosperity” (TRIPP), which is the planned trade corridor across southern Armenia unveiled after last August’s White House summit that ended the decades-long Armenian-Azerbaijani Conflict. TRIPP isn’t just economically significant, however, since it’s also highly strategic.

To begin with, it replaces Russia’s plan to pioneer a corridor along the same route that would be guarded by its forces, therefore challenging the Kremlin’s political influence in the post-war South Caucasus. Second, TRIPP serves as the means for optimizing Western logistical access to the resource-rich but landlocked Central Asian Republics on the other side of the Caspian, which is of interest for the US due to its critical minerals. The US signed MoUs with Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan about this last November.

On that topic, Vance proposed the creation of a critical minerals trading bloc during the inaugural Critical Minerals Ministerial that was attended by representatives of more than 50 countries, thus further contextualizing his trip to the South Caucasus a week later. His progress on implementing TRIPP will help to logistically open Central Asia’s critical mineral supply chain for the US.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

Pay attention to what little we can learn about how these freaks conduct themselves behind closed doors. By all means. But don’t forget to also pay attention to the evils they openly inflict.

❖ They launched a live-streamed genocide in full view of the entire world.
❖ They’re openly targeting civilian populations with siege warfare in Iran and Cuba in full view of the entire world.
❖ They openly kidnapped the president of a sovereign nation in full view of the entire world.
❖ They deliberately provoked a horrific and dangerous proxy war in Ukraine in full view of the entire world.
❖ They spent years actively backing Saudi Arabia’s monstrous genocidal atrocities in Yemen in full view of the entire world.
❖ They’re plundering and exploiting the resources and labor of the global south in full view of the entire world.
❖ They’re killing the biosphere we all depend on for their own enrichment in full view of the entire world.
❖ They’re circling the globe with hundreds of military bases to secure planetary domination in full view of the entire world.
❖ They engage in nuclear brinkmanship and wave around armageddon weapons like pistols in full view of the entire world.
❖ People go homeless and die of exposure while billionaires buy private islands and choose the next president in full view of the entire world.
❖ Weapons manufacturers lobby for wars and then profit from the death and destruction they cause in full view of the entire world.
❖ The president of the United States has repeatedly admitted to being bought and owned by the world’s richest Israeli in full view of the entire world.
❖ The US Treasury Secretary has been repeatedly admitting that the US deliberately sparked the violence and unrest in Iran by methodically immiserating the population via economic warfare, in full view of the entire world.

Strategic Culture Foundation (Editorial)
Strategic Culture Foundation

Agent Rutte should be in a modern-day dock. He and his masters want to push the world into catastrophe.

NATO chief Mark Rutte declared in a high-profile address to the Ukrainian parliament this week that alliance troops would be deployed in Ukraine immediately on signing any peace deal with Russia.

He asserted that the NATO forces would be British and French, deployed “on the land, in the air, and at sea.” He added that the coalition would have the “crucial backstop” of a U.S. security guarantee if “Russia tried to subjugate Ukraine again.”

It seems more than a coincidence that three days after Rutte spoke in the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada (parliament), there was an assassination attempt in Moscow on a top Russian general. Lieutenant General Vladimir Alekseev, the deputy commander of Russian military intelligence (GRU), was shot several times in the back by a gunman.

This was while delicate negotiations were being conducted in Abu Dhabi to find a peace settlement to the nearly four-year war in Ukraine. Russian delegates met with American and Ukrainian counterparts for a second round of talks this week.

Rutte’s speech in Kiev and the assassination attack in Moscow appear to be calculated moves to sabotage the negotiation efforts that the Trump administration has been pushing.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Indeed, for Russia, destroying the enemy's energy and transport infrastructure is one of the few instruments of strategic pressure that does not involve the use of nuclear weapons. It is necessary to use this advantage to the fullest extent possible. The whole of Ukraine has been turned into a battering ram against Russia, and the worse such important parts of this mechanism as energy and infrastructure function, the closer our victory is and the lower its price.

