Tag: russia

Australia to deploy 100 soldiers to help Ukraine in its bloody war against Russian aggression

Australia will deploy up to 100 soldiers and a military aircraft to Europe in an effort to support Ukraine in its ongoing war with Russia. 

Defence Minister Richard Marles announced the contributions at the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) leaders summit in the Netherlands on Wednesday. 

At the request of NATO and Poland, Australia will deploy a Royal Australian Air Force E-7A Wedgetail aircraft in August along with 100 Australian Defence Force personnel. 

Part of Operation Kudu, the deployment is designed to protect an international gateway for humanitarian and military assistance into Ukraine and will not be direct combat roles. 

The deployment is expected to conclude by November and will compliment Australia’s more than $1.5billion in support to Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February 2022. 

‘Australia is proud of its longstanding operational partnership with NATO,’ Mr Marles said in announcing the commitments on Wednesday. 

‘The deployment of an E-7A Wedgetail aircraft will again showcase our ability to operate from Europe, alongside NATO and partners, in support of Ukraine and international peace and security.’

Leaders of the defensive alliance descended on The Hague on Tuesday for two days of talks on the conflict and Washington’s uncertain commitment to NATO. 

Representatives of the member states, including many European nations, the UK, the US and Canada, are expected to commit five per cent of their national outputs to defence and related spending. 

Australia is not a NATO member but is considered one of its Indo-Pacific partners alongside Japan, the Republic of Korea and New Zealand.

During the summit, Australia also imposed a fresh wave of financial sanctions and travel bans on 37 individuals and financial sanctions on seven entities.   

Mr Marles said the sanctions will target Russia’s defence, energy, transport, insurance, electronic and finance sectors and proponents of disinformation and propaganda. 

Foreign Minister Penny Wong welcomed the sanctions as a sign of Australia’s deep ties with NATO member states.  

‘Our targeted sanctions reflect our close coordination with key NATO partners, including the UK, Canada and the European Union.

‘Australia has now imposed more than 1,500 sanctions in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. We will continue to work with partners to disrupt Russia’s ability to fund its illegal and immoral war.’

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NATO Pledges $40 Billion to Ukraine

The neocons would never permit a true ceasefire. The war in the Middle East must continue in order to broaden the West’s conflict with Russia. Russia is not permitted to remain neutral, despite Putin’s insistence. Follow the money—NATO has assembled $40 BILLION to prolong aggression against Russia.

“Let’s not forget, Iran is heavily involved in the fight of Russia against Ukraine by, for example, their drone deliveries, which are killing innocent Ukrainians every day, in cities, in communities, without any respect for life,” Rutte said. Russia has paid Iran for defense and drones throughout the conflict in Ukraine, and therefore, the neocons believe Russia should be held responsible for the war in the Middle East.

Russia has successfully fended off NATO and the weaponization of Ukraine by the West. The messaging put forth by NATO aligns with Socrates’ predictions—the worst is yet to come and we have mass panic cycles occurring in nearly every major economy in 2026. The reason cannot be provided by the computer, but historically, we only see such an uptick in activity during times of global conflict.

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US auditors arrive in Kyiv to check for corruption

American auditors have just landed in Kyiv, and their plan is simple – to dig out what is really happening with the billions of dollars that the US has already sent to Ukraine.

The West has poured an estimated $133bn into Ukraine since the start of the war over three years ago, but for much of that time there has been little accountability or reporting on where the money went and to whom.

Ukraine has been plagued by corruption since independence and as bne IntelliNews has reported, corruption is not a problem of the system; it is the system. Ukraine has long been dubbed one of the most corrupt countries in the Former Soviet Union (FSU). Part of the motivations behind the 2014 Euromaidan evolution was that former president Viktor Yanukovych is believed to have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from the state.

Now that the US ardour for supporting Ukraine is beginning to cool, the Trump administration intends to hold the Zelenskiy administration to closer account. And the momentum for more transparency has been building. When the US ran out of money for Ukraine at the start of 2023, part of the $60bn emergency bailout package included several tens of millions of dollars in a special budget dedicated to accounting and audits.

Scandals have plagued the Defence Ministry, including one last year when the government was caught procuring eggs for four times the market value and heavily overpaying for dud winter jackets. Zelenskiy sacked Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov in September 2023 in a military shake-up to crack down on corruption, but it remains rife. Reznikov himself was not accused of any wrong-doing.

The arrival of the US audit team has been confirmed by US State Department of contracts worth $814,806. That amount will cover the hotel accommodation of the employees who will stay in the capital of Ukraine for a month in the luxurious Hilton Kyiv hotel.

The audit comes as Trump has been leaning on the Ukrainian presidential administration to cut a ceasefire deal with Russia, but Zelenskiy has proved reluctant to do so. Some experts have speculated that audit comes as part of the pressure Trump hopes will push Zelenskiy into cutting a “quick and dirty deal” with President Vladimir Putin.

