Support Without a Seat at the Table: Poland’s Costly Alignment with Ukraine
Adrian Korczyński, July 14, 2026, https://journal-neo.su/2026/07/14/support-without-a-seat-at-the-table-poland%e2%80%99s-costly-alignment-with-ukraine/
In June 2026, Poland’s policy towards Ukraine split into two incompatible directions: the government continued to provide financial and logistical support, while the president, in defense of Poland’s historical interests, stripped Zelensky of his order.
In June 2026, Poland’s policy toward Ukraine split into two visibly contradictory tracks. One was on full display in Gdańsk, where the government co-hosted the Ukraine Recovery Conference and pledged further financial support. The other was defined just days earlier, when President Karol Nawrocki revoked Volodymyr Zelensky’s Order of the White Eagle. Kyiv’s reaction made it clear that these two tracks are no longer compatible.
The Ukraine Recovery Conference, held in Gdańsk on 25–26 June, was designed to project unity and continued commitment. Co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine, it featured high-profile announcements: the European Commission pledged €3.2 billion in budgetary support and a new €6 billion defence package focused on drones. It also launched the European Flagship Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine.
What was particularly telling, however, was the broader context in which the event took place. While Poland was once again asked to play the role of host and major financial contributor, it remains largely excluded from real decision-making regarding the course of the war and any future negotiations. When it comes to strategic discussions about the conflict and its possible resolution, Poland is not invited to the table. Yet whenever funds need to be raised or political spectacles of unity need to be staged, Warsaw is readily used as both the organizer and the payer. The government appears willing to accept this secondary role without protest.
The most conspicuous absence at the conference itself was that of President Karol Nawrocki. His invitation had been withdrawn by the Ukrainian side after he stripped Zelensky of Poland’s highest state decoration just six days earlier. Kyiv made no effort to conceal the political nature of this decision.
Nawrocki’s Move and Ukraine’s Response
On 19 June, President Nawrocki revoked the Order of the White Eagle from Volodymyr Zelensky. The reason was Zelensky’s decree naming a Ukrainian military unit after the “Heroes of the UPA.” For Poland, this was not a symbolic gesture — it was an official honouring of formations directly responsible for the mass murder of Polish civilians in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during World War II.
Ukraine responded in a coordinated and unambiguous manner. Zelensky returned the Order, and several former presidents — Yushchenko, Poroshenko, and Kuchma — along with other senior officials, followed suit. This was not a series of private decisions. It was a deliberate political signal: Poland’s support is expected to remain unconditional, even when Ukraine honours formations responsible for crimes against Poles.
Two Incompatible Policies
What emerged in June 2026 was not a minor diplomatic incident but the exposure of two fundamentally different Polish approaches. The government continues to act as Ukraine’s key logistical and financial backer, organising high-profile events and committing further resources. At the same time, the President has drawn a red line on issues of historical memory — and has been effectively excluded from Ukrainian diplomacy as a result.
These two tracks — one based on material support and political alignment, the other on the defence of non-negotiable Polish interests — are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain in parallel. Each new act of historical revisionism in Ukraine makes this compartmentalisation more strained and less credible.
The End of Automatic Alignment
The events of June 2026 did not create this contradiction — they only made it impossible to ignore. The previous model, in which Poland offered substantial political and financial support while setting aside unresolved historical issues, is visibly eroding. Ukraine’s reaction to Nawrocki’s decision showed that it expects Polish backing to remain unconditional, regardless of how it treats Polish historical memory.
Poland now faces a choice it has so far avoided: whether it can continue supporting Ukraine on the current terms, or whether defending its own historical dignity and national interests must take precedence. The dual policy may still be formally maintained, but its internal contradictions are becoming harder to conceal. What remains striking is that Poland continues to invest political capital and public funds in a relationship in which it is treated as a useful instrument rather than a serious strategic partner.
Adrian Korczyński, Independent Analyst & Observer on Central Europe and global policy research
A Sustainable Peace in Ukraine: Diplomacy, Neutrality, and the Limits of the Current Order
The Peacemonger, Ian Proud, Jul 14, 2026
There is no functional way to end the war in Ukraine, on the basis that NATO and the EU have stolen the sovereignty of their members, refuse to talk to Russia and see no interest for their citizens in peace-making.
In a perfect world, NATO and common EU foreign policy would cease to exist, but that won’t happen this side of the next decade.
So, I predict that at some point over the next year Zelensky will be ousted, and that from 2027, support for globalist mainstream parties will start to crumble across Europe as citizens increasingly come to the realisation that their prosperity and safety have been sold out to prolong a forever war that no one wants.
Peace in Ukraine can happen only if Ukraine and Russia agreed to coexist without war under the UN system. That does not mean a state of friendship between the two countries. It is impossible to imagine that any time soon and it would take a generation to restore any normality in relations.
Rather, it would mean an agreement by both sides to settle future disputes through dialogue and diplomacy — a situation that has not pertained in Ukraine since 2015.
Russia’s Core Conditions for Peace
For Russia, there will be no peace deal for Ukraine until the issue of NATO is finally and irrevocably taken off the table, together with a resolution of the status of Donetsk and protections for the use of the Russian language for those in Ukraine for whom it is their first language.
Ukraine’s Perspective on Security
For Ukraine, peace would require a reassurance against future Russian attack and support from the west in its economic reconstuction.
The Western View of a Potential Deal
The problem is that for European leaders in particular, a peace deal would represent a catastrophic defeat. Having spent years presenting Ukraine as a core and essential part of the NATO family, such a deal would confirm that European efforts had failed, despite years of asserting that the billions invested in the war would eventually secure success.
Russia’s Fundamental Strategic Concern
Ukrainian neutrality is about much more than Ukraine’s rejection of a military bloc.
For Russia, the Ukraine conflict — and now the full-scale war — has always been first and foremost about denying the West’s right to impose its will by force and economic pressure. Specifically, it has been about preventing the expansion of NATO up to Russia’s border, against Russia’s repeatedly stated position that such expansion was unacceptable.
Many argue that Russia does not have the right to decide who can or cannot join NATO. Strictly speaking, this is correct. However, Russia does possess the right, as a sovereign nation, to determine what constitutes its core strategic interests.
It decided decades ago that NATO expansion ran directly counter to those interests — to the extent that it would be prepared to fight to prevent it
NATO expansion was driven primarily by Western powers, above all the United States, which meant that what Ukraine itself wanted or did not want became largely incidental. Even President Poroshenko was initially very cautious about NATO membership, noting that a majority of citizens did not favour it. He did not mention NATO during his inauguration speech.
It was only in late November 2014 — almost three months after he attended the NATO Summit in Wales and with his military campaign in the Donbas backfiring and pulling Russia deeper into the fight — that he stated Ukraine was “decisively resuming its political course for integration into the Euro-Atlantic security system.”
A month later, Poroshenko signed into law the repeal of Ukraine’s 2010 non-aligned status, setting in motion a five-to-six-year programme for Ukraine to meet NATO standards and promising a referendum on membership.
Zelensky was elected by a landslide in 2019 on a platform to bring peace with Russia. He also indicated that any future NATO membership bid would require a referendum.
As of today, no vote has ever been put to the Ukrainian people on NATO membership, although a significant majority of the population that remains in unoccupied Ukraine would likely support it today.
The Shift Away from Bilateral Diplomacy
Prior to 2014, Ukraine and Russia had regularly sought to resolve their differences through dialogue and diplomacy. From 2014 onwards, however, the West adopted the view that so long as it could support a leadership in Ukraine favouring NATO integration, the preferences of ordinary Ukrainian people became secondary. That position has remained unchanged.
In that sense, Ukraine has effectively subordinated its sovereign right to choose in favour of Western strategic interests. While Ukraine retains the appearance of a democratically elected president — although Zelensky has not faced an election in over seven years — elected Ukrainian leaders have been expected to follow the Western directive on the specific issue of NATO.
Even if one accepts the proposition that Ukraine is a fully sovereign nation making choices independently of Western influence, it has not, since 2014, been permitted to settle its disagreement with Russia through dialogue and diplomacy. The US, UK, and European strategy has been to deny that Russia has any legitimate say in the matter and to demand that it unconditionally back down.
This approach denies that Russia’s concerns about NATO expansion — expressed consistently throughout Putin’s presidency — have any legitimacy. It also denies the validity of the argument that NATO expansion escalated tensions and eventually contributed to war.
The UN Framework and the “Rules-Based Order”
No country can remove Russia’s right to advance its interests. The UN Charter repeatedly calls on states to settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.
