Bruce Gagnon is coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space.
He offers his own reflections on organizing and the state of America's declining empire....
After forcibly mobilizing a Ukrainian man, Territorial Recruitment Center (TRC) officers told him he was being sent "straight to the slaughter," a captured conscript and former fighter of Ukraine's 25th brigade told Sputnik.
"The next morning, I woke up and my military ID was ready. They told me: ‘You’re being sent to the slaughter,’" Khorvat Emil said.
He recounted how six TRC officers assaulted and forcibly conscripted him while he was returning home from a hospital where his mother and four-year-old daughter were staying. He voluntarily surrendered to Russian troops in Dimitrov (also known as Myrnohrad), in the Donetsk People’s Republic.
The Ukrainian military has been struggling with severe personnel shortages. Recruitment officers have been routinely detaining men of conscription age in the streets, sparking public outcry and protests.
Videos of forced mobilization into the Ukrainian armed forces are widely circulating online, showing enlistment officers beating and loading men into minibuses. In response, draft-age men across Ukraine are going to great lengths to avoid conscription: fleeing the country illegally, setting fire to enlistment offices, and hiding at home.
Iran is acting like the only adult in the room - like the only country mature enough - while vampires are acting like spoiled brats enabled by daddy US.
US is in huuuuuuge debt they have no goods to sell the world like China - US staying above the water by selling weapons in every conflict on this planet - many if not all they have started or they trying to start .
U.S.-NATO-Israel chaos war machine now upping the anti inside Africa as the continent moves away from the west toward BRICS+. Thus the west brings on WW3 in their last ditch quest for uber control. Sieg Heil and all that kind of thing....
If it was not clear before the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) Christmas Day bombing of its Sokoto state, that Nigeria is not a sovereign African nation but is instead a neo-colonial state with a Western puppet government, it should be crystal clear now. The longstanding fundamental crisis of the sovereignty of African nations lies in the continuity of its neo-colonial structures, with the unrestrained operation of AFRICOM as a graphic example of that dependency.
The Black Alliance for Peace’s (BAP) Africa Team and U.S. Out of Africa Network (USOAN) unequivocally condemn this veiled act of aggression in the strongest terms. The U.S. administration claims the strike was “...against ISIS Terrorist Scum in Northwest Nigeria, who have been targeting and viciously killing, primarily, innocent Christians.” The Trump administration’s alleged concern for Christians is a transparent ruse for gaining a military foothold bordering the Alliance of Sahel States (AES). The 2011 U.S. destruction of the Libyan state gave power to these “jihadist” groups, who continue to serve U.S. interests by keeping Africa destabilized. The caretakers of the US-EU-NATO axis of domination are incapable of any such humanitarian regard. Palestinian Christians can attest to this. The U.S. has no right to attack anyone in Nigeria. As far as BAP and the USOAN — a network that consists of individuals and organizations throughout the African continent — is concerned the comprador leadership who do not genuinely represent the people, cannot give them permission to do so.
The only two real motives for this attack are the influence of white supremacy inherent in the U.S. settler state, as expressed in the Trump administration's ties to evangelicalism, as well as concern for the insistent anti-imperialism of the AES. It is actually unlikely that only one of these is a factor by itself. As BAP Africa Team member Tunde Osazua explains:
“The threat of U.S. military action against Nigeria, justified by claims of a 'Christian genocide,' did not emerge in a vacuum. Trump’s remarks came after weeks of lobbying by US lawmakers and conservative Christian groups and reflect renewed domestic political pressure to appear tough on the marginalisation or persecution of Christians abroad…”
It is important for African (Black) people to keep in mind that U.S. imperialism often uses a dual contradictory strategy: on the one hand engaging in so-called “counter-terrorism” operations while also on the other hand (covertly) supporting terrorism. Imperialist interests in Africa are dependent on a destabilized continent versus one where its people are free to exercise self-determination. Five days prior to the U.S. airstrike, the Alliance of Sahel States launched a unified military force to strengthen regional security. If the AES were to successfully repel and overcome the violent extremism plaguing that region, it would further delegitimize the paternalistic claim that Africa needs AFRICOM and other NATO forces.
