Tag: russia

While Germany Talks War With Russia, Romania’s Globalist Regime Conducts Mass Surveillance On Its Own People — 8,600 Secret Warrants, Zero Oversight

Germany’s globalist political class is once again talking about going to war with Russia. Officials in Berlin have suggested that Europe should “prepare for conflict,” a statement that’s raised alarms across the continent. But while Germany rattles sabers, another European Union member is already at war, not with Moscow, but with its own citizens.

Romania, one of NATO’s key Eastern members, has quietly constructed an enormous internal surveillance system under the banner of “national security.”

Documents obtained under Romania’s Freedom of Information law reveal that from the 2024 presidential elections through September 2025, the country’s Supreme Court issued 2,843 national security warrants. Every single request was approved. None were denied.

A Nation Surveilled 

Each warrant authorized Romania’s powerful intelligence agencies to monitor phone calls, intercept emails, track movements by GPS, and even enter private homes—all without notifying the citizens involved.

Experts estimate that more than 55,000 Romanians may have been surveilled under these programs, their private lives cataloged in the name of ‘protecting the state.’

During the last three years alone, Romania’s top court signed off on 8,603 such mandates, covering the tail end of President Klaus Iohannis’s term, the interim leadership of Ilie Bolojan, and the start of Nicușor Dan’s presidency.

Across administrations, one thing never changed: zero judicial oversight.

Courts Rubber-Stamp Everything

According to official responses from both the General Prosecutor’s Office and the Supreme Court, not one surveillance request was ever rejected. Every application moved seamlessly from prosecutors to judges—and was instantly approved.

That’s not oversight—it’s obedience.

Unlike the United States’ FISA Court, which modifies or rejects a portion of surveillance requests each year, Romania’s allegedly independent judiciary appears to function as a rubber stamp for intelligence operations.

Even more concerning, Romanian officials admitted they don’t know—or won’t say—how many people were targeted. The Supreme Court said it “does not hold a statistic” on the matter. The Prosecutor’s Office said the data is “not public.”

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Zelensky Declares Expansion Of Long-Range Attacks On Russian Oil Refineries 

Days after urging European allies in Britain that Ukraine urgently needs sufficient long-range weapons to change the course of the war, President Zelensky has declared Monday that he intends to expand strikes against Russian refineries.

After a meeting with his staff Zelensky indicated, “We reviewed the effectiveness of our long-range strikes over a defined period and the results achieved. Russian oil refining is already paying a tangible price for the war—and will pay even more. We set tasks to expand the geography for the use of our long-range capabilities.”

This makes clear it’s no secret how Kiev would use Tomahawks missiles if it received Washington’s approval to get them; however, President Trump has appeared to resist so far.

The past couple of months have seen Ukrainian long-range drone strikes on Russian energy sites and oil depots become an almost nightly phenomenon. Drones are very hard to defend against, given their small size, so the UAVs often hit their targets as they are often sent in large waves.

Recently, media sources have said the Trump White House has been actively giving intelligence assistance to Ukraine related to these long-range attacks on Russian energy. Still, there’s as yet no indication Trump has approved Tomahawks.

The Ukrainians of lately been striking defense sector and manufacturing sites as well, sometimes with devastating and deadly effect. One recent ‘mystery’ blast more than a dozen people:

The death toll from an explosion at a Russian plastics manufacturing plant has increased to 13 people, the Chelyabinsk regional administration said Monday.

The blast occurred last Wednesday night at the Plastmass plant in the town of Kopeysk. The facility, known for producing artillery ammunition for the Russian military, is subject to Western sanctions.

It is unclear whether sabotage or other deliberate action caused the explosion.

But Russia has been hitting back hard, with a Monday an aerial attack on an important energy facility in Chernihiv region, resulting in a number of towns and settlements in the border area being without electricity.

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Robbing Russia? Is von der Leyen Stupid or Insane?

Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever stubbornly refuses to go along with the latest absurd idea from the EU bureaucracy: seizing Russia’s assets in Belgium to offer them to Ukraine. Politico scolds him, claiming he is “harder to convince than Trump” (the ultimate embodiment of evil, apparently).
Confiscating Russia’s sovereign assets in Belgium would indeed be an act of sheer folly. Even during the Second World War, no such step was taken. After Pearl Harbor, for example, President Roosevelt froze Japanese assets — he did not steal them. Never in history have non-belligerent countries seized the central-bank assets of a belligerent state during wartime in order to finance the reconstruction of a third country (source).

  1. A Direct Violation of International Law

The United Nations Convention on Jurisdictional Immunities of States (Article 21) guarantees the protection of central bank assets when used for non-commercial purposes. Article 5 is unequivocal: “A State enjoys, for itself and its property, immunity from the jurisdiction of the courts of another State.”

The Articles on State Responsibility for Internationally Wrongful Acts (ARSIWA) require that any “countermeasure” be proportionate, reversible, and aimed at resolving a dispute — not destroying an economy.

Finally, the aim has never truly been the “reconstruction of Ukraine,” despite the protestations of the pale apparatchiks in the Berlaymont — headquarters of Ms. von der Leyen’s European Commission. The actual objective is to fund Ukraine’s war effort. In plain terms: a de facto act of war by little Belgium against imperial Russia. Even the authors most favourable to confiscation acknowledge that such assets could only, under international law, be used for reconstruction — never to finance warfare (Csongor István Nagy, International Investment Law Enables the Use of Frozen Russian Assets to Compensate for War Damage in Ukraine, Harvard International Law Journal, 15 November 2023).

  1. The Mother of All Financial Crises

All international financial transactions rely on trust, since there is no sovereign arbiter above states. Shattering that trust would unleash a financial crisis that would devastate Europe and the global financial system. Europeans fail to grasp that between their current comfort and poverty lie merely two or three disastrous decisions — precisely the sort the EU excels at making. Our fellow citizens behave as though supermarket abundance were part of the laws of nature, an eternal constant. But when you’ve been living on credit for fifty years, caution is essential. Europe is a leaking financial submarine, and von der Leyen proposes that we throw the hatches wide open — apparently to “breathe easier.”

Every state on the planet would instantly understand that the theft of Russian assets paves the way for the theft of their own, under whatever pretext might be found. One can picture the delight of the Berlaymont’s creatures fantasising about seizing the assets of China, India, the United States, and others, in the name of “insufficient climate efforts,” for instance. Two hundred countries, two hundred portfolios — a banquet for crazed bureaucrats.

The BRICS central banks would pull their reserves out of Western institutions within a week. The euro would become toxic as a reserve currency, and would collapse — for it is not backed by genuine industrial might, but merely by the fading remnants of the rule of law.

Europe is already financially drained after its economic suicide, pompously named the “Green Deal.” Desperate to keep their crumbling system alive a few months more, the EU’s bureaucrats are ready to seize anything within reach. But the rest of the world is not blind. It sees. It understands.

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Russia recognizes Ukraine’s independence but not its ‘Nazi’ regime – Lavrov

Moscow recognizes Ukraine’s independence but not the “Nazi” regime in Kiev bent on the “extermination of everything Russian,” Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

In an interview with Hungarian YouTube channel Ultrahang aired on Sunday, the top diplomat said today’s Ukraine differs greatly from the one whose sovereignty Moscow supported after the fall of the USSR.

“We recognize the independence of Ukraine, no doubt about this, [but] we recognized Ukraine on the basis of its own Declaration of Independence and Constitution… which defined Ukraine as a non-nuclear, neutral, non-bloc country guaranteeing the rights of all national minorities,” Lavrov said.

He stated that following the 2014 Maidan coup, Ukraine turned into “a bluntly Nazi regime” that “shows open contempt for anything Russian,” including its history, media, culture, religion, education, and language.

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POKROVSK CAULDRON: Russian Forces Tighten the Noose Around Donetsk Stronghold — 10,000 Ukrainian Troops Face Complete Encirclement

The cauldron is boiling.

