By Ray McGovern, Consortium News, 8/1/25

Small wonder that the Deep State tried to keep under lock and key the explosive appendix to Special Counsel John Durham’s anemic May 2023 report on the Russiagate “scandal.” Sen. Charles Grassley, head of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, made it public on Thursday and it became the latest revelation in July to blow open the real scandal behind Russiagate. 

It’s small wonder, too, that when Kash Patel won Senate approval to be F.B.I. director, former C.I.A. Director John Brennan, former F.B.I. Director James Comey, and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper “lawyered up.” Clapper told CNN colleague Caitlin Collins last week he’d been lawyered up with “perpetual attorneys, since I left the government in 2017.”

But the trio will need more than clever lawyers. Grassley has awoken to what his Oversight Committee is supposed to do – such as oversee the Department of Justice. Better late than never. In 2021, Grassley displayed his own anemia when he plaintively called the DOJ “the Department of JUST US”.

Grassley was lamenting that F.B.I. lawyer Kevin Clinesmith got a slap on the wrist after falsifying a FISA Court application to eavesdrop on Trump associate Carter Page, who was supposed to have been the lynchpin of Russia-Trump “collusion.” But Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s $32 million, two-year investigation found no such “collusion.”

Out of the Burn Bag; Onto the Front Burner

Kash Patel sworn into office as director of the FBI by Attorney General Pamela Bondi in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 21, 2025. (White House)

It had long been clear that Patel, given the breadth of his earlier experience investigating “Russiagate”, knew “where the bodies were buried” – and, not least, could identify the bodies of very senior miscreants still walking around free.

Reportedly, he had some luck in finding a secret room at F.B.I. headquarters that contained burn bags filled with thousands of Russiagate-related documents revealing evidence that incriminated the top gurus of the Deep State. (It’s a wonder why they weren’t burned).

Among these documents was a particularly damning 29-page secret Appendix to the not-so-thorough-yet-four-year-long investigation by Special Counsel Durham, appointed by Trump’s first-term Attorney General William Barr in May 2019 to look into the origins of the Russiagate mess.

(Burn bags commonly are simply paper bags containing classified documents to be burned, shredded, or otherwise destroyed beyond recognition. Deep State miscreants were rather careless. Remember, they were convinced Mrs. Clinton was going to win.)

Durham’s Appendix burst, so to speak, into the media Thursday, the day after the burn-bag story broke on Wednesday. But not before The New York Times obliged Clapper and Brennan the same day with a Guest Essay titled “Let’s Set the Record Straight on Russia and 2016” – an apparent attempt to pre-empt the damage from Durham’s Appendix.

It is a hard thing to do. Within a day of the discovery of the Appendix, Grassley on Thursday asked the F.B.I., C.I.A., and others to declassify it, which was done before the ink was dry on the Clapper-Brennan piece.

Among other things, the Appendix reveals that President Barack Obama intended to scuttle any F.B.I. investigation into Mrs. Clinton’s mishandling of classified information. And it is replete with evidence that the Clinton campaign, with the help of “special services” were hatching plots to falsely connect Trump to Russia.

The following three observations are drawn from Sen. Grassley’s Key Findings from the Durham Appendix. (We strongly recommend reading the whole Appendix. We include below salient excerpts from the full text.)

• During the first stage of the campaign, due to lack of direct evidence, it was decided to disseminate the necessary information [about alleged Russian interference] through the F.B.I.-affiliated…technical structures… in particular, the Crowdstrike and ThreatConnect companies, from where the information would then be disseminated through leading U.S. publications.

• Julie [Julianne Smith] says it will be a long-term affair to demonize Putin and Trump. Now it is good for a post-[DNC] convention bounce. [See below for the lurid detail.]

• It is a logical deduction Smith was, at a minimum, playing a role in the Clinton campaign’s efforts to tie Trump to Russia. And the communications Durham reviewed certainly lends some credence that such a plan existed.[NOTE: Yes, the same Julianne Smith whom President Joe Biden appointed U.S. Ambassador to NATO.]

