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Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s remarks to UN General Assembly – September 29, 2025

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We support the unwavering adherence to the principle of equality as it guarantees that all countries can take their rightful place in the world system regardless of their military power, population, territory, or economic capabilities.

From the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation

27 September 2025 20:57

Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the General Debate of the 80th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, New York, September 27, 2025

1611-27-09-2025

Madam President,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Eighty years ago, the most devastating war in human history came to an end, with more than 70 million lives lost to military operations, starvation, and disease. The year 1945 changed the course of world history forever. The triumph over German Nazism, under whose banners a great part of Europe had rallied, and Japanese militarism, paved the way for peace, recovery, and prosperity.

This year, Moscow and Beijing held celebrations to mark the festive days of May 9 and September 3 in honour of Victory in the Great Patriotic War and World War II. The world witnessed grand military parades in recognition of the Soviet people’s decisive contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the distinct role of the Chinese people in the defeat of militarist Japan. We hold sacred the memory of our combat fellowship with all the allies who stood on the side of truth in the fight against evil forces.

One of the enduring outcomes of that war was the establishment of the United Nations. The principles of this Organisation’s Charter agreed upon by its founding fathers continue to serve as a beacon of international cooperation. They embody the centuries-old experience of co-existence among the states and retain their full relevance in the era of multipolarity. The only remaining task is for all member states without exception to adhere to these principles in their entirety, totality and interconnectedness.

However, the reality is quite different. Systemic and callous violations of the principle of the sovereign equality of states undermine the very faith in justice and lead to crises and conflicts. The root cause of these problems lies in the incessant attempts to divide the world into “friends” and “foes,” into “democracies” and “autocracies,” into a “blooming garden” and a “jungle,” into those who are “at the table” and those who are “on the menu,” into a select few who are above the rules, and the rest, who are somehow obliged to serve the interests of the “golden billion.” We support the unwavering adherence to the principle of equality as it guarantees that all countries can take their rightful place in the world system regardless of their military power, population, territory, or economic capabilities.

Furthermore, the West has repeatedly violated the principle of the non-use of force or threat of force. NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia, the invasion of Iraq by a US-led coalition and NATO’s regime-change operation in Libya have all brought about tragedies. Today, Israel’s unlawful use of force against the Palestinians, along with aggressive actions targeting Iran, Qatar, Yemen, Lebanon, Syria and Iraq, threaten to trigger explosive developments across the entire Middle East.

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Scott Ritter: Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb and nuclear war

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Playing with Fire
By Scott Ritter
June 1, 2025


Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb has crossed the threshold when it comes to triggering a Russian nuclear response. How Russia and the United States respond could determine the fate of the world.

In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that “The nuclear weapons remain the most important guarantee of Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and play a key role in maintaining the regional balance and stability.”

In the intervening years, western analysts and observers have accused Russia and its leadership of irresponsibly invoking the threat of nuclear weapons as a means of “saber rattling”—a strategic bluff to hide operational and tactical shortfalls in Russian military capabilities.

In 2020 Russia published, for the first time, an unclassified version of its nuclear doctrine. The document, called “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence,” noted that Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons” when Moscow is acting “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” The document also stated that Russia reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in case of an “attack by [an] adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions.”

In 2024 Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear doctrine to be updated to consider the complicated geopolitical realities that had emerged from the ongoing Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, where the conflict had morphed into a proxy war between the collective west (NATO and the US) and Russia.

The new doctrine declared that nuclear weapons would be authorized for use in case of an “aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is considered as their joint attack.”

Russia’s nuclear arsenal would also come into play in the event of “actions by an adversary affecting elements of critically important state or military infrastructure of the Russian Federation, the disablement of which would disrupt response actions by nuclear forces.”

The threats did not have to come in the form of nuclear weapons. Indeed, the new 2024 doctrine specifically stated that Russia could respond with nuclear weapons to any aggression against Russia involving “the employment of conventional weapons, which creates a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity.”

Operation Spiderweb, the largescale assault on critical Russian military infrastructure directly related to Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence by unmanned drones, has demonstrably crossed Russia’s red lines when it comes to triggering a nuclear retaliation and/or pre-emptive nuclear strike to preclude follow-on attacks. The Ukrainian SBU, under the personal direction of its chief, Vasyl Malyuk, has taken responsibility for the attack.

Operation Spiderweb is a covert direct-action assault on critical Russian military infrastructure and capabilities directly related to Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent capabilities. At least three airfields were attacked using FPV drones operating out of the backs of civilian Kamaz trucks repurposed as drone launch pads. Dyagilevo airfield in Ryazan, Belaya airfield in Irkutsk, and Olenya airfield in Murmansk, home to Tu-95 and Tu-22 strategic bombers and A-50 early warning aircraft, were struck, resulting in numerous aircraft being destroyed and/or heavily damaged.

