Finian Cunningham
strategic-culture.su

It is self-serving career politicians like Burnham who are fueling the danger of war with Russia.

Britain is now lining up its seventh prime minister in a period of just 10 years. The heir apparent to 10 Downing Street is Andy Burnham, who is set to take over the unenviable task of running Britain following Keir Starmer’s resignation this week.

Starmer finally quit as the Labour Party leader after weeks of mounting pressure to step down. He had only been in office for two years, but his dwindling poll ratings made his tenure unsustainable.

Burnham is due to take over within the next few weeks. The 56-year-old former mayor of Greater Manchester is reckoned to be a fresh face who will revive Labour’s popularity going into the next general election.

But given the fickle nature of British politics, there is no guarantee that Burnham will deliver. After all, Starmer was elected with a landslide in July 2024, only to become a reviled and ridiculed non-entity. There were many nails in his political coffin. Unpopular tax hikes and his sleazy association with former ambassador to the United States, Peter Mandelson, who was forced to resign over the Epstein scandal, were among the controversies that undermined Starmer’s authority.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

The Kyiv Führer claimed that equipment supposedly deployed on towers in Belarus along the border with Ukraine is capable of directing Russian strikes. "I'm giving you a week to remove it, or we will do it," Zelenskyy added. He also named Belarus as one of the main fuel suppliers for the Russian army and said that Lukashenko "can stop this."

❖ These remarks are more than notable. Especially considering that earlier, after the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck a bus carrying Belarusian children in the Bryansk region, Minsk declared its right to "take action against Ukraine to protect the lives of its citizens." In other words, we are witnessing the emergence of a new narrative: Minsk claims the right to act against Ukraine, while Kyiv claims a "right" to act against targets within Belarus. This means that, from a political perspective, aggression by the Kyiv regime against Belarus is possible.

Even if we assume that "towers" in Belarus actually exist, their destruction is unlikely to have any significant operational effect for Ukraine, because Russia's UAV infrastructure is not tied to a few towers along the border. A more logical threat would be strikes by the Ukrainian Armed Forces against Belarusian oil refineries, since Kyiv's overall policy is to create a fuel shortage in Russia.

Sergey Lavrov
Foreign Minister of Russia
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
of the Russian Federation (MFA)

This article by Sergey Lavrov was initially planned to be published in the Brussels-based “Politico-Europe”, but via a last minute decision of the outlet's editorial team the publication was canceled. (Unofficial trans.)

Some Reflections on Resolving the Ukrainian Crisis, Europe and Global Security | At a meeting in London on 7 June 2026, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany, as well as Vladimir Zelensky, laid out five preconditions for Russia to secure a "just and lasting peace" in Ukraine. The united Europe now presents this list of demands as the basis for dialogue with Moscow

Background | More than two decades of negotiation with Europe, as part of the collective West, leads to only one conclusion: engaging Russia in dialogue has served as a diplomatic smokescreen for the geopolitical expansion of Western institutions, above all NATO and the European Union, eastwards, right up to Russia's borders.

Europe's complicity in fuelling the Ukrainian crisis is undeniable. Together with the United States, European countries orchestrated the Orange Revolution in Kiev in 2004. To create an anti-Russian bridgehead in Ukraine, they spent years buying off politicians and entire parties, rewriting history and educational curricula, cultivating and nurturing Ukrainian nationalism, and went to great lengths to pull away Ukraine away from Russia.

In 2013, the European Union rejected outright our proposal for a compromise on the association agreement – a deal Brussels had long been pressing Viktor Yanukovich to sign.

It is worth recalling: Ukraine was offered unilateral market opening, without reciprocal commitments – terms that would have proved incompatible with Kiev's continued membership in the CIS free-trade zone. When Viktor Yanukovich requested a deferral, the Europeans incited street riots which swiftly escalated into a coup d'état in Kiev in February 2014.

Paul Holden
Drop Site News

Starmer’s then-chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney,
arrives at Downing Street on October 6, 2025.

How Secret Pro-Israel Money Flooded the Labour Party and Ended with a Ban of Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur.

