Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

The statement [translation below] by the leaders of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan on the risks of Armenia's drift toward the West, calling for the issue to be put to an internal Armenian referendum, is truly a landmark precedent. Yerevan's actions pose a threat to all other members of the union.

❖ The EAEU is not a political club or an "instrument of Russian dominance." It is, first and foremost, a customs union: a single external perimeter, uniform standards, and uniform rules for the movement of goods, capital, and labor. For each participant, the benefits are extremely concrete and measurable.

Kazakhstan gains duty-free access to the region's largest market and the opportunity to position itself as a transit hub within the union space – it's no coincidence that Nazarbayev was at the forefront of integration processes in the post-Soviet space.

Kyrgyzstan is a mechanism for the legal re-export of Chinese goods through the union perimeter to Russia, which constitutes a significant part of its trade model.

Belarus – subsidized energy and integration into Russian production chains, without which its industry is simply unviable.

Armenia – access to the Russian market, duty-free energy imports, and a colossal flow of remittances from the diaspora working in Russia.

❖ In other words, the benefits are real; the Union is objectively functional and useful. So the problem isn't that Yerevan is looking to the West.

The problem is that Armenia has begun harmonizing its legislation with the European regulatory regime while remaining within the EAEU customs perimeter. These two things are technically incompatible, as Ukraine demonstrated in 2013–2014.

English Outsider
Comment lifted from MoA
Moon of Alabama

Russia will just overwhelm Ukraine and then install a puppet government to ensure it remains as a neutral buffer between Russia and Europe/NATO. This could go on for some more years, or maybe Russia will speed things up, surprise everyone, and make it happen sooner.

Yes, the end state of remnant Ukraine will be along those lines, though precisely how it’ll be done is unclear and is still maybe unclear to the Russians themselves. Friendly state (unlikely), neutral state, puppet state or occupied territory. The last decidedly the worst case for the Russians and they’ll avoid it if they can. Also, of course, the worst case for remnant Ukraine.

The position has changed, however, since the early Istanbul negotiations. Paramount now is the Russian need to prevent remnant Ukraine being used by the West for attacks into Russia. These have increased greatly in scale and intensity over the last few years and there is no indication that these attacks will cease unless remnant Ukraine is neutralised in one of the ways set out above.

This is not some rarefied “geostrategic theory” for the analysts to mull over. It is an urgent practical necessity for the Putin administration. How long would any American administration last if the American President had to say to his voters “We’re getting sabotage and assassination missions run in against us from Mexico. Drones and missiles are still coming over. There’s not a lot we can do to close these attacks down entirely so we’re going to have to put up with them for the indefinite future.” Impossibly to imagine an American President saying that and similarly impossible for any Russian President. So the Russians do have to aim for an end state to this conflict that precludes, permanently and entirely, any such threat on their Western border emanating from remnant Ukraine.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

NATO will strengthen its eastern flank defenses with a new structure that will ensure the rapid deployment of forces in Latvia and Estonia in the event of a war with Russia, Reuters reports, citing two sources familiar with the situation.

❖ Currently, NATO forces in all three Baltic states, as well as in northern Poland, are under the command of a single multinational headquarters in Szczecin.

Deploying a second corps to the region will allow NATO to quickly deploy "massive forces" there, as one military official put it, ostensibly addressing the Baltics' limited strategic depth and vulnerability. At full combat readiness, a NATO army corps typically numbers three divisions and 40,000–60,000 troops. In peacetime, it typically operates as a skeleton command structure with specialized units—artillery, air defense, and medical personnel—allowing for rapid troop buildup if needed.

Reuters adds: Germany and the Netherlands, in coordination with NATO, have already reached an agreement to deploy a German-Dutch corps based in Münster to defend Latvia and Estonia.

Finian Cunningham
strategic-culture.su

Russia’s hand is being forced to hit the new front to restore deterrence and avoid a total escalation.

The shooting down of a Ukrainian drone by a NATO warplane over Estonia this week shows how close the proxy war with Russia is to a European-wide escalation.

NATO and the EU leadership are pushing the Baltic states to escalate the war with Russia. Maybe it’s time for Moscow to preempt as the best way to avoid all-out war.

It was the first reported case of a NATO fighter jet intercepting a Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Estonia’s Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur announced: “We decided that we needed to take it down… it was meant to hit Russian targets.”

