Today’s interview with the Indian global broadcaster NewsX World was in two parts. I appear in minute 3.17

 The first segment dealt with the Kremlin’s positive evaluation of latest statements by several European leaders that it is time to initiate direct talks with Putin. The second part dealt with Viktor Orban’s decision to distribute a ‘petition’ among Hungarian voters calling for refusal to participate in any further EU funding for Ukraine.

As I point out, in the past few days French President Macron, Italian Prime Minister Meloni and German Chancellor Merz have all said that direct contact should be made with Vladimir Putin.  In the case of Macron, who is ever playing the chameleon and changing his political stance on Russia from warm to cold and back again, these latest statements are meaningless.  Meloni is also not a particularly serious person at the international level. But Merz’s decision to reach out to Putin is entirely another matter and worthy of attention. A day ago, the Chancellor remarked that Russia is part of Europe and relations with Russia should be recalibrated. So, apparently, he has finally consulted a map!

 What these statements suggest is that Trump has finally broken the solidarity in Europe behind foolish and self-destructive policies vis-à-vis Russia. Probably the biggest factor is their realization that NATO may well collapse if Trump proceeds to annex Greenland by force, which is entirely possible and could happen at any moment.  If NATO collapses, then Europe will be entirely defenseless against the Russian bear whom they have been poking and provoking ceaselessly for three years and more. Under those circumstances, it is prudent to establish lines of communication here and now beforehand.  It is also no longer clear in Berlin, Rome and Paris who is the more fearsome big bad wolf: Washington or Moscow.

The decision by Viktor Orban to solicit the opinion of Hungarian voters on whether to continue or to stop funding to the Kiev regime is a rare instance when real, meaning ‘direct’ democracy is put into practice by an EU Member State. In general, all that we have is ‘representative democracy,’ which, as we know, exists in the particular context of electoral laws that reserve seats in parliament for parties or movements backed by tiny minorities of the population and so deprive the most popular parties of a majority in parliament. All of that progressive electoral engineering results in most European countries having power-sharing coalition governments that are answerable to no one.

Virtually the only country in Europe that regularly practices direct democracy is Switzerland.  And so, I salute Orban for asking Hungarian citizens to sign a petition on this key question of war or peace.  If only other Member States would do the same, funding for the Zelensky regime would stop forthwith and this damned war would be over.

That being said, I note that there may be some quirks when they tally the ‘petitions’ in Budapest.  This afternoon I had a chat with one of the receptionists at my sports club who happens to be a dual national – Belgian and Hungarian.  I asked if he knew about Orban’s referendum and he sure did:  he told me that Budapest is distributing the petitions by email and he already received three. He sent all three of these ballots back with his signature!  As they say in the USA: vote early and vote often.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

NewsX World hourly morning news wrap-up, 13 January

In this morning’s news bulletin, I come on for two segments beginning at minute 14.  These deal firstly with the latest Russian attack on the Ukrainian city of Kharkov, where further destruction to the energy infrastructure has been inflicted. As I say here, repeating what the Russians themselves are saying about these attacks: the destruction of energy production and distribution is taking a page from the American playbook of their 1999 bombing campaign against Belgrade, though here the Russians have an ulterior objective of driving the population to flee to Europe, thereby reducing Ukraine’s economy while overwhelming social services in Germany and elsewhere by the refugee influx so that Europe sues for peace. Secondly, we spoke about the massive demonstration of French farmers in Paris protesting the terms of the Mercosur trade deal that has been concluded with the EU over objections from European farmers who claim there will be unfair trading that undercuts their markets. The problem is not unfair trading but the much greater efficiency and production costs in a very large market like Brazil versus France. I expect the treaty will be ratified and come into effect nonetheless, though with added provisions for review and modification of certain terms relating to agriculture after a year or two to avoid doing excessive harm to European farmers.