🔺 Another thought from “Пинта разума” deserves attention:

Against the backdrop of NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte's statement on the mandatory introduction of European NATO member troops into Ukraine immediately after the establishment of a ceasefire, the entire negotiation process under the auspices of the US needs to be rethought. It is necessary to assess where this vector of negotiations is leading.

One may view Rutte as a globalist figure, a former Eurocrat, a representative of internationalist structures, or a protégé of transnational capital, but he leads the world's largest military alliance, also known as “US+.” The NATO Secretary General does not determine the bloc's policy; he merely articulates it. The main “shareholder” of the North Atlantic Alliance is Washington.

Strategic Culture Foundation (Editorial)
Strategic Culture Foundation

Speaking yesterday at the World Government Summit in Dubai, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez criticized social media, calling it an uncontrolled territory “where lawlessness reigns.” The Spanish prime minister emphasized,

Alexander Rostovtsev
PolitNavigator

Having stopped taking his “anti-anger pills,” “peacemaker” Donald Trump promised that he would soon resolve the long-standing “Cuban issue” once and for all, declaring Havana's policies a threat to national security. A 25% tariff will be imposed on all imports from countries that supply Cuba with oil or petroleum products. This directly affects Mexico and, symbolically, Venezuela, which sold oil to the island at a discounted price.

The context of Trump's escalation can be explained by the “domino principle” in Washington's Latin American policy. In January 2026, the Yankees partially eased sanctions against the Venezuelan oil industry with a strict condition: a complete ban on working with Cuba. In other words, Caracas formally gained limited access to the American market at the cost of severing its energy ties with Havana, a key element of the alliance that had existed since Hugo Chávez's era.

For Cuba, whose economy has long been in a state of deep crisis due to the harsh sanctions imposed by the US and its lackeys, the loss of Venezuelan oil is a serious blow to its energy system and transport.

In public, Trump and his hereditary “gusanos” [traitors, specifically worms] in the person of Secretary of State Marco Rubio eloquently discuss the “last days of the communist regime” on the Island of Freedom. The bet is on the technology of “color revolutions.”

The United States is particularly concerned about the remarkable stability of the socialist system in Cuba, especially after the collapse of the USSR. Small Cuba, which has long endured the pressure of American sanctions, has repeatedly demonstrated its effectiveness across a number of key areas.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The US’ restoration of unipolarity risks sparking another World War if cooler heads don’t prevail. How Will Key Countries Respond?

The US’ new National Security and Defense Strategies, which collectively articulate the “Trump Doctrine”, make clear that the US’ grand strategic goal is to restore its predominant position (unipolarity) over the world. Unlike during the short-lived unipolar era that followed the end of the Old Cold War, this time the US is explicitly reluctant to embroil itself in overseas conflicts that risk overextending itself, and it’ll also now rely more on its regional partners to share the burden of advancing their shared interests.

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are identified as the US’ adversaries, the first of them being described as “the most powerful state relative to us since the 19th century” in the National Defense Strategy, and each must now decide whether to challenge the US, balance it, or bandwagon with it. To a lesser extent, the same also applies to rising powers like India that have complicated ties with the US. In reverse order, India won’t ever challenge the US, but it’s likely to balance and bandwagon instead.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

The real violent extremists are the oligarchs and imperialists who run the US-centralized empire from both mainstream parties. Not Antifa. Not trans people. Not anti-genocide activists. Not protesters against ICE.

The extremists who are inflicting the real violence and abuse in our world are the ones committing genocide, starting wars, backing blockades, imposing starvation sanctions, arming proxy conflicts, circling the planet with hundreds of military bases, and flirting with nuclear armageddon.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

NATO Secretary General: After the truce, NATO will appear in Ukraine “on land, in the sky, and at sea.”

Mark Rutte visited Kyiv on February 3 and spoke at the Verkhovna Rada. On behalf of NATO, he assured that

🔺 Rutte once again mentioned the alliance's mechanisms for continuing the war with Russia through Ukraine. These include the Ukraine-NATO Council, the NSATU command in Germany, which coordinates military assistance and training, and the PURL program for supplying Kyiv with American weapons at the expense of other NATO members. Thanks to PURL, Ukraine has received about 75% of all Patriot batteries' missiles and 90% of the missiles for other air defense systems.

