Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Polar opposite understandings of the Sino-Indo prisoner’s dilemma lie at the core of their calculations.

Trump announced on Monday that he was shortening his 50-day deadline to Putin for a ceasefire in Ukraine to “about 10 or 12 days from today”, thus meaning that he plans to impose up to 100% tariffs on all its trading partners by 7-9 August, but likely with exceptions such as the EU that he just subjugated. Turkiye might also be excluded given its attempt to expand its influence eastward at Russia’s expense, as could minor US trade partners like the Central Asian Republics as long as they curtail trade with Russia.

The question on everyone’s mind is whether he’ll tariff China and India, if they don’t cut off or at least curtail their resource-centric imports from Russia, that is. They’re Russia’s top trading partners, which collectively form the RIC core of BRICS, yet they trade more with the US (with whom they’re in ongoing trade negotiations) than with Russia. China and India are also some of the world’s largest economies so the US’ imposition of 100% tariffs could destabilize the global economy and raise prices for Americans.

Alexander Dugin
AGDchan (Telegram)

AI is not universal. It was created in the West and represents a structure of Western thinking, namely a colonial network imposed on all societies, subordinating them to Western meanings, goals, and procedures. AI has a civilizational identity. And it is Western. We will not be able to create Russian AI until we have clarity about Russian civilizational identity. Gigachat and other Russian creations are import substitutes, simply copied from ChatGPT with a few additional restrictions to please the authorities.

Zakharova raised an important topic: the sovereignty of AI. But she immediately reveals another topic about the sovereignty of intelligence in general, about Russian sovereignty of spirit and mind. It is impossible to talk seriously about AI without an equally serious conversation about Intelligence.

For three hundred years, we have been living in an intellectual context shaped by the West. This is reflected in our science, our politics, our culture, our economy, and our technology. It is a borrowed life. We are not living our own lives. The West is not just entering us now, along with AI, which Zakharova correctly interprets as imperialism. The West entered us long ago as I. We are not living in our minds. Considering Russia to be part of Western civilization, which began not with the Bolsheviks but with Peter, we have lost our Russian meanings and have no intention of restoring them. Everything we understand by science, politics, culture, and art is Western, imported, and copied. "Creative" development comes from the fact that we only partially understand borrowing, because we do not understand the contexts of origin; it is not our experience. Russia, since Peter, is a pseudomorph, an archaeo-modern, a cargo cult.

But that was not all. There were Slavophiles and Eurasianists, there was John of Kronstadt and Anthony (Khrapovitsky), there were Tikhomirov and Solonevich, there was Florensky with his Christian physics and S. Bulgakov with his Christian economics. And they made desperate attempts to make Russia Russian again, to de-Westernize the Russian consciousness. Each of their steps was worth its weight in gold for a civilization whose identity had been stolen and replaced with something foreign.

Author: Anonymous
Pascal Lottaz
Pascal’s Substack

The role of Ayatollah Khamenei's Fatwa against nuclear weapons is an open question that merits attention. In an anonymous letter, an Iranian colleague analyses the situation.

The question of whether Ayatollah Khamenei’s stance on nuclear weapons constitutes a formal fatwa (Islamic legal ruling) or merely a political statement has long been debated. Officially, the Iranian government—including the Supreme Leader’s office and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs—refers to this position as a fatwa prohibiting the production and use of nuclear weapons. This claim has also been presented in communications with international bodies such as the IAEA. In public speeches, Khamenei has stated: “We do not seek nuclear weapons, because we consider them forbidden—haram.”

Yet the supposed nuclear fatwa is absent from his formal compendia of legal opinions online. It exists primarily in speeches and official statements. Critics contend that without a documented legal opinion grounded in Islamic jurisprudence, this position operates more as a political or moral pronouncement than a juridical fatwa.

That said, in Shi’a legal tradition, a fatwa need not appear in book form to be valid—any public statement by a qualified authority declaring a normative judgment can be considered a fatwa. Thus, the status of Khamenei’s declaration depends on interpretive framing: to the Islamic Republic, it is a binding ruling; to skeptics, it remains a strategic assertion with limited doctrinal weight.

Arina Korshunova
Oriental Review

Economic consequences of sanctions policy | The EU sanctions against Russia, which began in 2022 and reached the 18th package by June 2025, have led to significant economic difficulties for Europe itself. As von der Leyen notes, sanctions have reduced Russia’s oil and gas revenues by almost 80% compared to pre-war levels, and inflation in Russia exceeds 10%. However, Russia has adapted by redirecting its trade toward China, with bilateral trade reaching $240 billion in 2024, and other BRICS partners, such as India, which increased its imports of Russian oil from 2% to 20% since 2022.