For those who may think that the almost daily commentary that this broadcaster requests of me puts them in the Alternative News category, I urge that you listen to the interview just prior to my appearance, where you will hear an account of the brutal repression of demonstrators by the Iranian authorities that could just as easily be shown on the BBC or Euronews.  For the truth about Iran, you would do well to go to Glenn Diesen’s interview yesterday with Iranian professor Seyed Marandi – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFRO4bXzEQw&t=696s

This morning’s NewsX World hourly round-up:  Trump cancels ‘international law’

I appear in this multi-segment broadcast at minute 19.26

The issue that I highlight in the title above is one of two or three highly topical issues which are widely discussed in media today but as I insist here are devoid of substance.  The relevance of international law to allegations of Russian aggression in initiating its invasion of Ukraine is nil. The notion of double standards in applying international law to the case of Russia’s supposed aggression in Ukraine when it is not applied to the American invasion of Venezuela is also empty now that Donald Trump publicly canceling international law as a restraint in an interview with The New York Times a couple of days ago.

Another empty bit of ‘breaking news’ that we discussed is the invitation extended by U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Bessent to India and Australia to attend the upcoming G7 meeting for talk about finding new sources of rare earth metals outside of China.  This is a PR exercise and nothing more, because any increase in mining and processing of these metals will come years from now and the crisis is here and now, when China has full leverage over the rest of the world in the growing confrontation with the West.

Similarly one does not have to spend more a minute considering how the U.S. seizure of a Russian tanker will affect the peace negotiations over Ukraine. The answer is very simple: there will be no peace negotiations or if they take place the guarantied outcome will be zero, and the war will continue until Russia gets what it wants, leaving Ukraine as a failed state.

I do not mean to suggest that there is no news worth reading or watching today.  Such news, of course, exists, but it is not being covered by Mainstream while they fill their on air minutes and their news columns with the irrelevancies cited above.

In this interview recorded in the morning, we discussed Volodymyr Zelensky’s latest proposal that both sides create buffer zones on their sides of the present battle lines, meaning ‘demilitarization’ of the part of Donetsk still in Ukrainian hands and a similar ‘demilitarization’ of as many kilometers to the east of the battle lines by Russia.

As I remark, this is purely a propaganda initiative by Kiev. They know perfectly well that the proposal is completely unacceptable to the Russians for several reasons that are easy to see.  First, this buffer zone on the Ukrainian side would remain under Ukrainian administration, meaning that the Russian speaking population would remain subject to the brutal repression which touched off their resistance to the newly installed ultra-nationalist government in Kiev in February 2014 and continued for eight years, prompting the Russians to launch their Special Military Operation. 

Zelensky’s ‘demilitarization’ would mean removal of heavy military equipment.  That sounds good, but in fact the war has evolved into a drone war and it is easy to envision that the Ukrainians would continue to launch drones against Russian positions to the East, while Russian responses would be condemned as violation of the peace justifying the entry of European “peacekeepers.”

If we look further afield, the Zelensky proposal does not address the root causes of the war that the Russians insist must be resolved if there is to be a durable peace. This means the neutrality of Ukraine, the ensured absence of any foreign troops or military installations. Though the Russians are not saying this aloud, they seek regime change in Kiev as part of any settlement. The extreme nationalists who have controlled the Kiev government since 2014 must be removed.

For all of the above reasons, the latest Zelensky proposal is dead on arrival in Moscow, even if the Kremlin is saying now politely that they will study it closely.

https://www.urmedium.net/c/presstv/135508

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

The addition of retired Swiss intelligence officer Jacques Baud to the list of persons sanctioned by the European Council a little more than a week ago has shocked the community of Alternative Media, precisely because it indicates that the European Institutions have gone rogue, are trampling on the concept of freedom of expression with impunity and operating in completely opaque fashion so as to frustrate any possibility of recourse to justice by any of our dissidents.