BAP and the leadership of the USOAN call on all anti-imperialist forces inside the U.S. to denounce the Congressional Black Caucus’ spineless silence on this incident. Their silence is emblematic of their role as a settler neo-colonial and comprador class, a counterpart to the Nigerian government. It is further proof that their true concerns about Trump and his administration are as shameless career politicians beholden to U.S. capital and the Democratic party wing of the duopoly.
Today the U.S. is wary of carrying out a naked military attack in Africa if it cannot stand behind a veil of anti-terrorism supported by that continent’s comprador class. In contrast to the increasing lawlessness of the U.S. state that is allowed to act with impunity against Venezuela, if the U.S. were to directly strike an AES state, which are very popular across Africa and around the world, there could likely be a domestic mass Black led response. And not even U.S. lackey ruled African governments could support them in such an action. The Economic Community of West African states (ECOWAS) does not have the same luxury as the right wing white elites of Latin America who openly call for regime change in Venezuela. For it to be silent or complicit on U.S. adventurism on the continent would destabilize their already weak states. This is already happening with Nigeria with many not believing that the state signed off on the strike.
ECOWAS remembers having to abandon its initial threat of military force against the AES because of support within their own countries. BAP also remembers and appreciates the response of the world when the AFRICOM Commander, General Micheal Langley openly admitted to regime change policy against Captain Ibrahim Traore, leader of the AES member state Burkina Faso.
The AFRICOM operations in Nigeria must put all Africans on notice. We must respond with unity and purpose. The primary challenge to Africa’s self-determination today is neo-colonialism and its comprador layer that obscures the reality from the people. Kwame Nkrumah pointed it out as “the last stage of imperialism,” a stage in which the masses across the continent are standing up to today. BAP and the USOAN stand with them.
Saudi Arabia’s ruling dictator, Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), is investing the funds of the Saudi people in Israel’s ethnic cleansing and genocide of Palestinians.
Please join us and call on Saudi ruler MBS to stop investing Saudi funds in people who oppose Palestinian freedom.
Under MBS, Saudi Arabia’s national Public Investment Fund (PIF) has invested billions of dollars in people and ventures that promote Israel’s destruction of Palestinian communities.
The Saudi monarchy invested $2 billion in the private equity firm of Jared Kushner, the son-in-law of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Jared Kushner’s firm Affinity Partners then bought nearly 10% of Israeli insurance company Phoenix Financial.
Phoenix Financial invests in Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian Territories and provides services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Israeli Police.
Kushner is a personal friend of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and has hosted Netanyahu in his home.
Kushner is one of the key individuals advancing Trump’s plan for Gaza, in which Trump is personally taking control of Gaza as chairman of a so-called “Board of Peace.”
Join us and call on Saudi Arabia’s dictator MBS to stop using the money of the Saudi people to fund opponents of Palestinian freedom.
Col Jacques Baud explains that on December 12 he learned via Radio Free Europe that his name would appear on an EU sanctions list.
After contacting his embassy in Brussels (where he lives), he received no follow-up. On December 15 the EU formally published the sanctions, which served as the only notification. Since then, his bank accounts have been frozen and he is banned from traveling within the EU, preventing him from returning to his home country.
He says he is accused of spreading pro-Russian propaganda and disinformation, including allegedly promoting a conspiracy theory that Ukraine orchestrated its own invasion by Russia in 2022. He strongly denies this, stating that he merely quoted remarks made in 2019 by Oleksiy Arestovych, then an adviser to President Zelensky, about the risk of war if Ukraine pursued NATO membership. He emphasizes that quoting a Ukrainian official is being treated as evidence of acting as a Russian agent, despite his claim that he has no ties to Russia.
