Category Archives: Geopolitics

Victoria Nuland Quits as NATO Suffered Major Defeat in Ukraine

The Managing Director of the US State Department’s regime change operation in Ukraine back in 2014 , Victoria Nuland resigns as NATO suffered heavy loses again in Ukraine.

US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland is poised to leave her post in the coming weeks, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has announced. The senior official, widely regarded as a foreign policy hawk, played a key role in the Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014.

In December 2013, she visited Kiev with the late Senator John McCain to hand out pastries to armed protesters in the city’s central square. Days before the February coup, as orchestrated mass murder gripped the city, she was recorded discussing how to “midwife this thing” with then-US ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, reportedly exclaiming “F**k the EU” when it came to a choice of new leader in the war-torn country.

Nuland resigned from the State Department during the Trump administration, taking the helm of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) think-tank before joining the Albright Stonebridge Group and the board of the neo-liberal National Endowment for Democracy (NED). She rejoined the government after President Joe Biden’s inauguration in 2021.

She has worked on arming Ukraine and assembling a Western coalition that would supply Kiev with weapons and ammunition for the conflict with Russia. Last month, she pleaded to Congress to approve $61 billion in funding to Ukraine, arguing that most of it would be “going right back into the US economy,” to create jobs in the weapons industry.

Her most recent trip to Kiev involved intervening with President Vladimir Zelensky on behalf of General Valery Zaluzhny, though to no avail. Zaluzhny was subsequently fired.

In a CNN interview at the end of February, Nuland admitted the defeat of US efforts towards Moscow, acknowledging that the target of her policy is “not the Russia that, frankly, we wanted.”

Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova attributed Nuland’s exit to “the failure of the anti-Russian course of the Biden administration.”

“Russophobia, proposed by Victoria Nuland as the main foreign policy concept of the United States, is dragging the Democrats to the bottom like a stone,” Zakharova said. Posting a photo of Nuland taken at an Orthodox church at some point, she said that if the US politician wanted to “go to a monastery to atone for your sins, we can put in a good word.”

Nuland is married to neoconservative stalwart Robert Kagan, a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century. Her sister-in-law Kimberley Kagan runs the Institute for the Study of War. Her temporary replacement at the State Department will be Under Secretary for Management John Bass, a former US Ambassador to Afghanistan (2017-2020), Turkey (2014-2017) and Georgia (2009-2012) .

In a statement on Tuesday, Blinken noted that his friend “Toria” has held most of the jobs at the State Department, from a consular officer to ambassador and deputy secretary, over her 35-year career. Her most recent posting was as undersecretary for political affairs. She was also Blinken’s acting deputy after the July 2023 retirement of Wendy Sherman, until Kurt Campbell was confirmed to the post last month.

“What makes Toria truly exceptional is the fierce passion she brings to fighting for what she believes in most: freedom, democracy, human rights, and America’s enduring capacity to inspire and promote those values around the world,” Blinken said.

He also noted that her “leadership on Ukraine” will be the subject of study “for years to come” by diplomats and students of foreign policy.

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The Axis of Asymmetry Takes On The ‘Rules-Based Order’

World War III is here, playing out asymmetrically in military, financial, and institutional battlefields, and the fight is an existential one. The western Hegemon, in truth, is at war against international law, and only ‘kinetic military action’ can bring it to heel.

Continue reading The Axis of Asymmetry Takes On The ‘Rules-Based Order’

How Facebook Became Tool for Censorship and Goldmine for US Intel Services

Sunday is the 20th anniversary of Facebook’s* launch. In twenty years, the company has grown into a major tool for manipulation, social engineering and control by the deep state, big business and Western intel agencies. Sputnik reached out to an insider-turned whistleblower for info on the architecture of Facebook’s censorship industrial complex.

Formally launched on February 4, 2004, Mark Zuckerberg’s future empire started out as a modest “directory of information for college students,” with Zuckerberg and several of his Harvard classmates assembling the initial platform in about two weeks, and the company taking just four short years to surpass rival Myspace to become the world’s number one social media platform. Twenty years since its founding, Facebook’s parent company Meta has become a tech giant, with over three billion active monthly users on its flagship service, and a market value of over $1 trillion.

