Tag: ukraine

Zelensky Says Iran Poses ‘Serious Threat’ To Ukraine, Amid Israel War

Once again another major Middle East conflict is taking much of the West’s attention away from the long war in Ukraine, but President Volodymyr Zelensky is speaking up (or rather inserting himself), suggesting that events in Iran have a direct impact on Ukraine.

He has told Newsmax the Islamic Republic poses a “serious threat” to Ukraine, given that it has for years supplied military arms and technology to Russian forces, which are then used against Iranian cities. There have been more recent reports that Tehran might be supplying short-range ballistic missiles.

It is the Iranian-produced Shahed Kamikaze drone which has wreaked havoc on Ukraine from since the war’s start. Zelensky claimed in the comments that Iran is “actively working” against his country.

“Iran is, in fact, actively working against us by supplying weapons and technology to Russia. That makes them a serious threat. Even so, we do not seek escalation,” Zelenskyy said. “We understand all too well the devastating consequences such a conflict can bring. The human cost, the losses, the potential outcomes of a full-scale war. But Iran continues to support Russia.”

“This regime is enabling Russia’s aggression by providing arms and technological support. Iran uses its oil revenues to fund war efforts. That is the harsh reality we are dealing with,” he added.

The last 48 hours have seen open war explode between Iran and Israel after the Israeli Air Force began attacking Iranian nuclear sites, as well as ballistic missile batteries. Nuclear scientists and military leaders have also been killed in Iran.

Iran has responded by launching unprecedented numbers of ballistic missiles and drones against Israel, in a serious tit-for-tat which is now ongoing.

“Let me be frank. We don’t want escalation in any part of the world. But if this continues, if there is another wave of conflict, more missile strikes, more collaboration between Russia and Iran, then the situation could grow even more dangerous,” Zelensky said.

Washington is the biggest funder of both the Ukrainian and Israeli militaries…

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Diplomacy On His Deathbed – From Peace-President To Warmonger

The US’s involvement in the attacks on Russia and Iran makes a negotiated solution to these conflicts unlikely. Trump, who promised his people peace, is bringing war…

Untrustworthy Trump

One day before the second round of negotiations in Istanbul, Ukraine attacked aircraft from Russia’s strategic bomber fleet with drones hidden in trucks that were smuggled into Russia. We reported on this in “Operation Spiderweb: Ukraine and NATO attack on Russia: a new Pearl Harbor? Full escalation? Are the fanatics back? Facts and analysis.” The military damage was minor; what remained was a propaganda victory for the West – nothing more. On June 11, the Financial Times went to great lengths to prove that these attacks were carried out with AI without Western help. The FT should probably confine itself to business news – pure propaganda without a shred of evidence. A feeble attempt to keep the Americans out of it, without whose help this attack would not have been possible.

This was followed shortly afterwards by a major attack by Israel on Iran. TheTimes of Israel boasted that the US, together with the Israelis, had carried out a multi-layered disinformation campaign to make the Iranians believe that an attack was not imminent. This report is credible, as Trump made no attempt to hide US complicity in the Israeli attack on Iran at the end of the week.

That’s not all, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio denied US involvement, saying:

“Tonight, Israel took unilateral action against Iran. We are not involved in strikes against Iran and our top priority is protecting American forces in the region.”Marco Rubio – 13. Juni 2025

This proves that the Americans certainly had a hand in this deadly game and that the Trump administration cannot even manage to coordinate coherently within its own team. Not a sign of professionalism.

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EU transfers €1 billion in aid to Ukraine — von der Leyen

The EU has transferred €1 billion of macro-financial aid to Ukraine, bringing its total spending on supporting Kiev since the beginning of the special military operation to €150 billion, European Commission head Ursula von der Leyen wrote on X.

“Today we disburse a new €1 billion to Ukraine, bringing our total support to almost 150 billion,” she wrote.

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What the giddy reaction to Ukraine’s surprise attacks says about us

A little over forty years ago, while preparing for a weekly radio address, President Ronald Reagan famously cracked wise about the possibility of attacking the Soviet Union. “I have signed legislation that outlaws Russia forever,” he said. “We begin bombing in five minutes.”

