Zelensky ‘systematically sabotaged’ Ukraine anti-corruption efforts: Report
Close associates of Zelensky recently fled to Israel amid allegations of a $100 million corruption scheme
News Desk, DEC 6, 2025, https://thecradle.co/articles/zelensky-systematically-sabotaged-ukraine-anti-corruption-efforts
Over the past four years, the Ukrainian government “systematically sabotaged” oversight of the country’s state-owned companies and weapons procurement processes, “allowing graft to flourish,” a New York Times (NYT) investigation published on 6 December has revealed.
The investigation details how the government of Volodymyr Zelensky sidelined outside experts from the US and EU serving on advisory boards responsible for monitoring spending, appointing executives, and preventing corruption.
“President Volodymyr Zelensky’s administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kiev even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around,” the NYT report says.
The investigation was published amid a corruption scandal centering on close associates of the Ukrainian president.
Anti-corruption authorities have accused members of Zelensky’s inner circle of embezzling $100 million from the state-owned nuclear power company, Energoatom.
“Mr. Zelensky’s administration has blamed Energoatom’s supervisory board for failing to stop the corruption. But it was Mr. Zelensky’s government itself that neutered Energoatom’s supervisory board,” the NYT writes.
The investigation also found that Zelensky sidelined the supervisory boards of the state-owned electricity company Ukrenergo and Ukraine’s Defense Procurement Agency.
European leaders have justified funneling billions of dollars in taxpayer funds to Ukraine despite knowledge of the systematic corruption and theft plaguing the country.
“We do care about good governance, but we have to accept that risk,” said Christian Syse, the special envoy to Ukraine from Norway.
“Because it’s war. Because it’s in our own interest to help Ukraine financially. Because Ukraine is defending Europe from Russian attacks,” he added.
Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, resigned late last month amid the Energoatom corruption scandal and just hours after police raided his home.
Ukrainska Pravda reported that he had left for Israel, of which he is a citizen, just hours before the raid.
Yermak is widely considered the second-most-powerful official in the country, with influence over domestic politics, military issues, and foreign policy, Axios noted.
Businessman Timur Mindich, who co-founded the entertainment company Kvartal 95 with Zelensky, allegedly led the embezzlement scheme.
Mindich also escaped to Israel, where he enjoys citizenship, hours before a separate raid on his luxury apartment by police from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU).
“Timur had an apartment with golden toilets that was in the same building as Zelensky’s,” a former Ukrainian government official told Fox News.
The Story They Forgot to Tell: Ten Years of Ukraine’s Corruption and the Media’s Convenient Timeline
The original of this article shows clear examples of mainstream media coverage of corruption, and also gives telling case studies
How the NYT’s latest “exposé” framing collapses when you place Ukraine’s graft in its full post-coup 2014–2024 context — and why MSM remembers corruption only when it fits partisan politics.
Gregor Jankovič, DD Geopolitics, Dec 08, 2025
When the New York Times ran its December investigation into how Kiev “sabotaged oversight” and allowed a $100-million corruption scheme to take root in state energy firms, many readers saw it as a stinging indictment of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government — and of the geopolitical consequences of a U.S. retreat. That was the intended reading. But placed against a fuller decade-long record, the NYT narrative looks less like an objective accounting and more like a carefully timed political frame: corruption is old and structural in Ukraine, and it has been tolerated, overlooked, and sometimes protected by Western patrons for years — through multiple U.S. administrations. For evidence of this, we need to look back. It was all reported.
The 2014 “reforms” — impressive on paper, weak in practice
After the Maidan coup (2013–14), Kyiv adopted a series of legal reforms and created new institutions, under pressure from Washington and Brussels — the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), anti-corruption prosecutors (SAP), and a push for “independent” supervisory boards at state companies. Western donors loudly backed these moves and conditioned assistance on these newly formed “watchdog structures”.
These reforms looked impressive on paper.
In reality:
The institutions were funded by the West but controlled through political appointments.- The supervisory boards were symbolic, frequently ignored, or never fully seated.
- Oligarchs shifted from Yanukovych-style control to a networked, distributed corruption model.
- The existing Ukrainian oligarchic network simply adapted to them, rather than collapsed or lose its hold over the national economy.
Even the EU Court of Auditors admitted in 2016:
“No meaningful progress. Political interference everywhere.”
The NYT now pretends these same paper-thin structures were once strong, credible, and functioning — until Trump broke them.
2017–2020: “Under Trump, Corruption Survives” — but Oversight Was Never Real
Trump’s first term did not “destroy” Ukrainian anti-corruption systems. They never worked to begin with.
Throughout these years:
- The EU repeatedly warned of massive political interference in SOEs.
- The IMF froze loan tranches over corruption concerns.
- Poroshenko used “anti-corruption bodies” as political weapons.
- Supervisory boards existed but were powerless and often ignored.
Trump didn’t weaken Ukrainian oversight.
Ukrainian elites never accepted it in the first place.
But acknowledging this would break the New York Times’ morality play — so the paper skips the entire era.
A notorious and in the Western MSM extremely suppressed story from this period was the case of the then ex-vice-president Joe Biden (tied to the Ukrainian energy company Burisma through his son Hunter Biden), related to his demanding for the removal of Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin in 2016:
Two years after leaving office, Joe Biden couldn’t resist the temptation last year to brag to an audience of foreign policy specialists about the time as vice president that he strong-armed Ukraine into firing its top prosecutor.
In his own words, with video cameras rolling, Biden described how he threatened Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in March 2016 that the Obama administration would pull $1 billion in U.S. loan guarantees, sending the former Soviet republic toward insolvency, if it didn’t immediately fire Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin.
“I said, ‘You’re not getting the billion.’ I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: ‘I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money,’” Biden recalled telling Poroshenko.
“Well, son of a bitch, he got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden told the Council on Foreign Relations event, insisting that President Obama was in on the threat.
The pattern was not unique to one administration: it was a systemic weakness of Ukrainian governance, which Western capitals tolerated because they preferred an obedient Kiev regime to the chaos of an un-governed vacuum – or even worse – an actual autonomous political leadership, acting in Ukraine’s national interest.
The practical effect: major contracts, procurement lines, and State-Owned Enterprises (SOE) budgets remained lucrative targets. (See EU/IMF concerns and internal audits.)
2021–2023: The Biden Years — Oversight Collapses Behind a Wall of Wartime Secrecy
This is the period NYT absolutely cannot afford to discuss honestly.