As the 20th anniversary of the company’s founding approached, legacy media began to publish a series of gushing, glowing and wistful reports on Facebook’s past, good times and memories created and shared online, and its ambitious, science fiction-inspired plans for the future, including the creation of artificial general intelligence.

But beneath the surface of these ebullient, heartwarming stories is a darker story of manipulation and social programming, censorship and shameless attempts at narrative control by Western governments, major corporations, and intelligence services.

As Americans, Europeans and others around the world signed up, logged on and voluntarily offered up private information that companies and intel agencies would have paid a fortune to get their hands on just a few short de

cades ago, powerful forces quickly realized the importance of collecting and engineering this new form of online human interaction.

“It is clear that intelligence agencies throughout the world, not only the US, can use Facebook to their advantage,” Ryan Hartwig, Facebook contractor-turned whistleblower and co-author of ‘Behind the Mask of Facebook: A Whistleblower’s Shocking Story of Big Tech Bias and Censorship,’ told Sputnik in an interview.

“The government launders their censorship through various NGOs and institutions on behalf of the US government,” Hartwig said, pointing, for example, to a 2021 report by the Stanford Internet Observatory entitled “Combating Information Manipulation: A Playbook for Elections and Beyond,” which plainly outlines tools the company uses to “remove the spread of malign information” from social media.

Excerpt from Stanford’s Internet Observatory Cyber Policy Center on tools Facebook has at its disposal to censor content.

Self-Appointed Ministry of Truth

In his book, coauthored with attorney Kent Heckenlively, Hartwig documents how, while working as a content moderator for Facebook in the 2010s, he had witnessed the platform’s disturbing transformation after the 2016 US elections into a tool for systematically suppressing conservative viewpoints while elevating liberal ones, and cracking down on some forms of suspected hate speech while amplifying others.

Of course, conservatives aren’t the only ones targeted by the social media giant’s censorship leviathan, with non-liberal left groups, critics of the US military-industrial complex, Big Pharma, Big Tech and other elite forces which run America and much of the world also falling victim. Documented instances of censorship by Facebook include the scrubbing of criticism of US and European immigration policy, climate policiesvaccines and vaccine mandatescriticisms of Facebook itself, and the vagaries of US foreign policy, with posts on these issues occasionally deleted outright, but more often hidden or deranked without users being informed using the platform’s complex, non-open source algorithm.

Internal Facebook list of ‘Dangerous Individuals and Organizations’ whose speech can be censored on company platforms based on their affiliation. © Photo : The Intercept / Facebook

In 2022, Facebook rolled out a special carve-out of exceptions to its anti-hate speech rules to allow users to make explicitly Russophobic posts, issue death threats against Russian officials, use dehumanizing language to refer to Russian troops, and even offer praise for the neo-Nazi Azov** Regiment, despite the social media giant’s ban on content featuring Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology.

“Facebook manipulates public opinion by suppressing unpopular opinions, or allowing newsworthy exceptions for the people they like,” Hartwig explained, noting this extends not just to big name issues, but even extremely minute details bordering on psychopathy.

“For example, they made a specific rule to protect Greta Thunberg from being attacked or called ‘Gretarded’,” the former content moderator recalled, referring to the WEF-promoted climate activist. “Normally, public figures, even young individuals like Greta are allowed to be called retarded. Facebook made an exception to protect her,” Hartwig said.

Image provided by Ryan Hartwig, Facebook contractor-turned whistleblower, showing a company directive instructing content moderators to “remove instances of attacks aimed at Greta Thunberg.”

“This is truly 5th dimensional warfare and by utilizing Facebook, spy agencies can influence public opinion much more easily than ever before,” the whistleblower believes.

Election Manipulation Tool

In 2020, concerned over what he saw as blatant interference in the upcoming US federal elections, Hartwig contacted Project Veritas with hidden camera footage and other information documenting Facebook’s skewed content moderation directives, revealing exactly how posts related to one candidate and his supporters could be removed or manipulated, in direct violation of the company’s policy on protecting political speech.

Hartwig’s observations have been corroborated by other whistleblowers and information leaks throughout the past decade. In 2018, for example, it was revealed that UK-based political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica engaged in the harvesting of tens of millions of Facebook profiles in 2014 to later target them with personalized political ads, including during the 2016 US presidential campaign. Subsequent reports consequently reported that the company engaged in similar harvesting and vote manipulation operations in nations across the globe, from Kenya and Nigeria to Argentina, Venezuela, India, the UK and the Czech Republic.

