Tag: russia

Zelensky Warns That 20 Million Ukrainians Would Pour Into EU If Russia Wins

Is that a threat?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders on Friday that if his country loses the war to Russia, as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe.

Such numbers would make the 2015 European migrant crisis look like a walk in the park.

“Russia is killing us,” Zelensky said while speaking at a summit of European Union leaders. “They [Russia] don’t want to stop” and Ukrainian are being pushed out of their homeland, he said.

“What will happen if we fall? I don’t know, 20 million Ukrainians will come to Europe,” Zelensky declared.

Earlier this week, Zelensky indicated he felt ‘betrayed’ by President Trump as relations with Washington spiral, particularly over the diesel deal with Putin and White House pressure for Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries.

Trump has also late this week in a Newsmax interview said that Ukraine should hold a new national election, and added provocatively that that even Putin is easier to deal with than Zelensky.

Indicators inside Ukraine show support for Zelensky’s war policy is slipping…

Keep reading

Europe Is Still Buying Record Russian LNG Under Its Own Contracts

Much of Europe continues to buy Russian liquefied natural gas, and this explains many of the targets and non-targets of the ongoing war in Ukraine. While long-range strikes by the Ukrainians have targeted to destroy Russian oil refining and related products infrastructure, the country’s major LNG export facilities have, for the most part, been left intact.

Refining: Crude runs at Russian refineries have reportedly dropped to multi-decade lows. Export restrictions are in place for diesel, with half of the country’s top diesel producers reported offline or heavily restricted by September 2026.

The deep strikes of September 2026 hit gas-condensate processing plants in the Yamalo-Nenets region, in the towns of Novy Urengoy and Purovsky. The plants that were hit by the strikes are not part of the Russian LNG production, and the Yamal LNG trains were not struck. The largest share of Russia’s total LNG exports is produced by the Yamal LNG terminals, which have a production capacity of about 17.4 million tonnes of LNG per year and sit further north than the plants that were hit.

Ukraine has so far avoided targeting operational LNG plants in the conflict. Analysts have noted that Western sensitivity to the global gas market and Europe’s continued imports are frequently cited as the reason.

European importers continue to receive large volumes of LNG under long-term contracts, including Yamal LNG, and the full statutory ban is only being phased in through 2027. In the first nine months of this year record volumes of LNG were delivered to EU terminals by Yamal cargoes.

This is uncomfortable for the governments in Brussels. While for years the Governments of Europe and of the world have been imploring others to cut off the Russians, they themselves continue to take delivery of record quantities of Russian gas and the plants that produce it have been ‘off target’. The assault on the diesel production of Russia has had a measurable effect, while Europeans continue to buy the same country’s LNG.

And it clearly illustrates just how much the requirements of the European energy supplies determine the course of this war. The power generating gas and the industrial gases that Europe needs are left untouched by the Ukrainian strikes – for the time being, and as long as the contracts are running.

We will have to wait and see whether European importers are still prepared to take Russian LNG when the ban is finally phased in through 2027.

Keep reading

Italian Defense Minister Admits Most Italians Oppose Ukraine Aid, Sends It Anyway

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has told the BBC that for the most part, most Italians are against sending arms to Ukraine. He admitted this in an interview at his Ministry in Rome, the full text of which was released on Sunday. And, in the meantime, Italy continues to send aid.

LaPresse quotes him as saying in an interview to the BBC at the Defense Ministry in Rome: “The majority of public opinion is against aid to Ukraine. But we have put together 12 aid packages and by the end of the year we will probably manage to put together another one.”

On Ukraine, Crosetto said: “We know perfectly well that our public opinion, also influenced from abroad, is mostly opposed to aid to Ukraine.” He added: “Above all, you cannot give in to public opinion when you believe public opinion is wrong.” He also said: “Ukraine will never be able to win the war. My objective is to ensure Ukraine survives and to bring the war to an end.”

Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia, Defense Minister Crosetto said in the interview to the BBC, adding that his goal is for Ukraine to survive and for the war to end. Victory for Ukraine, he said, would be “a victory for peace, a victory for justice, a victory for international law.”

A September poll by the Ixè institute found that only 18% of Italians want to continue to supply arms to Ukraine while the majority is looking on as prices skyrocket due to high energy costs. On Friday, in Rome, students from Italy’s secondary schools held a protest and chanted “We want more classroom, not more bombs” while truckers in the South have begun to block the roads in order to protest the sky rocketing prices of fuel. Crosetto blames the Russian disinformation campaign for the shift in public opinion. “It’s very hard to explain to a citizen who’s having trouble at the petrol pump that we can’t give any concessions to Russia right now,” he told the BBC.

