2025 August 24 « nuclear-news

Western Media Manufactured Consent for Israel’s Murder of Palestinian Journalists.

The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities.

Emma Lucia Llano, 22 Aug 25, https://fair.org/home/western-media-manufactured-consent-for-israels-murder-of-palestinian-journalists/

Israel’s targeted assassination of six Palestinian media members in the Gaza Strip on August 10 sent shockwaves through the journalism community. Though the murder of journalists has been a common tool of the Israeli’s government’s suppression of information coming out of Gaza, the loss of Al Jazeera‘s Anas al-Sharif was particularly harrowing.

Many of us had been moved by al-Sharif’s heart-wrenching coverage, from watching him remove his press vest in relief when a ceasefire was announced (1/19/25), to seeing a languid al-Sharif reporting on the famine (7/21/25) as people fainted around him. “Keep going, Anas, don’t stop,” said a voice off-camera. “You are our voice.”

Three of the victims were al-Sharif’s colleagues at Al Jazeera, one of the few media outlets that was able to keep journalists reporting in Gaza despite Israel’s blockade. As millions around the world grieved not just for al-Sharif but for his colleagues Mohammed Qreiqeh, Mohammed Noufal and Ibrahim Zaher, and freelancers Moamen Aliwa and Mohammad al-Khaldi, we were also gravely concerned about the vacuum their murders created of on-the-ground coverage of the genocide.

Establishment media, however, used these courageous journalists’ murders as an opportunity to continue parroting the same Zionist talking points that contributed to manufacturing consent for their killings. FAIR looked at 15 different news outlets’ initial coverage of the murders: the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, BBC, Politico, Newsweek, Associated Press and Reuters.

We found that they overwhelmingly centered Israel’s narrative, attempted to delegitimize pro-Palestinian sources, and failed to contextualize the killings within the larger context of the genocide.

Prioritizing Israel’s pretext

All of the articles mentioned Israel’s allegation that al-Sharif was a member of Hamas posing as a journalist, a claim that the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), the Foreign Press Association and the United Nations have all found to be baseless.

Four of the 15 articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) mentioned the allegations in either the headline or subhead. “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Airstrike, Claiming One Worked for Hamas,” was NBC‘s headline, with Israel’s smear that al-Sharif “posed as a journalist” in the subhead. Fox offered “Israel Says Al Jazeera Journalist Killed in Airstrike Was Head of Hamas ‘Terrorist Cell.’”

Reuters’ original headline (8/11/25) was “Israel Kills Al Jazeera Journalist It Says Was Hamas Leader,” only later changed to “Israel Strike Kills Al Jazeera Journalists in Gaza.”

Al-Sharif had been targeted and smeared by the Israeli Defense Forces for months prior to his murder, and had written a statement in anticipation of his killing. “If these words reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice,” he wrote. He asked the world to continue fighting for justice in Palestine: “Do not forget Gaza.”

Six of the articles (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; New York Times, 8/10/25; NBC, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) completely omitted references to or quotes from al-Sharif’s final statement. Of those six articles, the New York Times, BBC, NBC and Fox did include quotes from Israeli government representatives—perplexingly choosing to prioritize the voices of al-Sharif’s killers over his own.

Coverage by the Wall Street Journal and New York Times devoted the most space to advancing Israel’s pretext for the killings. The Journal’s Anat Peled dedicated the first three paragraphs of her article to detailing al-Sharif’s supposed Hamas affiliation. Ephrat Livni of the Times also spent three paragraphs on the bogus allegations, allowing only one paragraph for a rebuttal from Al Jazeera and CPJ.

Every article except the ones from the New York Times (8/10/25) and Fox (8/11/25) cited the historically high number of Palestinian journalists that have been killed since October 7, 2023. The death toll currently stands at 192, according to the CPJ. However, only four articles (ABC, 8/11/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Politico, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25) listed Israel as the primary perpetrator of these murders. More typically, the AP (8/11/25) wrote that “at least 192 journalists have been killed since Israel’s war in Gaza began,” leaving the identities of both these journalists and their killers unmentioned.