After months of fighting, the Donetsk bastion of Pokrovsky has been encircled and put in a ‘Cauldron’, and the final Stages of the Battle for Krasnoarmeysk (Russian name) is ongoing.

And, unless the Ukrainian command acts fast, 10,000 Kiev troops are about to be completely encircled.

We have been reporting on the battle for Pokrovsk, as you can read (from July) Russians Conquer a Dozen Settlements in a Week – In Eastern Donetsk, Northern Kharkov and Southern Zaporozhie – Moscow Forces Encircle Key Ukrainian Stronghold Pokrovsk (VIDEOS);

and SIEGE OF POKROVSK: Russian Forces Encircle Key Stronghold, Reach Its Outskirts – City is a Key Logistics Hub and the Last Fortified Bastion Before the Dnieper River (VIDEOS).

The Russian Tsentr (Center) group is leading the final assault for the key Pokrovsk-Mirnograd agglomeration.

Ukrainian forces are rapidly approaching a critical situation, and their defense has s become scattered.

Clearing operations are underway south of the railway.

Importantly, Pokrovsk is cut off from supplies. The E-50 highway to Pavlograd is under dense fire control by the Russians.

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China, Russia use ‘asymmetric advantage,’ unleash sex warfare to seduce US tech execs, steal secrets: report

China and Russia have deployed attractive women to the United States to seduce unwitting Silicon Valley tech executives as part of a “sex warfare” operation aimed at stealing American technology secrets, according to a report.

Industry insiders told The Times of London that they have been approached by would-be honeypots — some of whom have even managed to ensnare their targets by marrying them and having children.

Chinese and Russian agents are also using social media, startup competitions and venture capital investments to infiltrate the heart of America’s tech industry, the report said.

“I’m getting an enormous number of very sophisticated LinkedIn requests from the same type of attractive young Chinese woman,” James Mulvenon, chief intelligence officer at risk-assessment firm Pamir Consulting, told The Times.

“It really seems to have ramped up recently.”

A former US counterintelligence official who now works for Silicon Valley startups told The Times that he recently investigated one case of a “beautiful” Russian woman who worked at a US-based aerospace company, where she met an American colleague whom she eventually married.

According to the former counterintelligence official, the woman in question attended a modelling academy when she was in her twenties. Afterward, she was enrolled in a “Russian soft-power school” before she fell off the radar for a decade — only to re-emerge in the US as an expert in cryptocurrency.

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Overnight Drone Attack Hits Moscow High-Rise As Putin Warns Of ‘Overwhelming’ Response

Ukrainian drones have once again reached the Moscow area, far away from the border, at a moment the Kremlin is strongly warning against Washington allowing the transfer of US Tomahawk missiles to Kiev.

The attack on a Moscow suburb was part of a broader wave of overnight drone attacks which hit multiple regions across the country, injuring at least five people, including a child, when one drone slammed into an apartment building near Moscow.

According to Moscow region Governor Andrei Vorobyov, the drone hit a 14th-floor apartment in a high-rise building in the city of Krasnogorsk, northwest of the capital.

Four adults were hospitalized with head injuries, fractures, and shrapnel wounds, and a boy suffered minor injuries in the attack. Circulating photos showed blown-out walls in an apartment. 

Russia’s Defense Ministry said that air defense forces intercepted and destroyed over 110 Ukrainian UAVs over 13 regions overnight. Several drones were also shot down as they approached the capital.

Ukraine appears to be feeling emboldened, as it has had a series of ‘wins’ on a global stage given this week’s new US and EU anti-Moscow sanctions. This new attacked marked the second consecutive night which saw more than 100 drones assault Russian territory.

Power outages resulted in some Russian areas, particularly the Rostov region, and drone impacts were reported also in Bryansk, Kaluga, Tula, and Tver.

Meanwhile President Vladimir Putin has warned in the face of new sanctions and the potential for new long-range weapons including Tomahawk missiles to be given to Ukraine that Moscow stands ready to respond with an “overwhelming” force:

“Dialogue is always better than confrontation or any disputes, and especially war. We have always supported the continuation of dialogue,” Putin told journalists. 

