Israeli bullets found inside bodies of Iranian children killed in riots: Report

The Cradle.co

The Iranian supreme leader held the US and Israel directly responsible for the violence that swept the Islamic Republic.

Forensic examinations have revealed Israeli military-grade ammunition embedded in the bodies of children killed during recent rioting in Iran, Russian news agency TASS reported on 21 January, citing Iranian security sources.

The source described the case of an eight-year-old girl in Isfahan who was fatally shot while out shopping with her family during the unrest. She was hit in the stomach, chin, and back of the head, with forensic analysis confirming the bullets were Israeli military-grade.

Another incident involved three-year-old Melina Asadi, who was killed on the evening of 7 January 2026 in Kermanshah while returning with her father from a pharmacy. The child was shot from behind, with the source attributing the attack to armed terrorists.

The unrest began on 29 December 2025 following street protests sparked by a sharp fall in the Iranian rial.

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US operation in Venezuela a 'flagrant violation' of international law - Lavrov

RT

The US attack on Venezuela earlier this month in which President Nicolas Maduro was abducted was a blatant violation of international law, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Wednesday.

Speaking at a press conference after meeting with Namibian Foreign Minister Selma Ashipala-Musavyi, Lavrov stated that Moscow's assessment of the US operation in Caracas remains unchanged. He added that the condemnation is shared by the overwhelming "global majority," including the Global South and East.

"Only Western Europeans and other allies of Washington try to shamefully avoid the principled assessments, although everybody understands that we're talking about a flagrant violation of international law," the foreign minister said.

Speaking at the UN Security Council last week, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia described Maduro's abduction as "a cynical crime that cannot be justified." Chinese envoy Sun Lei also condemned the US, saying the military intervention in Venezuela threatens peace and security in the region.

The US military launched an attack against the oil-rich country on January 3, abducting Maduro and his wife. They were taken to a US warship and later flown to New York, where they appeared in court last week on charges of drug-trafficking conspiracy. Both pleaded not guilty.

After the kidnapping, US President Donald Trump said Washington would "run" Venezuela while cooperating with officials in Caracas until a transition is achieved. He stressed that the US needs "total access... to the oil and to other things in their country."

Days later, Trump announced that Venezuela's interim authorities would "turn over" 30 to 50 million barrels of "sanctioned oil" to be sold and "used to benefit the people of Venezuela and the United States."

Acting Venezuelan President Delcy Rodriguez, a close ally of Maduro, said neither the US nor any other "foreign agent" will control Venezuela. Rodriguez signaled openness to "cooperation" with the US, but vowed that her country "will never return to being the colony of another empire."

CIA taught Ukraine how to target Putin’s Achilles heel

Comment: Anyone who supports President Trump after he blessed this sabotage and his strikes against Venezuela must be delusional. Trump certainly deserved to be given the benefit of the doubt after the Russiagate hoax and January 6 psyops but unfortunately, he has proved to be just like all the other Presidents - wholly under the thumb of the Zio-cons. 

In the bin with you. 

--------

 

The Telegraph (UK)

Attacks on oil refineries have cost Moscow $75m a day, according to US intelligence

The CIA secretly taught Ukraine how to target crucial components of Russia's oil refining infrastructure and its sanction-busting shadow fleet, according to officials.

Despite Washington pulling back its support for Kyiv's war effort under the Trump administration, it has emerged that US intelligence and military officers continued to find new ways to stifle Vladimir Putin's war machine.

Since June, the CIA, with Donald Trump's blessing, has been covertly providing specific intelligence to bolster Ukraine's aerial offensive against oil refineries inside Russia, according to the officials.

The move came amid Mr Trump's growing frustration with Putin's unwillingness to negotiate while Russian forces accelerated attacks on Ukrainian cities.

The US has long shared intelligence with Kyiv that helps with attacks on Russian military targets in occupied parts of Ukraine and provides advanced warning of incoming Russian missiles and drones.

Under persuasion by Ukraine sceptics in the White House, led by JD Vance, the vice-president, and his allies, Mr Trump froze military aid in March and intelligence sharing was suspended as a result.

However, The New York Times, citing officials, said the CIA heavily lobbied for the agency to keep sharing intelligence.

Before summer, the impact of the strikes on Russia's energy infrastructure - which often hit storage depots or structures easily repaired - had been relatively minimal.

Under a new plan, crafted by the CIA and US military, the campaign was concentrated exclusively on oil refineries, targeting a newly found Achilles heel.