The West’s strategy has been to deny Russia’s sovereign right to articulate its concerns and to resolve those concerns through diplomacy. In doing so, the West has chosen to operate outside the spirit of the UN Charter, subordinating the sovereign interests of both Ukraine and Russia in order to advance NATO expansion.
NATO does not enjoy legal statehood. It is a collection of sovereign states that have chosen to align their national interests with the institution as a condition of membership. Like the EU institutions, NATO is a bureaucratic entity with its own institutional interest in survival and growth and with a leader who has not faced a public vote. It does not possess sovereignty.
Yet it has acquired or assumed the sovereignty of its members. Its policy has effectively allowed member states to pressure Russia into accepting their collective goal of expansion into Ukraine over Russia’s expressly stated objections.
NATO has placed itself in a position analogous to that of the UN in setting the rules of the game. Unlike the UN, however, NATO has no dedicated mechanism for the peaceful resolution of disputes with nations that fundamentally disagree with its purpose or its plans for expansion.
The international legal system built on the UN has therefore been sidelined in favour of what Western powers describe as the “rules-based international order” — a phrase that, in practice, often means “our rules, not yours.” For the record, I had not once heard the term “rules based international order” used in the British Foreign Office before the Ukraine crisis started. It emerged as a confected phrase within a new lexicon to describe the rules that other states should obey…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Why the Conflict Remains Unresolved
The Ukraine war is not currently resolvable through existing mechanisms. Russia will not abandon its long-standing objections to NATO expansion. NATO continues to maintain that expansion is the only reliable way to protect Ukraine. The Ukrainian leadership amplifies the NATO position and has shown little interest in realistic dialogue with Russia.
Western leaders keep calling on Russia to adopt a ceasefire.
And yet a ceasefire alone will never be acceptable to Russia, because while it would end the fighting, it would leave the underlying concern about NATO expansion unresolved while Ukraine rearms and seeks to integrate more deeply into a militarising Europe.
Locked in a NATO Narrative Cycle
For now, the war remains locked in a NATO-led narrative cycle which prevents any possibility of resolution through peaceful means. One of the biggest narrative thrusts is that Putin doesn’t want peace and that therefore we should avoid all diplomacy with him because there would be no point in talking to someone who doesn’t want peace.
However, this is an outright falsehood because peace will only be possible through diplomacy………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Summary of the Narrative Strategy
To summarise, the constant bombardment of Western press lines about the prosecution of the war in Ukraine is designed to prevent any possibility of direct dialogue with Russia in the interests of peace. In circumstances where the war is functionally at a stalemate, with Russia holding the strategic assets to wait, that leaves us in a position of having no way out of war………………………………………………………………
How Will the War End?
As of today, there is no functional route out of the war in Ukraine. Western leaders have locked themselves into supporting Zelensky come what may, and Putin is unwilling to back down. There is an absolute resistance to a diplomatic settlement and an outright military victory appears unlikely…………………………………………………………………….
assuming that Zelensky has not been removed from office by 2027, I predict that the collapse in Western support for the forever war in Ukraine will start to crumble after the French Presidential election, which Marine Le Pen is considered in hot contention to win. France under Le Pen will not want Ukraine to join the EU because of the loss of financial benefits to France that would result. I predict she would not want to prolong the war in Ukraine further given the significant indirect economic cost to France from the decline of Europe that it has precipitated………………..https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/there-is-no-functional-way-to-end?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=206975258&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The Patriot Trap
The goal of the West has always been to trap Russia in an endless conflict that saps the economic, military, and moral strength of the nation and its people.
the economic, military and moral collapse it anticipated isn’t transpiring inside Russia, but rather in Ukraine and its European partners.
Donald Trump has given the thumbs up for the licensed production of Patriot missiles by Ukraine. This is a trap that will not end well for those looking to the Patriot missile for salvation.
Scott Ritter, Jul 10, 2026, https://scottritter.substack.com/p/the-patriot-trap
Persistence pays off, or so it would seem. Less than a week before NATO convened its annual summit in Ankara, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky renewed his call for the establishment of a domestic production facility for Patriot air-defense missiles. Zelensky’s plea came in the aftermath of one of Russia’s largest missile attacks on Kiev. Unlike previous Russian attacks, where the Ukrainian side claimed the vast majority of the Russian missiles had been intercepted by Ukraine’s western-supplied air defenses, this attack exposed the harsh reality that Ukraine had no defensive response to the Russian attacks.
Ukraine was out of missiles.
“To reliably protect lives, we need our own production,” Zelensky said.
The Ukrainian President was echoing a call he had been making for months. In May, Zelensky observed “I asked the previous administration, I am asking todays administration, give Ukraine licenses. We will increase the production of Patriot missiles. It will be very helpful for us, it will be very helpful for the Middle East, for everybody whom the United States will decide to help.”
On July 8, during a meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Ankara Summit, Zelensky got his wish.
“We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriots,” Trump told a beaming Zelensky. “That’s pretty cool, right? This way you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough.”
Trump noted that he still needed to inform the “company” before adding “but that’ll work out all right.”
Problem solved?
Not even close.
Trump and Zelensky had fallen into what can only be called “The Patriot Trap”—the notion that a singular technology can somehow transform the fate of a nation.
The problem faced by Ukraine and their western sponsors—to include an apparently reinvigorated Trump-led United States—isn’t solved by pouring more resources into a war of attrition that favors Russia. This would imply that Ukraine has the potential of prevailing in the ongoing proxy war being waged between the collective West and Russia.
It doesn’t.
The goal of the West has always been to trap Russia in an endless conflict that saps the economic, military, and moral strength of the nation and its people.
The problem faced by the collective West is that the economic, military and moral collapse it anticipated isn’t transpiring inside Russia, but rather in Ukraine and its European partners.
And the other problem is that the United States is more than willing to allow both Ukraine and Europe to further deplete what remains of their respective strength on a gamble that Russia is somehow even more depleted.
A massive information warfare campaign has been underway concurrent with the Zelensky plea for the right to produce Patriot missiles. Centered on a drone-based offensive which has targeted critical Russian infrastructure, this campaign has been paired with a propaganda effort without precedent, designed to transform pleasing visuals of burning Russian oil infrastructure, destroyed trucks, and long-lines at gas stations into an endless thematic declaring Russia unable to defend itself and, as such, the Russian leadership weakened and desperate for an off-ramp to a war which cannot be won.
The purpose of this campaign is straightforward—arm Ukraine.
Give Ukraine the weapons it needs to defend itself.
Ignore the costs accrued by Ukraine to date in terms of lost lives and squandered resources.
Ignore the fact that Russia maintains the strategic advantage across the broad spectrum of issues that define this conflict—on the battlefield, in the defense factories, in the boardroom of companies, and in the hallways of global decision making—Russia is dominating across the board.
Ignore the reality that neither Ukraine nor its western sponsors can win this war.
Just create the perception that they can.
Because perception creates its own reality.
Especially if Russia falls victim to this information warfare campaign, and starts doubting itself.
The problem is that, at least when it comes to the issue of Ukrainian production of the Patriot missile, the perception the perpetrators of this scheme are seeking to manufacture has zero chance of manifesting itself.
It is doomed by the very ineptitude of those who have hatched this scheme to begin with.
Given the realities associated with Patriot production today, the most likely candidate for Ukrainian licensed production is the MIM-104F Guidance Enhanced Missile-Tactical (GEM-T) interceptors. Under normal conditions, a GEM-T interceptor costs $3-4 million each to manufacture. Accelerated production costs could raise the per-unit cost to between $6–7 million. Licensed production, requiring new facilities, could raise the costs to over $10 million per missile.
A missile which is not designed to shoot down the modern threats posed by Russia, such as the Iskander-M, the Kinzhal, the Zircon, or the Oreshnik.
Which means from the start, the US-Ukrainian license deal is designed not to actually improve the ability of Ukraine to defend itself, but create the impression among those susceptible to such flights of fantasy that Ukraine could actually accomplish this.
If only they were given the resources to to so.
The Ukrainian license will likely closely track with existing licensed production of the GGEM-T by Germany, where a new GEM-T production facility was built in the city of Schrobenhausen. The facility is operated by COMLOG, a joint venture between Raytheon and MBDA Deutschland. COMLOG is designed to handle the production and modernization of Patriot PAC-2 GEM-T missiles for European users, including Ukraine.
It is highly likely that the Ukrainian license will be an extension of the existing German license Such an arrangement would streamline many export control issues.
GEM-T interceptors contain guidance electronics, propulsion components, warhead assemblies, and launcher interface equipment that are sourced from a network of suppliers that already exist when it comes to the German license. Lead times on some of these components exceed six months.