The Full Text (Short Excerpts)

Hillary Clinton at a campaign rally in Tempe, Arizona, November 2016. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)

The text of the Appendix dwells largely on information coming from memoranda prepared by Russian intelligence. These Russian memoranda analyzed the take from Russian hacking of communications sent by two senior members of the Open Society Foundations (formerly known as the Soros Foundation).

A few appetizing nuggets from the Appendix itself:

• Barack Obama sanctioned the use of all administrative levers to remove possibly negative effects from the F.B.I. investigation of cases related to the Clinton Foundation and the email correspondence in the State Department. [Revealed by WikiLeaks].

• Based on information from [DNC head] Wasserman-Schultz, the F.B.I. does not possess any kind of direct evidence against Clinton, because of their timely deletion from the email servers.

• The political director of the Hillary Clinton staff, Amanda Renteria, regularly receives information from Attorney General Loretta Lynch on the plans and intentions of the F.B.I.

Again, quoting from the Appendix:

“In late July 2016 the F.B.I. received a report that summarized certain hacked emails allegedly sent by Leonardo Bernardo of the Open Society Foundations.

The translated [Russian] draft memorandum stated in relevant part:

According to data from the election campaign headquarters of Hillary Clinton obtained by the U.S. Soros Foundation, on 26 July 2016 Clinton approved a plan of her policy adviser, Juliana (sic) Smith to smear Donald Trump by magnifying the scandal tied to the intrusion by Russian secret services in the pre-election process to benefit the Republican candidate.

As envisioned by Smith, raising the theme of Putin’s support for Trump to the level of an Olympics scandal would divert the constituents’ attention from the investigation of Clinton’s compromised electronic correspondence. …”

A ‘Crimes Report’ Filed

The Durham Appendix notes that the C.I.A. sent the F.B.I. an investigative referral regarding “the purported Clinton campaign plan” to tie Trump to Russia. Investigative referrals are widely known as “Crimes Reports.” U.S. intelligence agencies are required by statute to file a Crimes Report with the Department of Justice, when an unauthorized disclosure of classified information (or another potential federal crime) is believed to have occurred.

Had someone leaked, or was someone about to leak the Russian information on the “purported Clinton anti-Russian campaign plan”? I don’t know. In any case, a Crimes Report was filed – perhaps because more than one intelligence agency was involved; the content was so explosive; and it seemed necessary to work out a common response, just in case; and to brief those with “a need to know”.

Two months later, responding to a Senate Judiciary Committee request, then Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe wrote the following:

• In late July 2016, U.S. intelligence agencies obtained insight into Russian intelligence analysis alleging that U. S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton had approved a campaign plan to stir up a scandal against U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump by tying him to Putin and the Russians’ hacking of the Democratic National Committee. …

• According to his handwritten notes, former Central Intelligence Agency Director Brennan subsequently briefed President Obama and other senior national security officials on the intelligence, including the ‘alleged approval by Hillary Clinton on July 26, 2016 of a proposal from one of her foreign policy advisors to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by Russian security services.’

• On 07 September 2016, U.S. intelligence officials forwarded an investigative referral to F.B.I. Director James Comey and Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok regarding ‘U.S. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s approval of a plan concerning U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections as a means of distracting the public from her use of a private mail server.’”

Shocked?

Strzok testifying to U.S. House Judiciary Committee on July 12, 2018 on F.B.I. probe in to 2016 election. (House Judiciary Committee/YouTube)

It hardly needs saying that neither F.B.I. Director Comey nor the equally infamous F.B.I. official Strzok could have been shocked at the information Russia had acquired and the conclusions drawn by Russian intelligence.  Comey and Strzok knew chapter and verse – and all the footnotes.

Recall that Strzok, a veteran F.B.I. counterintelligence agent leading the probe into alleged Russian interference, told his F.B.I. lawyer/lover later of his reluctance to join the Mueller investigation: “My concern is that there’s no big there there.” Nor was there any there there then (summer 2016). Few knew more about that than Comey and Strzok.

Nothing to worry about because most Americans had been conditioned to believe the Russians are “almost genetically driven” (as Clapper testified) to do all manner of bad things. So who would believe the Russians that they didn’t interfere? And if someone with access to the truth dared to leak to mainstream media,it would be highly unlikely that the media would give him/her air or ink. In such circumstances who would take such a big risk?