A CIA expert had identified a coupler device that is so difficult to replace that it could lead to a facility remaining shut for weeks.

The strikes became so successful that Russian oil refining was reduced by as much as a fifth on certain days, cutting exports and leading to domestic fuel shortages.

It was costing its economy an estimated $75m (£55m) a day, according to US intelligence.

In response, Mr Trump praised the strikes for the leverage and deniability they gave him as Putin continued to stonewall negotiations, according to the sources.

It was first reported in October that Washington was closely involved in the planning of such strikes, but it wasn't known that the CIA was responsible for the new focus of the campaign and identifying specific weaknesses in its energy infrastructure.

In late November, Ukraine also began a maritime campaign against Moscow's shadow fleet, a clandestine network of hundreds of vessels carrying sanctioned oil to keep the Russian economy afloat.

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The persecution of Colonel Jacques Baud: A hero in Europe's age of conformity

The Postil Magazine

In the shadowed theatre of contemporary European politics, where spectacle often substitutes for substance and moral posturing masks a vacuum of principle, the figure of Colonel Jacques Baud emerges not as a rabble-rouser, but as a profound and unsettling reflection. A former Swiss strategic intelligence officer, NATO planner, and United Nations peacekeeping expert, Baud is the antithesis of the caricatured dissident. His method is not the megaphone but the microscope; his weapon, not rhetoric, but evidence; his arena, not the public square, but the dispassionate realm of analysis.

Yet, for committing the most subversive act possible in our era — the insistence on thinking clearly and speaking truthfully about war, power, and the West's complicities — he has been systematically hounded, professionally ostracized, and publicly vilified. The persecution of Jacques Baud is not an anomaly; it is the diagnostic symptom of a Europe that has tragically confused democracy with docility, freedom with fealty to consensus, and its own enlightened values with a rigid, pusillanimous conformity. In an age that demands heroes of conviction over heroes of conquest, Baud stands as a necessary one, a man persecuted precisely for embodying the intellectual rigour Europe claims to revere.

I. The Crime of Independent Thought: From Analyst to Heretic

Jacques Baud's biography reads as a curriculum vitae of the ideal European technocrat. Swiss, multilingual, educated at elite military and diplomatic institutions, and seasoned in the complex labyrinths of NATO, the UN, and arms control, he represents the apotheosis of the continent's self-image: rational, cosmopolitan, pragmatic, and humane. This very pedigree, however, magnifies the perceived treachery of his conclusions. When such a man, trained within the system and privy to its inner workings, begins to articulate analyses that deviate from the sanctioned narrative, the system reacts not with intellectual engagement, but with institutional excommunication.

Baud's "crime" is a tripartite heresy against the new orthodoxy. First, in his analyses of the Ukrainian conflict, he refused the simplistic morality play of unalloyed good versus absolute evil. Drawing upon open-source intelligence, military history, and a nuanced understanding of post-Soviet geopolitics, he detailed the sequence of provocations, the Minsk Agreements' collapse, and the strategic miscalculations on all sides. He did not absolve Russian aggression, but he contextualized it within a longer chain of actions and reactions, arguing that understanding cause is not the same as excusing effect. For a media-political ecosystem demanding unequivocal condemnation, such nuance is intolerable.

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The real story behind the Russia-Ukraine war — and what happens next

David Stockman | International Man

Notwithstanding the historic fluidity of borders, there is no case whatsoever that Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 was "unprovoked" and unrelated to NATO's own transparent provocations in the region.

The details are arrayed below, but the larger issue needs be addressed first.

Namely, is there any reason to believe that Russia is an expansionist power looking to gobble up neighbors which were not integral parts of its own historic evolution, as is the case with Ukraine?

After all, if despite Rubio's treachery President Trump does manage to strike a Ukraine peace and partition deal with Putin you can be sure that the neocons will come charging in with a false Munich appeasement analogy.

The answer, however, is a resounding no!

Our firm rebuke of the hoary Munich analogy as it has been falsely applied to Putin is based on what might be called the double-digit rule. To wit, the true expansionary hegemons of modern history have spent huge parts of their GDP on defense because that's what it takes to support the military infrastructure and logistics required for invasion and occupation of foreign lands.

For instance, here are the figures for military spending by Nazi Germany from 1935-1944 expressed as a percent of GDP. This is what an aggressive hegemon looks like in the ramp-up to war: German military spending had already reach 23% of GDP, even before its invasion of Poland in September 1939 and its subsequent commencement of actual military campaigns of invasion and occupation.