The Schrobenhausen facility broke ground in 2022. The plan was to build six new buildings at the site by 2026: an assembly building, warehouse, combustion chamber preparation, technical center, extension of the existing technical service building and a new office wing. According to MBDA, a usable area of 6500 square meters will have been created. The Schrobenhausen facility is strictly an assembly facility; over 50 Bavarian and German suppliers are involved in the qualification and series production phase of all of the components used to produce the final product. Among the subcontractors is Bayern-Chemie, whose Aschau, Germany facility has been tasked to produce solid motors for the GEM-T interceptors. Bayern-Chemie produced Patriot motors between 1987 and 1996, and has the infrastructure conducive to resumption of its past work.
The rudder control system of the GEM-T missiles manufactured in Germany will no longer be hydraulic, but electro-mechanical. Modifications a for the upper part of the rocket, the so-called forebody, as well as the installation of a new computer, which will come from Europe, underscore the reality that the German GEM-T is a standalone product, not influenced by the availability of US components—another reason why a modification of the COMLOG license is the most likely path the US will take regarding Ukraine.
But all of this is part of the hype that such a deal is feasible, that there is hope for Ukraine once these Ukrainian-produced missiles start rolling off the production line.
Under ideal conditions, a Ukrainian assembled GEM-T could not manifest itself in reality until 2028 at the earliest.
This is assuming Congress permits this transfer to take place.
But this would require one to believe that Russia would stand by idly while Ukraine builds from scratch a new 6500 square meter facility, or modifies existing facilities to take on the task of assembling GEM-T Patriots.
That Russia would neither identify or seek to violently interdict this assembly facility, or the numerous supporting facilities involved in supporting the importation and/or manufacture of subcomponents.
Russia, simply put, will not be idle.
And any GEM-T production facility built on Ukrainian soil would have a lifetime measured in days—weeks at best.
The Ukrainian GEM-T Patriot will never see the light of day.
And anyone selling this fantasy—including Zelensky and Trump—know this to be true.
The Ukrainian GEM-T is a myth—a chimera—designed to break the spirit of the Russian nation by propagating the myth of a never-ending conflict.
But this is a trap neither the Russian people or their leadership will fall into.
Sadly, the same cannot be said about either Zelensky or Trump.
And the price for their error will be measured in the blood of both Russian and Ukrainian victims.
Trump Says He Supports Ukraine’s Long-Range Attacks Inside Russia, Will Allow Ukraine To Produce Patriot Missiles
by Dave DeCamp | July 8, 2026 , https://news.antiwar.com/2026/07/08/trump-says-he-supports-ukraines-long-range-attacks-inside-russia-will-allow-ukraine-to-produce-patriot-missiles/
President Trump heaped praise on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky at the NATO summit in Ankara on Wednesday, expressed support for Ukraine’s long-range attacks inside Russia, and said he would allow Ukraine to produce Patriot missile interceptors.
When asked about Ukraine’s strikes on Russian oil refineries, the president said, “It’s an escalation, but it’s also an escalation that could help lead to an end.”
Ukraine’s long-range drone attacks rely on intelligence provided by the US, and Ukrainian officials told The Financial Times this week that the Ukrainian military was able to strike multiple Russian oil refineries recently because US intelligence has allowed it to find the optimal flight path for its drones to get through Russia’s air defenses.
On top of Ukraine’s success in striking Russian oil refineries, there has also been a significant spike in Russian civilian casualties in Ukraine’s drone attacks. Russian officials have cited the civilian deaths when justifying Russia’s ramped-up bombardments of Ukrainian cities, which have led to an increase in Ukrainian civilian casualties.
Discussing the Patriot missiles, Trump told Zelensky, “We’re going to give a license to you to make Patriot missiles. That’s pretty cool. This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough. I said, ‘Make them yourself.’ We haven’t informed the company of that yet, but that’ll work out all right.”
Trump’s approval of Ukraine manufacturing Patriots marks another escalation of US support for Ukraine, and Russia will almost certainly attempt to target any Patriot factories that are established on Ukrainian territory.
Overall, Trump spoke very highly of Zelensky, a reversal from the start of his administration when the two clashed during a contentious Oval Office meeting. “We’ve actually developed a good relationship. It’s hard to believe,” Trump said, adding that Zelensky has “done an amazing job” and “been very effective” in the war.
Zelensky honoring Ukrainian WWII fighters who massacred Poles and Jews not a good way to get Polish help in lost war against Russia.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 9 July 26
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is traveling all over Europe begging for defensive missiles to repel Russian missiles and drones for which he has little to no defense. But he’s near totally alienated his Polish ally by his recent decision to sign a presidential decree bestowing the honorary title of “Heroes of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army” on an elite unit of the nation’s special forces after a World War II-era militia that slaughtered Poles and Jews during World War II.
Zelensky is even digging up the bones of former WWII era Ukrainian fascist leaders who participated in these anti Polish, anti-Jew atrocities to rebury them with honors in Kyiv. They include Andriy Melnyk, Yevgen Konovalets and Stepan Bandera. Why? Zelensky seeks to rev up Ukrainian nationalism to solidify his losing fight against Russia.
This anti Polish sentiment goes back to the end of WWI when newly created Poland gobbled up parts of Ukraine in the creation of their new state. The Nazi invasion of WWII allowed Ukraine ultra-nationalists to join forces with the Nazis to inflict payback on Poland. Zelensky is exploiting that sentiment to shore up his dwindling support among his dishearteded, demoralized populous suffering impending defeat in their lost war.
Poland officials are furious and won’t be sending Zelensky defensive missiles anytime soon.
Former Polish Prime Minister Leszek Miller describes Zelensky’s honoring a WWII era fascist militia as akin to Germany renaming a military unit after the Nazis’ Einsatzgruppen death squads.
Back in February 2022, Russian President Putin stated one of his war goals was denazification of Zelensky’s Kyiv government. Zelensky’s bizarre, ludicrous honoring of WWII era fascist Ukrainian militias and their leaders is doing nothing to prevent Ukraine’s inevitable collapse and proving Putin’s war goal justified.
Cleaning up: Ukrainian Woman suspected of Monaco bombing found shot dead near Kyiv
The affair could prove politically costly for Kyiv. Any evidence linking members of Ukraine’s intelligence services to a bombing on European soil would be deeply damaging, coming as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at a Nato summit on Tuesday seeking to shore up western support while Russia continues its deadly bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
Last week, German prosecutors accused Ukrainian “state authorities” of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe.
Pjotr Sauer, The Guardian, Tue, 07 Jul 2026, https://www.sott.net/article/507300-Cleaning-up-Ukrainian-woman-suspected-of-Monaco-bombing-found-shot-dead-near-Kyiv
Anastasiia Berezovska was being sought by police over attack that seriously injured a Ukraine-born businessman
A woman suspected of carrying out last week’s bomb attack in Monaco that seriously injured a Ukraine-born business tycoon has been found shot dead near Kyiv, in the latest twist in a case that has shaken the wealthy Mediterranean principality.
Ukrainian prosecutors said on Tuesday the woman had been found with a gunshot wound to the head and that two men had been arrested in connection with the case, including an officer with Ukraine’s military intelligence agency (HUR) and a former law enforcement officer.
On Friday, Interpol issued a red notice for 39-year-old Anastasiia Berezovska, a Ukrainian national who speaks German. The notice – a request to law enforcement agencies worldwide to locate and provisionally arrest a suspect pending extradition – said Berezovska was wanted by Monaco on charges of attempted murder, placing an explosive device in a public place with criminal intent, and criminal conspiracy.
Prosecutors said in a statement that Berezovska received cryptocurrency payments from the two men who were later arrested, leading investigators to treat them as “individuals potentially involved in the attempted murder in Monaco”. They added that the serving HUR officer was “acting on his own initiative” and did not inform his superiors about his contacts with Berezovska.
Prosecutors also released footage showing a blood-stained “torture chamber”, containing hammers and other equipment, which they said was discovered during searches of the men’s properties.
The Guardian could not independently verify the prosecutors’ account.
The affair could prove politically costly for Kyiv. Any evidence linking members of Ukraine’s intelligence services to a bombing on European soil would be deeply damaging, coming as President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrived at a Nato summit on Tuesday seeking to shore up western support while Russia continues its deadly bombardment of Ukrainian cities.
Prince Albert II of Monaco previously condemned the bombing as “an odious act” and said all the principality’s security services had been mobilised.
The victims have not been officially identified, but police and judicial sources told French media they were Vadym Iermolaiev, 58, a businessman originally from Ukraine who now holds Cypriot citizenship, his girlfriend and their son. Iermolaiev and his partner were taken to hospital with serious injuries, while the child sustained minor injuries.
