Tag: russia

Even if the war ended tomorrow, Ukraine could end up broke by 2026

There is no plan in place to fund the Ukrainian budget after 2025.

Even if the war ends by the summer of 2025, it will take some time to reduce military expenditures, leaving European nations on the hook. It’s not clear that European elites have fully understood the political costs, however much longer the war continues.

With intensive, U.S.-brokered negotiations ongoing in Saudi Arabia involving separate Ukrainian and Russian delegations, hopes are rising that the Trump administration will finally be able to bring an end to the war.

But even if the war ends tomorrow, it would be unwise to assume that Ukraine could reduce military spending close to prewar levels.

Ukraine now has almost 900,000 men and women at arms, a threefold increase from peacetime, and that doesn’t take into account irrecoverable losses through death and injury. Estimates vary widely, but the casualty rate is commonly thought to number in the hundreds of thousands, with compensation provided to the injured and families of the deceased.

The war in Ukraine has therefore come at a vast financial cost to that country. Ukraine’s defense spending has risen tenfold since the 2021 budget was announced, when social welfare payments were the country’s biggest expenditure.

This has left a gaping hole in Ukraine’s finances that no amount of tax increases or Western donations will be able to fill over a sustained period without political consequences.

Since 2022, Ukraine has run an average budget deficit of over 22% of GDP. Based on the current exchange rate, Ukraine’s budget shortfall in 2025 amounts to around $41.5 billion. And that assumes defense spending falling slightly this year. In the hopefully unlikely event that war continues to the end of the year, the Ukrainian state would need to revise its budget upwards as it did in 2024.

Today, Ukraine’s domestic revenue, including taxes, excise, and duties, just about covers the cost of the defense effort, which in 2024 accounted for 64% of its total budget expenditure. That includes significant tax increases as the war has gone on. Total tax revenue will have risen by more than 100% since the war started and personal income taxes by over 200%. This in a country in which, according to the Wilson Center, 50% of the population lives at a basic subsistence level.

As Ukraine is cut off from international capital markets, it has had to meet the difference through aid and loans from Western nations.

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Mainstream Media Criticizes Ceasefire Negotiations in Ukraine: Don’t Believe Them

The mainstream media continuously points out that while Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has expressed readiness to accept the Trump administration’s proposed thirty-day ceasefire without preconditions, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said only that he supports the idea of a ceasefire while attaching preconditions that render it unworkable.

Neither claim is true. Zelensky has attached preconditions, and Putin’s preconditions are not a priori designed to render a ceasefire unworkable.

Zelensky has said, not that he has no preconditions, but that “We do not set conditions that complicate anything.” Though largely omitted from the mainstream narrative, Zelensky has agreed to negotiations with certain key preconditions. According to reporting by The Independent, Kiev stipulates that negotiations must guarantee the return of children abducted by Russia and of Ukrainian civilians illegally held by Russia. Two key red lines are that no territory beyond that already occupied by Russia be ceded and that adequate security guarantees be given. Those security guarantees, Zelensky has previously made clear, must be NATO membership or must be international forces that include the United States.

Though those two key red lines have escaped criticism, they are not categorically different from Putin’s key preconditions. Putin, too, has made territorial demands to address Ukraine’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements and to protect the rights and lives of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. And Putin, too, has made security demands to address NATO’s failure to implement its promise not to expand east, a broken promise that has made its way all the way to Ukraine and threatened Russia’s security. The Kremlin has recently called this its own “ironclad” security guarantee, and the Russian readout of the conversation between Trump and Putin refers to “the root causes of the crisis” and “Russia’s legitimate interests in the field of security.”

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Chronicle of An Unnecessary War: How the West Provoked Russia and Squandered Peace

Scott Horton’s 900-page masterpiece, Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine, is a hugely important work that meticulously documents how three decades of Western encirclement provoked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. This long review aims to provide a broad and comprehensive overview of the many crimes, miscalculations, and failures by all sides that led to an unnecessary war.

Scott Horton, founder and director of the Libertarian Institute, is best known for conducting over 6,000 in-depth interviews with experts on U.S. foreign policy. His impressive new book Provoked is a monumental indictment of Western foreign policy follies, tracing how NATO expansion and regime-change wars fueled Russia’s hostility. With thousands of citations, Horton’s research persuasively shows that Western actions—cloaked in rhetoric of democracy and humanitarianism—provoked Moscow’s response.