Reagan had not realized that the studio microphone was recording his joke and that technical personnel preparing for the broadcast in stations across the country were already listening. His facetious remarks were leaked. The public reaction was immediate, strong, and negative. Democratic candidate Walter Mondale admonished his election opponent for ill-considered humor, and Reagan’s polling numbers took a temporary hit.

For many, the possibility of thermonuclear annihilation was no joking matter.

Within a few short years, history veered in a much more positive direction, and concerns about either superpower pressing “the button” by accident or by design began to recede. A reelected Reagan and his Soviet counterpart Mikhail Gorbachev launched a set of historic accords that greatly reduced the risk of superpower war. The Berlin Wall fell, the Cold War ended, and the USSR dissolved. For many Americans, the threat of nuclear conflict faded into distant memory.

Today, we encounter those Cold War fears primarily through history books. Fewer and fewer people recall nail-biting over the Cuban Missile Crisis or sheltering under desks in elementary schools. Many have not heard about the controversy over Reagan’s radio gaffe. Millennials and Generation Z wonder why their parents and grandparents worried about a nuclear Armageddon that never, in fact, materialized.

There may be no better illustration of our much-relaxed contemporary attitudes than the public reaction to Ukraine’s surprise attacks last week on dozens of Russian strategic bombers located at bases thousands of kilometers from Ukraine. On June 1, Ukraine used swarms of drones hidden in trucks smuggled across Russia’s border to attack one leg of its nuclear triad of missiles, submarines, and aircraft.

This time, the bombing was no joke. But the Western reaction hardly took the prospect of nuclear escalation seriously.

The operation was “a brilliant technical performance” that showed “why Ukraine will win this war,” according to French philosopher Bernard Henri-Levy writing in the Wall Street Journal. Rebecca Grant, vice president of the Lexington Institute, posted on the Fox News site that Americans should “savor Ukraine’s brilliant strike on Putin’s terror bombers. Too bad Ukraine can’t do it again. Or can they?”

The Washington Post editorialized that the operation showed that Ukrainians are “tough, determined – and right. Theirs is a fight the United States should be proud to support.” Legions of online armchair warriors praised Ukraine’s “bad-ass operation” that will “go down in history” and be “studied for years to come.”

Such reactions largely ignored the impact that such attacks might have on nuclear stability between the United States and Russia, which together hold more than 90 percent of the world’s nuclear weapons.

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Ukrainian attacks on Russian planes ‘Western’ intel op – Jeffrey Sachs

Ukraine’s drone strikes on Russian military airfields earlier this month were a “Western intelligence operation” orchestrated by the CIA and MI6, American public policy analyst Jeffrey Sachs has claimed.

In an interview with American journalist Tucker Carlson released on Wednesday, Sachs accused Western intelligence services of covertly working to undermine peace efforts aimed at resolving the Ukraine conflict, acting on orders from the US “deep state.”

On June 1, Ukrainian drones struck several Russian airbases in a coordinated assault across five regions – from Murmansk in the north to Irkutsk in Siberia – which Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky later called Operation Spider’s Web.

Kiev claimed that around 40 Russian military aircraft were damaged or destroyed, including long-range bombers. Moscow has dismissed the numbers and extent of damage, saying some of the aircraft were damaged, but that it was minimal and will be repaired. It added that most of the drones were intercepted.

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Russia Won’t End Ukraine War Until NATO Pulls Forces Out Of Eastern Flank

A top Kremlin official was quoted in Newsweek this week warning that Russia won’t end the Ukraine war until NATO pulls its troops out of the Baltic and ‘eastern flank’ states.

Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov demanded that NATO must withdraw its troops from the Baltic region. Russia has long seen the Baltics as very near, and its sphere of influence, also given its territory of of Kaliningrad. 

“The American side requires practical steps aimed at eliminating the root causes of the fundamental contradictions between us in the area of security,” he had said, originally in state TASS.

“Among these causes, NATO expansion is in the foreground,” he emphasized. “Without resolving this fundamental and most acute problem for us, it is simply impossible to resolve the current conflict in the Euro-Atlantic region.”

NATO’s ‘eastern flank’ closer to the start of the Ukraine war – forces have since grown…

“Given the nature and genesis of the Ukrainian crisis, provoked by the previous U.S. authorities and the West as a whole, this conflict naturally acts, well, if you like, as a test, a trial, which checks the seriousness of Washington’s intentions to straighten out our relations,” he said.

