Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – In an interview with Israel’s Channel 14, Minister of Energy Eli Cohen said that “Gaza must remain in ruins for decades to come” and that Israel will not help rebuild its civilian infrastructure. The Israeli army has damaged or destroyed some 90% of the Gaza Strip’s housing stock, as well as destroying most hospitals and all schools and universities, as well as water purification plants and other essential infrastructure, leaving over 2 million people to try to live in rubble.
Note that Cohen is a member of the ruling right wing Likud Party headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rather than being from the extremist Religious Zionism bloc that is in coalition with the Likud. A former accountant and teacher of business at Tel Aviv University, Cohen has been listed among the top 100 most influential Israelis.
Keeping millions of Palestinians in Gaza, half of them children, living in ruins for decades is not the sort of goal announced by sane, civilized, ordinary European politicians. At least, not since the 1930s. If a Likud Party stalwart like Cohen openly speaks like this, imagine what the Religious Zionism and Jewish Power cabinet members and members of parliament sound like.
Also on Sunday, the Associated Press reports from an eyewitness, Ramadan Nassar, that some 14 adults brought 20 children to collect water from a distribution point in Nuseirat in central Gaza. As though out of nowhere, an Israeli missile struck them, killing six children and four adults. AP says that the Israeli military alleged that the strike was a technical error. There seem to be a lot of those, since over half of the 58,000 Palestinians Israel has killed since October 2023 have been women and children, and many of the rest were noncombatant men.
Most water in Gaza is not potable, since Israel has deliberately destroyed water purification plants, and ground water is full of bacteria. Watery diarrhea, which can lead to dehydration and even death, is common in the Palestinian population of Gaza, including among vulnerable infants and children.
Just as civilized politicians don’t talk about making millions of people live in rubble for decades, civilized militaries don’t have rules of engagement that allow for 20, or 50, or even 100 civilian deaths for every militant targeted.
NATO is refusing to do joint military operations with Israel because of these unacceptable rules of engagement, which would get any NATO officer court-martialed who tried to implement them.
In addition, Palestinian media sources reported that Israeli airstrikes and attacks left 95 people dead on Sunday, 52 of them in Gaza City.
On Monday, UNICEF announced that it recorded 5,800 cases of malnutrition among children in the Gaza Strip during the month of June, as IMEMC reports:
Severe acute malnutrition involves muscle wastage and pencil-like arms, and produces permanent brain damage.
By Gordon Hahn – March 1 , 2025 – Source Russian and Eurasian Politics, Translated by Wayan, proofread by Hervé, for Saker Francophone.
– – ……………………..……………………………………………………..The collapse of the Ukrainian army
The collapse of the front is expected to occur simultaneously or shortly after the collapse of the Ukrainian army. The state of the Ukrainian army is indeed dire. It suffers not only from a growing shortage of weapons, but also from a shortage of personnel, discipline, morale, and capabilities, all crippled by corruption. The 2024 military mobilization failed. Desertion and refusal to obey orders are endemic, and corruption not only hinders recruitment but also promotes high levels of absence without leave, reducing the number of Ukrainian soldiers actually fighting at the front.
The military mobilizations of the past and present year are having a debilitating effect on the economy, and society is failing to replace current losses at the front with completely inexperienced recruits with low or zero morale. There are no more volunteers, and by spring, some Ukrainian officials report, the situation will be irremediable. Moreover, almost all of the new recruits are elderly or demotivated, reports The Economist .
Frontline commanders, such as the commander of the drone battalion of Ukraine’s 30th Mechanized Brigade, confirm that the 2024 mobilization was an absolute failure and that there are now too few men to replace combat losses. Mobilization is carried out through harsh, often violent, measures. Verkhovna Rada deputy Alexander Bakumov of Zelenskiy’s Servants of the People party said in a session that the mobilization in the Kharkiv region is forced, resembling a filtration of the Ukrainian population (referring to the practice of detaining, beating, and torturing citizens of the occupied areas in an ostensible search for fighters and collaborators), with exits from the city blocked by “recruitment “ gangs and lawyers for the mobilized men beaten. Small businesses are facing mass closures due to the lack of workers willing to leave for fear of being drafted into the army. Others have reported data falsification at recruiting offices to justify recruitment . There are numerous reports and videos of the violence used by recruiting gangs. Ultimately, what can be said of an army whose military system must force citizens to fight, even by forcibly seizing priests leading a religious procession and sending them to the front?
Moreover, many men are fleeing the country in greater numbers to avoid Ukraine’s desperate and draconian forced mobilization measures, sometimes risking their lives and sociopolitical stability. More recently, Western governments have pressured Kyiv to extend mobilization to the 18-25 age cohort, which would lead to a near-catastrophic demographic collapse of a population already reduced by some 30 percent due to war deaths and emigration. Even the recruitment centers themselves are trying to avoid the draft. When Rada deputies proposed filling the personnel shortage by creating a brigade from among the mobilization gangs, the chairman of the mobilization centers claimed that there were not enough of them to form a full brigade. The low number of volunteers and the failure of mobilization are creating distortions in the force structure. ” Zombie brigades ” or ” paper brigades ” are partially manned units simply called brigades to impress Western donors and facilitate the corruption of commanders who garnish salaries allocated to non-existent personnel.
The large number of desertions from the Ukrainian army, a phenomenon completely ignored by the Western media for three years, was finally revealed in November to have exceeded 100,000 since the start of the war. This would perhaps represent more than 10% of the Ukrainian army at its current size, given that Zelenskiy recently claimed that it has 800,000 recruits. Moreover, more than half of these desertions took place in the first ten months of 2024 alone. This is already large-scale desertion and includes mass desertions .
Military blogger Yurii Butusov, Servant of the People MP Maryana Bezuglaya, and others reported late last year the desertion of an entire 1,000-man brigade trained in France upon their arrival at the front. This may have been a case of the commander’s failed attempt to form so-called ” zombie brigades .” Indeed, military personnel have questioned the recent practice of creating new brigades when existing ones are woefully underequipped, apparently suspecting the corruption scheme behind the practice. One Ukrainian commander told a Polish newspaper that sometimes in combat there are more deserters than killed and wounded.
Desertions are one of the symptoms of lax discipline and, above all, low morale, increasingly plaguing the Ukrainian army. Commanders report that 90 percent of their frontline troops are newly mobilized men forcibly. Sources in the Ukrainian General Staff report the same . Thus, desertions are accompanied by unauthorized retreats, which are becoming increasingly frequent. For example, hundreds of people fled the battle at one point last fall in Vugledar (Ugledar) before the town fell. Vugledar was once a stronghold that, in 2023, Russian forces stormed dozens of times without success.
Ukrainian soldiers refuse to carry out operational orders because they amount to suicide operations and are beginning to surrender in entire units, in one case almost an entire battalion (for example, the 92nd Combat Squadron). Indeed, refusals to follow orders or undertake counteroffensive measures are increasing. In one recent case, the Azov Brigade’s chief of staff, Bogdan Koretich, accused a Ukrainian general of such poor command that he was described as responsible for more Ukrainian war deaths than Russians, forcing his dismissal. At lower levels, commanders are being dismissed in large numbers. At the same time, field commanders publicly criticize senior commanders and staff for their strategic incompetence and negligence.
One reason for the disintegration of discipline and morale is that there is no relief for the troops, as there is no long-term demobilization or time away from the front other than that resulting from brief episodic troop rotations; a consequence of insufficient troop numbers. Soldiers and their families have been lobbying for over a year for a demobilization law that would allow long rotations for troops to return home, but no such law is in sight. This would likely lead to a deadly shortage of troops and the complete rout of the Ukrainian army on the battlefield.
However, perhaps the main problem in the Ukrainian military, as in the rest of the Ukrainian state and society, is corruption. It is endemic and pervasive in the production and procurement of weapons, mobilization (evasion of conscription through bribes), the purchase of leave and absences from the front, and the staffing of brigades. One Ukrainian defense minister told a journalist that the problem was ” catastrophic .” Anna Skorokhod, an independent Rada MP, claims that only 15% (!) of rank-and-file soldiers serve at the front, with a large number either nonexistent (dead souls) in service or having bribed their way into hiding somewhere in the rear.
This is how Ukrainian officers describe the widespread corruption in the army. According to a Ukrainian army captain:
” Due to false information about the presence of personnel, the commanders of the branches receive false information. And they operate with ‘dead souls’, developing combat plans. For example, at a point where the Russians have broken through a section of the front, the commander orders a certain brigade to send a battalion with an attached group as reinforcements. In fact, the battalion has long since left, its number is now only one company, some have bought their way to the rear or deserted. As a result, there is nothing to close the breakthrough, because of the threat, the flanks of neighboring brigades begin to collapse. “
According to a source in the General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces: ” If we take the number of Russian soldiers we have at the front on paper, then if the Russians have a numerical advantage, it is less than double. But that’s on paper. In practice, the situation is different. Let’s imagine a section separated from the front. According to the newspapers, there are 100 people on our side and 150 on the Russian side. In other words, the enemy’s advantage is insignificant. With such numbers, it is quite possible to maintain the defense. But in a real battle, the situation is radically different. At most 40 of our 100 people participate. And often even fewer. The rest are deserters, who simply refuse to fight, etc. And the Russians have 140 to 145 people out of 150 fighting. In total, the advantage has already more than tripled. Why does this situation exist?” Our army was initially based on a core of volunteers, ATO veterans, and highly motivated soldiers who went into battle without coercion and seized the initiative. The Russians had a major motivation problem from the very beginning. But they worked on this issue and gradually created their own system of military-repressive coercion. And it works by sending soldiers into battle and stopping cases of insubordination and desertion. We haven’t created anything like that. And I doubt we’re even capable of creating such a system. Our state system is too weak and corrupt for that. And now that the volunteers are dead, either from wounds or simply exhausted, and the army is replenished with fake conscripts who have close to zero motivation, there’s no way to force them to fight. A separate problem is the quality of the command staff and the combat management system. There are also some very big failures here, as many experienced commanders have died and worthy replacements do not always come after them .”
Moreover, corruption reaches the top of the Ukrainian military establishment (as well as the civilian establishment). The suspension of US aid to Ukraine until April and the investigation into US arms supplies to Kyiv announced by the new administration of President Donald Trump resonated in the Ukrainian capital, leading to the opening of an investigation into the procurement practices of the Defense Ministry and Defense Minister Rustem Umerov, whose predecessor, Aleksey Reznikov, had also been ousted on suspicion of massive corruption. Umerov immediately moved to fire the head of the procurement organization, but she refused to leave her office. There have been rumors for months that Zelenskiy was seeking to oust Umerov, and following the announcement of the investigation, calls for his resignation are growing . This adds crisis to crisis, dealing another blow to the military establishment at a pivotal moment in a catastrophic war.