A group of 80 to 100 people is in charge of a comprehensive audit, according to reports, checking how funds for military and humanitarian support, logistics, security and security were spent.

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Russia Ready To Help Iran, Says Has ‘Every Right’ To Nuclear Energy Program

The Kremlin has announced Monday that Russia stands ready to help Iran in its ongoing conflict with Israel and the United States in the Middle East, based on specific requests.

Such assistance “all depends on what Iran needs,” presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov explained, as quoted in TASS. “We have offered our mediation efforts. This is concrete. We have stated our position, which is also a very important form of support for the Iranian side.”

“Going forward, everything will depend on what Iran needs at this moment,” Peskov continued, while Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi is currently in Moscow, preparing to meet with President Vladimir Putin.

“Just today, the Iranian Foreign Minister [Abbas Araghchi] will meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, where they will be able to exchange views in the wake of this traumatic escalation,” Peskov stated. That’s when he made clear, “And, in fact, the Iranian side will be able to inform us about its proposals and its vision of the current situation.”

It is highly unlikely that Moscow would actually give any level of direct military assistance, but it could possibly come in the form of safety, containment, or logistical help at now damaged nuclear facilities, following American forces’ weekend bombings of three key sites.

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NSC advisors urged ‘ISIS’-style drone attacks on Russian rail, leaked files show

A coterie of British and American academics advising the US National Security Council explicitly urged Ukraine adopt the tactics of ISIS in a detailed proposal for “anti-rail drone operations,” according to leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone.

The aggressive war plans recommended in the files eerily foreshadowed Ukraine’s Operation Spider Web, which consisted of a series of brazen drone attacks waged inside Russia between May 24 and June 1 – the eve of scheduled negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. A pair of Ukrainian bombings of Russian trains in Bryansk on May 31 and Kursk and the following day left seven dead, and injured more than 30 people, including two children.

The attacks on Russian rail infrastructure have continued since the launch of Operation Spiderweb, suggesting the British-born strategy has heavily influenced the thinking of Kiev’s increasingly desperate military.

The leaked plans reviewed by The Grayzone explore the use of “inexpensive drones” as “a low-cost means for disrupting Russian logistics,”  but also include blueprints for terror attacks composed by three “drone experts” before being passed to the Biden administration’s then-Director for Russia at the National Council, Col. Tim Wright.

Those experts belonged to a secret academic-intelligence cell called Project Alchemy, whose existence was first exposed by The Grayzone, and which was founded with a mission to “to keep Ukraine fighting” by imposing “strategic dilemmas, costs and frictions upon Russia.”

As previously reported here, Project Alchemy researchers called “to take a page from ISIS’ playbook,” presenting the jihadist group’s psychological operations as a model for Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilians. The Grayzone can now reveal that Alchemy’s team also urged US war planners to look to the Islamic State for inspiration in using commercial drones for attacks on Russian civilian targets.

One academic advising the Alchemy cell, Zachary Kallenborn of George Mason University, recommended Ukraine carry out “two-stage attacks like ISIS did frequently” on Russian-held railways, suggesting that Kiev first “break the track, and wait for the engineers to come to fix it, then use the drone to kill them.” In other words: double tap kamikaze drone strikes.

“Drones also could provide ISR [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] in finding and tracking trains to support larger actions,” with satellite imagery exploited for targeting purposes, Kallenborn added.

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WHAT? Out-Of-Touch Zelensky Asks ALL Allies To Devote 0.25% of Their GDP to Finance Ukrainian War Effort

After more than 3 years having his regime be the focus of the Globalist establishment, Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky now sees the world’s attention turning to the dangerous escalation in the Middle East – and is afraid funds for his war effort will become even harder to come by than they’ve already become.

So, Zelensky came up with a ‘brilliant’ idea: he is calling on Ukraine’s Western partners to allocate 0.25% of their GDP to help Kiev ramp up weapons production.

He also said Ukraine will start exporting weapon production technologies.

Reuters reported:

“In remarks released for publication by his office on Saturday, Zelensky said Ukraine was in talks with Denmark, Norway, Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Lithuania to launch joint weapon production.

‘Ukraine is part of Europe’s security and we want 0.25% of the GDP of a particular partner country to be allocated for our defense industry and domestic production,” Zelensky said’.”

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Russia conducts heavy missile and drone strike on Ukrainian military airfield – MOD

The Russian military struck a military airfield and energy infrastructure in Ukraine in an overnight attack involving missiles and kamikaze drones, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has reported.

In a statement on Saturday, the ministry said that the attack, which was carried out with high-precision air-, land-, and sea-based weapons, as well as explosive-laden unmanned aerial vehicles, targeted the infrastructure of a military airfield and an energy facility that supplied Ukrainian forces in Donbass with fuel.

“The goal of the strike has been accomplished. All designated targets have been hit,” Russian military officials reported, without disclosing the location of the targets.

