The ultimate decision over what America provides—and for what purposes—must be made in Washington, not Kyiv.

Let me start with somewhat not directly related but relevant story. A scholar living in Ukraine, posted something on a XIX century Russian poet. I disagreed and offered some philological arguments back. Then I hear from this guy, both on FB and in an email, that people comment on my remark, but he can’t see it. I became invisible. People in the west, or Russia, or everywhere read what I posted and comment on it, but not people in Ukraine. As simple as that. Stalin used to disappear people, CIA used to disappear people and still does, and now it is Kiev’s turn. Of course, platforms in the west do something similar, but in more subtle way, for sure, as I’ve had a chance to observe recently, when I posted my interview with a non-PC anchor.

The world is in the midst of the most dangerous European security crisis since World War II. The war in Ukraine has caused enormous destruction and loss of life, and millions of people have been displaced.

Recruiters approach young men on the street, but the standards are not always clear and there are reports of unwilling men being signed up while some eager to fight are turned away.

The recent meeting of the G-7 demonstrated a triumph of zeal over the members’ self-interest. The seven were overwhelmed with a host of crises; inflation, energy, climate change, impending food shortage, and Ukraine offered no solution to any of the problems.

Corporate media are ignoring the stark implications of Russia’s stated intention to take control of more Ukrainian territory than just Donetsk and Luhansk. I discussed this on The Critical Hour yesterday and supplement those thoughts in the paragraphs below.

Relentless Russian bombings were “the closest thing I’ve ever seen to hell,” an American who served several tours of the Middle East said.

Mixing religion with politics is generally not a good idea, but it looks like that is one of the few remaining options to avoid what Senator Sam Nunn and a growing number of foreign policy experts describe as a continuing “sleepwalk” towards a nuclear catastrophe.

It is very likely that Russian President Vladimir Putin tipped his hand months ago regarding one of the end-of-war scenarios that at least he would accept as having achieved an important goal or even victory in his Ukrainian ‘special military operation’ otherwise known as the Russo-Ukrainian War. In his February 2022 speech, signaling his decision to take military action, Putin discussed Ukrainian decommunization efforts and condemned them, retorting: “You want decommunization, we will show you decommunization”.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has fired leading security officials in the middle of a war. But the president’s public rebuke only obscures the real problem: lack of reform, says Eugen Theise.