Tag: ukraine

NATO forces in Ukraine could trigger World War III – Russia’s security chief

The deployment of foreign troops to Ukraine could lead to a clash between Russia and NATO, and ultimately to World War III, Sergey Shoigu, secretary of Russia’s National Security Council, has warned. The term “peacekeepers” is being used as a cover for the true objective of establishing control over Ukraine, according to the official.  

The defense chiefs from a number of NATO member states – led by the UK and France – have been discussing the idea of positioning a “peacekeeping” force in Ukraine. They claim the troops would contribute to a “lasting peace” between Russia and Ukraine. Russia has rejected the deployment of NATO forces, or troops from members of the bloc under a “coalition of the willing” to Ukraine under any pretext.  

In an interview published on Thursday by TASS, Shoigu, who previously served as Russia’s defense minister, stated that the presence of foreign “peacekeepers” on “Russia’s historic territories” could provoke a direct confrontation between Moscow and NATO, potentially escalating into a third world war. According to him, this risk is acknowledged by “reasonable politicians in Europe.”   

The term “peacekeepers” is being used to mask the true objective of gaining control over Ukrainian territory and its resources, Shoigu believes. He argued that it would be more accurate to describe such a force as “invaders” or “occupiers.”

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Yes, Zelensky Should Take the Deal

President Donald Trump has sold out the Ukrainians, given the farm to Vladimir Putin, alienated U.S. allies—and may have revealed himself to be Moscow’s puppet.

At least, that’s how the mainstream media have portrayed the Russia-Ukraine peace deal that the White House presented last week, details of which have emerged in recent days. 

“Did Putin write this?” asked a headline yesterday in POLITICO’s national security newsletter. A New York Times report gave the impression the White House was trying to elicit Kiev’s repudiation of the deal and “create a pretext for abandoning American support for Ukraine.” And if that wasn’t the intention, the Times told its readers, then the deal was meant to force Ukraine’s capitulation.

Russia’s vicious assault on Kiev early Thursday fed into the perception that Trump is forsaking the beleaguered Ukrainians. The attack was part of a country-wide missile and drone campaign through the night.

Yet a close analysis of the proposal, or what we know about it, suggests Trump is genuinely trying to cobble together a viable deal—and exposes as misleading the melodramatic insinuations of the mainstream media.

To be sure, Russia would get much from the agreement: de jure recognition of Crimea as Russian territory; de facto recognition of Russian control over the four Ukrainian oblasts Putin claimed in 2022 to annex; sanctions relief; and a U.S. pledge that Ukraine won’t join NATO.

These concessions would be difficult to stomach for Ukrainians and Westerners, including this columnist. In a just world, Putin would not be rewarded for launching an expansionist war of aggression.

But Ukraine would get more than many people realize, enough that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky should take the deal—and soon. The one-page document laying out the proposal is reported to describe the deal as Trump’s “final offer.” 

While Kiev would not be permitted to join NATO, the deal expressly permits it to join the European Union, which has a collective defense agreement. Moreover, the deal seems to allow for European peacekeepers on Ukrainian territory after the war, and for Western nations to rearm Ukraine. At the very least, it doesn’t rule any of this out. These would be meaningful security guarantees that collectively would deter future Russian aggression. 

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SPY TALK: CIA’s Ratcliffe and Russian SVR’s Naryshkin Have ‘Constructive’ Phone Talk, May Meet Soon

For those still stuck in a Cold War mindset this will seem hard to accept, but the fact is that the United States’ CIA and Russia’s SVR have been engaged in frequent talks, a line of communication that has proven vital for the ongoing détente between the two nuclear superpowers.

The negotiations between the two intelligence agencies have already bore fruit in this case: US and Russia Swap Prisoners in Abu Dhabi, Free ‘Wrongfully Imprisoned’ Ballerina Ksenia Karelina in Victory for Trump Diplomacy.

Now, the Russian side is divulging further talks, floating the possibility of a deeper engagement.

TASS reported:

“Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) Director Sergey Naryshkin has announced a potential meeting with CIA Director John Ratcliffe.

’I had a telephone conversation with my colleague, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It was a very constructive conversation. So, I do not rule out the possibility of a meeting in the near future’, Naryshkin told TASS.”

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Ukraine Encroaches on ‘Friendly’ Moldova

Ukraine has encroached westwards over the past year on its friendly neighbour Moldova, a country that has stood by Kyiv against the Russians and sheltered thousands fleeing the war with Moscow, to build hydroelectric dams in a bid to overcome a crippling power shortage, people close to the matter said.

Troops, engineers and construction workers from Ukraine — which is engaged in a disastrous war with Russia since February 2022 and unsure of continued U.S. assistance under President Donald Trump — entered Moldova without informing its poorer, landlocked neighbour which also shares its border on the west with Romania.

Known for its exquisite wines, Moldova, a country of 2.4 million, has been buffeted by an energy crisis following the discontinuation [by Ukraine on Jan. 1] of Russian gas supplies through Ukraine. The country — whose ethnic majority Moldovans are peeved at being dominated by Ukraine on one side and Romania on the other — is also plagued by huge unemployment among the youth.