Baud has now appeared on ‘Deep Dive’ and other widely watched podcasts to explain his situation. He has received moral support from serious people including state officials from a number of European countries. Though his bank accounts have been frozen and he is under a travel ban, friendly and decent people are giving him some assistance. Working through the proper channels, he may even get some humanitarian allowance access to his own funds. But I do not see that he is getting legal aid.

The issue raised by his case compels us all to put on our thinking caps and also to look in the mirror to see if we all have not in some way allowed government arbitrariness and disregard for due process, trampling on the sanctity of private property to go unchecked for too long, so that the latest acts of tyranny happening around us today are merely a continuation of preexisting trends.

I will not beat around the bush:  what we are now witnessing is shocking because it is happening to us.  Four years ago, at the start of the Special Military Operation, when it happened to Russians, we all had a good laugh.  Just think, this or that jurisdiction just seized the yacht of some Russian oligarch.  It was ‘rob the robbers!’ nothing more. 

I ask myself why I did not get hot under the collar when Peter Aven’s bank accounts in the UK were frozen so that he sat penniless in his London mansion and could not pay his butler.  Aven was the co-founder and co-owner of one of Russia’s most successful commercial and retail banks, Alpha Bank, that he has since sold off to be free of the associations that were used to put him on the sanctions list. Why was the seizure of his assets not troubling?  Perhaps because Aven was/is quite obnoxious as a personality.

But being obnoxious is hardly a criminal offense. Nor was he given a proper day in court when his assets were frozen. That came only years later.

Many of the wealthy Russians who were put on the personal sanctions lists of the EU, of the UK and other jurisdictions were accused of nothing more than ‘being a friend of Putin,’ or supporting the Putin regime and not denouncing the war.  As in the case of Baud today, these supposedly incriminating charges are vague and unenforceable in a court of law.  The sanctions were a political act of the given government of the day, not a judicial act, exactly as is the case of Baud today.

If we are troubled by the implications of the arbitrariness and extrajudicial nature of Baud’s being sanctioned, then we must go back to the very beginning of the confiscatory behavior of countries well outside the EU and including, by the way, the USA.  

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On thinking through the Baud case, I have been looking for some special reason why this man who made every effort to be objective in his written and spoken comments about the Ukraine war has nonetheless landed on the still rather short list of victims of EU tyranny.

My first conjecture was that maybe he had some personal enemies who decided to use the opaque procedures of denunciation to bring him down.  However, on second thought I see a more likely explanation in Baud’s very professionalism and respectability.  By career line, he had been one of theirs, not some shambolic peacenik. But then in his retirement he has spoken his mind, which does not match the mainstream narratives.

What I see in Baud’s punishment without a crime is the same as happened to a Canadian former diplomat, Patrick Armstrong, who had done service in Canada’s Moscow embassy in mid-career, if my memory serves me right. In the run-up to and first year of the Special Military Operation he was retired and occupied his mind by writing very good blogs on his own internet platform, all in the dissident vein.  Then one fine day in 2023 he received a visit from the Canadian thought police who told him that either he shut down his blog and instead looked after his garden OR his bank accounts would be frozen and his pension payments would stop.  Patrick made the right decision and we have hardly heard from him since.  This was just an example of the awful human rights watch of Justin Trudeau as Canadian prime minister, panderer to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian community in Canada.

The situation is not hopeless. On 19^th December here in Brussels there was an historic turning point when respect for international law won out over unprincipled theft and lawlessness at the level of the European Institutions.  Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever successfully stopped in their tracks Ursula von der Leyen and Friedrich Merz by refusing their demands that Belgium confiscate Russian sovereign assets on deposit in Euroclear to support a loan to Ukraine.  A sovereign state finally brought down the EU’s tyrants and the Belgian solution of a mutualized EU loan to Ukraine was decided upon. That should give us courage to take the European Council to court for violation of freedom of speech and other human rights.  This may not be pursued in EU courts but there are international courts that surely will hear the case if it properly presented, and that is also doable if authoritative expert lawyers come forward on a pro bono basis to help out.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

I assume that the Community is well aware of the savage act of censorship and intended financial ruin directed by EU authorities a week ago against the Swiss intelligence veteran and widely read author on the Russian Way of War, Jacques Baud. I refer you to his Wikipedia entry for details on his career in his homeland, in United Nations operations and on his most recent writings.