It is a state of corruption, low morale and incapacity reminiscent of Bashar al-Assad’s recently collapsed Syrian army.
This kind of Ukrainian army, or its collapse, poses a threat to both the Maidan regime and the Ukrainian state. The troops of a collapsed Ukrainian army will become a force that can be mobilized by a military or civilian leader to carry out a coup d’état and possibly a neo-fascist revolution, or by peripheral and local figures to establish separate fiefdoms. Recall that during the Maidan protests, leaders in Lvov and elsewhere first broached the idea of seceding from Ukraine, then controlled by Yanukovych. After the Maidan uprising and Yanukovych’s overthrow, it was Crimea and Donbass that moved toward separatism.
Ukrainian regime splits, then falls
With the army in collapse or even on the verge of collapse, political instability can be expected to intensify, with internal infighting intensifying as what remains resembles a front line moves closer to Kyiv. Russian forces will reach the Dnieper River by this summer and may capture territory along much or all of its length this year. With the fall of industrial giants, such as the cities of Dnipro and Zaporozhe, rump Ukraine will be reduced to a country of Western Ukrainian traders in a decimated economy, society, and political regime, assuming the Russians decide to stop at the Dnieper. Already, HUR leader Kyryll Budanov and the head of the Office of the President (OP), Andriy Yermak, are at odds, with rumors circulating for months that Zelenskiy is preparing to fire Budanov. In late January, Ukrainskaya Pravda , a pro-Maidan newspaper, reported that Budanov shocked Rada deputies at a closed-door meeting by declaring that if peace talks did not begin soon, processes would begin that would lead to the destruction of Ukraine . There has been some cooperation in the opposition between Zelenskiy’s dismissed armed forces commander, General Valeriy Zaluzhniy, and former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Both have been investigated for alleged treason by Zelenskiy’s prosecutors and the secret police, the SBU, and have been the subject of political attacks by the PO. The leader of the parliamentary faction of Zelenskiy’s ” Servants of the People ” party in the Ukrainian Verkhovna Rada, David Arakhamiya, is reportedly on the way out and will soon be replaced as party faction chairman. Arakhmiya is one of the few Ukrainian figures to acknowledge that Ukraine almost reached a peace deal with Russia in March 2022 that would have brought a swift end to the war, but that the West scuttled the agreement by withholding security guarantees and urging Kyiv to fight. Recently, as the new Trump administration put peace talks back on the agenda, Arakhmiya appeared to encourage the process by noting that he was in contact with Kremlin-linked Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich and had good ties to Republicans in the United States, likely increasing Zelenskiy’s suspicions about his loyalty. https://lesakerfrancophone.fr/les-quatre-prochaines-phases-deffondrements-de-lukraine
These internal struggles are compounded by the unfulfilled revolutionary aspirations of its ultranationalist and neofascist wing, which led the Maidan takeover in the first place ten years ago in February 2024. More recently, the founder and former leader of the neofascist Right Sector group and advisor to former Ukrainian Army Commander-in-Chief Zaluzhniy, Dmitro Yarosh, repeated his call for the completion of the neofascist revolution on his Facebook page: “ It turned out that during the Revolution of Dignity and the Russo-Ukrainian War, Ukrainian nationalists became the main factor in the Ukrainian national liberation struggle in the 21st century. I am a Ukrainian nationalist—this sounds proud both in Ukraine and around the world. The next power after the War of Independence should be nationalist.” Otherwise, we will once again be drawn into an unbreakable cycle of national humiliation, corruption, degeneration, moral degradation, economic decline, inferiority, and defeat. Therefore, after the War of Independence, the wise, courageous, and noble must reign in Ukraine. Glory to the Nation! ” The leader and commander of the neo-fascist Azov Brigade, Andrey Biletskiy, sounded the alarm about the army in December and called for far-reaching reforms, perhaps with the aim of taking over the leadership of the army and even the state. In short, the Zelenskiy government has opponents , even enemies, in all political camps, from the military to moderate nationalists to neo-fascists, even in his own largely discredited and corrupt Servant of the People party.
These developments within the elite are compounded by the collapse of Zelenskiy’s popularity and public trust. General Zaluzhniy is favored over Zelenskiy in the most recent opinion polls in Ukraine. Ukrainians’ trust in Zelensky has plummeted from 80% in May 2023 to 45% a year later, according to the US National Democratic Institute. A recent Ukrainian opinion poll conducted by the Kyiv-based Center for Social Monitoring shows that only 16% of Ukrainians are willing to vote for Zelenskiy in any future presidential election, and 60% would prefer him not to run. Meanwhile, Zaluzhniy, ousted by Zelenskiy, would lead in such an election and would have 27% support, the poll found. According to previous internal opinion polls by the Presidential Office, Zelenskiy would lose a presidential election to Zaluzhniy today. The dismissed general ranks as the most popular political and military figure in Ukraine, according to other recent polls (). In approval ratings, Zelenskiy has fallen to third place, after Zaluzhniy and the head of military intelligence (HRU) Budanov, whom the President’s Office is trying to fire . The stumbling block may be Budanov’s long-standing ties to US and Western intelligence services . In a more recent survey, Zaluzhniy (71.6%) and Budanov (46.7%) retained higher approval ratings than Zelenskiy (40.8%).
All of the above strongly suggests that the regime is fracturing behind the scenes and that Zelenskiy will be unable to maintain the situation as crises at the front and in the army intensify. The Maidan regime is threatened by a regime divided into competing factions, each putting forward its own claim to the sovereignty of the Ukrainian state or parts of it. Zaluzhniy’s reported contacts with opposition figure Poroshenko would mark the defection of a key actor from the Maidan regime to the political opposition to Zelenskiy. Such defections play a decisive role in regime transformations, whether transitional or revolutionary. It is sufficient to recall the effect that Eltsion’s defection from Mikhail Gorbachev’s reformist Soviet CPSU regime had on Soviet politics, exacerbating the polarization to both the ” left ” and ” right ” of Gorbachev’s perestroishchiki and leading to the sweeping August coup against both and ultimately the collapse of the USSR.
On top of all this, the regime’s stability is being undermined by the Trump administration’s push for peace talks with Moscow and, most recently, its implicit decision to remove Zelensky from the presidency to facilitate those negotiations. The February 2 call by Trump’s Ukraine peace envoy, Keith Kellogg, for presidential elections to be called by the end of the year appears to spell doom for Zelenskiy, given General Zaluzhniy’s far greater popularity. For Zelenskiy, an electoral defeat or a decision not to run would be a saving grace compared to other means by which he could be removed from power. But Kellogg’s mere suggestion, let alone an actual presidential campaign waged as the front and the army collapse, will intensify the power struggle, perhaps to the breaking point.
Then there is the very real potential for a popular uprising as the economy deteriorates and corruption becomes more publicized, especially as it is linked to the military’s difficulties. Ukrainians already view this as a greater threat than the Russian military, according to a recent poll conducted by the Kyiv-based sociological research group Reinting . The poll showed that more Ukrainians cited price increases and the general state of the economy (32% and 33%, respectively) as more worrisome than the expansion of Ukrainian territory occupied by the Russian military (25%). Social discontent with the regime’s shortcomings, highlighted by the extravagant lifestyles visible online by Zelenskiy’s family, his inner circle, and the Ukrainian elite in general, is a time bomb waiting to explode.
This crisis of the Maidan regime is likely to trigger a state crisis, perhaps state failure and territorial collapse. Domestic infighting and instability could very well lead to military and/or palace coups, and even to internecine wars and the division of parts of the country by mutually antagonistic Ukrainian factions of one kind or another.
The Failure and Collapse of the Ukrainian State
The collapse of the regime could lead to the organizational and administrative collapse of the state, leaving no functioning central government. This would facilitate territorial dissolution through warlord-led secessions, regions dominated by ethnic minorities, and/or vengeful takeovers by foreign powers: Poland, Romania, not to mention Russia. All of this could be compounded by economic dislocation and social chaos, leaving both Europe and Russia with a major security problem on their borders. One need only recall the Ukrainian national separatism that arose in Lvov and other regions of western Ukraine during the Maidan protests. These initial separatist measures preceded those taken in Crimea and Donbass, but came months after the collapse of the Yanukovych regime and the victory of the Maidan uprising. Below, I review various aspects or phases of Ukraine’s potential collapse as a state: state disorganization and functional failure; territorial collapse on a Ukrainian nationalist and/or quasi-criminal basis; minority ethnonational separatism; and foreign national revanchism.
The Ukrainian state is vulnerable to organizational incapacity and administrative failure due to an increasingly dysfunctional economy and the almost total dependence of its economy and state budget on foreign aid, loans, and grants. I and others have noted the destruction of Ukraine’s energy grid and other infrastructure and the further debilitating effect of military mobilization on businesses.
Against the backdrop of such grave difficulties and what can only be greater economic dislocation caused by the buildup and advance of the Russian military, Ukraine’s largest donor, the United States, has frozen all foreign aid, excluding only Israel and Egypt from the decree, as announced by the Trump administration. This will soon leave the Ukrainian government without the necessary funding to govern, provide public goods, and so on. Ukrainians already view prices as a greater threat than the Russian military, as noted above.
Thus, Ukraine’s loss of sovereignty to the West, primarily Washington, means a complete collapse with the withdrawal of funding. This is already evident in the most transparent of USAID corruption revelations, which revealed that 85% of Ukrainian media outlets will have to close without USAID funds. One can imagine the destructive impact on other sectors of Ukraine’s lifeline of Western aid: the economy, healthcare, social benefits, and so on. One can then expect regional governments, supported by ambitious oligarchs opposed to the Zelenskiy government or even the entire Maidan regime itself, to become separate fiefdoms for said oligarchs, paving the way for regional hoarding of key assets and possibly even separatism.
Furthermore, Ukraine suffers from an ethnically based “state problem,” driven by regions populated by ethnic minorities and foreign legacies encompassing most of western Ukraine. These regions became part of Ukraine following the Soviet defeat of Nazism in the Great Patriotic War and the occupation of these regions by the Red Army, which were subsequently incorporated into the Ukrainian SSR of the Soviet Union. As I wrote in my book ” Ukraine on the Brink : Russia, the West, and the ‘New Cold War’ ” (McFarland, 2016), today’s Ukrainian state was built by Lenin, Stalin, and later Khrushchev (Crimea). Thus, in the Transcarpathian region of western Ukraine, there are subregions with large Romanian and Hungarian populations whose lands previously belonged to Romania and Hungary, respectively, then allies of the Nazis. These populations were already subjected to linguistic and other forms of discrimination at the hands of the state and its Ukrainian ultranationalist and neofascist allies before Russia’s invasion in 2022. Now, they are being brutalized by Zelenskiy’s military mobilization gangs, perhaps disproportionately compared to ethnic Ukrainian areas. This may fuel a desire to return to their national homelands by enlisting their aid by incorporating them into Romania and Hungary, respectively. Territorially speaking, this is a far lesser danger than the potential for Polish revanchism, which would mean the dissolution of the Ukrainian state. Fortunately for Kyiv, such developments are for the time being a remote possibility. But if the Ukrainian state begins to disintegrate, let alone experience internecine warfare or an incipient civil war, the potential for external revanchism will become more kinetic.