From NATO’s broken promises to the arming of extremists, Horton exposes a pattern of Western hypocrisy, painting Russia as an expansionist aggressor while sabotaging peace talks in Ukraine. The book is not a defense of Putin’s regime but a forensic audit of how Western overreach and ideological hubris transformed post-Cold War optimism into nuclear standoff. With the precision of a historian and the tenacity of an investigative journalist, Horton challenges the mainstream portrayal of Russia as the sole architect of global instability, arguing instead that U.S. and NATO policies exacerbated conflicts from Chechnya to the Donbas.

By weaving diplomatic cables, declassified documents, battlefield testimonies, and historical analysis into a gripping narrative that is as engrossing as it is unsettling, Horton encourages readers to challenge the myths that threaten to destroy us. Every pivotal claim is substantiated with quotes and data from unimpeachable sources, even establishment figures and outlets. Horton’s reliance on mainstream-respected voices, paired with granular archival research, grants the book a rare authority, transforming what might read as contrarian revisionism into an irrefutable counter-narrative. Horton’s sharp analysis and dark humor make Provoked compelling. This is not a polemic but a forensic use of the West’s own records to expose its missteps.

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Biden-Appointed U.S. Attorney Who Was Found Dead Led High-Profile Investigations Into CIA Leaks and Russian Fraud Cases

Jessica Aber, a Biden-appointed U.S. Attorney who was found dead in her Virginia home this past weekend, was known for spearheading high-profile investigations into CIA intelligence leaks, war crime allegations tied to individuals linked with Russia, and suspects involved in transferring sensitive U.S. technology to Moscow.

Jessica Aber, 43, was found unresponsive on Saturday morning.

“This morning, at approximately 9:18 a.m., Alexandria Police responded to the 900 block of Beverley Drive for the report of an unresponsive woman. Officers located a deceased woman. Following notification of family members, the Alexandria Police Department can confirm the identity of the woman as Ms. Jessica Aber, age 43, former U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia,” police said.

Alexandria Police responded to a call about an unresponsive woman at Aber’s residence on Beverley Drive, Alexandria, Virginia.

Officers found her dead, and the department initiated an investigation as a matter of protocol, with the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner of Virginia tasked with determining the cause and manner of death.

A family friend told CBS News that her death is believed to be the result of a longstanding medical issue, and two former senior Justice Department officials informed NBC News that authorities have found no reason to suspect foul play.

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Trump’s Ukraine Deals: No Blank Checks, No World War

President Trump vowed to end the war in Ukraine, and true to his word, he has offered President Zelensky two smart, mutually beneficial deals: defense in exchange for access to minerals and defense in exchange for energy cooperation.

Both proposals would have strengthened Ukraine’s position while advancing U.S. strategic interests—yet Zelensky rejected them. It appears he prefers unconditional aid, giving nothing in return.

Meanwhile, Europe seems determined not only to prolong the war indefinitely but also to risk provoking Russia into a broader conflict that could spiral into World War III.

The first major deal President Trump offered to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was a strategic defense-for-minerals agreement that served the interests of both nations.

Under this deal, Ukraine would grant the U.S. access to critical mineral resources—such as rare earth elements—in exchange for increased American defense support.

This arrangement provided Ukraine with much-needed funding and a de facto security guarantee, as the presence of American personnel on the ground to safeguard mineral operations would serve as a deterrent to Russian aggression.

Crucially, the deal accomplished all of this without requiring Ukraine to join NATO, making it more acceptable to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who had long opposed NATO expansion.

The presence of Americans on key sites would have raised the stakes for any Russian attack, potentially deterring an invasion due to the risk of direct conflict with U.S. forces.

However, European leaders harshly criticized President Trump for proposing the defense-for-minerals deal, demanding instead that the United States continue its open-ended military support for Europe and financial aid to Ukraine.

Many in Europe labeled Trump a bully and an extremist for attempting to reshape the terms of engagement.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky also rejected the offer, preferring unconditional financial aid over a mutually beneficial agreement.

Ironically, while condemning Trump’s proposal—which could have de-escalated tensions and provided a peaceful resolution—European nations have moved in the opposite direction.

They are rearming, expanding their militaries, approving a massive EU-wide military spending loan program, and even considering deploying troops directly to Ukraine, a move that could risk triggering World War III.

All the while, they continue to criticize the United States for stepping back from the war and exploring a diplomatic solution.

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Is The EU’s New Army The Final Nail In The Project’s Coffin?