However, the most important point of Rutte's speech concerned the situation after the ceasefire:

🔺 Thus, NATO's plans involve deploying allied troops to Ukrainian territory immediately after the ceasefire is established. Preparations are underway for the occupation and transformation of Ukraine into a direct NATO springboard against Russia. The next phase of the war from this territory will no longer be a proxy war through Ukraine, but a direct military conflict with NATO.

Ainur Kurmanov
PoitNavigator

Despite Astana's previous threatening statements that anti-Russian nationalists and pro-Western liberals who justify the Ukrainian Armed Forces' attacks on CPC terminals and tankers transporting Kazakh oil would be held criminally liable, the pro-Bandera elements got off with a slight scare, and even earned the government's understanding of their “civic stance.”

Deputy Prime Minister Aida Balayeva, who previously actively supported the de-collectivization and de-russification campaign as Minister of Information, as well as the policy of cultural cancellation against Russian performers, once again acted as an advocate for the supporters of the sabotage. Balayeva officially announced the closure of the “investigation”:

In fact, [she] had previously protected Nazi bloggers and “activists” by providing them with legal counsel, paid from the state budget. But this story once again confirmed that all these people were initially working on behalf of the government and are thus government agents.

It is paradoxical, because in practical terms, this is an internal fight against the state interests, since Kazakhstan has failed to deliver 26 million barrels of oil to world markets due to the Ukrainian attacks, and the total damage has already exceeded $2 billion. But the strategic alliance with London and Kyiv seems to outweigh all the losses by building a common anti-Russian front.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

I don’t know what to say today. We are ruled by abusive monsters.

There’s so much cruelty. So much abuse.

You’d think all this evidence that we are ruled by deranged psychopaths would unite us against them, but it doesn’t. The population is more angrily, bitterly divided against itself than ever.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

The immediate goal of the US’ de facto oil embargo on Cuba is a “regime tweaking” that achieves at least some of Trump’s demanded foreign policy goals and initiates a phased regime change that averts the impending US-instigated humanitarian crisis which could spill into Florida ahead of the midterms.

Trump promulgated a “national emergency” last week for granting himself the power to impose tariffs on any country that supplies Cuba with oil. This primarily affects Mexico, which replaced Venezuela as Cuba’s top oil supplier after the US’ capture of President Nicolas Maduro resulted in it obtaining proxy control over the Bolivarian Republic’s energy industry through his successor. Just prior to Trump’s decree, Mexico temporarily paused its oil shipments to Cuba, which now has only 15-20 days of oil left.

It was assessed here in January that “Cutting [Cuba’s oil imports] off could accelerate the economy’s collapse and thus subordinate it to the US, with or without regime change, like Washington has sought to achieve for decades already.” Trump predicted in the run-up to promulgating his latest “national emergency” that “Cuba is really a nation that is very close to falling” while Secretary of State Marco Rubio told the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee that “we would like to see the regime there change.”

Sonja van den Ende
Strategic Culture Foundation

Kaja Kallas, Ursula Von der Leyen & Antonio Costa

Europe is trying to save face now that America has become a country beyond repair and unreliable.

President Putin of Russia is currently the EU’s greatest geopolitical enemy. Until recently, the EU’s worldview was aligned with that of the US—that is, until Trump became the US’s new colonial MAGA ruler and ushered in the new MAGA America. The “love” between the two brothers, America and Europe, is thus over. Europeans now live on a self-imposed island of isolation, where the appearance of a good life and democracy is maintained by politically funded media.

EU countries are creating countless enemies to mask their incompetence on the world stage, following America’s example. Now, practically everyone is an enemy—including their shining example and “Atlantic brother” since 1945, America, which some, especially many Germans (former GDR citizens), consider an occupier of Europe. We can now say that America, Donald Trump, along with Putin (Russia), is the newest and greatest enemy of the European Union, especially of the Western European and Baltic countries.