Conclusion
There is nothing inevitable about the cascade of collapses proceeding at full speed. Regime collapse can still be avoided, but regime collapse will quickly follow that of the front and the army. The only ways to fully prevent this cascade of collapses are a ceasefire, a full-fledged peace agreement, a full-scale NATO military intervention, or the conquest of all of Ukraine by Russia. Of these, only a ceasefire agreement is theoretically possible this year, and as early as April, a ceasefire could come too late or prove ineffective in stopping several of these collapses, holding the front line but unable to prevent the collapse of the army, the regime, and the state. Roving bands of idle soldiers on little or no pay will remain a combustible force, and a ceasefire could force the equally combustible crucible of presidential and parliamentary elections. In this, one can agree with HUR leader Budanov, who stated that if Ukraine does not begin peace talks by the summer, processes could begin to destroy the country. And Budanov’s assertion may be an understatement of the urgency. Trump must place Ukraine at the top of his agenda and pursue a settlement with maximum effort, using all the levers of persuasion Washington still possesses. Otherwise, Ukraine could explode. The fact that Kellogg’s call for elections produced a statement the very next day from Zelenskiy finally supporting negotiations with Moscow and thus seeking to break off direct US-Russian talks ” on Ukraine without Ukraine ” and without Europe is a demonstration of how pressure on the increasingly politically weak and emotionally damaged Zelensky could produce rapid results. But time is running out, and Ukraine’s four collapses are approaching.
US President Trump’s tariffs loom over gathering in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur which will also feature US-Russia talks.
Aljazeera, 10 Jul 2025
China has agreed to sign a Southeast Asian treaty banning nuclear weapons, Malaysia’s and China’s foreign ministers confirmed, in a move that seeks to shield the area from rising global security tensions amid the threat of imminent United States tariffs.
The pledge from Beijing was welcomed as diplomats on Thursday gathered for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) foreign ministers’ meeting, where US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is also due to meet regional counterparts and Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.
Malaysia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohamad Hasan told reporters China had confirmed its willingness to sign the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) treaty – an agreement in force since 1997 that restricts nuclear activity in the region to peaceful purposes such as energy generation.
“China made a commitment to ensure that they will sign the treaty without reservation,” Hasan said, adding that the formal signing will take place once all relevant documentation is completed.
ASEAN has long pushed for the world’s five recognised nuclear powers – China, the United States, Russia, France and the United Kingdom – to sign the pact and respect the region’s non-nuclear status, including within its exclusive economic zones and continental shelves.
Last week, Beijing signalled its readiness to support the treaty and lead by example among nuclear-armed states.
Rubio, who is on his first visit to Asia as secretary of state, arrived in Kuala Lumpur on Thursday amid a cloud of uncertainty caused by President Donald Trump’s aggressive tariff strategy, which includes new levies on six ASEAN nations as well as key traditional allies Japan and South Korea……………………………………………………………….
………………………..Reporting from Kuala Lumpur, Al Jazeera’s Rob McBride says Southeast Asian nations are finding themselves at the centre of intensifying diplomatic competition, as global powers look to strengthen their influence in the region.
“The ASEAN countries are facing some of the highest tariffs from the Trump administration,” McBride said. “They were also among the first to receive new letters announcing yet another delay in the imposition of these tariffs, now pushed to 1 August.”
The uncertainty has pushed ASEAN states to seek alternative trade partners, most notably China. “These tariffs have provided an impetus for all of these ASEAN nations to seek out closer trade links with other parts of the world,” McBride added.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi has been in Kuala Lumpur for meetings with ASEAN counterparts, underscoring Beijing’s growing engagement.
With this in mind, the official representatives of most of the world’s nations, gathering in 2017 under UN auspices, met and crafted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Endorsed by a vote of 122 to 1 (with 1 abstention), it banned the use, threatened use, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, stationing, and installation of nuclear weapons. The treaty entered into force in January 2021, and has been signed, thus far, by 94 nations. Opinion polls and declarations by hundreds of cities in a variety of nations indicate that it has substantial public support.
Are we headed towards one, or already in it, asks Lawrence Wittner
Amid growing international chaos, it should come as no surprise that nuclear dangers are increasing.
The latest indication is a rising interest among U.S. allies in enhancing their nuclear weapons capability. For many decades, remarkably few of them had been willing to build nuclear weapons―a result of popular opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear war, progress on nuclear arms control and disarmament, and a belief that they remained secure under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. But, as revealed by a recent article in London’s Financial Times, Donald Trump’s public scorn for NATO allies and embrace of Vladimir Putin have raised fears of U.S. unreliability, thereby tipping the balance toward developing an expanded nuclear weapons capability.
This growing interest in nuclear weapons is especially noticeable in Europe, where Trump’s berating of NATO and Putin’s threats of nuclear attack are particularly unsettling. Although Friedrich Merz, Germany’s chancellor, dismissed any notion of Germany developing its own nuclear weapons, he has stated that it must explore “whether nuclear sharing, or at least nuclear security from the UK and France, could also apply to us.” Furthermore, several German think tank experts have floated the idea of building the infrastructure that, if necessary, could produce German nuclear weapons.
In Poland, too, a nuclear weapons capacity has become increasingly appealing. Prime Minister Donald Tusk recently raised the idea of pursuing nuclear weapons or, at least, seeking an agreement for sharing France’s nuclear arsenal. A board director of PGZ, Poland’s state-controlled military manufacturer, remarked: “There are suddenly a lot of words and different opinions about what to do, but they all show Poland believes in stronger nuclear deterrence against Russia.”
In South Korea, North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and its growing military relationship with Russia, combined with Trump’s unreliability, have contributed to growing support for the nation’s acquiring its own nuclear weapons. Although neither of the two major parties has announced this policy, Cho Tae-yul, the foreign minister, informed parliament that acquiring nuclear weapons was “not off the table,” for “we must prepare for all scenarios.”
Similarly, the idea of developing nuclear weapons is drawing increasing scrutiny in Japan. Sharing South Korea’s fear of a North Korean attack and Trump’s unreliability, Japanese leaders also worry about China’s growing assertiveness. If a North Korean or Chinese nuclear strike occurred, Japan would have only 5 minutes of warning time. Moreover, thanks to its nuclear power plants, Japan already holds enough plutonium to build several thousand nuclear bombs.
In addition, of course, a nuclear arms race is well underway among the nuclear weapons-producing nations: the United States, Russia, China, Britain, France, Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea. All of them are either expanding their nuclear arsenals, building a new generation of nuclear weapons, or both. Most of the nuclear arms control and disarmament agreements of the past have been abandoned, while the remaining agreements are on life support. The New Start Treaty between Russia and the United States, the two nations possessing almost 90 percent of the world’s 12,331 nuclear weapons, is scheduled to expire in February 2026, and there are no negotiations underway to replace it. Meanwhile, in recent years, the top officials of three nuclear-armed nations―Vladimir Putin, Donald Trump, and Kim Jong Un―have issued numerous statements threatening nuclear war.
Against this backdrop, this January the editors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists reset their “Doomsday Clock,” established in 1946, at 89 seconds to midnight, the closest ever to human extinction. The following month, UN Secretary-General António Guterres, deploring the unraveling of international security arrangements, warned that nuclear weapons provided a “one-way road to annihilation.”
These escalating nuclear dangers suggest that, if nuclear weapons, whether possessed by an alliance or by individual nations, are unable to safeguard humanity from total destruction, then a different approach to survival in the nuclear age is needed: one grounded in international security.
With this in mind, the official representatives of most of the world’s nations, gathering in 2017 under UN auspices, met and crafted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Endorsed by a vote of 122 to 1 (with 1 abstention), it banned the use, threatened use, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, stockpiling, stationing, and installation of nuclear weapons. The treaty entered into force in January 2021, and has been signed, thus far, by 94 nations. Opinion polls and declarations by hundreds of cities in a variety of nations indicate that it has substantial public support.
Although the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons provides a useful framework for creating a nuclear weapons-free world, it has not, as yet, rolled back the nuclear menace. The reason is that its provisions are only binding on the nations that have signed it. And the nine nuclear weapons-producing nations, joined by the nations under their nuclear umbrella, refuse to do so―at least so far. Convinced that, in a world of independent and often hostile nations, their security rests upon possession of nuclear weapons, they remain unwilling to abolish them.
Even so, their resistance to the treaty might be overcome by a further step toward international security: the strengthening of international organizations. At present, the United Nations lacks the power to effectively enforce its primary mission of maintaining international peace and security. But that power could be expanded by providing the global organization with an independent source of income, restricting the role of the veto in the Security Council, and expanding the role of the General Assembly. International security would also be enhanced by increasing the jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice and of the International Criminal Court.
Strengthening international security might seem impractical at this time of overheated nationalist claims and the global chaos they produce. Even so, times of crisis sometimes produce historic breakthroughs, and the prospect of nuclear annihilation might have that effect.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL. 13 July25
Most esteemed observers put Ukraine’s dead and wounded at north of a half million in their lost war with Russia. Several million young Ukrainian men have fled conscription while stragglers are rounded up like stray dogs to be thrown into the meat grinder of warfare they’re totally unprepared to fight.
But the war is much more than Ukraine defending itself from a Russian invasion. It’s America’s proxy war to weaken, Russia from Western European political economy. Its origins go back 17 years when the US pitched NATO membership to Ukraine to achieve that senseless goal. It virtually guaranteed war after the US engineered the 2014 coup against Russian friendly Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych. It ignited a civil war between the Kyiv government and the Russian cultured Ukrainians in the Donbas on Russia’s border. Russia tried diplomacy for 8 years to no avail before invading both to keep Ukraine out of NATO and end protect the beleaguered Donbas Ukrainians. Just before the invasion the US stupidly told Russia that NATO membership for Ukraine and Russia’s security concerns were not subject to diplomacy.
America’s best laid plans to prevail failed spectacularly. Now Ukraine will never join NATO but Donbas Ukrainians are largely safe and thrilled to be under Russian protection from the terrors imposed by Kyiv. Ukraine’s fate was sealed once Biden announced he’d only waste US treasure for weapons but not one drop of US blood for Ukraine’s defense. Three and a half years and over $200 billion in US/NATO weapons have simply put Ukraine on US/NATO life support.