It used to be quite a common thing for people in polite society to say “imagine if women ran the world…we would certainly have less wars, right?”. Wrong. Women are running the world, well, at least the EU world. Three women to be precise. Ursula von der Leyen, EU commission boss, Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s foreign minister and of course, last but not least, the EU’s own foreign affairs chief, Kaja Kallas. And what do all three of these women have in common, apart from having names which sound like sexually transmitted diseases? They all want war.

In line with spectacularly poor decision making right from the beginning of the Ukraine war, with probably Russian sanctions at the top of the list of stupid ideas, the EU has only one way forward in Ukraine. At whatever cost, it must come out at least not looking like it lost. The EU project is very much like an old man on a bike moving very slowly along a Dutch cyclists’ path. The fear from the elites in the EU is that if he falls off the bike, he will never get back on. The constant worry from top EU figures is that if the EU loses its momentum with press coverage and relevance in general, then a pause – any pause – could be devastating. This, you might be surprised to hear, is what EU officials themselves confided in me when I was based in the Belgian capital. Such an expression gives you an idea of how little confidence the EU has in itself as a worthy, stable long-term project.

And so the madness escalates now to such a point where we are actually looking at draining the wallets and purses of our own very poorest people to fund the ultimate EU sex toy going: an EU army.

The idea of an EU army is not new. As a notion, it’s as old as the hills as hard core federalists in Brussels have been arguing for the EU to have its own army for at least twenty years, but until now failed. The main reason for the idea not getting off the ground is that it created too many new, worrying political problems for the EU to wrangle with. In a nutshell, there was always a risk of a new political crisis that an EU army would create as member states argue over which country gets to run it, which nationality is its head, where it would be based and how politically would it be run, based on what decision making structure? (existing EU council, EU commission, member states themselves in a new set up via defence ministries). The concern was always that Germany would have too much power and then this would open an old wound about the country re-arming and rekindling memories of 1939. And we all know where that led.

The EU army idea is actually more complicated than you might think. One of the reasons why it never got off the ground despite several serious attempts is that both the EU and member states are both confused and lack confidence about such a bold plan. They are literally concerned the idea could blow up in their faces. It’s what Americans call ‘blowback’. No, that’s nothing to do with the German foreign minister or even innuendo. It’s a military term for when a gun throws back energy in your face when it discharges and wounds whoever is holding the weapon.

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The Terrible Cost of Kursk

On March 16, The New York Times reported that “Ukrainian forces have pulled almost entirely out of the Kursk region of Russia.” After seven months, one Ukrainian soldier told the BBC, “Everything is finished in the Kursk region.”

Back on August 6, 2024, the Ukrainian armed forces surprised both Russia and Western analysts with a lightning advance across the Russian border into 500 square miles of Russia’s Kursk region. Although the offensive caught the Russian military by surprise – and the area had been left relatively undefended – the territory concerned contained little of strategic significance.

If the offensive achieved anything straight away, it was to cause some embarrassment for the Russian government that Ukrainian forces could take pre-2022 Russian territory. At the same time, it certainly provided some short-term propaganda benefit at home and in the West: a small morale boost to Ukrainian military and its wider population that was no doubt getting used to bleak news from the frontline after the failure of Ukraine’s much vaunted summer 2023 counteroffensive.

Like in so many battles in this war, and like in so many battles in Russian and Soviet history, the Russian armed forces accommodated to changing circumstances. As in the war as a whole, after a seemingly reckless – or in this case careless – initial phase, they started to introduce more resources, set realistic expectations for success, became more methodical in their approach and introduced innovative new weapons and appropriate tactics to best utilize them.

Back in August 2024, there may also have been a deliberate decision of the Russian military command to push the Ukrainian troops out of Kursk in slow motion because their prolonged presence there kept the best trained and best equipped Ukrainian troops off the battlefield that really mattered in eastern Ukraine. The decision to accelerate the operation and push them out very recently was no doubt motivated by the prospect of seemingly inevitable ceasefire negotiations driven by the U.S. Trump administration.

The final stages of Ukraine’s Kursk offensive certainly did not go well for Ukraine. Only days ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that the Ukrainian troops were “completely isolated and under complete fire control.” He also suggested that getting out was increasingly “impossible.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky insisted that Putin was “lying.” Ukraine’s military was adamant that “[r]eports of the alleged ‘encirclement’ of Ukrainian units by the enemy in the Kursk region are false and fabricated by the Russians… There is no threat of encirclement of our units.”

