Tag: russia

How A Fabricated Story From A Corrupt Billionaire Launched The New Cold War With Russia.

With the coming close to the Ukraine proxy war, now is a better time than ever to look at what sparked the post-cold war hostilities between America and Russia.

Some could point to multiple events including the Maidan coup, the downing of the MH17 flight, the Russian intervention into the Syrian war, Russiagate, or the Ukraine proxy war.

But one event precedes all of these things.

That is the passing of the Magnitsky Act sanctions in 2012.

The bill, which put sanctions on Russian officials supposedly for “the detention, abuse, or death of Sergei Magnitsky, for the conspiracy to defraud the Russian Federation of taxes on corporate profits through fraudulent transactions and lawsuits against Hermitage, and for other gross violations of human rights”.

The bill was passed in the House and Senate and was eventually signed into law by then-President Barack Obama.

This story came from Bill Browder, an American billionaire who set up shop in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union to try to make money off of Russia’s new IMF-imposed economy.

According to Browder’s account, he was the head of Hermitage Capital Management, which he called “the largest investment firm in Russia.” Browder alleged that in 2007 his office was raided by two Russian policemen named Artyom Kuznetsov and Pavel Karpov who seized documents that were “used to fraudulently re-register the ownership of our investment holding companies as well as to create $1 billion of fake tax liabilities”.

He alleged that “the corrupt officials used their new “ownership” of our companies and the fake liabilities to fraudulently reclaim $230 million of taxes we paid in the previous year”.

He claimed that he then “hired Sergei Magnitsky, then a 35-year-old tax lawyer, to investigate”.

According to Browder’s story “he helped us file criminal complaints against the police officers involved in the raids with a different branch of Russian law enforcement and was so brave that he even testified against them.” And in retaliation “was arrested by two of the same Interior Ministry officers against whom he had testified”.

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Crazed Maniac Zelensky Keeps Pushing for WWIII – Brags that New Long Range Missiles Can Hit Moscow

Trump was right. You can’t make peace deals with Ukraine as long as Zelensky is calling the shots.

He can’t be trusted.

Zelensky came to America in early March to sign a minerals agreement and agree to a ceasefire as a first step towards peace with Russia.

But the entire signing ceremony blew up when Zelensky started acting squirrelly and reneged on his prior promises.

Democrat Senator Chris Murphy knew this was going to happen before the meeting even started with Trump.

This was not the first time Zelensky made promises with the US and then later backed out of the deal.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent later revealed in an exclusive interview with Laura Ingraham on The Ingraham Angle that this is the third time Zelensky has refused to sign a mineral agreement, leaving U.S. officials stunned.

Bessent, who has been instrumental in facilitating economic partnerships between the U.S. and Ukraine under President Trump’s administration, detailed how Zelensky’s erratic behavior has put critical negotiations in jeopardy.

The agreement, which would have secured billions in U.S. aid in exchange for access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals, was expected to cement a stronger economic and strategic alliance between the two nations.

“This has to be one of the greatest diplomatic mishaps of all time by President Zelensky,” Bessent said about Zelensky during his interview.

Zelensky does not want peace.

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Zelenskiy Accuses Trump Of ‘Misinformation’, Pushes For More War

The Ukrainian General Staff has firmly rejected reports of encircled troops in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, directly contradicting statements made by US President Donald Trump following his “productive discussions” with Vladimir Putin about the fate of supposedly surrounded Ukrainian soldiers, reported EuroMaidan Press.

“Reports of a supposed ‘encirclement’ of Ukrainian units by Russian troops in Kursk Oblast are false and are being fabricated by the Russians for political purposes, aiming to pressure Ukraine and its partners,” says the Ukrainian military leadership.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces’ operation in Kursk Oblast is still underway, with ongoing combat and the withdrawal of troops from areas captured in August 2024. Meanwhile, Russian forces are advancing into the border of Sumy Oblast, aiming to sever Kyiv’s supply lines. The Commander-in-Chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, Oleksandr Syrskyi, states that fighting continues in the suburbs of Sudzha city in Kursk Oblast and the surrounding areas. The city itself has been almost completely ruined by Russian guided bombs and artillery.

“Ukrainian Defense Forces have repositioned, moved to more advantageous defense lines, and are carrying out their assigned tasks in Kursk Oblast,” notes the General Staff.

“There is no threat of encirclement of our units,” the Ukrainian military report emphasizes.

“Our troops continue to restrain the relevant groups of Russia and North Korea in the Kursk region. There is no encirclement of our troops”, said Ukrainian President Zelenskiy.

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Rutte Confirms NATO Membership For Ukraine Off The Table, Hints At Future Normalization With Russia

In fresh comments NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte confirmed that NATO membership for Ukraine is off the table when it comes to negotiations with Russia to end the war.