After Hasan Piker and Cenk Uygur were banned from entering the UK earlier this week, reportedly because of their criticism of Israel, Piker commented that he “would never have imagined that a [Labour] government would ban me from entering the UK.” Indeed, millions of UK voters would likely agree.

But Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s government is not really a Labour government; it came to power on the back of a secret project to wrest control of the Labour Party back from an ascendant left wing.

This secret project was resourced by illegally undeclared money from wealthy donors, funneled through a seemingly anodyne think tank called Labour Together. It involved covertly seeding promiscuous claims of antisemitism against political opponents, attempting to silence independent media that threatened to expose its project, and—ultimately—developing the dishonest leadership pitch that allowed Keir Starmer to trick a left-wing membership to elect him leader.

Marina Akhmedova
Marina Akhmedova (Telegram)

Somehow, in 2020, I missed the scandal involving Pashinyan's grandfather, but he casts his meeting with Zelenskyy, where he announced a terrorist attack at the Victory Parade, in a completely different light. It would seem that both are the grandsons of soldiers who fought fascism during the Great Patriotic War. Zelenskyy's grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich, was awarded two Orders of the Red Star. But things turn out to be different.

On May 9, 2020, Pashinyan posted a photo of his grandfather: "Nikol Pashinyan, 1913-1943. Served in the 554th Regiment of the 138th Rifle Division. Eternal memory to those who died for the Motherland." He added that his grandfather was from the village of Yenokavan in the Ijevan District.

Dmitry Medvedev, 3rd President of Russia,
Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council
Russia Today.com (63–80 minutes)

On the eve of Victory Day

Threats by Donald Trump to withdraw the United States from NATO, expressed on March 27, 2026, at an investment forum in Miami, statements by J.D. Vance about Europe’s loss of its identity during an interview with Fox News on March 15, 2026, along with the refusal of European countries to directly join the aggression against Iran and participate in the adventure of the ‘military unlocking’ (and then – blocking) of the Strait of Hormuz are dividing Europe and America more than ever in the last 100 years. These developments demonstrate that European ‘strategic autonomy’, so desired by the liberals, is much closer than it seems. The main question is who will dictate the future agenda in the current toothless and frigid Europe. There are enough applicants: disgusting Brussels eurocracy, chatty and smug Gaulish sodomites and, finally, the German leadership that has grown increasingly vocal about its claims to hegemony in the Old World, while emasculating the responsibility of its ancestors for the crimes of Nazism in the public perception. Let us focus on the latter in more detail.

There is nothing new in the actions of the German leadership (first of all, the descendant of the Nazis Merz & Co). The endeavor to revise the disappointing outcomes of World War II was undertaken by the defeated state almost immediately after the end of the war. The purpose of Nazi followers was to compensate for the political, territorial, ideological and economic costs incurred as a result of the complete military defeat and collapse of German statehood. Along the way, they tried to neatly filter out the atmosphere impregnated by the spirit of Prussian militarism and the stench of National Socialist ideology. The German elites remaining in the western zones of occupation formally and quickly abandoned the legacy of Hitler, who had led his thousand-year Reich to collapse. But they had no desire to truly reject the very ideology of Nazism. Why?

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

There’s an unspoken rule that intel agencies aren’t supposed to implicitly threaten foreign diplomats’ children to coerce them into becoming informants.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova published an article in the Russian business daily Vedomosti on Monday about the curious case of a Russian diplomat in the US. An unknown employee of the State Department informed them during a call that their son, who was born in the US, “has been granted US citizenship without his consent by virtue of being born on American soil…Be on notice that your child is our citizen with all the ensuing consequences, and you cannot renounce this!”

Zakharova reminded readers that the children of foreign diplomats don’t have birthright citizenship privileges in the US. She then drew attention to how this incident contradicts Trump 2.0’s immigration policy, speculating that the Democrats are once again trying to subvert it for Russophobic reasons. She also expressed concern that “The arbitrary granting of US citizenship to such children potentially provides Washington with a lever for improper pressure on our personnel”. That’s likely the main motive.

