Who is Hitler and who is Chamberlain today?

For the last 50 years at least, American hawks have time and again brought up a lesson from the past to justify their foreign and military policy predilections that amounted to war-mongering.

Every attempt to find accommodation, détente with America’s ideological adversaries was systematically denounced as “appeasement” in the tradition of Chamberlain seeking ‘peace in our time’ when dealing with the German Fuehrer, whose ambition was absolute political, economic, military domination in Europe.

Donald Trump’s absolutely shocking act of aggression this past weekend compels us to face a new reality: that the President of the United States is today the incarnation of Hitler with ambition on a world-wide scale.

I am not repeating here the cheap and empty political posturing of the Trump haters in America who have called him a fascist because he opposes their Green agenda, opposes their LGBTQ+ Rainbow parades and support for sex change operations among adolescents, and opposes other extreme Liberal values that amount to the destruction of the foundations of society in pursuit of I, Me, Me, I.

No, those complainers about Trump are abusing the notion of fascism to serve their own selfish hunger for political power at any price.

I am speaking about the notion of fascism writ large, as a program to destroy all those nations which do or could stand in the way of American global hegemony.

Trump has trampled on the sovereignty of Venezuela and makes no secret of plans to ‘run’ the country and extract enormous wealth for American corporations by setting them free to exploit Venezuelan oil. He has just renewed his claims to take possession of Greenland. He has threatened Iran with military intervention over the suppression of political disturbances that are a direct result of the country’s economic hardships under crippling U.S. sanctions that go back twenty years or more. Surely Cuba is also in his sights.

The operation in Caracas this past weekend is the template for what is to come. No big invasions, just a very carefully researched and executed decapitation strike that removes to American prisons the leaders of the countries on the Trump check-list.

And why bother adding to the prison detainees? In the past week the CIA targeted Vladimir Putin’s countryside residence with intent to murder. Minister of War Pete Hegseth in the past few days has threatened Putin with “we’re coming for you”.

*****

Given all of the foregoing, I am shocked that some colleagues continue to praise the moderation shown thus far by Russia and China in response to what Trump has done and said this past weekend. We are told that they appreciate the volatility, the narcissism, the oncoming dementia of the man in the Oval Office and are making their highest priority avoidance of a nuclear war by handling The Donald with kid gloves.

Dear friends, you are arguing the case for Chamberlain! And was not Hitler in 1938-39 understood to be mentally unbalanced, a madman if I may cut to the quick? The only argument that one might have made in defense of Chamberlain’s appeasement was the lack of preparedness for war of his country and its allies on the Continent. But that is manifestly not the case today, when we all understand that Russia’s conventional forces are more than a match for NATO in its shambolic present conditions, and that Russia’s nuclear triad, its strategic arsenal is years ahead of the USA at this moment. That will likely not be true 5 years from now, but it is true today. Accordingly, there is no logic to Russian pusillanimity, to its not threatening the USA with total destruction here and now if Washington does not pull in its horns and behave in accordance with the UN Charter.

Going back 5 years, I argued in an essay that Khrushchev was right to bang his shoe on the desk in the UN General Assembly. He was right to issue his famous threat to the capitalist world: “we will bury you.”

Khrushchev may have been boorish, but he was brave and he was ready to fight to the death if the U.S. side did not come to its senses. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 was a test of courage on both sides the like of which I do not see today. The annihilation of tens of millions of people was a possibility, to be sure, but it was offset by readiness to enter into serious and decisive negotiations going to the root causes of the confrontation. After all, in the end, not only did the Russians pull their nuclear tipped missiles out of Cuba but the USA pulled into missiles out of Turkey and Italy.

*****

‘Progressive humanity’ is today reporting on the demonstrations being held in capitals around the world to protest against the imprisonment of Maduro and U.S. aggression.

Regrettably, the net result of these demos will be nil. The only powers on earth that can stop the insane Hitler-like course of the Trump administration today are China and Russia. If they twiddle their thumbs now then you can be sure that the possible war today will be replaced by a certain civilization ending war in five years’ time.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

Time to impeach Trump

The attack on Venezuela and snatching of President Maduro puts an end to my flirtation with Trump. He has just trampled on the National Security Strategy that he rolled out 3 weeks ago. He has proven that the Neocons control the government and he is nothing more than a figurehead.

I call for his impeachment so as to install JD Vance and give him two-three years to do what has to be done, namely to purge the Pentagon, the CIA, State of the Neocons who constitute the decision makers and implementers in the ‘power ministries’. This accomplished, Vance could then hope to carry out the NSS and position the USA as a major world power among peers, rather than a hegemon and Cold Warrior.

For those in the Community who may be puzzled by my turning against Trump, I recommend that they read the first chapter in my 2019 collection of essays entitled A Belgian Perspective on International Affairs: “Time to Impeach Trump,” dated 21 September 2017, pp. 1-4. You may have overlooked this book because its title was explained only in the Foreword, p. xiii: the ‘Belgian’ in question was not a collective part of this small nation that one could disregard until its Prime Minister Bart De Wever stood up to Ursula von der Leyen and Chancellor Friedrich Merz a couple of weeks ago and saved the global financial markets from the catastrophe that would have followed confiscation of Russian state assets held in Belgium. The word ‘Belgian’ in the title stood for one person, me, who had become a naturalized Belgian. My call for impeachment was precipitated by Trump’s barbaric declarations before the UN General Assembly threatening to annihilate North Korea, a nation of 22 million people.

My coddling of Trump’s vile activities in some global hotspots since taking office again, in January 2025, in particular his enabling the Israeli genocide in Gaza, was based on the reasonable assumption that that was the price to pay for him to enjoy the political capital in the heavily pro-Zionist Congress and in the foreign policy establishment in Washington necessary to pass his domestic and foreign policy programs. The same logic persuaded me to remain silent about his attack on the Iranian nuclear facilities and his enabling Israeli strikes on Teheran and other purely civilian targets in their 12-day war.

But the recent months of Trump’s superintending so-called peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine have shown that at best his efforts are incompetent and so are condemned to failure. Holding separate talks with each of the warring parties and agreeing with each side to their entirely contradictory peace plans shows that he is posturing and that nothing of use can come out of these talks. Moreover, no peace agreement that met the Russian demands of resolving the underlying reasons for the war, namely turning back NATO expansion to Russia’s borders and getting Washington to consider revising the security architecture in Europe, will get approval in Congress now that everyone has read about Trump’s hopes to overturn 76 years of American foreign policy priorities by the language of his NSS document.

Accordingly, I view without prejudice and on their merits Trump’s attack on Venezuela and the kidnapping of President Maduro and his wife to face trumped up charges of drug trafficking in the USA. And on their merits Trump has egregiously violated international law. Sad to say, he has not set a precedent, but is following a pattern of ‘rogue state’ behavior established by President George H.W. Bush when he invaded Panama in December 1989 and seized president Manuel Noriega. Noriega then spent years in U.S. detention and died there.

Let us remember that ‘rogue state behavior’ was precisely what one of the chief popularizers of Neocon ideology, Robert Kagan, husband of the notorious Victoria Nuland, urged upon the United States in books and speeches. That is to say, scorn for all legal constraints on how foreign policy is conducted for the sake of maintaining U.S. global domination.

The difference between what H.W. Bush did in 1989 and what Trump has just down now in Venezuela must be called out. Bush was just ‘kicking ass,’ as they say in the States. Trump is implementing a farther- reaching geopolitical objective of driving all foreign powers out of the Western Hemisphere, which he seeks to maintain as Washington’s exclusive hunting preserve. To be more specific, Trump has attacked not just Venezuela. He has attacked China which is a main export market for Venezuela; conversely, China is highly dependent on Venezuelan oil and an American take-over would surely cause economic harm to Beijing. In this regard, the warm-up exercise to yesterday’s snatch operation was the U.S. capture of two Venezuelan oil tankers, one of which was carrying oil destined for and already paid for by China.