Rutte in an interview Friday was asked by Bloomberg TV’s Annemarie Gordern if Trump has definitely removed the issue of Ukraine’s accession to NATO from the negotiating table. Rutte answered “yes” and nodded in the affirmative when pressed.

The issue of NATO constantly expanding right up to Russia’s borders, which especially ramped up in the mid-2000s during the Bush era, has been consistently identified by President Putin as a key motive in his ordering hundreds of thousands of Russian troops into Ukraine in February of 2022.

Russia sees this as a continuation of a war in Donbass that was already burning since 2014, which saw CIA and Western intelligence assist Kiev in seeking to push back Russian influence. But the reality has always been that natives on the Donbass are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking and pro-Moscow.

Rutte’s predecessor Jens Stoltenberg made a bombshell admission in a televised 2023 speech stating that the bloc’s refusal to stop expanding east as a key reason for why the Ukraine war started.

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg said at the time. “That was what he sent us. And [that] was a precondition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.”

Previous to those words, this was considered a ‘pro-Kremlin talking point’. NATO chief Stoltenberg had even emphasized in the remarks that Putin “went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”

But apparently no lessons have been learned, and mainstream Western media has still by and large failed to feature the Stoltenberg admission as part of the narrative on the build-up to war.

As for Rutte, he explained in the new Friday Bloomberg TV interview Europe could normalize ties with Russia when the war is over. “It’s normal if the war would have stopped for Europe somehow, step by step, and also for the US, step by step, to restore normal relations with Russia,” he stated.

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Putin Calls For All Ukrainians In Kursk To Surrender, ‘Sympathetic’ To Trump’s Request To Spare Lives

The Kremlin has responded to President Donald Trump’s request that the lives of the Ukrainian troops encircled in Russia’s Kursk Region be spared, which was conveyed in a Friday Truth Social post by the president. Moscow says it is “sympathetic” to this request, and the pattern in the battle to retake Kursk has been to take POWs if weapons are laid down.

At the same time President Putin has called immediate surrender of all Ukrainian troops remaining on Russian soil. Trump had acknowledged that “thousands of Ukrainian troops” are “completely surrounded by the Russian military” in the southwest Kursk region.

Putin said during a National Security Council meeting on Friday that Russian forces guarantee their lives if they lay down their arms, according to state media translation:

Putin responded that he was aware of Trump’s request, adding that Russia was willing to consider it. “If they lay down their arms and surrender, [we] will guarantee them their lives and dignified treatment in accordance with international law and Russian legal norms,” the president said.

But Putin also emphasized the “numerous crimes against civilians” in the region, also has hundreds of thousands of citizens have fled over the last six months of the Kursk occupation on risky operation ordered by Zelensky.

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Putin Urges Kiev to Order Troops in Kursk to Surrender

Following a telephone discussion with President Donald Trump on Thursday where Trump urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to spare the lives of Ukrainian soldiers in their Kursk Region of Russia, Putin ordered Kiev’s forces to surrender.

“If they lay down their arms and surrender, [we] will guarantee them their lives and dignified treatment in accordance with international law and Russian legal norms,” Putin said.

Putin also said that these soldiers, which are now surrounded by Russian forces, committed numerous crimes against civilians while occupying Kursk and that Russian authorities are treating these as acts of terrorism, something Putin has said previously as well.

Trump said in a social media post that Russian forces have the ability to wipe these Ukrainian forces out, however if they did, “[it] would be a horrible massacre, one not seen since World War II,” Trump said.

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Zelensky Lashes Out as Putin Accepts US-Ukraine Ceasefire Plan

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky wasted no time in reacting to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s acceptance of a proposed 30-day ceasefire, calling it a “manipulative” move aimed at stalling rather than ending the war.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Thursday that he is open to a U.S.-backed proposal for a 30-day ceasefire in Ukraine. However, his agreement came with a key stipulation—direct discussions with President Donald Trump.

It can be recalled that Russian President Vladimir Putin signaled to Washington in 2023 in public and privately through intermediaries that he was ready to open to a ceasefire in Ukraine. Putin’s proposal was to freeze the war along current lines, which includes territory gained by Russia.

Sources told Reuters that this approach from Putin offered what some Kremlin figures saw as the best hope for some form of peace. But Biden and his Regime rejected the proposal without countering, as one Russian source lamented.

Another Russian source explained that the Regime insisted on involving Ukraine in any discussion regarding a possible ceasefire. This immovable position caused the talks to collapse completely.

In 2024, Putin offered a peace proposal to Ukraine to permanently end the war in Ukraine and begin negotiations.