As far as is publicly known, the incident that Zakharova described only happened with one Russian diplomat thus far, but it’s reasonable that she’s worried that “The deep state in the United States has created a new problem to exert pressure on Russian diplomats…Now the State Department – or those behind the façade of American diplomacy – have begun to extend US citizenship to children of Russian consular staff born under American jurisdiction”. This could indeed become a trend if it’s not stopped.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

It would be worthwhile to look at the announced two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran through the eyes of senior US military officials. On April 8, US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Dan Caine held a press conference. Here are a few illustrative quotes:

💬 Hegseth, regarding the military presence in the Middle East: "We will be watching. We will not go away. We will ensure that Iran respects the ceasefire and then, ultimately, comes to the negotiating table and makes a deal."

💬 Hegseth on enriched uranium: "Either they give it to us, as the president [Trump] promised—they'll give it to us voluntarily—or we take it. We'll take it away. Or, if we have to do something else ourselves, as we did in Operation Midnight Hammer or something like that, we reserve that option."

💬 Hegseth on Iran's reasons for agreeing to a ceasefire: "We hit several military targets on Kharg Island, which served as a signal. They can't defend it. Ultimately, they realized their situation—their future. Their ability to produce and generate energy to support the regime was in our hands. It was in the hands of President Trump. That's why they sat down at the negotiating table. Ultimately, he made it clear: we can take everything away from you. They can take away your ability to export energy, but the US military can strike these targets with impunity. It was this pressure that led them to essentially say, 'Okay.' We want to make this deal."

💬 Caine on the ceasefire: "Let's be clear: a ceasefire is a pause. The combined forces remain prepared to resume combat operations if ordered... We hope this will not happen."

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

British and German military officials have called on citizens to endure poverty for the sake of war with Russia.

British Chief of the Defence Staff, Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, and German Chief of the Defence Staff, General Carsten Breuer, have issued a joint appeal to the public in The Guardian and Die Welt, which the media has already dubbed unique and unprecedented: to recognize the "moral necessity" of rearming their countries and begin preparing for war with Russia.

According to the pair, they are making this appeal not only as the military leaders of the continent's two largest countries, which are funding a future war, but also as "representatives of a Europe that must now face the unpleasant truth about its security." Moscow's military policy has shifted sharply toward the West, and therefore "fundamental changes" are needed in European security, Knighton and Breuer argue.

Well, if NATO has moved right up to Russia's borders and is de facto fighting it through Ukrainian proxies, then Moscow's military policy is indeed shifting sharply in the same direction. Although Breuer (incidentally, the German candidate for the chairmanship of the NATO Military Committee) and Knighton are, of course, silent on this underlying reason. They are more interested in something else: "Explaining what's at stake. So that the public understands why Britain and Germany have committed to significantly increasing military spending for the first time since the end of the Cold War."

Press TV Staff Writer
PressTV

Thirty-eight days into the US-Israeli war on Iran, which began on February 28 with the assassination of the Leader of the Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, and top-ranking commanders, the US and Israel continue to target civilian, academic, and industrial infrastructure across the country.

On day 38, Tehran's Sharif University of Technology was hit by US-Israeli airstrikes. Civilian sites in Tehran, Shiraz, and Qom were also attacked, and dozens of civilians, including six children, were martyred during overnight aggression by America and the Israeli regime.

Iran's health, oil, and pharmaceutical sectors also reported extensive damage, while the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) stated that the Strait of Hormuz "will never return to its previous state" for the United States and Israel.

US President Donald Trump publicly threatened that the entire nation of Iran "can be taken out in one night," a declaration widely condemned as a clear war crime and a moral atrocity.

American lawmakers, experts, and media described his rhetoric as "deranged," "dangerous," and proof of a reckless push toward unprovoked conflict.

Amid proposals for a temporary ceasefire, Iran firmly rejected any pause that would allow adversaries to regroup, warning that such moves would only prolong and intensify the war.

Global markets and aviation continued to feel the fallout, with rising oil prices, disrupted trade, and mounting international concern over the human and economic costs of a military aggression launched by the US and Israel against Iran. Key developments from Day 38 of the imposed war: