Tag: russia

Estonia Might Become Europe’s Next Trouble Spot

The latest socio-political and security developments suggest that it relishes being a frontline state…

Estonia catapulted back into international news after it recently seized an alleged vessel from Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet”, to which Russia had a restrained reaction for the pragmatic reasons explained here, but it’s also been stirring up trouble with Russia in other ways too. The aforementioned provocation coincides with the passing of a law allowing Estonia to sink foreign vessels that it deems to pose a national security threat. It’s possible that this could be the next planned regional escalation.

On the security front, Estonia also reportedly wants to deploy some of its troops to Ukraine as part of a peacekeeping mission jointly led by France and the UK. Moreover, there’s always the chance that the UK decides to transform its rotational ~1,000-troop military presence in Estonia into a permanent fixture. That would make it the third NATO member to do so in the region after the US (in Poland and Romania) and Germany (in Lithuania). This could be sold as a hedge against the US withdrawing some of its troops.

Estonia’s internal situation is also becoming increasingly tense as a result of three interconnected developments.

The first concerns the latest law denying local voting rights to foreigners, which includes some of those 22.5% of Russians living in the country who don’t meet the post-independence criteria for citizenship and are thus legally classified as “stateless persons”.

For background, Estonia considers them to be the descendants of “Soviet occupiers”, which is the basis upon which it’s restricted their rights.

Expanding upon the last point about historical perception, Estonia is also ramping up its long-running campaign of dismantling Soviet-era World War II monuments, which the state regards symbols of Soviet occupation. 

Russia, however, believes that this move amounts to historical revisionism. In connection with that, readers should be aware that Russia has consistently accused Estonia of glorifying Nazi collaborators, with the most blatant example thereof being the annual marches in honor of the SS.

As if these moves weren’t provocative enough, Estonia just passed a law requiring the Estonian Chrisitan Orthodox Church to sever its canonical ties with the Russian Orthodox Church. 

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Did Ukrainian Intel Attempt Trump Assassination?

For weeks, the mainstream media has been gripped by mania over Nikita Casap, a teenage resident of rural Wisconsin accused of murdering his mother and stepfather, in order to finance an elaborate scheme to assassinate US President Donald Trump and instigate a nationwide race war. News outlets have given the case blanket coverage. This has included extensive investigative timelines, psychological profiles speculating on the 17-year-old’s motives and mental state, and even cautions that federal funding cuts could prevent similar plots being foiled in future.

Eerily absent from this inexorable flurry of coverage, however, has been much if any reference to how Casap was no lone wolf, but a component of a wider conspiracy coordinated with and directed by as yet unidentified actors in Ukraine. Even more damningly, there has been zero consideration of whether the intended assassination of Trump was one way or another orchestrated by Kiev’s security and intelligence services, in order to sabotage ongoing peace negotiations between Moscow and Washington.

This glaring oversight is all the more inexcusable given the contents of a publicly-accessible FBI affidavit. It contains numerous excerpts of private conversations conducted over prior months via Telegram between Casap and pseudonymous individuals with Ukrainian telephone numbers in Cyrillic, discussing the killing of Trump in some detail. In one such chat, Casap posed a variety of questions to an anonymous Ukrainian user, amply indicating he expected to be extracted to Kiev once he took Trump out.

“How long will I need to hide before I will be moved to Ukraine?” he enquired, adding, “I probably should brush up on my Russian.” He further asked, “So while in Ukraine, I’ll be able to get a normal job and have a normal life? Even if when [sic] it’s found out I did it?” In an even more revealing exchange in January, Casap asked an “unknown” confederate “what country do you think will get the blame for this?” They stated plainly:

“Russia will be blamed for it, this is the goal.”

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Russia Resumes ‘Special Military Operation’ After 30-Hour Easter Truce Expires, Moscow Says

Russian forces have resumed military operations against Ukraine following the expiration on April 21 of a 30-hour cease-fire, which Moscow unilaterally announced last weekend to mark the Easter holiday.

“With the expiry of the truce, the Russian Armed Forces continued the special military operation,” Moscow’s defense ministry stated, referring to its ongoing invasion of eastern Ukraine.

In a statement cited by Russia’s TASS news agency, the ministry claimed that Russian forces had strictly observed the Easter cease-fire, which lasted from 6 p.m. on April 19 to midnight on April 20 (Moscow time).

Hours after the truce expired, the Ukrainian air force said Russia had fired a number of missiles and drones into Ukraine’s Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, and Cherkasy regions.

According to the Ukrainian air force, most incoming drones were successfully neutralized by air defense batteries.

Ukrainian officials said that no deaths or injuries—or any significant material damage—had so far been reported as a result of the renewed Russian attacks.

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Does Zelensky Want Peace or War?

