Tag: ukraine

Giving Ukraine a US Security Guarantee Risks National Suicide

Too much of the talk about the recent Alaska summit meeting between President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin focuses on the wrong issue.  The key question is not whether an eventual peace accord ending the fighting in Ukraine will require Kyiv to accept Moscow’s continued possession of Crimea and at least a portion of Ukraine’s Donbas region.  Anyone with a modicum of realism understands that such territorial concessions are unavoidable if the bloody war of attrition is to end.  The real issue involves the demand of Ukraine and of its fan club in NATO that Kyiv be given “security guarantees” in exchange for accepting that reality.  Agreeing to such an open-ended commitment could ultimately prove fatal to the United States.

Trump has attempted to steer a middle course to accommodate the competing demands and extricate Washington from its entanglement in NATO’s dangerous proxy war using Ukraine as a weapon against Russia.  He has told Ukraine leader Volodymyr Zelensky repeatedly that his country must at least make some territorial concessions – especially Crimea.  Trump also has indicated that Ukraine must give up its aspirations for official NATO membership.  However, he has been receptive to endorsing vaguely conceived security commitments to shield Ukraine from any further coercion by Russia.

Extending a U.S. security guarantee to Kyiv could take two forms – both of them bad from the standpoint of America’s genuine interests and well-being.  One version could consist of pledges from individual European NATO powers – especially major players such as Great Britain, France, Germany, Poland, and Turkey–as well as the United States to enforce a peace accord between Kyiv and Moscow.  Another equally dangerous option would be to establish an explicit pledge from NATO as an alliance to come to Ukraine’s defense if it is the victim of renewed aggression from Russia.  In essence, that move would make Ukraine a de facto NATO member, even though Kyiv apparently would not have the right accorded to formal members to vote on Alliance decisions.  Any version of a security guarantee also is almost certain to include a peacekeeping contingent to enforce a ceasefire or a full-blown peace agreement.  However, Russian leaders insist that such a deployment must never take place without Moscow’s explicit consent.

Unfortunately, the Western powers may seek to implement the scheme of deploying peacekeeping troops along with a robust NATO security guarantee to Kyiv in defiance of Moscow’s wishes.  NATO countries have already blurred and expanded the security pledge contained in Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty to consider an attack on any Alliance member to be an attack on all members and to provide aid to the victim.  Since Russia’s expanded military operations in Ukraine began in February 2022, the United States and other key NATO nations have treated Ukraine as though it were already an integral part of the alliance.

Article 5 does not require a member to launch retaliatory military strikes against the aggressor or even to provide weaponry to the alliance signatory under siege.  Yet, the United States and other NATO countries have provided sophisticated weapons to Kyiv, including missiles and drones that it has used to strike targets deep inside Russia.  NATO intelligence operatives also have assisted Ukrainian forces to conduct offensive operations against Russian targets.  Finally, although the evidence is not definitive, the United States, Britain, Norway, and possibly Poland are prime suspects in the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream natural gas pipeline. 

Keep reading

Ukrainian arrested in Italy over Nord Stream sabotage – German prosecutors

Italian police have arrested a Ukrainian man who it is claimed is suspected of involvement in the bombing of the Nord Stream gas pipelines, German prosecutors reported on Thursday.

The man, referred to only as Sergey K, was detained near Rimini on the basis of a European arrest warrant. German investigators believe he led a unit that blew up sections of the pipelines in September 2022.

The attacks, which ruptured both the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines in the Baltic Sea, were, improbably, initially blamed on Russian operatives. But German prosecutors later traced a rented sailing yacht to the operation and linked it to Ukrainian nationals.

Investigators say Sergey K was part of a group that placed explosives on the pipelines near the island of Bornholm in September 2022. The accused was allegedly one of the coordinators of the operation. He and his accomplices are said to have used a sailing yacht that departed from the German city of Rostock. The vessel had previously been rented from a German company through intermediaries using forged identification documents. 

Keep reading

Ukraine has lost over 1.7 million troops – leaked docs

Ukraine has allegedly lost more than 1.7 million troops killed and missing, multiple media outlets reported on Wednesday, citing a leaked digital card index from the country’s armed forces.

Russian hacking groups were reportedly able to obtain the information by gaining access to the personal computers and local networks of the Ukrainian General Staff. The database is said to include the full names of deceased soldiers, descriptions of the circumstances and places of their death or disappearance, personal data, next of kin, and photos.