Under Biden:
- Western weapons deliveries lacked tracking mechanisms;
- The CBS documentary reporting that “only 30% of Western arms reach the front” was pressured into removal;
- The Ukrainian defense ministry’s food, fuel and procurement scandals exploded;
- Wartime laws classified nearly all budgetary and procurement data;
- Local and international NGOs documented the worst transparency regression since 2014;
- EU institutions quietly complained about “political capture” of state companies.
Biden’s approach was simple:
fund Ukraine massively, ask few questions, conceal accountability problems to maintain wartime unity.
The NYT now pretends this era was a model of transparency — but it was precisely the opposite.
The SMO did change incentives. Massive Western assistance flowed; governments were conveniently reluctant to publicly police Kiev for fear of weakening its war effort or Ukrainian morale. Wartime secrecy and emergency procurement rules further reduced transparency.
The most striking example was the CBS Documentary “Arming Ukraine” in 2022 suggesting that a surprisingly low share of Western weapons could be verified at frontline use — here is the original “unredacted” version:
The story raised alarms and was subsequently revised after huge diplomatic pushback – which was, of course, swept under the carpet. CBS exposed major tracking problems and distribution opacity in a wartime logistics nightmare of super-charging the Kiev junta’s military — and it was, “surprisingly”, quietly downplayed.
The bigger point: weapons tracking, procurement integrity, and transparency were problems long before any 2025 scandals surfaced.
The Editor’s note on the redacted CBS Reports story says it all:
Why military aid in Ukraine may not always get to the front lines
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Conclusion — What honest coverage would look like?
A responsible investigation would do three things simultaneously:
document concrete corruption cases and who profited;
trace the long arc (2014→2024) showing systemic weaknesses and donor complicity;
and evaluate how wartime necessities reshaped incentives and motives for both Kiev and its backers.
The NYT’s piece does the first well — but the rest of the story is too often left out of concrete framing and reduced to jabs at its political “enemy”.
Readers deserve unbiased coverage that resists tidy partisan narratives and accepts complexity:
Ukraine’s corruption is real, longstanding, and enabled as much by it’s Masters foreign policy choices as by local actors’ greed. https://ddgeopolitics.substack.com/p/the-story-they-forgot-to-tell-ten?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=1769298&post_id=180977735&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Bombed Chornobyl shelter no longer blocks radiation and needs major repair – IAEA
Drone attack that Ukraine blamed on Russia blew hole in painstakingly erected €1.5bn shield meant to allow for final clean-up of 1986 meltdown site.
Guardian staff and agencies, 6 Dec 25
The protective shield over the Chornobyl disaster nuclear reactor in Ukraine, which was hit by a drone in February, can no longer perform its main function of blocking radiation, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has announced.
In February a drone strike blew a hole in the “new safe confinement”, which was painstakingly built at a cost of €1.5bn ($1.75bn) next to the destroyed reactor and then hauled into place on tracks, with the work completed in 2019 by a Europe-led initiative. The IAEA said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure found the drone impact had degraded the structure.
The 1986 Chornobyl explosion – which happened when Ukraine was under Moscow’s rule as part of the Soviet Union – sent radiation across Europe. In the scramble to contain the meltdown, the Soviets built over the reactor a concrete “sarcophagus” with only a 30-year lifespan. The new confinement was built to contain radiation during the decades-long final removal of the sarcophagus, ruined reactor building underneath it and the melted-down nuclear fuel itself.
The IAEA director general, Rafael Grossi, said an inspection mission “confirmed that the [protective structure] had lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability, but also found that there was no permanent damage to its load-bearing structures or monitoring systems”.
Grossi said some repairs had been carried out “but comprehensive restoration remains essential to prevent further degradation and ensure long-term nuclear safety”……………………………https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/06/chornobyl-disaster-shelter-no-longer-blocks-radiation-and-needs-major-repair-iaea
Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant temporarily lost power overnight, IAEA says.
By Reuters, December 6, 2025, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/ukraines-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-plant-temporarily-lost-power-overnight-iaea-says-2025-12-06/
Dec 6 (Reuters) – Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant temporarily lost all off-site power overnight, the International Atomic Energy Agency said on Saturday, citing its Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi.
The nuclear plant, Europe’s largest, has been under Russian control since March 2022, when Russian forces overran much of southeastern Ukraine. It is not currently producing electricity but relies on external power to keep the nuclear material cool and avoid a meltdown.
The plant was reconnected to a 330-kilovolt (kV) power line after a half-hour outage, the IAEA said.
A 750 kV line that was also disconnected earlier was back in operation, the Russian-installed management of the plant said later on Saturday, and stable power supply had been restored.
Radiation levels remained normal, the management said.
Widespread military activities overnight affected Ukraine’s electricity grid and prompted operating nuclear power plants (NPPs) to reduce output, the IAEA added.
Reporting by Gnaneshwar Rajan and Yazhini M V in Bengaluru; Editing by Aidan Lewis and Bernadette Baum
Chernobyl nuclear plant’s shield damaged: UN agency
Canberra Times, December 6 2025, https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9128130/chernobyl-nuclear-plants-shield-damaged-un-agency/
A protective shield at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in war-torn Ukraine, built to contain radioactive material from the 1986 disaster, can no longer perform its main safety function due to drone damage, the UN nuclear watchdog says.
The International Atomic Energy Agency said an inspection last week of the steel confinement structure completed in 2019 found the drone impact in February, three years into Russia’s conflict in Ukraine, had degraded the structure.
IAEA director general Rafael Grossi said in a statement the inspection “mission confirmed that the (protective structure) had lost its primary safety functions, including the confinement capability, but also found that there was no permanent damage to its load-bearing structures or monitoring systems.”……………………………………………………………….. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/9128130/chernobyl-nuclear-plants-shield-damaged-un-agency/
What’s behind the peace negotiations for Ukraine?
(President Macron) had indeed pompously signed documents for the sale of 100 Rafale fighter jets, SAMP/T air defense systems, modern air defense radars, air-to-air missiles, and guided bombs to Ukraine. In reality, these were not contracts, but “declarations of intent.” The financing for these extravagant sales was not guaranteed, and their manufacture by Dassault Aviation could not begin for five to ten years.
We don’t know what was said in Washington, but we can assume that the United States took a firm stance toward Ukraine, even if it didn’t want to risk destroying Atlantic solidarity. Thierry Meyssan presents here what transpired during this tumultuous week.
by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 5 December 2025, https://www.voltairenet.org/article223293.html
To understand the week of peace negotiations in Ukraine, it is essential to first dispel the misinformation disseminated by the mainstream press: contrary to what they implied, the Europeans were never allowed to join the Geneva talks.