This would be the equivalent of a hostile actor launching drone strikes against US Air Force B-52H bombers stationed at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and B-2 bombers stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.

The timing of Operation Spiderweb is clearly designed to disrupt peace talks scheduled to take place in Istanbul on June 2.

First and foremost, one must understand that it is impossible for Ukraine to seriously prepare for substantive peace talks while planning and executing an operation such as Operation Spiderweb; while the SBU may have executed this attack, it could not have happened without the knowledge and consent of the Ukrainian President or the Minister of Defense.

Moreover, this attack could not have occurred without the consent of Ukraine’s European partners, in particular Great Britain, France and Germany, all of whom were engaged in direct consultations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the days and weeks leading up to the execution of Operation Spiderweb.

The Ukrainians have been encouraged by Europe to be seen as actively supporting the Istanbul peace process, with an eye to the notion that if the talks failed, the blame would be placed on Russia, not Ukraine, thereby making it easier for Europe to continue providing military and financial support to Ukraine.

There appears to be a major role being played by US actors as well—Senator’s Lyndsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Sydney Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, made a joint visit to Ukraine in the past week where they coordinated closely with the Ukrainian government about a new package of economic sanctions linked to Russia’s willingness to accept peace terms predicated on a 30-day ceasefire—one of Ukraine’s core demands.

Operation Spiderweb appears to be a concerted effort to drive Russia away from the Istanbul talks, either by provoking a Russian retaliation which would provide cover for Ukraine to stay home (and an excuse for Graham and Blumenthal to go forward with their sanctions legislation), or provoking Russia to pull out of the talks as it considers its options going forward, an act that would likewise trigger the Graham-Blumenthal sanctions action.

Unknown is the extent to which President Trump, who has been pushing for successful peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, was knowledgeable of the Ukrainian actions, including whether he approved of the action in advance (Trump appeared to be ignorant of the fact that Ukraine had targeted Russian President Putin using drones during a recent trip to Kursk.)

How Russia responds to this latest Ukrainian action is yet unknown; the drone attacks on Russian military bases came on the heels of at least two Ukrainian attacks on Russian rail lines that resulted in significant damage done to locomotives and passenger cars and killed and wounded scores of civilians.

But this much is clear: Ukraine could not have carried out Operation Spiderweb without the political approval and operational assistance of its western allies. The American and British intelligence services have both trained Ukrainian special operation forces in guerilla and unconventional warfare actions, and it is believed that previous Ukrainian attacks against critical Russian infrastructure (the Crimea bridge and Engels Air Base) were done with the assistance of US and British intelligence in the planning and execution phases. Indeed, both the Crimea bridge and Engels airbase attacks were seen as triggers for the issuing of Russia’s 2024 nuclear doctrine modifications.

Russia has in the past responded to provocations by Ukraine and its western allies with a mixture of patience and resolve.

Many have interpreted this stance as a sign of weakness, something which may have factored in the decision by Ukraine and its western facilitators to carry out such a provocative operation on the eve of critical peace discussions.

The extent to which Russia can continue to show the same level of restraint as in the past is tested by the very nature of the attack—a massive use of conventional weapons which struck Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence force, causing damage.

It is not a stretch of the imagination to see this tactic being used in the future as a means of decapitating Russian strategic nuclear assets (aircraft and missiles) and leadership (the attack against Putin in Kursk underscores this threat.)

If Ukraine can position Kamaz trucks near Russian strategic air bases, it could do so against Russian bases housing Russia’s mobile missile forces.

That Ukraine would carry out such attack likewise shows the extent to which western intelligence services are testing the waters for any future conflict with Russia—one that NATO and EU members say they are actively preparing for.

We have reached an existential crossroads in the SMO.

For Russia, the very red lines it deemed necessary to define regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons have been blatantly violated by not only Ukraine, but its western allies.

President Trump, who has been claiming to support a peace process between Russia and Ukraine, must now decide as to where the United States stands considering these developments.

His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has acknowledged that under the previous administration of Joe Biden the United States was engaged in a proxy war with Russia. Trump’s Special Envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, recently acknowledged the same about NATO.

In short, by continuing to support Ukraine, both the US and NATO have become active participants in a conflict which has now crossed the threshold regarding the employment of nuclear weapons.

The United States and the world stand on the precipice of a nuclear Armageddon of our own making.

Either we separate ourselves from the policies that have brought us to this point, or we accept the consequences of our actions, and pay the price.

We cannot live in a world where are future is dictated by the patience and restraint of a Russian leader in the face of provocations we are ourselves responsible for.

Ukraine, not Russia, represents an existential threat to humanity.

NATO, not Russia, is responsible for encouraging Ukraine to behave in such a reckless manner.

So, too, is the United States. The contradictory statements made by US policy makers regarding Russia provide political cover for Ukraine and its NATO enablers to plan and execute operations like Operation Spiderweb.

Senators Graham and Blumenthal should be called out for sedition if their intervention in Ukraine was done to deliberately sabotage a peace process President Trump has said is central to his vision of American national security going forward.

But it is Trump himself who must decide the fate of the world.

In the coming hours we will undoubtedly hear from the Russian President about how Russia will respond to this existential provocation.

Trump, too, must respond.

By telling Graham and Blumenthal and their supporters to stand down regarding Russian sanctions.

By ordering NATO and the EU to cease and desist from continuing to provide military and financial support to Ukraine.

And by taking sides in the SMO.

Choose Ukraine and trigger a nuclear war.

Choose Russia and save the world.

Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer with extensive experience in arms control and disarmament, and an expert on US-Russian relations. His work can be found at ScottRitter.com. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, 2014-2025, published by Clarity Press.

https://scottritter.substack.com/p/playing-with-fire

John Pilger’s 2014 Warning About Ukraine

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Originally published by The Guardian, May 13, 2014
In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia
Washington’s role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime’s neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world
By John Pilger

Republished by Consortium News, September 24, 2022

In an article on May 13, 2014 in The Guardian, republished here, John Pilger warned the “U.S. is threatening to take the world to war” over Ukraine, words that have taken on new meaning.

Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a “brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis”, as if the truth “never happened even while it was happening”.

Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his “updated summary of the record of U.S. foreign policy” which shows that, since 1945, the U.S. has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – “our” terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the U.S. state department noted that, following Nato’s campaign in 2011, “Libya has become a terrorist safe haven“.

The name of “our” enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory, or merely offering an alternative to U.S. domination.

The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of vilification – think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.

“If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained ‘pariah’ role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.”

Washington’s role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the U.S. is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the U.S. and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.

Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.

But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with U.S.-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.

Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels”, as the western media calls them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a C.I.A. theme park – run personally by C.I.A. director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of “special units” from the C.I.A. and F.B.I. setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.

A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate. What occurred yesterday didn’t even take place during the fascist occupation in my town in world war two. I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.” [see footnote]

Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation“, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is “duly elected”. As Henry Kissinger once said: “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true.”

In the U.S. media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says“. Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia’s “undeclared war”. For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

A popular truism is that “the world changed” following 9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently runs “special operations” – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate this?_______________

FOOTNOTE: The Guardian attached the following footnote to Pilger’s story, which Pilger says suggests “that a quote of a witness to the Odessa atrocity is unverified. This appeared only in the last edition. In fact, the quote didn’t come from a Facebook entry, but from a Voice of America broadcast and was verified.” This is The Guardian‘s footnote: ” The following footnote was appended on 16 May 2014: The quotation from a doctor who says he was ‘stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals’ was from an account on a Facebook page that has subsequently been removed.”

John Pilger has twice won Britain’s highest award for journalism and has been International Reporter of the Year, News Reporter of the Year and Descriptive Writer of the Year. He has made 61 documentary films and has won an Emmy, a BAFTA and the Royal Television Society prize. His ‘Cambodia Year Zero’ is named as one of the ten most important films of the 20th century. He can be contacted at www.johnpilger.com

[John Pilger died December 30, 2023]

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

https://consortiumnews.com/2022/09/24/john-pilgers-2014-warning-about-ukraine/

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/may/13/ukraine-us-war-russia-john-pilger

Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov speaks to UN Security Council, July 16, 2024

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG7b0Kq85Zw — with UN-dubbed English and English subtitles

From the Ministry of Foreign MInistry of the Russian Federation

Statement by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during the UN Security Council meeting on multilateral cooperation in the interest of a more just, democratic and sustainable world order, New York, July 16, 2024

16 July 2024

I would like to extend a warm welcome to distinguished dignitaries present in the Security Council Chamber. Their participation in today’s meeting confirms the importance of the subject under review. In accordance with Rule 37 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite the representatives of Australia, Bangladesh, Belarus, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Maldives, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, the Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Türkiye, the UAE, Uganda, Vietnam, and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to take part in the session.

In accordance with Rule 39 of the Council’s provisional rules of procedure, I invite His Excellency Stavros Lambrinidis, Head of the European Union Delegation to the United Nations, to participate in this meeting.

The Security Council will now begin its consideration of agenda item 2. I would like to draw the attention of the Council members to document S/2024/537, a cover letter dated July 9, 2024 from the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to Secretary-General of the United Nations Antonio Guterres for a policy brief on the item under review.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen,

Your Excellency,

Today, the very foundations of the international legal order – strategic stability and the UN-centric system of international politics – are put to the test. We won’t be able to resolve the mounting conflicts unless we understand their root causes and restore faith in our ability to join forces for the common good and justice for all.

Let’s face it: not all countries represented in this chamber recognise the key principle of the UN Charter which is the sovereign equality of all states. Speaking through its presidents, the United States has long declared its exceptionalism. This applies to Washington’s attitude towards its allies, whom it demands to be unquestioningly obedient even to the detriment of their national interests.

Rule, America! This is the thrust of the notorious “rules-based order” which presents a direct threat to multilateralism and international peace.

The most important components of international law – the UN Charter and the resolutions of our Council – are interpreted by the collective West in a perverse and selective manner, depending on the instructions coming from the White House. Numerous Security Council resolutions have been ignored altogether, among them Resolution 2202, which approved the Minsk agreements on Ukraine, and Resolution 1031, which approved the Dayton Agreement on peace in BiH on the basis of the principle of equal rights of the three constituent peoples and two entities. We can discuss endlessly the sabotage of the resolutions on the Middle East. Just think back to what Antony Blinken had to say in an interview with CNN in February 2021 taking a question about what he thinks about the decision of the previous US administration to recognise the Syrian Golan Heights as part of Israel. In case someone is not sure what his answer was, I will refresh your memory. The Secretary of State said, “Leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security.” This is despite the fact that UN Security Council Resolution 497 of 1981, which you and I are well aware of and which no one has cancelled, qualifies annexation of the Golan Heights by Israel as illegal. However, according to those very “rules,” to quote Mr Blinken, “legal questions are something else.” And, of course, everyone remembers the statement by the US Ambassador to the UN that Resolution 2728 adopted on March 25 demanding an immediate ceasefire in the Gaza Strip “is not legally binding,” meaning that the American “rules” supersede Article 25 of the UN Charter.

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Finland gives U.S. control over 15 military bases, on Russia’s doorstep

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From Global Research
July 4, 2024
by Drago Bosnic

For nearly half a century, Scandinavia’s neutrality (with the obvious exception of Norway) was an important segment of keeping various buffer zones between the Soviet Union and NATO. And interestingly, despite the fact that the USSR was much more powerful than Russia nowadays, while also being virtually unopposed in the Baltic Sea, for some reason, neither Sweden nor Finland felt the need to become part of NATO.

What’s more, if there ever was a danger of a mythical Soviet invasion of either country, it was gone in 1991. Up to that point, Moscow’s access to the Baltic Sea stretched from Finland to Denmark (nearly, that is). Nowadays, Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad are Russia’s only access points.

Thus, if the Kremlin hadn’t invaded Sweden and Finland during the (First) Cold War, it surely wouldn’t be doing it now. However, as rabid Russophobia is an extremely damaging degenerative disease, it clouds people’s judgment, leading them to make all sorts of rash and inexplicable decisions. On the other hand, it’s impossible to explain NATO expansionism in Scandinavia without seeing it as part of a wider offensive build-up that aims to surround Russia with hostile states and other entities (including terrorist ones). In one of the latest such moves, Helsinki just gave the United States the legal permission to station troops in the country. The vote in the Finnish Parliament was unanimous.

Thus, starting from July 1, Washington DC has access to at least 15 Finnish military bases, with the possibility of deploying heavy weapons. It wasn’t specified what sort of arms and equipment that refers to, but it’s not that difficult to imagine.

The US is already trying to surround both Russia and China with the previously banned medium and intermediate-range missiles, which is precisely why it’s setting up new military bases all across Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. The latest agreement with Finland, aptly termed the “Defense” Cooperation Agreement (DCA), “will allow the United States to bring defense equipment, supplies, materials, and soldiers to Finland”, according to local sources (https://yle%5Bdot%5Dfi/a/74-20097310.)

Worse yet, the DCA gives America legal grounds to create military exclusion zones, areas that will be accessible to US personnel only. What this really means is that Finland effectively relinquished its sovereignty so it could become a legitimate target for Russian missiles.

Congratulations, Helsinki! You just exposed 5.5 million Finns to virtually immediate thermonuclear annihilation in case of (an increasingly possible) military conflict between NATO and Russia. Considering the fact that the US has similar “exclusive access” facilities all over the world and that the Pentagon usually uses them for illegal programs and experiments, including with deadly biological materials, Russia will respond.

In fact, the Kremlin certainly anticipated such moves, which is why it started deploying new missile brigades in northwestern Russia, including those armed with ballistic and hypersonic weapons. Moscow’s second-to-none missiles such as those used by the “Iskander-M” platform or the MiG-31K strike fighters with 9-A-7660 “Kinzhal” systems (carrying the 9-S-7760 air-launched hypersonic missiles) put the entire Scandinavia in range. In addition, the sheer speed of these unrivaled weapons gives the Kremlin the ability of a virtually instantaneous retaliation in case anyone gets any ideas. Unfortunately, none of this seems to have deterred the (obviously suicidal) ruling elite in Helsinki.

The Finnish Parliament’s rather senseless decision to antagonize its much larger nuclear-armed neighbor cannot possibly be justified by any excuses of “defense” or any similar reasoning. The simple fact that Finland is allowing the presence of American offensive capabilities on the border with Russia will be enough for the latter to deploy weapons that the former simply has no means of defending against. As the DCA creates a legal framework for a permanent American military presence in Finland, this also means that the Kremlin will surely respond in kind, making Helsinki far less safe than was the case before it joined NATO, thus defeating the very purpose of its membership in this racketeering cartel.

However, according to Finnish sources, there might even be some opposition to this in the country, as MP Anna Kontula submitted a proposal calling on other MPs to reject the DCA, although her motion received no backing. Therefore, the Finnish Parliament “did not vote on the agreement, but approved it unanimously”, local sources report (https://yle%5Bdot%5Dfi/a/74-20097360). This alone puts the legality of the agreement in serious question, although we’re extremely unlikely to see any major opposition to it. Last month, Helsinki’s Constitutional Law Committee concluded that the “[DCA] would have to be approved by a two-thirds majority in Parliament, as it affects several aspects of the Finnish constitution” (i.e. it’s unconstitutional).

In other words, Finland is going out of its way to please the US and NATO, just like it did with Nazi Germany (their geopolitical predecessor) over 80 years ago. This was in the making for quite some time, even predating the special military operation (SMO), as Helsinki wanted to acquire the troubled F-35 fighter jets back in 2021 (https://www.treasuryfinland%5Bdot%5Dfi/news/state-treasury-has-completed-currency-hedging-in-the-purchase-of-finlands-f-35-fighter-jets/#:~:text=In its plenary session in,%2C software%2C supplies and services.). Having such aircraft in one’s arsenal also means that a country is relinquishing its sovereignty. Namely, the US has control over the F-35’s systems, as the jet keeps sending data back to Lockheed Martin and the US military, meaning that even if the then “neutral” Finland didn’t join NATO, the Pentagon would effectively control a crucial branch of the country’s armed forces, forcing Russia to respond either way.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Drago Bosnic, Global Research, 2024

Anti-NATO events in Washington DC

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From Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space
by Bruce Gagnon
July 9, 2024

Bruce Gagnon and Rick Staggenborg in the march on Sunday

Four of us from Maine (MB Sullivan, Lisa Savage, Mark Roman and I) made the 10-hour drive to Washington DC last Friday to join the anti-NATO events planned to protest NATO’s ’75th anniversary celebration’ which begins on July 10. We were joined by former Mainers Melody Shank and Ken Jones  now living in North Carolina. 

Things began with a conference on Saturday morning at a local church attended by about 150 people and organized by a coalition led by World Beyond War. Disappointingly (but not surprising) several of the speakers once again blamed Russia for the war in Ukraine with words like ‘illegal, immoral, provocative’ Russian invasion. Sadly there are still some in the ‘peace movement’ who continue to be reluctant to pin the blame for the proxy war on US-NATO which was particularly uncalled for at an anti-NATO summit. Those that do at some point admit that US-NATO did in fact instigate the ‘tensions’ always seem to say that Russia should not have responded to protect the Donbass. That option was of course unacceptable to Moscow which I fully agree with.

This of course has been going on ever since the 2014 US-NATO orchestrated coup d’etat in Kiev which was led by the Obama-Biden administration under the direction of Victoria Nuland, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden [and John Kerry]. Soon thereafter the US-NATO regime in Kiev (infused with Nazis from Western Ukraine) began attacking the Donbass region of Ukraine where Russian-ethnics predominate and killed more than 15,000 and wounded around 35,000. 

Moscow made repeated attempts to create mechanisms to end the siege on the Donbass including the Minsk 1 & 2 agreements that leaders of Ukraine, France and Germany later admitted they never intended to honor – they just used the agreements to buy time to build up Ukraine’s US-NATO funded, trained, armed and directed army for a final charge against their own citizens whose only crime was they spoke Russian.

By early 2022 Russia knew that the western controlled Ukrainian military would soon launch a full scale attack on the Donbass so Moscow decided to preempt that move and began the slow and deliberate effort to push the Nazi-led forces away from the Donbass which sits on Russia’s border.

Later Saturday around 5:00 pm a larger conference began at another church in Washington. Oh, what a difference it was. This event was led by anti-imperialist organizations that have no doubt the US-NATO were in fact responsible for the war in Ukraine – to be used in a now failed strategy to force ‘regime change’ in Moscow in order for western resource extraction corporations to grab Russia’s vast resource base (among other reasons).

More than 300 (mostly young activists) gathered at this event with powerful speakers talking about a myriad of regions of the world where the US-NATO war machine is trying to regain their settler colonial domination. Good luck with that one.

This multi-ethnic coalition was a stark difference from the smaller event we had attended earlier that day. 

I learned years ago about the US anti-imperialist movement led by Mark Twain during Washington’s war on the Philippines.  At this event an impressive video was shown about the long US occupation of the Philippines that continues today as the Biden administration now floods that island nation with new missiles, warships, war planes and troops aimed at China. All part of NATO’s ‘pivot’ into the Asia-Pacific.

We also heard from young activists speaking about Palestine, Puerto Rico, black liberation movements across the US and much more. The Nicaraguan ambassador to the US also spoke and was roundly received. 

Fascism is growing worldwide in order to protect corporate interests and to suppress the resulting people’s movements for liberation. US-NATO wars in the Middle East have cost 4.5 million lives in the last 25 years. Israel is a ‘partner’ of NATO and takes part in its war games. NATO also trains Middle Eastern reactionary regimes that have served as western puppets for many years – Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, UAE, Jordan and more.

On Sunday we joined a march led by the anti-imperialist/anti-capitalist coalition to the White House. A rally was set up in Lafayette Park next to the White House led by the World Beyond War coalition. When we arrived very few people were at the rally site. Thanks to the 400 in the anti-imperialist march the rally began to look more respectable though I didn’t see any of the anti-imperialist leaders invited to the stage to speak to the largely younger crowd.

Despite the long drive from Maine to DC we all agreed that it was well worth the trip – especially to be with emerging activists. We often hear elder ‘peace movement’ folks wonder where are the ‘young people’? Actually they are out there leading the protests against zionist genocide in Palestine and doing great anti-NATO work against the empire’s ever expanding war machine. Some might call them radicals – but I stand by the definition of radical as those getting to the root of the problems that we face.

The half-stepping reformist peace groups (sometimes linked to the Democratic party and their foundation funders) have a long way to go if they hope to more fully integrate with the next generation of activism.

https://space4peace.blogspot.com/2024/07/anti-nato-events-in-washington-dc.html

NATO War Summit protest in Washington, D.C., July 6-7

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From United National AntiWar Coalition

Join us in Washington, DC!

Saturday, July 6, 2024 – People’s Summits

No to NATO – Alternative Summit, 9:30 am – 5:30 PM
@ St. Mark’s Church, Capitol Hill 3rd St & A St, SE

Resist NATO – People’s Summit, 5 PM – 9 PM
@ New York Ave Presbyterian Church, 13th St, H St., NY Ave. NW

Sunday, July 7, 2024 – March and Rallies

Resist NATO Coalition, 12 PM, McPherson Sq.
@ 15th St & K St. NW,

1:00 PM March to White House @ Lafayette Sq. with No to NATO

Read recent UNAC statement: NATO, Zionism and Imperialism

If you want to attend the D.C. events, register here

Additionally, there will be Anti-NATO events organized by the Anti-Imperialist Platform

Click this link to view their flyer

For more information: UNACpeace(at)gmail.com

ResistUSledWarMovement.com

https://nepajac.org/unac_070124.html

Using Ukraine since 1948

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From Consortium News

By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News

The United States has for nearly 80 years seen Ukraine as the staging ground for its once covert and increasingly overt war with Russia. 

After years of warnings, and after talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia fought back two years ago. With neither side backing down, Ukraine is increasingly becoming a flashpoint that could lead to nuclear war. 

The West thinks Russia is bluffing.

But its doctrine states that if Russia feels its existence is threatened it could resort to nuclear arms. Instead of taking these warnings seriously, NATO is recklessly opening corridors for a ground war against Russia in Ukraine; France says it’s putting together a coalition of nations to enter the war, despite Russia saying French or any other NATO force would be fair game. 

In Paris the other day Joe Biden said Russia wants to conquer all of Europe but can’t even take Khariv. It is this kind of inflammatory nonsense, combined with allowing Ukraine to fire NATO weapons into Russian territory, that is imperiling us all. 

The danger started building up many years ago but it is now reaching a climax. 

The U.S. relationship with Ukraine, and its extremists, to undermine Russia began after the Second World War. During the war, units of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) took part in the Holocaust, killing at least 100,000 Jews and Poles. 
https://en%5Bdot%5Dwikipedia%5Bdot%5Dorg/wiki/Massacres_of_Poles_in_Volhynia_and_Eastern_Galicia

Mykola Lebed, a top aide to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the fascist OUN-B, was recruited by the C.I.A. after the war, according to a 2010 study by the U.S. National Archives.  [https://www.archives[dot]gov/files/iwg/reports/hitlers-shadow.pdf]

Lebed was the “foreign minister” of a Banderite government in exile, but he later broke with Bandera for acting as a dictator. The U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps termed Bandera “extremely dangerous” yet said he was “looked upon as the spiritual and national hero of all Ukrainians….”

Instead of Bandera, the C.I.A. was interested in Lebed, despite his fascist background. They set him up in an office in New York City from which he directed sabotage and propaganda operations on the agency’s behalf inside Ukraine against the Soviet Union. 

The U.S. government study says:

“CIA operations with these Ukrainians began in 1948 under the cryptonym CARTEL, soon changed to AERODYNAMIC. …

Lebed relocated to New York and acquired permanent resident status, then U.S. citizenship. It kept him safe from assassination, allowed him to speak to Ukrainian émigré groups, and permitted him to return to the United States after operational trips to Europe.

Once in the United States, Lebed was the CIA’s chief contact for AERODYNAMIC. CIA handlers pointed to his ‘cunning character,’ his ‘relations with the Gestapo and … Gestapo training,’ [and] the fact that he was ‘a very ruthless operator.’”

The C.I.A. worked with Lebed on sabotage and pro-Ukrainian nationalist propaganda operations inside Ukraine until Ukraine’s independence in 1991.

“Mykola Lebed’s relationship with the CIA lasted the entire length of the Cold War,” the study says. “While most CIA operations involving wartime perpetrators backfired, Lebed’s operations augmented the fundamental instability of the Soviet Union.” 

Continued Until and Beyond Ukrainian Independence

The U.S. thus covertly kept Ukrainian fascist ideas alive inside Ukraine until at least Ukrainian independence was achieved.

Mykola Lebed, Bandera’s wartime chief in Ukraine, died in 1998.

He is buried in New Jersey, and his papers are located at the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, the U.S. National Archives study says.  

The successor organization to the OUN-B in the United States did not die with him, however.  It had been renamed the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), according to IBT.

“By the mid-1980s, the Reagan administration was honeycombed with UCCA members. Reagan personally welcomed [Yaroslav] Stetsko, the Banderist leader who oversaw the massacre of 7,000 Jews in Lviv, in the White House in 1983,” IBT reported.  “Following the demise of [Viktor] Yanukovich’s regime [in 2014], the UCCA helped organise rallies in cities across the US in support of the EuroMaidan protests,” it reported.
https://www.ibtimes%5Bdot%5Dco%5Bdot%5Duk/america-backing-neo-nazis-euromaidan-1437848
https://www.ibtimes%5Bdot%5Dco%5Bdot%5Duk/ukrainian-parliament-impeaches-president-yanukovich-1437539
http://www.facebook%5Bdot%5Dcom/MaidanUSA

That is a direct link between the U.S.-backed 2014 Maidan coup against a democratically-elected Ukrainian government and WWII-era Ukrainian fascism. 

[See: Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story] 

Since 2014, the U.S. pushed for an attack on the Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine who had rejected the coup, and NATO began training and equipping Ukrainian troops.  Combined with talk since 2008 of Ukraine joining NATO, Russia reacted after years of warning. 

More than two years after Russia’s intervention, with Ukraine clearly losing the war, Western leaders will do just about anything to save their political skins, as they’ve staked too much on winning in Ukraine.   Don’t listen to them.  They need a West in denial of the dangers facing us.

As President John F. Kennedy said in his 1963 American University speech:

“Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy–or of a collective death-wish for the world.”
https://www.jfklibrary%5Bdot%5Dorg/archives/other-resources/john-f-kennedy-speeches/american-university-19630610

The world may wake up when it’s too late — after nuclear missiles have already started flying.   


Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.

https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/10/using-ukraine-since-1948/

Was “No NATO expansion east” more than a promise?

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From the Libertarian Institute

By Ted Snider
July 17, 2023

At the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, eventual membership in NATO was promised to Ukraine and Georgia with the statement that “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agree today that these countries will become members of NATO.” Russian President Vladimir Putin “flew into a rage,” and, according to a Russian journalist quoted by John Mearsheimer, warned that “if Ukraine joins NATO, it will do so without Crimea and the eastern regions. It will simply fall apart.”

A decade and a half later, Putin sent the message [1] to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky: “Tell me you’re not joining NATO, I won’t invade.”

Putin is consistently accused in the West of dangerous melodrama and of historical revisionism when he points to NATO’s broken promise that it wouldn’t expand east if the Soviet Union permitted a united Germany to join NATO.

In 2007, Putin complained, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.” A year later, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev complained that the United States “promised that NATO wouldn’t move beyond the boundaries of Germany after the Cold War but now half of central and Eastern Europe are members, so what happened to their promises? It shows they cannot be trusted.”

Then U.S. Secretary of State James Baker has claimed [2] that the discussion of NATO expansion applied only to East Germany, not to Eastern Europe: “There was never any discussion of anything but the GDR (East Germany].” A 2014 NATO report claimed, “No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia’s claims has ever been produced.”

But declassified documents [3] now reveal that NATO was lying, and that it is Baker, and not Putin, who was engaging in historical revisionism.

After complaining that no one remembers the West’s assurances, Putin went on to remind his audience what they said: “I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are those guarantees?”

Putin was quoting correctly. He might have added, as we know from the recently declassified documents, that Woerner also “stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 out of 16 NATO members support this point of view).” The NATO Secretary General also assured the Russians on July 1, 1991 that, in an upcoming meeting with Poland’s Lech Walesa and Romania’s Ion Iliescu, “he will oppose Poland and Romania joining NATO, and earlier this was stated to Hungary and Czechoslovakia.” (Document 30)

As for Baker’s insistence that no such promise was made, he articulated some of the most important statements of that promise. On February 9, 1990, Baker famously offered Gorbachev a choice: “I want to ask you a question, and you need not answer it right now. Supposing unification takes place, what would you prefer: a united Germany outside of NATO, absolutely independent and without American troops; or a united Germany keeping its connections with NATO, but with the guarantee that NATO’s jurisdiction or troops will not spread east of the present boundary?”

Baker has been dismissive of this statement, categorizing it as only a hypothetical question. But Baker’s next statement, not previously included in the quotation, but now placed back in the script by the documentary record, refutes that claim. After Gorbachev answers Baker’s question, saying, “It goes without saying that a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable,” Baker replies categorically, “We agree with that.” (Document 6)

There are a number of other declassified statements that now solidify the evidence against Baker’s claim. The most important is Baker’s own interpretation of his question to Gorbachev at the time. At a press conference immediately following this most crucial meeting with Gorbachev, Baker announced that NATO’s “jurisdiction would not be moved eastward.” He added that he had “indicated” to Gorbachev that “there should be no extension of NATO forces eastward.”

And while Baker was meeting with Gorbachev, Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates was asking the same question of KGB leader Vladimir Kryuchkov in clearly non-hypothetical terms. He asked Kryuchkov what he thought of the “proposal under which a united Germany would be associated with NATO, but in which NATO troops would move no further east than they now were?” Gates then added, “It seems to us to be a sound proposal.” (Document 7)

On that same busy day, Baker posed the same question to Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze. He asked if there “might be an outcome that would guarantee that there would be no NATO forces in the eastern part of Germany. In fact, there could be an absolute ban on that.” How did Baker intend that offer? In Not One Inch, M.E. Sarotte reports that in his own notes, Baker wrote, “End result: Unified Ger. Anchored in a changed (polit.) NATO—whose juris. would not be moved eastward!” According to a now declassified State department memorandum of their conversation, Baker had already in this conversation assured Shevardnadze, “There would, of course, have to be ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward.” (Document 4)

And, according to a declassified State Department memorandum of the conversation, on still the same day, Baker told Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, not in the form of a question at all, that, “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” (Document 5)

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Minsk agreements allowed me to arm Ukraine – Poroshenko

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From RT
6-6-23

Pyotr Poroshenko has said he turned to NATO to prepare for war instead of implementing the peace roadmap

Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has boasted about his role in rebuilding his country’s military under the cover of the Minsk agreements. The documents were ostensibly intended to reconcile Kiev with eastern regions that had not endorsed the 2014 Western-backed coup.

“Do you know how many battalions I had north of Kiev when I became president? Zero. What about the state budget? Below zero. What about working tanks? A pittance,” the former leader said, describing the state of Ukraine nine years ago in an interview with Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper published on Monday.

Poroshenko took office in June 2014, as the post-coup Ukrainian government was attempting to quash a rebellion in Donetsk and Lugansk Regions with military force. The two Minsk agreements were adopted with Poroshenko at the helm. They were supposed to de-escalate the conflict and reintegrate the regions into Ukrainian political systems under wide autonomy, but Kiev stonewalled their implementation.

Instead, Poroshenko told the newspaper that his government had opted for a military buildup with the help of foreign sponsors.

“Immediately after the signing, I invited NATO instructors, bought weapons and vehicles. During my presidency we built an army,” he declared.

The former president insisted that this had allowed Ukraine to prepare for the current confrontation with Russia. Moscow cited Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk accords, its continued attacks on Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as NATO’s encroachment into Ukraine as key reasons for the launch of its military operation in February 2022.

Russian officials have claimed that the Minsk agreements, which were mediated by France and Germany, were negotiated in bad faith. Former French President Francois Hollande and ex-German Chancellor Angela Merkel have since confirmed that the deals were intended to buy time for Kiev.

Poroshenko suffered a landslide defeat to Vladimir Zelensky, the current president, in the 2019 election. The comedian-turned-politician promised to reverse his predecessor’s bellicose policies and reconcile with Donbass. However, Zelensky performed a U-turn after coming to power, as extremist nationalist forces objected to any attempts to negotiate.

In the interview, Poroshenko endorsed the opinion of Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, who argued last week that Minsk and Moscow should have “resolved” the Ukrainian situation in 2014-2015, instead of pursuing diplomacy. Poroshenko implied that his government would have been toppled in that scenario.

https://www.rt.com/russia/577553-poroshenko-minsk-accords-nato/