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'A lie and propaganda': DNI Gabbard fact-checks Reuters' Russia scaremongering in real time

Zero Hedge 

On Saturday afternoon, Reuters posted an anonymously-sourced story pushing the idea that Russia is bent on reconstituting the Soviet Union. Before the metaphorical ink had dried, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi  Gabbard pounced, condemning the story as "a lie and propaganda" on behalf of "warmongers" seeking to derail President Trump's drive to end the long and bloody Ukraine war.  

From selling the Iraq invasion to achieving a news and social media lockdown on Hunter Biden's laptop, the Deep State has long used major media outlets like Reuters, the New York Times and Washington Post to inject their agenda-advancing narratives into America's town square. Displaying the typical modus operandi with its Saturday night story, Reuters vaguely attributed the purported US intelligence conclusions about Russia to "six sources familiar with US intelligence." 

According to those sources, "US intelligence reports" are warning that, despite Putin's outwardly earnest claims that he wants to end the Ukraine war -- claims credited by Trump -- Russia not only wants to conquer all of Ukraine but also other European territories that were part of the Soviet Union. "The reports present a starkly different picture from that painted by...Trump and his Ukraine peace negotiators," wrote Reuters journalists Jonathan Landay, Erin Banco and John Irish. Shortly after Banco promoted the story on X, Gabbard lashed out: 

"No, this is a lie and propaganda Reuters is willingly pushing on behalf of warmongers who want to undermine President Trump’s tireless efforts to end this bloody war that has resulted in more than a million casualties on both sides.

Dangerously, you are promoting this false narrative to block President Trump’s peace effort, and fomenting hysteria and fear among the people to get them to support the escalation of war, which is what NATO and the EU really want in order to pull the United States military directly into war with Russia.

The truth is the US intelligence community has briefed policymakers, including the Democrat HPSCI member quoted by Reuters, that US Intelligence assesses that Russia seeks to avoid a larger war with NATO. It also assesses that, as the last few years have shown, Russia’s battlefield performance indicates it does not currently have the capability to conquer and occupy all of Ukraine, let alone Europe."

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UK plotting to undermine Trump's Ukraine peace efforts - Russian intelligence

Comment: MI6 playbook for years...

------

RT

London is pushing for the EU to seize frozen Russian assets hoping to drag the conflict out "to the last Ukrainian," the SVR claims.

The UK is reportedly trying to convince the European Union to take control of frozen Russian assets, aiming to undermine US President Donald Trump's efforts to advance peace initiatives that could end the Ukraine conflict, according to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

After the launch of Russia's Special Military Operation in February of 2022, Kiev's Western backers froze approximately $300 billion in Russian sovereign assets, of which $246 billion has been immobilized by EU member states. Discussions concerning the frozen Russian assets intensified within the bloc in recent weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen proposed using the funds to back a "reparations loan" to Ukraine.

In a statement released on Tuesday, the SVR claimed that the UK's leadership was "desperately pushing for Brussels' decision to seize Russian assets." Aside from the clear goal of providing financial support to Kiev, London is also seeking to diminish US interest in facilitating any peace mediation between Ukraine and Russia, according to Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service.

The SVR concluded:

"The UK's endgame is to use Kiev against Russia without any obstacles, 'down to the last Ukrainian'. Although the former grandeur of Great Britain has long sunk to oblivion, appropriation and deceit are still the creed for so-called 'London gentlemen'."

Last week, EU member states voted to keep the Russian sovereign funds temporarily frozen. To push through the controversial agenda, the bloc's leadership had to invoke emergency powers to bypass the unanimity requirement.

Several member states, including Hungary, Slovakia, and Belgium, have raised objections. The latter is the seat of the Euroclear depositary, which holds the bulk of the frozen Russian assets. Brussels has expressed concern that it would be left in the lurch by the bloc in the face of Russian lawsuits.

Moscow has characterized any use of its immobilized funds as "theft." On Friday, the Bank of Russia announced that it was filing a lawsuit seeking compensation from Euroclear for damages stemming from its "inability to manage" the assets.

Late last month, the SVR similarly claimed that Britain was concocting a smear campaign aimed at damaging US President Trump's standing, with the aim of derailing his efforts to end the Ukraine conflict.