It is also worth recalling what I explained last week [1]: European governments have no interest in peace; they even fear it: it would undoubtedly bring about their own downfall.
It is therefore no coincidence that the German, British, and French press claimed that the Geneva peace plan was a European document. They asserted this so strongly that we ourselves repeated this falsehood before correcting it.
With that established, let us review the sequence of events:
When the peace plan, drafted by the United States and Russia in Florida, became public [2], the subservient commentators presented it as “outrageously pro-Russian.”
The Geneva Negotiations
The Ukrainians requested to draft a counter-proposal with the United States. Talks were held in Geneva on November 23 and 24.
However, on November 22, EU leaders, along with the British, Norwegians, and Japanese, all attending the G20 summit of heads of state and government in Johannesburg, issued a joint statement. It reads:
“We are ready to commit to ensuring that future peace is lasting. We are clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force. We are also concerned about the proposed restrictions on the Ukrainian armed forces, which would leave Ukraine vulnerable to future attack.
We reiterate that the implementation of elements relating to the European Union and those relating to NATO would require the consent of the respective EU and NATO members.”
Germany, France, and the United Kingdom therefore sent diplomats—uninvited—to the Intercontinental Hotel where the US and Ukrainian delegations were staying. They were able to speak with both sides but were not admitted to the negotiations.
The document, released after the talks, reiterates only the Ukrainian arguments [3].
It no longer mentions the denazification of Ukraine, the country’s neutrality, or EU participation in its reconstruction. It is therefore unacceptable from a Russian perspective.
Presenting his work to the press, State Secretary Marco Rubio simply stated that things were progressing very well. This is probably because Ukraine had renounced the reconquest of territories occupied/liberated by Russia and accepted their international recognition as Russian.
The “Coalition of the Willing”
On November 25, the Coalition of the Willing, established on March 1, 2025, by General Petr Pavel, Czech President and former Chairman of NATO’s Military Committee, and by Keir Starmer, British Prime Minister, met via videoconference.
Continue readingUkraine’s Energoatom, Holtec International, and the US retreat from fighting corruption abroad
very little about the relationship between Trump’s Washington and Zelenskyy’s Kyiv might be considered ordinary.
President Zelensky moved to dismantle the safeguards meant to protect Ukraine’s institutions from corruption,
Bulletin, By Matt Smith | December 3, 2025,
In 2012, FBI agents stationed themselves in a Trump Tower apartment to wire up a senior official of FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, to record conversations that would become evidence for anti-bribery prosecutions. In 2018, Justice Department officials seized the yacht Equanimity in an operation aimed at returning stolen assets to Malaysia. In 2023, the United States sent a veteran US prosecutor to Kyiv to strengthen Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies, which America had earlier helped establish.
In a functioning international order, we might see this type of global collaboration in the wake of a recent investigative piece I wrote for the Bulletin about a US company, Holtec International, that has had substantial dealings with a state-owned nuclear company now under investigation in Ukraine.
In more normal times, the government of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy might request assistance under the US-Ukraine Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters. The FBI established a liaison office at the headquarters of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (aka NABU) in 2017, under a memorandum of understanding to cooperate on “investigations related to money laundering, international asset recovery, and Ukrainian high-level officials’ bribery and corruption.” These are word–for–word what investigators are now pursuing in Ukraine’s nuclear power agency.
A professionalized Justice Department could respond to a formal Ukrainian request by issuing subpoenas seeking information from US firms that might be relevant to the Ukrainian probe.
But we are no longer in anything like normal times.
Here’s the context: NABU—an agency the United States helped create and train—is investigating an alleged $100 million corruption scheme inside Energoatom, the governmental body that oversees nuclear energy and spent fuel storage in Ukraine. This scandal has consumed Zelenskyy’s inner circle and led to the resignation of his chief deputy and lead peace negotiator.
Holtec International, a Florida company that established an office in Kyiv in 2007, became a prime contractor and subcontractor for Energoatom on complex, multi-year spent nuclear fuel storage projects.
Holtec executives met repeatedly with Energoatom leadership. They navigated Ukraine’s procurement systems. They hired local subcontractors. They managed complex, multi-year construction projects in a business environment that Ukrainian prosecutors now say has been compromised. Holtec has files that could matter: Ukrainian invoices, compliance checks, email communications, and management logs.
In response to my inquiry about whether the company had heard from the Justice Department regarding Ukraine, Holtec issued a statement saying it witnessed no corruption: “Our operations center in Kyiv, Holtec Ukraine, has worked with our client, Energoatom, to provide safe storage systems and technology to ensure the spent fuel in Ukraine is stored safely and protected from external threats. At no time have we had any interactions that would have led us to believe in any impropriety with our work and contracts.”
As with any such company statement, this one merits checking. Holtec email communications might show whether American executives interacted with the officials now under investigation. Compliance audits might reveal whether the company flagged irregularities. Payment records might reveal inflated costs prosecutors have identified elsewhere. Internal management logs might document which Ukrainian officials controlled access to Holtec’s projects and whether those officials match the outside “shadow managers” prosecutors have identified as having gained control of Energoatom and then having demanded bribes from contractors.
The Bulletin’s investigation, published November 20, did not find evidence that Holtec was involved in Ukrainian misconduct. In fact, subpoenaing Holtec’s records would neither require nor imply allegations of corporate wrongdoing; such subpoenas require only the recognition that a US entity could possess evidence material to a foreign corruption prosecution. The legal mechanisms for seeking Holtec’s records exist. The precedents for doing so are well-established. Such a procedure has previously been seen as an ordinary step.
But very little about the relationship between Trump’s Washington and Zelenskyy’s Kyiv might be considered ordinary.
Since Trump took office in January, his administration has pursued a quiet dismantling of America’s ability to provide this kind of aid. On February 5, Attorney General Pam Bondi formally disbanded Task Force KleptoCapture, the unit established after the Russian invasion of Ukraine and dedicated to seizing assets of Russian oligarchs. Five days later, President Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14209, explicitly “pausing” enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—the very statute that authorizes investigations into potential bribery of foreign officials by US companies.
Deregulation even extended to tools of crime, as Russia increasingly relies on cryptocurrency to bypass sanctions. The Justice Department has turned away from prosecuting digital asset violations while the US established a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve,” giving legitimacy to a cryptocurrency known as a key sanctions-evasion tool.
Scores of federal prosecutors have left Justice as colleagues were fired for perceived political slights. Trump’s highest-priority prosecutions—i.e., the politicized ones—are pursued by unqualified loyalists who have ended up, in many matters, embarrassing a once-storied agency.