Ryabkov said Moscow’s position all along has been that the Western military alliance “not deploy strike weapons near Russian border.”

“In any case, reducing NATO’s Eastern European contingent would likely boost the security of the whole continent,” he concluded.

Such a broader ultimatum was actually issued just before the full-scale invasion, but was not heeded. In fact, countries like Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania have only grown more hawkish and vocal in their anti-Moscow rhetoric, and have even taken legal action against the Russian Orthodox Church in the Baltics.

A very provocative and sensational alert issued by German intelligence…

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Israel Unveils Unprecedented Transfer To Ukraine Of ‘Several’ Patriot Missile Batteries

In early May it was first reported that a US-supplied Patriot air-defense system that was based in Israel would be refurbished and sent to Ukraine. This was despite what the White House’s National Security Council said at the time in a statement: “President Trump has been clear: he wants the war in Ukraine to end and the killing to stop.”

But American and Western arms for Ukraine have continued flowing, with no end in sight, despite what was a very brief stoppage of maybe a couple days earlier in Trump’s term. Israel has just revealed that it wasn’t merely “one” Patriot battery transferred to Ukraine, but “several”.

Israeli Ambassador to Ukraine Michael Brodsky unveiled in a Sunday interview with Pravda USA that Israel has delivered several MIM-104 Patriot surface-to-air missile systems to Kiev, in a clear significant escalation in its military support to the Zelensky government.

During the opening years of the war Israel largely remained on the sidelines, for fear of damaging sensitive relations with Russia, which has maintained a military presence on the Mediterranean, along Syria’s coast. But times have changed, and Russia could be packing up its Syrian naval and air bases, given the December overthrow of its ally Assad and the Jolani regime being installed in Damascus.

Ambassador Brodsky told the Ukrainian media publication (according to machine translation):

The Patriot systems that we once received from the United States are now in Ukraine. These are Israeli systems that were in service with Israel in the early 90s. We agreed to transfer them to Ukraine. And unfortunately, not much was said about this. But when they say that Israel did not help militarily, this is not true. This is not true,” Brodsky emphasized.

This appears to be confirmation of what Axios reported in late January:

The U.S. military transferred around 90 Patriot air defense interceptors from storage in Israel to Poland this week in order to deliver them to Ukraine, three sources with knowledge of the operation tell Axios.

These are apparently older US-supplied systems which remained in Israel’s stockpile. Still, the NY Times had presented that merely one Patriot battery was being prepped, in this May 4 report for example:

A Patriot air-defense system that was based in Israel will be sent to Ukraine after it is refurbished, four current and former U.S. officials said in recent days, and Western allies are discussing the logistics of Germany or Greece giving another one.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, declined to describe President Trump’s view of the decision to transfer more Patriot systems to Ukraine.

Israel is perhaps only making this public now in the context of Russia’s air war against Ukrainian cities, and the capital in particular, heating up.

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Russian Forces Reach Donetsk’s Western Border and Enter Dnipropetrovsk, Taking the War Into Another Ukrainian Region

During the Istanbul talks between Russia and Ukraine, when presented with Moscow’s demand that Kiev’s troops must withdraw from territory of the four regions that they have partially conquered (Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhie and Kherson), the Ukrainian delegation reacted with a strong rejection of this point.

It’s been widely reported that, at this point, Russian negotiators warned their foes: ‘Next time, it won’t be four regions, but six or eight’.

That could, of course, be nothing but bragging, except that today the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that units of the 90th Tank Division have reached & crossed the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and that their offensive continues deeper into Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

That the Russian offensive has now breached into a brand-new region is a serious setback for the Kiev regime, who really depends on a constant PR effort to keep allies engaged and prevent further deterioration of public morale in their country.

So, at this point, besides the four regions mentioned above, there are also Russian successes in the northern Sumy and Kharkov regions – and now Dnipropetrovsk.

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Ohr Memo Confirms Clinton Team Had Early Knowledge Of Ukrainian Black Ledger

The newly released Nellie Ohr documents from Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, have already made waves for two major reasons. First, they show the FBI concluded Nellie Ohr lied to Congress and then failed to act on it. Second, they revealed an internal FBI “black hole” filing system designed to bury evidence that contradicted or disproved the Donald Trump-Russia narrative, shielding it not just from the public but from the FBI’s own agents.

