By Ian Proud, Strategic Culture Foundation, 1/8/25

Ian Proud was a member of HM Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. From July 2014 to February 2019 Ian was posted to the British Embassy in Moscow. He was also Director of the Diplomatic Academy for Eastern Europe and Central Asia and Vice-Chairman of the Board of the Anglo-American School of Moscow.

There has been an enormous cancellation of debate on Ukraine in the mainstream western media. Google does its part too, making it very difficult in the west to search for and find genuinely independent reporting on what is happening. When you search for key issues, such as Ukrainian casualty rates, ultra-nationalism in Ukraine, presidential elections or the state of Ukraine’s economy, the computer will normally say no.

Let’s look at those areas where independent information and analysis is actively withheld from western citizens.

The number of Ukrainian casualties

In a war that has killed or injured, by most accounts, over a million people, the issue of which side has suffered most may appear academic. Why can’t we stop the killing, would be my first question?

But the western media often claims that Russia has suffered far greater casualties than Ukraine. They do this to maintain the argument that, even though Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, it could still win the war. This is completely false.

The go-to figure used by western journalists is that 1,500 Russian troops are being lost on the front line every day. This number has no basis in analysis but is rather plucked from a Ukrainian military intelligence report of early November. Recognising that it is in the interests of both sides in a conflict to embellish the other side’s casualty figures, western officials and journalists nevertheless take numbers from the Ukrainian Defence Ministry as truer than the Gospel.

What the Ukrainian side almost never does is to admit the shocking number of Ukrainian casualties so far. In a rare announcement on the subject, Zelensky suggested in December 2004 that 43,000 Ukrainian troops had died. No serious analysts believes that figure. I have seen estimates of upwards of 700,000 Ukrainian dead or injured. Looking at the six separate exchanges of dead bodies between the Russian and Ukrainian side during 2024 which have been reported in the press, six times more bodies were returned to Ukraine (1611) compared to Russia (273). That doesn’t mean that Ukraine has suffered six times as many deaths, as Russia has been advancing and Ukraine retreating. But few serious analysts really believe that Russia is suffering a higher rate of casualties than Ukraine, quite the opposite.

Yet talking about Ukrainian casualties in the western media would reaffirm the assessment many realists have made, that Ukraine is losing on the battlefield, suffering greater casualties than Russia, and urgently needs to sue for peace.

The ‘Russia is suffering more’ narrative is merely a PR tool to bolster Zelensky’s never-ending quest to keep fighting and to receive additional billions in support from the west in a battle he can’t win.

Ultra-nationalism in Ukraine

I have never believed that most Ukrainians are Nazis, but there is a huge body of evidence to suggest that Nazi-sympathising groups have a disproportionate influence on state policy in Ukraine. Western media seldom discusses this.

A recent ultra-nationalist torch parade in Lviv to commemorate the birthdate of the Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera received no western coverage, for example. Nor the extinguishing of a Jewish menora statue. Any suggestion that there is a deeply unpleasant ultra-nationalist core at the heart of decision making in Kiev is written off as pro-Russian propaganda.

It didn’t used to be like this. In the run up to the Polish and Ukrainian hosting of the Euro 2012 Football championship, there was widespread reporting in UK media about the risk of anti-Semitism among Polish and Ukrainian football fans. The Kyiv Post reported on Svoboda’s anti-Semitic and racist tendencies when, in 2012, the marginal ultra-nationalist party form western Ukraine gained seats in the Verkhovna Rada. In the aftermath of the 2014 coup to remove Viktor Yanukovych, the western press cautiously reported on the prevalence of ultranationalists like Right Sector in the Maidan protests; they instead minimise their role, particularly in the killing of 100 protestors by snipers, despite evidence suggesting their possible involvement or complicity. In 2015, Politico was still describing Svoboda, Patriot of Ukraine and the Social-Nationalist Assembly as neo-Nazi organisations. A 2019 photo essay in the Guardian newspaper suggested the Azov battalion was also neo-Nazi and had propagated white supremacist views. Yet this same group was welcomed with open arms into the Reform Club in London by Boris Johnson in the spring of 2024, who greeted them as ‘heroes’.