Not surprisingly, there has been no additional information about the investigative referral/Crimes Report.

Coincidence?

July 26, 2016: The timing may be coincidence, but on the same day Mrs. Clinton reportedly endorsed the big push to tie Trump to Russia, David Sanger and Eric Schmitt of The New York Times co-authored an article titled: “Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C.”

“WASHINGTON: American intelligence agencies have told the White House they now have ‘high confidence’ that the Russian government was behind the theft of emails and documents from the Democratic National Committee, according to federal officials who have been briefed on the evidence.”

Sanger and Schmitt have won Pulitzers for regurgitating what the C.I.A. and F.B.I. whisper in their ears. I have a bitter, war-of-aggression memory of Sanger one day stating as flat fact seven times that “Weapons of Mass Destruction” were in Iraq. That article, co-authored with Thom Shanker, appeared on July 29, 2002 as Dick Cheney and George Bush Jr. began browbeating Congress to authorize the unprovoked attack on Iraq.

Don’t Fret; We’re Still Here

Some of us got Russiagate right, and we are pledged to stay at it. Actually, one of us got it right on day one. That would be Consortium Newsfavorite, Patrick Lawrence (whom The Nation fired for exposing the lie about “Russian hacking” of those embarrassing DNC emails).

Patrick let it all out in a column at Salon.com after watching some of the chicanery at the 2016 Democratic Convention. Strangely, the day he let loose was the same day that now-Ambassador Julianne Smith got the bright idea to blame the Russians – July 25, 2016 – and sold it to Mrs. Clinton the following day.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a C.I.A. analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

***

The New York Times Can’t Stop Sucking (Coverage of Durham Annex)

By Matt Taibbi, Substack, 8/1/25

Predictably, the New York Times pooh-poohed the release of the classified annex to the Durham report. Charlie Savage wrote:

Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, and other Trump allies have declared that a newly declassified report on the Russia investigation provides “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.” The reality is almost precisely the opposite… The report shows that a purported email that Trump supporters have long tried to portray as a smoking gun is instead most likely a fake. Russian spies appear to have tried to make it seem authentic by assembling passages lifted from actual emails by different hacking victims…

Mr. Trump and his aides have coupled those releases with wild and inaccurate claims about what they show, spinning the reports as proof of his long-running narrative that the investigation was a hoax instigated by enemies for political reasons.

This whole “assembled by Russian spies” line is based on one assessment about a pair of emails likely pulled by Russians from other real American victims of hacking. Beyond this instance of a “composite,” the paper ignores the gigantic load of material from the same source, which has been described in multiple other reports as real and affecting numerous American “victims” from the Executive and Legislative branches, as well as think-tanks and NGOs.

More irritating is Savage’s diatribe against Patel and the hoax “narrative,” offered without mentioning the roughly ten million instances in which the Times botched its coverage of Patel and Republican investigations into Russiagate. When Patel and then-House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes released the much-denounced “Nunes memo” about FISA abuse in early 2018, Savage personally “annotated” the document, which would be vidicated more or less entirely by an Inspector General investigation nearly two years later. About the accusations of FISA abuse, which included use of the Steele dossier to obtain surveillance authority, Charlie wrote:

• The FBI had ““grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy,’” adding, “In accusing the F.B.I. of omitting important information, this memo’s critics say the memo itself omits crucial context: other evidence that did not come from Mr. Steele, much of which remains classified.”This is the much-used initial argument that the Steele material wasn’t important to the FISA warrant. Savage went with this talking point multiple times, also saying in another piece, “Mr. Steele’s information was only one thread in a tapestry of evidence from various sources that the memo ignored, exaggerating its relative importance.” Inspector General Horowitz dashed that, concluding Steele “played a central and essential role”;
• Savage went on in the “annotation”: “It makes no note of the fact that [Carter] Page attracted the F.B.I.’s interest in 2013, when agents came to believe that Russian spies were trying to recruit him.” Why didn’t Patel include that detail? Because Page was an informant in good standing with the CIA at the time, a fact an FBI lawyer was criminally convicted for omitting. Savage, who later wrote about Kevin Clinesmith’s conviction, omitted the same critical detail as Clinesmith — perhaps unknowingly, but still;
• Savage wrote, “The language used here on Mr. Steele’s relationship with the F.B.I. suggests that it was formal. But he never entered into any formal relationship from which he could be suspended or terminated, according to people familiar…” Steele was terminated as a source by the FBI “for cause” on November 17, 2016, years before the annotation article, showing Savage’s “people familiar” either weren’t “familiar” or were yanking his chain. Colleague Scott Shane would describe the firing as a decision by the FBI to “end the formal relationship” with Steele. Oops.