The entries suggest that since the escalation of the Ukraine conflict in 2022, Kiev’s forces have lost a total of 1,721,000 servicemen. 118.5 thousand were apparently killed in 2022, 405.4 thousand in 2023, 595 thousand in 2024 and a record 621 thousand in 2025.

Hackers from the groups Killnet, Palach Pro, User Sec and Beregini are said to have obtained terabytes of information about the Ukrainian military. Aside from personnel losses, the groups allegedly also possess the personal data of the command of the Special Operations Forces and the Main Intelligence Directorate, lists of all countries that have supplied weapons to Kiev and lists of all weapons transferred from 2022 to 2025.

This Ukrainian casualty estimate far exceeds losses previously reported by Kiev.

Keep reading

Declassified: CIA’s Covert Ukraine Invasion Plan

On August 7th, US polling giant Gallup published the remarkable results of a survey of Ukrainians. Public support for Kiev “fighting until victory” has plummeted to a record low “across all segments” of the population, “regardless of region or demographic group.” In a “nearly complete reversal from public opinion in 2022,” 69% of citizens “favor a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible.” Just 24% wish to keep fighting.  However, vanishingly few believe the proxy war will end anytime soon.

The reasons for Ukrainian pessimism on this point are unstated, but an obvious explanation is the intransigence of President Volodymyr Zelensky, encouraged by his overseas backers – Britain in particular. London’s reverie of breaking up Russia into readily-exploitable chunks dates back centuries, and became turbocharged in the wake of the February 2014 Maidan coup. In July that year, a precise blueprint for the current proxy conflict was published by the Institute for Statecraft, a NATO/MI6 cutout founded by veteran British military intelligence apparatchik Chris Donnelly.

In response to the Donbass civil war, Statecraft advocated targeting Moscow with a variety of “anti-subversive measures”. This included “economic boycott, breach of diplomatic relations,” as well as “propaganda and counter-propaganda, pressure on neutrals.” The objective was to produce “armed conflict of the old-fashioned sort” with Russia, which “Britain and the West could win.” While we are now witnessing in real-time the brutal unravelling of Donnelly’s monstrous plot, Anglo-American designs of using Ukraine as a beachhead for all-out war with Moscow date back far further.

In August 1957, the CIA secretly drew up elaborate plans for an invasion of Ukraine by US special forces. It was hoped neighbourhood anti-Communist agitators would be mobilized as footsoldiers to assist in the effort. A detailed 200-page report, Resistance Factors and Special Forces Areas, set out demographic, economic, geographical, historical and political factors throughout the then-Soviet Socialist Republic that could facilitate, or impede, Washington’s quest to ignite local insurrection, and in turn the USSR’s ultimate collapse.

The mission was forecast to be a delicate and difficult balancing act, as much of Ukraine’s population held “few grievances” against Russians or Communist rule, which could be exploited to foment an armed uprising. Just as problematically, “the long history of union between Russia and Ukraine, which stretches in an almost unbroken line from 1654 to the present day,” resulted in “many Ukrainians” having “adopted the Russian way of life”. Problematically, there was thus a pronounced lack of “resistance to Soviet rule” among the population.

The “great influence” of Russian culture over Ukrainians, “many influential positions” in local government being held “by Russians or Ukrainians sympathetic to [Communist] rule, and “relative similarity” of their “languages, customs, and backgrounds”, meant there were “fewer points of conflict between the Ukrainians and Russians” than in Warsaw Pact nations. Throughout those satellite states, the CIA had to varying success already recruited clandestine networks of “freedom fighters” as anti-Communist Fifth Columnists. Yet, the Agency remained keen to identify potential “resistance” actors in Ukraine:

“Some Ukrainians are apparently only slightly aware of the differences which set them apart from Russians and feel little national antagonism. Nevertheless, important grievances exist, and among other Ukrainians there is opposition to Soviet authority which often has assumed a nationalist form. Under favorable conditions, these people might be expected to assist American Special Forces in fighting against the regime.”

Keep reading

ABC’s Martha Raddatz Cheers Against Trump’s Efforts To Achieve Peace In Ukraine

President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday in Alaska in a historic attempt to end the more than two-year war between Ukraine and Russia. Since Russia’s 2022 invasion, tens of thousands have died, while millions have been displaced. The Alaska summit marked the first serious step toward direct negotiations between Moscow and Kiev.

But for ABC News’ Martha Raddatz and the rest of the propaganda press, a Trump-negotiated peace itself was a problem. Instead of acknowledging the significance of Trump’s diplomacy, Raddatz spent her Sunday segment disparaging the president for daring to treat Putin like a foreign leader who can choose to keep the war going rather than a pariah.