It is now entirely commonplace to see black and red flags of the neo-Nazi Ukraine Insurgent Army displayed at Ukrainian military ceremonies, even at the passing out parade of the Anna of Kyiv Battalion that was trained in France. A cross-chest fascist salute is commonplace in photographs of Ukrainian army formations. The term ‘Slava Ukraini’ slips off the tongues of western political leaders more easily that ‘Heil Hitler’, as they don’t obviously seem to appreciate it’s neo-Nazi associations.

The most corrosive aspect of Ukrainian ultra-nationalism has been the relentless quest since 2014 for Ukrainian to be the sole and only language spoken in Ukraine. This first manifested itself in the declaration of the Verkhovna Rada on 24 February 2014, two days after Yanukovych’s ouster, to cancel the Kolesnichenko language law which allowed for Russian to be considered one of Ukraine’s state languages, among others. Perhaps more than other reckless moves by the Ukrainian side, attempting to deny the Russian language to a significant proportion of Ukraine’s population that speaks Russian as a first language, was the act that provoked Russian intervention.

By refusing to talk about the challenge of ultra-nationalism in Ukraine, western commentators are potentially contributing to its growth and for the maintenance of a war posture in Kiev. It is also holding back prospects for Ukraine to emerge from war and continue on its road to potential future EU membership.

The absence of democratic elections

The issue of ultra-nationalism is perhaps not seen as a pressing challenge right now, as Ukraine itself is going through a markedly undemocratic phase, given the constraints of war. Because western commentators also seldom talk about the pause in presidential elections in Ukraine.

These elections in Ukraine should have taken place in Ukraine in March 2024, but were postponed sine die because the country is under martial law. This is not necessarily an illegitimate move. Elections didn’t take place in the United Kingdom for ten years between 1935 and 1945 because of the intervention of World War II. However, in the United Kingdom, the government was comprised of a coalition representing the two main political parties, the Conservatives and Labour. This was despite the Conservative party having a very large majority in Parliament. During the war, political power in Britain was shared in the interests of the nation.

However, in Ukraine, no such division of power exists. Zelensky has centralised all power into the office of President. By edict, he can rule on any topic, for example, making it illegal for any official to hold talks with Russia about peace. For now, any decision to negotiate with Russia an end of the war appears entirely to be in his power.

Ukraine, though, has found itself in the perfect storm of losing the war slowly yet continuing to receive billions of dollars’ worth of aid and loans each year. If Ukraine was losing in a more dramatic way on the battlefield, there would be more internal pressure for Zelensky to sue for peace. But, for now, western sponsors appear happy to keep paying for slow defeat. Western leaders treat Zelensky like a superhero when he visits, yet Ukrainian opinion polls suggest that he would lose a Presidential election to Zaluzhny, and that many Ukrainians believe Zelensky shouldn’t even stand for office again. Zelensky has now started using excuses such as that it would be impossible to hold elections with so many Ukrainians living outside the country; although that didn’t seem to be a problem in the recent elections in Moldova, where diaspora voters tipped the vote in favour of Maia Sandu. The real issue here, I suggest, is that with over one million Ukrainians having moved to Russia, that Zelensky would not wish for them to vote.

Zelensky has fallen into the same trap that many dictators fall into, in believing that he is the state, and therefore indispensable. So, it is not in Zelensky’s interests to negotiate an end to the war, as that would almost certainly mean an end to his political career.

Even Trump’s pick for Director of National Intelligence – Tulsi Gabbard – has described Zelensky as an unelected dictator. But you will never hear the western media talk about that. They have spent three years lionising Zelensky and it would be damaging to their credibility to suggest that, rather then being part of the solution, he may be part of the problem.

The state of Ukraine’s economy

As war grinds on, there is considerable western reporting of the state of Russia’s economy. Despite Russia forecast to grow by over 3% in 2024, when final figures are released, western journalists portray an imminent meltdown on the back of admittedly high inflation and interest rates caused by the massive fiscal stimulus of war spending. However, Russia’s foundations remain strong with state debt at only 14% and international reserves topping $620bn (including that part which is currently frozen by sanctions). There’s no evidence to suggest Russia will be unable to continue to prosecute a war for the foreseeable future.

