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The authoritarian behavior of Volodymyr Zelensky has become impossible to ignore. An article written by Pavel Lokshin for the German newspaper WELT sharply criticizes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy for his increasingly authoritarian tendencies.The report shows how the man lionized by the MSM as ‘a second Churchill’ is in fact consolidating his power through the suppression of political opponents.Welt reported (translated from the German):“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is consolidating his power. Anyone who stands in his way must give way – most recently the freely elected mayor of the city of Odessa. Zelensky is thus sending a clear signal to other...

Russia tested a nuclear-powered cruise missile that it said is capable of traveling thousands of miles. Trump countered that there is a U.S. nuclear submarine off Russia’s coast.President Donald Trump rebuked Russia on Monday for testing a new nuclear-capable cruise missile instead of working to end the war in Ukraine — a testy exchange that is indicative of how relations between the countries have worsened in recent weeks. Russia on Sunday announced a successful test of a nuclear-powered cruise missile called Burevestnik, which Russia says can carry a nuclear warhead and travel for more than 8,000 miles. Russian President Vladimir...

WASHINGTON — Vladimir Putin is feeling the sting of President Trump’s new oil sanctions — so much so that he dispatched one of his top henchmen on a desperate charm offensive across the US. Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin-linked financier who once served as Moscow’s backchannel to Washington, spent the weekend trying to schmooze top Trump officials and going on a media blitz. But the move failed spectacularly, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent bluntly blasting Dmitriev as a “Russian propagandist,” and NATO Amb. Matt Whitaker flatly rejected his overtures — saying the administration’s energy crackdown would continue. On one of the...

President Trump issued a chilling warning to Vladimir Putin Monday after the Russian tyrant boasted about testing his country’s new “invincible” nuclear missile. “They know we have a nuclear submarine, the greatest in the world, right off their shore,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Monday as he prepared to travel to Japan. He was speaking after Putin on Sunday hailed an 8,700-mile, 15-hour test flight for Russia’s “unique” nuclear-powered missile, dubbed a “flying Chernobyl,” which the country says could strike targets in the US. The Burevestnik missile is a “unique product, unlike anything else in the world,”...

An Italian appeals court on Tuesday approved the extradition to Germany of a Ukrainian man arrested last month on suspicion of setting off explosions that damaged North Stream gas pipelines between Russia and Germany. The suspect, Serhii Kuznietsov, has opposed the extradition and his lawyer, Nicola Canestrini, said he is appealing the decision by an appeals court in Bologna to Italy’s highest Cassation Court. Any transfer will be delayed until a high court decision, expected in about a month, the lawyer said. German prosecutors allege that Kuznietsov both organized and carried off the detonation of at least four bombs of...

Ukraine is rushing to strengthen its positions in the strategic eastern transport hub of Pokrovsk as about 200 Russian troops have infiltrated the city in small groups, Kyiv's military said on Monday. The Ukrainian general staff, which made the estimate of enemy forces, reported small arms firefights and the active deployment of drones. The Russian defense ministry said that its assault groups were trying to advance near the train station. Russia has been aiming to occupy Pokrovsk, a key part of Kyiv's defensive lines, for months, seeing it as a crucial point for its push to fully capture the Donetsk...

What’s next? Basically, the war is lost. If you look at all of the objectives that Putin set for the war, all of them have failed. All of them. So, continuing the war is the only way for Putin to stay in power. He wants to create extra chaos in the free world hoping that a new window will open for him. It’s really just a protracted agony. It is cynical and stupid, but Putin is willing to put thousands of civilians into graves in the months to come before the whole of Ukraine is liberated, if that will allow...

When a situation gets complicated, such as in Putin’s war on Ukraine, some analysts might observe that one side is playing chess while the other side is playing checkers. If one really wants to emphasize how outmatched one side is, an analyst might say that the other side is playing three-dimensional chess. Regular old two-dimensional chess is complicated enough, and when playing it at the grandmaster level can be labyrinthine.The game of chess is rather like war. For one thing, chess involves strategy and tactics. Given that, perhaps we can learn something about the war in Ukraine and its mastermind...

America should be embracing trade opportunities and peace vs. advocating for the neocon agenda of war with Russia. Why would we alienate a superpower when we could have open dialogue for peace and negotiate trade that would benefit all Americans?

Let’s put the events of the last 72 hours into context.On Monday and Tuesday, Russian oil refineries in NATO countries Hungary and Romania suddenly, and simultaneously, have mysterious explosions and catastrophic fires {citation}}. On Wednesday, NATO head Mark Rutte comes to visit President Trump in the White House, and at the end of the day, the same Russian company, Lukoil, whose refinery exploded in Romania, suddenly becomes sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. These events are not disconnected.President Trump then disputes a Wall Street Journal report, further saying he did not give approval, nor does he know where NATO long-range missiles...