Considerable attention has been paid to whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is serious about negotiating a peace or whether he is delaying to provide time to achieve all of Russia’s goals on the battlefield. The Kremlin, itself, has said that, though they take the Trump administration’s diplomatic efforts seriously, they cannot simply be accepted “as they are” because they have not yet addressed “Russia’s core demand, that is, the need to resolve the issues stemming from the root causes of this conflict.”

Russia has been accused by some of rejecting Trump’s ceasefire. The Kremlin has called the issue “complex” and cautioned against expectations of “immediate results.” Some of Russia’s “core demands,” like guarantees Ukraine won’t join NATO and protection for ethnic Russians in Ukraine, are reasonable; some, like maximal restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces and Ukraine ceding more territory at the negotiating table than it has lost on the battlefield, are not.

Less attention has been paid to whether Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is serious about negotiating a peace. Though it is frequently claimed that, unlike Putin, Zelensky has accepted the Trump administration’s ceasefire without preconditions, like Russia, Ukraine has set preconditions. Zelensky has stipulated that children abducted by Russia and Ukrainian civilians illegally held by Russia must be returned. He has identified as red lines, reasonably, that no territory beyond that already occupied by Russia be ceded, and, more unreasonably, that adequate security guarantees be given. Unreasonable because those security guarantees, as Zelensky has previously made clear, must be NATO membership or international forces that include the United States. Recently, Ukraine added the red line that it could not accept limitations on its armed forces: “This is a principled position of Ukraine – no one, and certainly not the aggressor country Russia, will dictate to Ukraine what kind of armed forces Ukraine should have.”

But more immediately, and more provocatively, there has recently been a series of events that Ukraine has seized upon and potentially enhanced to provide a cause for increased Western aid and intervention. Standing between the Trump administration, who is trying to negotiate an end to the war, and Europe, who seems determined to continue the war, Zelensky has bought the rights to these true events and produced stories that may dramatically enhance the facts in order to provide the motivation to bring the U.S. back into the war.

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Congressman Visits Ukraine Frontlines, Filmed Firing Heavy Weapon

Apparently trying to out-hawk the late John McCain, Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick has described that he recently traveled to Ukraine and spent several days at the front lines.

The 51-year old Republican rep from Pennsylvania spent a total of a week inside the war-ravaged country, visiting soldiers while making declarations that Ukraine and the US will defeat the Russian military.

Fitzpatrick even did a provocative photo op wherein he signed an artillery shell “to Putin”. And even more alarming is that he filmed himself firing a large gun, which may have been an anti-aircraft weapon.

It’s unclear whether he was manning the gun near an actual combat zone, or if he was really engaging a target. Likely it was at some kind of training or firing range.

Still, it’s clear the Congressman was trying to be as provocative against the Russians as possible, at a moment a Republican president is trying to forge peace between Moscow and Kiev.

Crucially, Fitzpatrick traveled around with Ukraine’s National Guard Artillery and Third Assault Brigade – the latter which is made up of Azov Special Operations soldiers and is commanded by Andriy Biletsky, who has long been accused of having neo-Nazi links and ideology.

He wrote on X after the trip, “It was my profound honor to deliver a very ‘personal’ message to Vladimir Putin today, from the front lines of the war near the Russian border, on behalf of our PA-1 community.  The only permissible details to share are that ‘the message was delivered on target.’“

This does suggest he may have been firing on or near an actual war zone – though the security risks would be enough to probably prevent him from getting very close to any real fighting.

Fitzpatrick has been receiving significant backlash over the stunt, especially as it could harm the cause of Trump’s efforts to negotiate peace settlement. In addressing ‘messages’ directly to Putin, it seems a deliberate effort at sabotaging peace.

Gen. Mike Flynn (ret.) ripped the Congressman, saying on X: “How stupid can you be?”

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Secret Terror Blueprints for US to ‘Help Ukraine Resist’

Explosive leaked documents reviewed by The Grayzone show how a shady transatlantic collective of academics and military-intelligence operatives conceived schemes which would lead to the U.S. “helping Ukraine resist” and to prolonging the proxy war “by virtually any means short of American and NATO forces deploying to Ukraine or attacking Russia.”

The operatives assembled their war plans immediately in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and delivered them directly to the highest-ranking relevant U.S. National Security Council official in the Biden administration.

Proposed operations ranged from covert military options to jihadist-style psychological operations against Russian civilians, with the authors insisting, “we need to take a page from ISIS’ playbook.” 

ISIS was not the only militant outfit upheld as a model for Ukraine’s military. The intelligence cabal also proposed modernizing improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, like those staged by Iraqi insurgents against occupying U.S. troops, for a potential stay-behind guerrilla army in Russia, which would attack rail lines, power plants and other civilian targets.

Many of the cabal’s recommendations were subsequently enacted by the Biden administration, dangerously escalating the conflict and repeatedly crossing Russia’s clearly-stated red lines.