Baud’s bank accounts and other assets in the EU have been frozen. This is all the more painful in that he in fact lives in Brussels. He is under a travel ban which in principle excludes the possibility of his going to Switzerland to pick up some cash and then returning to his Brussels residence. He is now dependent on the generosity of friends and supporters to put bread on the table, and those who assist him are themselves risking being sanctioned for that very act.

Worst of all, the sanctions have not been handed down by a court. The rule of law does not apply, because the sanctions are an act of political fiat within the EU’s executive body, the Council, against which it seems there is no appeal to European instances of justice. So much for checks and balances, which the architects of the EU in the 1990s, all highly educated intellectuals in the Leftist camp seem to have overlooked due to their unfounded optimism about the goodness of human nature, especially among the well-educated social strata like themselves. This situation is one further argument why the structure of the EU must be reinvented if democracy and civil liberties are to have any future here. The problem is not just the very low intellectual and educational level of the present national leaders and bosses within the EU Institutions; it is rooted in the EU’s founding documents.

Those of you who have sampled Baud’s writings or heard his occasional interviews on leading podcasts know that the man is as far removed from being a propagandist in general and an asset for the Kremlin, in particular, with which he is charged, as is humanly possible.  I found his book on the structure of the Russian armed forces to be impenetrable beyond the first chapter, suitable for experts not for the layman.  Moreover, he has shunned invitations to appear on RT, he has avoided using Russian sources in his research. He has minded his tongue on the few video appearances he gave to Alternative Media.  In short, he has tried consciously to avoid any suspicion of being biased on the war.  All to no avail!

Indeed, the case is so strange that I suspect he has been put under sanctions at the urging of some personal enemies, not by disinterested examiners of his case within the EU.  But that is just my guess.

Now, to cut to the quick: what does the Baud case mean for the panelists, for the hosts of programs like ‘Judging Freedom’ or Glenn Diesen’s channel, to mention just two of the most prominent podcasts?  Most every participant and host daily violates the political correctness of Euro-speak and could be accused of promoting Russia’s views of the war.

In yesterday’s ‘Judging Freedom,’ Scott Ritter stated flatly that he will no longer travel to Europe, because he fears detention and other serious unpleasantness over his political statements and participation in Russian media. 

This issue is one that I must take with the utmost seriousness, given that I do not just travel through Europe but actually live there – for 45 years and counting.   

I will take precautions, to the extent possible, not to be caught out as has Jacques Baud.  However, I believe that it is highly unlikely that the European Council will sanction Americans under present conditions of ideological warfare with the Trump administration. I point to the speech of Vice President J.D. Vance at the Munich Security Conference in February and now, a couple of weeks ago to the newly issued National Security Strategy document which denounces the European Union for violation of civil liberties, for depriving citizens of freedom of speech.  Any EU sanctions against individual American citizens for expressing their opinions on the war would go directly against the frantic efforts of the Commission to keep Trump on side over the Ukraine war and ensure provision by the U.S. of essential participation in any post war security guaranties to Kiev.

                                                                        *****

All of the foregoing brings me back to the core issue that I am publicizing in my latest critical comments on the Russian ‘gently, gently’ conduct of the war. Indeed, I am saying before any microphone offered to me that Putin should move to end the war here and now by a decapitating strike on both civilian and military decision-making centers in Ukraine.

I say this not for the sake of sparing further loss of life among Russian or Ukrainian soldiers and civilians, important as that may be. I say it out of concern for the milieu in which I live.