At the same time, the sanctions have boomeranged on Europe. The energy crisis caused by the refusal of Russian supplies (previously accounting for 45% of the EU’s gas and 50% of coal) has led to a 40% increase in energy prices since 2022. This has undermined the competitiveness of European industry, especially in Germany, where jobs have been lost. Inflation in the EU in 2025 reached 5%, increasing pressure on households and businesses. According to the World Bank, EU GDP growth remains sluggish (1-2% per year), while Russia’s economy, despite sanctions, is growing at 3.2%.

Harold Turner
Hal Turner Show

The current United States Director of National Intelligence (DNI) has publicly accused former President Barack Obama and several of his top Cabinet officials of "Treasonous Conspiracy" against Donald Trump.

On Friday, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard revealed overwhelming evidence that demonstrates how, after President Trump won the 2016 election against Hillary Clinton, President Obama and his national security cabinet members manufactured and politicized intelligence to lay the groundwork for what was essentially a years-long coup against President Trump.

Dmitry Trenin
RT.com

Many now speak of humanity’s drift towards World War III, imagining events similar to those of the 20th century. But war evolves. It will not begin with a June 1941 Barbarossa-style invasion or a Cuban Missile Crisis-style nuclear standoff. In fact, the new world war is already underway – it’s just that not everyone has recognized it yet.

For Russia, the pre-war period ended in 2014. For China, it was 2017. For Iran, 2023. Since then, war – in its modern, diffuse form – has intensified. This is not a new Cold War. Since 2022, the West’s campaign against Russia has grown more decisive. The risk of direct nuclear confrontation with NATO over the Ukraine conflict is rising. Donald Trump’s return to the White House created a temporary window in which such a clash could be avoided, but by mid-2025, hawks in the US and Western Europe had pushed us dangerously close again.

This war involves the world’s leading powers: the United States and its allies on one side, China and Russia on the other. It is global, not because of its scale, but because of the stakes: the future balance of power. The West sees the rise of China and the resurgence of Russia as existential threats. Its counteroffensive, economic and ideological, is meant to put a halt to that shift.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

This might backfire if the Global South perceives him to be a Western proxy and Russia intensifies its asymmetrical responses, however, so it’s best for him to relent before it’s too late.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev was hitherto known as a pragmatic leader who was actively multi-aligning between competing power centers.

As part of that policy, Azerbaijan and Russia became strategic allies, yet he suddenly jeopardized their mutually beneficial relations by stirring up highly publicized trouble with Russia over the past week, which readers can learn more about here and here. It was completely out of character for him to do this, thus raising questions about his motives.

In short, Azerbaijan appears to be taking advantage of reports that Armenia might open the “Zangezur Corridor” but without allowing it to come under Russian control like agreed. That would streamline Turkiye’s military logistics to Central Asia and thus turbocharge its rise as a Eurasian Great Power at the expense of Russian influence there. Even if that unfolds, Aliyev could still maintain his country’s strategic ties with Russia, so he might arguably have image-related motives for unexpectedly jeopardizing them.

To explain, his decision to stir up trouble with Russia might be partially meant to cement his standing among the Central Asian members of the Turkic bloc that Ankara seeks to assemble on the basis of the “Organization of Turkic States” (OTS).

By spinning his moves as “standing up to Russia”, he could be trying to inspire them to follow his lead in future disputes with it. If successful, then the influence that he obtains over them could help prevent Azerbaijan from becoming Turkiye’s junior partner in the OTS.

Strategic Culture Foundation (Editorial)
Strategic Culture Foundation

The real danger from Britain’s unhinged war propaganda is that relentless British provocations in Ukraine are tempting a nuclear winter.

An apology to our readers. With so much grave tension over potential war escalation in the Middle East and the never-ending horror of genocide in Gaza, our choice of editorial topic this week may seem inappropriately frivolous.

Please bear with us. The relevance is the way Western news media are increasingly used by hostile powers to recklessly promote conflict and war, or to whitewash the crimes of Western states. This incitement is nothing short of criminal, and it speaks of an unbridled militarism akin to fascist totalitarianism.

Western media has degenerated into a criminal war propaganda system. One might say that such conduct has always been the case. However, there was a time when Western news media could project a semblance of genuine reporting and journalism. Not anymore. It’s full-on disinformation, cued by those who push a war agenda.