Included among the proposals were providing extensive training to “Ukrainian expatriates” in using Javelin and Stinger missiles, enabling “cyberattacks on Russia by ‘patriotic hackers’ with deniability,” and flooding Kiev with “unmanned combat air vehicles.”

It was also foreseen that “replacement fighter aircraft” would be provided by “many sources,” and that “non-Ukrainian volunteer pilots and ground crews” would be recruited to fight air battles in the manner of the Flying Tigers, a World War II-era force composed of American Air Force pilots, which was formed in April 1941 to help the Chinese oppose Japan’s invasion before Washington’s formal entry into the conflict.

The document was written and cosigned by a quartet of academic armchair warriors with colorful pasts. They included historian Andrew Orr, the director of the Kansas State Institute for Military History.

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Over 1,300 Easter truce violations by Ukraine – MOD

The Russian military has been targeted more than 1,300 times by Ukrainian forces in the less than 24 hours since the declaration of an Easter truce by both sides, the Defense Ministry in Moscow has said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said earlier that the pause in hostilities would be in effect from 6:00pm Moscow time on Saturday, and last until midnight on Monday. He instructed the country’s military to stay on high alert and be ready “to respond to any violations or provocations.” Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky answered a few hours later that Kiev’s forces “will act in a reciprocal way.”

The Defense Ministry said in a statement on Sunday that “despite the announcement of the Easter truce,” Ukrainian forces attempted to assault the positions of the Russian military in the areas of the settlements of Sukhaya Balka and Bogatyr in Russia’s Donetsk People’s Republic overnight. The attacks were repelled, it added.

Kiev’s troops also used 48 plane-type UAVs against the Russian military, including one in Crimea, the statement read. 

“The Ukrainian units fired 444 times from cannons and mortars at the positions of our troops, [and] carried out 900 strikes with quadcopter drones,” the ministry said.

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Russia announces Easter ceasefire

Russian President Vladimir Putin has announced a temporary Easter pause in hostilities with Ukraine, which is slated to begin at 18:00 Moscow time on Saturday and last until midnight on April 21.

The announcement came during his meeting with Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov in Moscow. Putin expressed hope that Kiev would demonstrate goodwill and adhere to the ceasefire.

”At the same time, our troops must be prepared to respond to any violations or provocations by the adversary, to any aggressive actions,” he said.

Putin stated that Ukraine’s reaction to the ceasefire would be a clear indicator of whether Kiev is sincerely willing to engage in negotiations to end the conflict.

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Germany wants the UK to hold its hand while it starts WWIII

Germany’s chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz doesn’t officially take office until May 6, but that hasn’t stopped him from hitting the press circuit like it’s demolition day. Apparently, he’s got some lost time – and infrastructure – to make up for. 

In a chat with Germany’s public broadcaster, ARD, he floated the idea that Kiev, which seems to rank higher than Berlin on his priority list, needs to “get ahead of the situation” on the battlefield and “shape events” instead of playing defense. The event he seems most eager to shape? Oh, just the Third World War, apparently. Because he pivoted straight to the Kerch Bridge – mainland Russia’s lifeline to the Crimean peninsula – like it’s been living on borrowed time.

Merz said that “if for example, the most important land connection between Russia and Crimea is destroyed, or if something happens on Crimea itself, where most of the Russian military logistics are located, then that would be an opportunity to bring this country strategically back into the picture finally.” Cool, cool. Which picture would that be, exactly? The one labeled “Catastrophic Misjudgments of the 21st Century”?

Probably. Which is why Merz needs a useful idiot to ride shotgun alongside him in the doltmobile to share in any responsibility for the eventual mayhem when things inevitably go pear-shaped.

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US Open to Giving Crimea to Russia in Peace Deal

The United States is prepared to recognize Russian control over Crimea. This is part of a broader peace agreement the US has facilitating between Ukraine and Russia.

If elected, President Trump promised to bring peace to Ukraine, but he did not understand that illegitimate President Volodymyr Zelensky and the globalist West would be his main obstacles to peace in the region.

Crimea is a peninsula in the Black Sea. In 2014, Russia took control of the region and its ports.

As far as its history goes – Crimea came under Russian control following the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca  in1774.  Catherine the Great from Russia annexed the peninsula for Russia in 1783.

Anglo-French forces later in 1856 and took control of Sevastopol, Crimea, a major port on the Black Sea.ssia then took control of Crimea during the Russian Civil War in 1918 to 1920 when the Bolsheviks took control of the country.

The peninsula later became the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1921.

In 1954 the peninsula was transferred from the Russians to Ukraine.

In 1991 Crimea was once again made an autonomous republic within the Soviet Union. Then, as the Soviet Union collapsed in December 1991, Crimea was passed to the newly independent Ukraine.

Russia, under Vladimir Putin took control of Crimea in 2014.

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