Wars do not bring out the best in society, unless you enjoy watching ceremonies recounting heroism on the field of battle. All too often, the medals are given out posthumously to the widows.

No, wars mostly bring out the worst instincts of society to suppress liberties and enforce the rule of authoritarians.  Two or more years of war in Ukraine, which is what the Putin and EU strategies are envisioning, will further poison the political life of Europe, will keep in power the monsters and fools who rule us presently.  This is patently not in the interests of everyone living on this Continent and it is also not in Russia’s interests because it will lead straight to a Russia-NATO kinetic war two or three years hence.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

Prime Minister Bart De Wever’s address to the Belgian parliament this morning

As I noted yesterday on the basis of news in the Belgian daily ‘Le Soir,’ early this morning Prime Minister Bart De Wever convened a session of the Belgian parliament (Chamber of Representatives) to deliver a speech about his planned actions later in the day at the European Council meeting of heads of government and state of the 27 EU Member States when they discuss the proposal of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to free the 185 billion euros in frozen Russian assets held in Euroclear (Belgium) to be used as collateral for a massive ‘reparations loan’ to Ukraine.

Here below is the link to this session. Regrettably there is not yet a version available on the internet with English translation.  As you will find, De Wever opens with a few words in French and then switches to Flemish (Dutch) for the remainder of his speech.  Nonetheless, in the Q&A with deputies which follows some of the questions are from French-speaking deputies and De Wever answers each one in French. I refer you to minute 21 and minute 33 and following, for example.  He also weaves into his speech and into his answers English turns of speech. 

I call attention to his statements in French which I could pick up and which are highly relevant to anyone who wants to understand how and why he dares to go up against the majority of EU Members and still more courageously against the authoritarian and vengeful Frau von der Leyen as he is doing.  De Wever says that he has backers for his opposition to the notion of seizing the Russian assets among other European leaders, in particular Italy, Malta and Bulgaria, as well as several others which are still unnamed, and on this basis he assures the deputies that Belgium does not stand alone, that it is not isolated. These countries agree that the proposed ‘reparations loan’ is, as he says here in English: ‘sailing in uncharted waters.”   The countries siding with Belgium have told him that if the Russian assets were being held in their countries as they are now in Euroclear (Belgium) they would act precisely as De Wever is doing.

De Wever insists that the Member States consider instead issuing an EU guarantee for any loans to be extended to Ukraine directly, not using Russian assets, per what von der Leyen called ‘Plan B’ a couple of weeks ago.  This would be less expensive and less risky, he says.

Clever words! Of course, he knows perfectly well that Germany, The Netherlands and several Nordic countries are stingy and will resist strongly any attempt to draw them into mutualizing a loan to Ukraine.

The has been a torrent of news these past several days bearing on the title given to today’s discussion with Judge Andrew Napolitano.

From the results of the paper voting of EU Member States last Friday in which von der Leyen invoked emergency powers to override any possible vetoes, she succeeded in ending the six-monthly renewals of the freeze on Russian state assets held in Euroclear (Belgium) and making the freeze unlimited in time. For this she surely benefited from the argument that this would provide the EU with leverage against the United States and reserve for them a seat at the peace negotiations table which they otherwise would not enjoy.

Then on Monday, at a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing hosted by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, and attended by Trump’s emissaries Witkoff and Kushner, as well as by Volodymyr Zelensky, the decision was taken to approve a peace proposal that incorporated all conditions that the Ukrainians have sought from the beginning of the conflict: a ‘security guaranty’ would be include NATO member states providing ‘boots on the ground’ in Ukraine, the armed force would be trained by European advisers and would number 800,000, the U.S. would participate in defending Ukrainian sovereignty by clauses similar to Article 5 of the NATO treaties, no territorial concessions to Russia would be made, the Russians would be obliged to pay reparations to Ukraine and the Russian leadership would be brought to justice. 

Incredibly, Trump’s emissaries sat through these discussions and said at the conclusion that peace was now closer than ever before, an idea which Donald Trump himself repeated publicly later in the day.

