Tag: russia

Trump’s Contronymal “Peace” with Russia

ith all the hullabaloo about President Donald Trump’s “peace” gestures toward Russia over Ukraine and the resetting of US-Russia bi-lateral relations, it is worth remembering the “pivot to Asia” announced by the Obama administration in 2011 and the coup d’état it carried out in Ukraine in 2014.

For those who might not remember, I would recommend two films: John Pilger’s The Coming War on China and Oliver Stone’s Ukraine on Fire.

They are two prongs of a long-term U.S. strategy to maintain American preeminence throughout the world by countering Russia and China simultaneously, if not equally at once. Such strategy is not determined by someone like President Donald Trump speaking or acting impulsively, as is his wont, but by bankers, financiers, éminences grises, and pale-faced scholarly guns-for-hire in stately buildings reserved for such deliberations.

Despite rhetoric to the contrary, there is a consistent foundational foreign policy strategy from one American presidential administration to the next with necessary little detours here and there, and arguments within the ruling class about tactics.

Long-term strategy is capacious enough to include sudden seeming shifts in policies that are couched in cover stories that beguile even the smartest people. Wishes fuddle the minds of the most astute. They serve to obscure the interests of U.S. dominance of the world, a dominance that is now threatened, and one that Trump is not abandoning, even as he adjusts American tactics on the fly.

The Council of Foreign Relations (CFR) and its magazine, Foreign Affairs are where the ruling elites of the United States debate and determine American foreign policies from administration to administration, regardless of political party.

The CFR is the preeminent U.S. think tank; it is over one hundred years old, financed by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie Foundations and its members have included former CIA Director Allen Dulles, McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and many other high government and financial figures, including David Rockefeller, who served as  chairman between 1970-1985.

“Largely unbeknownst to the general public, executives and top journalists of almost all major US media outlets have long been members of the influential Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).” It is evidence of why the corporate mainstream media is an adjunct of the U.S. propaganda system. To become a member is to be baptized into the U.S. ruling establishment and its vast propaganda network that includes, as former CIA analyst Ray McGovern describes it: the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex, MICIMATT.

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Ukraine Gov’t Looks to Ban Branch of Orthodox Church over Ties to Russia

The Ukrainian government has declared that a branch of the Orthodox Church has failed to sever its longstanding ties with Moscow – and could soon be banned.

The looming ban affects one of the two rival branches of Orthodoxy in the country and further underscores the turbulent role of religion as Ukraine fends off the Russian invasion. Orthodoxy is the majority religion in both Russia and Ukraine and has served as a cultural and spiritual battleground in tandem with the wider war.

The action comes a year after the Ukrainian Parliament passed a law banning the Moscow-based Russian Orthodox Church due to its strong support of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The law also authorized banning any organization tied to the Russian church. A government investigation into the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, with its centuries-old ties to Moscow, soon followed.

The UOC denounced the full-blown Russian invasion from the start in 2022. It declared its independence from the Moscow church the same year and reiterated that stance in 2025.

Even so, the government says the UOC has refused to take necessary steps, such as revising its governing documents, to complete that separation.

The Aug. 27 government action, while long in the works, still requires more legal processes to take full effect.

The government has petitioned a court to ban the activities of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church itself. The church, if it loses, would have the right to one appeal to a higher court before the case is finalized – a process that could be completed in months, its lawyer said.

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US generals involved in European plan to send 10,000 troops to Ukraine – WSJ

Top US military officials have been involved in drawing up a plan for “security guarantees” for Kiev advocated by Paris and London that includes a massive troop deployment to Ukraine, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, citing a European diplomat.

The scheme drawn up primarily by European army chiefs includes two groups of forces that are to be sent to Ukraine, according to the report. One of them would be tasked with training and assistance to the Ukrainian military, while the second would serve as a “reassurance force” for Kiev. The troops are to be deployed once Moscow and Kiev reach a peace deal.

A total of 26 nations agreed to contribute to “security guarantees” for Ukraine in various ways, French President Emmanuel Macron said earlier this week, following a meeting of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ – a group of Kiev’s European backers.

The current commitments would allow for a deployment of over 10,000 troops to Ukraine, the WSJ source said, adding that the plan “received input from some US generals,” including the US head of the NATO Allied Command Operations.

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The Power Of Siberia 2 Pipeline Deal Signifies The Failure Of Trump’s Eurasian Grand Strategy

Trump’s escalatory signals in Ukraine, the Indo-US split that he induced, and the attendant alleviation of the Sino-Indo security dilemma freed Russia up to clinch the long-negotiated Power of Siberia 2 deal…

Trump’s Eurasian grand strategy has sought to preemptively avert Russia’s potentially disproportionate dependence on China in order to avoid having its natural resources turbocharge the superpower trajectory of the US’ only systemic rival. In pursuit of this, the US envisaged entering into a resource-centric strategic partnership with Russia upon the end of the Ukrainian Conflict, expecting that this shared goal would incentivize Putin into agreeing to significant territorial and/or security concessions.

Trump’s unwillingness or inability to coerce Zelensky into any of Putin’s demanded concessions paired with increasingly concerning reports about plans to deploy NATO to Ukraine to spook Putin into ditching his balancing act and pivoting to China. The successful clinching of their long-negotiated deal over the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline, which will nearly double Russia’s gas exports to China to ~100 bcm a year and at a cheaper price than the EU receives, signifies the failure of Trump’s Eurasian grand strategy.

Putin might have held out for longer had Trump not inadvertently catalyzed the incipient Sino-Indo rapprochement via his hypocritically punitive tariffs that aim to derail India’s rise as a Great Power. That spooked India into patching up its ties with China, which alleviated their security dilemma that the US was exploiting to divide-and-rule them. This in turn reduced India’s worries about closer Russian-Chinese energy cooperation that it previously feared could lead to Russia becoming China’s junior partner.

It was never officially voiced, but astute observers and those who’ve talked to Indian thinkers know that India was worried that China might leverage its influence over Russia to get it to curtail or cut off military exports to India, therefore giving China a pivotal edge in their border dispute. The Trump-induced Indo-US split and attendant alleviation of the Sino-Indo security dilemma freed Russia up to clinch the Power of Siberia 2 deal without fear of spooking India into the US’ arms and thus dividing-and-ruling Eurasia.

The growing convergence between BRICS and the SCO, which aim to gradually reform global governance via their complementary efforts to accelerate multipolar processes, is due in no small part to India’s embrace of both in response to new strategic threats from the US. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s first visit to China in seven years to attend the SCO Leaders’ Summit, during which time he held an important bilateral meeting with President Xi Jinping, is expected to lead to a new normal in Sino-Indo ties.

The roots of their tensions haven’t been resolved, but Russia expects that they’ll now be better managed, ergo why it clinched its deal with China over the Power of Siberia 2 gas pipeline right after also concluding that the US won’t try to help it obtain any of what it wants from Ukraine. To review, Trump signaled escalatory intent in Ukraine reportedly as the quid pro quo for the US-EU trade deal and then Sino-Indo ties improved as Indo-US ones worsened, thus making Power of Siberia 2 politically possible.

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Trump Ready To Place More US Troops In Poland Amid Russia Threat

  • Trump told President Karol Nawrocki the U.S. is prepared to expand its 8,000-strong military presence in Poland.
  • The meeting underscores Warsaw’s push for stronger U.S. security guarantees amid Russia’s war on Ukraine.
  • Nawrocki, a conservative close to Trump’s movement, won the election narrowly on a “Poland first” platform while pledging support for Ukraine but opposing NATO membership.

US President Donald Trump told his Polish counterpart the United States was ready to increase its military presence in the Central European nation, one of the countries on NATO’s so-called “eastern flank” warily watching Russia’s actions.

Trump welcomed conservative President Karol Nawrocki to Washington in an event highlighted by a flyover of US F-16 fighter jets honoring a Polish military pilot who had died last month in a crash.

Asked if he planned to keep US forces deployed to Poland, Trump replied in the affirmative.

“We’ll put more there if they want,” he added, while citing the United States’ “tremendous relationship” with Poland, one of the more important military and political allies of Ukraine during its war with Russia.

“We never even thought in terms of removing soldiers from Poland.”

“We’re with Poland all the way, and we’ll help Poland protect itself,” Trump added.

Warsaw has long sought an increased US military presence in Poland. The United States has based troops in Germany, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, and other European nations since the end of World War II, initially to serve as a deterrence to Soviet aggression on the Continent.

The first permanently stationed US troops arrived in Poland in March 2023. There are an estimated 8,000 US troops now garrisoned in Poland, some on a rotational basis.

Nawrocki added that it is “the first time in history” that Poland has been happy to host foreign troops.

Nawrocki, a vocal admirer of the US leader, said after the talks with Trump that the two presidents had discussed bolstering troop levels, adding that Trump had strongly guaranteed Poland’s security.

“The success of his [Nawrocki’s] special relationship with the MAGA movement and with President Trump would be if the United States increased its presence in Poland,” Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told reporters a day earlier — a reference to Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement.

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Europe Advancing ‘Precise’ Plans For Troops In Ukraine, Backstopped By US

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told the Financial Times that European nations are developing detailed plans to potentially send troops to Ukraine as part of a future peace agreement, despite it being obvious to all the world that Moscow would never agree to this as a basis of peace or ceasefire.

Hawkish European leaders continue to claim they have support from President Donald Trump for pursuing such a plan, which would see a joint multinational force of troops from various European armies, backed by a US security guarantee. “President Trump made it very clear that the US would be part of the security backstop,” von der Leyen said.

“Security guarantees are paramount and absolutely crucial,” she described of the European consensus. “We have a clear road map and we had an agreement in the White House… and this work is going forward very well.”

She had also said that “President Trump reassured us that there will be [an] American presence as part of the backstop. That was very clear and repeatedly affirmed.”

Indeed Trump had declared immediately after hosting European leaders at the White House last month, “We’re willing to help, especially from the air – because no one has what we have.”

However, there still appears to be some distance between Washington and European expectations, with one senior official recently explaining to Axios, “Europe can’t drag out this war with unreasonable expectations and expect the US. to foot the bill. If Europe chooses to escalate, that’s their decision – but they risk turning a potential win into a loss.”

Von der Leyen admitted there’s a long road ahead in terms of organizing a joint commitment for a multinational ‘peacekeeping’ force for Ukraine.

“Of course, it always needs the political decision of the respective country, because deploying troops is one of the most important sovereign decisions of a nation,” she said, adding that “the sense of urgency is very high . . . it’s moving forward. It’s really taking shape.”

Her words were issued during a tour of European countries which lie close to Russia, which the Kremlin is sure to see as provocative in its own right – given for example she was at a military base in Estonia, and at one point was along the Poland-Belarus border, and in Bulgaria, and toured arms depots and factories in ‘NATO’s eastern flank’.

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Trump Again Suggests He Could Back European Troops in Ukraine With Air Power as Part of a Security Guarantee

President Trump suggested in an interview with the Daily Caller published on Tuesday that he would be willing to back a European troop deployment in Ukraine as part of a security guarantee for a potential future peace deal, an arrangement Russia has made clear it would never accept.

Trump was asked if he was considering using US troops for security guarantees, and he said “no,” but made clear he was open to the idea of using US air power, something he has previously suggested.

When asked if he would use US planes for the security guarantees, Trump said, “Maybe we’ll do something. Look, I’d like to see something get solved. They’re not our soldiers, but there are, five to 7,000, mostly young people, being killed every single week. If I could stop that and have a plane flying around the air every once in a while, it’s going to be mostly the Europeans, but we, we’d help them. They, you know, they sort of need it, and we’d help them if we could get something done.”

The insistence from European officials on sending troops to Ukraine could be what ends up sinking the peace process. Russia has said that it must be involved in talks on security guarantees for Ukraine, but European leaders continue to discuss the idea with Ukrainian officials without Russian involvement.

Trump was asked how his support for the potential security guarantees squares with an “America First” foreign policy and pointed to the fact that NATO countries are now purchasing US weapons for Ukraine, although a recent deal that will arm Ukraine with long-range cruise missiles will be partially funded by US military aid.

“Look, we were spending hundreds of billions of dollars in that war. Now we sell equipment to NATO. I got them to go from two to five. Nobody thought that was, and pay. We sell equipment to NATO. We don’t sell it to Ukraine. We sell it to NATO. They pay for the equipment. We’re not spending any money on the war,” Trump said.

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UK sucking resources out of Ukraine – Moscow

The British establishment views Ukraine as a source of cheap resources that can help alleviate the UK’s ongoing economic problems, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has said.

Such a predatory attitude is typical of London, Zakharova said in an exclusive interview with RT on Wednesday.

Moscow considers the UK one of the main actors fueling the Ukraine conflict, claiming it collaborates with the EU to undermine diplomatic efforts made by US President Donald Trump.

“Britain has a history of aggressive colonialism and imperialism toward resource-rich countries,” she stated. “Ukraine holds significant potential in this regard, and Britain views it as a means of enrichment – or rather a lifeline given the current state of Western European economies.”

“London perceives Ukraine as merely a feeding trough, both now and in the future, from which it can extract essentially free minerals and refine them,” she added.

The Ukrainian leadership is not acting in the interests of its citizens, Zakharova claimed, but instead follows directives from “NATO, Western European elites, and local self-interested groups.”

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Russia’s Vector Institute Engineers Lab-Made Bird Flu Spike Protein for ‘Needle-Free Jet Injection’: Journal ‘Vaccines’

In new a study published last week in the journal Vaccines, Russia’s Vector Institute detailed how it engineered a lab-built H5 influenza spike protein—chemically optimized for durability and mass expression—under the banner of needle-free jet injection vaccine development.

The study, titled “Immunogenic and Protective Properties of mRNA Vaccine Encoding Hemagglutinin of Avian Influenza A/H5N8 Virus, Delivered by Lipid Nanoparticles and Needle-Free Jet Injection,” confirms yet another link in the chain of international bird flu pandemic countermeasure orchestration.

Lab-Built Hemagglutinin (HA)

The authors openly admit that they deliberately cut away the natural anchor of the bird flu spike and rebuilt it to be secreted outside the cell.

“In brief, the transmembrane and cytoplasmic domains were excised from the native HA sequence. For the purpose of secretion from cells, the signal peptide from the native sequence was retained,” the researchers write.

And further, they took the bird flu spike gene, inserted it into a lab plasmid, and added human RNA control elements plus a long poly(A) tail to boost expression.

“The HA gene, designed based on the native HA gene of the influenza virus A/turkey/Stavropol/320-01/2020 (H5N8) … was cloned into the pVAX-Cas1CC expression cassette … The cassette also contains the human α-globin 5′- and 3′-untranslated regions, as well as a 100-nucleotide poly (A) tail.”

They even confirm the same chemical alteration used in the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 shots:

“mRNA synthesis was performed … with uridine replaced by N1-methylpseudouridine.”

Pseudouridine—the synthetic mRNA ingredient swapped in for natural uridine—has now been shown to cause ribosomal “frameshifting” that makes the body attack its own proteins in roughly one-third of recipients, and in other studies has been linked to stimulating cancer growth and metastasis.

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European delusions are prolonging Ukraine’s suffering

The stench of hypocrisy is thick in the halls of Brussels these days, where European leaders—clutching their champagne flutes and virtue-signaling press releases—continue to demand that Russia surrender unconditionally, even as their own militaries crumble under the weight of their own incompetence. While they preach about “democracy” and “territorial integrity,” they send Ukraine just enough weapons to keep the slaughter going, but never enough to actually win. Meanwhile, American taxpayers foot the bill for a war that Europe’s own generals admit they cannot sustain. Now, the Trump administration has had enough. According to leaked reports from Axios and The Atlantic, White House officials are openly accusing the EU of sabotaging peace talks with “unreasonable” demands, all while expecting the U.S. to bankroll their geopolitical fantasies. One senior official didn’t mince words: “The Europeans don’t get to prolong this war and backdoor unreasonable expectations, while also expecting America to bear the cost.”

The truth is as brutal as it is obvious: Europe wants this war to drag on—not because victory is possible, but because admitting defeat would shatter their illusion of global relevance. And so, they push Ukraine to reject any compromise, even as their own citizens freeze in energy poverty, their economies stagnate, and their armies reveal themselves to be little more than paper tigers. President Trump, ever the pragmatist, has seen through the charade. After high-stakes meetings with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky, he’s made it clear: if Europe wants to play war games, they can pay for them themselves. But if they truly want peace, they’ll have to swallow their pride, accept the new territorial realities, and stop treating Ukrainian lives as bargaining chips in their desperate bid to cling to a fading unipolar order.

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