The West discovers Zelensky is not really a good guy

Tarik Cyril Amar | RT

 

In a fleeting glimpse of lucidity, the mainstream media has noticed a tiny fraction of the corruption and authoritarianism in Kiev.

It's that time of the great proxy war crusade against Russia again. Someone in the mainstream West has woken up to, if not the facts about the politics of Ukraine, then at least a quantum of disquiet.

The last major wave of the likes of the Financial Times, The Economist, and The Spectator suddenly noticing - all at the same time, as if on cue - that Ukraine has an authoritarianism and corruption problem (and then some) took place less than half a year ago.

Now it's Politico - usually a steadfast party organ of Russophobia, Zionism-come-what-genocide-may, and servility to NATO - that feels vaguely troubled by the realities of the Kiev regime or, as the publication puts it, the "dark side" of Vladimir "I don't like elections" Zelensky's rule.

Not all of those realities, of course. That would be asking too much. Instead, Politico is homing in on one great scandal (out of countless ones) concerning one man and the anguish of a few "civil-society"-NGO types, both with good connections to the West. This time, the scandal concerns the obvious, shameless political prosecution of Vladimir Kudritsky, formerly a high-ranking and effective energy infrastructure executive and de facto civil servant.

Yet what about noticing the murder in Ukrainian detention of critical blogger - and US citizen - Gonzalo Lira? Or the vicious persecution of leftist war critic Bogdan Syrotiuk? Or the mean, indecent harassing of Christian clergy and believers for not saying their prayers in quite the right Ukrainian-nationalist-approved manner? Perish the thought!

In a similar spirit of extreme selectiveness, some Western outlets are now registering - a little and very slowly - the brutal realities of Ukrainian forced mobilization that feed the Western proxy war: Recently, a war - pardon, "defense" - editor of the ultra-gung-ho British tabloid The Sun has returned shell-shocked from NATO's de facto eastern front, not because of the bloody and wasteful fighting but because the uncouth Ukrainians press-ganged his fixer.

In a similarly traumatic experience, Hollywood's Angelina Jolie had her local driver snatched away at a Ukrainian military roadblock. Yet violent forced mobilization has been an everyday occurrence in Ukraine for years already. So much so that Ukrainians have chosen the term "busification" (from minibus, a popular vehicle for mobilization manhunts) as word of the year for 2025.

For quite a few of its victims, it ends up even worse than for those privileged enough to work for Western movie stars and British propagandists. Roman Sopin, for instance, who did not even resist, has just been beaten to death in a mobilization precinct in central Kiev, as an official medical assessment of his cause of death implies as clearly as anyone may dare under Zelensky's regime.

But let's get back to the few things Western media deign to notice occasionally: Already dismissed last year, Kudritsky is now facing the courts under transparently trumped-up charges. The reason is obvious to everyone. He has been too popular and far too vocal about corruption at the highest levels and the authoritarian power grabs of Zelensky's presidential office in particular.

Kudritsky's case - comparatively harmless, really - does raise many disturbing questions: why is it that the Zelensky regime has such a nasty record of abusing arbitrary financial sanctions and politically perverted legal processes, or lawfare? And haven't we been told that this regime under its "Churchillian" leader is fighting for Western values of democracy and legality?
 

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NATO to deploy 800,000 troops in case of war with Russia - German general

RT

Such a clash could happen "tomorrow," Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank has warned.

Berlin is prepared for a war with Moscow and stands ready to facilitate the deployment of 800,000 NATO troops towards the Russian border, the head of the nation's joint operations command, Lieutenant General Alexander Sollfrank, has said.

The hypothetical deployment is part of Operations Plan Germany, which was revealed last year. The 1,000-page-long document governs Berlin's response if Article 5 of the NATO treaty is triggered in a confrontation with Moscow. It includes turning Germany into a major logistics hub for the deployment of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and pieces of equipment from various NATO nations against Russia. The deployment must be completed within 180 days of the start of the conflict.

According to Sollfrank, the plan may be implemented sooner rather than later. He told an annual Bundeswehr conference in Berlin on Friday:

"Russia possesses a very large military potential despite the war in Ukraine. Russia is already capable of [launching] a limited attack on the NATO territory."

Speaking to Reuters the same day, the general claimed that Moscow could do it "as early as tomorrow." German officials have increasingly spoken of the alleged Russian threat while taking an increasingly belligerent stance towards Moscow.