Six (ABC, 8/11/25; BBC, 8/11/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25; Fox, 8/11/25; CBS, 8/11/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) of the 15 articles failed to mention Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and none mentioned the International Criminal Court’s arrest warrant against him for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder and intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.

Critically, only two articles (Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; Washington Post, 8/11/25) even noted the fact that the other five slain journalists had not been accused of belonging to Hamas. With this omission, the other outlets accepted and transmitted to audiences Israel’s premise that any number of bystanders can legitimately be killed in order to target a supposed Hamas member.

Unnecessary qualifiers

A common practice for Western media has been the use of unnecessary qualifiers to delegitimize information that comes from Palestinian sources. The coverage of al-Sharif’s assassination was no exception.

The BBC (8/11/25) wrote, “More than 61,000 people have been killed in Gaza since the Israeli military operation began, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry.” Western media have taken it upon themselves to seemingly rename the Gaza Health Ministry (GHM) in order to cast doubt on the extent of Israel’s atrocities. They rarely note that a Lancet study (2/8/25) has found that the death toll could be up to 40% higher than what the GHM is reporting. The New York Times (8/10/25) and Reuters (8/11/25) also utilized “Hamas-run” to describe figures from the Gazan government.

These outlets also showed a clear bias as to how they characterize casualties. The New York Times (8/10/25), when reporting on the death toll in Gaza, wrote that the GHM doesn’t “distinguish between civilians and combatants.” Later on, the Times reported on Israeli deaths—and failed to distinguish between Israeli civilian and combatant deaths.

The implication is that some Palestinian deaths might be considered to be of lesser importance, or even justified, based on victims’ potential “combatant” status. Israeli deaths, meanwhile, are to be counted simply as human beings. The Washington Post (8/11/25) exhibited the same double standard in its reporting.

NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Many of the targets of [the October 7] attacks were civilians, including people attending a music festival.” When reporting Palestinian deaths, NBC made no mention that over half of those killed by Israel have been women, children and the elderly. A more recent investigation found that civilians make up 83% of deaths, according to the IDF’s own data. The report also didn’t describe what Palestinian victims might have been doing when they were killed, such as the almost 1,400 who have been shot while seeking aid.

In addition to the usual rhetoric, eight of the 15 articles cast doubt on Al Jazeera by repeatedly mentioning its ownership by the Qatari government. (Qatar, like Israel, is one of 20 countries worldwide officially designated as a “major non-NATO ally” by the United States.) Three of the articles (New York Times, 8/10/25; Wall Street Journal, 8/11/25; LA Times, 8/11/25) mention the Israeli government’s adversarial relationship with Al Jazeera, with the New York Times and the Journal dedicating several paragraphs to the outlet’s alleged ties to Hamas as the presumed basis for the conflict, rather than Al Jazeera‘s critical coverage of Israeli actions.

False equivalences

Only three of the articles use the word “famine” (Financial Times, 8/10/25; CNN, 8/10/25; Newsweek, 8/10/25), and only the Financial Times mentions the word outside of quotes. Reuters (8/11/25) and the Wall Street Journal (8/11/25) called the situation “a hunger crisis” and “a humanitarian crisis that has pushed many Palestinians toward starvation,” respectively.

Media outlets continue to push the narrative that this so-called conflict began less than two years ago, as when NBC (8/10/25) wrote, “Israel launched the offensive in Gaza, targeting Hamas, after the Hamas-led terror attacks against Israel on October 7, 2023.”

Though the rate of killing greatly escalated after the October 7 operation, Israeli violence against Palestinians goes back to before the founding of the state, as many historians have carefully explained. In the decades immediately prior to the Hamas operation, the Israeli human rights group B’tselem counts more than 10,000 Palestinians killed by Israeli forces between September 2000 and September 2023—most of them noncombatants, over 2,400 of them children under 18. (Over the same period, some 1,300 Israelis—civilians and military—were killed by Palestinians.)