“The Kyiv regime began constructing a second barrier line at the Lower Dniester Hydroelectric Power Plant from the Moldovan side without prior notice to Chisinau (Moldova’s capital). This (has) created an imbalance of 470 MW between the Moldovan and Ukrainian power systems, with Chisinau’s energy losses rising to 7.1 percent. For the average Moldovan consumer, this meant electricity costs instantly more than tripled,” a Moldovan energy official told Open, asking not to be named because he is not authorised to speak to the media.

The construction is on the Moldovan side of the Dniester River, which flows from Ukraine to Moldova, the breakaway region of Transnistria, then to Ukraine and finally to the Black Sea, a person in the know explained.

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European Leaders Reject US Proposal of Russian Sovereignty Over Crimea Despite Russia Controlling the Region for the Last 10 Years

More insanity from the globalist Western European elites.

According to news reports last week, the Trump Administration suggested it was prepared to recognize Russian control over Crimea. This is part of a broader peace agreement that the US has facilitated between Ukraine and Russia.

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

Crimea is a peninsula off Ukraine in the Black Sea. In 2014, Russia took control of the region and its ports during the Obama presidency, over ten years ago now. For much of its history Russia has controlled Crimea. Crimea was passed from the Soviet Union to Ukraine in 1994, not that long ago.

According to RT.com and others, the Europeans have rejected this idea.

They did nothing about Crimea for over ten years but suddenly this is a peace deal game-stopper.

How do they think this will play out if they insist on Russia returning Crimea to Ukraine.

RT reported:

European leaders have rejected a US proposal to recognize Russia’s sovereignty over Crimea as part of a draft peace deal on the Ukraine conflict, the Financial Times reported on Thursday. European officials told the outlet that such a move could cause a rift within NATO and force Kiev’s backers to choose between sticking with Ukraine or siding with Washington.

According to the report, US President Donald Trump’s team has presented Ukraine with a take-it-or-leave-it deal that includes Washington formally recognizing Crimea as Russian territory. US Vice President J.D. Vance has also suggested freezing the conflict along the current lines of control.

A senior European diplomat told the FT that it would be “impossible” to accept the US proposal, while one EU official claimed that “Crimea and future NATO membership aspirations are red lines for us.”

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Ukraine Situation Report: U.S. Peace Plan Stumbles After Tumultuous Day

During a very turbulent day in which the Trump administration saw its plans to end the war in Ukraine sputter, Vice President JD Vance said Kyiv would have to give up territory now held by Russia in any such deal. He also said Ukraine would have to accept the annexation of Crimea by Russia and a prohibition on joining the NATO alliance.

“It was the first time a U.S. official had publicly laid out a plan to end the war that favors Russia in such stark terms,” The New York Times reported.

“The current lines, or somewhere close to them, is where you’re ultimately, I think, going to draw the new lines in the conflict,” Vance told reporters in India. “Now, of course, that means the Ukrainians and the Russians are both going to have to give up some of the territory they currently own.”

Vance did not specify what territory in Ukraine would be given up by Russia, which currently occupies about 20 of it. Under those terms, Ukraine would have to surrender huge swaths of land. Vance also said both sides need to come to the table or the U.S. would “walk away” from further negotiations.

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Did Ukrainian Intel Attempt Trump Assassination?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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3rd Would-Be Trump Assassin Plotted with Telegram Account Linked to Ukrainian Cell Number — We’ve Identified the Account and Individual It’s Registered To

A newly unsealed FBI affidavit reveals that 17-year-old Wisconsin native Nikita Casap — who murdered his parents, stole $14,000 in cash, and plotted to assassinate President Trump using a militarized drone — was communicating via Telegram with an overseas phone number registered to Vodafone Ukraine, one of the country’s largest mobile carriers.

The Telegram account linked to the overseas phone number +380 50 259 5318 — registered under Vodafone Ukraine — was found to be communicating in Cyrillic script, specifically written in the Ukrainian language.

The Telegram username “PoМаН ВіКТОВИЧ” — written in Ukrainian Cyrillic — translates to Roman Viktorovich, the shadowy figure linked to a foreign cell guiding a would-be Trump assassin.

How We Confirmed It Was Ukrainian, Not Russian:
1. Country Code +380
The +380 prefix is the internationally recognized country code for Ukraine, confirming the phone number is Ukrainian in origin.

The mobile prefix 050 specifically identifies the number as belonging to Vodafone Ukraine, one of the country’s leading mobile operators.

2. Telegram Display Name: РОМаН ВіКТОВИЧ
This is the Cyrillic version of the name Roman Viktorovich.

The presence of the letter “і” in “ВіКТОВИЧ” is key:

The letter “і” is used in Ukrainian, but not in modern Russian (Russian uses “и” instead).

Ukrainian also includes unique letters like “ї”, “є”, and “ґ” which do not appear in the Russian alphabet.

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Does Zelensky Want Peace or War?

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

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

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

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

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