In a bombshell interview with Joe Rogan in 2022, Mark Zuckerberg explicitly admitted that Facebook had suppressed the biggest news story of the 2020 election cycle – a New York Post article published on the eve of the November vote based on damning files in Hunter Biden’s laptop containing evidence of a pay-to-play corruption scheme by the Biden family. Facebook was ordered to censor the story by the FBI, Zuckerberg said.

“Basically the background here is the FBI I think basically came to us, some folks on our team and was like hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert, there was – we thought that there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election, we have it on notice that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that. So just be vigilant,” Zuckerberg recalled. “If something is reported to us as potentially misinformation, important misinformation, we also [have a] third-party fact-checking program because we don’t want to be deciding what’s true and false. And for the I think it was five or seven days when it was basically being determined whether it was false, the distribution on Facebook was decreased…basically the ranking and newsfeed was a little bit less, so fewer people saw it than would have otherwise.”

Similarly blatant practices have been seen elsewhere, with Hartwig pointing to one particularly “egregious example” used against Venezuela, where “there was a call to arms to help defend Nicolas Maduro and Facebook deleted that post because it was [deemed] a ‘call to violence’. Nicolas Maduro was the sitting president and Facebook didn’t allow people to use social media to defend their own country.”

Screenshot by Ryan Hartwig of directive to Facebook content moderators telling them to delete a video from a Maduro ally calling on Venezuelans to “defend the revolution with arms.” © Photo : Courtesy of Ryan Hartwig

Handy Coup-Plotting Assistant

Along with election manipulation, Facebook and other social media resources have long been seen by intelligence services as an ideal tool for fomenting social unrest or even overthrowing governments. Learning from the experiences of the 2011 Arab Spring violence, spy agencies quickly realized the potential of the new technology for advancing their nations’ geopolitical objectives abroad. In 2013, it was a Facebook post by a liberal Ukrainian television journalist-turned activist angered by the Yanukovych government’s decision to scrap Kiev’s plans to sign an association agreement with the EU which ended up triggering the Euromaidan unrest, culminating in the February 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected government.

Western intelligence services tried to repeat the process in Iran in late 2022, when violent protests sparked by the death of a young Iranian woman under suspicious circumstances were commandeered by an Iranian-American US-based Voice of America employee and suspected CIA asset who used Facebook, Twitter and Instagram* to organize and radicalize demonstrators to overthrow the government.

Down the Rabbit Hole of Physiological Manipulation

Facebook’s attempts to control and manipulate go beyond censorship and election interference. In 2012, the company carried out a secret mood manipulation experiment targeting nearly 700,000 users and using their news feeds to alter their emotional states. The project, whose existence was only revealed in 2014 after the publication of a scientific article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that by tweaking users’ news feeds, Facebook could influence the content they would post, lead them to post more negative replies and status messages, and more. The controversial study ultimately found “that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness.”

That was more than a decade ago. Today, with the company incorporating machine learning and other tools on an industrial scale, it can only be imagined what kind of ‘experiments’ Facebook may have in store, especially as Meta continues to dabble with augmented reality technology designed to ensnare users even more deeply online.

Ilya Tsukanov is a Moscow-based correspondent specializing in Eastern European, US and Middle Eastern politics, Cold War history, energy security and military affairs. Member of the Sputnik team since the site’s inception in 2014. Opposed to censorship of all kinds.

“President Marcos is A Drug Addict Who Seeks to Perpetuate Power” – Former President Duterte

In a bold move to stop the descent of the Philippines back towards a narco-State and another Marcos dictatoship, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has accused incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. of being a drug addict attempting to perpetuate power through a shift to parliamentary form of government via the ongoing People’s Initiative.

Continue reading “President Marcos is A Drug Addict Who Seeks to Perpetuate Power” – Former President Duterte

How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ is Reshaping Geopolitics

The Arabic word Asabiyya, or ‘social solidarity,’ is a soundbite in the west, but taken very seriously by the globe’s new contenders China, Russia, and Iran. It is Yemen, however, that is mainstreaming the idea, by sacrificing everything for the world’s collective morality in a bid to end the genocide in Gaza.