The Financial Times (8/10/25) described the ongoing genocide as “triggered” by the October 7 attacks, as if the al-Aqsa Flood operation were a random act of violence unrelated to the apartheid system that Israel imposes on Palestinians. The BBC (8/11/25) described Israeli violence as a “response to the Hamas-led attack,” completely erasing Israel’s history of occupation and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians that long precedes the existence of Hamas. Obscuring this sort of context is part of the motivation for Israel’s systematic murder of Palestinian journalists, including al-Sharif and his colleagues.

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Israel, media, USA | Leave a comment

Children at gravest risk as full-fledged famine unfolds in Gaza

23 August 2025 AIMN Editorial, Plan International Australia , https://theaimn.net/children-at-gravest-risk-as-full-fledged-famine-unfolds-in-gaza/

As famine grips Gaza, putting over a million children at risk, Plan International is demanding a ceasefire and unrestricted humanitarian access.

Famine has taken hold in Gaza Governorate and will expand to Deir al-Balah and Khan Younis without urgent action, according to a new report from the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) published today, Friday 22 August.

Preventable catastrophe

Responding to the IPC’s latest report, Dr. Unni Krishnan, Global Humanitarian Director at Plan International said:

“The fatal consequences of Israel’s weaponisation of hunger and blocking of humanitarian aid are devastatingly clear for all to see. No conflict should ever reach this point. What we are seeing in Gaza today is an entirely man-made and preventable catastrophe that is leaving more than a million Palestinian children – and 2.2 million people in total – struggling to stay alive.

Famine in Gaza is not a failure of logistics or aid – it is the outcome of brutal war and deliberate starvation.”

Dr. Unni Krishnan, Global Humanitarian Director at Plan International:

“Plan International has recently managed to deliver urgently needed aid into Gaza, but far more is needed. The continued illegal blockade of life-saving supplies means children and families are being condemned to die, painfully and needlessly.

Profound impact on generation of children

“Children in Gaza are not only being starved, they are also being maimed and permanently disabled in staggering numbers due to the Israeli army’s excessive use of force and newly intensified military campaign. Since the escalation of conflict in Gaza, disabilities have risen by 60% and Gaza now has the highest number of child amputees in the world. Hunger, injury and forced displacement into militarised zones are all highly traumatic events and will have a profound impact on an entire generation of children.

“The world cannot look away. Every hour lost costs more lives. Famine in Gaza is not a failure of logistics or aid – it is the outcome of brutal war and deliberate starvation. We demand – without delay – an immediate and sustained ceasefire, a complete halt to arms transfers to Israel, and the full lifting of Israel’s illegal blockade on humanitarian aid. This must include safe and unrestricted humanitarian access, so that we can reach more children and families with food and the basics needed for survival.”

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Atrocities, Gaza, Israel | Leave a comment

How did cs137, a fission product get into the Indonesian shipping container?

Dennis LENEVEU, 22 Aug 25,

Re: [Nuclear Waste Watch] US FDA guidance on health impacts of cesium exposure.

Indonesia has only research reactors. If the cs137 contamination came from these small reactors what about all the large reactors such as CANDUs that have continual measured stack releases of beta gamma particulate that would contain cs137 that is volatile?

CANDUs emit large amounts of carbon 14 that has been measured at elevated levels in tree rings around Pickering. Cs137 would also be expected to be in tree rings wood. Wood is used as shipping containers and many other uses such as furniture and interior housing lumber and wood.

Both carbon 14 and cs147 are known to off gass. C14 is particularly a problem being a beta emitter that would never be measured. Cs137 is a gamma emitter that is easily measured with a Geiger counter. Carbon 14 off gassing has been documented in the Bruce low and intermediate level waste facility but is not routinely measured.