Biden was able to keep Ukraine in the fight for nearly 3 years, squandering a half million of its finest, so he could pass the war on to successor Trump. After being eviscerated by the US national security class for his admitting defeat and withdrawing from the 20 year Afghan war, Biden was loathe to incur another defeat on his watch. So he loaded up Ukraine with tons of weapons in his last months to ensure Ukraine would not collapse before his leaving.
Even before retaking office, clueless Trump bragged he’d end the war in one day. He tried to browbeat Ukraine President Zelensky to negotiate war’s end, even humiliating him before the world in the Oval Office. One hundred seventy-five days in Trump is facing his own Afghanistan style defeat as Ukraine nears collapse.
To stave off impending defeat he reversed the Pentagon’s withdrawal of new weapons based on US stockpiles running low. But all he could sputter was that he’s releasing “defensive weapons” only which will do no good with Ukraine running out of cannon fodder to fire them.
For Trump that’s A-OK. ‘Fight on Ukraine…I’ve only got three and a half years to keep this going till I can pull a Biden and pass it on the next clueless idiot trying to defeat an undefeatable Russia.’ The real issue is not whether Trump will succeed. He can’t. The ominous issue facing the US, indeed peoplekind, is whether Trump’s plan to avert defeat will lead to nuclear war that has been a possibility every day in Ukraine for the past three and a half years.
For nearly 630 days, the world has watched the Israeli slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, primarily by bombing, sniping, and starvation. Off-camera, we’ve read about the rape and torture of Palestinian hostages, including the torturing to death of three doctors from the enclave.
For the last 100 days, Israel has reinforced a full blockade on Gaza, depriving starving Palestinians of food, drinking water, medicines, and fuel – meaning ambulances cannot function. . This is following prior blockades last year, and the overall blockade of the strip, which has lasted over 17 years.
Since late May, we’ve been seeing horrific video footage of skeletal Palestinians lined up hoping for food aid being gunned down by US mercenaries and Israeli soldiers.
Israel has endlessly bombed Palestinians, destroyed hospitals and abducted doctors and patients. It has bombed churches, schools, UN centres and tents housing displaced Palestinians – in supposed “safe zones” where they were ordered by the Israeli army to flee to. It has killed over 200 journalists and deliberately targeted medics. To those only paying attention recently, these crimes go back decades, and extend to the Israeli army and illegal colonists’ crimes against Palestinian civilians, including children, in the West Bank. Add to this the Israeli bombardment of civilian areas of Lebanon and Syria over the years, and now Israel’s recent unprovoked bombings of Iran.
Suffice it to say that when Israel came under the barrage of Iranian retaliatory missiles, reports of some 30 Israeli civilians suffering panic attacks garnered little sympathy.
Again, those who have been paying attention for longer than two years would also recall previous Israeli wars on Gaza, like in 2014, when Israelis gathered with drinks and snacks on hillsides to rejoice in the bombing of the enclave, or the 2009 t-shirts celebrating snipers killing pregnant women with the phrase “one shot, two kills”.
In 2010, when writing about a traumatized 10 year old I’d met who could no longer walk normally nor speak after the terror of having Israeli tanks shelling his home, I cited a study by the Gaza Community Mental Health Programme which stated that “91.4 percent of children in Gaza displayed symptoms of moderate to very severe PTSD.”That was fifteen years and numerous Israeli wars on Gaza ago.
The US-Israeli “humanitarian” death traps
The killing of Palestinians in Gaza didn’t stop when Israel attacked Iran. The most insidious new invention is the recently-created US-Israeli “aid” group, the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF). The Israeli authorities accuse Hamas of stealing aid, and based on this unproven accusation, have deemed that long-established UN aid agencies could no longer operate in Gaza, insisting instead that a group staffed with armed combat veterans (mercenaries is a better word) is better equipped to ensure that food reaches famished Palestinians.
It is outrageous that in spite of some media coverage, Israel has been allowed to for months (over a year, really) block the entrance of thousands of aid trucks amassed outside of Gaza, only to then dictate that hired gunmen would be in charge of “distributing aid.”
The massive irony and duplicity is that even Israeli and Western media have reported on the actual thieves of aid in Gaza: not Hamas, but an ISIS-linked group under the protection of the Israeli army.
As the independent media outlet The Cradle reported, the group’s leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, “is a known leader of armed gangs linked to ISIS and involved in looting aid under Israeli protection… Multiple reports, including from Haaretz and The Washington Post, confirm that these gangs have been seen looting in full view of Israeli forces, who neither intervene nor prevent the theft.”
In a subsequent post, The Cradle cited the Israeli Army Radio as reporting: “Israel has transferred weapons to members of the militia…The militia operates mainly in the Rafah area, which the Israeli army has occupied and cleared. The militia’s tasks include preventing humanitarian aid from entering Gaza and fighting Hamas.”
What is apparently happening is that starved Palestinians, after walking many kilometres to the distribution sites, are then corralled into tight enclosures and fired upon by the “aid” mercenaries.
Jonathan Whittall, the Head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OCHA) described the situation as “conditions created to kill, carnage, weaponized hunger, a death sentence for people just trying to survive.”
In a clip posted on June 23, Whittall said, “Israeli authorities are preventing us from distributing through these systems that we’ve established and that we know work. We could reach every family in Gaza, as we have in the past, but we’re prevented from doing so at every turn.”
More recently, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres echoed Whittall, saying: “Any operation that channels desperate civilians into militarized zones is inherently unsafe. It is killing people.. People are being killed simply trying to feed themselves and their families. The search for food must never be a death sentence.” The UN’s own humanitarian efforts are being “strangled” by Israel, he said, and even the aid workers themselves are starving.
The aid-seeking civilians are reportedly being shot in the head and chest, in what looks more like execution than “warning shots” or “crowd control”.
The victims include an 18-month old girl whose X-ray shows a bullet lodged in her chest. According to Ramy Abdu, Chairman of the non-profit Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, the girl was shot while in her mother’s arms on the way to a GHF aid point.
As far back as last July, an article in The Lancet warning that the total number of Palestinian civilian deaths caused directly and indirectly by Israeli attacks since October 2023 could reach “up to 186,000 or even more.”Other estimates were even more grim, include that of Norwegian Dr. Mads Gilbert, who has worked extensively from Gaza over the years, who said the number of those dead or soon to die could be over 500,000.
Fast forward to a recent report by Yaakov Garb of Ben-Gurion University, published via the Harvard Dataverse. It describes the false aid distribution design as, “all adjacent to Israeli military installations… manned by armed combat veterans backed by Israeli soldiers. The design creates a ‘chokepoint’ or ‘fatal funnel’ – a predictable movement path from a single entry to a single exit with no cover or concealment.”
It is the graphic on page five which caught people’s attention. From a population of 2.2 million before the genocide, the graph only accounts for 1.85 million, leaving many asking, where are the remaining 350,000 people? This makes the concerns voiced a year ago more valid.
In his report, Yaakov Garb wrote, “The Israeli military has an obligation, as the occupying power in Gaza, to supply the population with humanitarian relief… If an attacker cannot adequately and neutrally feed a starving population in the wake of a disaster it is ongoingly creating, it is obligated to allow other humanitarian agencies to do so.”
But instead, every day we see new horrors of emaciated Palestinian civilians desperately braving death in hopes of securing food for their families… and being gunned down by the Israeli army and the mercenaries it backs.
It seems, at least, that these actions are finally catching up with Israel, meaning a lack of support for or trust in the state or its representatives, and a global demand for justice for Palestinians.
To cite Craig Mokhiber, a human rights lawyer and former senior UN Human Rights official, who posted recently on X:
“The (Israeli) regime is on trial for genocide. Its leaders are indicted for crimes against humanity. Israel is isolated. The regime is now almost universally despised, just as the Nazi and apartheid regimes were despised. People across the world stand overwhelmingly with Palestine. You don’t come back from apartheid & genocide.”
Part of tens of billions in US aid to Israel, the projects include multi-year tenders for hangars, fuel stations, and ammunition sites.
The US Army Corps of Engineers is constructing new military infrastructure for Israel across several bases, including airfields, hangars, and ammunition depots, according to public records reported by Haaretz on 8 July.
The current projects total more than $250 million, with future ones expected to exceed $1 billion, based on a call for interested contractors originally scheduled for June but postponed due to Israel’s war against Iran.
The Israeli news site Haaretz reported on the public documents on Monday.
The US Army Corps of Engineers is using contractors to build ammunition depots, refuelling stations, and concrete structures for Israeli military bases. The documents also show that the US is seeking contractors for building maintenance and repairs, including work on airfields.
One project for hangars, maintenance rooms, and storage facilities for new Boeing KC-46 tankers that Israel is expected to receive in the coming years is projected to cost over $100 million. Another facility to house CH-53K helicopters is expected to cost up to $250 million.
The US is also soliciting bids for ammunition storage buildings, estimated at up to $100 million. A separate seven-year tender, capped at $900 million, covers maintenance, repairs, construction, demolition, and infrastructure upgrades at unspecified sites for the Israeli Ministry of Defence.
These projects are funded through foreign military financing. Israel receives $3.8 billion annually in military aid, under a system that allows the US and Israel to determine how to spend the funds, which are routed to US defense contractors.
Since the Hamas-led 7 October 2023 Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, Washington has also provided supplemental military aid totalling around $18 billion.
The US has previously used military aid for Israeli infrastructure. In 2012, public tender documents showed large-scale US-funded works at Nevatim air base. At the time, the Washington Post reported that the US had constructed a secret facility there, known as site “911.”
The construction projects detailed on Monday were planned before the June 2025 Israeli attack on Iran. On 2 July, Reuters cited an Israeli official confirming that Iranian ballistic missiles struck several Israeli military sites during the 12-day exchange.
Earlier in June, Washington approved a $510 million arms deal for Israel, adding over 7,000 JDAM kits and support services to the growing list of weapons transfers in 2025.
That package formed part of a broader escalation in US military support, which by mid-year had surpassed $9 billion. Tel Aviv reported receiving more than 90,000 tons of US weapons in 600 days – deliveries Netanyahu credited to Trump as “the greatest friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.”
Around the same time, the Pentagon halted multiple arms shipments to Ukraine, despite internal reviews showing no critical shortage.
The decision followed concerns over stockpile depletion after the US assisted Israel in intercepting Iranian missiles. Senior officials have since pushed for a shift in US military focus toward the Pacific.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz has ordered the IDF to prepare a plan to establish a camp to concentrate the entire civilian population of Gaza on the ruins of the southern Gaza city of Rafah.
According to Haaretz, Katz said that once Palestinian civilians are pushed into what he is calling a “humanitarian city,” they will not be allowed to leave. The idea is to first transfer 600,000 civilians from the al-Mawasi tent camp on the coast in southern Gaza, followed by the rest of the civilian population.
Katz said that if conditions permit, the “city” could be built during a potential 60-day ceasefire, comments that will make Hamas less likely to agree to a temporary truce. The Israeli defense minister also said that during the ceasefire, Israel will maintain control of the “Morag Corridor,” a strip of land between Rafah and Khan Younis.