French prosecutors allege Berezovska, who had been living in Germany, disguised herself as a man before placing an explosive device in the entrance hall of the family’s apartment building in Monaco.
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Iermolaiev had been living in Monaco as part of a group of wealthy Ukrainian businessmen and politicians that independent Ukrainian media labelled the “Monaco battalion”.
Ukraine imposed sanctions on Iermolaiev in 2023, alleging he had maintained business links with Russian entities operating in Ukrainian territories occupied by Moscow, including Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014.
Comment: The Guardian hews to the narrative . . . .
Monaco’s deputy prosecutor said last week that the suspected attacker fled the principality on foot into neighbouring France before travelling by car to Germany via several European countries, including Italy.
Ukraine has carried out numerous lethal operations involving explosive devices against senior Russian military officers and Kremlin-backed Ukrainian officials inside Russia, but there is no established precedent for such attacks on European territory.
Last week, German prosecutors accused Ukrainian “state authorities” of ordering the 2022 explosives attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines linking Russia with Europe.
Comment: Among other criminal activities, Vadym Iermolaiev apparently ran a number of call center scamming operations. From the Daily Mail:
Now, Ukrainian police sources have claimed that the violent attack is directly linked to a network of fraudulent call centres in Dnipro, Ukraine, allegedly used to carry out large-scale financial scams across Europe.
The Yermolaiev family is alleged to have played a significant role in the scheme, with the oligarch’s name reportedly at the centre of a sprawling pan-European investigation into clandestine call centres operating out of Ukraine.
According to sources, the so-called ‘boiler room’ operations defrauded thousands of investors in Germany, Estonia and Ukraine of more than €100million (£86million) between 2019 and 2022, through fake cryptocurrency investment schemes.
The network also allegedly sold fraudulent divorce advice to unsuspecting victims.
Ukrainian law enforcement sources say that French investigators believe the murder attempt may have been orchestrated by members of a criminal network in retaliation.
Ukrainian outlet Ukrainska Pravda reported that the attempted assassination stemmed from a failed agreement to divide territory and unpaid debts allegedly owed to organised crime bosses in Dnipro.
While Vadym, who is currently subject to sanctions in Ukraine, handled the financial side of the operation, it was his son, Artur, who reportedly ran the network.
According to local reports, Artur was arrested by Interpol in Cyprus at the end of 2025 following an Estonian arrest warrant.
Although it isn’t mentioned, Zelensky is known to demand a cut of criminal profits made in Ukraine in exchange for looking the other way. The professionalism of the operation certainly points to a state operation.
From ZeroHedge:
Per Euronews:
After the explosion, she is believed to have walked to the nearby French town of Beausoleil, where she retrieved her rental car and drove through Italy to Germany, her last known country of residence, Morgan Raymond, Monaco’s deputy public prosecutor, told reporters.
“The relative sophistication of the explosive device and the modus operandi appear to indicate that the person who planted the device did not act alone,“ the prosecutor said, confirming that the individual was “a woman posing as a man.”
Given that Ukrainian businessman Iermolaiev had long ago been declared an enemy of the Ukrainian state, and has been under sanctions for years for his extensive business dealings in Crimea, Ukrainian intelligence has come under the spotlight for possible involvement in the Monaco bomb attack – a first of its kind in the small, wealthy principality.
Le Figaroreported that the investigation focuses on Zelensky’s secret police (SBU) in the Monaco bomb attack: “According to several concurring sources at Le Figaro, investigators are focusing on the possibility that the attack was orchestrated by the SBU, the Ukrainian intelligence service.”
So already the Zelensky government is desperately trying to distance itself from the ordeal, claiming that Ukraine’s own intelligence officer was merely “acting on his own”. More details are as follows:
Ukrainian authorities said they detained two men on suspicion of murdering Berezovska “by prior conspiracy.”
Police said that one of the men – a current employee of the Ukrainian Defense Ministry’s Main Intelligence Directorate – confessed to the murder of Berezovska and claimed that the second suspect, who is a former law enforcement officer, was an accomplice.
Senior U.S. Diplomats, Journalists, Academics and Secretaries of Defense Say: the U.S. Provoked Russia in Ukraine
it should come as no surprise that our government is lying now about the war in Ukraine.
it should come as no surprise that our government is lying now about the war in Ukraine.
The Ukraine Papers, by Donald A. Smith, PhD, 27 June 26
It took some years for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about the war in Vietnam. Thanks to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, and thanks to the antiwar movement, Americans eventually learned about the injustices and failures of that war.
Likewise, it took several years after the starts of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan for Americans to realize they’d been lied to about those wars as well.
Americans are just now starting to realize that they’ve been lied to about the war in Ukraine. (The propaganda effort has been quite effective, with the New York Times, in particular, acting as a mouthpiece for the government’s position.) More and more mainstream publications are exposing the lies, and a majority of Americans now oppose further arming of Ukraine.
This essay is a summary of what the U.S. government has been hiding about the war in Ukraine, with links to sources for further information.
According to Brown University’s Costs of War project, U.S. military actions since 9/11 directly killed over 900,000 people, with an additional 3.5 million people dying from indirect effects. The wars cost Americans at least $8 trillion and displaced over 38 million people from their homes. The U.S. spends over a trillion dollars a year on its military, if you count all expenditures.
If we go back to the 1960s, the number killed by U.S. wars includes the several million killed in the Vietnam war, the approximately 1 million killed by U.S. support for Indonesian military’s attacks on left wing groups, and the hundreds of thousands, at least, killed in proxy wars and government overthrows in Latin America.
The wars, overthrows, and associated sanctions caused mass migrations worldwide — particularly in Europe and at the southern U.S. border — and destabilized politics. The Lancet medical journal reported that between 1971 and 2021, US and EU sanctions killed over half a million people annually. Yet almost nobody (except for whistleblowers) was held accountable for these disasters; indeed, many of the same people are in Congress or work for the government or the weapons industry.
Moreover, the U.S. government lied about almost all the wars — in particular, about the wars in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, but also about the war in Yugoslavia, as documented in Harper’s Magazine, here (Chapter 3), and here. In short, the Kosovo Liberation Army that the U.S. supported was, basically, a terrorist organization funded by the CIA, and U.S. propaganda greatly overstated the nobility of the U.S. intervention. Likewise, The U.S. backed ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia.
The United States withdrew from the following arms treaties: Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, Strategic Arms Reduction (START II)Treaty, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran deal, Open Skies Treaty, and Conventional Armed Forces Treaty (Russia withdrew after alleged NATO non-compliance)
So, it should come as no surprise that our government is lying now about the war in Ukraine. Specifically, claims by President Biden and others that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked” are greatly exaggerated.
Read what these diplomats, secretaries of Defense, journalists, academics, politicians, and others have to say:
Here the author gives quotations from 30 highly regarded people – certainly not pro Russian propagandists ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Ambassador Jack Matlock (referenced above) said in a 2024 interview: “Why don’t we understand that trying to remove Ukraine from Russian influence and put military bases there would be, in their case, absolutely unacceptable and worthy of defense?” Matlock said the U.S. backed the 2014 coup, and “Obviously, to any Russian leader, not just Vladimir Putin, that would have been an absolutely impossible, hostile act, which they had to react to. And in particular, they were not going to lose their naval base in Crimea.” Finally, Matlock said the Ukrainians are “dominated in their thinking by neo-Nazis — we tend to ignore that, or when Putin points it out, we say he’s lying. He’s not lying.” And Matlock wrote: “I have been appalled that a succession of American presidents and European leaders discarded the diplomacy that ended the Cold War, abandoned the agreements that curbed the nuclear arms race, and provoked a new cold war which has now become hot.”
See this for dozens of mainstream news articles about the presence Nazis in Ukraine and U.S. support for them.
Evidence of U.S. involvement in the coup is overwhelming. The Cato Institute (not a radical Marxist outfit!) wrote America’ Ukraine Hypocrisy which includes:
The extent of the Obama administration’ meddling in Ukraine’ politics was breathtaking. Russian intelligence intercepted and leaked to the international media a [U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria] Nuland telephone call in which she and U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Geoffey Pyatt discussed in detail their preferences for specific personnel in a post-Yanukovych government… Both the Obama administration and most of the American news media portrayed the Euromaidan Revolution as a spontaneous, popular uprising against a corrupt and brutal government… It was a grotesque distortion to portray the events in Ukraine as a purely indigenous, popular uprising.
The 2019 RAND Corporation study Overextending and Unbalancing Russia examines “cost-imposing options that the United States and its allies could pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress — overextend and unbalance — Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.” It includes the paragraph:
“Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in US military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages.”
The highlighted words indicate that the authors were quite aware that US provocations would cause Russia to respond militarily.