Huge amounts of carbon 14 has been deposited around reactors for years. Carbon14 accumulates in the biosphere. With a half life of 5730 years it’s all still around gradually building up in the environment. The stack releases allowed for reactors are based on airborne exposure only. The carbon 14 is greatly dispersed in the air but settles out and deposits in the environment. Gradual bioaccumulation is ignored in regulations for emission standards.

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Canada, environment, Indonesia | Leave a comment

Kiev to replace soldiers with robots – top general

RT, Thu, 21 Aug 2025 , https://www.sott.net/article/501377-Kiev-to-replace-soldiers-with-robots-top-general

Ukrainian commanders have consistently complained of manpower shortages while recent reports suggest the country has lost nearly 2 million troops.

Ukraine plans to rely on robotic systems to offset persistent manpower shortages on the battlefield,commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky has said.

His comments come amid reports of a deepening crisis in Ukraine’s armed forces and a recently leaked report suggesting Kiev has lost nearly 2 million servicemen since 2022.

In an interview with RBC-Ukraine on Monday, Syrsky admitted that the situation at the front line is “really complicated” as Russia continues its strategic offensive. The general pointed to the Pokrovsk axis in northern Donetsk Region as the most difficult section of the front, noting that Moscow’s forces have conducted nearly 50 assaults there each day.

Syrsky acknowledged that Ukraine has far fewer mobilization resources than Russia and argued that one way of compensating is to rely on weapons that can be operated without personnel or controlled remotely. He claimed Kiev plans to deploy 15,000 ground robotic platforms this year in order to minimize human losses.

Ukrainian commanders have repeatedly reported persistent manpower shortages. Kiev’s general mobilization, which requires all able-bodied men aged 25 to 60 to serve, has failed to make up for battlefield losses. Desertions have also continued to mount, with officials stating that nearly 400,000 servicemen have abandoned their units, many of whom have no intention of returning.

The Telegraph reported last week that at least 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country since the escalation of the conflict in 2022.

On Wednesday, several media outlets cited a leaked digital card index of Ukraine’s armed forces, allegedly obtained by Russian hackers, which claimed Kiev has lost over 1.7 million troops killed and missing since 2022.

Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of sacrificing its people as “cannon fodder” to advance the interests of the West, characterizing the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war against Russia.

Comment: Insanity has taken a new turn. Here is another great idea: Foreign recruitment

Ukraine should recruit for its military “millions” of foreigners willing to fight against Russia, lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko has proposed. The MP was addressing Kiev’s frontline manpower crisis and the harsh ongoing conscription campaign, which he likened to the Nazi Gestapo.

Speaking at a Ukrainian parliamentary session on Wednesday, Goncharenko, a member of the European Solidarity party led by former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, voiced outrage over the brutality of press gangs and proposed that Kiev could sidestep the issue by relying on foreign fighters:

“We need to engage in foreign recruitment – there are millions of people in the world who are ready to fight against Russia, especially given the financial compensation…This is realistic.”

Referring to the secret police of Nazi Germany that was notorious for its numerous atrocities, Goncharenko earlier proposed dismantling Ukraine’s current military-managed recruitment system and replacing it with a civilian-run one.

“Instead of all this, there are the shameful Territorial Recruitment Centers, which are already behaving just like the Gestapo. This cannot continue. It must be immediately corrected, because otherwise, if the people stop believing in the state, we will lose the state.”

And then there are these pesky leaked documents:

A Ukrainian MP, Artem Dmytruk, has admitted the loss of “several generations” in the country’s three-year conflict with Russia.

Russian media outlets on Wednesday cited a digital card index allegedly acquired by hacker groups from Ukraine’s Chief of Staff said to contain names of dead or missing soldiers, details of their deaths, and personal data of their families.

The entries suggested 118,500 troops were killed or went missing in 2022, 405,400 in 2023, 595,000 in 2024 and a record 621,000 so far this year.