Keep reading

Ukraine, A Country Of Misery: What Were The Origins And Reasons For The Current War With Russia?

In this article we would like to explore the reasons and the origins for the current on-going war with Russia. What happened?

We would like to start with several hypothesis for this war that seem to us to not have been described by political observers of various size and colors.

  1. The current war is not only a geopolitical tournament for the area, it’s a war that based on vulgar reasons of access to cashflow channels from natural resources.
  2. The current war is based on a combination of political, geopolitical, economic, personal reasons of higher level that just money.

Let’s begin with how the reasons for the war are viewed and declared in Ukraine. The war is on the territory of Ukraine. Russia occupied approximately 26% of Ukraine’s territory from 2014. Thus, the occupant is Russia, the aggressor is Russia. Let’s explore the views and the reasons for the war from the eyes of the government of Ukraine and the average citizen of Ukraine (peresichniy hromadianyn, as they call this resident-citizen in Ukraine).

Please, pay attention of the conflicting views on the reasons and the origins. We tried to keep the voices and the views expressed as original as possible.

From the view of citizen-resident (without any particular order, what comes first to the mind is stated first). Please, be attentive, this list includes politically-correct and acceptable expressions of average Ukrainians and “expressions that are not-voiced openly in the public”, but easily expressed in private conversations and has been recently voiced in the soccer stadiums and on public TV channels.

  1. “Putin is huylo (dickhead), and he is the only and the main reason, all other reasons are derivative and subordinate”
  2. “Russia is an empire state, always wanted to occupy Ukraine, this is just the way things are”
  3. “Ukraine was a part of Russian Empire, thus, they want Ukraine back”
  4. “They need to back off NATO from the borders”
  5. “Poroshenko made a treaty with Putin-huylo and sold part of Ukraine”
  6. “Zelensky insulted Putin for so many years, it’s a matter of personal revenge for Putin on Zelensky”
  7. “The government of Ukraine was weak and sold us to Putin”
  8. “The government of Ukraine failed to deter Russia, thus, Russia occupied Ukraine”
  9. “Russia’s government understood how weak and stupid is the government of Ukraine is and decided to occupy the country governed by the imbecile politicians and the clowns”
  10. “The leftist ultra-nationalist and oligarch-sponsored government occupied Ukrainian government, seized some Russian assets on the territory of Ukraine, thus, Russian bandits decided to strike back to get even more out of Ukraine”
  11. “The left-sided, and brain-washed radicals and bandits from the Western Ukraine, sponsored from the Western countries, occupied the parliament, the ministries of Ukraine, and, led the country to it’s weak form, thus, allowing Putin and FSB to analyze the state of affairs and see that there is a possibility to strike”
  12. “Ukraine was never an independent state, not even from the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991”
  13. “KGB, now FSB decided to take Ukraine as a territory that was a part of it’s influence and temporarily went out of control after the coup of the Revolution of Dignity (or not-so-dignity, depending on what you know)”
  14. “Ultra-nationalistic forces from the West and the Western Ukraine control the government of Ukraine. They could not, didn’t even have a chance to negotiate with Russia. They spent 8 years to prepare for the war. They wanted this war.”
  15. “We wanted democracy and independence from Russia. Russia wants to control us, our government and our resources.”
  16. “Yanukovich sold us to Russia for gas. We don’t need gas from Russia. We do not need oligarchs from Russia doing busines in our country.”

From the view of politicians, current or former (retired) state officials of Ukrainian government (without particular order, what comes first to the mind is stated first). Please, be attentive, this list includes politically-correct and acceptable expressions of politicians and “expressions that are not-voiced openly in the public”, but easily expressed in private conversations. We will not provide the sources of those expressions and the names of the people who voiced them – if you want you watch the thousands of videos with Ukrainian politicians in your own spare time. We provide you the samples of the expressions and declarations.

Keep reading

Russians Not Welcome In Europe?

Finland wants the European Union to stop issuing tourist visas to Russians until Moscow ends its war against Ukraine. Finland’s Foreign Ministry says Schengen countries issued close to 500,000 tourist visas to Russians in 2025. Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen declares that “Russian citizens should not be issued tourist visas,” adding, “The same must finally happen at the EU level.” Her argument is that Russians should not enjoy European freedoms while their country attacks Ukrainian homes. But who, exactly, is being held accountable here? The person applying for a holiday visa did not necessarily order the invasion, support it, or possess any means of stopping it.