In a speech to Dutch legislators in The Hague on Tuesday, Zelensky boasted about these terms and said that the Russian aggression would be punished, thereby reinforcing international law.

This utter collapse of the Trump position on the peace which favored realism and acknowledgement of the Russian military victory did not promise anything good for the meetings in Brussels tomorrow and Friday to decide on confiscation of the frozen Russian state assets.

However, this morning’s edition of ‘Le Soir,’ the main French-speaking daily newspaper in Belgium has two full pages devoted to the issue of the disposition of the Russian assets and the domestic politics here relating to the coming Council meeting.  Per Le Soir, De Wever now has the support of ALL political parties in Belgium, north and south, left and right for his veto on von der Leyen’s plans unless she can produce written binding guaranties of all Member States to share the financial risks of the loan operation in case the loan is called by the lending banks.  This could happen under two different scenarios: that the Russians win a law suit against Euroclear for damages over what is effectively the confiscation of their assets OR if the Russians defeat the Ukrainians on the field of battle and force a capitulation, meaning that the peace term do not foresee any Russian reparations to Ukraine.

My present guess is that von der Leyen simply cannot provide such written guaranties to Belgium because there are many naysayers among the Member States to risk sharing, including such heavyweights as France and Italy.

This means that the only fallback position of the Ukraine cheerleaders in the EU will be to raise an EU loan from their own pockets, meaning going to their parliaments to get budgetary approval, and most Member States are loathe to do that. 

Accordingly, if the loan scheme fails this Friday in the European Council, then it is highly likely that Ukraine will be bankrupt in Q1 2026 and the war will end at the negotiating table in capitulation of Kiev.

As we also discuss in this Judging Freedom episode, the shocking flip-flop of Trump on the peace terms that we have seen these past two days is setting off a fierce fight within the highest decision-making levels of the Kremlin.  Putin’s bet on Trump is shown up to have been a strategic mistake. Hardliners including the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ryabkov who said that diplomacy had exhausted its utility several weeks ago are now the winners in the debates around Putin.   The president’s ‘gently, gently’ approach to managing the war is shown to be wrong.   We may therefore expect a big change in Putin’s next moves towards escalation.  It would be best if he followed the advice of many in the elites who want him to blow up Kiev and end the war with a decapitation strike.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

One of the benefits of being in multiple ‘press pools’ is that you get drawn into reporting on breaking news even before major media put out their accounts. Thus, early this morning I received a WhatsApp invitation from RT International to comment briefly on the Statement issued by the participating EU Member States at a meeting in Berlin yesterday hosted by Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/statement_25_3086

Note: the meeting in Berlin set out Europe’s terms for a cease fire and peace to be concluded between Russia and Ukraine. It amounts to a Russian capitulation along the lines that Volodymyr Zelensky has demanded for more than three years now.

 The Americans Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner took part in that meeting. They are shown in photographs released today by The Financial Times standing next to the other participants and appearing to be relaxed and accommodating. We are led to believe that they agreed to the terms of this so-called peace deal, though that strains my credulity.

However, the importance of the Statement is not in settling with the Americans what terms for peace will now be presented to Moscow. It was a measure to get the EU states aligned for the decisive meeting of the European Council tomorrow and on the 19^th to vote on disposition of the frozen Russian state assets being held in Euroclear (Belgium) as Ursula von der Leyen wants and the Belgian prime minister has so far vetoed.  In this context, it is important that we see Italy’s prime minister Meloni has signed the Statement, considering that among its terms it envisions using the frozen assets to serve as reparations to Ukraine for the damage Russia has caused by its war of aggression. That is precisely what the European heads of government and of state will be voting on in Brussels and on that issue Meloni had joined Belgium, Bulgaria and Malta in a statement last Friday which expressed opposition to the collateralization of the assets for purposes of lending 145 billion euros to Ukraine.

As I have said in the RT interview, which will be posted on the internet and for which I will share the link as soon as I receive it, the greater meaning of the meeting in Berlin yesterday as reflected in the Statement now on the Commission website is that it seeks to perpetuate all of the preconditions that Moscow has called the root causes of the conflict and what prompted them to launch their Special Military Operation. By its terms, NATO-Russian relations will be those of enemies who are armed and ready for the next round of battle at any time. Ukraine will be armed to NATO standards, with NATO military personnel present on the ground as a trip-wire to set off World War III at any time. And the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev will remain in power, with hundreds of billions of euros in Russian ‘reparations’ to sustain the criminal feeding frenzy of its civilian and military leaders.

Chancellor Merz and Ursula von der Leyen have gotten what they wanted from this meeting. They are well on their way to ensuring their continued rule for years to come while turning the EU from the Peace Project which it was in the 20^th century to the War Project that it is today.

Meanwhile, the brutal suppression of civic freedoms in Europe that J.D. Vance denounced at his speech to the Munich Security Conference continues unchecked. Yesterday one reader alerted me to the latest EU sanctions applied to Jacques Baud for allegedly acting as a spokesperson for the Kremlin and spreading disinformation about the Bucha massacre and other issues relating to the ongoing war.

See the Radio Free Europe summary: https://www.rferl.org/a/eu-blacklist-russia-sanctions-shadow-fleet/33619173.html

For those who do not know Baud, from among the books he has published about the war, I can recommend his ‘The Russian Art of War: How the West Led Ukraine to Defeat’ (2024).  You will quickly understand that this former colonel and member of the Swiss strategic intelligence service who also advised United Nations peacekeeping operations, is a serious scholar. He has been interviewed by Glenn Diesen on his youtube channel and been a guest on other major Alternative Media programs.

The EU sanctions now potentially mean that Baud will not be allowed to travel to any EU country and any assets he may have in Europe will be confiscated.

I point out that the sanctions imposed on Baud could just as easily be imposed on any of the American and other non-EU passport holders appearing on any of the Alternative Media programs that readers of these pages are likely to consult.

In brief, this development should be brought to the attention of J.D. Vance because it bears directly on his denunciation of the EU Institutions for violating free speech principles. It also provides grist for Elon Musk’s call to disband the EU and restore sovereignty to the Member States.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2025

I open with a word of gratitude to the NewsX World production team for inviting my commentary on the Russia-Ukraine war and peace efforts day after day given that they know very well how my interpretations of events contradict directly the Western mainstream spin that turns the news bulletins on Euronews, on the BBC and on some other Indian broadcasters into crass pro-Kiev propaganda!

Today’s discussion, beginning at minute 21 focuses on the latest wave of Ukrainian drones sent deep into the territory of the Russian Federation, with 15 targeting Moscow.  As I say here, this wave drone attack as well as the attack with an even greater number of UAVs on the previous day may be seen as a Public Relations effort. Zelensky has placed PR above purely military objectives in order to impress Western backers with Ukraine’s robust fight and wheedle still more financial and hardware support from them. In fact, there seem to have been no Russian infrastructure struck by these drones, only one incidence of reported damage due to falling debris from a drone struck by Russian air defenses.

I also was given an opportunity to decode Zelensky’s stated willingness to make concessions now on NATO membership so long as Ukraine receives strong security commitments from the US and other allies. His intent is clear:  to demand that his Western supporters, especially the USA install themselves in Ukraine for purposes of the country’s security. That, of course, is precisely what the Russians saw as an existential threat to themselves in the run-up to their December 2021 demand that NATO  move back its men and installations to the pre-1996 borders. It was to end the de facto NATO presence in Ukraine that the Russians they launched the SMO in February 2022.  A Russian rejection of peace over the stationing of Coalition of the Willing troops in Ukraine will be trumpeted as demonstration of ‘Putin’s unwillingness to end his war of aggression.