Chancellor Friedrich Merz has previously declared that diplomatic options for resolving the Ukraine conflict are "exhausted" and doubled down on providing weapons to Kiev.

On Friday, both he and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said that Germany's existence in its present form was threatened by Russia. "It is not alarmism... when I say that our way of life is in danger," Pistorius told the military conference.

Moscow has repeatedly stated it has no intention of attacking NATO. It also dismissed Berlin's claims as "nonsense" aimed at justifying skyrocketing military spending. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has previously warned that Germany demonstrates "clear signs of re-Nazification."

Politico reported last month that Germany's rearmament plans would cost it €377 billion ($440 billion).

Side of Jihad with that pastrami on rye?

James Howard Kunstler | kunstler.com

 

"Socialism is a wonderful idea. It's only as a reality that it has been disastrous."
— Thomas Sowell

Does Zohran's radiant smile put you in mind of a labradoodle puppy? The guy was just that soft and fluffy during the mayoral election campaign, beaming remorselessly for the cameras, summoning a cushy nirvana of give-aways that would deliver an "affordable" life to the moiling masses of under-employed latte-clutchers doomed by their unpayable college loans and the gender-study diplomas they innocently bought with all that money. Under Zohran, New York City will soon be one colossal student lounge, and even the baristas serving the lattes will get nice one-bedroom river-view apartments, ride to work on free buses, and buy their take-out chili-crisp fried tofu for cheap at the city-run food store.

Look (above): there is Zohran with his billionaire friend and patron Alex Soros. Alex does not seem to realize that Zohran wants to eat him for lunch. Fluffy as they might be, labradoodles are actually carnivores. And Zohran has declared that billionaires should not exist. He says the billionaires of New York are going to pay for those lattes, free buses, river-view apartments, and all the rest of the package. Is he planning to hold them hostage? Staple their John Lobb bespoke alligator leather loafers to the parqueted floor of the penthouse at 15 Central Park West while he loots their accounts?

No! They are going to make like Snake Plisskin and escape from New York with all their assets and chattels. Florida, Nashville, Boise! It's a big country and, let's face it, your laptop is your office. Then what? Maybe it will be like the old glory days of Soviet Russia in New York. The people will pretend to work and Zohran will pretend to pay them and everybody will be all happy and equal. That city-run food store will become the city-run free food store, just like the hippies dreamed about in 1967, the summer of love! Jews and Jihadis will march together, arm-in-arm, into a gleaming future. . . ! 

 

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Taming the sound and fury of the Empire of Chaos

Pepe Escobar | Strategic Culture Foundation

 

Close the door, put out the light
You know they won't be home tonight
The snow falls hard and don't you know
The winds of Thor are blowing cold

Led Zeppelin, No Quarter

In a matter of less than a year, Russian scientific know-how came up with four bangers:

1. Oreshnik: hypersonic missile, already tested in the Ukraine battleground.

2. Burevestnik: Or "Stormbringer", with that nice Deep Purple ring. Nuclear cruise missile with unlimited range.

3. Poseidon: nuclear-powered torpedo, capable of loitering underwater, undetected, for unlimited time; then, at a command, strikes enemy coasts with a nuclear payload, provoking a radioactive tsunami. Largely exceeds the destructive power of the Sarmat, Russia's largest ICBM.

4. Khabarovsk: nuclear sub. Call him The Messenger of Doom: capable of delivering at least 6 Doomsday-enabling Poseidons.

President Putin was crystal clear when detailing some key facts. The "compact nuclear systems" used in the Burevestnik and the Poseidon "can also be adapted to create new energy sources, including for the Arctic."

Putin also stressed how both Burevestnik and Poseidon "use only Russian-made parts". Praise the Lord for those chips from upgraded Soviet washing machines.

And there's a lot more to come following the tracks of Burevestnik and Poseidon: "I'm talking about...the Avangard system, or the serial production of the Oreshnik missile system...soon the heavy intercontinental Sarmat missile." 

 

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Poland, Slovakia, Hungary Defy EU By Keeping Bans On Ukraine Imports

ZeroHedge

 

A new European Union deal to liberalize trade with Ukraine took effect Wednesday, but Poland, Hungary and Slovakia are defying it, maintaining their protectionist bans on imports from the country. Their defiance comes amid mounting grievances over EU prioritization of the West's proxy war on Russia over the prosperity of EU member states and their citizens.