Continue reading How Yemen’s ‘Asabiyya’ is Reshaping Geopolitics

Washington and London Make Mockery of International Law

As the White House and 10 Downing Street deny genocide in Gaza, both imperialist states bomb Yemen, the most impoverished and underdeveloped country in the West Asia region. Yemen is aiding Gaza by targeting weapons delivery for Apartheid Israel.

Continue reading Washington and London Make Mockery of International Law

100+ Global Rights Groups Support South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel at ICJ

More than 100 international groups signed onto a letter released Wednesday by a newly formed Palestinian rights coalition, urging governments across the globe to formally support South Africa’s International Court of Justice case against Israel, accusing the government of genocidal violence in Gaza.

Continue reading 100+ Global Rights Groups Support South Africa’s Genocide Case Against Israel at ICJ

Marcos Presidency: A Conjugal Narco-Government?

Retired Generals from the Philippine Military Academy have become restless once more due to revelations exposing the 16-month-old government of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as protectors of drug lords and smugglers. This revelation poses a threat to the security of the population.

Continue reading Marcos Presidency: A Conjugal Narco-Government?

THE TOP TEN POLITICIANS TAKING THE MOST ISRAEL LOBBY CASH

As the Israeli attack on Gaza, Lebanon and Syria intensifies, the U.S. public watch on aghast. A new poll finds that Americans support a permanent ceasefire by a more than 2:1 ratio (including the vast majority of Democrats and a plurality of Republicans).

Continue reading THE TOP TEN POLITICIANS TAKING THE MOST ISRAEL LOBBY CASH

The Survival of Washington’s Domination of the UN

When it was created, the United Nations held out the ideal of equality between peoples and nations. However, from the very first months of its existence, Washington and London supported Israel against the Palestinian people. Then Washington falsified the Security Council, seating Formosa in China’s place and provoking a boycott of the USSR.

Continue reading The Survival of Washington’s Domination of the UN

UK’s Abraham Accords Company and ‘Flatlands’ of the Zionist Movement

The Abraham Accords is the new Zionist weapon of choice to push back against multipolarity and the unprecedented unity of the axis of resistance. The Tel Aviv regime has been working hard to marshall its agents and assets to promote the farce of normalisation.

Continue reading UK’s Abraham Accords Company and ‘Flatlands’ of the Zionist Movement

If Israel Won’t Stop Bombing Gaza, Iranian Countermeasure is Inevitable | Iran Foreign Minister

Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, emphasized in a recent televised interview that if the Israeli government’s actions in the Gaza Strip persist without a political resolution, various possibilities, including preemptive actions by the resistance front, could be considered.

Continue reading If Israel Won’t Stop Bombing Gaza, Iranian Countermeasure is Inevitable | Iran Foreign Minister

Israel’s Absolute Intel Failure Sparks Catastrophic Hamas Offensive!


Israel’s ‘catastrophic’ intelligence failure has resulted in a Hamas offensive. The advanced surveillance and espionage systems in Israel make the sight of Hamas fighters navigating the streets of southern Israeli cities all the more remarkable.

Continue reading Israel’s Absolute Intel Failure Sparks Catastrophic Hamas Offensive!

RFK Jr. Expected to Announce Independent Run for U.S. Presidency

According to Mediaite, which was the first to report this afternoon, a “campaign insider” disclosed that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the founder and chairman of Children’s Health Defense currently on leave, is set to announce his candidacy for president as an Independent on October 9th in Philadelphia.

Continue reading RFK Jr. Expected to Announce Independent Run for U.S. Presidency

Nazi Standing Ovation Should Compel Justin Trudeau, Not Just to Apologize, But to Resign

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued an apology for his applause of a Ukrainian Nazi veteran during a parliamentary ceremony last week.

He acknowledged the incident as “deeply embarrassing for parliament and Canada.” Trudeau expressed these apologies before addressing the Canadian House of Commons on Wednesday, extending “parliament’s unreserved apologies for what happened on Friday.”

This incident occurred when Canadian lawmakers, including Trudeau, gave a standing ovation to 98-year-old Yaroslav Hunka.

