Tag: ukraine

Ending the War in Ukraine as Soon as Possible – Is the Only Chance for Ukrainians To Bring Back Their Democratic Freedoms

The Secretary General of the Council of Europe Alein Berset claims that the European Union is getting ready to conduct first elections after the ending of the war in Ukraine, and it’s a very positive signal for all Ukrainians. The Council of Europe also noted that Ukraine is up to hard reintegration of war veterans into a normal life, helping families who suffered from the war and people who were forcibly moved from their homes, and also restoring psychological health of the society. However, the main goal is to restore Ukrainians’ faith in democracy after all they’ve been through.

On the one hand, such a concern of European officials with restoring democratic processes in Ukraine is well-timed especially during Ukraine opening EU’s negotiation clusters. On the other hand, psychological state of the society and the rise of a new large social group of war veterans shouldn’t be only concerns of post-war political processes in Ukraine, because other pathological changes, which are creating quite dangerous antidemocratic tendencies years ahead, are already happening. This is well illustrated by loud corruption scandals. The latest one is fleeing Ukraine and subsequent firing of Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko, and also new investigations by NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine) of massive corruption scandals including top officials who are close to the president Zelenskyy.

Thus, the war not only provoked humanitarian, social, and economic distress in Ukraine but also left a room for aggravating corruption processes essentially creating new political culture where every law isn’t taken by Ukrainian officials as something immutable.

The Council of Europe which has been cooperating with Kyiv in the fields of conducting reforms and combating corruption for years can’t close their eyes to such processes. Moreover, control over efforts undertaken by Kyiv in these fields shouldn’t be connected only with future financial support of Ukraine. The more important part of it is developing harmful antidemocratic processes provoked precisely by prolonging of the war. Including political persecution cases, especially. The most persecuted by the Ukrainian government group of people are usually the ones who support activation of the negotiation process.

Meanwhile, sociological services controlled by Kyiv’s officials are continuing to intrusively publish data about 62% of Ukrainians who are ready to endure the war as long as it takes.

Thus, it creates a certain impression that the Ukrainian political elite is doing everything to continue the war to use opportunities given by it for abuse of power. That’s why European partners of Ukraine shouldn’t recklessly assume that the Ukrainian political elite formed during the war will be ready to get back to compliance with democratic principles if the war continues for another several years.

Ukrainians are really interested in succession of power, proper socialization of war veterans, and taking into account restrictions of their rights during the martial law they really need their democratic rights and freedoms. That’s why participation of the Council of Europe in implementation of everything written above is needed now. Delaying this process on post-war time, as well as discreditation of peace initiatives only worsen and multiple Ukraine’s political, social, and economic problems making almost impossible its return to democratic basics.

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Ukraine Asks Lockheed For Patriot Production Licenses While Its Inner Circle Faces Corruption Charges

Ukraine has asked Lockheed Martin to let it manufacture America’s most advanced air defense interceptor, the Patriot missile, on Ukrainian soil. At a meeting in Kyiv on October 19, Volodymyr Zelensky described to Orlando Sanchez Jr., President of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics, a request to ‘jointly produce’ the interceptor under ‘production licenses’, and said Ukraine hopes to buy some ballistic-missile interceptors outright. He also requested that F-16s be repaired in Ukraine. Sanchez said Lockheed is ready to deepen cooperation.

As of now, the meeting hasn’t produced any figures (quantities and/or dollar values) or timeframes, which is the only reason this story is not bigger. Transferring the missile technology of America’s most advanced air defenses to a government that is currently struggling to contain its own corruption scandals is the ask on the table.

The corruption unearthed by Ukraine’s anti-corruption bureau NABU in its Operation Midas investigation is a matter of public record. NABU says the outfit ran as a massive criminal organization, taking kickbacks of 10% to 15% from contractors to the state nuclear operator Energoatom, and laundering roughly $100 million. The alleged organizer of the gang was Timur Mindich, a long-time business associate of President Zelensky’s from their days at Kvartal 95 studio. Andriy Yermak, then head of the President’s Office, who stepped down on the day investigators searched his apartment in November 2025, was charged with large-scale money laundering in May 2026. He has been denying any wrongdoing on his part. The same case also led to charges against a former energy minister.