Katz also suggested the camp can facilitate the government’s ultimate goal of ethnic cleansing, which it refers to as “voluntary migration,” telling reporters that Israel will implement “the emigration plan, which will happen.”
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich has previously said that the goal of Israel’s current military operation, dubbed Gideon’s Chariots, is to create a concentration camp south of the Morag Corridor and pressure the civilians forced into it to leave.
“The Gazan citizens will be concentrated in the south. They will be totally despairing, understanding that there is no hope and nothing to look for in Gaza, and will be looking for relocation to begin a new life in other places,” Smotrich said in May.
Katz’s comments come after Reuters reported that the controversial US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) had proposed to the US government the idea of creating camps it called “Humanitarian Transit Areas” inside Gaza or possibly outside Gaza.
The GHF plan describes the camps as “large-scale” and “voluntary” places where the Palestinian population could “temporarily reside, deradicalize, re-integrate and prepare to relocate if they wish to do so.”
Katz said Israel is seeking “international partners” to manage the zone and that four aid distribution sites would be set up inside the camp, suggesting the GHF will be involved in the plan. GHF aid sites are secured by American security contractors, who have been credibly accused of using live ammunition and stun grenades to disperse crowds of hungry Palestinian civilians.
“These figures represent a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing,” said the project’s director.
Less than a week after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a budget package that pushes annual military spending past $1 trillion, researchers on Tuesday published a report detailing how much major Pentagon contractors have raked in since 2020.
Sharing The Guardian‘s exclusive coverage of the paper on social media, U.K.-based climate scientist Bill McGuire wrote: “Are you a U.S. taxpayer? I am sure you will be delighted to know where $2.4 TRILLION of your money has gone.”
The report from the Costs of War Project at Brown University’s Watson School of International and Public Affairs and the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft shows that from 2020-24 private firms received $2.4 trillion in Department of Defense contracts, or roughly 54% of DOD’s $4.4 trillion in discretionary spending for that five-year period.
The publication highlights that “during those five years, $771 billion in Pentagon contracts went to just five firms: Lockheed Martin ($313 billion), RTX (formerly Raytheon, $145 billion), Boeing ($115 billion), General Dynamics ($116 billion), and Northrop Grumman ($81 billion).”
In a statement about the findings, Stephanie Savell, director of the Costs of War Project, said that “these figures represent a continuing and massive transfer of wealth from taxpayers to fund war and weapons manufacturing.”
“This is not an arsenal of democracy—it’s an arsenal of profiteering,” Savell added. “We should keep the enormous and growing power of the arms industry in mind as we assess the rise of authoritarianism in the U.S. and globally.”
The paper points out that “by comparison, the total diplomacy, development, and humanitarian aid budget, excluding military aid, was $356 billion. In other words, the U.S. government invested over twice as much money in five weapons companies as in diplomacy and international assistance.”
“Record arms transfers have further boosted the bottom lines of weapons firms,” the document details. “These companies have benefited from tens of billions of dollars in military aid to Israel and Ukraine, paid for by U.S. taxpayers. U.S. military aid to Israel was over $18 billion in just the first year following October 2023; military aid to Ukraine totals $65 billion since the Russian invasion in 2022 through 2025.”
“Additionally, a surge in foreign-funded arms sales to European allies, paid for by the recipient nations—over $170 billion in 2023 and 2024 alone—have provided additional revenue to arms contractors over and above the funds they receive directly from the Pentagon,” the paper adds.
The 23-page report stresses that “annual U.S. military spending has grown significantly this century,” as presidents from both major parties have waged a so-called Global War on Terror and the DOD has continuously failed to pass an audit.
Specifically, according to the paper, “the Pentagon’s discretionary budget—the annual funding approved by Congress and the large majority of its overall budget—rose from $507 billion in 2000 to $843 billion in 2025 (in constant 2025 dollars), a 66% increase. Including military spending outside the Pentagon—primarily nuclear weapons programs at the Department of Energy, counterterrorism operations at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and other military activities officially classified under ‘Budget Function 050’— total military spending grew from $531 billion in 2000 to $899 billion in 2025, a 69% increase.”
Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act passed earlier this month “adds $156 billion to this year’s total, pushing the 2025 military budget to $1.06 trillion,” the document notes. “After taking into account this supplemental funding, the U.S. military budget has nearly doubled this century, increasing 99% since 2000.”
Noting that “taxpayers are expected to fund a $1 trillion Pentagon budget,” Security Policy Reform Institute co-founder Stephen Semler said the paper, which he co-authored, “illustrates what they’ll be paying for: a historic redistribution of wealth from the public to private industry.”
Semler produced the report with William Hartung, senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute. Hartung said that “high Pentagon budgets are often justified because the funds are ‘for the troops.'”
“But as this paper shows, the majority of the department’s budget goes to corporations, money that has as much to do with special interest lobbying as it does with any rational defense planning,” he continued. “Much of this funding has been wasted on dysfunctional or overpriced weapons systems and extravagant compensation packages.”
In addition to spotlighting how U.S. military budgets funnel billions of dollars to contractors each year, the report shines a light on the various ways the industry influences politics.
“The ongoing influence of the arms industry over Congress operates through tens of millions in campaign contributions and the employment of 950 lobbyists, as of 2024,” the publication explains. “Military contractors also shape military policy and lobby to increase military spending by funding think tanks and serving on government commissions.”
“Senior officials in government often go easy on major weapons companies so as not to ruin their chances of getting lucrative positions with them upon leaving government service,” the report notes. “For its part, the emerging military tech sector has opened a new version of the revolving door—the movement of ex-military officers and senior Pentagon officials, not to arms companies per se, but to the venture capital firms that invest in Silicon Valley arms industry startups.”
The paper concludes by arguing that “the U.S. needs stronger congressional and public scrutiny of both current and emerging weapons contractors to avoid wasteful spending and reckless decision-making on issues of war and peace. Profits should not drive policy.”
“In particular,” it adds, “the role of Silicon Valley startups and the venture capital firms that support them needs to be better understood and debated as the U.S. crafts a new foreign policy strategy that avoids unnecessary wars and prioritizes cooperation over confrontation.”
The UN has named dozens of multinationals in a report for profiting from Israel’s genocide in Gaza. . Stephanie Tran reports.
A landmark United Nations report has named dozens of multinational corporations that are aiding and profiting from Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza, accusing them of complicity in war crimes and calling for urgent accountability.
Authored by Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, the report details the role of weapons manufacturers, tech firms, energy companies and financial institutions in sustaining an “economy of occupation turned genocidal.”
But the list of named companies is just the beginning. Albanese describes the report as “the tip of the iceberg,” noting that more than 1,000 corporate entities were investigated for their involvement in Israel’s war machinery.
Weapons and warfare
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”
At the centre of Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza is a heavily militarised economy supported by Western weapons manufacturers.
U.S. defence giant Lockheed Martin is identified as a central player, providing F-35 and F-16 fighter jets that have enabled Israel to drop an estimated 85,000 tonnes of bombs since October 2023. Their use has left more than 179,000 Palestinians dead or injured and destroyed vast swathes of Gaza’s civilian infrastructure.
According to the report, the F-35 program represents Israel’s largest-ever defence procurement project, involving over 1,650 companies.
Israel’s own arms manufacturers are also central to the genocide. Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries, two of the country’s top weapons companies, are responsible for much of the surveillance, drone and targeting systems deployed in Gaza.
The report notes that Israel’s repeated military campaigns have made it a testing ground for emerging weapons technologies. These systems are later marketed as “battle-proven”
Independent journalist and author Antony Loewenstein — whose award-winning book, podcast and film series The Palestine Laboratory exposes how Israel’s occupation has become a global model for repression — told MWM:
“This landmark report goes to the heart of why Israel’s illegal occupation of Palestine has lasted so long; the longest in modern times. Far too many corporations and individuals are making money from oppression. I’m honoured that the report frequently cites my work, The Palestine Laboratory, a book, podcast and film series that details how Israel’s occupation is a key model and inspiration for many around the world.”
“Cutting off Israel’s financial lifeline is the only way that this abomination will end.”
Surveillance and Silicon Valley
The UN report devotes substantial attention to the role of Silicon Valley in enabling Israel’s high-tech war.
Palantir Technologies, the U.S. surveillance firm founded by Peter Thiel, expanded its support for the Israeli military after October 2023. The company has provided “automatic predictive policing technology, core defence infrastructure for rapid and scaled-up construction and deployment of military software, and its Artificial Intelligence Platform, which allows real-time battlefield data integration for automated decision-making.”
In January 2024, Palantir’s board met in Tel Aviv “in solidarity”. In April 2024, CEO Alex Karp dismissed concerns about civilian casualties by stating that Palantir had killed “mostly terrorists.”
Microsoft operates its largest research centre outside the U.S. in Israel, and has been “integrating its systems and civilian tech across the Israeli military since 2003”. In October 2023, Microsoft’s Azure platform supported the Israeli military’s overloaded cloud systems. According to an Israeli colonel quoted in the report, “cloud tech is a weapon in every sense of the word.”
Amazon and Google, through their $1.2 billion Project Nimbus contract, provide Israel with core cloud infrastructure for the military and government agencies.
IBM, which has operated in Israel since 1972, has operated the central database of the Population and Immigration Authority, “enabling collection, storage and governmental use of biometric data on Palestinians, and supporting the discriminatory permit regime of Israel.”
Hewlett-Packard (HP) “has long enabled the apartheid systems of Israel,” supplying technology to the military, prison system, and police.
NSO Group, infamous for its Pegasus spyware, is cited as a textbook case of “spyware diplomacy.” Founded by former Israeli intelligence officers, the company has licensed its tools to repressive governments worldwide and used them to surveil Palestinian activists, journalists, and human rights defenders.
Financing Occupation
The financial industry underpins much of the infrastructure of occupation and genocide. Israeli treasury bonds, underwritten by global banks such as Barclays and BNP Paribas, have provided critical financing to the Israeli government. Asset managers like Blackrock, Vanguard and Allianz’s PIMCO were among more than 400 investors from 36 countries to purchase these bonds.
Blackrock and Vanguard are also among the largest shareholders in Lockheed Martin, Palantir, Microsoft, Amazon, and Chevron. Their funds distribute these investments across global markets via ETFs and mutual funds, spreading complicity to millions of unwitting investors.
Energy and resources
Glencore and Drummond Company dominate coal exports to Israel, primarily from Colombia and South Africa. Even after Colombia announced a suspension of coal exports to Israel in 2024, shipments continued through subsidiaries.
Chevron, which supplies over 70% of Israel’s energy, paid $453 million in royalties and taxes to the Israeli government in 2023. The company profits from the Leviathan and Tamar gas fields and owns a stake in the East Mediterranean Gas pipeline, which passes through occupied Palestinian maritime territory.