Approved on Oct 13, the new EU arrangement expands tariff-free Ukrainian access to European markets, replacing a temporary lowering of trade barriers adopted after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. "We believe (the agreement) is a stable, fair framework, that can be reliable both for the EU and for Ukraine, to ensure a gradual integration in our single market, while providing stable trade flows," said European Commission spokeswoman Ariana Podesta. The European Commission (EC) is the EU's principal executive branch.

Rebelling against the Brussels regime, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia say they will maintain the bans on agricultural imports from Ukraine they put in place in 2023. The three countries' bans were a reaction to a wartime glut of Ukrainian products, which resulted from Black Sea ports being disrupted by the war with Russia. The glut sank prices and hammered domestic producers.

 

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Lavrov talks Russia-NATO relations, arms control and dialogue with US: Key takeaways from the foreign minister’s speech — RT Russia & Former Soviet Union

RT

Moscow has no intention of attacking the US-led military bloc and is prepared to give official guarantees to that effect, the top diplomat has said.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has outlined Moscow's vision of relations with an increasingly belligerent NATO, US President Donald Trump's administration, and the security architecture in Eurasia.

Lavrov touched on these and other topics at an international security conference in Minsk, Belarus on Tuesday. Here are the key takeaways from his address:

Russia-NATO relations

Moscow "has repeatedly said that we have had no intention of attacking any of the current NATO and European Union member states," Lavrov stressed. He added that Russia is prepared to give official guarantees to this effect as part of a future security architecture in Eurasia.

According to the foreign minister, EU leaders are studiously avoiding these discussions, aiming instead for "security guarantees against Russia, as opposed to with Russia."

Lavrov claimed that the West is openly preparing for a "new big European war" against Russia and key ally Belarus. He said there is ongoing militarization across most European NATO member states.

"NATO's expansion has not stopped for a single minute, despite assurances not to move eastward by an inch given to Soviet leaders," he said, accusing the West of seeking to preserve its "global dominance" despite the dawn of a new era.

The Western military bloc is attempting to establish a foothold as far afield as the Asia-Pacific, with a view to containing China, North Korea, and Russia, Lavrov stated.

Russia-US dialogue

Russia needs "guarantees" that a potential summit between President Vladimir Putin and his US counterpart, Donald Trump, "will yield a concrete result," the foreign minister explained.

Tentative discussions on a meeting in Budapest, Hungary began after the two presidents spoke by phone earlier this month. Last week, Trump clarified there are no plans for talks in the near future, as he wants to make sure it would not be "wasted time" in terms of resolving the Ukraine conflict. On Sunday, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov similarly said that both Moscow and Washington have to do a substantial amount of "preparatory work before top-level negotiations can take place."

Moscow hopes that the US president "really wants a stable peace," Lavrov said. He expressed incredulity at the apparent change in Trump's rhetoric in recent days, as the US president called for an immediate ceasefire along the current front lines. Moscow has rejected this scenario, insisting that the root causes of the Ukraine conflict should be addressed first. 

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Ukraine Conflict Destroying Europe - Tucker Carlson

Tucker Carlson | RT

The conflict with Russia cannot be won by Ukraine, the US media host has argued.

European leaders are being "stupid" and "reckless" by continuing to back Kiev against Russia, effectively destroying both Ukraine and Europe itself, American political commentator Tucker Carlson said in an interview published on Monday.

Speaking to RTVI US, a New York-based Russian-language media outlet, Carlson mocked the idea that Kiev could prevail over Moscow on the battlefield.

"They cannot win this war. All it's doing is destroying Europe. It has already destroyed Ukraine.

"Of course they are not going to beat Russia. Russia is an industrial power, a resource power, a close military ally of China at this point. It's a joke. All they can do is destroy themselves and destroy the world with a nuclear exchange. This is deranged.

"Europe is falling apart because the same people and the same ideas that got us into this war have dominated for 80 years."

A vocal Christian conservative, Carlson tied Europe's current economic decline to decades of secular liberal policies, claiming that the same elites who provoked a confrontation with Moscow had already undermined the continent's cultural foundations.

He also pointed to Ukraine's escalating demographic crisis and its plans to import foreign nationals to beef up the workforce. Carlson argued that should a plan like that be implemented, "there will be no Ukraine" and that "that was the plan" from the start, in his opinion.

Pro-Kiev European nations have spent billions of euros on military aid for Ukraine and pledged to continue funding the country's government for years to come. Meanwhile, Western attempts to curb Russian energy imports have contributed to a sharp surge in energy prices in the European Union, which is working to replace affordable Russian products with more expensive alternatives.