The diminished US interest in corruption prosecution has had foreseeable consequences in Kyiv. Concurrent with the shift in Washington, President Zelensky moved to dismantle the safeguards meant to protect Ukraine’s institutions from corruption, signing legislation in July to strip NABU of independence. Ukrainians took to the streets. Most reports about international pressure to restore NABU’s status concerned European countries that sprang to the defense of the anti-corruption agency America helped build. The United States recently rotated a new FBI liaison to the NABU offices as part of the cooperation agreement. The Ukrainian press said a recent meeting concerned the Energoatom bribery case.
Typically, the next steps might seem clear. But nobody involved seems to be operating in a typical way.
The Justice Department press office did not respond to questions asking whether Holtec’s files sit in Florida, untouched. https://thebulletin.org/2025/12/ukraines-energoatom-holtec-international-and-the-us-retreat-from-fighting-corruption-abroad/?utm_source=ActiveCampaign&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Ukraine%20s%20Energoatom%2C%20Holtec%20International%2C%20and%20the%20US%20retreat%20from%20fighting%20corruption%20abroad&utm_campaign=20251201%20Monday%20Newsletter%20%28Copy%29
Trump’s buried complicity in lost US proxy war against Russia.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL 2 Dec 25
Trump boasted he’d end the war destroying Ukraine in one day if re-elected. He claimed it was all Biden’s war that Trump had nothing to do with. If only Trump had been reelected in 2020, he claims, there would have been no war gutting Ukraine as a functioning state with tens of millions fled, dead, deserted, injured. The US wouldn’t have squandered over $180 billion to achieve this dubious Biden achievement.
Trump, like every world leader, gets to make history but not rewrite history. Joe Biden was president when Russia launched its Special Military Operation to liberate the Donbas Ukrainians from destruction by Kyiv and keep NATO missiles off Russia’s borders. Biden essentially triggered that totally unnecessary war now in the final stages of Ukraine’s collapse. Biden also sabotaged the peace deal nearly achieved two month in that would have ended the war with no new lost Ukrainian territory.
That will get Biden history’s everlasting condemnation. But Trump also deserves history’s condemnation for ramping up the conditions that led to war under successor Biden. During his first term from 2017 to 2021 Trump kept alive long standing US dream of bringing Ukraine into NATO, a red line Russia warned America not to cross for over a decade prior. Trump authorized repeated NATO military exercises in Ukraine, which effectively made Ukraine a de facto NATO member. Trump allowed new NATO bases in Poland and Romania, adding to Russian angst over NATO encroachment.
Trump reversed a sensible Obama policy of not arming the Kyiv government to complete its destruction of Donbas Ukrainian separatists. In his 4 years Trump oversaw a fourfold increase of Kyiv military might. Had Trump simply reversed senseless US expansion of NATO beginning under Bill Clinton in 1999, and forced Germany, France and UK to honor the Minsk Agreements granting regional autonomy to Donbas Ukrainians, Biden may not have had the conditions or momentum to provoke the February 2022 Russian invasion.
Trump pretends he’s the White Knight bringing peace to a Ukraine wrecked solely by Biden’s perfidy. He should own up to his first term complicity and make peace to atone for his own sins destroying Ukraine as well as those of Joe Biden.
France & UK Still Insist On Sending Troops To Ukraine, In Effort To Sabotage Trump Peace Plan
by Tyler Durden, Tuesday, Dec 02, 2025 ,https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/france-uk-still-insist-sending-troops-ukraine-effort-sabotage-trump-peace-plan
As we reported earlier, the important Miami meeting wherein American and Ukrainian delegations hammered out a revised ceasefire draft for some five hours on Sunday did not have European participation. But this is where the real deal-making is taking place. Trump envoy Steve Witkoff is en route to Moscow, where he’s expected to meet with President Putin on Tuesday, in order to present where things stand on the peace plan.
The Miami meeting reportedly focused on where the new de facto border would be in the east, after the 19-point plan featured significant territorial concessions in the Donbass and Crimea. As for Europe, is still touting a “coalition of the willing” which are vowing ongoing military support to the Zelensky government.
At this moment, France and the United Kingdom especially are continuing to push for the deployment of troops from NATO-member states to Ukraine as part of their version of peace settlement, despite this being very obviously unacceptable to Moscow.
Last week Politico reported that when US Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined a discussion involving the coalition of the willing via phone call, he made clear to all that the White House wants a peace agreement in place before committing to any long-term security guarantees for Kiev.
But UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer tried to push back, arguing that a “multinational force” would be essential for ensuring Ukraine’s future security.
Bloomberg then followed with a report saying that UK officials have already selected the military units they plan to deploy, based on several reconnaissance trips to Ukraine.
France’s President Emmanuel Macron proposed that such troops could operate in the capital area or western regions of the country, far from the front lines. But this would flagrantly cross all Russia’s red lines. NATO troops on its doorstep was key Putin’s decision-making in launching the ‘special military operation’ in the first place.
It must be recalled that the original US-drafted 28-point peace plan, which leaked to the press and more recently was condensed down to 19 points, included an explicit prohibition on deploying NATO troops to Ukraine.
The European-proposed counter-plan, which was also quickly leaked to the media, greatly softened that stance and laid out that instead of a blanket ban, NATO would not “permanently station troops under its command in Ukraine in peacetime.”
At a moment Trump’s peace plan advances, and with Witkoff on his way to meet with President Putin, hawks in Europe are growing even more hawkish:
Such intentionally vague language leaves open the possibility of NATO troop rotations into Ukraine. The Kremlin has time and again said it would not tolerate this, and such a move would lead to direct war with the West.
Europe’s plan also seeks to leave open a Ukrainian path to NATO, but this is also a sticking point which the US plan leaves out, given it would of course be dead on arrival if presented to Putin.
U.N. nuclear agency returns to Chernobyl to check damage from recent Russian drone attack.
The International Atomic Energy Agency is sending
technicians to the site of Ukraine’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant to
assess the current condition of an arch-shaped steel structure that was
erected over the damaged reactor following the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. The protective shell, known as the New Safe Confinement, was erected in 2016.
It was struck by a Russian drone in February 2025, authorities said.
“While February’s drone strike did not lead to any release of
radioactive material, it caused significant structural damage, affecting
the NSC’s designed confinement function and projected lifetime,” IAEA
Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi said Thursday in a statement.