The speaker stresses that he was never warned, contacted, or given a chance to respond by EU, Belgian, or Swiss authorities before the sanctions were imposed. He argues the decision is political, not legal: there was no court ruling, no charges under any law, no right to defense, and no real avenue for appeal.
He further explains that he deliberately avoided appearing on Russian media, refused invitations from outlets like RT, and bases his work largely on Ukrainian and U.S. sources to maintain academic objectivity. He insists propaganda itself is not a crime under European law and says he has always tried to use precise, nuanced language in his analysis.
Overall, he presents his case as evidence of a serious erosion of democracy and free speech in Europe, arguing that objective analysis of the Russia–Ukraine war is being labeled “pro-Russian.”
He describes the sanctions as effectively confiscating his livelihood without due process and says he is now struggling to meet basic needs, pending a possible humanitarian exemption to access limited funds for essentials like food.
“They do not consider it possible to step back and allow the situation on our border region to be stabilized. Therefore, they are making gradual attempts to torpedo the negotiation process,” military analyst Alexander Stepanov told Sputnik, commenting on the attack on Putin’s residence in Novgorod region by 91 drones Sunday night.
“We’ve seen this attitude in the openly-stated positions of key EU leaders. Now, we’re seeing it in the intentions of intelligence agencies, mostly likely British, who are clearly continuing to develop plans to launch terrorist strikes on strategically significant targets, to carry out targeted terrorist attacks against high-ranking Russian military personnel, de facto transforming the war into permanent proxy-hybrid mode using the tools of state terrorism,” Stepanov, an expert from the Institute of Law and National Security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, explained.
Naturally, these efforts serve to further “delegitimize” the Kiev regime, Stepanov said. They make it clear that Ukraine’s authorities are “war criminals and, more broadly speaking, international terrorists, who have neither the right to govern this territory nor the right to control the lives of its citizens.”
Negotiating with such actors is “impossible, and does not fit into any normative framework of international relations,” the observer stressed.
Stepanov expects a “maximum reduction” in US-Ukraine military-technical and intelligence cooperation, including for navigation and targeting systems, in the wake of Sunday’s attack.
If US statements “are backed by real will, it would be possible to remotely disable the control systems of virtually all weapons supplied through Western channels, including American ones, and to end the presence of US military specialists who, at certain stages, support the operation of both sophisticated Patriot air defense systems and long-range HIMARS tactical systems,” Stepanov said.
Same goes for Starlink, which could leave Ukraine’s military blind “within a few hours.”
As far as Russia is concerned, Sunday night's attack on Putin's residence will "likely entail reclassifying" those held responsible "as terrorists, subject to capture or elimination," Stepanov believes.
Beside the ongoing genocide in Gaza, Israel is carrying out a silent genocide behind prison walls.
More than 9,300 Palestinian detainees are subjected to torture, starvation, medical neglect, and daily violent raids inside Israeli prisons.
Through routine abuse, the weaponization of food, beatings, dog attacks, exposure to extreme cold, and enforced disappearances, Israel is operating a mass detention system that constitutes collective punishment and systematic torture against Palestinians.
Beijing slammed the recent US weapons package for Taiwan as ‘a major breach of the One China principle’.
China placed retaliatory measures against 20 US defense industry companies for arms sales to Taiwan, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry. This is a hammer blow against the US military industrial complex. Some details:
The sanctions target key players in the American defense industry working in the fields of UAVs, electronic warfare, maritime unmanned platforms, AI, and combat management systems:
• Northrop Grumman • L3Harris Maritime Services • Boeing’s division in St. Louis • Gibb & Cox • Advanced Acoustics Concepts • VSE Corporation • Sierra Technical Services, Inc. • Red Cat Holdings • Teal Drones, Inc. • ReconCraft • High Point Aerotechnologies • Dedrone • Area-I • Dive Technologies • Vantor • Intelligent Epitaxy Technology, Inc. • Epirus • Rhombus Power • Lazarus Enterprises Inc. • Blue Force Technologies
What the package of measures includes:
freezing of all assets in China;
a complete ban on any commercial and cooperative ties with Chinese entities;
personal sanctions against company executives, including PalmerLuckey (founder of Anduril);
a ban on entry to China, including Hong Kong and Macau.