I question the logic of making someone’s freedom to travel conditional upon a decision made in the Kremlin. What is an ordinary Russian supposed to do to satisfy that condition? Walk into Putin’s office and demand that he withdraw the army? Europe describes Russia as an authoritarian state and then treats its citizens as though they personally control its foreign policy. You cannot have it both ways. If political power is concentrated and opposition is repressed, the responsibility of the individual must be judged by what that individual has actually done.

The people with money have more options. Russian businessmen Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, for example, hold multiple nationalities and have challenged sanctions through European courts. That does not mean wealthy Russians are untouched by sanctions; many have faced asset freezes and travel restrictions. It means a billionaire’s position is very different from that of someone with one passport, a salary, and no team of international lawyers. A blanket nationality restriction is easiest to apply to the person least equipped to contest it.

As for espionage, does anyone seriously believe Russian intelligence depends entirely on Russians arriving with tourist visas and their real identities neatly printed in their passports? Documented cases show intelligence officers operating under commercial and diplomatic cover, as well as covert agents using false identities. Travel restrictions can complicate some operations, but they cannot replace counterintelligence. The Kremlin can recruit people already abroad or use intermediaries. Keeping out an ordinary visitor does not establish that a professional operative has been stopped.

There is also a consequence Europe seems unwilling to consider. Closing ordinary contact can strengthen the Kremlin’s claim that the West despises Russians themselves. A person who might otherwise discover that Europeans distinguish between a government and its citizens instead encounters a policy telling him that his passport is sufficient reason for exclusion. That outcome would serve propaganda far better than diplomacy. If the objective is to weaken hostility between societies, treating an entire nationality as suspect deserves considerably more scrutiny.

In truth, Russians already feel the hostilities from Europe. The arrogance is believing that another restriction on ordinary people constitutes a meaningful blow against rulers who remain in office. Finland is promoting the hatred of Russian people. The distinction between the Kremlin and the Russian citizen disappears.

Once an entire nationality is treated as suspect, people find it easier to dismiss the suffering of its ordinary citizens and harder to imagine any future reconciliation. Demonizing the population makes it politically easier to maintain confrontation. The rulers remain insulated while ordinary people learn to distrust one another. Europe should ask whether closing those human connections weakens the Kremlin or merely gives it another reason to tell Russians that the West hates them.

Keep reading

Russia Arrests Japanese Journalist On Espionage Charges, Tokyo Summons Ambassador

Relations between Russian and Japan have been on a downward spiral of late, as Tokyo continues cozying up to the US military as well as NATO, and amid a long-simmering dispute over the Kuril Islands, which Japan identifies as its own Northern Territories.

Russia on Tuesday arrested a Japanese journalist, which the Kremlin says is actually a spy operating on behalf of the Japanese government.

The detained Japanese national has been identified as Yuki Imai, who works for Hokkaido Shimbun newspaper – a regional outlet for Japan’s northern island. Hokkaido is one of the country’s four main islands and the daily paper he writes for has large dissemination.

The FSB security agency has accused the man of utilizing media sources to gather intelligence, specifically on Russia’s defense and intelligence capabilities.

Russian officials say they caught him retaining and storing sensitive data, in a saga that sounds parallel to the saga of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich in 2023-2024.

Imai was reportedly preparing to exit the country upon his detention in the far eastern Sakhalin region.

Tokyo did not immediately issue a full-throated condemnation, only saying that the government is gathering more information on the identity of the detained and the circumstances of the case.

Toward this end, the Russian ambassador to Japan has been summoned, with a protest lodged over the detention, centered on the Kremlin issuing strong accusations yet without providing any explanation to Tokyo.

Japanese and European officials are now seeking access to the detained suspect, even as Russian state media has been airing footage of him in handcuffs.

The footage shows security raiding where he was staying and proceeding to search his electronic devices and belongings while he was held on the floor.

Keep reading

The Sheer Ignorance Of What’s At Stake Globally

This is a textbook case of how someone can reach the top of one field and still be utterly clueless about everything else. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg served as National Security Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence and later as Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. He is Co-Chair at the Center for American Security, America First Policy Institute, USA, which is a Neocon think tank. The man’s ignorance is staggering. He has made no effort to examine the facts—or, more likely, he knows them and deliberately refuses to discuss how Victoria Nuland helped select the interim government that started this civil war and attacked the Donbas on Neocon orders.