Washington Times 28th Nov 2025 https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/nov/28/un-nuclear-agency-returns-chernobyl-check-damage-recent-russian-drone/
The Neocon-Realist Armageddon Over Ukraine
Rubio was in Geneva last Sunday with the Ukrainians and Europeans to undermine Trump’s 28-point plan, trying to replace it with one of just 19 points that unrealistically gives an advantage to Ukraine. Unrealistic because this war has already ended on the battlefield and Trump has virtually acknowledged it.
By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/28/ray-mcgovern-the-neocon-realist-armageddon-over-ukraine/
Donald Trump made some revealing remarks to the media as he flew to Florida for Thanksgiving on Wednesday. Asked if he thought Ukraine is being asked to give too much land to Russia in his proposal to end the war, Trump responded:
“It’s clearly up to the Russians. It’s moving in one direction. … That’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway. So, do you want to fight and loose another 50,000 or 60,000 people? Or do something now? They are negotiating; they are trying to get it done.”
That’s the same realistic approach Trump’s new special envoy to Ukraine, U.S. Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll, took with the Ukrainians and Europe’s so-called “coalition of the willing” during a visit to Kiev earlier this week.
Driscoll reportedly threw in yet one more reason for Ukraine to end the war – the fact that the Russians have ever-growing stockpiles of missiles they can deploy.
In other words, the undeniable Russian advances all along the contact line in Ukraine are no longer deniable to anyone tuned into reality.
But not everyone is tuned in. U.S. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who unrealistically claimed that Ukraine could still win, has been removed as special envoy to Ukraine, but there are other neocons lurking near the White House, for instance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio who also as national security adviser can control the flow of intelligence and policy proposals to the president.
Rubio was in Geneva last Sunday with the Ukrainians and Europeans to undermine Trump’s 28-point plan, trying to replace it with one of just 19 points that unrealistically gives an advantage to Ukraine. Unrealistic because this war has already ended on the battlefield and Trump has virtually acknowledged it.
What’s next is an official agreement, endorsed, ideally by the United Nations Security Council, where France or Britain, however, could veto it, as the Europeans continue their efforts to thwart such a peace agreement.
Britain, France and Germany, for example, are still pushing the fantasy that Russia is poised to attack Europe.
So we are at the threshold on Ukraine, at the beginning of a consequential battle between the neo-cons and Europeans on one side, and Donald Trump and the realists on the other. Will Trump show the fortitude to see this through and overcome his secretary of state?
For now you can dismiss the idea that the so-called “Peace Plan” is “dead on delivery.” It hasn’t even officially been delivered to Russia yet.
Russian President Vladimir Putin awaits hand delivery from U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff probably on Monday – Washington’s recent unorthodox conduct of diplomacy notwithstanding.
My sense is that Witkoff, like Driscoll, will dis the Europeans and go to Moscow with the 28-point draft plan for discussion and that it will adhere to one of the main provisions of Anchorage — namely that Trump will not let Zelinski sabotage movement toward an agreement. Putin told Hungarian President Viktor Orban today in Moscow that he remained open to meeting Trump in Budapest at a future date.
For his part, Putin seems ready to do business. An important backdrop is his priority objective of preventing relations with the U.S. from falling into a state of complete disrepair. As for Ukraine, Putin has reiterated that the 28-point Trump plan could form the basis for future agreements.
Taking questions from the press yesterday in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, Putin gave clarity to a number of key issues. He said there was “no ‘draft agreement’ per se,” but rather “a set of issues proposed for discussion and finalization.”
Putin went on:
“We discussed this with American negotiators, and subsequently, a list of 28 potential points for an agreement was formulated.
Thereafter, negotiations were held in Geneva between the American and Ukrainian delegations. They decided among themselves that all these 28 points should be divided into four separate components. All of this was passed on to us.
In general, we agree that this could form the basis for future agreements. However, it would be inappropriate for me to speak now of any final versions, as these do not exist.”
Putin noted that the U.S. — this would be Trump, not Rubio — is “taking our position into account – the position that was discussed before Anchorage and after Alaska. We are certainly prepared for this serious discussion.”
On the question of land, Putin made certain that Russia will not be denied. He said, “I think it will be clear at once what it is all about. When the Ukrainian troops leave the territories they occupy, then the hostilities will cease. If they do not leave, we will achieve it militarily. That’s that.”
Of course, in 2022 Russia entered the Ukrainian civil war that had begun after the 2014 U.S.-backed coup that lead to the U.S.-installed government attacking the ethnic Russian Donbass region, which had rejected the unconstitutional change of government and declared independence.
After eight years of indirectly aiding Donbass, Russia intervened directly after the Minsk agreements to end the civil war were sabotaged by Ukraine and the Europeans. Russia’s war demands have remained demilitarizing and denazifying a neutral Ukraine. In the course of its intervention it has absorbed four Ukrainian oblasts into the Russian Federation, which remains non-negotiable to Moscow.
“Those in the West who understand what [recent Ukrainian defeats on the battlefield] could lead to are pushing for an end to the fighting as soon as possible,” Putin said, referring to the realists in Washington.
“They understand that if the front lines are drawn back in certain areas, the Ukrainian armed forces will lose their combat effectiveness and their most combat-ready units,” he said. “‘Enough is enough, preserve the core of your armed forces and your statehood, that’s what you need to focus on,’ say those who hold this view.”
But he said “others,” referring to the Europeans and neocons, “insist on continuing the hostilities until the last Ukrainian. That’s the difference in approaches.”
Putin tried to put to rest the fear-mongering in Europe about a planned Russian attack on the continent. “Russia does not intend to attack Europe. To us, that sounds ridiculous, does it not?” he said. “We never had any such intentions. But if they want to have it formalised, let’s do it, no problem.”
Putin also reiterated that Russia could only sign a peace agreement with a legitimate government in Ukraine after a new election, another obstacle to overcome.
“I believe that the Ukrainian leadership made a fundamental, strategic mistake when it was afraid to hold presidential elections, and as a result, the president lost his legitimate status,” Putin said. “As soon as any kind of peace agreement is reached, the fighting will stop, and the state of emergency will be lifted, elections will be announced.”
Which is another incentive for Zelensky and those who back him inside and outside of Ukraine to keep on fighting.
“So, basically, we want to reach an agreement with Ukraine in the end, but it’s almost impossible right now, legally impossible. We need our decisions to be internationally recognized by the major international players. That’s it,” said Putin.
He added:
“And so, of course, we need recognition, but not from Ukraine today. I hope that in the future we will be able to come to an agreement with Ukraine: there are many healthy people there who want to build relations with Russia for a long-term historical perspective.”