Germany, widely considered the EU's driving economy, is undergoing a "dramatic" economic decline, the ifo Institute, a leading economic think tank, cautioned last week.

Anti-Russian Propaganda and Preparation for War Against Russia

Thierry Meyssan | Voltairenet.org

While deep state propaganda convinces public opinion that Russia is evil, armies are being prepared for war before our very eyes. The Chief of Staff of the French Army, General Pierre Schill, has just announced to the National Assembly that he is preparing for the next war against Russia. Meanwhile, the Polish Deputy Prime Minister has announced that he will intercept Vladimir Putin's presidential plane. Alone against all his allies, Donald Trump is trying to preserve world peace.

The confrontation between President Donald Trump and the coalition of British, American, Israeli, and Ukrainian deep states is likely to extend to the Far East. In Japan, Sanae Takaichi has just formed a LDP (Liberal Democratic Party) government thanks to his alliance with the Innovation Party, which shares his warmongering views.

Far East

Although Prime Minister Takaichi is the first woman to hold this office, she is nonetheless a champion of "Japanese imperialism" from the Showa era. Barely inaugurated, she announced her intention to rewrite the National Defense Strategy (NDS), the Defense Enhancement Program (DBP), and the National Security Strategy (NSS). These texts are, in principle, updated every ten years, but will be reformed seven years ahead of schedule.

Sanae Takaichi claims that she simply wants to honor President Trump's wish that each US ally devote 5% of its GDP to defense; everyone has understood that she wants to restore the Emperor's army, amend the Constitution to end Japanese neutrality, and attack the Korean Peninsula and the People's Republic of China.

To be clear, her predecessor and outgoing Prime Minister, Shigeru Ishiba, sent an offering to the Yasukuni Shrine in memory of Japanese criminals against humanity. Ishiba is the largest private collector of World War II memorabilia. His home is a shrine to war criminals.

Ms. Takaichi certainly did not go to the Yasukuni Shrine this year, unlike in previous years. She refrained from using anything too provocative, and Shigeru Ishiba went there very rarely. But she did appoint seven men from among the parliamentarians corrupted by the Moon sect as ministers and secretaries of state.

Following the assassination of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 8, 2022, by a victim of the Moon sect, the police discovered that she had not only bribed him, but also parliamentarians from her own party, the Liberal Democratic Party. In previous years, she had paid them half a billion dollars. Yes, half a billion dollars. The largest parliamentary corruption scandal in history; a scandal that remains unsolved and has only led to three indictments.

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Putin 'most popular leader in the world' - Tucker Carlson

RT

Russian President Vladimir Putin is the most popular leader in the world, American journalist Tucker Carlson has claimed, in an interview with RTVI US. Outside of Western Europe, Canada, and the "Anglo-sphere," it is almost impossible to meet someone who doesn't like Putin, Carlson told the network.

"He is the most popular leader in the world, by far," Carlson said, noting that the primary reason for Putin's global popularity is the fact that he has "put his own country's interests above his own in a lot of ways. In ways that Western leaders don't."

Asked if his perspective on Putin's worldview had changed after an interview with him in February 2024, Carlson said that he was surprised to realize that the Russian president "actually likes the West." And that he probably likes it "way more than anyone who would potentially replace Putin."

In his interview with RTVI US, Carlson also suggested that the US, Western Europe, and most of the industrialized world, are "in a decline phase" while Russia is experiencing a "spiritual revival" and is proving to be a prosperous country with "a sense of self-worth and a sense of purpose." He further proposed that this was one of the reasons the West "hates it so much" and wants to destroy it.

RTVI US is a subsidiary of RTVI (Russian Television International), a privately-funded Russian-language television network with headquarters in Moscow and New York.

Carlson told Germany's Bild, in July, that while Putin had been doing a "great job for Russia," Western leaders were failing their people.

"Your country is going down, Russia is going up. You should be mad at your own leaders. You are mad at Putin instead," he told the outlet. Carlson went on to suggest that German officials were attacking Putin and Russia to distract the public from domestic economic and migration issues. 

EU Declares War On Its Own Members

Simplicus The Thinker

Yesterday, two near-simultaneous acts of sabotage saw explosions ripping through oil refineries in both Hungary and Romania. In Hungary it was the MOL in Százhalombatta, which reportedly receives Russian oil, while in Romania the Petrotel-Lukoil, a subsidiary of the Russian parent company.