He advocates that Zelensky should tell President Trump to go to hell and destroy every refinery in Russia. To illustrate his sheer stupidity: forget the food crisis he would cause in Russia, knowing that would lead to nuclear war—he completely ignores that Africa and the Middle East account for over 80% of Russia’s wheat exports, making those regions the most directly tied to Russian grain. Iran is 100% dependent on Russian grain. That would be a surefire way to make the Middle East explode into a full-blown war, which would then merge with the Russia-versus-EU war, and China and North Korea would join.

It is these Neocons, who simply hate the Russian people, who are cascading the world into World War III over a war they instigated using Ukraine. He would fulfill our model by pushing diesel to the extreme, projecting $8, which would hit the U.S. economy, reduce trucking, and result in a U.S. food shortage. This is what I mean. Expertise in one field does not qualify you to argue about things that will impact the rest of the entire world with zero comprehension of where that leads.

A full-scale war with Russia would very likely cause a severe global diesel crisis, and in many regions, a collapse in supply is a real possibility. The system is already under extreme strain, and a broader conflict would push it past its breaking point. Our computer projects $10+ a gallon by 2032.

Keep reading

AfD’s Weidel Tells Berlin The Truth: A German Company Goes Bankrupt Every 19 Minutes While Merz Sends Billions To Kyiv

German businesses are going bust in alarming numbers, claims AfD co-leader Alice Weidel. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is devoting his strength and taxpayers’ money to Kyiv, she charged. The numbers for the first part of her statement are dramatic.

“A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping across our country,” Weidel said. “Every 19 minutes, a company in Germany goes bankrupt. In the third quarter of this year alone, the wave of insolvencies affected 41,000 jobs. Many of them will disappear permanently.”

The 19-minute figure traces to official data from the Federal Statistical Office. There were 2,373 corporate insolvencies in July, 8% up on the previous year and thus the highest July figure since 2013. As small-business expert Marc Evers of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry told n-tv: “Every 19 minutes a company in Germany goes insolvent.” In the seven months to end-July a total of 15,185 corporate insolvencies were registered, 6.9% up on the same period of the previous year. Insolvencies were most frequent in the transport and storage sector, followed by the hospitality industry and construction.

The figure of 41,000 jobs also corresponds with the third-quarter insolvency tracker from the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). According to this, there were approximately 4,880 cases of insolvency of partnerships and capital companies in the third quarter, down 2.3% from the record high of the second quarter. However, this still corresponds with the second highest number of quarterly cases of insolvency since 2005 and approximately 41,000 jobs were affected, about 10% fewer than in the second quarter. Weidel’s assertion that many of these jobs will disappear permanently is her own assessment and not a statistic.

Smaller businesses have not yet experienced the upswing the government is predicting for this year. Instead, according to n-tv, they are slipping into insolvency more and more often. Evers said the small upswing “threatens to be short-lived, because it is based mainly on high, debt-financed government spending.”

Keep reading

Calls For Europe To Get Involved In The War Are Growing, Czech PM Babiš Says: Fight For 20 Years Or 10, Or Finally Do Something?

Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babiš says the calls for Europe to get involved in the war in Ukraine are growing, and he wants European leaders to say out loud what they are going to do. The Czech premier spoke to the press in Brussels on Thursday, as he was arriving at the European Union summit, Czech news site Ekonomický deník reported.

“Are we going to fight for another 20 years or 10 years, or are we finally going to do something?” Babiš told reporters as he arrived for the European Union summit in Brussels. There are growing calls for Europe to become involved in some way, he said.

The Czech Prime Minister saw Washington symbolizing Europe’s isolation. “Trump talks to Putin regularly,” he said, adding that Europe is completely out of the conversation. He characterized the deal about Russian diesel that Trump agreed with Putin as “not good news”. Above all, he said, Trump puts the United States first with elections coming.

Babiš then pointed at European leaders. “European leaders need to clearly say what they want, and we should agree on how we’re going to proceed,” he said. He made clear who is footing the bill: “We are paying for all of this.”

The frozen Russian assets were also expected to come up at the Summit. The Europeans were already very clear on this issue in Miami, a week ago, and told the Americans that no one would take control of these assets, the Financial Times reported.

Europe already has a military plan within the Coalition of the Willing, led by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer. After a ceasefire is agreed a multinational reassurance force could be deployed inside Ukraine. The plan has already been discussed by Macron and Starmer and the UK and France signed a declaration of intent on the plan in January.

This is the background to Babiš’s question. A sitting EU prime minister goes to Brussels to say that more and more voices want Europe to be involved in the war. Europe is paying for it all, and the EU leaders should now say what they want. The only concrete military initiative put on the table so far is European troops on Ukrainian soil. And a question that few people ask: will the European voters also get a say?