Peace then will require the complete negation of the neocons and the Europeans and a new government in Kiev — a tall order indeed.
It comes down to whether Trump can finally stand up to them — people whom he appointed, like Rubio, and whom he golfs with, like Sen. Lindsey Graham. He seems to have less respect for the Europeans, who practically sat at his feet around the Oval Office desk earlier this year pleading their case on Ukraine.
Trump may be motivated in part by the vain desire to end the war to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But he can get it done. Trump can ignore the Europeans and be serious this time about cutting off military aid and intelligence to Ukraine as he threatened to do if Zelensky did not accept his 28 points by Thanksgiving.
When it comes to Ukraine, Trump really does hold the cards. Will he play them?
The mysterious black fungus from Chernobyl that may eat radiation
Mould found at the site of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster appears to be
feeding off the radiation. Could we use it to shield space travellers from
cosmic rays? In May 1997, Nelli Zhdanova entered one of the most
radioactive places on Earth – the abandoned ruins of Chernobyl’s exploded
nuclear power plant – and saw that she wasn’t alone.
Across the ceiling,
walls and inside metal conduits that protect electrical cables, black mould
had taken up residence in a place that was once thought to be detrimental
to life. In the fields and forest outside, wolves and wild boar had
rebounded in the absence of humans. But even today there are hotspots where staggering levels of radiation can be found due to material thrown out from the reactor when it exploded.
BB 28th Nov 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/future/article/20251125-the-mysterious-black-fungus-from-chernobyl-that-appears-to-eat-radiation
What Defeat Looks Like
Had the western powers acted in good faith to resolve these issues at Minsk, history might have taken a different course. Instead, European leaders did everything they could to scuttle the Accords.
On the battlefield, Russia is in no rush; it is defeating Ukraine in a grinding war of attrition that by now is irreversibly in Russia’s favour.
As in Potsdam at the end of the Second World War, the only path forward now is working out the terms of Ukraine’s defeat. And there is still time to save lives, writes Stefan Moore.
Stefan Moore, Consortium News, November 28, 2025, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/11/28/what-defeat-looks-like/
European leaders are in panic mode. They are scrambling to ensure that Trump’s 28-point peace plan that they believe favours Russia can be revised to give Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky an equal say alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin.
This is delusional thinking. Whether or not Zelensky and his U.S./NATO allies, who have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into this conflict care to accept it, Russia is the indisputable victor in this terrible 14-year war, beginning with the 2014 Ukrainian civil war, which Russia entered in 2022.
Moscow will call the shots when it finally ends. As in Potsdam at the end of WWII, the only path forward now is working out the terms of defeat.
Those terms include Ukraine losing all or most of the four eastern oblasts – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson (amounting to roughly a third of its territory and population); an ironclad prohibition from joining NATO, which Russia correctly views as a hostile alliance; the reduction of its armed forces (the size to be negotiated) and the denazification of its military and government.
For those who believe this is an intolerable capitulation, it’s time to review the historical record.
Since the end of the Cold War, despite promises to Russia that it would not move “one inch eastward”, NATO has pushed up to Russia’s borders from Poland to the Baltic states and in 2008 invited Ukraine and Georgia to become members. The potentially devastating consequences of this expansion were signalled by the most senior U.S. diplomats at the time.
William Burns, the U.S. ambassador to Russia in 2008 warned in a cable published by WikiLeaks that Ukraine becoming a NATO member could lead to war with Russia in Ukraine, a prediction that eventually came true.
The architect of America’s Soviet containment policy, George Kennan, presciently warned as early as 1997 that “expanding NATO would be the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”
Not only were these words not heeded, but the West set out to weaken Russia in every way possible.
The Coup
In 2014, the U.S. helped engineer a coup (revealed here, here, and here) to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected, Russia-friendly president Victor Yanukovych and install a Western-friendly regime. Billed in the Western media as a popular uprising for democracy, it led Ukraine on the path to civil war between the European-aligned west and the east which had closer ties to Russia.
The biggest losers in this adventure were the ethnic Russian people of Ukraine’s eastern region who opposed the coup and called for the creation of separate autonomous states. In response, Ukraine’s armed forces and its virulently anti-Russian neo-Nazi battalions went on the attack.
In what turned out to be a disingenuous attempt to resolve the conflict, Ukraine and Russia took part in the Minsk Accords (mediated by France and Germany with U.N. support).
Among other things, Minsk proposed autonomy of the ethnic-Russian regions of Donetsk and Lugansk within a federated state of Ukraine, and an understanding that Ukraine could not join NATO, an alliance that Russia correctly sees as an existential threat.
For those who fail to comprehend Russia’s insistence on the latter point, it would be equivalent to Mexico or Canada entering a security alliance with Russia that allowed them to station nuclear capable missiles on the U.S. border. One only has to recall the Cuban Missile Crisis to see how that worked out.
Had the western powers acted in good faith to resolve these issues at Minsk, history might have taken a different course. Instead, European leaders did everything they could to scuttle the Accords.
Later, former Germany’s Angela Merkel and then ex-French president Francois Hollande would publicly admit that they were just playing along to give NATO more time to arm Ukraine to defeat Russia – a battle they have been willing to fight to the last Ukrainian.
Between the time of the Minsk Accords in 2015 and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, on behalf of the besieged population in the east, nearly 14,000 ethnic Russian civilians had been killed by Ukraine’s forces, teaching the Russian language had been prohibited, Russian churches had been outlawed and Russian language media had been severely restricted.
The Istanbul Denial
Yet, despite the setback following Minsk and just two months into Russia’s invasion, another opportunity to end the war was being negotiated between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul.
The terms were similar to Minsk, but just as Ukraine was about to sign the agreement, U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson descended on Kiev on behalf of NATO to tell Zelensky to pull the plug — the U.S. and Europe would provide Ukraine with all the weapons it needed to continue to fight Russia.
So, four years on, here we are. Putin, fooled twice, has lost all trust in Western leaders and has no more time for their games. On the battlefield, Russia is in no rush; it is defeating Ukraine in a grinding war of attrition that by now is irreversibly in Russia’s favour.
Contrary to European leaders’ tough talk, Ukraine has nearly run out of trained soldiers, the U.S. has run out of ground war arms to give to Ukraine and, despite its belligerent rhetoric, Europe has run out of money to send to Kiev. (Meanwhile, revelations of corruption close in on Zelensky’s inner circle, claiming the resignation today of his chief of staff.)
