Russia

Dept of Defence briefing document insists facilities are non-military A briefing released by the US Department of Defence admits that the US military has been maintaining forty-six bio-facilities in Ukraine, while insisting that they and other laboratories it ‘supports’ in that country are purely for peaceful purposes. The presence of US-run bio-facilities in Ukraine formed […]

Britain joined Russia in blocking a UN Security Council statement condemning the Azeri blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh

A bloody attack on a Ukrainian Orthodox Church priest, close to the Orthodox Christmas, in a church....and sanctioned by the government.

Why Ukraine may be under even more pressure than Russia to Do Something when the ground finally freezes in Ukraine.

Just because the weather gods are now smiling on Europe does not mean its energy crunch is over.

A piece about NATO's recent noises re Ukraine sadly reveals how supposedly non-captured, well-meaning activists have lost the plot.

Is Ukraine's spin getting threadbare?

Paul Niland looks at how even Russia's minimal war aims in Ukraine are vague and impossible, eroded by the attrition of the Ukrainian armed forces and a failing mobilisation

The West is arraying financial weapons never deployed before against a country of Russia’s size, forsaking some of the principles that have defined it.

Part of what has defined the West – and most of what has been the world’s engine of prosperity for the past century and a half – has been the free flow of goods across borders, a working banking system, and property rights.

There’s been an implicit understanding that no sizeable nation (Russia’s economy is about the size of Australia’s) would be denied access to these things. Otherwise the financial system wouldn’t be the financial system.

That seems to have been the understanding of Russian President Vladimir Putin. But ten days ago, the West did the unthinkable, and the global financial system may never be the same again.