Raddatz opened her report by sneering at diplomatic courtesy:

Russia’s Vladimir Putin, responsible for invading Ukraine and the deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians, given a red carpet arrival, a warm handshake and a ride in the presidential limousine to a closed door three-hour meeting with the whole world watching and waiting.

Notably, Raddatz apparently had no such objections (based on a cursory search of the web) to “warm” welcomes when then-President Joe Biden rolled out the red carpet for Chinese dictator Xi Jinping.

Keep reading

Ukraine wants Europeans to pay $100bn for weapons deal with US

Ukraine has proposed that its European backers spend $100 billion providing it with American weapons, the Financial Times reported. Kiev continues to seek security guarantees from Washington. 

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky and the heads of several Western European states held talks with US President Donald Trump in Washington on Monday to discuss the ongoing conflict and diplomatic attempts to resolve it.

Trump, who has repeatedly questioned the previous administration’s unconditional aid to Kiev, announced last month that Washington’s NATO allies would effectively pay for the US-made weapons being sent to Ukraine.

In addition to the weapons procurement proposal, Ukraine is preparing a $50 billion deal to produce drones domestically, FT reported, citing four people familiar with the matter and a document Kiev reportedly shared with the US.

Although the document contains limited details, FT said Ukraine intends to purchase at least 10 Patriot air defense missile systems.

Keep reading

Zelensky Declares ‘Impossible’ for Ukraine to Give Up Territory to Russia, Doubles Down on Ceasefire Demand

Ukrainian President Zelensky said on Sunday that it would be “impossible” for Kyiv to cede territory to Russia and reiterated his call for an immediate ceasefire.

Speaking from the European Commission headquarters in Brussels ahead of his planned sit-down with President Donald Trump in the United States on Monday, Zelensky appeared set to maintain his maximalist position towards the war with Russia, and seemingly shoot down officially recognising Moscow’s territorial gains in exchange for a peace agreement.

“Putin has many demands, but we do not know all of them. And if there are really as many as we heard, then it will take time to go through them all. It’s impossible to do this under the pressure of weapons. So, it’s necessary to ceasefire and work quickly on a final deal,” the Ukrainian president said.

This contrasts with President Trump’s position after his bilateral talks with Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, after which Trump said that the best way to end the conflict would be to enter into direct peace talks rather than seeking a preliminary ceasefire.

Apparently responding to reports that Putin demanded that Ukraine cede the entirety of the Donbas region, approximately three-quarters of which is already under Russian control, Zelensky noted that “Putin has been unable” to take over the region entirely for over 12 years and suggested that Ukraine does not intend to retreat from Donetsk.

“The constitution of Ukraine makes it impossible, impossible to give up territory or trade land,” Zelensky said.

However, despite the seemingly definitive declaration, the Ukrainian leader appeared to leave some wiggle room, saying that because the “territorial issue is so important, it should be discussed only by the leaders of Ukraine and Russia” at a trilateral meeting with the United States.

“So far, Russia gives no sign that a trilateral will happen, and if Russia refuses, then new sanctions must follow,” he said.

Keep reading

Europe Reveals Itself as Ridiculous in Ukraine

By Donald Trump’s transactional criterion, NATO has been a costly failure that needs fixing or needs to be cut lose. Europe has failed to pay the price and has left the U.S. with the financial and military burden of defending Europe. The war in Ukraine has proven the point.

But that was never the point of NATO. The point of NATO was never economic nor transactional. The point of NATO was, in large part, to keep Europe militarily coordinated with, dependent on and subordinate to the United States. The point wasn’t to extricate the U.S. from Europe, it was, as Lord Ismay, the first Secretary General of NATO explained, precisely “to keep the Americans in Europe,” while keeping the Russians out. By that criterion, NATO has been a massive success. The Ukraine war has proven that point too.

While it continues, with a loud voice, to make demands regarding the defense of Ukraine and the terms for ending the war, Europe has revealed to the world that it is unable to mount that defense without the U.S. and that it has been sidelined in the negotiations, leaving decisions about Europe to the Americans. 

Europe is unable to supply Ukraine with the weapons it requires and that Europe insists Ukraine must receive. The U.S. has reiterated that it will no longer be the font from which Ukraine’s weapons flow. On August 10, Vice President Vance said clearly again that the U.S. is “done with the funding of the Ukraine war business.” Europe does not have the stockpile to spare nor the capacity to manufacture a fraction of the weapons Ukraine needs. And though Europe has, by necessity, accepted the U.S. plan that Europe can send American weapons to Ukraine if they pay for them, that will not provide Ukraine with even close to the amount of weapons the U.S. was supplying. And even that was not enough.