On the other hand, Ukraine’s economy is entirely dependent on foreign handouts. Of the $93bn budget that was set for 2024, almost fifty percent of that cost was to be met by lending, either from western donors or domestic bonds to Ukrainian citizens. Another $12.5bn would be provided in the form of free handouts from the west, the biggest donor being the U.S. So, Ukraine racked up over $44bn in new debt in 2024 – or almost one quarter of GDP – and will do the same in 2025. The economic cost of the war is completely unsustainable for Ukraine with debt soaring above 100% of GDP and no plan to repay it. Indeed, it is far from clear that any donor government will receive back the money they have lent to Ukraine. And the worst part is, there is no plan to keep paying the bills in Ukraine after 2026. So, in the entirely plausible – though hopefully unlikely – eventuality that western leaders are persuaded by Zelensky to keep fighting into 2026, they may be shocked to discover that they will need to pay for it.

If this was covered in the western media, there would be far more pressure among western voters to bring the war to its resolution, because Ukraine isn’t winning but Zelensky is still writing cheques at our expense.

By Jon Henley, The Guardian, 1/14/25

European anxiety about Donald Trump’s return to the White House is not shared in much of the world, a poll has shown, with more people in non-western powers such as China, Russia, India and Brazil welcoming his second term than not.

The 24-country poll, which also included Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Indonesia and Turkey, found that Switzerland, the UK, 11 EU nations surveyed and South Korea were alone in feeling Trump 2.0 would be bad for their country and for peace in the world.

“In short, Trump’s return is lamented by America’s longtime allies but almost nobody else,” stated the report by the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, adding that his re-election left Europe in particular “at a crossroads” in its relations with the US.

The report also found that many people outside Europe believed the incoming president was committed to ending wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, and saw a Trump-led US as just one leading power among several – including the EU.

“Europeans need to recognise the advent of a more transactional world. Rather than attempt to lead a global liberal opposition to Trump, they should understand their own strengths and deal with the world as they find it,” the report said.

Respondents fell into five groups, ranging from “Trump welcomers”, most common in India (75%), Russia (38%), South Africa (35%), China (34%) and Brazil (33%), to “never Trumpers”, prevalent in the UK (50%), Switzerland and the EU (28%).

Optimism about Trump’s second term was especially pronounced in India – where 82% saw it as a good thing for peace in the world, 84% as good for their country, and 85% as a good thing for US citizens – and Saudi Arabia (57%, 61% and 69% respectively).

Among long-term US allies, responses were very different: 22% in the 11 EU countries surveyed, 15% in the UK and 11% in South Korea said they thought Trump would be good for their country, while only slightly more felt he would be good for peace.

Large proportions in several countries also felt Trump’s return would make peace more likely in Ukraine and the Middle East specifically, including India (65% and 62%), Saudi Arabia (62% and 54%), Russia (61% and 41%) and China (60% and 48%).

Ukrainians were much more reserved, with 39% believing Trump would help bring peace to their country and 35% saying this was less likely, while in Europe and South Korea there was widespread scepticism that Trump 2.0 would make any difference.

Only 24% in the UK, 31% in South Korea and 34% in the 11 EU countries said Trump’s return would make peace in Ukraine more likely, while even fewer (16% in the UK, 25% in the 11 EU countries and 19% in South Korea) felt it would have that effect in the Middle East.

The report’s authors argued that their findings confirmed a general “weakening of the west” and the emergence of a far more transactional, à la carte world, pointing to a strong acceptance in many countries of Russia as an ally or a necessary partner.

Despite Moscow’s brutal war on Ukraine, the survey found that the number of Indian and Chinese people who considered Russia to be their country’s ally had actually grown marginally in the past year, while average US opinion of Russia had also improved.

By contrast, faced with Trump’s return, just one in five Europeans (22%) said they viewed the US as an ally, which is significantly fewer than the 31% who did so two years ago, and half the relatively unchanged proportion of Americans who considered the EU an ally.

Most people in countries including Brazil, Indonesia, China, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey expect Russia’s global influence to grow, but majorities in all those countries plus the EU and UK think China will be the strongest power in 20 years.

US influence is expected to increase, but few believe “Make America Great Again” (Maga) will lead to global dominance. “US geopolitical exceptionalism is beginning to recede,” the authors said, with the US expected to act in future as a “normal” large power.