This would be a massive transfer of highly protected technology to a government whose inner circle stands accused of skimming wartime funds. American taxpayers have been underwriting this war. Nobody serious is asking whether corruption reaches Kyiv’s top offices. The question is whether Washington wants to hand this same system the blueprints to some of the most guarded and protected technology that Raytheon and Lockheed Martin have to offer.

Ukraine has also reopened its arms exports. Reuters reported in February that Kyiv was opening up wartime technology sales to raise cash, and Zelensky has framed the policy as “controlled” sales of surplus production. Recent defense cooperation agreements have been signed by Ukrainian officials with countries of the Gulf. A country that is shopping its military industry abroad for cash while still at war is unlikely to keep licensed Patriot production in a locked safe once it has the technology. The next buyer would be whoever pays most.

It is after all the Pentagon’s own Inspector General who highlighted serious problems with the US DoD’s attempt to track more than $1 billion in high-risk defense equipment, including Javelin and Stinger missiles, sent to Ukraine over the past years. If Washington struggled to track shoulder-fired weapons, it should not be exporting the manufacturing know-how for Patriot interceptors.

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Putin Proposes Summit With Trump And Xi To Negotiate End Of Ukraine War; Zelensky Not Invited

Amid an escalating war that appears to get farther from any hope of a ceasefire, let alone peace, late on Sunday the WSJ reported that Vladimir Putin has proposed that he, President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping meet next month to talk about Ukraine in an attempt to negotiate an end to the four-year conflict that would favor Moscow.

Citing people familiar with the discussions, the WSJ notes that the plan represents an effort by Putin to capitalize on warming ties between Trump and the Russian leader that have alarmed Ukraine and its allies in Washington and Europe. Such a summit – one notably without the involvement of Zelensky who appears to have terminally alienated Trump in recent days – would be “unprecedented and send alarm bells ringing in European capitals and beyond.”

According to a former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter, Putin floated the idea in an Oct. 9 phone call with Trump. That conversation also produced a deal for the U.S. to buy Russian diesel fuel and facilitate its sale on the global market. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed that discussions were taking place over a potential meeting.

“There is no clear understanding yet regarding the meeting itself or its potential agenda, although all three parties acknowledge the hypothetical possibility of such a meeting taking place,” he told The Wall Street Journal.

A senior US official said that while Trump hadn’t agreed to such a summit, he said that the president could be receptive to the idea, given his desire to fulfill a campaign promise to settle the war. Trump had said it would be finished on “day one” of his new term, but he is now approaching nearly two years in office.

The Kremlin has suggested holding the trilateral dialogue on the sidelines of the coming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, the people familiar with discussions said. That gathering takes place on Nov. 18 and 19 in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese tech hub.

A potential three-way dialogue on Chinese soil would mark a big step for Xi in his efforts to elevate China’s role as a diplomatic power broker, said analysts who study China. Russian officials proposed the idea to Beijing through diplomatic channels and the Chinese side has indicated it wouldn’t object if Trump is on board.

“China wants to be seen as the pivot of the great powers, and potentially as a mediator between the U.S. and Russia,” said Yun Sun, director of the China program at the Stimson Center, a Washington think tank.

While Putin had unsuccessfully proposed a trilateral summit to both Trump and Xi on previous occasions, this time, however, it comes during a reversal of Moscow’s fortunes with Washington.

Trump just notched a deal with Putin to get Russian diesel in a bid to lower fuel prices that have slowed the American economy and hurt Republican prospects ahead of the midterm elections. On Friday, Trump halted implementation of sanctions that were to be imposed on Russia under a bipartisan bill he signed last month, drawing criticism from lawmakers, including some of his allies.

The senior White House official said Trump made the decisions after seeing few other good options to lower prices.