Yet there’s more. Buried in the release is also confirmation of another key aspect of how the Russiagate smear unfolded, one that has so far escaped much attention: Clinton campaign operative Ohr appears to have had advance knowledge of the so-called “black ledger” operation by Ukrainian officials.

This operation ultimately led to the political downfall of Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort in 2016. This information also provides more evidence that it wasn’t Trump who colluded with foreign powers against domestic opponents — it was Democrats.

While the broad outlines of this connection between the Clinton campaign and Ukraine have been known for some time, the newly released documents reveal the FBI was aware of Ohr’s foreknowledge as early as 2019. That’s when a report on her activities was written — but the FBI took no action.

Notably, this was before the first impeachment of President Trump, which was triggered by his inquiries into corruption in Ukraine. This detail confirms the strong likelihood that the Clinton campaign was more directly involved in the Ukrainian effort to smear Trump than was previously acknowledged.

The American public didn’t learn about the ledger until August 15, 2016, when The New York Times ran a front-page story accusing Manafort of receiving off-the-books cash payments from the Party of Regions, the political party of Ukraine’s deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych. But according to Grassley’s release, Nellie Ohr had already tipped off her husband, Bruce Ohr — then a senior DOJ official — along with two prosecutors from the DOJ’s Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force, on May 30, 2016.

Even more striking, that alert came a full day before the first known public mention of the ledger in Ukrainian press. That May 31 article, co-authored by anti-Trump activist Serhiy Leshchenko, mentioned the ledger’s existence but made no reference to Manafort or U.S. politics. In congressional testimony, Nellie Ohr later admitted that Leshchenko was one of her sources at Fusion GPS and had passed along information about Manafort.

Leshchenko has been candid about his motives. Speaking to the Financial Times in 2016, he said his goal in publicizing the ledger was to intervene in the U.S. elections to damage Trump, whom he described as a pro-Russian candidate who could destabilize the global order. Notably, Leshchenko now serves as an advisor within Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s inner circle, a disturbing fact considering his history of actively promoting anti-Trump disinformation.

Ohr’s foreknowledge and contact with Leshchenko provide more evidence that the Clinton campaign, through Fusion GPS, was not only behind the fake Steele and Alfa Bank dossiers, but also acted as a conduit between Ukrainian political operatives and U.S. law enforcement. These efforts laundered foreign political propaganda into the DOJ and FBI under the guise of international criminal intelligence.

The ledger’s authenticity has long been in question. Manafort was never charged with receiving the cash payments alleged in the ledger and reported by The New York Times. Shortly after the 2016 election, Ukraine’s former domestic intelligence chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, expressed skepticism, pointing out it was suspicious only one fragment of the ledger had surfaced. “Where is the handwriting analysis?” he asked. “It’s crazy to open an investigation based on this kind of document.”

The orchestration also appears to go back even further. According to former Ukrainian diplomat Andrii Telizhenko, who spoke exclusively to me about the latest Ohr revelations, the operation began with a January 19, 2016 meeting at the White House.

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US diverted military aid for Kiev to Middle East – Zelensky

US President Donald Trump’s administration has diverted a large military aid package his predecessor promised to Kiev to American forces in the Middle East, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky has told ABC. The package included thousands of anti-drone missiles Ukraine desperately needs to fight Russia’s long-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), he said.

The Ukrainian leader raised the issue in an interview with ABC News’ Martha Raddatz which aired on Sunday. When asked about the importance of US support, Zelensky admitted that the Ukrainian military was struggling to deal with Russian UAVs on its own.

“We have a lot of problems with these Shaheds,” he said, referring to Russian Geran-2 long-range drones, which Kiev claims to be Shahed-family UAVs allegedly supplied to Moscow by Tehran. Both Russia and Iran have previously denied the allegations.

The Ukrainian leader then revealed that Kiev had not received a major aid package it was “counting on.” Former US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin promised Ukraine 20,000 anti-drone missiles that were based on a “special technology,” Zelensky claimed. Austin served as the secretary of defense under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden.

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