As backdrop, Taiwan’s two main opposition parties, the Kuomintang (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP), used their combined majority to pass a resolution to impeach President Lai Qing-de. The vote on this resolution will take place on May 19, 2026. Society is deeply polarized. Taiwan’s current ‘democratic’ administration is pursuing martial law and a military dictatorship.
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China did not forget about the EU. China is imposing temporary duties of up to 42.7% on certain dairy products imported from the EU. Milk and cream, as well as cheese, including processed cheese, are but the beginning of this list, walloping France!
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China also did not forget about Japan, and at least 50% or more flights to Japan have been cancelled, along with warnings on all media urging the Chinese NOT to visit Japan. Tourist revenues for Japan are tanking.
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Thailand and Cambodia agree to a ceasefire effective 27 December — local media. Malaysia and China active in the negotiations. We wait on this one.
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Besides rank and file Israelis abandoning Israel, their companies and technologists are running. Israeli tech companies flood Europe – According to EIT Hub Israel, around 30k specialists are employed by them throughout the continent, mostly in the UK, Ukraine and Germany.
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Will Schryver@imetatronink reports that the fleeing Bella1 tanker was seized in the last hours. "The US forcibly boarded and seized the VLCC Bella 1 today. The United States under President Donald Trump has become an out-of-control rogue nation.”
There are a number of objectives here. The bigger objective is to forcibly impose an embargo against the oil trade of Russia, China, and Iran. Venezuela is a starting point but also meant to be the crowning glory of empire strength for Marco Rubio. This will not end well.
MB and I watched this new documentary last night. It's a block buster about the professional journalistic life of Seymour Hersch.
The film covers the intrigues of his work on Watergate, My Lai massacre in Vietnam, CIA foreign assassinations, MK Ultra (the mind control program brought to America by former Nazi scientists under Operation Paperclip), U.S. Army Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, U.S. destruction of Nordstream pipeline, and far too many more stories to recount.
You won't regret viewing this film. It's an American classic for sure.
It tells a sad but real truth about our nation and it's only getting worse by the day. Largely because CBS TV, New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the corporate owned media won't report on these stories any more. They are bought and paid for by Mr. Big.
Hours before airtime last Sunday, CBS News' “60 Minutes” pulled a planned story on Donald Trump's deportation policy at the order of the network's new editor-in-chief, Bari Weiss.
Luckily it aired in Canada which enabled people to grab the segment to share worldwide.
YouTube took it down - likely from orders of the zionists who appear to control most social media outlets these days.
For some, the end of the world did not come through a Great Flood, but through a traditional Christmas bombing strike, pretexted by way of saving Christians in Nigeria.
This Sokoto State is right on the border with Niger, one of the Sahel States. Nigeria thanked the US Africa Command for the strikes in a long, flowery note that the US Africa Command itself may have written, since it contains every word in the lexicon of a Rules-Based International Order.
THE ENCAMPMENTS follows student organizers at elite universities, including the recently detained Mahmoud Khalil, as they take a historic stand against their institutions’ investments in the Gaza genocide.
While originally scheduled for later release, we have chosen to bring it to audiences early with the blessing of those featured, driven by the urgent need to challenge the misinformation surrounding Mahmoud, the student movement, and all who feel the moral duty to stand against genocide.
Gaza is drowning… and the world is still counting the drownings as mere numbers on a screen. Tents are being swallowed by the water, and children are shivering into silence… and you? You dry up your consciences and wash away any trace of shame.
Oh world: how many more tents must collapse? How many more children must drown in the mud before your frozen humanity stirs? And you who call yourselves “initiators,” we don’t need your fleeting successes or your dancing on the trend.