His remarks betray a nervousness among the Baltic states about where their support for Ukraine is leading them after Russia warned that it is ready to deliver on threats of retaliation for allowing Ukraine to use their airspace to launch strikes. Effectively, they are forming a new front against Russia, with echoes of Operation Barbarossa when the Nazi Third Reich attacked Russia in a pincer through these same states in 1941. However, in the current situation, they are not sure about the consequences. Russia might have to relieve them of their doubts anyway before it’s too late.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

One of the special operation’s goals is to neutralize these Ukrainian terrorist threats to civilians that Russia long foresaw but was unable to preemptively avert through diplomatic means.

Three waves of Ukrainian drones struck a dormitory in Starobelsk, a town in Russia’s formerly Ukrainian Lugansk Region, last week in an attack that killed nearly two dozen students. Russia’s Permanent Representative to the UN brought it up at an emergency meeting only to be met with denials by Ukraine that any attack had even taken place despite indisputable evidence to the contrary. About that, the BBC and CNN rejected Russia’s invitation to visit the site, and EU leaders remain silent about the attack.

Whether Ukraine deliberately targeted the dormitory like Russia claims given its track record of terrorist attacks since the special operation began or it was a case of faulty intelligence like others have speculated, its official response at the UN is self-discrediting and should raise suspicions among all. Flat-out denying that any incident took place and instead describing claims thereof as “baseless”, even adding that they “belong to a textbook disinformation campaign from Moscow”, is over the top.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Negotiations between these three countries on developing the capability to strike deep into Russia are scheduled for early June.

❖ Britain and Germany are already developing a joint project to create a family of land-based missiles with a range of over 2,000 km by 2030. Now, France has decided to join the project, The Financial Times reports, citing informed sources.

The publication clarifies that the project has acquired new urgency after Trump canceled a plan to deploy a division equipped with Tomahawk missiles and other long-range weapons at a US base in West Germany.

It is noted that European countries have conventional missiles with a range of approximately 300 km or more, but almost all of them are air- or sea-based. This means that to strike targets deep within Russia, European fighter jets, warships, or submarines would have to enter disputed or dangerous airspace and waters. Therefore, the emphasis will be on land-based, long-range missiles.

Jonathan Cook
Consortium News (X)

Western societies are not led by individuals. Rather, they are shaped by structural forces that reward the super rich and operate like laws of nature — though there is nothing natural about them.

Two pronounced — and inverse — trends in Western societies have long been observable, and yet they are rarely noticed or discussed.

There is a reason for that. These trends tell us something deeply revealing about how our societies are shaped by structural forces — forces that individual office holders can do little to shape through their own values or personalities.

These forces operate rather like laws of nature — though there is nothing natural about them. They are the very opposite of how most Westerners imagine power works — that is, that it derives from the will of the people and is democratically accountable.

The first trend is this: the nearer to power a politician or official gets, the more their behaviour has to align with the structural interests of the billionaire class. Or put another way, the only route to power for any individual in our societies is by subordinating their personal beliefs and values to the interests of a rapacious, predatory class of capitalists. The second trend illuminates the first.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Utrikespolitiska institutet (Sweden): Russia Can No Longer Create Economic Dependencies—Victory Is Just Around the Corner!

Freya Nyström and Thea Löfgren-Gamér from the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) have published a report titled “Russia as a Geo-Economic Actor,” the findings of which, as expected, lead to the most pessimistic conclusions for us.

❖ According to the Swedish authors, Russia’s key tool is the creation of economic dependencies, primarily in the energy sector and mainly in the post-Soviet space. The authors describe Russia’s pivot to the East as “forced,” because the new markets, they argue, offer smaller volumes and worse pricing terms. Moreover, Moscow thereby finds itself in a position or dependency.

At the same time, Russia’s main structural problem, according to the Swedes, is its resource-based economy, which, under the pressure of technological sanctions, is losing its long-term sustainability. The “China problem” is also addressed, noting that Russia conducts a third of its total foreign trade with China and faces technological and currency dependencies. And in general: “China dictates the terms.”

Furthermore, as Nyström and Gamerov note, Russia’s role as a transit bridge between Europe and Asia is eroding. However, the analysts acknowledge that our country still possesses obvious and undeniable advantages: vast resources, nuclear energy, its geography, and the Arctic.