At a time when Diesel prices are soaring, in part due to limited Russian exports amid a constant drone campaign waged by Ukraine against its refineries, Trump has shown renewed frustration with Zelensky, saying the Ukrainian leader must stop strikes on Russian refineries and suggesting that the country needs a new president. U.S.-led efforts to broker an end to the war, meanwhile, have been largely stalled.

In a post on Truth Social on Sunday, Trump took aim at Zelensky, following Ukraine’s strike on an oil terminal in Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg earlier in the day. He accused the Ukrainian leader of targeting Russian diesel refineries and said he “doesn’t want to end this war, and probably never did.” The president said he was holding off on imposing sanctions because he didn’t want to drive Russia away from the bargaining table. “I WANT THIS WAR END!” he wrote.

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South Korea’s Hedging Strategy

Republic of Korea (ROK) leaders are having to navigate an increasingly challenging policy course to avoid having their country become entangled in an array of dangerous security problems, both in East Asia and elsewhere in the international system.

The most recent example involved Seoul’s actions in Ukraine.  In late September 2026, the Kiev regime transferred two North Korean prisoners of war, who had been fighting with Russian forces, to South Korea.  That move was highly confidential, lest it put the ROK government in a highly compromising position.  Disclosure of the information could not only cause a rift in Seoul’s delicate relations with Moscow, but could also create a dangerous confrontation between the two rival Korean states.

Instead of maintaining the required discretion and confidentiality, however, Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelensky announced the transfer to the world during a speech before the United Nations General Assembly. Zelensky also sharply criticized North Korea and its leader, Kim Jong-un, for deploying troops on Russia’s behalf. South Korean media then reported that the two captured soldiers had expressed their desire to defect to the ROK. Tensions between North and South Korea promptly spiked.

So did the anger of the ROK administration toward Zelensky.  South Korean President Lee Jae Myung immediately accused Ukraine of violating a nondisclosure agreement between Seoul and Kiev about the transfer. Ukraine flatly denied making such a deal.  The ROK’s risks of being drawn into the maelstrom of the Russia-Ukraine war seemed to rise.

Seoul already was resisting pressure from Kiev to sell sophisticated weapons to Ukraine. Zelensky’s government has asked the ROK on several occasions, most recently in early August 2026, to send air defense missiles and other crucial systems. Seoul has repeatedly declined those requests.  Zelensky’s clumsy conduct regarding the North Korean prisoners of war episode is not likely to enhance Kiev’s prospects going forward.

Yet NATO members, including the United States, have long been pressing the ROK to approve such arms sales.  Indeed, Seoul has faced such calls since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.  It has not been easy for ROK leaders to resist that pressure, but they have done so to this point.

Lee’s stance on the Ukraine arms sale issue is consistent with his government’s overall policy to try to reduce tensions with North Korea.  He has even gone beyond endorsing President Trump’s willingness to hold a summit meeting with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un before the end of 2026.  In a major speech in late September, Lee called on the United States to ease its onerous, longstanding economic sanctions against Pyongyang, and to accept a freeze on North Korea’s nuclear weapons program rather than continue Washington’s hoary insistence on the abolition of that program.

South Korea is making a concerted effort to avoid becoming entangled in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, to promote a possible rapprochement between Washington and Pyongyang, and to ease the ROK’s own tensions with North Korea.  Lee and his advisers are also attempting to steer a middle course with respect to the mounting animosity between Japan and the People’s Republic of China.  Both Beijing and Tokyo seek Seoul’s backing regarding a number of disputes.  One emotional spat is the territorial dispute between Japan and the PRC over control of the Senkaku (Diaoyu) islands, which has led to several provocative deployments of maritime vessels in the past year.

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Impeaching Impeachment: Declassified memos challenge key witness testimony from 2019 Trump case

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch, one of the Democrats’ star witnesses in their first impeachment of Donald Trump, received repeated briefings, emails and memos related to the Ukrainian energy company that employed Hunter Biden, according to declassified documents that directly conflict with her and other witnesses’ testimony in the failed bid seven years ago to remove the president from office.