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Record dropouts in Bundeswehr as delusional EU/NATO still mulls going to Ukraine

It’s no secret that Western militaries have suffered from poor recruitment for years. Virtually all EU/NATO members have this problem and there are no signs it will go away any time soon. Worse yet, they are now faced with record dropout rates, which is threatening the integrity of their armed forces. Despite all this and for some inexplicable reason, the EU/NATO still wants to pick a fight with Russia, a “noble democratic endeavor” that would require many times more troops. However, as previously mentioned, their ability to even retain (let alone attract) soldiers remains highly questionable. Namely, the latest reports confirm that 25% of new recruits in the German Bundeswehr drop out after only six months of service.

According to Financial Times, personnel shortages are “pushing troops to a breaking point”. The report cites Eva Högl, the Commissioner for the Armed Forces (Bundeswehr) in the German Parliament (Bundestag), who pointed out that “despite some success in recruitment, poor   meant that the armed forces had come no closer to meeting their target of having 203,000 soldiers by 2031”. As a result, this number dropped to just over 181,000. FT laments that “this comes at a time when Germany is pledging to do more to bolster Europe’s own defenses in the face of a potential US retreat from the continent”. It should be noted that Washington DC has anywhere between 50,000 and 84,000 troops deployed in Europe.

It’s virtually impossible to imagine Bundeswehr being able to deploy even 10% of that outside of Germany. Worse yet, while US soldiers are often very young (teenagers or in their early 20s), the Bundeswehr is “shrinking and getting older”, as Högl pointed out. In her annual report on the state of the German military, she lamented that “the average age had risen to 34 years — up from 33.1 years in 2021”.

“This development must be stopped and reversed as a matter of urgency”, she stated, adding: “I said the troops are challenged, but they are also very overburdened. I’ll go as far as to say they’re at breaking point. When we look at where our Bundeswehr is needed — for national defense, [NATO] alliance defense, international crisis management — it is a lot. And it really is at the limit.”

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Kremlin Says There Are Grounds For ‘Cautious Optimism’ For Peace In Ukraine After Witkoff Visit

Kremlin: Late last night, President Putin met with U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff, delivering key messages and signals for Donald Trump.

No date has been set for a direct call between Putin and Trump. It will be scheduled after Witkoff reports to Trump.

“There are grounds for cautious optimism on Ukraine,” reported Clash Report.

Ukraine has seen multiple ceasefires since 2014, and every time it turned out that the Kiev government has lied, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, reported Russian state news agency TASS.

“This whole story shows that temporary ceasefires were declared multiple times since 2014. I’m talking about the Minsk Accords, the deal that was discarded after the 2014 coup and the Istanbul agreements. All of those included a ceasefire. And every time, it turned out that they had lied to us. The Ukrainians lied with the support of their European partners,” he said.

“He left on a plane,” a Kremlin told TASS, referring to Trump envoy Steven Witkoff.

Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff leaves Moscow by private jet after high-stakes talks with Putin. Flightradar24 data shows Izvestia footage reportedly captured the American envoy’s motorcade at Moscow’s Vnukovo Airport before departure. (@vick55top)

Witkoff left Moscow last night and travelled to Baku, Azerbaijan, which just finalized a peace deal with Armenia, ending 40 years of war.

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Ukraine Agrees to a Ceasefire. Could it Really Happen?

Only days ago, the chances that Ukraine would agree to negotiate with Putin or agree to a ceasefire seemed very remote. A few days without U.S. military and intelligence aid changed that. On March 11, the Ukrainian delegation in Saudi Arabia, led by Zelensky’s powerful chief of staff Andriy Yermak, “expressed readiness to accept the U.S. proposal to enact an immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire.”

The Trump administration now awaits the Russian response, since the agreement “is subject to acceptance and concurrent implementation by the Russian Federation.” If Russia rejects the ceasefire, Secretary of State Marco Rubio says, “then we’ll unfortunately know what the impediment is to peace here.”

Putin has repeatedly said that he is willing to negotiate but that he is not willing to agree to a “short truce” that would just provide Ukraine with “some kind of respite for regrouping forces and rearmament with the aim of subsequently continuing the conflict.”

Russia is unwilling to agree to a 30-day ceasefire with no conditions. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says that Russia is waiting for a briefing from the Trump administration and that it would be “difficult for Putin to agree to this in its current form.” A senior Russian official adds that “Russia would need to hash out the terms of any ceasefire and get some sort of guarantees.”

Without those guarantees, Ukraine’s readiness to accept a 30-day ceasefire is just a readiness to pause Russia’s winning the war while the U.S. resupplies it with now unpaused military aid. The Ukrainian armed forces are exhausted and depleted. They are rapidly being pushed out of Kursk, the one sliver of Russian territory they hold as a bargaining chip. On March 10, in one day, the Ukrainian armed forces lost a third of the territory they held in Kursk with reportedly very heavy losses. As Ukrainian forces seem to be attempting to withdraw, Valery Gerasimov, the Russian Chief of Staff, says that they have been encircled and isolated. The Ukrainians are being pushed back across the line in eastern Ukraine. And there are suspicions that Russia is gathering forces for a significant spring offensive.

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