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Why’d Russia Only Just Now Decree That Ukrainians Must Legalize Their Presence Or Leave?

This suggests that Russia expects a political settlement or at least an armistice within the next six months so it’s now prioritizing the further legitimization of its control over the new regions by finally completing their legal integration into the country at the local administrative level by 10 September.

Putin signed a decree on Thursday obligating all Ukrainians in Russia without valid residence documents to legalize their stay by 10 September. They can do this by either applying for Russian citizenship via the simplified procedure for Ukrainian nationals that entered into force in summer 2022 or for residency by either proving legal employment or enrollment in a Russian education program. Many assumed that this had already happened some time ago, especially in the new regions, yet it’s only just now occurring.

Some Ukrainian nationals’ legally ambiguous status doesn’t mean that the state isn’t aware of who they are and what they’re doing, just that it wasn’t hitherto a priority to clarify this with regard to Russian law, likely due to stereotypically slow bureaucracy and the state’s focus on waging the special operation. With the Ukrainian Conflict drawing to a close due to the nascent Russian–US “New Détente”, it’s now time to wrap up loose ends such as these for further legitimizing Russia’s control over its new regions.

Ukrainian and other foreign nationals must therefore legalize their presence there just as they’d have to do in any other country otherwise it would look like Russia is doubting the legitimacy of its own claims by making an exception for these locals. If Putin didn’t get around to decreeing that this is finally done within less than six months, the timeframe of which suggests approximately how long he expects the peace process to last at max, then that category of residents would literally be above the law.

From there, Ukraine could claim that Russia is “atoning for its guilty conscience of illegally occupying foreign land” by letting the locals over whom the state assumed responsibility “preserve their separate Ukrainian legal status”, thus serving as the pretext for Kiev to meddle in those lands after hostilities end. By mandating that they voluntarily legalize their presence in line with Russian law or be deported, Moscow neutralizes Kiev’s aforesaid claims, thus delegitimizing any post-conflict meddling on that basis.

In other words, this decree is meant to facilitate the incipient peace process by fortifying Russia’s legal claims to the four former Ukrainian regions that unified with it after September’s 2022 referenda, which reaffirms that Russia won’t cede these lands since they’re now being fully treated as integral territories. They were constitutionally considered as such for over two and a half years, but local bureaucracy took a long time to catch up in all legal regards, though that’s finally changing as a result of Putin’s decree.

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Outrage after German intelligence chief says Ukraine war should keep going for another 5 years

The Ukraine war has already cost hundreds of thousands of lives, but Germany’s top intelligence chief is predicting far more carnage, and Ukraine’s opposition is reacting with outrage.

Bruno Kahl, the head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) made the comments in an interview, saying: “If a war in Ukraine comes to a standstill earlier than (2029 or 2030), then all the means (of Russia) – both the technical and the material – are able much earlier to provide a threat against Europe.”

In Ukraine, this portion of the interview has been met with sharp backlash.

German newspaper Berliner Zeitung now asks: “Will the war be waged on the backs of the Ukraine?” Perhaps a ridiculous question concerning it has already been waged on their backs for the last three years.

The paper further writes: “In Ukraine, that passage is causing excitement. The reading in Kyiv: The German intelligence chief publicly declares that the Ukraine war should not end before 2029. Otherwise, Russia could use its resources faster to pose a threat to Europe.”

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We Told You – Now China Wants Troops In Ukraine As ‘Peacekeepers’

It is rare the world gets to see a glimpse behind the CCP’s green curtain, but we did today. A portion of their agenda is exposed in Europe.

China is being considered for participation in a peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, reports Welt am Sonntag.

Chinese representatives held informal talks in Brussels, exploring how European nations would react to their involvement.

China may take part in peacekeeping missions in Ukraine Chinese representatives have held unofficial talks in Brussels, probing how European countries would react to the idea.

According to diplomats in Brussels, involving China could increase the chances that Russia would agree to the deployment of peacekeeping forces in Ukraine.

China’s entire focus is great power competition, unrestricted warfare against the United States. The purpose of the Ukraine war (enabled by China’s Manchurian Candidate Joe Biden) is to weaken the U.S. militarily, and tie Washington up in a war long-term, to prevent the ‘Asian pivot’.

This is obvious to any critically thinking human being. Those pushing for the ‘Ukraine war’ are either working for China directly, compromised, or simply are not able to clearly see the world.

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