The documents released Friday by the White House Government Transparency Task Force show Yovanovitch and her aides were apprised of corruption concerns about Burisma Holdings, efforts by the company to repair its image or curry U.S. favor that would not “pass The Washington Post sniff test” and even a bid to get the Trump administration to approve a U.S. visa for Burisma’s controversial owner Mykola Zlochevsky, who was banned from American travel.

The memos provide a stark contrast to Yovanovitch’s testimony that the Biden-Burisma matter “just wasn’t a big deal” during her tenure as ambassador, and that she wasn’t briefed by staff on the issues surrounding Joe Biden’s son except for an initial briefing book during her 2016 Senate confirmation and what she read in the news media.

Yovanovitch and her top aides engaged in dozens of communications between 2016 and 2019 about Burisma, Hunter Biden, Zlochevsky and efforts by their legal defense teams and lobbyists to make investigations go away or curry favor for a company the State Department deemed to be corrupt, according to the documents the task force released, and additional memos obtained by Just the News under open records litigation.

A newly declassified email between Yovanovitch and her top deputy in Kyiv, George Kent, also directly challenges the primary argument Democrats made at the late 2019 House impeachment, namely that Hunter Biden’s relationship with Burisma had no impact on U.S. policy, and therefore it was wrong for Trump to seek investigations into the Burisma scandal.

“The real issue to my mind was that someone in Washington needed to engage VP Biden quietly and say that his son Hunter’s presence on the Burisma board undercut the anti-corruption message the VP and we were advancing in Ukraine b/c Ukrainians heard one message from us and then saw another set of behavior with the family association with a known corrupt figure whose company was known for not playing by the rules,” Kent wrote to Yovanovitch on Nov. 22, 2016.

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Zelensky Warns That 20 Million Ukrainians Would Pour Into EU If Russia Wins

Is that a threat?

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told EU leaders on Friday that if his country loses the war to Russia, as many as 20 million Ukrainians could be forced to flee to Europe.

Such numbers would make the 2015 European migrant crisis look like a walk in the park.

“Russia is killing us,” Zelensky said while speaking at a summit of European Union leaders. “They [Russia] don’t want to stop” and Ukrainian are being pushed out of their homeland, he said.

“What will happen if we fall? I don’t know, 20 million Ukrainians will come to Europe,” Zelensky declared.

Earlier this week, Zelensky indicated he felt ‘betrayed’ by President Trump as relations with Washington spiral, particularly over the diesel deal with Putin and White House pressure for Ukraine to stop hitting Russian oil refineries.

Trump has also late this week in a Newsmax interview said that Ukraine should hold a new national election, and added provocatively that that even Putin is easier to deal with than Zelensky.

Indicators inside Ukraine show support for Zelensky’s war policy is slipping…

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Italian Defense Minister Admits Most Italians Oppose Ukraine Aid, Sends It Anyway

Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto has told the BBC that for the most part, most Italians are against sending arms to Ukraine. He admitted this in an interview at his Ministry in Rome, the full text of which was released on Sunday. And, in the meantime, Italy continues to send aid.

LaPresse quotes him as saying in an interview to the BBC at the Defense Ministry in Rome: “The majority of public opinion is against aid to Ukraine. But we have put together 12 aid packages and by the end of the year we will probably manage to put together another one.”

On Ukraine, Crosetto said: “We know perfectly well that our public opinion, also influenced from abroad, is mostly opposed to aid to Ukraine.” He added: “Above all, you cannot give in to public opinion when you believe public opinion is wrong.” He also said: “Ukraine will never be able to win the war. My objective is to ensure Ukraine survives and to bring the war to an end.”

Ukraine cannot win the war against Russia, Defense Minister Crosetto said in the interview to the BBC, adding that his goal is for Ukraine to survive and for the war to end. Victory for Ukraine, he said, would be “a victory for peace, a victory for justice, a victory for international law.”

