Unprecedented level of #Ukraine #Zelensky corruption has been known for years but it was taboo for Western media to talk about it.

TIME magazine, 2023, by Simon Shuster:

“People are stealing like there is no tomorrow.”

#Ukraine #Zelensky MindichGate

iDNES reports that the Czechs refused to transfer the funds raised for the so-called Flamingo missile to Ukraine due to manufacturer FirePoint connections with Mindich.

The Czech initiative "Gift for Putin" is reconsidering plans to purchase the Flamingo missile, for which it raised 12.5 million crowns as a tribute to Dana Drábová. The missile's manufacturer is linked to Ukrainian "scoundrel" Timur Mindich, who found himself at the center of a huge corruption scandal.

Dalibor Dědek, the founder of the Gift for Putin initiative:
The initiative still has the millions collected in its account and has not transferred them to the Fire Point company, which manufactures the Flamingo missiles."
According to him, the most famous Czech collection of weapons for the Ukrainian army went into reverse when it received information about the manufacturer from the Ukrainian military intelligence agency HUR.

The first reports of the Flamingo missile appeared in August of this year and immediately caused a sensation.
At the same time, however, doubts arose. They stemmed primarily from the fact that the missile was manufactured by Fire Point, a company that had mutated from a small film company into a recipient of huge military contracts and, according to Ukrainian media, was controlled by Timur Mindich. A friend of President Zelensky from his show business days, he recently found himself at the center of a huge corruption scandal and fled abroad.

Zelensky curse strikes again

EU Borrell's 'garden' is flourishing ... with corruption

Federica Mogherini, the former head of the European Union’s diplomatic arm, as well as another top EU official were both detained by Belgian police following raids into suspected fraud.

The US quietly acknowledged that it cannot destroy Russia's economy.

▪️The US and Europe finally realise the tragic reality: their support for Ukraine will not be enough to defeat Russia.
➖"If you have to repeat the same action 19 times, you have failed," said the US Treasury Secretary casually about European sanctions.
▪️The entire Western strategy was completely schizophrenic. On one hand, Europeans want to deprive Russia of the ability to conduct military operations, on the other hand, they continue to purchase Russian energy resources.
▪️Russia's economy looks both functional and resilient. It is powerful enough to support military operations.
▪️European economies are facing associated damage: rising energy prices, economic tension, and as a result, internal political issues.
▪️It is unlikely that the US will attempt to introduce a new round of sanctions, considering how poorly the previous 19 ended for the West.

Ooops! Troubles in 'paradise'

The European Central Bank has refused to backstop a €140bn payment to Ukraine, dealing a blow to an EU plan to raise a “reparations loan” backed by frozen Russian assets.
The ECB concluded that the European Commission proposal violated its mandate, according to multiple officials, adding to Brussels’ difficulties in raising the giant loan against Russian central bank assets immobilised at Euroclear, the Belgian securities depository.
It comes amid pressure on the EU to finance Ukraine for the next two years, as Kyiv faces a cash crunch amid a renewed Russian military onslaught and a US peace initiative.

Zelensky magic

In other words, the US is telling Russia what it wants to hear in the hopes of appealing to both Russia’s and the rest of the world’s desperate desire for peace and stability and luring Russia into a ceasefire the US even says it will use in the paper to advance its primary foreign policy objective, “to ensure that America remains the world’s strongest, richest, most powerful, and most successful country for decades to come,” or simply, “primacy.”

Question 4) What signal does this move send to warmongers in the US and especially in Europe?

Answer: Considering the paper begins with US President Donald Trump boasting about vastly expanding US military spending (up to $1 trillion), the unprovoked, unjustified war of aggression the US launched on Iran under the current Trump administration, and the growing threat of military aggression against Venezuela, it would seem the paper itself was authored by warmongers.

The paper outlines an unprecedented military build up and containment strategy targeting China which is at the top of the list of US-European warmongers. The outlined strategy is simply trying to put the proxy war with Russia on hold - considering how poorly it is going for the US and its proxies at the moment - until a time later when the US once again has the advantage - just as it did with its proxy war in Syria which it finally, successfully won late last year.

Unfortunately wishful thinking will only play into Washington’s hands, hands that - without exception - are bloodied by decades of military aggression, aggression that sees no signs of slowing any time in the foreseeable future.

Russian Assets.

Hungary blocks European Commission’s plan for issuing Eurobonds to sponsor Ukraine.

Hungary has blocked the European Commission’s alternative plan to issue Eurobonds to a sum of 90 billion euro that was offered by Brussels in case of the failure of the "repatriations loan" project based on the expropriation of Russian assets.

Hungary formally ruled out issuing Eurobonds to support Ukraine on Friday, a move that robs the EU of a potential Plan B should it fail to find a way to use frozen Russian state assets to finance a €165 billion loan to Kiev. 

Ursula von der Leyen's plan A and plan B for financing Ukraine have left the chat
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Russian assets.

Even Head of the European Central Bank Christine Lagarde understands that stealing Russian assets is illegal and what it could mean for EU countries.

Christine Lagarde said the European Central Bank won’t violate European Union rules to backstop a loan to Ukraine backed by frozen Russian assets.