The New Yorker’s Is the F.B.I. Truly Biased Against Trump? contains a telling paragraph on the U.S. government’s efforts to suppress information about exactly what happened in Ukraine:
According to [FBI agent] Buma’s statement, shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, on February 24, 2022, he was told to terminate relations with one of his most valuable sources in that field, Dynamo. The order came from both his supervisors and the F.B.I.’s Foreign Influence Task Force, and, per Buma, superiors told him that the shutdown of Dynamo was based on “highly classified information from the National Security Agency” which he could not access. They also said that it was part of a broader effort, around the time of the invasion, to close off many “sources related to Russia/Ukraine matters.”
After the collapse of the USSR, Russia wanted desperately to be integrated into the West and, up to the end of 2021, pleaded with D.C. to come to an equitable peace in Ukraine, but the U.S. wanted to weaken Russia, and NATO needed an enemy to justify its existence. The expansion of NATO — which violated multiple verbal promises given to Soviet leaders — provoked the war that is now touted as showing the need for NATO.
According to the LA Times’s Russia feels threatened by NATO. There’s history behind that, “some of Russia’s security concerns are real. Offering to discuss them doesn’t qualify as appeasement; Thirty years ago, Russia had a buffer zone of satellite states to its west. Now it has only the unimpressive presence of Belarus.”
From 2018, in Medium’s American Lethal Weapons Could Already Be on the Ukrainian Front Line: “Two weeks ago, the Trump administration announced it will allow the sale of some lethal weapons to Ukraine, including the Javelin anti-tank missile….Butusov identified the [Nazi] Azov Battalion as a recipient of the PSRL-1 [grenade launcher] systems.”
Right before the Russian invasion, in January of 2022, Yahoo News reported: CIA-trained Ukrainian paramilitaries may take central role if Russia invades. After the invasion, in March of 2022, Yahoo News reported: Secret CIA training program in Ukraine helped Kyiv prepare for Russian invasion..
In November of 2023, the Washington Post exposed that “Since 2015, the CIA has spent tens of millions of dollars to transform Ukraine’s Soviet-formed services into potent allies against Moscow, officials said…. The extent of the CIA’s involvement with Ukraine’s security services has not previously been disclosed.” Foreign Policy’s essay of July 11, 2025 mentions the “CIA’s decade of covert support for Ukraine.” ABC News also has an article about CIA involevment in Ukraine since 2015.
Likewise, a New York Times article The Spy War: How the C.I.A. Secretly Helps Ukraine Fight Putin, dated February 25, 2024, revealed that the CIA had been coordinating with Ukrainian intelligence since at least 2014 and that the Ukrainians had been launching assasinations and other kinetic actions in Crimea and Russia. As Mark Episkopos writes in Responsible Statecraft, CIA in Ukraine: Why is this not seen as provocation?: “An explosive new NYT report shows how Washington needlessly fed into Russia’s worst fears and precipitated the invasion, justified or not.”……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
These facts and opinions do not justify Russia’s brutal invasion, but they certainly give the lie to statements by President Biden and others that the invasion was “unprovoked.” Even the Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 was provoked: it occurred after, and partially in response to, the U.S.-backed overthrow of the pro-Russian government of Ukraine.
And the facts expose stunning hyprocrisy. The U.S. launched numerous unjustified wars, proxy wars, bombings and coups far from U.S. borders; surrounded Russia and China with pro-US allies and military bases (about 800 worldwide); exited multiple arms treaties; and increased military spending to about $1 trillion a year despite $34 trillion in debt and dire domestic needs. Yet we accuse Russia and China of being the aggressors.
Both sides can be at fault in a conflict. The U.S. too has blood on its hands.
Finally, the facts are strong reasons why the U.S. should not be arming Ukraine to the teeth, pushing it to fight to the last Ukrainian and risking a nuclear war. Instead, it should push for a negotiated end to the war. https://theukrainepapers.org/senior-US-diplomats-academics-journalists-and-secretaries-of-defense-say-the-US-provoked-Russia-in-Ukraine.html
UK Tests Long-Range Missile for Ukraine
by Kyle Anzalone | Jun 22, 2026, https://libertarianinstitute.org/news/uk-tests-long-range-missile-for-ukraine/
The UK tested a missile with a range of 300 miles, with plans to send the munitions to Ukraine. The platform will allow Ukraine to deliver 500-pound warheads to Moscow.
The missiles tested by the UK military last week were developed under Project Brakestop. The goal of the project is to design a long-range weapon that can be produced for under half a million dollars and within 20 months.
UK Armed Forces Minister Louise Sandher-Jones said the new missiles will “complement” the Storm Shadow cruise missiles London sends to Kiev. “The UK stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Ukraine, and we will continue to provide the support it needs to defend itself against Russian aggression,” she added. “Project Brakestop shows what happens when we combine that commitment with the talent and ingenuity of British industry.”
The range of the missiles will allow Ukraine to target the Russian capital.
Ukraine has increased the large-scale drone strikes targeting Moscow and other Russian cities in recent months. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Moscow would respond by “massive group strikes” against Ukrainian targets on a “on a regular basis.”
Russia reported downing over 300 Ukrainian drones overnight Sunday, including 80 in the Moscow region. While Moscow often does not discuss strikes that cause damage in Moscow, videos on social media appear. to show damage caused by Ukrainian attacks.
Substation damage delaying operation of repaired Zaporizhzhia power line, says IAEA
Friday, 26 June 2026, https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/substation-damage-stopping-zaporizhzhia-power-line-reconnection-says-iaea
After months of ceasefire negotiations, planning and complex repairs, the main external power line to Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant has been fixed – but it can’t be put back into operation because of damage to a substation 100 kilometres away, the International Atomic Energy Agency has said.
IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said: “Of the six temporary ceasefires that we have negotiated since late last year to help protect nuclear safety … this was the most challenging to implement. It required several months of delicate negotiations, followed by mine clearance and repairs on high pylons across the Dnipro River. The IAEA monitored these activities on the ground to confirm they were carried out as agreed.
“Both sides worked constructively with us to enable the repairs to proceed. Despite the many military and technical challenges, this demonstrates that concrete progress remains possible, even during a large-scale war. We will continue our efforts to reduce the ever-present danger of a nuclear accident.”
The IAEA team based at the Zaporizhzhia plant monitored the repair work on the plant side of the frontline, with a separate IAEA team monitoring the repair work on the other side of the Dnipro River.
However the 750 kV Dniprovska external power line is not back in operation yet, because of damage sustained in May at an electrical substation 100 kilometres northwest of the plant, Grossi said.
“Repeated damage to the electrical infrastructure on which nuclear power plants depend continues to create serious nuclear safety and security risks. I once again call for maximum military restraint around all nuclear facilities and the power infrastructure they require,” he said.
Since the main Dniprovska line was disconnected in March, the six-unit nuclear power plant, which has been under Russian military control since early March 2022, has been relying on its sole remaining 330 kV Ferosplavna-1 backup power line.
During the war there have been a number of occasions when all external power has been lost to the plant. Last week the back-up power line was reconnected after the 19th such loss of power. As with the previous occasions, the plant had to rely on power from its emergency diesel generators for the power required by the plant, including for various safety functions.
‘Poles, Russians, and Jews must be exterminated’: The bloody history of Zelensky’s heroes
On June 30, 1941, immediately after capturing Lviv, Bandera’s followers, led by Yaroslav Stetsko, proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State and formed a pro-German “government.” In its declaration of statehood, the OUN openly expressed the intention to collaborate with Nazi Germany, which “under the leadership of its Führer Adolf Hitler is creating a new order in Europe and assisting the Ukrainian people “
How the OUN-UPA embraced ethnic violence, collaborated with Nazi Germany, and became one of the most controversial movements of World War II
3 Jun, 2026 , Rt.com
Burned villages. Families slaughtered in their homes. Women, children, and the elderly hacked to death with axes and pitchforks. Thousands of Jews beaten, tortured, and murdered during pogroms that accompanied the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. These are some of the atrocities associated with the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its military wing, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – movements whose legacy remains one of the most divisive issues in Eastern Europe more than eighty years after World War II.
For decades, supporters of the OUN-UPA have portrayed its members as freedom fighters who resisted both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union in pursuit of Ukrainian independence. Opponents, however, point to a different record: collaboration with the Third Reich, participation in anti-Jewish violence, and the mass killing of Polish civilians during the Volhynia massacres of 1943-1944, which Poland today officially recognizes as genocide.