A September poll by the Ixè institute found that only 18% of Italians want to continue to supply arms to Ukraine while the majority is looking on as prices skyrocket due to high energy costs. On Friday, in Rome, students from Italy’s secondary schools held a protest and chanted “We want more classroom, not more bombs” while truckers in the South have begun to block the roads in order to protest the sky rocketing prices of fuel. Crosetto blames the Russian disinformation campaign for the shift in public opinion. “It’s very hard to explain to a citizen who’s having trouble at the petrol pump that we can’t give any concessions to Russia right now,” he told the BBC.

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Ukraine, A Country Of Misery: What Were The Origins And Reasons For The Current War With Russia?

In this article we would like to explore the reasons and the origins for the current on-going war with Russia. What happened?

We would like to start with several hypothesis for this war that seem to us to not have been described by political observers of various size and colors.

  1. The current war is not only a geopolitical tournament for the area, it’s a war that based on vulgar reasons of access to cashflow channels from natural resources.
  2. The current war is based on a combination of political, geopolitical, economic, personal reasons of higher level that just money.

Let’s begin with how the reasons for the war are viewed and declared in Ukraine. The war is on the territory of Ukraine. Russia occupied approximately 26% of Ukraine’s territory from 2014. Thus, the occupant is Russia, the aggressor is Russia. Let’s explore the views and the reasons for the war from the eyes of the government of Ukraine and the average citizen of Ukraine (peresichniy hromadianyn, as they call this resident-citizen in Ukraine).

Please, pay attention of the conflicting views on the reasons and the origins. We tried to keep the voices and the views expressed as original as possible.

From the view of citizen-resident (without any particular order, what comes first to the mind is stated first). Please, be attentive, this list includes politically-correct and acceptable expressions of average Ukrainians and “expressions that are not-voiced openly in the public”, but easily expressed in private conversations and has been recently voiced in the soccer stadiums and on public TV channels.

  1. “Putin is huylo (dickhead), and he is the only and the main reason, all other reasons are derivative and subordinate”
  2. “Russia is an empire state, always wanted to occupy Ukraine, this is just the way things are”
  3. “Ukraine was a part of Russian Empire, thus, they want Ukraine back”
  4. “They need to back off NATO from the borders”
  5. “Poroshenko made a treaty with Putin-huylo and sold part of Ukraine”
  6. “Zelensky insulted Putin for so many years, it’s a matter of personal revenge for Putin on Zelensky”
  7. “The government of Ukraine was weak and sold us to Putin”
  8. “The government of Ukraine failed to deter Russia, thus, Russia occupied Ukraine”
  9. “Russia’s government understood how weak and stupid is the government of Ukraine is and decided to occupy the country governed by the imbecile politicians and the clowns”
  10. “The leftist ultra-nationalist and oligarch-sponsored government occupied Ukrainian government, seized some Russian assets on the territory of Ukraine, thus, Russian bandits decided to strike back to get even more out of Ukraine”
  11. “The left-sided, and brain-washed radicals and bandits from the Western Ukraine, sponsored from the Western countries, occupied the parliament, the ministries of Ukraine, and, led the country to it’s weak form, thus, allowing Putin and FSB to analyze the state of affairs and see that there is a possibility to strike”
  12. “Ukraine was never an independent state, not even from the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991”
  13. “KGB, now FSB decided to take Ukraine as a territory that was a part of it’s influence and temporarily went out of control after the coup of the Revolution of Dignity (or not-so-dignity, depending on what you know)”
  14. “Ultra-nationalistic forces from the West and the Western Ukraine control the government of Ukraine. They could not, didn’t even have a chance to negotiate with Russia. They spent 8 years to prepare for the war. They wanted this war.”
  15. “We wanted democracy and independence from Russia. Russia wants to control us, our government and our resources.”
  16. “Yanukovich sold us to Russia for gas. We don’t need gas from Russia. We do not need oligarchs from Russia doing busines in our country.”