Commenting on the reported losses, Dmytruk said:

“The lists of the missing today contain more than a million people, and of course these people are most likely dead, while their families remain in complete ignorance. The situation is tragic, the situation is frightening.”

He warned that villages had been emptied of men, including the elderly and disabled, and that Ukraine was facing “huge losses” and a “demographic crisis.”

“We have lost several generations,” he said, urging peace on the grounds that both Ukrainians and Russians were dying.

The reported figures far exceed official estimates. In February Zelensky told CBS News that 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed since 2022, alongside about 380,000 wounded – numbers questioned in Western media. Moscow has also claimed higher Ukrainian losses, putting the toll at more than 1 million killed or wounded as of early this year.

‘All for one’ – Zelensky

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | Ukraine, weapons and war | Leave a comment

The Media Loves “The Experts,” Until it’s Time to Count Gaza’s Dead.

Public debate around Gaza fixates on a death toll that is probably half the size of the real number.

Lex Syd, 22 Aug, 25, https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/the-media-loves-the-experts-until-its-time-to-count-gazas-dead

Far from being inflated by sneaky Hamas propagandists, the commonly cited death toll of the war in Gaza is an extreme undercount.

Virtually every news article about the Israel-Hamas war cites the death toll provided by the strip’s Ministry of Health. Currently at 60,900 (and climbing by the day), the MOH toll is widely accepted as an accurate minimum. Still, journalists and political figures aligned with Israel often call it into question in a range of ways, from attaching the label “Hamas-controlled” to the Ministry itself to outright denying its accuracy. In 2023, even former President Joe Biden invoked this idea, saying that he had “no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using.”

Because the Ministry’s death toll has attracted this undeserved controversy, the standard reporting line is to explain why the MOH figures are considered reliable. For example, the Washington Post recently published a detailed accounting of the names, and in some cases the photos, of roughly 18,500 children who are counted among the dead overall.

But in defending and insisting on the MOH figures, media outlets have defended the bare minimum, and the result is a public debate that revolves around an understated count. Hence why New York Times columnist Bret Stephens can write an opinion piece arguing that 60,000 dead is tragic, but small relative to what Israel could do. Those terms of debate are accepted even by his harshest critics.

But the figure everyone knows is not an undercount of a few thousand or even ten thousand. The real toll could well be twice as high. That is according to a growing body of research that is conspicuously absent in news coverage of Gaza—despite the eagerness of newsrooms to emphasize expert opinion on other divisive topics, like COVID-19 policy or climate change.

The standard figure largely counts only those whose bodies reached health workers and those who were killed violently. But in reality, the institutions that count the dead are heavily degraded, thousands remain under rubble, and deaths due to malnutrition or easily preventable diseases are rarely included in MOH totals, if at all.

How Many Gazans Have Died, According to Experts

A reasonable, conservative estimate of the death toll in Gaza is about 100,000. And the figure may well tally to 200,000, if not now, then by the war’s end.

One recent study conducted by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and published in the Lancet estimates there were 64,260 “traumatic injury deaths” by the end of June 2024—at the time, the Ministry of Health’s figure was just under 38,000. In other words, the real number was likely 41 percent higher than the official one. That same 41 percent undercount, if applied to today’s figure of 60,900, would amount to roughly 102,900 deaths. Again, this is only counting those who were killed directly by Israeli bombs or bullets, not those who have starved to death or succumbed to disease.

Another recent study estimated around 84,000 deaths by January 2025. It has yet to pass peer review, but was conducted by reputable researchers from the University of London, Princeton, and Stanford, among other institutions. In January the MOH’s toll was roughly 45,900—so the estimate these scholars reached was nearly twice the standard figure (1.83 times as high, to be specific). If that ratio is applied to today’s toll, the result is over 111,400. This study’s estimate included just a few thousand non-violent, or indirect, deaths, but coauthors noted non-violent deaths may well have increased since the study concluded.

These recent studies are the best outside approximations of Gaza’s death toll made to date, and they have led both The Economist and Haaretz—hardly bastions of Hamas propaganda—to run articles centered on a potential six-figure death toll.