Far from being settled history, this debate has recently returned to the center of international politics. In 2026, a new diplomatic dispute erupted after Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky honored the UPA tradition at the state level, prompting outrage in Poland and reigniting long-standing accusations that modern Ukraine is rehabilitating organizations linked to fascism, ethnic cleansing, and wartime crimes. At the very moment when Polish and Ukrainian officials are working together to exhume the victims of Volhynia, disagreements over the legacy of Bandera, Shukhevich, and the OUN-UPA continue to poison relations between the two countries.
Below, we’ll talk about the origins of modern Ukrainian nationalism, the motives behind the mass killings of Poles and Jews by underground nationalist forces, and the reasons why OUN-UIA leaders collaborated with Nazi Germany.
The ideology behind Ukrainian ‘heroes’
Ukrainian integral nationalism, which became the foundation of OUN-UIA ideology, owes much to the writings of Dmitry Dontsov. In the mid-1920s, he articulated a doctrine of Ukrainian nationalism that was heavily influenced by the fascist ideology of the time………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
During the 1930s, the OUN engaged in underground activities, particularly in Galicia. It was also during this period that Stepan Bandera emerged as a prominent figure among the nationalists. Young, ruthless, and determined, he quickly established himself as one of the recognized leaders of the OUN, gaining notoriety through violent acts against high-ranking Soviet and Polish officials……………………………………………………………………………..
A Polish court sentenced Stepan Bandera to death for organizing the murder of Polish Interior Minister Bronislaw Pieracki, but the sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment. During his trial, Bandera showed no remorse, and stated: “We know how to value our lives and those of others, but our idea is worth making millions of sacrifices for.”
Bandera’s imprisonment did not last long – he was released in 1939 after Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and quickly rejoined the nationalist movement……………………………………………….
the collaboration with the Nazis did not distract the Ukrainian nationalists from what they considered more pressing tasks: eliminating ethnically foreign elements.
In a May 1941 directive, the OUN explicitly stated that Russians, Poles, and Jews were enemies of the Ukrainian nation and must be annihilated.
In the early days of Nazi Germany’s war with the USSR in June 1941, nationalists called on people to take up arms and “destroy the enemy,
And words soon turned to actions.
After German forces captured Lviv on June 30, 1941, Ukrainian nationalists unleashed a brutal pogrom against the city’s Jewish population. OUN militants, operating as part of the so-called Ukrainian People’s Militia and the Nachtigall Battalion, organized raids on Jewish residents. People were publicly beaten, tortured, and many were murdered right in the streets or executed after being tortured. Over the course of a few days, thousands of Jews were brutally killed. Similar atrocities occurred throughout the region; the occupying authorities encouraged anti-Semitic violence, which local nationalists eagerly participated in.
The OUN viewed Jews as “supporters of the Moscow-Bolshevik regime” and welcomed their extermination. Many members of the OUN later served in auxiliary police forces for the Nazis, actively participating in the Holocaust by herding Jewish people into ghettos and camps, escorting death marches to Babi Yar in Kiev, and personally executing prisoners.
Although later the UIA declared a fight against Germany, by early 1943 almost all Jews in Volynia and Galicia had been killed, with the active help of Ukrainian nationalists. Few managed to escape, and only a handful of people survived the war within the ranks of the UIA – these were mostly doctors or specialists who were tolerated for practical reasons.
Hunting for Poles
However, the primary targets of the ethnic cleansing efforts of the OUN-UIA were the Poles of Galicia and Volynia, whom the nationalists regarded as historical enemies and “occupiers” of Ukrainian lands that needed to be expelled or eliminated. Plans for these atrocities were devised long before the Volynian massacre: as early as 1938, the OUN’s internal doctrine outlined a project for an uprising aimed at “sweeping away every last Polish element” from Western Ukrainian territory.
……. in the spring of 1943 when the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (the military wing of the OUN) carried out the massive slaughter of the Polish population in Volynia.
The Volynian massacre of 1943 became one of the bloodiest crimes of WWII in Eastern Europe. UIA units and armed nationalist peasants attacked hundreds of Polish villages with the intent of physically annihilating all Poles living on “Ukrainian” land. Terror reached its peak in July 1943 during ‘Bloody Sunday’ on July 11, when dozens of settlements were simultaneously attacked by militants.
The methods of execution were unbelievably cruel. People were killed indiscriminately: women, the elderly, children, and infants; many were not just shot but hacked with axes, stabbed with pitchforks, or bludgeoned to death. The homes of Poles were burned to the ground, their property looted; entire villages vanished in flames and were reduced to charred ruins.
Historians estimate that 60,000-100,000 Poles were barbarically killed by the OUN-UIA in Volynia and the surrounding areas. Polish partisan groups later responded with retaliatory terror against Ukrainian villages; however, the initiative for the large-scale extermination of civilians belonged squarely to the Ukrainian nationalists.
The modern Polish Sejm and historians classify the Volynian massacre as an act of genocide. Numerous accounts indicate that the slaughter was premeditated by the leadership of the OUN, which sought to realize Dontsov’s vision of a “monoethnic” state at any cost.
As a result of the actions of the OUN and UIA, Poles in Volynia and Eastern Galicia were virtually annihilated. Waves of refugees fled their homes to escape the violence. The ethnic landscape of the region was radically reshaped through mass terror tactics. Repression was not limited to Poles and Jews: UIA militants also targeted Ukrainians who refused to support them or were suspected of “disloyalty,” labeling them as traitors.
Nazi collaborators
The activities of Ukrainian nationalists extended beyond the extermination of Jews and Poles. Under the command of Roman Shukhevich, the head of the OUN military branch, two diversionary Abwehr battalions were formed – the Nachtigall Battalion and the Roland Battalion. These Ukrainian units became part of the Wehrmacht and, in June 1941, crossed the Soviet border dressed in German uniforms and under German command, invading the territory of the Ukrainian SSR alongside the Nazis.
Subsequently, the Germans formed the Schutzmannschaft Battalion 201 from the Nachtigall and Roland battalions. It was dispatched to Belarus to combat partisans. This battalion was also commanded by Roman Shukhevich, who would later become the supreme commander of the UIA.
In 1942, the soldiers under his command participated in punitive expeditions aimed at “pacifying” Belarusian villages suspected of aiding partisans (in other words, burning down entire settlements along with their inhabitants).
Throughout this period, the OUN hoped to reap political benefits from its alliance with the Nazis.
On June 30, 1941, immediately after capturing Lviv, Bandera’s followers, led by Yaroslav Stetsko, proclaimed the establishment of the Ukrainian State and formed a pro-German “government.” In its declaration of statehood, the OUN openly expressed the intention to collaborate with Nazi Germany, which “under the leadership of its Führer Adolf Hitler is creating a new order in Europe and assisting the Ukrainian people in liberating themselves from Moscow’s occupation.”……………………………………………………………………………………………… https://www.rt.com/russia/640925-bloody-history-of-zelenskys-heroes/
Memory politics – a tragic military strategy in Ukraine
23 June 2026 Noel Wauchope, https://theaimn.net/memory-politics-a-tragic-military-strategy-in-ukraine/
I came across the views of Marta Havryshko in a YouTube video on June 15th, in a lengthy audio essay.
What struck me about this speech, was that it comes from a Jewish Ukrainian woman, who is describing her own observations, living in Ukraine today. I also found the title of her speech very interesting – The tragedy of Memory Politics in Ukraine, Israel & the West. That’s because I cannot help noticing that in the prevailing commentaries on Ukraine, the commentators seem to have forgotten the complexity in Ukraine’s recent modern history.
Marta Havryshko is aware of this complex history. She has been living through the most recent part of it. She sees it from a Jewish perspective, and she is no fan of Putin’s Russia. But – she also brings her awareness of history to current affairs in Ukraine, and she is no fan of Volodymyr Zelensky either.
I tried to transcribe the entire 95 minutes of her speech. It is too long for an article, but I will include excerpts here, to illustrate her themes. She discusses Ukraine’s troubled history of anti-semitism, and the Nazi period in Ukraine. She focusses on Zelensky and the current accepted views on Ukraine’s history – the apparent forgetting of the facts in that history, as Ukrainian extreme nationalism now flourishes.
Marta describes her childhood, and education in Ukraine. She learned at school the history of Soviet Russia’s oppression of Ukrainians, and of the heroic freedom fighters who resisted the Russians:
“I was was raised on this nationalistic myth about glorious fighters, members of the Ukraine underground movement the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and the organisation of Ukraine nationalists. We learned all these patriotic songs. Our family gatherings involved histories about Soviet repressions and actually, the house that my parents built was on the territory on the land that was seized by Soviets in 1939. Some of my family were involved on the ground in the Ukrainian nationalist movement and they were oppressed. Some of them were booted in prison and some of them were sent to Siberia. So I was raised in this highly nationalistic environment.