From the view of politicians, current or former (retired) state officials of Ukrainian government (without particular order, what comes first to the mind is stated first). Please, be attentive, this list includes politically-correct and acceptable expressions of politicians and “expressions that are not-voiced openly in the public”, but easily expressed in private conversations. We will not provide the sources of those expressions and the names of the people who voiced them – if you want you watch the thousands of videos with Ukrainian politicians in your own spare time. We provide you the samples of the expressions and declarations.

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The Sheer Ignorance Of What’s At Stake Globally

This is a textbook case of how someone can reach the top of one field and still be utterly clueless about everything else. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg served as National Security Advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence and later as Special Envoy for Ukraine and Russia. He is Co-Chair at the Center for American Security, America First Policy Institute, USA, which is a Neocon think tank. The man’s ignorance is staggering. He has made no effort to examine the facts—or, more likely, he knows them and deliberately refuses to discuss how Victoria Nuland helped select the interim government that started this civil war and attacked the Donbas on Neocon orders.

He advocates that Zelensky should tell President Trump to go to hell and destroy every refinery in Russia. To illustrate his sheer stupidity: forget the food crisis he would cause in Russia, knowing that would lead to nuclear war—he completely ignores that Africa and the Middle East account for over 80% of Russia’s wheat exports, making those regions the most directly tied to Russian grain. Iran is 100% dependent on Russian grain. That would be a surefire way to make the Middle East explode into a full-blown war, which would then merge with the Russia-versus-EU war, and China and North Korea would join.

It is these Neocons, who simply hate the Russian people, who are cascading the world into World War III over a war they instigated using Ukraine. He would fulfill our model by pushing diesel to the extreme, projecting $8, which would hit the U.S. economy, reduce trucking, and result in a U.S. food shortage. This is what I mean. Expertise in one field does not qualify you to argue about things that will impact the rest of the entire world with zero comprehension of where that leads.

A full-scale war with Russia would very likely cause a severe global diesel crisis, and in many regions, a collapse in supply is a real possibility. The system is already under extreme strain, and a broader conflict would push it past its breaking point. Our computer projects $10+ a gallon by 2032.

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AfD’s Weidel Tells Berlin The Truth: A German Company Goes Bankrupt Every 19 Minutes While Merz Sends Billions To Kyiv

German businesses are going bust in alarming numbers, claims AfD co-leader Alice Weidel. Chancellor Friedrich Merz is devoting his strength and taxpayers’ money to Kyiv, she charged. The numbers for the first part of her statement are dramatic.

“A wave of bankruptcies is sweeping across our country,” Weidel said. “Every 19 minutes, a company in Germany goes bankrupt. In the third quarter of this year alone, the wave of insolvencies affected 41,000 jobs. Many of them will disappear permanently.”

The 19-minute figure traces to official data from the Federal Statistical Office. There were 2,373 corporate insolvencies in July, 8% up on the previous year and thus the highest July figure since 2013. As small-business expert Marc Evers of the German Chamber of Commerce and Industry told n-tv: “Every 19 minutes a company in Germany goes insolvent.” In the seven months to end-July a total of 15,185 corporate insolvencies were registered, 6.9% up on the same period of the previous year. Insolvencies were most frequent in the transport and storage sector, followed by the hospitality industry and construction.

The figure of 41,000 jobs also corresponds with the third-quarter insolvency tracker from the Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH). According to this, there were approximately 4,880 cases of insolvency of partnerships and capital companies in the third quarter, down 2.3% from the record high of the second quarter. However, this still corresponds with the second highest number of quarterly cases of insolvency since 2005 and approximately 41,000 jobs were affected, about 10% fewer than in the second quarter. Weidel’s assertion that many of these jobs will disappear permanently is her own assessment and not a statistic.

Smaller businesses have not yet experienced the upswing the government is predicting for this year. Instead, according to n-tv, they are slipping into insolvency more and more often. Evers said the small upswing “threatens to be short-lived, because it is based mainly on high, debt-financed government spending.”

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