So, for these deranged EU politicians, everyone is an enemy—from Putin to Trump. They call Maduro, who was brutally kidnapped, the enemy; Khamenei the enemy; Putin the enemy; Xi a dictator; and China a dangerous country with a social credit system (which the EU itself wants to implement). On this issue, they slavishly follow the madman Trump’s policy of a world without rules, while, according to the same politicians and media, Trump—along with Putin—is by far the greatest enemy of those same liberal EU politicians. Are you still following?

Faramarz Kouhpayeh
Tehran Times

January marked Iran’s most eventful month since the nation came under direct U.S.-Zionist strikes in June of 2025. What began as harmless, peaceful protests by business owners demanding economic reforms—the fundamental source of the Iranian people’s hardship being years of crippling Western sanctions—devolved into what can essentially be characterized as systemic urban terrorism.

The lived reality in Iranian cities, and the genuine sentiment among the populace, stand in stark contrast to the narrative aggressively pushed by Western media. The horrors that Iranians endured during the early January nights bear absolutely no resemblance to the fabricated accounts being peddled.

In this regard, the media is slavishly echoing the talking points issued by Israeli and Western politicians who suddenly posture as champions of Iranian “rights,” all while conspicuously omitting any call for lifting the sanctions that have utterly decimated their livelihoods.

This sudden, feigned concern for Iranian rights is especially egregious when juxtaposed with the West’s complicity in the Gaza genocide, where Israel has systematically murdered at least 71,000 people over the past two years. The entire enclave has been reduced to rubble, and the remaining population is systematically starved and bombarded daily, even under a so-called ceasefire. The West, however, has done nothing less than actively justify and materially aid these atrocities.

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

We call them sanctions, as if they were a neutral judgment handed down in a courtroom, but in reality, they are our modern form of siege. In the old days, warships were sent to starve a city; today, we use codes and bank transfers to suffocate an entire people. We have seen sanctions against Russia, Venezuela, Cuba, North Korea, and other places. Now it is Iran that the EU wants to sanction.

We have NOT seen sanctions against the US, either for illegal warfare, support for genocide, killing of civilians in international waters, regime change, actions contrary to international regulations, or, as now, readiness to wage a crushing war against Iran.

We condemn the brutal reactions of a regime that has been backed into a corner, but we choose to close our eyes to who actually painted them into that corner. By strangling the economy and making people desperate, we ourselves have helped fuel the fire that we are now sanctioning them for trying to extinguish.

The most painful thing is not only the use of power, but the hypocrisy that accompanies it. We talk about human rights and international obligations with a matter-of-factness as if we ourselves follow them, but the story of Gaza stands as the ultimate proof that our principles only apply when they do not cost us the friendship of the strongest.

We sanction Iran because it is defined as an enemy, but we never dare to raise our voices against the US or Israel, which are now ready to crush this regime without having the right or authority to do so.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Redirecting Iran’s oil exports from China to India in exchange for partial US sanctions relief could avert another American attack by satisfying its goal of depriving China of some of the resources that it requires for maintaining its rapid superpower rise without risking a potentially disastrous regional war.

The US’ deployment of an aircraft carrier to West Asia and its newly announced aerial drills ominously hint that another American attack on Iran is forthcoming, one which could embolden neighboring Azerbaijan, Pakistan, and/or Turkiye (which are allies with one another) to try to militarily “Balkanize” it. In connection with that scenario, the Middle East Eye recently reported that the Turkish Foreign Ministry briefed lawmakers about a plan to carve out a “buffer zone” in Iran ostensibly for sheltering refugees.

Since they consider themselves to be “one nation, two states”, and the border is largely populated by ethnic Azeris, Turkiye would certainly coordinate its “buffer” with Azerbaijan, which could then lead to a joint operation for forcibly annexing Northwestern Iran into Azerbaijan to create a Turkic superstate. Even if that particular scenario doesn’t unfold, the prerequisite of which is US strikes leading to large-scale instability in Iran, then Turkiye could still intervene on the pretext of fighting Kurdish separatists.