When I became a student at Lviv National University actually I met almost the same atmosphere. Lviv is a very nationalistic city with the biggest monument to Stepan Bandera (leader of the UPA). My home was close to Bandera street, and many streets had these partisan names.”
Marta explains how the memories of wartime events have now become confused, enmeshed into present day views and anti-Russian fervour.
“After 2014 this very western Ukraine nationalistic historical myth started to move eastward. After 2022 it became really the national myth promoted on the very national level. That’s why for example under President Zelensky we nowadays have streets named Bandera and Shukhevych (another UPA leader) in Kirik, home town of our president Zelensky.
This myth is cultivated in Ukraine in war time. Another dimension of this very troubling development in is that Nazi apologism is flourishing because many members of the Ukraine nationalists on the ground during the second world war were members of auxiliary police under German occupation and some of them occupied chief positions, so they were not just ordinary rank and file policemen – they were chiefs of police. Vasyl Levkovych, for example, is a very glorious figure in this nationalist pantheon. Those people nowadays are celebrated as freedom fighters and their direct participation in the holocaust is obscured, is marginalised and silenced and even denied.
At the holocaust memorial I was really shocked. I saw these fancy souvenir magazines with Daddy Bandera socks and Daddy Bandera bags. In one day I spent almost three hours in the city center and I saw an amount of different hate symbols like SS bolts, like black sun like Nazi eagles, like swastikas. I never saw in my life. in Western Europe, this concentration of these Nazi hate symbols. and the amount of different hate symbols – SS bolts, black sun, Nazi eagle, different combinations of swastikas. In Ukraine it’s so normalised – why? Because it’s a part of military culture nowadays. Those symbols are adopted primarily by military actors and by soldiers. The trust in Ukraine military is so high in Ukraine society – approximately more than 90% of Ukrainians nowadays trust Ukraine military. That’s why they just accept this.
Ukraine military nowadays is full of different far right groups. They are sponsored and they are celebrated as freedom fighters. In the Ukraine military we have overt Nazi apologists. For example we have the Niga named after the Nachtigall Battalion formed by the Germans and this battalion participated in the Nazi Barbarossa plan against Russia in 1941. From the documents of some participants of this unit we know that they participated in anti-Jewish pogroms.
Especially after 2022 so many neo-Nazis and far right groups neo-Nazis and far right groups were empowered and they openly promote their agenda. They openly celebrate Nazi units. Why? Because their ideology is.” Those guys are lesser evil because they fought our eternal enemy, meaning Russia. And they compare themselves with Nazis.So it’s not only Putin who compares them with Nazis, but that they themselves compare themselves with Nazis, and it’s ridiculous, it’s just crazy.”
Marta explains “memory politics” as a strategy, a weapon of war:
Those who are against military mobilisation are not a minority any more, Those who want to have peace with Russia, those who want to build a relationship with Russia on good terms, who don’t want to be engaged in eternal war with Russia, they are “bad Ukrainians” – you need to view Russia as the eternal enemy. For our children, this means only permanent war. With the anti-Russian project and narrative we will be in constant war with the superior angry and very powerful aggressor., in constant destruction.
We don’t want to spend our lives, sacrificing our life for what? – for our political elites. Ukraine is now a colonial client of the West, The West is deciding what money will go where, what laws will be adopted. In our fight against the Russian imperial state we are becoming a colony of Western imperialism. No-one is talking about this, because it’s a “good” empire.
We still have enormous casualties, and those casualties are hidden.
Memory politics is the main issue. They make movies etc about Russian atrocities but never about Ukrainian atrocities. Ukraine killed Ukrainian students in occupied Donbass, in Spring 2022. It was painful to see how many people denied it, and then justified it, blaming those students for “collaboration with Russia,” some were trying to present this as collateral damage.
The state is pouring so much money into commemorating this war. It’s about producing, inflicting emotions. First of all it’s always in both Ukrainian and English language, It’s for Western audiences, to inflict emotion, to inflict empathy, to present Ukraine as poor victim, to present a black and white picture when Ukraine is of course presented as the forces of good, and Russia as the forces of evil. Nothing of course about what happened to the people of Donbass in 2014, 2015, 2016 – always about guilt of Russia, bad Russia, crazy Putin, imperialism in Russian blood, and angels Ukraine.
So memory politics is a part of Ukraine war propaganda. Many intellectuals are engaged in this propaganda, and many receive grants from abroad. And it supports the Western agenda: Many many Western people – who discovered Ukraine only in February 2022 – see Ukraine as this angel, who was unjustifiably attacked, and is bleeding, and needs support to continue resistance. Nobody is asking those people kidnapped in the vans. Nobody asking those women, their sisters, their mothers, their wives – “Do they want to fight, to be sent to the meat-grinder against their will?” This myth of resilience, of this nation, who would rather die than live under Russian occupation. But this myth is produced by Zelensky propaganda. I must admit they’re doing a very good job in this, because Zelensky is very good at entertainment – it’s his profession.
The forgotten towns of the Chernobyl exclusion zone
Sam Farley, Tue 16 June 2026, https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-forgotten-towns-of-the-chernobyl-exclusion-zone/
When reactor four of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant melted down in 1986, beyond impacting Ukraine, then part of the Soviet Union, it had an effect across the world.
In the years that have followed, it’s become a niche tourist attraction, with dark tourists fascinated by this apocalyptic environment, with pictures abound on the internet of that famous, rusting Ferris wheel, the tall tower blocks being eaten up by nature and the school gymnasium littered with gas masks. Everyone remembers Pripyat, and it’s undergone a second life in popular culture, decades after the final resident left, but there lie some other towns and villages, forgotten from the Chernobyl exclusion zone.
Pripyat was the zone’s largest settlement, but it’s estimated that around 40,000 people from outside that city were forced to flee the area after the reactor went ablaze. The village of Zalissya was once the largest in what became the exclusion zone, with a population of around 3,000 people, and unlike Pripyat, which was built with the power plant, it had been a settlement for 400 years before the accident, surviving conflict, famine, occupations and even revolution.
Now, Zalissya is littered with the remains of those who fled in May 1986; there are toys left to rot, alongside signs of domestic life with pots and pans, and even canned food. Despite being regularly used as the first stop for dark tourist tours of Chernobyl, pre-Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s largely been reclaimed by Mother Nature, with buildings overtaken by greenery and vegetation carpeting the streets.
Not far away is Kopachi, or more technically, was Kopachi, a village, once home to 1,100 people, situated by the plant’s cooling pond, roughly equidistant between the towns of Chernobyl and Pripyat. While the place was evacuated like everywhere else, the radiation levels were so high that the authorities decided that abandonment wasn’t enough, and they needed to bury the village entirely.
Besides two brick buildings, one of which was the village’s nursery school, everything else was buried. From a distance, Kopachi looks like a bumpy meadow, but under those mounds remain houses and a reminder of the panic that defined those early weeks following the accident. Then, just over a mile from reactor four sits Yaniv, which housed only 100 people but was significant thanks to the train station there serving the plant. As of April 2003, it’s no longer a village, having been deregistered, but it still has an incredible story.
Some of the machinery used pre-accident and even after in the clean-up still sits there and sets Geiger counters off with their high levels of radiation; hence, the decision to not bury some of the equipment, such as the engineering vehicle built on the chassis of a tank, was a strange choice. During the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it was even occupied by invading forces for two months in early 2022, which was both a crazy decision given the health risks, and a reminder that history doesn’t stop.
It’s easy to think that all the abandoned settlements in the zone were tiny villages, but that wasn’t always true, like Poliske, which was a thriving town founded in 1415, and had led many lives, both as a textile production hub and a home for Jews, who made up 80% of the population around a century before the accident. Due to its location right on the western edge of the exclusion zone, it wasn’t abandoned with the haste of many other towns and villages closer to the power plant.
There was a decline following the accident, but it wasn’t until 1999, some 13 years after, that most of the population was evacuated. In fact, there were still around 1,000 people living there as recently as 2005, with a number of the elderly refusing to leave and happy to see out their days there. Its abandoned buildings have inspired the computer game STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, and like Yaniv, it was occupied by Russian forces during the invasion.
The village of Krasne has long been silent; just four miles from Pripyat, it was on the northern contamination track, which was one of the first directions that saw nuclear fallout following the explosion. While its residents have long gone, it’s notable because the over 200-year-old wooden church of St Michael still stands tall, its decay almost noble and rebellious, as it greys and is slowly devoured by weeds and undergrowth from below, serving to remember the power of faith.
