It could join the EU’s awkward squad if Robert Fico forms a government

There’s been a lot of debate lately over the US strategy of surrounding nations like Russia and China with war machinery in order to deter them from aggressive actions. Some argue that since powerful nations tend to respond aggressively to the amassing of military threats on their borders, this policy actually provokes the very aggressions its proponents claim it prevents.

It’s funny how much empire apologia in the 2020s consists of westerners saying that governments who aren’t aligned with the United States shouldn’t have the security concerns they have and shouldn’t regard their national interests the way they do.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, and Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Marc Miller leave a meeting during the Liberal Cabinet retreat in Charlottetown, Tuesday, Aug. 22, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese

Browder’s critics argue that he didn’t merely profit from Russian oligarchy as it transformed into Putinism; he may even have helped usher that system into existence by pioneering and refining the structures that continue to enable it.

In one fell swoop, Trudeau discredited himself as a so-called “champion of human rights”, while Zelensky proved beyond any doubt that an ethnic and practicing Jew can indeed glorify the Nazis’ genocidal allies despite having family who were murdered in the Holocaust.

In April 2019, Ukraine was brimming with optimism as it elected Volodymyr Zelensky, a candidate who promised peace, an end to government corruption, and economic prosperity. Fast forward four years: a civil war within the Donbas region turned into a European war raging on Ukrainian territory, destroying the country’s infrastructure, killing hundreds of thousands of its citizens, and creating millions of refugees. Government corruption is an all-time high, and the country is in a state of material poverty.

In 2007, Putin asked the world, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” He then went on to remind his audience of NATO’s promise not to expand east of Germany toward Russia’s borders.

If you’re Volodymyr Zelenskiy right now you’ll take little solace from Joe Biden’s earnest assurances that the US “will not walk away” from Ukraine.

It should be no surprise that the Canadian parliament was misled into applauding an old Nazi and former member of the Waffen SS Galizien in Ukraine during the second world war. Yaroslav Hunka served in the 14th SS Volunteer Division “Galicia”, which was made up of Ukrainian nationalists. At the end of the war, these “volunteers” who fought with Hitler’s army and collaborated in massacres committed on Ukrainian soil during the Second World War, were not extradited to the Soviet Union but like Hunka were able to emigrate to Canada while many others escaped to the UK and through the Vatican’s “Rat Lines” to South America.

For the record, I knew Simon Wiesenthal well, he was an honorary member of the Board of my non-profit Andrei Sakharov Institute, and I am a contributor to his anti-Nazi Simon Wiesenthal Center. Occasionally, I contribute to some other charities, including the Holocaust memorial in DC.

Deliberate provocations of a nuclear rival, coups d’état, colour revolutions, broken promises, broken treaties, escalation of tensions, demonization, invective, double-standards — all this while asserting adherence to international legal norms and playing innocent about our aggressions, our violations of the Hague and Geneva Conventions, of articles 1(2)[1], 2(3)[2], 2(4)[3] and 39[4] of the UN Charter.

The scholar who famously warned in 2014 that NATO was provoking Russia in Ukraine on the state of the war and the troubles ahead.

Russia and China fully understand they must stick together to fend off Washington, because if one falls the other is on its own

Germany defies US by maintaining constructive engagement with China, which Berlin sees as uniquely placed as peacemaker in Ukraine

Zelensky came to Washington to receive a $45 billion Christmas present, stuffed in a sack of $1.7 trillion in U.S. government spending.

Biden Regime Secretary of State Blinken has blocked negotiations between Russia and Ukraine by declaring it is US policy to drive Russia out of the reincorporated territories, including Crimea.

Ukraine continues to shrilly double-down on its claim that the S-300 missile that killed two Polish citizens earlier this week was a Russian missile fired from Russia. Russian-made it may have been since Ukrainian arsenals have long held Russian-made weaponry from Soviet times.

William Browder claims to be fighting for justice. One of the reasons he’s so successful may be because he’s adept at aligning his story with the devastating image that Russia has been projecting for years. And many media outlets believe him.

With rare exceptions, this headline could be applied to all the mainstream media in the U.S. today. But here I’ll concentrate on only the New York Times and the Washington Post, since these two papers have long been considered America’s journalistic icons, ably representing the professionalism and integrity of their calling, and deserving their places on the Olympic peak.

If there was no Russia, you would have to invent it, even just for the US to try to destroy it. There is something deeply rooted in neocons that makes them crave for a good enemy, preferably someone to demonise as a primordial evil that fits into their manichean world view.

Avoiding Nuclear War: As the list of those who take the looming threat of nuclear war seriously keeps growing, let’s try to analyze what brought us to this sad state of affairs.

Any longtime observer of Russian politics would know that the state of play in the Russian-American tango is best assessed from subplots, often obscure and unnoticed, away from its amphitheatre where gladiators cross swords. Therefore, two alleys on Ukraine crisis need to be explored.

As the list of those who take the looming threat of nuclear war seriously keeps growing, let’s try to analyze what brought us to this sad state of affairs.