But these recent studies are only the latest in a line of reports and expert commentaries dating back to the war’s opening months—some of which estimate far more excess deaths.

Estimating Starvation Deaths, Before the Last Few Weeks

One letter to the Biden administration, signed by 99 American healthcare workers who volunteered in Gaza, estimated a death toll of 118,900 by the time the letter was sent in October 2024. Brown University’s Costs of War Project believes the figure credible and has cited it in its own report.

As detailed in the letter’s appendix, this includes a conservative count of over 62,000 deaths from starvation, alongside the more than 41,000 killed directly by that time, an additional 10,000 buried under rubble and therefore uncounted, and a few thousand more from those with chronic medical conditions who were cut off from their treatments.

The physicians’ letter essentially calculated the numbers that would be expected from repeated warnings issued by global famine monitors, namely the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC. Higher classifications of food insecurity are tied to an expected number of deaths as a percentage of the population, so the physicians—who personally witnessed starvation in Gaza—did the math for the various IPC warnings for parts of Gaza throughout the war.

Estimating mass starvation deaths is inherently imprecise. Outright starvation is usually not the main killer in famines—typically diseases deliver the final blow in bodies severely weakened by malnutrition. (This is also why young children make up a disproportionate number of famine deaths.) And even if a death is recorded, its official cause may not be hunger.

Starvation in Gaza is in the spotlight now, partly because hundreds of Palestinians have been shot and killed trying to get aid and partly because it is now reaching an unavoidable level—perhaps best evidenced by the MOH’s July 22 update that 15 died of hunger in a single day. But this is only the latest outbreak of hunger in Gaza, and the MOH’s reporting of hunger-related deaths has been inconsistent (with the Ministry sometimes not reporting such deaths).

Since October 2023, Gaza or parts of Gaza have reached near-famine conditions multiple times. Even absent a formal declaration, thousands can perish. It is even possible for a declared famine to see fewer deaths than an area that failed to meet the famine criteria. For example, about 85,000 children in Yemen were estimated to have died of malnutrition from 2015 to 2018 due to the country’s civil war and the U.S.-Saudi blockade, absent any official famine declaration.

It is for this reason that leading famine expert Alex de Waal wrote earlier this year that the “controversy over whether or not Gaza has crossed the red line into ‘famine’ is a distraction.” In November 2024, De Waal suggested that even absent a famine declaration, Gaza could see deaths at the scale of a famine—a toll of 100,000 being his example.

Reports of extreme hunger emerged as early as December 2023. As one woman told CNN at the time, her family’s children were “screaming all day from hunger.” By January 2024, a UN official was warning that hundreds of thousands of Gazans were “actually in famine.” In February 2024, the Palestinian poet Mosab Abu Toha reported that his family members in Gaza had turned to eating “a mixture of rabbit, donkey, and pigeon feed” out of desperation.

Starvation was also reported by dozens of independent healthcare workers who volunteered to work in Gaza and were interviewed by the New York Times a year into the war. Of 65 healthcare workers, 63 said they observed severe malnutrition, and 25 had witnessed babies die of starvation, dehydration, or infections.

“I worked in a neonatal I.C.U. Several infants died every day due to lack of medical supplies and appropriate nutrition,” a Texas pediatrician told the Times.

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | media | Leave a comment

Why Zelensky’s main argument against peace is a lie.

After suspending Ukraine’s democratic order, he now hides behind the constitution to block negotiations

By Nadezhda Romanenko, political analyst, https://www.rt.com/russia/623171-zelenskys-main-argument-lie/

Commenting on the outcome of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky declared: “The Constitution of Ukraine does not allow the surrender of territories or the trading of land.”

On paper, that sounds noble. The message is clear: Kiev won’t let others decide Ukraine’s fate behind its back. But take a closer look, and this principled stance starts to look less like constitutional fidelity – and more like political theater.