The disaster at Chernobyl has had a lasting impact on Ukraine and the Soviet Union (the eventual collapse of which can be attributed to the incident), but while we think of Pripyat and its huge abandoned tower blocks, it’s worth remembering that there was life all over what is now the exclusion zone, where generations of families grew up, got old, married, and died, in the villages and towns that all got caught up in this epic disaster.
UK powers up Ukraine with £210 million nuclear fuel deal
The deal, announced by
the Prime Minister at the G7, sees UK Export Finance (UKEF) guarantee a
loan enabling Urenco, a UK-headquartered uranium enrichment company, to
supply enriched uranium to Ukraine’s national nuclear power producer,
Energoatom, powering the country’s nuclear plants for the next two years.
UK Export Finance 16th June 2026, https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-powers-up-ukraine-with-210-million-nuclear-fuel-deal-and-boosts-british-jobs
Why a single ‘peace deal’ for Ukraine war just won’t work
As Western mainstream media carpet bombs the world with news that Ukraine is turning the tide in the war and could still win, then the calculus may be among Western policy hawks that continuing the war is no bad thing.
The Europeans and Zelensky appear dug in for the long haul.
An agreement within NATO. A peace settlement for Ukraine will only land when its future NATO aspiration is taken decisively off of the table. Anyone who still believes that Russia will give up on this clearest of redlines is dangerously misguided.
The time is ripe for European leaders to set aside the self-licking summits and get in the room with the US, Ukraine, and Russia
Ian Proud, Jun 13, 2026, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-russia-europe-talks/
The time is ripe for European leaders to set aside the self-licking summits in European capitals and get in the room with the U.S., Ukraine, and Russia to orchestrate a modern-day Helsinki Conference.
A durable peace for Ukraine will require several interlocking agreements, each of which will be incredibly difficult to negotiate, but all of which will be vital if we are to avoid a general war in Europe.
In a recent post on X, former U.S. diplomat Dan Fried, commenting on the June 7 E3 Leaders’ Statement on peace in Ukraine, said, “If Russia wants to end the war it can, you know, end the war.”
It’s important to pause here and note that Fried was the State Department Coordinator for Sanctions Policy from 2013 until 2017. I know, because I was directly involved at the time, that Fried is the architect of the policy of making Russia sanctions permanent by linking them to the full implementation of the Minsk II agreement, which Russia and Ukraine interpreted in radically different ways. The main aim of sanctions conditionality was therefore to delay any possibility of peaceful settlement, and in that it succeeded.
Eleven years on, Fried’s remark echoes a common line of argument in pro-war Western circles: that Russia could simply end the war without a negotiated settlement. And yet an unconditional about-face by Russia is quite obviously never going to happen, and so the comment serves only to prolong the war.
The E3 statement flowed from the same logic. It offered nothing new or unexpected. Critically, it reiterated the line that roughly $300 billion of Russian assets will remain immobilized until Russia “ceases its war of aggression and compensates Ukraine for the damage caused by the war.”
The current World Bank estimate of the cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine stands at $588 billion. So, the E3 position amounts to confirmation that Russia will never see its money again and moreover will still have $288 billion left to pay.
This, I fear, is another example of Fried’s logic — that peace in Ukraine is indeed possible, but only on terms that Russia would be unable or unwilling to accept. As Western mainstream media carpet bombs the world with news that Ukraine is turning the tide in the war and could still win, then the calculus may be among Western policy hawks that continuing the war is no bad thing.
It’s certainly clear that no one appears in a rush. The E3 statement follows a sixteen-month period of endless and repetitive meetings by European leaders and Zelensky in which everyone violently agrees, but to which the Russians are never invited.
Only in recent months, notably since President Donald Trump’s Alaska Summit with Putin, has the topic of a negotiated end to the Ukraine war slowly bubbled to the surface in Europe. President Alexander Stubb of Finland, President Emmanuel Macron of France, Prime Minister Bart de Wever of Belgium have at various times dipped their toes in the water of suggesting diplomatic talks with Russia.
Last week, Zelensky himself issued an open letter to Putin about a possible meeting.
But, being that the letter contained several pages of personal barbs and insults about Putin, it is hard to see this as anything more than a self-licking stunt, of the type Dan Fried would support. The Europeans and Zelensky appear dug in for the long haul.
A senior Russian contact remarked to me recently that the Europeans spend a lot of time talking about the possibility of talks, but not the substance of what might be on the agenda. In truth, a vast amount of work will be needed in preparatory negotiations to map out the shape of a future peace settlement, requiring a clarity of focus that has hitherto been missing.
A durable peace for Ukraine will require several interlocking deals, possibly negotiated separately with different signatories. Talk of a single ‘peace deal’ for Ukraine is a lazy over-simplification. The latest E3 statement bundles up separate issues in the same basket as does the now dormant US brokered plan. A peace settlement for Ukraine will require, inter alia, the following.
A bilateral peace deal between Russia and Ukraine, brokered by the U.S. and others. The existing U.S.-brokered draft is the right place to start, as that includes the most contentious issue of territory, and in particular the future status of the remaining territory in Donetsk which Russia has not conquered. It would also need to cover sensitive topics such as the size of Ukraine’s army, Ukrainian children who were removed to Russia, and minority languages in Ukraine.
A clear plan and timeline for Ukraine to join the European Union. This can only be negotiated bilaterally by the EU and Ukraine, without U.S. or British involvement. It is arguably as difficult as a bilateral peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia.
Zelensky has said he wants to see Ukrainian accession by 2027, but this is not going to happen, and not only because the war may still be ongoing. The Europeans aren’t over eager about Ukraine joining because Ukraine is nowhere near ready, and Europe can’t afford it. Chancellor Merz has recently resurfaced the idea of “associate membership,” in which Ukraine gets no voting rights or money. Every rational observer should be able to judge that many Ukrainians will want clarity on the glidepath towards EU membership as a condition for ending the war.
An agreement between Russia and Europe, including the United Kingdom, on the future shape of their relationship. The third issue is equally as complex. Should Ukraine eventually join the EU, then it would join existing former Soviet and Warsaw Pact members (the Balts and Poland) who frame Russia as an existential threat. Relations between Europe and Russia are more shuttered today than they were during the Soviet era.
Europe needs cheap energy to stem the tide of self-imposed deindustrialization; Russia would like European investment again and a more open people-to-people relationship. There will need to be a settlement on how sanctions against Russia are eased during a post-war period. Ignoring an EU-Russia deal risks pressing the pause button on a future general war at a time when Europe is rapidly rearming,
An agreement within NATO. A peace settlement for Ukraine will only land when its future NATO aspiration is taken decisively off of the table. Anyone who still believes that Russia will give up on this clearest of redlines is dangerously misguided.
Ukraine needs cast iron security guarantees that should involve a hard commitment to boots on the ground should Russia renege on its commitments.This will require Russia to have confidence that NATO isn’t stoking the fire in the background to reignite tensions as a pretext for intervention. These are incredibly complex issues and will require U.S. leadership to shift the Europeans into line. The NATO-Russia Council could have provided a forum for discussion and deconfliction but was formally disbanded in December 2025. Perhaps a NATO-Ukraine-Russia Council might emerge, to take its place, reopening a vital avenue for military dialogue and deconfliction.
Amid signs that the Trump Administration is tiring of the Ukraine peace process, the time is ripe for a serious push to bring the disastrous war in Ukraine to a close. Rather than the Europeans and Americans tussling over who should be in charge of the negotiations, the truth is that every Western nation will have a role to play, together with Ukraine and Russia, to hammer out the various agreements needed for peace. That may require a grand summit similar in scale to the Helsinki Conference of 1975. On the back of the E3 Statement, however, I am not holding my breath.
No electricity at Zaporizhia nuclear power plant after attack, IAEA says
11 Jun 2026 , https://swedenherald.com/article/no-electricity-at-zaporizhia-nuclear-power-plant-after-attack-iaea-says
An attack has disrupted the electricity supply to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine, the UN atomic energy agency, the IAEA, announced.
No elevated radioactivity has been recorded, the IAEA said in a statement, adding that diesel generators are currently used to power critical functions, including cooling systems.
It is not clear who is behind the attack at the facility, which is Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. It occurred on Wednesday evening and was aimed at a nearby transformer station.
Kyiv and Moscow have repeatedly accused each other of risking a disaster by attacking the nuclear power plant and its nearby area.
The power outage is the 19th since Russia’s full-scale offensive war against Ukraine began in February 2022.
1 This Month
of the week – Hiroshima Nagasaki Day Coalition – Working together for the abolition of n\nuclear weapons – https://www.hiroshimadaycoalition.ca/
No Nuclear in Cwm Llynfi! Stop the nuclear power station near Maesteg.
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