But if Russia was attacked with US Tomahawk missiles, which Ukraine seeks, the response would be “very strong, if not overwhelming. Let them think about it,” he added. 

So far Trump appears to have resisted Zelensky’s and Europe’s urging on this front, but shown willingness to later reverse his decisions on such Ukraine war-related issues.

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Russian Official Confirms North Koreans Operating Along Ukraine Border

Alexander Khinshtein, governor of Russia’s Kursk region, said in a televised interview on Tuesday that North Korean troops are assisting with mine-clearing efforts along the border with Ukraine.

“Representatives of the Korean People’s Army have played a vital role in clearing the border area. Today, they are deeply engaged in demining efforts, which are crucial for the future reconstruction and security of the region,” Khinshtein stated.

The governor said the “camaraderie between the Russian and Korean peoples compels us to forge a unique partnership with North Korea.” To that end, he said a plan is under development to designate the city of Kaesong in North Korea as a “sister city” to Kursk.

Kursk was counter-invaded by Ukrainian forces in August 2024, 18 months after Russia invaded Ukraine. The Russians were taken completely by surprise, allowing Ukrainian forces to take and hold positions deep inside Kursk province.

In desperation, the Russians turned to North Korea for cannon fodder. Pyongyang sent about 12,000 troops to help the Russians recapture Kursk, a deployment both Russia and North Korea denied for months until finally providing official confirmation in April 2025. The Russian government announced Kursk had been recaptured from Ukrainian forces in the same month.

According to North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, his forces were sent to “annihilate and wipe out the Ukrainian neo-Nazi occupiers and liberate the Kursk area in cooperation with the Russian armed forces.”

Kim declared the North Korean soldiers, who seemed baffled by modern drone warfare and took heavy losses in Kursk, to be “heroes of the motherland.” The North Korean regime held a ceremony to honor them in August 2025.

Khinshtein, who was appointed acting governor of Kursk by President Vladimir Putin in December, said on Tuesday that the border between Kursk and Ukraine remains “contaminated with land mines, unexploded ordnance, aerial bombs, and shells,” necessitating an extensive de-mining operation.

Khinshtein’s predecessor as governor, Alexey Smirnov, resigned due to public anger over his handling of the Ukrainian counter-invasion, particularly his failure to evacuate civilians from the occupied territory.

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NATO Jets Scrambled Over Lithuania After Russian Aircraft Breach Airspace

NATO member Lithuania on Thursday alleged that a pair of Russian jets violated its sovereign airspace, in what the government quickly condemned as a breach the country’s territorial integrity.

“This evening, Russian military planes violated Lithuanian air space. This is a blatant breach of international law and territorial integrity of Lithuania,” the country’s President Gitanas Nauseda said in a statement.

Alluding to recent EU plans to create a joint aerial defense and drone shield to protect European airspace from Russian incursions, he added: “Once again, it confirms the importance of strengthening European air defense readiness.”

Nauseda further announced that his foreign ministry will be summoning Russian diplomatic representatives, to lodge formal protest against the “reckless and dangerous behavior”.

Lithuania’s military said it scrambled jets in response to the brief incursion. It said:

Today, Russian military aircraft briefly entered Lithuanian airspace. Our forces acted quickly with NATO jets on patrol. Lithuania remains strong and ready. Every inch of our country is protected.

Initial reports say that two Russian military planes violated the airspace for a mere 18-seconds.

Baltic and Eastern European countries, including Poland, have for several weeks been complaining of Russian aerial incursions. This month Denmark hosted a summit where a ‘drone wall’ was the focus:

Fortified by intense security measures after a wave of drone incursions above airports and sensitive sites, two high-stakes summits in the Danish capital offered a mounting sense of collective clarity — and a possible solution that sounds like science fiction: a “drone wall.”

“There is only one country that are willing to threaten us, and it is Russia,” Danish President Mette Frederiksen told reporters on Wednesday, adding that Europe was in the middle of a “hybrid war.”

