Upcoming online event: Free the Kononovich Brothers! Free all Ukrainian Political Prisoners!

7pm British Summer Time, Thursday 25 August. Access details will be circulated closer to the date.

Please register for the event here on Eventbrite, and the zoom link will be emailed to you on the day of the event.

Speakers from the UK, US and Ukraine.

Mikhail and Alexander Kononovich, members of of the youth wing of the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), were arrested by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) on 7th March 2022, and tortured in a Kiev detention centre. The SBU, Ukraine’s intelligence agency, has charged them with being “propagandists” and aiming to “destabilise” the internal situation in Ukraine.

Upcoming online event 8/25/2022: Free the Kononovich Brothers! Free all Ukrainian Political Prisoners!

“Everyone’s a Little Problematic in Ukraine’s International Legion”

by Lindsey Snell and Cory Popp

“Benjamin Velcro” is former US serviceman and volunteer with the International Legion of Territorial Defense of Ukraine, the official unit of foreign volunteers under the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In early August, Russian media widely shared voice recordings in which Velcro recounted the torture and murder of a Russian prisoner of war.

“Everyone’s a Little Problematic in Ukraine’s International Legion”

Related:

An exit interview: Benjamin Velcro

I am quite good with languages, one could describe my Russian as a solid B1 (someone said B2 before but that was an ego stroke lol) I would rather understand the language of my enemy than Ukrainian. My convictions against the putin regime were largely solidified when I was part of a task force related to Georgia just prior to their invasion with the US Army. In 2014, maiden inspired me. In 2020, August, I thought the similar conditions could be met in Belarus. I travelled to Belarus. However things did not materialize.

Interesting how this “Benjamin Velcro” seems to be drawn to US-sponsored color revolutions. 👇

Read More »

Sonja Van den Ende: Russians Welcomed as Liberators in Many Eastern Ukrainian Cities Contrary to Western Media Depictions

By Sonja Van den Ende, Covert Action Magazine, 8/10/22

Sonja is a freelance journalist from the Netherlands who has written about Syria, the Middle East, and Russia among other topics. Sonja can be reached at: sonjavandenende@gmail.com.

Sonja Van den Ende: Russians Welcomed as Liberators in Many Eastern Ukrainian Cities Contrary to Western Media Depictions

Video via sonja vandenende

The Mess That Pelosi Made

In 2015, Robert Parry, the late investigative journalist and founder of Consortium News, wrote an article titled “The Mess that Nuland Made.” It summarized the aftermath of the 2014 coup in Ukraine that was engineered by Victoria Nuland, who served in Obama’s State Department and is back working for the Biden administration.

Nuland’s coup sparked widespread unrest in Ukraine, Russia taking Crimea, and the war in the eastern Donbas region. The day that Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, the title of Parry’s salient article wouldn’t get out of my head. Nuland’s meddling in Ukraine reflected an overarching neocon, deep state agenda, but the chaos that has ensued since will always be her legacy, and her mess.

Now, as China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is lobbing missiles toward Taiwan and holding its largest-ever drills around the island, another woman that is a fixture of the establishment in Washington is to blame: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The Mess That Pelosi Made

Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call

Lavrov is on Blinken’s list of people to call

Blinken also added a second topic he’d like to discuss with Lavrov —implementation of the recent “grain deal”. Washington played no role in negotiating the deal and is presumably hoping to make a lateral entry into the matrix now. Blinken claimed he is “seeing and hearing around the world a desperate need for food, a desperate need for prices to decrease. And if we can help through our direct diplomacy encourage the Russians to make good on the commitments they’ve made, that will help people around the world, and I’m determined to do it.”

Interestingly, in a veiled reference to the US, Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavuсoglu stated Wednesday on broadcaster Tv100 that there were countries who “wanted to block” the grain deal between Russia and Turkey, who want the Ukraine conflict “to prolong”, as they think the longer Moscow’s special military operation continues, “the weaker Russia will be.”

Indeed, the war has spun out of US algorithm. As Hungarian PM Orban pointed out last week, anti-Russian sanctions “have not shaken Moscow,” but Europe has already lost four governments and is in an economic and political crisis.

The spectre of the collapse of EU economies is rattling the Biden Administration. A CNN report yesterday was titled US officials say ‘biggest fear’ has come true as Russia cuts gas supplies to Europe. It said the Biden administration “is working furiously behind the scenes to keep European allies united” as the blowback from the sanctions against Russia hits them and the “impact on Europe could boomerang back onto the US, spiking natural gas and electricity prices.”

The report quoted an unnamed US official saying Russia’s retaliation for western sanctions has put the West in “unchartered territory.” Suffice to say, Blinken’s call underscores the desperate urgency in Washington to open a line of communication to Moscow at the political level.