POLITBLOGME 

In front of my eyes are two concepts of foreign policy. One of 2016. The other one was made public just hours ago.

These are the concepts of two distinct countries that exist in fundamentally different realities. The former is grounded in a flirtation with the West, aspiring to integrate into it and follow the rules imposed by Western powers. The latter represents a declaration of Russia as a unique, independent, and powerful entity in international relations, history, culture, and civilisation. It articulates the existence of a cultural and civilisational community known as the Russian world, placing emphasis on the struggle against Russophobia and the fight for the right to very existence of the Russian world as one of its top priorities. The Concept also outlines plans to strengthen Russia’s role in humanitarian affairs, to defend traditional values and spirituality. This is declared directly, without any equivocations or usual fawning phrasing.

At present, Russia gracefully closes the door in front of the West without slamming it shut, leaving an option for re-entry. The entire foreign policy course can be summed up in one phrase from the Concept: «The Russian Federation’s approach to other states and international organisations is based on their constructive, neutral, or unfriendly relationship towards it.»

The protesters have left a message for Macron which is quite unambiguous in its meaning. 

Yesterday, he accused Le Pen of causing destabilization and bringing the country to the brink of civil war. Shifting blame and responsibility for one's actions is a characteristic trait of modern western leadership. The principle of “blame others for your own shit” seems to work perfectly in the West for foreign and domestic policies, saving precious political assholes for the time being. 

Macron has stated that the protests are illegitimate, as only Members of Parliament can represent and articulate the people’s will. However, he seems to have forgotten that the National Assembly has been deprived of the right to vote on this bone of contentions, on this contentious law opposed by all of France, apart from those with deep pockets, on this law introduced as a part of the Macronian reforms which serve businesses and tycoons. 

That is demeaning to people of color, not merely historical and artistic parody. People of color have their own culture, history, literature, and art, all of which reflect their authenticity, continuity of generations, and fidelity to their origins. The West destroys black culture and cuts people of color off from their roots. 

Examples of Hitler's propaganda and agitation targeting the Russians during WWII. Find the difference between Hitler’s propaganda and the current Western propaganda and agitation of the Western-paid so-called Russian opposition.

Spoiler: There's no difference.

1. 

Those who have followed me for a long time know that last year my team and I were raising money to produce a documentary that was supposed to tell the real stories of the people of Donbass. The project that was meant to be completely independent never materialized since we were unable to raise the required funding. Most of the money was successfully sent back. The funds we received through Donation Alerts we sent to support humanitarian aid for those residing in the war zone. That was almost a tragedy for us, but we move on, and we're filming short stories and working on the humanitarian track. Several of the videos we produced have already been shared on Twitter and my Telegram channels. For example here and here.

Since the humanitarian issues don't get any better, they get even worse, we are eager to move on. I've been getting a lot of questions from individuals all over the world asking how they can support the Donbass. I make it happen now. So far I can’t activate the Donation Alerts, so for awhile you can support the humanitarian track via the relevant "humanitarian" subscription on Boosty: BASIC and EXTENDED. The reports and the short videos we produce will be published on the channel as well. 

Thanks to everybody who would be eager to join financially our activities!

With Mario Draghi in power and plans to succeed Stoltenberg as the next Secretary General of NATO when he steps down this year in the autumn, Italy joined the EU's efforts to flood Ukraine with weapons in the first ranks. Draghi has been rushing so much that the Italian government began sending the arms even before this very step was even discussed and approved by the parliament. To drag Italy into the very mess of the ongoing crisis and to present himself and Italy as one of the motors of NATO unity and militarism was the most appropriate thing to do for Mario Draghi to meet his goals. After the governmental crisis, the new government, surprising (not so much, to be honest), continued on the same track, being unable to do anything but continue the track shaped by Mario Draghi, which plunged the country into the epicentre of the cataclysm.

But economically, the country is not ready for such a role, having been acutely damaged by the COVID crisis, and according to the data, it is short on military resources.

Though Italy has never been in the focus of my research interests, I came across a quite interesting Italian report published by the Italian Defense Research and Analysis Institute. Despite having a very boring title, it has quite fascinating revelations. According to the document, the military budget was critically small and insufficient before the conflict, and it became critically insufficient taking into account the current developments and Italian approaches. Since 2008, the Italian budget in relation to GDP has grown just on 0,02% from 1,35 to 1,38, (from 21.132,4 M€ in 2008 to 25.956,1 M€), despite the obvious rise of geopolitical threats that were expanding throughout the past years.

The country that has been positioning itself as a NATO motor, encouraging the countries to support Ukraine by all means, has little chance of enlarging its budget, but at the same time has had to cut certain expenditures and shorten its military personnel to balance the distribution of resources in the military sector and at the same time to cover the debts. The inner imbalance of the defense structure, caused by imbalanced resource distribution multiplied by resource insufficiency, influences the functionality of the Italian defense sector and harms Italy's capacity to fulfill its commitments to NATO.

In the meantime, five military aid packages from Italy to Ukraine amount to 1 billion dollars. With the sixth one, which contains Italian air-defense systems, the military assistance provided by Italy to Ukraine totals nearly $2 billion. Being short on money, the generous supplies of arms to Ukraine raise the question of how Italy is going to restock its depleted military depots. The Meloni's bravado that Italy will not stop providing Ukraine till the victory sounds something extremely close to nonsense, taking into account the obvious financial problems of the Italian defense sector and taking into consideration that Italy reduces its own military operational expenses by 10%. And all of that against the background of the numerous security problems faced by Italy that are not limited only to the ongoing crisis.

2013. I wrote the first ever article in English and it was published by us-russia.org (American University in Moscow and Think-Tank).

9 years later, it perfectly describes the current global situation and the prediction made that time is coming true. 

The new world order… Political scientists all over the world have been discussing this issue for twenty years, right from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Unipolarity, multipolarity, plural-unipolarity, nonpolarity…which one is the best to describe the world system after the Cold war? While discussing this, political scientists have missed the moment, when even the term "order” became debatable itself.

The system of the modern world has nothing in common with the chessboard. The epoch of "chess players” has gone to the past with the end of bipolar era. Having a clear logic, limited quantity of players (two blocks), who’s relations had been setting the pitch of all the interactions and climate on the world stage – this system had all reasons to be called "an order”, even in the moment when the humanity was on the threshold of nuclear war. (The fact that, finally, the Third World War did not evolve to nothing more than a nightmare, confirms, that there was an order and real mechanisms of regulation, that didn’t let the situation degrade to hell).

​George Galloway made a poll yesterday on MOATS and his social media if "Biden is losing interest in Zelensky and in Ukraine". The majority voted "Yes." 

However, the trend seems to be more complex, and it is not only about Biden's preferences and interests (though Taiwan and China are definitely far more crucial for the US than Ukraine), but about the overall trend: it seems that the West is getting ready to throw the Zelenskly regime under the bus. The ways to do that are numerous. However, the current trend shows that there's an attempt to depose the golden idol-like statue of Zelenskiy that they have erected in the past five months.

Several materials appeared in the mainstream media, including one from the Western government-linked NGO: Amnesty International, with its report that simply stated that AFU uses civil infrastructure for military purposes, which is an undeniable war crime. The German Welt published the material on Zelenskiy, exposing the industrial scale of corruption under his rule and the financial crimes of the President himself. The Sky News presenter, Cory Bernardy, made a tough speech