Going back still further, this American attack on Venezuela is a continuation of the attack on China’s commercial activities in Latin America that we saw still earlier in 2025 when Trump brought pressure on Panama to remove the Chinese from their control over the Canal.

*****

What lessons can the world’s two other superpowers draw from Trump’s outrageous attack on Venezuela?

As for Russia, the message should be crystal clear to President Vladimir Putin that he does not and cannot have a partner in Donald Trump. Russia must proceed on its own path to resolve the Ukraine war, and as I have been saying in recent months, the sooner the war is ended, whether by a decapitation strike on Kiev and other decision-making centers, or by storming Kiev with ground forces, the better. Russia now has a window of opportunity that it should exploit without hesitation. If President Putin is unable to act decisively in this sense, then he should resign and pass the torch to someone in a younger generation who is level-headed, has proven experience at high levels of the government and is decisive, not wishy-washy.

As for China, this attack on Venezuela is de facto an attack on China. Generally, Chairman Xi is more decisive and has more resources to threaten the USA than does Putin and Russia. If ever there were a moment for China to resolve the Taiwan issue it is here and now. The Americans have just stolen Chinese oil and are attacking a major supplier to China. Xi will not straighten out relations with Washington now by remaining silent and failing to respond appropriately. Such reticence will only encourage further provocations and give Washington time to better prepare for armed conflict.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2026

Press TV (Iran): Ukraine signals readiness to scale back Eastern forces

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

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 24 December: The Totalitarian EU

In today’s conversation with Judge Andrew Napolitano, we discuss the terrible sanctions recently imposed by the European Council on retired Swiss military intelligence expert Jacques Baud for what is said to be his pro-Russian disinformation (an outrageous defamation) and the precedents for such extrajudicial violations of citizens’ rights to free speech, to property rights and more. As I say here this goes straight back to the seizure of assets of Russian oligarchs early in 2024 after the start of the Special Military Operations on charges of their ‘being friends of Putin’ and other nonsense that would never be accepted in a court of law. The problem may be said to go still further back to the breach of international law when the U.S. seized embassy and consular properties of the Russian Federation during the Obama administration in December 2016 to hand a poisoned chalice to the incoming Team Trump.

My point is that rule of law works for all of us only when it is defended against each and every violator. Failure to bring legal action and/or high-level lobbying against violators can only lead to escalation and spread of abuses over time. That is how we have reached a situation where none of us in the Alternative Media today can feel safe in the European Union, although as I say here, it is highly unlikely that any American will be put on EU sanctions lists for fear of enraging Trump and putting in jeopardy America’s nuclear umbrella and NATO support for Europe. But if you are a Swiss or some other third country national: watch out!

We also delve into the deeper problem that makes cases like Baud’s so intractable: the absence of any system of checks and balances, of division of powers whereby an independent judiciary could review cases of abuse like this and compel the offending executive to back down. This fundamental problem must be put at the door of the Left-leaning highly intellectual caviar socialists who played a very important role in writing the foundation documents of the EU, and who assumed that their successors would be equally well-intentioned and tolerant of others’ views. Well read, they may have been but they did not pay due attention to the 19^th century political scientists who reasoned that men can be overbearing, oppressive and must be held in check by limitations on the power written into the constitution. In this regard, it should come as no surprise that the EU institutions today lend themselves to totalitarianism. Elon Musk is right: the EU must be deconstructed and rebuilt in a way that better protects democracy and specifically protects all human rights of its citizens, starting with freedom of expression, which is now being trampled upon.

Either rule of law applies to everyone or it applies to no one

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.

****

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

The European sanctions against Jacques Baud: what does this mean for freedom of speech in the EU?

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.

‘Judging Freedom’ edition of 17 December: Will the EU Steal Russian Bank Deposits?

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.

Required reading

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.

NewsX World hourly bulletin: discussing the latest Ukrainian massive drone attacks on Russia

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.