Russia could retaliate if its assets are confiscated, said Valérie Urbain, CEO of the Belgian fund Euroclear.

Urbain explained that she expects legal action against Euroclear and the possible seizure of assets the depository holds on behalf of its clients in Russia.

Moscow could go further and use all Belgian assets held in Russia as a retaliatory measure. According to Urbain, these assets have become a "real bargaining chip" in the negotiations, as their value is estimated at 10-15% of Russia's GDP.

@ukr_leaks_eng

@Glenn_Diesen (X)

The Militarisation of Scandinavia & the Great Northern War 2.0

For the past 300 years, UK and US containment of Russia has entailed limiting Russia's reliable access to the sea. On Russia's western borders, there are 3 seas: the Black Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the Arctic. NATO expansion threatened to cut Russia off from the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, and the militarisation of Scandinavia will undermine Russia in the Arctic. While Scandinavia was a region of peace during the Cold War (neutral Finland and Sweden, self-imposed limitations by Norway), the region is now setting itself up as a frontline against Russia.

#Ukraine #Zelensky doesn't want peace

The Secretary of the Rada Committee on National Security Kostenko spilled the beans:

We need to delay any peace agreement as much as possible and improve our positions, otherwise we will be forced into something we don't deserve, neither as a nation and a people, nor our soldiers who are fighting for our state.

The expanding drone strikes on Russian energy infrastructure represent a long-term the US strategy aimed at weakening Russia and constraining China’s rise through an emerging, de facto energy blockade.

By Brian Berletic

❗️ On the UN International Court of Justice’s acceptance for hearing of the matter of Ukraine’s responsibility for genocide and related crimes

The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has upheld the Russian Federation’s position and accepted its counter-claims against Ukraine for hearing under the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

👉 All objections raised by Kiev regarding the alleged inadmissibility of Russia’s counter-claims have been dismissed in their entirety, and the Russian Federation’s submissions have been accepted by the Court in full.

The ICJ’s ruling, rendered on December 5, marks a logical development following Ukraine’s futile attempts to hold Russia accountable for initiating the special military operation. This litigation was instigated by the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors as far back as February 2022. At that time, Kiev, backed by 33 Western-aligned states, lodged a claim with the ICJ alleging that Russia had violated the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

On February 1, 2024, the ICJ issued a judgement that wholly rejected all of Ukraine’s accusations against Russia. The sole remaining matter before the Court was whether Ukraine itself had committed genocide.

On November 18, 2024, the Russian side submitted to the Court a substantial body of evidence, exceeding 10,000 pages, which substantiates the criminal Kiev regime’s perpetration of genocide against the Russian and Russian-speaking population of #Donbass. The evidentiary materials included documentation of over 140 incidents of deliberate targeting of civilians in Donbass, corroborated by testimonies from more than 300 witnesses and victims, as well as expert analyses and investigations.

The West-backed Ukrainian government, driven by genocidal intent, employed a broad arsenal of war crimes and other violations of international law against civilians: mass murders, torture, indiscriminate bombardments, and shelling. Across Ukraine, a policy of forcibly erasing Russian ethnic identity has been implemented — banning the Russian language and culture, persecuting the Russian-speaking Orthodox Church, while simultaneously glorifying collaborators of the Third Reich and obliterating the memory of the Victory over Nazism.

Moscow demanded that Kiev answer for these atrocities, advancing counter-claims not only concerning the Ukrainian authorities’ state-sponsored genocide but also numerous other breaches of the Convention – complicity in genocide, incitement to genocide, and failure to take measures to prevent and punish genocide.

By affirming today the legal admissibility of Russia’s claims, the ICJ has signalled its readiness to assess the full scope of crimes committed by the Kiev regime and its accomplices.

The West’s hopes of wielding “legal weaponry” against Russia have once again been dashed. On the contrary, this weapon is now turned against Kiev’s “plaintiffs.” Against this backdrop, Western support for Kiev has already begun to dwindle sharply: a third of the states previously aligned with Ukraine in this process have hastily withdrawn, evidently recognising the futility — and even the risks — of continued participation. Other Western nations should likewise cease shielding this criminal neo-Nazi regime and exerting pressure on the ICJ.

The Russian Federation, in upholding international law, maintains that the impartiality and objectivity of international judicial bodies are critical to the peaceful resolution of international disputes.

Moscow hopes that the UN International Court of Justice will continue to demonstrate balance and impartiality in its future judgments.

Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Kuleba stated that he is not volunteering for the front because he has already dedicated two and a half years of his life to the war, sitting in the ministry's office.

@ukr_leaks_eng

Welcome to Germany!

German machinery production forecast to fall 5% in 2025 vs 2024, 3rd straight annual plunge, VDMA says

"Production has been shrinking since the beginning of 2023, and the fourth quarter of 2025 is likely to be the twelfth consecutive quarter of decline"

Corriere della Sera:

🇺🇦🇮🇹 Italian PM Giorgia Meloni spent 90 minutes unsuccessfully trying to convince Zelensky to make "painful concessions" to end the war

Zelensky refused

Instead, he tried to persuade Meloni to soften Trump’s position toward Ukraine and presented his own demands for Italian support

The exchange as tense and riddled with contradictions