In a separate statement on Saturday, the ministry claimed that Russian warplanes, drones, missiles, and artillery had destroyed several UAV production workshops, as well as ammunition depots in Ukraine.

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President Trump Sends Warning to Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo For Going to Ukraine and Provoking Ukrainians to Keep Fighting Russia

President Trump warned Senator Lindsey Graham and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for going to Ukraine and encouraging them to continue fighting Russia.

“Lindsey Graham and Mike Pompeo were on the ground in Ukraine, trying to provoke Ukrainians to keep fighting. What do you think of that?” a reporter asked President Trump after he touched down in New Jersey.

Trump warned Lindsey Graham and Pompeo to be careful about what they say.

“People have to be very careful with what they say. Their mouth could get them into a lot of trouble.”

As TGP recently reported, Volodymyr Zelensky announced that 117 drones were used in the strike inside Russia that wiped out dozens of nuclear “doomsday” bombers and other aircraft.

President Trump WAS NOT NOTIFIED of the attack before it took place – because Trump wants peace and the globalists want World War and the destruction of Russia.

Senator Lindsey Graham, who was in Ukraine just two days before Zelensky’s drone strikes, cheered the news of the attack.

What did Lindsey Graham say to Zelensky during his visit to Ukraine last month?

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The Brits & Ukrainians Are Plotting To Manipulate Trump Into Escalating Against Russia

Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Agency (SVR) warned that the Brits and Ukrainians are preparing two false flag scenarios in the Baltic Sea.

The first one would see Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian torpedoes explode near a US ship there and a supposedly malfunctioning one will then be found to implicate Russia in the alleged attack

The second, meanwhile, will involve Ukrainian-transferred Soviet/Russian mines fished out of the Baltic Sea and presented as proof of a Kremlin plot to sabotage international shipping.

These perfidious provocations are being employed to manipulate Trump into escalating against Russia after Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced in mid-February that the US won’t extend Article 5 mutual defense guarantees to NATO countries’ troops that might deploy to Ukraine. That scenario was the initial one that was planned for getting him to pull out of talks with Putin and then double down on support for Ukraine, but his team preemptively scuttled it through Hegseth’s announcement.

That’s why efforts are now underway to organize a false flag attack against a US ship in the Baltic and/or frame Russia as a threat to international shipping through the fishing out of its mines there. The Baltic has already been a so-called “NATO lake” since even before Finland and Sweden’s joined NATO given their prior shadow membership in the bloc, however, so it’s unrealistic that Russia could really carry out either of these two operations undetected even if it wanted to.

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Europe’s risky war on Russia’s ‘shadow fleet’

The European Union’s latest moves (as part of its 17th package of sanctions against Russia declared in May) to target much more intensively Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” of oil tankers and other vessels illustrate the danger that, as long as the Ukraine war continues, so will the risk of an incident that will draw NATO and the EU into a direct military clash with Russia.

The EU sanctions involve bans on access to the ports, national waters and maritime economic zones of EU states. Ships that enter these waters risk seizure and confiscation. It does not appear that Washington was consulted about this decision, despite the obvious risks to the U.S.

As part of this strategy, on May 15, an Estonian patrol boat attempted to stop and inspect a tanker in the Gulf of Finland. Russia sent up a fighter jet that flew over the Estonian vessel (allegedly briefly trespassing into Estonian waters), and the Estonians backed off — this time. In January, the German navy seized a Panamanian-flagged tanker, the Eventin, in the Baltic after its engines failed and it drifted into German territorial waters.

Sweden has now announced that starting on July 1 its navy will stop, inspect and potentially seize all suspect vessels transiting its exclusive economic zone, and is deploying the Swedish air force to back up this threat. Since the combined maritime economic zones of Sweden and the three Baltic states cover the whole of the central Baltic Sea, this amounts to a virtual threat to cut off all Russian trade exiting Russia via the Baltic — which would indeed be a very serious economic blow to Moscow.

It would also threaten to cut off Russia’s exclave of Kaliningrad, which is surrounded by Poland, from access to Russia by sea.

This is the kind of action that has traditionally led to war. The Swedish assumption seems to be that the Russian navy and air force in the Baltic are now so weak — and so surrounded by NATO territory — that there is nothing Moscow can do about this. However, it is very unlikely that the Swedes would take this step unless they also believe that in the event of a clash, Washington will come to Sweden’s defense — even though the EU and Swedish decisions were made without U.S. approval and are not strictly covered by NATO’s Article 5 commitment.

And despite all the hysterical language about Russia being “at war” with NATO countries, these moves by the EU and Sweden are also based on an assumption that Russia will not in fact lose its temper and react with military force. European policymakers might however want to think about a number of things: for example, what would the U.S. do if ships carrying U.S. cargo were intercepted by foreign warships? We know perfectly well that the U.S. would blow the warships concerned out of the water and declare that it had done so in defense of the sacred rule of free navigation — in which the EU also professes to believe.

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