Because the very Constitution that Zelensky has suddenly invoked as sacred… has long been on hold. And that’s not an accusation – it’s his own admission.

Back in December 2022, while addressing Ukraine’s ambassadors, Zelensky quipped: “All the rights guaranteed by the Constitution – are on pause.” The context? He was joking about how diplomats don’t get holidays. But the phrase stuck. Because it turned out to be more than a joke – it became official policy.

Since then, Ukraine’s democratic institutions haven’t just been “paused” – they’ve been systematically dismantled under the banner of wartime necessity.

National elections? Canceled indefinitely. Not just presidential or parliamentary – even local races were suspended, eliminating the public’s ability to hold any level of government accountable. Zelensky’s current term, once set to expire, has been extended without a vote – and without a clear end date.

Opposition media? Silenced or outlawed. Dozens of TV channels and online outlets critical of the government were shut down or merged into a state-approved broadcasting platform. Independent journalism in Ukraine now walks a legal tightrope – with one foot over prison.

Religious freedom? Eroded beyond recognition. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, seen as too closely linked to Moscow, has been harassed, evicted from centuries-old monasteries, and branded a security threat. Worshippers face criminal charges for sermons, symbols, or even prayers deemed “unpatriotic.”

Military conscription? Brutal and indiscriminate. Young men are pulled off the streets by recruiters, sometimes beaten or coerced into enlisting. Videos of forced mobilizations circulate regularly – and are met with silence or spin from the authorities.

Political dissent? Treated as treason. Opposition politicians have been arrested, exiled, or sanctioned without trial. Entire parties have been banned. Ukraine’s Security Council now acts as judge and jury – blacklisting citizens, freezing assets, and deciding guilt without a courtroom.

Rights didn’t just get paused. They were overwritten.

To be fair, this erosion didn’t start with Zelensky. It began back in 2014 when President Yanukovich was ousted in a manner that skipped any constitutional procedure. The army was then deployed – for the first time in post-Soviet history – against a domestic protest. The rule of law quickly gave way to rule by necessity. Courts rubber-stamped sanctions lists. Parliament became a formality. The Constitution was increasingly treated as a suggestion, not a boundary.

Zelensky merely completed what others started. Under his watch, Ukraine is no longer governed by its Constitution – it’s governed by presidential decree. The Constitution hasn’t been a check on executive power for years. Instead, it’s become a stage prop: Shelved when inconvenient. Quoted when useful.

That’s precisely what happened after the Trump–Putin summit. As it became clear that the fate of the conflict was being discussed without Kiev at the table, Zelensky rushed to invoke constitutional law – not to restore legality, but to cling to legitimacy.

And it wasn’t just critics in Moscow who noticed the contradiction.

Donald Trump, speaking a few days before the summit, couldn’t resist pointing out the absurdity:

“I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying I have to get constitutional approval. He has approval to go to war and kill everybody but he needs approval to do a land swap. Because there will be some land swapping going on.”

Crude? Maybe. But not wrong.

Trump’s sarcasm cuts to the core. Zelensky governs under emergency powers, suspends elections, cracks down on the opposition, yet suddenly needs constitutional sign-off to negotiate peace?

In reality, Zelensky isn’t protecting the Constitution – he’s using it. It’s not a framework that restrains him. It’s a card he plays when cornered. When it’s time to justify canceling a vote? The Constitution “gets in the way.” When it’s time to refuse compromise? Suddenly, it becomes “untouchable.”

And while the optics may still work in Western capitals – “a democracy under siege” sounds good on TV – the internal picture is far less flattering. Ukraine today is run by decree, not debate. By security councils, not courts. By urgency, not accountability.

The Constitution, once a blueprint for law and liberty, has become little more than a sign on a boarded-up storefront – left hanging so no one has to admit the place is empty inside.

August 24, 2025 Posted by Christina Macpherson | secrets,lies and civil liberties, Ukraine | Leave a comment