During an event with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, House Speaker Anthony Rota introduced Hunka as “a Ukrainian hero, a Canadian hero… who fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians” during World War II. This means that they do have prior knowledge about which side Hunka was fighting with against the Russians at the time.

Rota subsequently resigned from his position after it became public knowledge that Hunka had served with the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Ukrainian unit formed by the Nazi regime in 1943 that committed atrocities against Jews and Poles on the Eastern Front.

Initially, Trudeau had described the incident as “embarrassing” but did not directly apologize or call for Rota’s resignation. However, during his Wednesday address, Trudeau distanced himself from Rota, a fellow member of the Liberal Party, stating that “the speaker was solely responsible for the invitation and recognition of this man and has wholly accepted that responsibility and stepped down.”

He also expressed regret for the standing ovation, emphasizing that those present were unaware of the context surrounding Hunka’s past.

Yaroslav Hunka praised at the Canadian Parliament

Trudeau asserted that he had been unaware of Hunka’s affiliation with a Nazi unit, but Rota’s description of him as a Ukrainian fighting against the Russians in World War II could only have applied to someone aligned with Nazi Germany.

SS Galizien during World War II. The Forward identified the man in the front center as Hunka,[1] although per Hunka himself he is the man standing in the middle.[2]

We might as well crown Justin Castro as the King of Denials before he steps down, as many Canadians may have finally awaken to the reality that indeed Nazis are in their midst, and in fact running their government from the top.

Trudeau acknowledged the ceremony’s impact, calling it a “horrendous violation of the memory of the millions of people who died in the Holocaust” and deeply painful for various communities, including Jewish, Polish, Roma, and 2SLGBTQI+ individuals.

This apology from the Canadian Prime Minister followed strong condemnation from Russia, Poland, and Jewish organizations such as the Toronto-based Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center.

They characterized Hunka’s wartime unit as responsible for the mass murder of innocent civilians with unprecedented brutality and malice.

Now, Wikipedia is planning to erase Hunka from its record. So, before they do that, visit the page and save it.

German Ambassador Downplays Attendance at Canadian Parliament Honoring of WWII Nazi

The German Foreign Office has downplayed its ambassador to Canada’s presence at a recent event where lawmakers in Ottawa honored a Ukrainian veteran of the Waffen SS, indicating that she was unaware of his Nazi background when she joined Canadian lawmakers in applauding him.

German Ambassador Sabine Sparwasser

Foreign Office spokesperson Sebastian Fischer acknowledged this oversight during a press briefing on Wednesday in response to questions about Ambassador Sabine Sparwasser’s participation in the event honoring Yaroslav Hunka, a WWII Nazi collaborator.

During a visit by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky, members of the Canadian parliament gave lengthy standing ovations to the 98-year-old Hunka when he was introduced.

Notably, Zelensky and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau were among those enthusiastically applauding. Fischer asserted that Sparwasser, like others in attendance, was unaware of Hunka’s Nazi affiliation at the time.

While acknowledging the incident’s inappropriateness, Fischer stated that Hunka’s true identity remained unknown to the German diplomat and the event’s attendees because his participation was not announced in advance.

However, when House Speaker Anthony Rota introduced Hunka to the audience, he mentioned that Hunka “fought for Ukrainian independence against the Russians,” which strongly implied his service on the side of the Axis powers during WWII. Rota referred to him as a “Ukrainian hero” and a “Canadian hero” for his service.

Rota resigned from his position on Tuesday and offered an apology for his mistake in honoring Hunka. Hunka had volunteered in the 14th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, a Ukrainian unit responsible for atrocities against Jews and Poles on the Eastern Front.

When questioned about Sparwasser’s failure to recognize Hunka’s Nazi ties despite being informed that he fought against the Red Army, Fischer suggested alternative explanations for his wartime role. He theorized that Hunka might have been a member of the Polish Home Army, which fought against both German and Russian forces.

It’s worth noting that during WWII, Ukrainian Nazi collaborators were responsible for the deaths of thousands of Poles. Hunka, along with thousands of other Ukrainian fighters, was allowed to immigrate to the UK and Canada after WWII, despite potential involvement in war crimes.