DONALD Trump has just blown a hole in Vladimir Putin’s warchest – and the shockwaves are already rippling through Moscow, Beijing and New Dehli. In a move branded by the Kremlin as “an act of war”, the US President slapped sweeping sanctions on Russia’s oil titans Rosneft and Lukoil – and within hours, the pain began to bite. Global oil prices surged nearly five per cent overnight, China’s state oil giants froze Russian purchases and India – Moscow’s biggest remaining lifeline — is preparing to slash imports. For Putin, the timing couldn’t be worse. His forces are still pounding Ukraine,...

Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday that Russia belongs among the ranks of self-respecting nations and will not act under external pressure, responding to new US sanctions and Western efforts to isolate Moscow. More to come ...

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman Dmitry Medvedev claimed on Thursday that United States President Donald Trump, whom he described as a false peacemaker, has set himself on a "warpath" against his country by introducing new sanctions on its oil sector. "They will, of course, say he could not help but be pressured in Congress, etc. This does not change the main point: the decisions taken are an act of war against Russia," the former president wrote on Telegram. "And now, Trump has fully aligned himself with insane Europe." Moreover, Medvedev noted a "latest swing of the Trump pendulum," claiming that...

Four major state-owned Chinese oil companies have suspended their purchases of seaborne Russian oil in response to the new sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on Rosneft and Lukoil, according to a Reuters report, citing anonymous trade sources. The suspension, if confirmed, would put Russia under major economic pressure to end its war on Ukraine. China is a key strategic partner of Russia. Beijing's large-scale oil purchases have aided Moscow through punishing Western sanctions related to its invasion of Ukraine. The four oil firms involved are PetroChina, Sinopec, CNOOC, and Zhenhua Oil, per Reuters.

Napoleon Bonaparte was a genius. Adolf Hitler had an above-average IQ. Joe Biden is a half-wit. All three are fools who believed they could destroy Russia. The West’s failed Ukraine project has forced us to confront a bewildering array of what look like instances of stupidity, verging even on psychosis. Competent analysts like John Mearsheimer and Jacques Baud confirmed the obvious: total defeat for Ukraine has been inevitable from the get-go, yet the politicians and media kept telling us Ukraine was sure to win, and even if Ukraine lost, at least Putin could easily be removed from office. To me,...

The White House has hit President Putin with a “substantial” package of sanctions against Russia’s two largest oil companies in a sign of President Trump’s growing impatience over the war in Ukraine. Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, said last night: “President Putin has not come to the table in an honest and forthright manner, as we’d hoped.” Announcing a raft of new penalties, Bessent added: “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine. Treasury is prepared to take further action if necessary to support...

United States President Donald Trump denounced in a Truth Social post on Wednesday a report by the Wall Street Journal of the US allowing Ukraine to strike "deep into Russia" with Western-made long-range weapons as "fake news." "The US has nothing to do with those missiles, wherever they may come from, or what Ukraine does with them!" he clarified. In the report, WSJ stated that Washington gave the green light to Kiev to attack Russia with British-supplied Storm Shadow missiles before Trump met with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky at the White House last week.

Russia has stepped up attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, leading to frequent blackoutsThe Ukrainian city of Chernihiv is in total blackout following what the authorities describe as a "massive" assault by Russian missiles and drones, with hundreds of thousands of people affected.Across the wider Chernihiv region, four people are reported to have been killed as residential neighbourhoods were struck in the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi.Ten others were injured, including a 10-year-old girl.The country's most northerly region is the latest to be hit in an intensifying series of attacks on civilian infrastructure as Russia targets energy supplies, the rail network, homes and...

A planned summit between U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was put on hold on Tuesday, as Moscow's rejection of an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine cast a cloud over attempts at negotiations. A senior White House official told Reuters "there are no plans for President Trump to meet with President Putin in the immediate future" after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had a "productive call" but opted against an in-person meeting. Trump had announced last week that he and Putin would meet soon in Hungary to try to bring an end...

I am continuing to prepare for President Donald Trump’s trip to Budapest, where he will meet with President Putin. In order to negotiate an end to the war with Ukraine, it is necessary to know for what Putin sent his soldiers there. To clarify, I am not asking “why,” but “what for.” Since the beginning of Putin’s attack on Ukraine, political scientists, psychologists, and other experts have attempted to explain the attack based on Putin’s psyche: his desire to prove to world leaders that he is the most powerful, his dream of being remembered as the “gatherer of Russian lands,”...