The tragedy is that all of this – the loss of over a million lives (mostly young Ukrainian and Russian men thrown into the meatgrinder of trench warfare), the fleeing of over 7 million Ukrainian refugees who are unlikely to ever return and the widespread destruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure – could have all been avoided.
The notion that the West came to the aid of Ukraine to defend democracy in the most corrupt and neo-Nazi infested country in Europe is as deceptive as it is laughable. This has always been a battle initiated by the U.S./NATO alliance to weaken Moscow, overthrow Putin and return the West to dominance over Russia like in the 1990s, with Ukraine as the unfortunate willing proxy.
It was sheer hubris and stupidity for the neocons in Washington and Brussels, pumped up with triumphalism after the fall of the Soviet Union, to think they could mould the post-Cold War world including Eurasia in their interests without disastrous consequences.
In the end, Ukraine will be defeated but there are no real winners.
Both Ukraine and Russia will take years to recover from the human and economic cost of this devastating war; Europe’s economy is in tatters with near negative growth, energy prices three times higher than before the destruction of Russia’s Nord Stream pipeline, and companies fleeing to produce offshore.
As for the U.S. , it has nothing to show other than public anger over the war, soaring national debt and increasing isolation as a global power.
As always, the biggest prize-winners are the global defence contractors whose profits have skyrocketed since the start of the war in Ukraine and Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza.
Stefan Moore is an American-Australian documentary filmmaker whose films have received four Emmys and numerous other awards. In New York he was a series producer for WNET and a producer for the prime-time CBS News magazine program 48 HOURS. In the U.K. he worked as a series producer at the BBC, and in Australia he was an executive producer for the national film company Film Australia and ABC TV.
Trump’s Ukraine peace plan D.O.A with neocon Rubio as Secretary of State, National Security Advisor.
top diplomat Rubio doesn’t do peaceful diplomacy, only violent regime change.
Trump wants out of the US proxy war with Russia…but not because he’s man of peace.
Walt Zlotow West Suburban Peace Coalition Glen Ellyn IL , 28 Nov 25
Enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza that has killed over 100,000 Palestinians made no dent on Trump’s degraded conscience. In fact, he’s ecstatic that he can both control and rebuild Gaza as head of the colonial ruling ‘Board of Peace’ which will essentially cement Gaza into Greater Israel.
Trump’s sadism extends to his ghoulish glorying in blasting 20 small unarmed boats to smithereens off Venezuela as prelude to his imminent and violent regime change operation.
But Trump wants out of America’s lost proxy war with Russia destroying Ukraine. He cares not a whit about the death and destruction his predecessor Biden brought Ukraine by promising NATO membership and fueling their war on Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas. He simply knows it’s a lost cause that gobbles up valuable war resources needed for Gaza, Venezuela and eventual confrontation with China.
Why then was he so stupid to appoint virulent neocon Marco Rubio as both Secretary of State and National Security Advisor? Rubio is not in sync with Trump’s peace plan. He flew to Geneva to reassure European leaders committed to an impossible Ukrainian victory that ‘all is not lost.’ Rubio’s remarks halted momentum derived from Trump’ 28 point peace plan that Russia President Putin agrees provides a sensible framework for a negotiated peace. Europe is risking self-destruction to prevail over Russia and Rubio is all too willing to assist them.
Trump should fire Rubio from both jobs to regain lost momentum to extricate America from its lost war to weaken, isolate Russia from Europe. With Rubio at State and National Security, Ukraine will simply lose more territory and more cannon fodder every day he continues to gum up the peace process.
One might surmise Rubio would push for peace in Ukraine so he could spend more of his supposed diplomatic portfolio effecting regime change in Venezuela followed by Honduras, Nicaragua, Columbia and his ultimate prize Cuba.
But top diplomat Rubio doesn’t do peaceful diplomacy, only violent regime change. Since Russian regime was part of our 11 year long proxy war against Russia beginning when we KO’d Russian leaning Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovych in 2014, Rubio remains all in.
If Trump was serious about withdrawing from Ukraine and indeed all of Europe bankrupting their economies to confront an imaginary Russian bogyman, he’d have put peacemakers at State instead of warmakers. Forget ending the Ukraine war on Day 1. Unless he dumps Rubio and his fellow neocons, Trump will get to Day 1,461, his last, still enmeshed in the Ukraine roach motel.
Fighting for Peace and Fighting for War in Ukraine
More importantly, Kiev also rejected Russia’s key demand, thus maintaining the root, main cause of the war: NATO’s and Kiev’s attempts to have Ukraine become a NATO member
Russian and Eurasian Politics, by Gordonhahn, November 26, 2025, https://gordonhahn.com/2025/11/26/fighting-for-peace-and-fighting-for-war-in-ukraine/
We are witnessing another failed effort by U.S. President Donald Trump to make peace in Ukraine. Europe, perhaps along with the Deep State, has helped Kiev reject yet another Trump diplomatic effort. This leaves in place the threat of a Europe-wide war with Russia. Europe very possibly will spark a larger war with Russia.
The effort for peace spawned by the 28-point plan drafted by Steve Witkoff in consultation with Moscow has failed because Kiev again has refused to accept Russia’s key demands: Ukrainian neutrality, territorial concessions, and demilitarization. Denazification appears to a less key demand for Moscow or at least Kiev is willing to make concessions on this point.
Rather than accepting its imminent defeat the Ukrainians joined with their European allies in once again drafting an alternative, completely countervaling and counter-productive peace proposal, which Moscow immediately rejected, having already accepted the Trump document, as „a basis for a future agreement,“ as Russian President Vladimir Putin put it.
This could have led to the beginning of a three-way give and take, but Kiev rejected abandoning the 20 percent of Donetsk Oblast territory its forces still hold and demands an 800,000-man army. More importantly, it also rejected Russia’s key demand, thus maintaining the root, main cause of the war: NATO’s and Kiev’s attempts to have Ukraine become a NATO member, despite the objective threat this poses to Russian national security and Moscow’s opposition to NATO expansion spanning three decades.
Europe immediately declared its opposition to the plan and raced to draft the alternative, Kievan plan to undercut the Trump plan, repeating an exercise they undertook in summer when another Trump diplomatic effort seemed might make some headway. Furthermore, it appears that the Deep State and/or MI6 have helped to spearhead the Eurpean effort to derail the Trump peace train.
The bugging and leak to Bloomberg of a less than compromising conversation between Steven Witkoff and Russian President’s chief foreign policy advisor Yurii Ushakov has been used as was intended: to discredit the peace plan, which neocon propagandists like Michael Weiss have claimed was a purely Russian creation that Trump and other ‚Putin agents‘ dutifully pushed on tot he agenda, doing the Kremlin’s bidding.