So, this week, British newspapers ran absurd articles claiming Russia was planning to use secret climate-change technology to darken skies over Albion. And you thought the sun never sets on the British Empire!

This is like a broken record, played over and over with theatrical variations, from Russia interfering in elections to cyberattacks to cutting power cables under the sea. Meanwhile, in the real world, Britain and its NATO allies blew up Russian gas pipes under the Baltic Sea.

Editing Team
Quds News Network

Doctors under Attack, which was finally broadcast on Channel 4 on Wednesday night, recounts how hospitals in the territory have been overwhelmed, bombed and raided by Israeli forces during the genocide.

Medics recount being detained and tortured. It had originally been due to run on the BBC.

Ben de Pear, the programme’s executive producer and a former Channel 4 News editor, accused the BBC of attempting to stop him talking about its “painful journey” to the screen with the use of legal gagging clauses.

Constantin von Hoffmeister
Russia Today

Words like “net zero,” “decarbonization,” and “climate justice” sound pure and benevolent, yet behind them stands an apparatus of control

Western Europe’s new green regime reorders the continent through policies of territorial cleansing and restriction, replacing the lifeways of rooted peoples with a managed wilderness shaped by remote technocrats and mandated compliance. What arrives with the language of environmental deliverance advances as a mechanism of control, engineered to dissolve ancestral bonds.

In the soft light of the northern dawn, when the fog rests over fields once furrowed by hands and prayers, a quiet force spreads, cloaked in green, speaking in the language of “sustainability,” offered with the glow of planetary care. Across Europe, policymakers, consultants, and unelected “visionaries” enforce a grand design of regulation and restraint. The new dogma wears the trappings of salvation.

It promises healing, stability, and ecological redemption. Yet beneath the surface lies a different pattern: one of compression, centralization, and engineered transformation. This green wave comes through offices aglow with LED light and carbon dashboards, distant from the oak groves and shepherd chants that once shaped Europe through destiny and devotion. Traditional Europe lived through the pulse of the land, its customs drawn from meadows, its laws mirrored in trees, its faith carried by the wind over tilled soil and cathedral towers.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

It remains to be seen whether Serbia will keep its word and no longer indirectly arm Ukraine.

Serbia surprised some observers after its President and Prime Minister assured Russia that it’ll no longer indirectly arm Ukraine, which came after Russia’s Foreign Spy Service (SVR) said that Serbia hasn’t discontinued this trade that it first raised awareness about in late May. Serbia’s latest smooth-talking towards Russia is politically self-serving, however, since it preceded last weekend’s attempt to revive the protest movement which Moscow consistently assessed to be a Western-backed Color Revolution.

It was explained last summer that “The Serbian Government Is Inadvertently Responsible For The Latest Color Revolution Intrigue”, yet Russia still maintained its aforementioned position, with Lavrov implicitly reaffirming it after last weekend’s unrest in Belgrade. Even so, SVR’s two announcements about Serbia’s indirect arming of Ukraine in just as many months might have made the government speculate that Russia might play a role in the then-upcoming protests or at least promote them in its media ecosystem.

Therefore, the decision might have been made to preempt that by assuring Russia that it’ll discontinue this trade, ergo the timing of these declarations by its President and Prime Minister. The Prime Minister also pledged not to join the West’s anti-Russian sanctions nor sign any anti-Russian declarations. Going back on the first would harm the Serbian economy, however, while doing the same with the second wouldn’t likely entail any harm since none followed it voting against Russia on Ukraine at the UNGA.

Member of the Federation Council Committee on Foreign Affairs Natalia Nikonorova is skeptical:

The Dissident
The Dissident (Substack)

Background | For years, the UK government has attempted to crack down on the activist group “Palestine Action”, due to their disruption of the Israeli arms manufacturing plant Elbit Systems, which manufactures weapons used to slaughter civilians in Gaza.

The UK government has consistently coordinated with officials from Elbit Systems to assure them that it will crack down on pro-Palestine protests.

As the Guardian has reported , because many court cases have led to “Palestine Action” activists being “acquitted for in the past with human rights defenses” UK government officials met with representatives of Elbit Systems to “reassure” them that they would crack down harder on the protests.

As the independent outlet Declassified UK reported, in 2022, “then home secretary Priti Patel met privately with Martin Fausset, the CEO of Elbit Systems UK, to ‘discuss protests and security’, Home Office documents revealed that the purpose of the meeting was to ‘reassure… Fausset that the criminal protest acts against Elbit Systems UK are taken seriously by the Government'”.