Gaza is not a season… nor is it a publicity stunt. If your hearts don’t move before your cameras do, then we have no need of you at all. Gaza isn’t waiting for an audience… Gaza is waiting for human beings. 💔
Jesus was a social activist who stood up to the Roman empire
Martin Luther King - Reflections on Jesus
He was born in an obscure village, the child of a poor peasant woman. And then he grew up in still another obscure village, where he worked as a carpenter until he was thirty years old.
Then for three years, he just got on his feet, and he was an itinerant preacher. He didn't have much. He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family. He never owned a house. He never went to college. He never visited a big city. He never went two hundred miles from where he was born. He did none of the usual things that the world would associate with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.
He was 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. They called him a rabble-rouser. They called him a troublemaker. They said he was an agitator. He practiced civil disobedience; he broke the laws of the day. And so he was turned over to the people in power, and went through the mockery of trial.
Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today, he stands as the most influential figure that ever entered human history. All of the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of humanity on this earth as much as that one solitary life. Even today I can hear them talking about him. Every now and then somebody says, `He's King of Kings'. And again I can hear somebody saying, `He's the Prince of Peace.'
Somewhere else I can hear somebody saying, 'In Christ there is no east nor west, in him no south and north, but one community of love throughout the whole wide earth.'
He didn't have anything. He just went around serving.
Pepe Escobar joins to analyze how Russia is sending a stark message with one of its most powerful weapons and no one is talking about it except the panicked European backers of Ukraine's dying regime.
Meanwhile, Trump is escalating an oil tanker war against Venezuela and the Western hemisphere that is already backing him into a corner that won't end well for the flailing US empire.
Pepe, reporting from Sicily, also discusses on NATO expansion and Germany's plans for massive rearmament aimed at Russia.
Britain’s ruling class loves to cosplay as a titan. From the podium, it’s Churchillian thunder: prepare for war, deter Russia, stand tall, lead the free world. Back in the engine room, it’s Whitehall with a calculator, sweating through its suit because the numbers simply don’t work.
The Financial Times reports Starmer has delayed the Defence Investment Plan over “affordability,” kicking it into 2026, because the military’s wish list collided with the Treasury’s reality. Translation: the rhetoric is premium, the balance sheet is bargain-bin.
And then, because the universe has a sense of irony sharp enough to cut steel, enter Ajax; the £6-plus billion armoured vehicle program that has become the British state’s spirit animal. Trials paused again. Fresh safety concerns. Soldiers injured. Crews sickened by vibration and noise. Endless reviews. Endless “lessons learned.” Endless press lines insisting this is all somehow progress.
If you want to understand modern Britain, don’t read strategy documents. Watch a procurement program that cannot stop hurting the people it is meant to protect.
Ajax was meant to be the backbone of Britain’s future armoured forces, a next-generation reconnaissance and strike platform designed to replace ageing vehicles and restore credibility to the British Army’s manoeuvre capability. Instead, it has become a case study in institutional failure: spiraling costs, years of delay, fundamental design flaws, and a safety record so poor it forced repeated trial suspensions. Soldiers were not merely inconvenienced; they were physically harmed in testing, suffering hearing damage, sickness, and long-term health concerns.
This is not a marginal technical glitch. It is the predictable outcome of a system where industrial capacity has been hollowed out, accountability diffused, and procurement reduced to a paper exercise optimized for contracts, not combat. Ajax does not fail because Britain lacks engineers or soldiers. It fails because Britain no longer possesses a state machinery capable of translating ambition into functioning hardware at scale.
This is the farce at the heart of the Atlantic security sermon.
Britain speaks about Russia the way a fading aristocrat sneers at a rising industrial superpower... condescending, dismissive, utterly uncurious. For years we’ve heard the same insult recycled like a nervous tic: Russia is a “gas station,” a crude petro-state propped up by fumes and nostalgia. Yet here we are.
Russia the “gas station,” under the most comprehensive sanctions regime in modern history, has been forced—by Western institutions themselves, into an inconvenient admission: Russia now ranks as the fourth-largest economy in the world by purchasing-power parity.