BP, the British energy giant, expanded its presence in 2025 with new exploration licences in maritime zones off the Gaza coast, areas Israel occupies in violation of international law.
Machinery
Heavy machinery has long played a role in Israel’s occupation through the demolition of Palestinian homes and the construction of illegal settlements.
Caterpillar Inc. has supplied the Israeli military with bulldozers used to demolish Palestinian homes and infrastructure. Since October 2023, Caterpillar equipment has been used to “carry out mass demolitions – including of homes, mosques and life-sustaining infrastructure – raid hospitals and burying alive wounded Palestinians”. In 2025, the company signed another multi-million-dollar contract with Israel.
Heavy machinery producers Volvo and HD Hyundai have also been linked to the destruction of Palestinian property. After October 2023, Israel increased the use of this equipment, levelling entire districts in Gaza, including Rafah and Jabalia. The Israeli military reportedly obscured the logos of the machinery during these operations.
Volvo is also tied to the settlement economy through its joint ownership of Merkavim, a bus manufacturer serving Israeli colonies.
Shipping, Tourism and Logistics
Multinational logistics firms are another key part of the war economy. A.P. Moller–Maersk, the Danish shipping conglomerate, is responsible for transporting weapons parts, military equipment, and raw materials to Israel. Since October 2023, the company has facilitated the continued flow of US-supplied arms.
Tourism platforms like Airbnb and Booking.com are profiting from the settlement project. Booking.com listings in the West Bank have increased from 26 in 2018 to 70 in 2023; Airbnb listings have grown from 139 in 2016 to 350 in 2025. These platforms promote illegal settlements while restricting Palestinian access to land and resources.
Calls for sanctions
Albanese’s report is a damning indictment, not only of Israel’s genocide in Gaza but of the global political and economic architecture that enables it. The evidence it presents leaves no ambiguity, multinational corporations are not peripheral actors but central to the machinery of occupation, apartheid and now genocide.
Albanese urged states to impose a full arms embargo on Israel, halt all trade and investment ties with companies implicated in violations of international law, and freeze the assets of individuals and entities facilitating human rights abuses.
She called on the International Criminal Court and national courts to investigate and prosecute corporate executives for their role in war crimes and for laundering the proceeds of genocide.
The Trump administration has approved a new arms deal for Israel that will provide the country with $510 million worth of Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAMS), kits that turn bombs into precision-guided weapons, as the US continues to provide military aid to support the genocidal war in Gaza.
According to the Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA), the State Department notified Congress of the sale of 3,845 JDAMS for 2,000-pound BLU-109 bombs and 3,280 JDAMS for 500-pound MK 82 bombs. The deal also includes US “government and contractor engineering, logistics, and technical support services; and other related elements of logistics and program support.”
The DSCA said Boeing is the principal contractor for the deal. The notification of the potential deal begins a time period when US lawmakers could potentially block the sale, but there’s little opposition to US military support for Israel within Congress, despite the many war crimes the US is implicated in by providing Israel with weapons.
Fragments of bombs with US-provided JDAM kits have been found at the scene of Israeli airstrikes in Gaza that have massacred many civilians. In 2023, Human Rights Watch said it identified JDAM fragments that were found in two airstrikes on homes in central Gaza that killed 43 civilians, including 19 children, and 14 women.
It’s unclear at this point how the deal will be financed, but many arms sales to Israel are funded by US military aid, and US assistance to Israel has significantly increased since October 7, 2023. According to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, in that time, US funding has covered an estimated 70% of Israel’s war-related military spending.
After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.
The aftermath of Operation Midnight Hammer, a strike by the US Air Force on three nuclear facilities in Iran authorised by President Donald Trump on June 22, was raucous and triumphant. But that depended on what company you were keeping. The mission involved the bombing of the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, the uranium-enrichment facility at Natanz, and the uranium-conversion facility in Isfahan. The Israeli Air Force had already attacked the last two facilities, sparing Fordow for the singular weaponry available for the USAF.
The Fordow site was of particular interest, located some eighty to a hundred metres underground and cocooned by protective concrete. For its purported destruction, B-2 Spirit stealth bombers were used to drop GBU-57 Massive Ordnance Penetrator “bunker buster” bombs. All in all, approximately 75 precision guided weapons were used in the operation, along with 125 aircraft and a guided missile submarine.
Trump was never going to be anything other than optimistic about the result. “Monumental Damage was done to all Nuclear sites in Iran, as shown by satellite images,” he blustered. “Obliteration is an accurate term!”
At the Pentagon press conference following the attack, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth bubbled with enthusiasm. “The order we received from our commander in chief was focused, it was powerful, and it was clear. We devastated the Iranian nuclear program.” The US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force Gen. Dan Caine was confident that the facilities had been subjected to severe punishment. “Initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction.” Adding to Caine’s remarks, Hegseth stated that, “The battle damage assessment is ongoing, but our initial assessment, as the Chairman said, is that all of our precision munitions struck where we wanted them to strike and had the desired effect.”
Resort to satellite imagery was always going to take place, and Maxar Technologies willingly supplied the material. “A layer of grey-blue ash caused by the airstrikes [on Fordow] is seen across a large swathe of the area,” the company noted in a statement. “Additionally, several of the tunnel entrances that lead into the underground facility are blocked with dirt following the airstrikes.”
The director of the Central Intelligence Agency, John Ratcliffe, also added his voice to the merry chorus that the damage had been significant. “CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran’s Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted airstrikes.” The assessment included “new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.”
Israeli sources were also quick to stroke Trump’s already outsized ego. The Israel Atomic Energy Commission opined that the strikes, combined with Israel’s own efforts, had “set back Iran’s ability to develop nuclear weapons by many years.” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir’s view was that the damage to the nuclear program was sufficient to have “set it back by years, I repeat, years.”
The chief of the increasingly discredited International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, flirted with some initial speculation, but was mindful of necessary caveats. In a statement to an emergency meeting of the IAEA’s 35-nation Board of Governors, he warned that, “At this time, no one, including the IAEA, is in a position to have fully assessed the underground damage at Fordow.” Cue the speculation: “Given the explosive payload utilised and extreme(ly) vibration-sensitive nature of centrifuges, very significant damage is expected to have occurred.”
This was a parade begging to be rained on. CNN and The New York Times supplied it. Referring to preliminary classified findings in a Defense Intelligence Agency assessment running for five pages, the paper reported that the bombing of the three sites had “set back the country’s nuclear program by only a few months.” The entrances to two of the facilities had been sealed off by the strikes but were not successful in precipitating a collapse of the underground buildings. Sceptical expertise murmured through the report: to destroy the facility at Fordow would require “waves of airstrikes, with days or even weeks of pounding the same spots.”
Then came the issue of the nuclear material in question, which Iran still retained control over. The fate of over 400 kg of uranium that had been enriched up to 60% of purity is unclear, as are the number of surviving or hidden centrifuges. Iran had already informed the IAEA on June 13 that “special measures” would be taken to protect nuclear materials and equipment under IAEA safeguards, a feature provided under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Any transfer of nuclear material from a safeguarded facility to another location, however, would have to be declared to the agency, something bound to be increasingly unlikely given the proposed suspension of cooperation with the IAEA by Iran’s parliament.
After mulling over the attacks over the course of a week, Grossi revisited the matter. The attacks on the facilities had caused severe though “not total” damage. “Frankly speaking, one cannot claim that everything has disappeared and there is nothing there.” Tehran could “in a matter of months” have “a few cascades of centrifuges spinning and producing enriched uranium.” Iran still had the “industrial and technological” means to recommence the process.
Efforts to question the effacing thoroughness of Operation Midnight Hammer did not sit well with the Trump administration. White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt worked herself into a state on any cautionary reporting, treating it as a libellous blemish. “The leaking of this alleged report is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran’s nuclear program,” she fumed in a statement. “Everyone knows what happens when you drop 14 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets.”
Russia is spending vast sums of money on the war against Ukraine, but nevertheless continues its expensive nuclear weapons development program. “We can expect more weapon testing this summer and fall,” says Barents Observer Editor Thomas Nilsen.
In the studio is Thomas Nilsen, Editor of the Barents Observer and expert on nuclear weapons in the Arctic. In the podcast, Thomas explains how Russia is making big efforts on the development of nuclear-powered weapons, including the Burevestnik cruise missile and the Poseidon underwater drone. He also outlines Russia’s ongoing activities at the nuclear test sites in Novaya Zemlya and the continued construction of nuclear submarines.
Nilsen says that Ukraine’s recent Operation Spider Web was a game-changing attack which ultimately could make Russia move parts of its nuclear weapons from the Air Force to the Navy.
He argues that the nuclear weapon powers should return to the table to negotiate arms reduction and arms control treaties. Nevertheless, he believes that there is no immanent danger of Russia actually using nuclear weapons. It is more about the Kremlin trying to scare the world, he says.
“The fear of nuclear weapons is a weapon in itself.”
Over several years, you have written stories about the Kola Peninsula and the situation in the region. And you have used satellite maps that shows how Russia is developing its nuclear arsenals in the north. How is Russia developing nuclear weapons in the region?
Well, what we see on satellite images is that there has been a quite extensive rebuilding of the facilities at the northern test site at Novaya Zemlya over the last two, maybe three year period.
The northern test site is the active one. It’s where Russia conducted underground nuclear testings up to 1990. But we don’t know exactly what is happening on the ground. We see the buildings. This could be also a renewing of the quite run-down Soviet facilities that they had. In a kind of the same way as we have seen at other military sites in the Russian Arctic, where the Soviet buildings at Severnaya Zemlya, Franz Josef Land and so on, has been abandoned and they have built new buildings. So it is an area quite close to the Matochin Strait. It’s called the Severnaya base, the northern base, where a lot of new buildings has appeared over the last few years.
Do you think there is a possibility that Russia will resume actual testing in Novaya Zemlya?
Well, the northern test site at Novaya Zemlya is the only place where Russia actually can conduct full-scale nuclear tests if they want. And they are capable of it. They do have tunnels that are made ready. So it is actually a political question. And two years ago, Vladimir Putin withdrew Russia from the comprehensive test ban treaty in the way that they un-ratified it. That is a political sign. It is maybe not as dramatic as it sounds. It doesn’t mean that Russia will make nuclear tests at Novaya Zemlya, but they are in a way showing the United States that they are ready to do so if needed. And this comprehensive test ban treaty that were signed back in 1996 was actually never ratified by the United States itself. So in many ways, Russia is now on the same level as the United States that they have not ratified it. And by that, they can conduct nuclear weapon tests at Novaya Zemlya if needed.