As one commentator writes, these attacks came literally hours after the European Council had just approved to ban Russian gas starting in 2026:

The timing here is exceptionally curious because this attack came just hours after the European Council essentially locked in its position to almost completely ban Russian gas imports, with new contracts being outlawed at the beginning of 2026, and all long term contracts forcibly expiring in 2028. A similar ban on oil imports is expected in the near future. Hungary and Slovakia have pledged to issue legal challenges to the ban.

As of this writing, there were reports that a new explosion lit up a refinery in Bratislava, Slovakia—which allegedly processes Russian oil from the Druzhba pipeline. But subsequent follow-ups appear to show these were fake—though it’s as of yet uncertain.

The real attacks on Romania and Hungary came just days after Europe essentially gave carte blanche for terror attacks across the EU by way of several top European officials openly condoning not only the Nord Stream attacks, but even attacks against Hungarian oil pipelines. Here Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski addresses Hungary’s Peter Szijjarto:

  

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Trump’s Sanctions Put Him on “Warpath” with Russia, Says Medvedev

Will Jones | The Daily Sceptic

Donald Trump has put the US on the “warpath” with Moscow with his decision to impose sanctions and cancel a peace summit, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev has said. The Telegraph has more.

On Wednesday night, the US President announced sanctions against Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. The measures followed the collapse of a proposed meeting with Vladimir Putin.

The Kremlin had signalled it was unwilling to meet America’s terms for a ceasefire.

“The US is our enemy, and its talkative ‘peacemaker’ has now fully embarked on the warpath with Russia,” Mr Medvedev wrote on Telegram. 

“The decisions taken are an act of war against Russia. And now Trump has fully aligned himself with loony Europe,” said the Deputy Chair of Russia’s National Security Council, reigniting his war of words with the US President.

The European Union also announced new sanctions on Russia, including a ban on the import of liquefied natural gas. The natural gas ban will phase out imports rather than halt them immediately. 

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Is Peace with Russia Possible?

Armstrong Economics

ANSWER: Europe and NATO are the aggressors – not Putin. Zelensky is meeting with Trump today. Trump has to realize who his real opponents are. Peace with Russia is easy if you do what is right. Putin warned Zelensky that the Minsk Agreement was the key. Zelensky has been taking his orders from NATO, NEOCONS, and never from his own people. I had two employees there, and I can say many people questioned if he was even legitimately elected. We have witnessed what the EU and NATO did in Romania. Do you really think they were hands-off in Ukraine? There would have BEEN NO WAR if the EU, NATO, and Neocons had not lied and honored the Minisk Agreement.

 You cannot defeat Putin and think that is somehow the answer. When Khrushchev had to back down after the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a coup occurred, and Brezhnev took power, deepening the Cold War.

Then there was a proposal that Russia join NATO when the USSR collapsed. Just as our Neocons in the CIA killed JFK to keep war on the table and rejected his peace initiatives, the Russian Neocons staged coup #2 and overthrew Gorbachev. That is when Yeltsin stood on the tank and pleaded with the military not to fire on their own people. The military stood down, and the coup collapsed. Anyone who thinks they can beat Putin and force him out of Ukraine is not just a fool; they are a dangerous asshole. You will get coup #3, and this time you will get the Russian Neocons in full power. Just imagine if John McCain had become president with Lindsey Grachm as his VP. You would probably be dead by now. 

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Danish PM Alleges Russian 'Hybrid' Drone War 'Only The Beginning'

Zero Hedge 

Some of the more tiny NATO countries are pretending to carry the biggest stick, at least judging by their outspoken jingoistic rhetoric of late. Small 'Eastern flank' countries like Estonia and Lithuania have long exhibited this loud anti-Moscow rhetoric, but Denmark is increasingly joining in.

Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen in a fresh interview given to Financial Times has declared NATO must step up its response to Russia, warning that recent drone incursions are "only the beginning" of an alleged 'hybrid war' and sabotage campaign aimed at dividing Europe.

"We need to be very open about [the fact] that it probably is only the beginning," she told FT. "We need all Europeans to understand what is at stake and what's going on. When there are drones or cyber attacks, the idea is to divide us."

Over the last couple weeks Danish authorities have claimed that hundreds of mystery drones have at various times over that span sought to disrupt commercial and military aviation over the small northern European country. Top officials have linked these to Russian operations, though without presenting any evidence.

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