So let’s pause and ask the question Britain’s elites refuse to face. If Russia is a glorified gas station, what exactly does that make Britain? A country that cannot publish a defence investment plan on time. A state that cannot field a functioning armoured vehicle without injuring its own troops. An economy that cannot sustain rearmament in spite of private finance gimmicks and accounting contortions. A political class that cannot reconcile its war talk with its industrial capacity.
If Russia is a gas station, Britain increasingly resembles a heritage museum complete with a gift shop, living off past glories while subcontracting its future.
Now let’s move to where the illusion truly collapses, production.
Wars are not won by hysterical speeches, theatrical bravado, summits, or moral pronouncements. They are won by output — steel, shells, access to critical minerals, drones, logistics, and the brutal arithmetic of throughput. On this front, the West has been dragged, kicking and screaming, into recognition of a reality it tried to meme out of existence.
Greta Thunberg was arrested in central London at a demonstration in support of Palestine Action.
The Prisoners for Palestine protest group confirmed Greta had been arrested at a demonstration in support of the Palestine Action members on hunger strike in prison - some of them now over 50 days without food.
Bruce Gagnon, the coordinator of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space joined me [Regis Tremblay] for an emotional discussion that ranged from Trump’s role as Captain Hook in Pirates of the Caribbean, the psychotic partner of Netanyahu in the genocide in Palestine, to the fake 28 Point Peace Plan, to Trump’s Golden Dome and the Space Race.
We analyzed the role of Witkoff and Kushner in Trump’s plans for an Atlantic City Casino, resort, and golf course on the bones of Palestinians, and the role of those two real estate shysters in the “peace plan” talks with Vladimir Putin.
We mocked Trump’s coveting of the beautiful, warm Crimea bordered by four oceans! Gotta think it’s a sign that Witkoff and Kushner are discussing how Trump could build another casino, resort, golf course, and a Mar-a-Lago mansion a few kilometers from the famous Livadia Palace here in greater Yalta when the war in Ukraine ends.
Private equity is collapsing—and now they want your retirement savings to bail them out.
President Trump’s team just leaked a potential executive order that would unlock $12.2 trillion in 401(k) assets for risky private equity investment.
These are the same firms sitting on a $3 trillion pile of toxic, unsellable debt.
Harvard and Yale, with nearly 95% of their endowments in these same funds, haven’t been able to sell off $8 billion worth of PE for eight months. And their returns? A weak 5–7% over 4 years—while the S&P 500 soared 95%.
Now they want YOU to buy in—with your retirement.
This is not about access. It’s a setup.
It’s a billionaire bailout dressed as opportunity.
Today’s leaders disconnect themselves from historical record, and rely entirely on appeals to limbic instincts and knee jerk passions.
Just observe the EU apparat’s current cast of uncharismatic minstrels, who brazenly dismiss objective historical realities in angling their cheap narratives. Coming to mind is KajaKallas’s recent affected disbelief at the idea that Russia defeated the Nazis in WWII in a lazy attempt to perpetuate the image of Russia as ancestral ‘Other’ to the West.
[KajaKallasis an Estonian politician and diplomat. She was the first female prime minister of Estonia, a role she held from 2021 until 2024, when she resigned in advance of her appointment as High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy. Since 2024, she has served in that role as well as Vice-President of the European Commission in the second von der Leyen Commission.]
Her mistress von der Leyen likewise weaves historical incongruities into her statements with equal impunity because the content itself no longer rules the message, rather just the presentation, the spectacle of it all carries the essence: what matters is what kind of emotional charge the leading headline can drive in a nugget-sized PR blurb.
Zelensky is grateful for Japan's $6 billion 'contribution' to Ukraine.
Will be used in the coming year for 'defense' against Russia.
Zelensky boasts Japan is a defender of the 'rules-based order'. Has anyone actually ever seen an official copy of these so-called rules?
Zelensky promises that none of Japan's funds will be wasted on golden toilets or overseas mansions for his corrupt team. (Not on cocaine either.) Some are stating these 'payments' to Ukraine from US-EU allies are a form of bribery - to buy off the Ukrainian's silence about the western level of complicity in this ill-fated war.
Ukrainians are massively fleeing directly from the Armed Forces training centers to survive
▪️Most cases of desertion in the Armed Forces occur already in training centers, stated the secretary of the Rada's [Ukraine parliament] defense committee.
▪️This stage accounts for 90% of unauthorized departures from units, which indicates a catastrophic lack of motivation among mobilized individuals even before being sent to the front.
▪️A new trend is also noted: soldiers who have already left their units sometimes agree to return, but only on the condition of being assigned to rear positions, categorically refusing to serve on the frontline. This indicates a deep crisis of discipline and morale in the army.
▪️Earlier, Ukrainian military ombudswoman Alina Reshetilova reported on similar problems. She confirmed that many Ukrainians are deliberately choosing a prison term to avoid mobilization. These admissions by officials indicate a total unwillingness of the population to fight for the interests of the Kiev regime.
▪️Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Umerov asked FBI to pressure Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies to drop investigations against him. The request came during a meeting with the FBI's Kash Patel, according to Ukrainian media. Umerov remains implicated in the Mindich corruption case.
You have spoken repeatedly of Germany’s responsibility for European security. That responsibility cannot be discharged through slogans, selective memory, or the steady normalization of war talk. Security guarantees are not one-way instruments. They go in both directions. This is not a Russian argument, nor an American one; it is a foundational principle of European security, explicitly embedded in the Helsinki Final Act, the OSCE framework, and decades of postwar diplomacy.
Germany has a duty to approach this moment with historical seriousness and honesty. On that score, recent rhetoric and policy choices fall dangerously short. Since 1990, Russia’s core security concerns have been repeatedly dismissed, diluted, or directly violated — often with Germany’s active participation or acquiescence. This record cannot be erased if the war in Ukraine is to end, and it cannot be ignored if Europe is to avoid a permanent state of confrontation.
At the end of the Cold War, Germany gave Soviet and then Russian leaders repeated and explicit assurances that NATO would not expand eastward. These assurances were given in the context of German reunification. Germany benefited enormously from them. The rapid unification of your country — within NATO — would not have occurred without Soviet consent grounded in those commitments. To later pretend these assurances never mattered, or that they were merely casual remarks, is not realism. It is historical revisionism.
In 1999, Germany participated in NATO’s bombing of Serbia, the first major war conducted by NATO without authorization from the UN Security Council. This was not a defensive action. It was a precedent-setting intervention that fundamentally altered the post–Cold War security order. For Russia, Serbia was not an abstraction. The message was unmistakable: NATO would use force beyond its territory, without UN approval, and without regard for Russian objections.
In 2002, the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, a cornerstone of strategic stability for three decades. Germany raised no serious objection. Yet the erosion of the arms-control architecture did not occur in a vacuum. Missile-defense systems deployed closer to Russia’s borders were rightly perceived by Russia as destabilizing. Dismissing those perceptions as paranoia was political propaganda, not sound diplomacy.
In 2008, Germany recognized Kosovo’s independence, despite explicit warnings that this would undermine the principle of territorial integrity and set a precedent that would reverberate elsewhere. Once again, Russia’s objections were brushed aside as bad faith rather than engaged as serious strategic concerns.
The steady push to expand NATO to Ukraine and Georgia — formally declared at the 2008 Bucharest Summit — crossed the brightest of red lines, despite vociferous, clear, consistent, and repeated objections raised by Moscow for years. When a major power identifies a core security interest and reiterates it for decades, ignoring it is not diplomacy. It is willful escalation.
Germany’s role in Ukraine since 2014 is especially troubling. Berlin, alongside Paris and Warsaw, brokered the February 21, 2014 agreement between President Yanukovych and the opposition, an agreement intended to halt violence and preserve constitutional order. Within hours, that agreement collapsed. A violent overthrow followed. A new government emerged through extra-constitutional means. Germany recognized and supported the new regime immediately. The agreement Germany had guaranteed was abandoned without consequence.