People around the world also saw the EU as a major global power, with majorities in most countries considering it capable of dealing on equal terms with the US and China. (Ironically, those least likely to share that view were Europeans.)

Majorities in India (62%), South Africa (60%), Brazil (58%) and Saudi Arabia (51%), and pluralities in Ukraine (49%), Turkey (48%), China (44%), Indonesia (42%) and the US (38%), believed the EU would wield “more influence” globally in the next decade.

Moreover, the bloc was widely seen as an “ally” or “necessary partner”, including in countries such as Brazil, India and South Africa. The recent EU-Mercosur trade agreement “shows the kind of deals” a more united EU could make, the report said.

The authors stressed, however, that the west was clearly divided as Trump returns, not just between the US and Europe (and other allies such as South Korea), but also within the EU: some member states were far more welcoming of Maga than others.

“What the EU must do to be taken seriously by Trump’s White House resembles what it must do to make friends and influence people globally,” the report’s authors, foreign policy experts Mark Leonard, Ivan Krastev and Timothy Garton Ash, wrote.

Rather than trying to shape liberal resistance to Trump and “posing as a moral arbiter of everyone else’s behaviour”, Europe should “build its domestic strength and seek new bilateral partnerships to defend its own values and interests”, they said.

By Matt Taibbi, Racket, 1/7/25

On January 11, 2019, at the peak of Russiagate mania and months before the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s deflating report, the New York Times for the first time made public a remarkable fact. In “FBI Opened Inquiry Into Whether Trump Was Secretly Working on Behalf of Russia,” a trio of Times reporters revealed that in the days after Donald Trump’s May 2017 firing of FBI Director James Comey, the Bureau “began investigating whether he had been working on behalf of Russia.”

The country first learned the FBI was investigating “any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government” when Comey testified in Congress in March, 2017. Comey then was referring to the FBI’s much-ballyhooed Crossfire Hurricane probe, which was opened in July, 2016 and targeted the likes of George Papadopoulos and Carter Page.

This second FBI probe disclosed by the Times in 2019 carried far more explosive implications, making its delayed disclosure unusual. It’s one thing for the FBI to investigate possible “links” between foreigners and a presidential campaign. It’s another for Deputy Director of the FBI Andrew McCabe to open an investigation into whether a sitting president, i.e. his boss, is “working on behalf of Russia.”

“Imagine even opening this investigation up on just your average Joe,” says Aaron Maté of RealClear Investigations. “That would be crazy, unless you have some real predication. But this is the fucking president. Andrew McCabe decides that he can do this. On what basis?”

Either the FBI had evidence to start such an investigation, which would be damning to Trump, or it didn’t, which would be damning to the FBI. Which was it?

The 2019 Times story suggested the FBI probe was begun in part to determine if Trump’s “firing of Mr. Comey constituted obstruction of justice.” Beyond that, details were scant, and once the new investigation was folded into Robert Mueller’s inquiry, the reasons for its opening disappeared into the proverbial dustbin of history. Even when Special Counsel John Durham issued his report on the FBI and Crossfire Hurricane, he made just one mention of this second investigation, saying it was beyond his purview:

We also have not interpreted the Order as directing us to consider the handling ofthe investigation into President Trump opened by the FBI on May 16, 2017.

Nobody seemed to care what this second investigation was about, or what evidence was submitted to justify its opening, until Aaron and RealClear in December, 2022 sent a Freedom of Information request. They sought a copy of the original document explaining why the FBI opened a new “Sensitive Investigative Matter” on May 16, 2017. It took over two full years for the Bureau to respond. The answer was a middle finger: six pages, almost entirely redacted, with the exception of a few paragraphs.

The released documents weren’t entirely bereft of information. In fact, they should contain enough to pique the curiosity of any incoming officials looking for places to start unraveling the Russiagate mystery. Whatever’s underneath these redactions is embarrassing to someone. Aaron yesterday published a story on the subject at RealClear Investigations which I recommend everyone read. This document is one of a series of Russiagate-related revelations about to hit the public.