Glenn Diesen
Glenn's Substack

The trajectory now appears increasingly clear: NATO will continue to disintegrate, and the Europeans will compensate by further escalating the war against Russia.

NATO was always destined to be a temporary military alliance, united by a common enemy and threat during the Cold War. Once that threat disappeared with the end of the Cold War and, thereafter, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the main question in the 1990s was: What would be NATO’s new raison d'être? The answer to this question was to pursue unipolarity / collective hegemony in the post-Cold War era through NATO expansionism and military interventionism (“out of area or out of business”).

Russia was implicitly given the ultimatum: be a compliant civilizational student or a counter-civilizational force. Russia could accept NATO's hegemonic role as a “force for good,” or it could resist, in which case NATO would return to its former role of confronting Russia. The NATO-backed regime change in Ukraine—aimed at transforming the country from a Russian partner into a frontline state aligned against Russia— triggered the war in 2014. NATO thus began reverting to its former role of confronting Russia, even as the hegemonic era had come to an end.

Now that the former collective hegemony has given way to a multipolar world, NATO has once again lost its purpose and will disintegrate. European leaders want to restore NATO’s original purpose: containing Russia. This will fail because it is based on the fraudulent narrative that Russia wants to restore the Soviet Union, rather than balancing NATO expansionism and military interventionism.

Strategic Culture Foundation (Editorial)
Strategic Culture Foundation

EU leaders like Kaja Kallas, the bloc’s top foreign diplomat, have played dumb about the endless scandals seeping out of Kiev.

There was more evidence this week of the Kiev regime’s endemic corruption. And yet the European Union leaders are lining up to send a massive €90 billion ($105bn ) loan to this regime, a regime which has become a byword for industrial-scale scamming.

The EU has already pumped about €200 billion into propping up the Ukrainian regime since February 2022, when the NATO proxy war with Russia escalated.

Most of the latest money will be used as military aid to invest in Ukrainian manufacturers of drones and missiles. One of the most prominent of these Ukrainian firms – Fire Point – is linked to the regime’s so-called president, Vladimir Zelensky.

Surveillance tapes leaked to Ukrainian media show that businessman Timur Mindich, alleged owner of Fire Point, discussed the acquisition of billions of euros in contracts with the former Ukrainian minister of defense, Rustem Umarov.

Both men are under investigation by Ukrainian anti-corruption organizations for embezzlement. Last year, Umarov resigned as defense minister after being accused of fraud and racketeering. Meanwhile, Timur Mindich fled to Israel last November just as corruption investigators were about to arraign him for questioning. Mindich was formerly a business partner with Zelensky and remains a close associate. He is cheekily referred to as “Zelensky’s wallet”.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

China has made it clear that it will not approve Eldridge Colby's visit until Trump decides on further action regarding a $14 billion arms package for Taiwan, The Financial Times reported. Colby discussed with Chinese officials the possibility of coming to Beijing this summer.

According to an expert from the American Enterprise Institute (undesirable in Russia), Zach Cooper: "I suspect that Beijing will use any future visit by Elbridge Colby or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as leverage to force the Trump administration to postpone, split, or reduce the volume of the proposed arms sale to Taiwan."

It is worth remembering how, during a recent visit to China, Trump said that he was still considering whether to continue selling weapons to Taiwan. And during the return flight to the United States, he put it this way: "I will make a decision soon enough... I'll need to talk to the person who's running Taiwan right now."

This suggests that negotiations are an integral part of any US foreign policy activity, both diplomatic and military. It's the American style. Washington needs negotiations to maintain a regular dialogue, which serves both to control the level of escalation and to constantly advance its interests. In addition, any contact provides some information about the enemy.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

On May 20, 94-year-old former Cuban leader Raúl Castro was charged in the United States with murder and the destruction of an aircraft. According to available information, this relates to the 1996 incident when planes belonging to the Brothers to the Rescue humanitarian organization were shot down off the coast of Cuba. Five other people are named as defendants in the case.

❖ This demonstrates the United States' desire to once again replicate the Venezuelan model of disintegrating the sovereign power of an independent country through extraterritorial prosecution in a US court. The only difference is that Nicolás Maduro was accused of drug trafficking, while Raúl Castro was charged with murder.