In response to the incident, Moscow criticized it as a cynical exploitation of the memory of Nazism’s victims, an example of blatant Russophobia, and indicated the possibility of launching an investigation into potential war crimes and requesting Hunka’s extradition.

Poland, a strong supporter of modern-day Ukraine in its conflict with Russia, also called for an investigation into potential war crimes committed by Hunka.

The Nazification of America, Canada, UK, and EU

The Nazification of America, Canada, UK, and EU started even before WW1 and WW2.

Remember, individuals like George Scherff Sr., also known as ‘Prescott Bush,’ were already in the US when the bank he was working for, the Union Bank of New York, along with the rest of Wall Street, was financing the rise of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, much in the same way they are financing Ukraine today.

The only difference is that the recruited Clown Zelensky is not only much more corrupt but also lacks the military background that Corporal Adolf had. This explains the heavy reliance on Andrey Biletsk, the founder of the Nazi Azov battalion.

At the conclusion of the Second World War, the Nazis primarily went underground in the Americas with the assistance of the true power behind the entire organization, namely the Vatican Church, through Operation Paperclip.

Today, it is undeniable that they have infiltrated the corridors of power, including the Canadian Parliament and the White House, much earlier.

Here is a concise summary of recent events in Canada and their global implications…

During the visit by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada will provide an additional C$650 million ($482 million) in military assistance to Ukraine over the next three years.

This announcement followed Ukraine’s military claim on Friday that it had “successfully” targeted the headquarters of Russia’s Black Sea navy in Sevastopol, a port city in Crimea.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskiy received a warm welcome from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as he arrived to deliver a speech at the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on September 22, 2023.

With Justin Castro, Zelensky and Hunka inside the Canadian Parliament, Nazism, Zionism, and Communism are proven to have come from the same source, the same malevolent organization now called as the Khazarian Mafia.

Considering all of the above, is Putin wrong in the ongoing deNazification of Ukraine?

‘Reckless’ Western Politicians Have Lost the Sense of Self-Preservation

According to the top Russian diplomat, NATO’s actions have surged to levels unseen since the conclusion of the Cold War. He contends that the US-led coalition within NATO has engaged in exercises that simulate nuclear attacks against Russia.

Continue reading ‘Reckless’ Western Politicians Have Lost the Sense of Self-Preservation

Russia, North Korea Stage ‘Strategic Coup’ Against Western Hegemony 

​It will take ages to unpack the silos of information inbuilt in the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok last week, coupled with the – armored – train-keeps-a-rollin’ conducted by North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un straddling every nook and cranny of Primorsky Krai.

Continue reading Russia, North Korea Stage ‘Strategic Coup’ Against Western Hegemony 

Gamed by Zelensky: Ukraine Uses Toxic Pick-up Tactics to Get What it Wants

Kiev has become adept at manipulating its supporters to bend to its whims.

How many times have Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and his entourage dissed their Western friends for not meeting Kiev’s expectations?

In just the latest example, Zelensky adviser Mikhail Podoliak called Western institutions like the International Atomic Energy Agency, the International Red Cross, and Amnesty International “fictitious organizations that pollute our consciousness with absolutely rubbish assessments.” He also attacked the United Nations as a “rather absent organization” and a “public relations office or a lobby office to earn money for a happy old age for people occupying certain leadership positions.”

He’s starting to sound like your average anti-globalist, which isn’t exactly the team that’s sponsoring him. 

There’s a pretty easy explanation, though. It’s like when a dude who’s a solid two out of ten on the attractiveness scale wants to get with someone whom he considers to be a solid ten. So in an attempt to cut his object of interest down to his level, he starts making snide little insults suggesting that she isn’t that hot, like, “Hey, did you break your nose, or was it always like that?” It’s a notorious pick-up technique known as ‘negging’.

Ukraine is famously corrupt, and that corruption is routinely evoked as a reason why the EU can’t currently commit to making it a member. Kiev does say, though, that it’ll be ready to join the EU in two years – which is like an arsonist saying they’ll be ready to join the fire department in two years because they’re confident that their fire-starting habit will be squared away by then – even though they just burned down a building last week.