Trump’s only hope of acheiving an agreement is to force one by pulling out all the stops in order to pressure Kiev to accede to Moscow’s demands, which are backed up strongly by Russia’s mounting advance across eastern Ukraine towards the Dnieper River.
Only depriving Kiev of all US assistance has a chance of forcing Ukrainian leader Volodomyr Zelenskiy to agree to a neutrality, a small army, and territorial losses. But Trump does not want to be blamed for helping Russia to achieve its war goals and to be able to claim a military victory over both Ukraine and NATO. Trump cannot abode a semi-credible propaganda campaign tot he effect that it was he is a loser, that he lost the NATO-Russia Ukrainian War, imagined by most in the West as ‚Putin’s full-scale, unprovoked war against Ukraine.‘ This is the stalement – one between Trump’s political needs and personal weaknesses, European and Kievan elites political-survival needs requiring Russia’s defeat, and Russia’s realistic perceptions of its national security’s min imal requirements – there is no stalement on the battlefield.
Only two outcomes are possible immediately – that is, during Trump’s presidency: (1) Russia takes all of Ukraine east of the Dniester or (2) a European-wide war begins when some Europeans deploy forces to western Ukraine and they are attacked by Russia and/or when Ukraine or its Western partners orchestrate some false flag operation to justify an escalation. These two outcomes both can occur sequentially.
The first outcome is already underway prompting panic and desparate steps in global neocon circles from Washington to Stanford to London and Paris. Russian forces are taking Kupyansk in the north on their way to Kharkov. After Kharkov, the road is open to western Kiev. Russian troops are finishing the capture of the important conglomeration and hub of Pokrovsk and Myrnograd, which opens the way to the last significant Ukrainian strong point of Pavlograd, located a mere 15 miles from the major industrial city of Dnipro on the Dnieper.
Further to the south, Russian forces have already entered Guliapole after having finished up sweeping through several small towns in the wake of capturing Vugledar 13 months ago. The southern city of Zaporozhia on the Dnieper also is now in site. Gulaipole is halfway from Vugledar to Zaporozhia, with Russian forces moving twice as fast as they were moving immediately after taking Vugledar. In addition to these forces marching west, other Russian forces are fighting towards the city from the south. That is the Russia will be at the Dnieper in force along a broad front in a matter of months, with Dnipro and Zaporozhia likely to fall in 1-3 months. There is no stopping the Russian army now. Its manpower, weapons superiority, and morale are increasing, while those of Kiev are in persistent decline.
The second outcome, which becomes more possible, as European and Kievan elites scramble to avoid political, professional and even personal disaster for themselves, is a European provocation of a larger European war. The French are making more and more insistent noises about sending troops to Odessa and elsewhere in Ukraine. And the voices calling for the deployment of European troops to Ukraine are becoming increasingly shrill.
Most recently, Gen. Fabien Mandon, French army’s new chief-of-staff, told a congress of mayors that France’s must muster will to fight:
“We have the know-how, and we have the economic and demographic strength to dissuade the regime in Moscow.”
“What we are lacking – and this is where you [the mayors] have a role to play – is the spirit. The spirit which accepts that we will have to suffer if we are to protect what we are.
“If our country wavers because it is not ready to lose its children … or to suffer economically because the priority has to be military production, then we are indeed at risk.
“You must speak of this in your towns and villages” (www.nytimes.com/2025/11/24/world/europe/france-voluntary-military-service.html).
Simultaneously, former NATO Secreytary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen declared: „Europe must stop waiting for signals from Washington and take the initiative in Ukraine. Paper guarantees mean nothing to Putin. Only concrete commitments matter. That’s why I now call for Europe to deploy up to 20,000 troops behind Ukraine’s front lines, establish an air shield with around 150 combat aircraft, and unlock frozen Russian assets. Europe earns its seat at the table by bringing real capability, not by asking for permission“ (https://x.com/AndersFoghR/status/1993221555166310410?s=20).
Europe’s ruling neocon-neoliberal elite are ‚simulacrats‘; they believe they can create reality on the basis of an the old world long dead and a new world it imagines, attempts to construct, make real by way of propaganda and the fear and hate it can induce. The old war of different glorious national pasts is mixed with the fictional new world of a Europe with perfect, pure democracies, histories, cultures, motives, and policies facing a putrid, barbarian Russia driven by an inexhaustible thirst for domination, power, and violence. Reality can be instantly reconfigured. First, Russia is a weak authoritarian regime with clay feet of oil and terror and an army that captures an uninhabited Ukrainian village or two per month. Then it is capable of conquering Europe, being at your front door virtually any day now.
The choice between war and peace should be an easy one. To be sure, Mr. Putin seems to have chosen war back in February 2022. However, there was good cause, and he softened the blow by conducting not the full-fledged massive invasion of Western mythology but a limited invasion force of some 100,000 troops and using little of Russia’s monumental air power. Moreover, he immediately contacted Kiev for peace talks, seeking an end to NATO expansion in Ukraine and the massive military buildup there equipped and trained by NATO. Mr. Zelenskiy immediately agreed to talk, and the ensuing Istanbul process yielded a treaty initialed by both sides in late March.
But the West chose a more serious war. The Bucha false flag ‘Russian massacre‘ was organized and Washington sent its British minion, then PM Boris Johnson to inform Kiev that the West would not provide the security guarantees, upon which much of Kiev’s agreement to the treaty rested and promised military and other assistance ‘for as long as it takes.‘ Putin’s short war for Russian nationals security became Ukraine’s long war for NATO. Now it is one for the survival of the Maidan regime and perhaps of NATO and the EU.
Some in the West have changed the nature of its assistance, struggling to build an offramp from destruction for Kiev, but others appear ready to offer in full the Ukrainian sacrificial lamb on the altar of NATO expansion ‘for as long as it takes‘ for Trump to leave the Oval Office and a new proponent of war for dying, democratic Ukraine‘ takes his place.
1 This Month
4 May -West Suburban Peace Coalition to discuss Iran war at May Educational Forum
Monday, May 4, 7:00 – 8:00 PM Central Standard Time
Title: : How Trump’s Narrative Tries to Shape the Reality of the War on Iran.
Contact Walt Zlotow, zlotow@hotmail.com 630 442 3045 for further information
14 May – online event From Bombs to Data Centres: the Face of Nuclear Colonialism
To see nuclear-related stories in greater depth and intensity – go to https://nuclearinformation.wordpress.com
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