The memo is included below. Apart from the fact that it names former FBI Counsel James Baker and Counterintelligence chief Bill Priestap at the top, the most interesting section is probably this passage:

The FBI is opening [redacted] based on an articulabe factual basis that reasonably indicates that President Donald Trump may be or has been, wittingly or unwittingly, involved in activities for or on behalf of the Russian government which may constitute violations of federal criminal law or threats to the national security of the United States.

If your first thought is, “How can a person ‘unwittingly’ be involved in activities on behalf of Russia that ‘may constitute violations of criminal law’?” you’re not alone. I reached out to multiple lawyers with experience working on the Hill to ask how one betrays the country criminally without intent. One sent back a “shrug” emoji, while another said this was the problem with the new generation of broad national security probes. The FBI often does investigations that are “not tethered to or bound by criminal law.”

“Unwittingly, without his knowledge, he’s being manipulated by the Kremlin,” laughs Maté. “It’s unbelievable.”

McCabe, now an author and sometimes contributor to CNN, said in 2019 that Trump’s “own words” prompted the investigation. Aaron attempted to reach him for his RealClear story, but he did not respond.

This is not a small issue. The FBI opening an investigation into a presidential candidate on the thinnest of pretexts, then continuing it despite repeated dead ends, then leaking word of an active investigation despite a total lack of results, and finally opening a second probe into a sitting president after their Director was fired, all speak to a law enforcement agency that was coloring way outside its lines, involving itself in unprecedented political interference. Whoever takes over the Bureau needs to unredact these and many other pages.

“It’s nuts,” says Maté. “Trump is in office, and they decide after he fires Comey to open a second investigation just of him, not his campaign but him, suspecting him of being a Russian agent. Why?” He pauses. “We know the pretext for the first investigation was George Papadopoulos. What’s the reason for this one? Probably the firing of Comey is in there in the redaction, but there’s got to be something else too.”

But what? Let’s hope we find out soon.

RT, 12/25/24

Russia’s birth rate this year is expected to be the lowest in three decades, according to a demographics specialist at the Russian Academy of Sciences. Vadim Bezverbny called for a “systemic approach” to resolving the problem in an interview with the Eurasian News Agency published on Tuesday.

The outlook remains largely pessimistic as the population could decline by 6.2 million people by 2050, he said, citing various estimates.

“We have the statistics for January to October. Honestly, we are close to record low for birth rates. There is a likelihood that 2024 will end with the lowest figure in the last 30 years. Compared to last year, the birth rate has decreased by 3%,” the specialist said.

Bezverbny called for what he described as a “systemic approach” to demographic policy that should include measures to provide young families with affordable housing, increased social benefits for families with children and opportunities for women who gave birth to many children to go into retirement earlier.

With the right set of policies, Russia could get its population back to the level of 145 million by 2100 after a potentially inevitable decline in the coming years, Bezverbny stated.

According to Russia’s state statistics agency, Rosstat, the nation’s population at the beginning of this year was just above 146 million.

The World Health Organization puts Russia’s population at just over 145 million and projects it to fall by almost 10 million to 136.1 million by 2050.

Last month, the Kremlin raised the alarm over Russia’s shrinking population, with spokesperson Dmitry Peskov calling the demographic decline a “huge challenge” for the nation. President Vladimir Putin also said last week that it was “an extremely important matter” and one of the “key issues for Russia.”

The president pointed out, however, that Russia is not the only country facing such issues. Norway’s figures roughly match those of Russia, while Finland, Spain, Japan, and South Korea all have even lower birth rates.