Not only can Europe not supply the weapons, they cannot supply the troops. Europe has, to its embarrassment, publicly conceded that it cannot mount the number of troops needed to send to Ukraine as peacekeepers after a ceasefire.

The war in Ukraine has exposed Europe’s dependence on the United States. Europe can neither provide the weapons nor the troops to defend itself. Europe has been revealed as dependent on, and subordinate to, the United States.

Ukraine is now facing a crisis on the battlefield. Russia’s military efforts were long dismissed as not rapidly gaining ground. But keeping the media focus on that criterion kept the public in the dark about the real criterion. Russia’s war of attrition was devouring and exhausting Ukraine’s weapons and, more importantly, manpower. The shrinking Ukrainian armed forces is running out of weapons to defend itself against the massive and still growing Russian army. There are not enough soldiers to fill the front line. That leaves gaps in the line. As Ukraine moves troops from other places to fill those gaps, it leaves even bigger gaps in those places. Russia’s war of attrition was setting up this moment. And now, Russian troops are breaking through those gaps in the lines. 

For the first time in the war, the Russian armed forces have broken through key defensive lines and their rapid move west is now measured in miles and not inches. Logistical hubs critical for the Ukrainian armed forces to supply their troops in the east have been partially infiltrated and surrounded. Russian positions are being consolidated and roads that are lifelines to Ukrainian soldiers have been partially cut. There is also reliable reporting from both Russian and Ukrainian sources that the rapid advance has brought the Russian army all the way to the heavily fortified second Donbas fortification line, which they have now breached. Beyond that defensive line is largely open fields with no organized line of defense. The Russian armed forces may then be free to rapidly advance, making the Russian goal of control of the entire Donbas a real possibility. For the first time in the war, the Ukrainian armed forces face the very real possibility of collapse. 

Keep reading

Zelensky defies Trump minutes after US President lays out his terms for peace – setting up another showdown at White House TODAY watched by European leaders

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appears to have already rejected President Donald Trump‘s terms for a peace plan with Russia as the two leaders prepare for an Oval Office showdown. 

Trump laid out his demands on Sunday night by telling Zelensky to sacrifice Crimea and give up his desire to join NATO in advance of Monday’s blockbuster meeting in the White House. Zelensky returns to Washington DC for the first time since their famous bust-up in February.

Unlike on his previous visit, Zelensky will be backed by the UK’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Friedrich Merz and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, who will all join him in Washington. Trump posted a dramatic statement that claimed Zelensky could ‘end the war with Russia almost immediately’ – which the Ukrainian leader rebuked within 90 minutes. 

‘President Zelensky of Ukraine can end the war with Russia almost immediately, if he wants to, or he can continue to fight,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social about 9.20pm.

‘Remember how it started. No getting back Obama given Crimea (12 years ago, without a shot being fired!), and NO GOING INTO NATO BY UKRAINE. Some things never change!!!’

In response, Zelensky took to X to insist ‘Russia must end this war, which it itself started,’ railing against Trump’s suggestion that he was solely responsible for ending the conflict.

‘Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their independence. Now, our soldiers have successes in Donetsk and Sumy regions,’ he wrote.

Zelensky also indicated he would not acquiesce to Trump on Crimea, territory which Russia annexed in 2014 and has been furiously defending during the three-year war.

Keep reading

The US Has Given Ukraine The Most Aid To Date

To date, the United States has been the biggest supporter of Ukraine in terms of aid, according to data from the Ukraine Support Tracker compiled by the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

EU institutions (including the European Commission and the Council), followed by Germany and the United Kingdom have been the next biggest contributors.

As Statista’s Anna Fleck shows in the following chart, financial assistance (such as loans and grants), humanitarian aid (like food and medical supplies), and the value of weapons and equipment delivered is enormous.

This included in-kind donations to the Ukrainian military and financial support tied to military purposes.

When looking solely at military aid, including weapons and defense-related financial support, Germany ranks second, contributing an estimated €16.5 billion.

The United States remains the largest military backer, however, having delivered weapons and military funds totaling approximately €115 billion between January 24, 2022 and June 30, 2025.

In early March 2025, U.S. military aid was briefly paused, but resumed on March 11 after Ukraine signaled openness to a potential ceasefire.

Keep reading