The Minsk II agreement of 2015 was supposed to be the corrective — a negotiated framework to end the war in eastern Ukraine. Germany again served as a guarantor. Yet for seven years Minsk II was not implemented by Ukraine. Kyiv openly rejected its political provisions. Germany did not enforce them. Former German and other European leaders have since acknowledged that Minsk was treated less as a peace plan than as a holding action. That admission alone should force a reckoning.
Merz and Zelensky
Against this background, calls for ever more weapons, ever harsher rhetoric, and ever greater “resolve” ring hollow. They ask Europe to forget the recent past in order to justify a future of permanent confrontation.
Enough with propaganda. Enough with the moral infantilization of the public. Europeans are fully capable of understanding that security dilemmas are real, that NATO actions have consequences, and that peace is not achieved by pretending that Russia’s security concerns do not exist.
European security is indivisible. That principle means that no country can strengthen its security at the expense of another’s without provoking instability. It also means that diplomacy is not appeasement, and that historical honesty is not betrayal. Germany once understood this. Ostpolitik was not weakness; it was strategic maturity. It recognized that Europe’s stability depends on engagement, arms control, economic ties, and respect for the legitimate security interests of Russia.
Today, Germany needs that maturity again. Stop speaking as if war is inevitable or virtuous. Stop outsourcing strategic thinking to alliance talking points. Start engaging seriously in diplomacy — not as a public-relations exercise, but as a genuine effort to rebuild a European security architecture that includes, rather than excludes, Russia. A renewed European security architecture must begin with clarity and restraint. First, it requires an unequivocal end to NATO’s eastward enlargement — to Ukraine, to Georgia, and to any other state along Russia’s borders.
NATO expansion was not an inevitable feature of the post–Cold War order; it was a political choice, taken in violation of solemn assurances given in 1990 and pursued despite repeated warnings that it would destabilize Europe. Security in Ukraine will not come from the forward deployment of German, French, or other European troops, which would only entrench division and prolong war. It will come through neutrality, backed by credible international guarantees. The historical record is unambiguous: neither the Soviet Union nor the Russian Federation violated the sovereignty of neutral states in the postwar order — not Finland, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, or others. Neutrality worked because it addressed legitimate security concerns on all sides. There is no serious reason to pretend it cannot work again.
Second, stability requires demilitarization and reciprocity. Russian forces should be kept well back from NATO borders, and NATO forces — including missile systems — must be kept well back from Russia’s borders. Security is indivisible, not one-sided. Border regions should be demilitarized through verifiable agreements, not saturated with ever more weapons. Sanctions should be lifted as part of a negotiated settlement; they have failed to bring peace and have inflicted severe damage on Europe’s own economy.
Germany, in particular, should reject the reckless confiscation of Russian state assets — a brazen violation of international law that undermines trust in the global financial system. Reviving German industry through lawful, negotiated trade with Russia is not capitulation. It is economic realism. Europe should not destroy its own productive base in the name of moral posturing.
Finally, Europe must return to the institutional foundations of its own security. The OSCE — not NATO — should once again serve as the central forum for European security, confidence-building, and arms control. Strategic autonomy for Europe means precisely this: a European security order shaped by European interests, not permanent subordination to NATO expansionism. France could rightly extend its nuclear deterrent as a European security umbrella, but only in a strictly defensive posture, without forward-deployed systems that threaten Russia. Europe should press urgently for a return to the INF framework and for comprehensive strategic nuclear arms-control negotiations involving the United States and Russia — and, in time, China.
Most importantly, Chancellor Merz, learn history, and be honest about it. Without honesty, there can be no trust. Without trust, there can be no security. And without diplomacy, Europe risks repeating the catastrophes it claims to have learned from. History will judge what Germany chooses to remember — and what it chooses to forget. This time, let Germany choose diplomacy and peace, and abide by its word.
Respectfully,
Jeffrey D. Sachs University Professor Columbia University
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