Keep reading

The EU-NATO Establishment Is Waging A Hybrid War Against Europe

The (fake) elite which currently leads in many European countries as well as the European Union in Brussels is determined to wage a war against Russia.

Unfortunately for them the people they rule over have no interest in that. The leaders are waging a massive propaganda campaign to change their minds.

They are following a line set by Hillary Clinton who, after losing the 2016 presidential election to Donald Trump, blamed Russia for interfering with it.

Accusations against Russia of interfering with elections elsewhere have since been repeated many times. The claim of ‘Russian bots’ waging ‘Russian influence’ is trotted out whenever populist outsiders manage to win.

Another allegation is that Russia is waging a ‘hybrid’ war against Europe. The meme goes back to the false claim by journalist Mark Galeotti who, in 2014, had claimed that there existed a ‘Gerasimov doctrine’, named after Russia’s highest general, which was leading Russia to wage ‘non-linear’ or ‘hybrid’ wars.

It took Galeotti four years, during which his thesis had gained some massive following, to recant his claims:

[T]o my immense chagrin, I created this term, which has since acquired a destructive life of its own, lumbering clumsily into the world to spread fear and loathing in its wake.
…
Gerasimov was actually talking about how the Kremlin understands what happened in the “Arab Spring” uprisings, the “color revolutions” against pro-Moscow regimes in Russia’s neighborhood, and in due course Ukraine’s “Maidan” revolt. The Russians honestly — however wrongly — believe that these were not genuine protests against brutal and corrupt governments, but regime changes orchestrated in Washington, or rather, Langley.

There never was and is no Russian ‘hybrid’ war.

There is however a strong western campaign to blame Russia for each and every thing:

Lately, not a day goes by in Europe without some drone scare, fire or blackout being blamed on Russia. We are told that these incidents are all part of a relentless “hybrid war” that Russia is waging against Europe — one that involves drone incursions, airspace violations, sabotage, arson, cyberattacks and more. We are told this “includes plots to place incendiary devices aboard DHL cargo planes, blow up railroad tracks in Poland, and burn down warehouses and shopping centers all over Europe”, as well as “acts of sabotage against defense companies and the defense industry in Europe”, and “attacks on European critical infrastructure” — but also, apparently, sending secret agents to defecate in the lavatories of Finnish MPs. We are also told that “[s]uch attacks began occurring shortly after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022”, and have escalated in recent months and weeks. According to Kaja Kallas, “Europe faces a fast-proliferation of sabotage attacks and airspace violations”.

There is however no evidence, none, that any of the alleged incidents had anything Russian to them.

There is though a ‘hybrid war’. But it is one waged by the western ‘elite’ against its own people:

Ultimately, serious scrutiny of the “Russian hybrid warfare” narrative can only lead to one disquieting conclusion. A “hybrid war” is indeed being waged against Europe — but it is being waged by the EU-NATO establishment itself, against its own population. Europeans are being subjected to a sustained campaign of cognitive or psychological warfare aimed at conditioning them to believe that Europe is under attack from Russia, and that these hybrid attacks are a prelude to conventional hostilities — a claim for which, by and large, there is little or no proof. What the record points to, in fact, is a deliberate campaign of threat inflation in which governments, media outlets and defence-funded “think tanks” have colluded to instill a permanent sense of fear in the population, through relentless coverage of “incidents”, “attacks”, “sabotages” and “campaigns” that, in most cases, simply do not exist.

Yesterday Andy Burnham, the unelected Prime Minister of Britain, blamed Russia for the outcome of Britain’s Brexit vote:

Prime Minister Andy Burnham sparked fury in Britain on Monday with his assertion that Russia had sought to interfere in the 2016 Brexit vote that took the country out of the European Union, breaking with previous premiers who said there was no evidence Moscow had meddled.

There had been an extensive parliament investigation about imagined Russian influence on the Brexit referendum which had found none. Burnham is now, without any evidence, claiming such influence because he wants to roll back Britain’s exit from the EU:

Just a few weeks ago, in his first conference speech as Labour leader, Burnham became the first prime minister to open the door to rejoining the European Union. Shortly thereafter, he suggested his party’s manifesto at the next election might include a referendum on just that question.

Burnham’s unspoken argument: If Russia has influenced the Brexit referendum the result is illegitimate and must be undone.

The argument is as fake as Burnham’s allegations about Iran being behind some fuel smugglers arrested near a military airport in Britain and let off on bail.

The propaganda about the non-existing ‘hybrid’ war Russia is allegedly waging against Europe climbed to a new apex yesterday.

Keep reading