Russia has all the time since the breakup of the Soviet Union maintained a few tunnels and another test site. And in two of those tunnels, we know that they are conducting so-called subcritical tests, which is using a small portion of either uranium or plutonium and test it with conventional explosives. And then they simulate a nuclear test. This is done both for maintaining the safety of existing nuclear weapons, but also we can presume that it’s some kind of new development of computer technologies and the warheads capabilities and so on. This test site is maybe two, three kilometers from the Severnaya main settlement on the northern test site. But what is most interesting is that they are also maintaining a couple of other tunnels that we believe are designed for real nuclear weapon tests. And there has been activities at these tunnels over the last few years. We saw it also last spring and last summer.
If Vladimir Putin decides to escalate the situation, conducting nuclear tests could be one way of showing such political disagreements with the United States. But historically, Russia has not been the country that have pushed the trigger first. So I think it is unlikely, but we can no longer exclude it.
Novaya Zemlya is important for Russia. And we know that the weapons designers of Rosatom are in the process of developing new weapons. Tell us a bit about this.
Yes, that is also a special location at Novaya Zemlya. It’s a test site called Pankovo, where we have seen on satellite images over the last few years that they have expanded the activities up there, especially after 2020. The Pankovo test site is a place where they are launching the so-called Burevestnik missile, or by NATO, named the Skyfall. This is a cruise missile that is powered by a small nuclear reactor. It has a scramjet to push it up in the air, and when it is airborne, they start the reactor. And according to Russian weapon designers and according to Vladimir Putin himself, when he is talking or bragging about this weapon, this cruise missile, the Burevestnik, has unlimited range. And it is also possible to navigate it midair, meaning that it can potentially avoid anti-missile systems. This weapon is kind of interesting to follow because it’s not deployed yet, but they are doing tests. And with a small nuclear reactor up in the air, it also has some releases of radioactivity that goes directly out behind the cruise missile as it is flying.
Very little is known about how successful these tests are. We know that a couple of them have crashed in the Barents Sea. They have been lifted from the seabed and brought safely ashore again. But it is very interesting to follow the Pankovo nuclear test site. That is one of several cruise missile test sites where we believe parts or the entire combat of the Burevestnik missile is tested. Another place that we have seen, and we published articles on that in the Barents Observer, is the Nenoksa site on the coast to the White Sea. And we quite recently published brand new photos, satellite photos, that show that it has been really a lot of construction work at that site modernised over the last two years.
So let’s stick a little bit with this Nenoksa test site, which is located very close to Arkhangelsk in the Russian north. And you’ve written, as you said, a story about this, and it can be read by everyone on the Barents Observer. So tell us what is special about this Nenoksa testing site.
Nenoksa made big headlines worldwide back in July 2019. Or it was actually early August 2019, when during work of recovering one of the missiles that were launched from that area, the radioactive component of the missile exploded. And it led to a release of radioactivity. So isotopes were blowing towards the city of Severodvinsk, which is some 30 kilometres to the east of Nenoksa. And it was not very high levels, but it lasted for about half an hour, with several isotopes measured in the town of Severodvinsk. And we learned after a few days that five of the experts in the Rosatom Development Division of the Burevestnik missile and the reactor were killed of radioactive sicknesses in that explosion. So it is a very serious area. And the big difference here between Nenoksa and Pankovo site on the Novaya Zemlya is that Nenoksa is close to densely populated areas. Severodvinsk with more than 200,000 inhabitants, and not far away is also the city of Arkhangelsk with 300,000 people. So there is actually more than half a million people living in an area where Russia conducts testing of reactor-powered weapons that both have experienced accidents and are releasing radioactivity as they are testing it. And these new satellite images are a sign that Russia plans to resume the Burevestnik testing at Nenoksa, and that is worrying. First of all for the population of northern Russia, but also for Russia’s neighbors in the north, Finland and us in Norway.
Nuclear-powered cruise missile is indeed a scary thought, but there are also other weapons under development. And you have also written a story about the Poseidon, which is an underwater drone capable of carrying nuclear weapons. Tell us about the Poseidon, please.
The Poseidon is a weapon we know much less about than the Burevestnik, quite naturally because it’s tested and developed for underwater warfare. But it’s also one of the weapons that were bragged about by Vladimir Putin when he showed Russia’s plans for new nuclear weapon delivery systems in his annual speech to the public a few years ago.
The Poseidon in basic is also powered by a small nuclear reactor that is giving it a quite long range. We don’t know how long, but potentially this drone that is more than 20 meters long and can navigate across the Atlantic. So it’s an intercontinental underwater weapon. And the idea with the weapon is to dive deeper than normal submarines can sail, which means also that it’s much more difficult for the enemy, in this case NATO, to stop the weapon as it is launched. So it is a deterrence weapon for Russia. In case Russia is taken out in a nuclear war, they will always have this weapon to retaliate on Europe or the United States.
The weapon is carried by a submarine that is called Belgorod. It is a redesigned former Oscar-class submarine, and this submarine brings the torpedo or underwater drone, the Poseidon, out in open water from where it is launched. We don’t know where this is happening. We see that the submarine is sailing out of Severodvinsk. We can see that on social media channels and photos and videos that are published in this town. But we know it’s sailing north. If the testing takes place in the White Sea area, the areas where other weapons are tested, submarine weapons are tested, or if it takes place in the eastern part of the Barents Sea or even in the more shallow southern part of the Kara Sea. We don’t know. But we know that they are testing it, and they haven’t yet deployed the weapon. They have developed a special class of submarines that one day will carry this weapon. It’s called the Khabarovsk submarines.
They started building them back in 2014, according to Russian sources. But these submarines are not yet put on the water, and they are not even rolled out of the ship hulls at the Sevmash yard in Severodvinsk. So we don’t know how far they have come in developing the Poseidon nuclear drone, but they are working on it, and that is a concern. It’s a kind of both a concern, of course, because it’s a very terrifying weapon, but it is also a concern because it will cause releases of radioactivity to the marine environment during development and testing.
Talking about submarines, which is indeed a very important part of Russian armed forces, and they are based – many of them at least – in the Kola Peninsula, not so many kilometers away from where we are sitting here today. But Russia is spending tremendous resources now on the war in Ukraine. Does really Russia have the capacity to follow up Vladimir Putin’s ambitions to build more nuclear submarines?
This is a key question when analyzing Russia’s military structures nowadays, and the short answer is yes, they are giving priority to building new submarines and new surface warships. But to focus on the submarines, they have the new fourth-generation submarines, both of the multipurpose class, the Yasen class, and the strategic submarines, the ballistic missile submarines of the Borey-A class. And, well, they are delayed according to the original plans, but they are rolling out approximately one of each every year, one Borey-A class ballistic missile submarine and one Yasen class submarines. And these are tremendously expensive weapons. They are high-tech technology, and they are kind of the best submarines that Soviet Union and Russia have ever built. They are sailing quietly, and they are armed with what we could call post-Soviet developed cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. The Borey class with the Bulava missiles, and the Yasen class with the Kalibr missile, the Tsirkon missile, and probably the Tsirkon missile is the one we should keep a special eye on because this is a missile that in case it is needed can be armed with a nuclear warhead. And it is also a missile that has a very long range. And the worrying part here is that this missile, when it has been tested, it has been launched from sea, flying over land and hitting targets in the sea. So the Yasen class nuclear-powered submarines actually have weapons that can be launched from Russia’s home waters in the Barents Sea and flying over northern Scandinavia and hitting targets in the North Atlantic, mainly the northern part of the Norwegian Sea. And that is Russia’s planning for expanding a kind of the buffer zone in case they need to protect the ballistic missile submarines. And for now, there are three Yasen class submarines based with the Northern Fleet, all of them in Zapadnaya Litsa, which is 65 kilometers from the border with Norway on the coast to the Barents Sea. And Russia has two Borei-A class submarines with the Northern Fleet based in Gadzhievo. And those are, of course, the ones that really are armed with nuclear warheads, four to six warheads on each of the 16 missiles in each of those submarines.
Can we expect testing of these weapons this summer, this fall? It’s quite expensive as well to do testing, isn’t it?
Testing is expensive, but it is highly needed. And Russia, like most other navies, before commissioning a warship, either it’s a submarine or a surface warship, they have to prove that the weapon systems on board actually work. And both for the latest Borei-A class submarine, the K555 Knyaz-Pozharsky, and for the latest Yasen class submarine, the Arkhangelsk, they need to conduct more testing of the weapons. The Borei-A class, we believed it was out over the last year and trying to test the Bulava, but we haven’t seen any actual reports of successful testings. And before transferring this vessel from the naval yard in Sevmash, Severodvinsk, to the Northern Fleet where it’s going to be based, they need to do a test. And this test, I’m pretty sure, will come during summer or autumn 2025. For the Yasen class submarine, Putin has been bragging about the options of launching a Tsirkon missile, that this submarine is specially designed to carry the Tsirkon missile. And when the chief, the dictator himself, says that it works, well, then the Navy and the weapon designers have to prove that it actually does. So we will see also tests of the Tsirkon missile in the near future in our northern maritime areas, either that is the White Sea or the Barents Sea.
So we see that Russia is building new submarines, building more submarines able to carry nuclear weapons. Does that mean that we will see more also nuclear weapons deployed in the Russian Navy and also in the Russian North?
We don’t know. There are different scenarios here. First of all, it is important to underline that although there hasn’t been any inspections by the United States to see if Russia fulfills the limits, the maximum limits that are set in the new START treaty on the amount of nuclear weapons on ballistic missile submarines, all intelligence reports that we see in Europe and in the United States tells that Russia is not basing more nuclear weapons than those 1,750 warheads that are in the triad, that’s not only submarines, it’s also the Air Force and on silo-based ballistic missiles. So we don’t think that Russia has more weapons than the limits in the START agreement. But on the other side, and this is the big question we don’t have insight to, that is how many tactical nuclear weapons are on storage at the naval bases in the Russian North and how many tactical nuclear weapons are potentially already on board the multipurpose submarines of the Yasen class. We know that they can carry it, but we don’t know actually if they are armed when they are on board or if they at all are placed on board the ships or if they are just at the naval bases in storages ready to be placed on board. And this is one of the big problems with the new START treaty is that it does not cover tactical nuclear weapon, it only focuses on the ballistic missile submarines and the strategic nuclear weapons.
The START treaty obviously is important both for Russia and for the United States. It expires, as you said, next year. But what about other countries? What is their role in this picture?
Nuclear weapons are making headlines worldwide nowadays. We were a bit scared when we saw the news about India and Pakistan and the near war situation up in Kashmir that could have triggered a war between two nuclear weapon states. Luckily, it did not. But one of the main points for the United States when they are now talking about the new START treaty and an option to prolong it or to renew it or to replace it with another treaty on strategic nuclear weapons.