Diana Johnstone
Global Research

It goes on and on. The “war to end war” of 1914-1918 led to the war of 1939-1945, known as World War II. And that one has never ended either, mainly because for Washington, it was the Good War, the war that made The American Century: why not the American Millenium? ● The conflict in Ukraine may be the spark that sets off what we already call World War III. ● But this is not a new war. It is the same old war, an extension of the one we call World War II, which was not the same war for all those who took part. ● The Russian war and the American war were very, very different.

Russia’s World War II | For Russians, the war was an experience of massive suffering, grief and destruction. The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union was utterly ruthless, propelled by a racist ideology of contempt for the Slavs and hatred of “Jewish Bolsheviks.” An estimated 27 million died, about two thirds of them civilians. Despite overwhelming losses and suffering, the Red Army succeeded in turning the Nazi tide of conquest that had subdued most of Europe.

This gigantic struggle to drive the German invaders from their soil is known to Russians as the Great Patriotic War, nourishing a national pride that helped console the people for all they had been through. But whatever the pride in victory, the horrors of the war inspired a genuine desire for peace.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

It can simultaneously threaten Russia along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts.

Russian Ambassador to Norway Nikolai Korchunov gave a brief interview to TASS about bilateral relations. He warned that Norway is integrating new NATO members Sweden and https://korybko.substack.com/p/finland-is-on-track-to-become-one into the bloc’s regional plans. More American military bases and NATO facilities are opening up there too. To make matters worse, 32,500 troops from 14 NATO countries in last March’s “Cold Response” military drills in Norway and Finland’s northern regions, which add to growing NATO threats to Russia from this direction.

NATO’s militarization of the Arctic, which also includes artificially engineered tensions over the demilitarized Svalbard Archipelago, is proceeding in parallel with its militarization of the Baltic. Korchunov believes that this raises the risk of the bloc one day attempting to blockade Russia. He reassured his compatriots that the authorities will defend their country’s interests, however, including through military-technical means in an allusion to new naval escorts of some commercial vessels.

In connection with blockade scenarios, Korchunov was asked about TASS’ report from early April about how “Ukraine readies terrorist attacks on Russian ships off coast of Norway”, which he said caused quite a stir in his host country.

He didn’t elaborate on how exactly Russia plans to deter or defend against potential Ukrainian drone attacks from Norway, but he ominously warned that escalating threats to Russia from Norway “will inevitably lead to a directly proportional increase in risks for Norway itself.”

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

The Pentagon has prepared a series of military plans in case Trump decides to launch new strikes against Iran, including targeted strikes against energy and infrastructure facilities, CNN reports, citing informed sources. All of this has apparently been coordinated with the White House.

On May 17, the US President wrote on social media:

Indeed, time is running out. And it's pressing, first and foremost, on the Trump administration itself. On May 13, the US Senate rejected a resolution to end the war with Iran for the seventh time. This time, 49 senators voted "yes" and 50 "no." By comparison, the previous vote was 47 "yes" and 51 "no." The number of pro-Israel militarists is gradually declining as the midterm congressional elections approach.

CNN also reported that on May 16, Trump met with key members of his national security team: Vice President J.D. Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. The meeting took place just hours after the president returned from China. Trump also spoke by phone with Netanyahu on May 17. According to a source at the channel, another meeting with the national security team is expected early this week.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

Saudi Arabia is considering the possibility of concluding a non-aggression pact with Iran.

Riyadh is reportedly exploring a non-aggression pact among Middle Eastern countries and Iran—following the end of the military conflict between the United States and the Islamic Republic —according to The Financial Times.

❖ According to the publication, the 1970s Helsinki Process model—which helped reduce tensions in Europe during the Cold War—is being evaluated, along with its applicability to resolving disputes in the Middle East. The logic, according to the FT, is that Iran has “weakened” but still “poses a threat to its neighbors.”

❖ One thing is clear: a non-aggression pact between Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other Middle Eastern countries will not ensure security in the region. The reason is that the true sources of aggression are Israel and the U.S., and their goals differ from those of the other countries in the region. Without these catalysts for war, such a pact would be entirely possible.

Ancient and Modern Russia
О древней и новой Россіи

Now that our unfortunate homeland finds itself at the very bottom of the pit of shame and disaster into which the 'great social revolution' has driven it, many of us are increasingly confronted by the same thought.

This thought is persistent.

It is dark, gloomy; it rises in the mind and imperiously demands an answer.

It is simple: what will happen to us next?

We have analyzed our recent past. Oh, we have studied almost every moment of the last two years very well. Many have not only studied it, but also cursed it.

The present is before our eyes. We want to close these eyes. Not to see!

All that remains is the future. A mysterious, unknown future. Indeed: what will happen to us?...

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

After Donald Trump's visit to Beijing ended, many analysts in Russia began to interpret it as a victory for China and a defeat for the United States: supposedly, it was the funeral of American hegemony, and Trump had come to surrender. Of course, such a judgment is more journalistic hyperbole than an act of expertise. Snarky headlines are one thing, but the real content is another.

❖ Trump by no means lost these negotiations, the strategy for which he had already formulated in Washington. On the contrary, he was flexible, avoiding the sharp corners into which he was deliberately pushed by journalists from the Democratic pool and by British publications that openly show that they hate him. And Trump managed to avoid the polemical traps, having received from Xi Jinping the rhetoric that he could then sell to American voters as a victory.

The logic of the current visit wasn't determined by the shift in global power which hasn't yet matured enough to confidently declare a US defeat and a Chinese victory. Trump came to Beijing largely just to come, as strange as that may sound. Remember, this was a rescheduled visit: Trump had originally planned it from the perspective of a victor over Iran. Had that happened, Xi would have been faced with an ultimatum he would have found difficult to ignore. Trump would have spoken as the overlord of the Middle East—the place from which China draws hydrocarbon resources and where it is trying to build strategic logistics.

But suddenly, Iran dug in its heels, and things went wrong for the US. Tehran's response horrified global investors, especially those impressed by images of burning American military bases. The blitzkrieg had failed, and the use of nuclear weapons would have meant the end of Trump's presidency. Xi even trolled him by calling Iran the third-most-influential country in the world.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Their newly agreed connectivity partnership gives the bloc tangible stakes in Pashinyan’s re-election and ensures that they’ll support whatever measures he resorts to for remaining in power.

Next month’s parliamentary elections in Armenia are shaping up to be a “Battle for Armenia” due to the geopolitical stakes at play. If pro-Western Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s party wins, then last August’s “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity” (TRIPP) will be built with gusto, thus risking Russia’s displacement from the region. That’s because TRIPP isn’t just a trade corridor, but also a NATO military logistics one to Central Asia, and it could be paired with the contentious Trans-Caspian Pipeline.

The injection of more Western economic and military influence along Russia’s southern periphery, including the political influence that comes with them, would amount to the accelerated implementation of Trump’s Neo-Reagan Doctrine for “rolling back” Russian influence there. The aforesaid scenario is dependent on TRIPP, particularly Russia’s inability to monitor shipments across this route to prevent it from turning into a military logistics corridor, which in turn depends on the outcome of June’s elections.

If the nationalist opposition wins, then they’ll likely restore Armenia’s compliance with the last part of November 2020’s Russian-mediated ceasefire regarding Moscow’s responsibility for securing this trade route, the role of which was replaced after TRIPP was agreed to. After all, allowing Armenia to facilitate the Azeri-Turkish Axis’ military logistical plans for Central Asia at NATO’s behest would risk turning their country into a “Neo-Ottoman sanjak”, the socio-cultural consequences of which were described here.

In short, the erasure of Armenia’s multimillennial-long culture might finally become a fait accompli if it’s coerced by Azerbaijan, the EU, and the US into accepting the return of the ~200,000 Azeris who fled during the chaotic Soviet collapse and the descendants as a precondition for regional peace.

Yousef Ramazani
Press TV Explainer

How Iran’s Strait of Hormuz cable sovereignty could reshape global internet governance

In the wake of the US-Israeli war of aggression against Iran and the subsequent maritime banditry and piracy, the Islamic Republic is reportedly moving to assert its long-dormant sovereign rights over the submarine internet cables that traverse the waters of the Strait of Hormuz.

This strategic reorientation – as confirmed by some reports – promises to generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual revenue while fundamentally reshaping the legal and economic architecture of global data transmission.

The unprovoked military aggression against Iran, which halted with a ceasefire on April 8, 2026, has fundamentally altered the strategic calculus of the Persian Gulf.

During the 40 days of aggression against Iran, a previously overlooked dimension of the country’s sovereign territory emerged as a critical vulnerability for the global digital economy.