“I think we are in the most difficult and dangerous situation since the end of the Second World War,” she added. “I want us to rearm. I want us to buy more capabilities. I want us to innovate more.”

Likely Thursday’s event happened off Lithuania’s coast over the Baltic Sea, where Russian and NATO planes frequently patrol.

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Washington’s Deadly Lack of Foreign Policy Empathy Toward Russia

It is hard to believe that U.S. and other Western officials actually are surprised at the consequences of their habitually tone-deaf policies toward Russia.  Are they truly shocked that a major power, already humiliated by its defeat in the Cold War, resented having the most powerful military alliance in history steadily expand toward its borders?  One need only look at a current map and compare it to a map of Eastern Europe in 1990 at the time of Germany’s reunification to see the geographic extent of NATO’s expanded military power.  The encroachment on Russia’s core security zone is blatant.  Yet, U.S. leaders in five administrations ignored repeated, escalating admonitions and warnings from Moscow as those provocations took place.

The culmination – so far – of such policy arrogance and ineptitude is a dangerous proxy war between NATO and Russia, with NATO using Ukraine as its principal weapon.  Most worrisome of all, the proxy war is a conflict that could, given the slightest miscalculation by either side, escalate to the nuclear level.

Members of America’s foreign policy elite fail to exhibit even a modicum of strategic empathy, and that deficiency urgently needs to be corrected.  The principal global nightmare in the coming decades is likely to be a possible military collision between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).  If the new generation of U.S. policymakers cannot do a far better job than the current crop has done with respect to policy toward Russia, a catastrophe becomes much more likely.

Aspiring and current U.S. policymakers should be compelled to conduct mental exercises in which they genuinely attempt to view a geostrategic issue from the perspective of an opponent or competitor of the United States.  As an important corollary, there needs to be a more serious effort to comprehend how the other party seems to view specific U.S. actions and initiatives.  Such an approach requires sincere, in-depth intellectual role reversals.

An attempt to achieve something at least resembling strategic empathy would, for example, try to determine how a defeated and humiliated United States would react to a victorious Russia expanding a powerful military alliance it controls ever closer to the American homeland.  Let’s say that the encroaching Russian great power started by adding small nations in the Caribbean and Central America as new alliance members and then moved on to admit larger countries possessing more significant military assets, such as Colombia and Venezuela.  Not content with implementing those provocations, Moscow then seeks to make Canada or Mexico a front line alliance member against the United States.

Substitute the Baltic republics for the small Caribbean or Central American countries, and substitute Poland, the Czech Republic, and Romania for Colombia and Venezuela, and one has the mirror image of what the U.S. and NATO did in Eastern Europe between 1998 and 2004 with the initial stages of NATO’s expansion.  Throughout that period, Washington and other leading NATO powers kept insisting that the moves were not hostile measures directed against Russia – an assertion that had little credibility even during the early phases of expansion and ultimately had no credibility with Russian leaders.  When Anti-Russia hawks began to do their utmost to admit Ukraine to NATO during George W. Bush’s administration, the provocations reached an intolerable level.

Adding Ukraine as a NATO military asset, whether or not Kiev was granted formal membership, was the functional strategic equivalent of a victorious Russia trying to add Mexico or Canada to the looming military power already arrayed against Washington.  In this alternate universe, would anyone be surprised if the increasingly beleaguered United States took decisive steps to prevent Mexico or Canada from becoming a crucial Russian geostrategic asset?  Would we be surprised if U.S. leaders and the American people concluded that they faced an existential security threat and decided that decisive action to neutralize that threat must be taken, whatever the risk?  It is nearly certain that both the public and the government would reach such a conclusion.

Why, then, do U.S. leaders and their NATO allies profess to be surprised and outraged that Russian officials and the Russian people seem to view matters in a similar fashion about the threat their country faces?  The total lack of strategic empathy on the part of Western – especially U.S. – policymakers has produced a predictable, disastrous outcome.

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