And here the United States has a very good point, is that this is a bilateral treaty between Russia and the United States. And the United States says that they need to include China in this treaty as well. And up till quite recently, China was a nuclear weapon power state, but it did not have that many warheads, maybe only two, three hundred warheads, which is comparable with what the United Kingdom and France have. It’s a scary many, but it’s not on the same level as Russia and the United States. But in recent years, Beijing has expanded its nuclear arsenal and is building new silos and also the number of nuclear warheads is increasing. So China is a country to take a closer look at. And if there should be a new arms treaty regulating the number of warheads in each country, it is a very good idea to also include China into this treaty. But so far that has not happened.
I think the main focus now will be to maybe expand the time horizon for the existing START treaty, maybe with one year, maybe with two years, until a new, more global posture on arms reduction treaties can be signed. Meanwhile, nuclear weapons are also in discussions in Europe. It was up and at debate on the NATO summit in Hague last week. And the United Kingdom has announced that they will buy F-35 fighter jets that are capable of carrying tactical nuclear weapons. We know that France is very relying on their ballistic missile submarines and so on. So I think really it is important to bring back the nuclear weapon powers to the table, just like it was in the end of the Cold War, you know, when Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met in 1986 in Reykjavik and so on. Because the worst case scenario now is that in February next year, we don’t have one single arms reduction treaty or arms control treaty that limits the number of nuclear weapons in the world, except, of course, the non-proliferation agreement. But that one is also challenged by countries like Iran, North Korea, etc.
Talking about Russia, it’s not getting easier to follow developments in the country. How do we actually manage to keep an eye on what Russia is doing with its weapons, with its nuclear weapons, with the submarines? How can we get a glimpse at least of what’s going on?
I think based on the experiences we in the Barents Observer and we as journalists have, I think it is very important to not only focus on what Russia says, but to keep a very close eye on what Russia does. And in the north, we saw it in February 2022, when the full scale invasion of Ukraine happened. It was very quiet on the strategical nuclear forces in the Russian north. They did not deploy more ballistic missile submarines to the sea and also at the storage that they have five, six of in the Kola Peninsula area or Murmansk region. It was also very, very quiet. And this is important because we are today facing a political situation in the Kremlin where the Kremlin itself is not loudly talking about its nuclear weapon arsenal. But there are proxy players like Dmitry Medvedev, the Security Council, and not least to talk about the propaganda people in different Russian TV channels that are loudly talking about using nuclear weapons. Either it is tactical nuclear weapons against some Ukrainian cities or maybe if the situation escalates that they want to use it against Europe. But this is, of course, not in Russia’s interest at all because they know that they should not trigger the first use of nuclear weapons. So it’s rhetorics. Meanwhile, we in the media will focus on what we see actually is happening. And on that side, it is nothing deeply to worry about currently.
We have talked about a lot already, but are there any other things with regard to Russia’s nuclear capabilities in the north that we should keep an eye on?
Absolutely, absolutely. And the Ukrainian spectacular attack against the Olenya Air Base on the Kola Peninsula on June 1st, and not only the Olenya Air Base, but several air bases in Russia. Here in the north it is important also to remember that the Olenya is not only an air base that is home to strategic bombers flying and launching cruise missiles against Ukraine. It is also a very important air base for Russia’s nuclear deterrence. It’s the northernmost air base they have with strategical bombers that can carry nuclear weapons in case of an escalating conflict between east and west. And this is actually first time in the world history that it has been such a massive attack and destroying strategical bombers on an air base that is important for the nuclear deterrence of the United States and Russia. So I think we can expect that there will be changes in regards to how many nuclear weapons Russia have available for the air force, the strategic bombers, and maybe that it will be an increased number of nuclear weapons on the Navy instead. That means in the north, submarines. But this remains to be seen. But absolutely, the Ukrainian drone attacks on Russia’s air forces and the bases is changing the game in many ways. One of Russia’s largest storages, central storages for nuclear weapons warheads are in the mountains not far from the Olenya Air Base. And those are the weapons that Russia might deploy if they want to escalate the situation and bring it out to the naval bases and maybe even put it on submarines that are sailing the Barents Sea. So keeping an eye on what happens in the Russian north is key to understanding Russia’s nuclear weapon thinking and doing.
These are lots of scary stuff. Do people in Europe, in the Nordic region have reason to be afraid?
I don’t think so. I think that we should keep calm. I think that the biggest threat by nuclear weapons as we see it right now is actually the scaring of people with it. Russia always having people that are making statements that, oh, if you cross the red line now, we will trigger nuclear weapons and so on. And the fear of nuclear weapons is a weapon in itself. But the use of nuclear weapon, I think, is very unrealistic and it’s suicide for any nation that tries to use it.
The smell of blood and smoke still lingers in the memory of those who lived through the Nuseirat massacre in the heart of the Gaza Strip.
One year has passed since the slaughter on 8 June 2024, when Israeli forces launched a “hostage rescue” operation against Hamas.
However, that military raid – which killed more than 270 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians – left behind nothing in Nuseirat but devastation and collective loss.
As families continue to mourn, media reports, including by theNew York Times, have added another layer of pain.
They revealed that Western countries, including the US and UK, provided intelligence ahead of the operation through surveillance flights and advanced monitoring technology.
Today, survivors of the massacre hold those countries responsible, saying that surveillance planes which filled the skies over the camp in the days leading up to the operation may have been “British and American eyes directing the fire from above.”
‘Unforgivable’
Raed Abdel Fattah, 38, is still unable to return to normal life after what he experienced that bloody morning.
“I was with my wife and our three children in the market when the airstrikes began. We ran aimlessly through the street, just trying to survive.
“We tried to take cover in a parked car on the side of the road. We passed it just seconds before it was struck by a missile and went up in flames. Had we been a moment later, we would have been buried under the rubble.”
Raed pauses, then continues in a tense voice: “We ran into the Nuseirat market as bullets rained down around us, with bodies and the wounded filling the streets.
“There was no safe place. In front of us was a young man selling sweets – suddenly, a quadcopter drone shot him in the head.
“His brain spilled out before my eyes. I couldn’t hold myself together. It was a moment of human collapse I haven’t recovered from to this day.”
He adds: “This massacre was not random. Everything was calculated precisely, as if they were tracking every move.
“When I learned that the US and Britain provided Israel with intelligence from reconnaissance planes, I felt betrayed from above.
“These planes were not only Israeli. If they supplied images or data, they are part of the decision – and partners in the outcome.”
Raed is not seeking sympathy: “We do not want diplomatic apologies. Whoever provided the information opened the door to the massacre, even from afar. This is unforgivable and cannot be forgotten.”
Britain has sent more than 500 surveillance flights over Gaza since the war began, supposedly to help Israel locate hostages.
The raid on Nuseirat is one of the only examples where Israel freed captives through military force, increasing the likelihood that British intelligence contributed in some way.
British pilots conducted 24 flights over Gaza in the two weeks leading up to and including the day of the massacre.
The confidence trickster was at it again on his visit to The Hague, reluctantly meeting members of the overly large family that is NATO. President Donald Trump was hoping to impress upon all present that allies of the United States, whatever inclination and whatever their domestic policy, should spend mightily on defence, inflating the margins of sense and sensibility against marginal threats. Never mind the strain placed on the national budget over such absurd priorities as welfare, health or education.
The marvellous irony in this is that much of the budget increases have been prompted byTrump’s perceived unreliability and capriciousness when it comes to European affairs. Would he, for instance, treat obligations of collective defence outlined in Article 5 of the organisation’s governing treaty with utmost seriousness? Since Washington cannot be relied upon to hold the fort against the satanic savages from the East, various European countries have been encouraging a spike in defence spending to fight the sprites and hobgoblins troubling their consciences at night.
The European Union, for instance, has put in place initiatives that will make getting more weaponry and investing in the military industrial complex easier than ever, raising the threshold of defence expenditure across all member countries to 3.5% of GDP by the end of the decade. And then there is the Ukraine conflict, a war Brussels cannot bear to see end on terms that might be remotely favourable to Russia.
The promised pecuniary spray made at the NATO summit was seen by NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte as utterly natural if not eminently sensible. Not much else was. It was Rutte who remarked with infantile fawning that “Sometimes Daddy has to use tough language” when it came to sorting out the murderous bickering between Israel and Iran. Daddy Trump approved. “He likes me, I think he likes me,” the US president crowed with glowing satisfaction.
Rutte’s behaviour has been viewed with suspicion, as well it should. Under his direction, NATO headquarters have made a point of diminishing any focus on climate change and its Women, Peace, and Security agenda. He has failed to make much of Trump’s mania for the annexation of Greenland, or the President’s gladiatorial abuse of certain leaders when visiting the White House – Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa come to mind. “He is not paid to implement MAGA policy,” grumbled a European NATO diplomat to Euroactive.
In his doorstep statement of June 25, Rutte made his wish known that the NATO collective possess both the money and capabilities to cope, not just with Russia “but also the massive build-up of military in China, and the fact that North Korea, China and Iran, are supporting the war effort in Ukraine.” Lashings of butter were also added to the Trump ego when responding to questions. “Would you really think that the seven or eight countries not at 2% [of GDP expenditure on defence] at the beginning of this year would have reached the 2% if Trump would not have been elected President of the United States?” It was only appropriate, given the contributions of the US (“over 50% of the total NATO economy”), that things had to change for the Europeans and Canadians.
The centrepiece of the Hague Summit Declaration is a promise that 5% of member countries’ gross GDP will go to “core defence requirements as well as defence and security-related spending by 2035 to ensure our individual and collective obligations.” Traditional bogeyman Russia is the predictable antagonist, posing a “long-term threat […] to Euro-Atlantic security”, but so was “the persistent threat of terrorism.” The target is optimistic, given NATO’s own recent estimates that nine members spend less than the current target of 2% of GDP.
What is misleading in the declaration is the accounting process: the 3.5% of annual GDP that will be spent “on the agreed definition of NATO defence expenditure by 2035 to resource core defence requirements, and to meet NATO Capability Targets” is one component. The other 1.5%, a figure based on a creative management of accounts, is intended to “protect our critical infrastructure, defend our networks, ensure our civil preparedness and resilience, unleash innovation, and strengthen our defence industrial base.”
Another misleading element in the declaration is the claimed unanimity of member states. The Baltic countries and Poland are forever engaged in increasing their defence budgets in anticipation of a Russian attack, but the same cannot be said of other countries less disposed to the issue. Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, for instance, declared on the eve of the summit that his country had “better things to spend money on.” Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has also called the 5% target “incompatible with our world view,” preferring to focus on a policy of prudent procurement.
Rutte seemed to revel in his role as wallah and jesting sycophant, making sure Trump was not only placated but massaged into a state of satisfaction. It was a sight all the stranger for the fact that Trump’s view of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is a warm one. Unfortunately for the secretary general, his role will be forever etched in the context of European history as an aspiring warmonger, one valued at 5% of the GDP of any of the NATO member states. Hardly a flattering epitaph.