On top of being friend-zoned by the EU, there’s also the fact that NATO won’t make a firm commitment to Ukraine either, beyond using it to get the attention of the true object of its obsessions: Russia. So Zelensky’s entourage has started negging all of these major Western-led institutions, effectively saying, “We’re not corrupt… YOU’RE corrupt! All this talk about dating down and not being able to commit to Ukraine because of your lofty standards, but you’re not exactly great catches yourselves.” That’s the message.

On top of the negging, there’s also been the guilt-tripping. German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock wouldn’t cough up the Taurus long-range missiles that Zelensky wanted during a visit to Kiev this week, resulting in Ukraine’s top diplomat accusing Berlin of “wasting time,” and saying Kiev would get the weapons eventually anyway. Baerbock ended up offering €20 million ($21.5 million) as a consolation prize, which should buy Berlin about ten minutes of silence in the same way that parents pay off their mouthy kids with candy so they can watch their favorite TV show in peace and quiet. The root cause of the kid being a demanding, pretentious, spoiled brat is never actually addressed if you just keep appeasing him. And the root cause here is Ukraine’s total unwillingness to negotiate with Russia, with Zelensky saying he is “not interested” in talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Instead, Zelensky talks about the problem being “Russia remaining on Ukrainian territory” while totally ignoring the fact that he allowed his country to become a flop house for Washington’s aggressive regime-change interests. 

And beyond the negging and guilt-tripping, there have also been the not-so-subtle threats.

Zelensky hasn’t hesitated to threaten the EU while simultaneously demanding entry into it. One reason is that Poland, Hungary and Slovakia have imposed bans on dumping Ukrainian grain into their territory, after a similar EU-level measure expired last week. A glut of grain, which would flood the market and drive down the price of their own farmers’ supply, is particularly an issue for Poland ahead of its national elections this autumn.

“Ukraine is strongly against any further restrictions on the export of our grain,” Zelensky said in response to the continued ban. “Ukraine is fighting for life and for our common European values on the battlefield… if we have to fight for Ukraine and the foundations of our common Europe in arbitration, we will fight… If we need to fight on the platforms of international organizations, we will fight there as well.” Who knew that a guy getting showered with taxpayer cash from the entire Western world would turn out to be such a big defender of free markets? It’s kind of like when Team Zelensky effectively vowed to clean up Wall Street last year by threatening big Western financial institutions, like JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and HSBC, and their managers, with war crimes prosecution for engaging with companies that sell and trade Russian oil or gas or in Russian energy shares, like Gazprom, Rosneft, Lukoil, and Vitol. 

And just this week, Zelensky explained in an interview to The Economist that there’s a real danger to the EU from Ukrainians. He told the publication that if he doesn’t get what he wants in terms of aid, Ukrainian refugees might feel abandoned and if they feel “driven into a corner”, they could react unpredictability. No doubt Ukrainian refugees would appreciate Zelensky describing his own people as some kind of sleeper agents who could activate against the EU if he doesn’t get what he wants. 

Ukraine and the West are starting to look like a couple that persists in a toxic relationship strictly for appearances, worried about what all the neighbors would say if they ever split, and using each other as much as they can until it all ends in tears – or in World War III. 

Rachel Marsden is a columnist, political strategist, and host of independently produced talk-shows in French and English. Her website can be found at rachelmarsden.com

Putin + Kim Summit: Military Cooperation, Space Exploration, Challenging US Sanctions Together

In a meeting held at the Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korea Chairman Kim Jong Un engaged in extensive discussions.

Continue reading Putin + Kim Summit: Military Cooperation, Space Exploration, Challenging US Sanctions Together

Victoria Nuland’s Desperate Plea for African Cooperation to Reverse Niger’s Popular Coup!

A South African official met an unprepared and “desperate” Victoria Nuland, begging for local help rolling back the popular coup in Niger. The recent BRICS conference might give Nuland even more to fret about.

Continue reading Victoria Nuland’s Desperate Plea for African Cooperation to Reverse Niger’s Popular Coup!

High-Stakes Diplomacy: US Commerce Secretary Arrives in China Amid Escalating Rivalry

US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo arrived in China on Sunday evening, undertaking a visit to the world’s second-largest economy as part of the ongoing efforts to manage the intensifying rivalry between the two nations.

Continue reading High-Stakes Diplomacy: US Commerce Secretary Arrives in China Amid Escalating Rivalry