Russia Matters, 1/17/25

1. U.S. President-elect Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin are expected to hold a phone call “in the coming days and weeks,” Trump’s nominee for national security advisor, Mike Waltz, said Jan. 12. However, Putin’s foreign policy aide Yuri Ushakov, as cited by TASS, claimed on Jan. 17 that there have been no contacts “as of today” between Moscow and Trump’s team on the organization of his possible meeting with Putin. Ushakov also said Russia will be represented at Trump’s inauguration by its chargé d’affaires in the U.S. only if the Russian diplomat is invited to attend the ceremony.
2. Ukraine and Russia are holding limited talks in Qatar about rules to shield nuclear facilities from being targeted, a person familiar with the Kremlin’s preparations told Bloomberg. A spokesman for the Kremlin declined to comment on Bloomberg’s report, but if accurate, the report raises the question of whether the rules would protect substations connecting nuclear facilities to the grid, which Russia has been targeting even as it was reportedly refraining from direct attacks on the three Ukrainian energy-generating nuclear plants. Ukraine has become dependent on these three plants for two–thirds of the country’s electricity generation, so the destruction of the substations that connect these three NPPs to the grid could cause significant pain, not only for the economy—including military-related production—but also for the population. In 2024, electricity outages in Ukraine lasted almost 1,951 hours (so 5.5 hours a day), according to Ukraine’s Dixi Group. Electricity outages lasted 226 hours in the period of Dec. 1–Dec. 13, according to this group.*
3. In the past month, Russian forces made a net gain of 172 square miles in Ukraine (the rough equivalent of 7 1/2 Manhattan islands), according to the Jan. 15, 2025, issue of the Russia-Ukraine War Report Card that is based on data provided for that period by the Institute for the Study of War. As of Jan. 16, 2025, 18.55% of Ukraine’s territory was under Russian occupation, according to Ukraine’s DeepState OSINT group’s interactive map. 
4. The IMF’s latest World Economic Outlook anticipates Russia’s economic growth will slow from 3.8% in 2024 to 1.4% in 2025 and 1.2% in 2026. In comparison, world output grew by 3.2% in 2024 and is expected to grow by 3.3% in 2025 and then another 3.3% in 2026. As the table below shows, Russia’s rate of growth will be lower in 2025–2026 than that of China, India, the U.S., advanced economies as a whole and developing economies as a whole. 
5. Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Iran’s Masoud Pezeshkian signed a treaty on “comprehensive strategic partnership” between their countries on Jan. 17. The new treaty, which runs for 20 years, aims to strengthen Tehran and Moscow’s “military-political and trade-economic” relations, the Kremlin said, according to RFE/RL. The signing of the Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Between the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Iran has been expected by officials in Moscow and Teheran, as well as by watchers of the relationship between the two countries, since at least last fall. But when Vladimir Putin and Masoud Pezeshkian inked the deal in the Kremlin on Jan. 17, it came as an anti-climax of a sorts for those in Russia and Iran that expected a significant strengthening of the two countries’ geopolitical alignment from the treaty. Even though last year saw Putin twice refer to Iran as Russia’s ally at one and the same event in October 2024, while Pezeshkian did the same in July 2024, the text of the treaty, as published by the Kremlin, contains no reference to Russia and Iran being allied. Nor does it have a clause for mutual military aid of the kind that can be found in the 2024 Treaty on Comprehensive Strategic Partnership bbetween the Russian Federation and the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea. The names of both treaties use the same words to describe the bilateral relationship, but the level of military relationship that the two accords provide for differs.  The 2024 Russian-DPRK agreement states: “In the event of an immediate threat of an act of armed aggression against one of the Parties, the Parties, at the request of one of the Parties, shall immediately engage bilateral channels to conduct consultations with the aim of coordinating their positions and agreeing on possible practical measures to assist each other in helping to eliminate the threat that has arisen.” In contrast, the 2025 Russian-Iranian treaty says: “In the event that one of the Parties is subjected to aggression, the other Contracting Party shall not provide any military or other assistance to the aggressor that would facilitate the continuation of aggression, and shall assist in ensuring that the differences that arise are settled on the basis of the Charter of the United Nations and other applicable norms of international law.” We have also gone through references to military and military-technical cooperation in the Russian-Iranian treaty and found none that would call for mutual military aid in the event of aggression. Neither does the treaty’s text refer to the signatories as allies or say they have allied relations, even though Iran is helping Russia’s aggression against Ukraine by supplying hundreds of drones. It should be noted that the 2024 Russian-North Korean treaty did not contain such “allied” references either, but overall, Moscow and Pyongyang are considerably closer to being military allies than Moscow is with Teheran, if only because thousands of DPRK soldiers are presently engaged in direct combat on the Russian side against the Ukrainian forces in the Kursk region, shedding blood on the frontline [this has been alleged but not proven – Natylie]. No other country does that for Russia, even though at least four countries have signed bilateral treaties or declarations that designate them as Russia’s allies.