For what it’s worth, the Times without Savage’s help also swallowed the Hamilton 68 hoax whole and described the #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag as the work of Russian “bots”; ran an editorial called “The Nunes memo is all smoke, no fire”; and ran a full house editorial (one that again cited the phony Hamilton 68 dashboard, by the way) describing the Nunes report as a “fake scandal” designed, like the Clinton email investigation, to distract from the “real conspiracy” investigated by Robert Mueller. This sounds remarkably like today’s story, which described the Durham release as an effort to “change the subject from its broken promise to release Jeffrey Epstein files.” They write the same stories, over and over. It never ends.

The part that really infuriated today, however, was this section:

In reality, the F.B.I. opened its investigation based on a lead it received from the Australian government in late July 2016, after WikiLeaks released Democratic emails stolen by Russian hackers and disrupted the Democratic convention. The tip involved a Trump campaign adviser suggesting, before the hacking had become public, that the campaign had received outreach from Russia and knew what it would do.

This paragraph is an outrage. It’s carefully written to conceal how utterly the Times botched one of the most impactful stories of the Russiagate affair, a story called “How the Russia Inquiry Began: A Campaign Aide, Drinks and Talk of Political Dirt.” This professed to be the origin story of Russiagate, explaining that on July 26th, 2016, four days after Wikileaks leaked thousands of documents damaging to the Democratic Party, Australian authorities told American counterparts about a suspicious Russia-themed conversation Trump aide George Papadopoulos had with a diplomat named Alexander Downer.

The Times reported that Papadopoulos had been told of “dirt” Russia had, in the form of “thousands of emails that would embarrass Mrs. Clinton,” given to him by a Maltese professor named Josef Mifsud, presented as a cutout for Russia. This was described as a “driving factor” for the FBI opening its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia on July 31, 2016.

Almost everything about this story was wrong. It took a while, but Downer himself eventually admitted there was no “dirt” talk, or email talk. From the public Durham report:

According to Downer, Papadopoulos made no mention of Clinton emails, dirt or any specific approach by the Russian government to the Trump campaign team with an offer or suggestion of providing assistance. Rather, Downer’s recollection was that Papadopoulos simply stated “the Russians have information” and that was all.

Downer also said he “did not get the sense Papadopoulos was the middle-man to coordinate with the Russians.” More infuriating? The FBI dropped Papadopoulos as a lead weeks into the Crossfire Hurricane inquiry, with Deputy Director Alexander McCabe testifying that his comments “didn’t particularly indicate” contact with Russians:

Screwing up “dirt” and “thousands of emails” is bad, but the McCabe testimony shows the FBI knew in in August of 2016 that Papadopoulos was a dead-end. But “current and former American officials” polished that turd and fed it to the Times a full year and a half later. The paper then used it for its blockbuster tale about how Papadopoulos played a “critical role” in the Russiagate drama.

This will go down as an infamous screw-up and smear. Papadopoulos was totally uninvolved with any intelligence scheme and merely used as a technical pretense to start what proved to be a bogus investigation. Still, the Times plastered his face all over its front page as the scandal’s poster child, in what in hindsight was a proud advertisement for how badly they’d been bent over by their sources.

Now, years later, Savage not only re-writes this passage without the name “Papadopoulos” and without references to “dirt” or “thousands of emails,” but uses sleight-of-hand to suggest what was said between the young Trump aide and the Australian diplomat was meaningful. He describes a “Trump campaign adviser suggesting, before the [Russian] hacking had become public, that the campaign had received outreach from Russia and knew what it would do.” Knew what it would do? Savage leaves out the fact that Papadopoulos had not, in fact, received outreach from Russia, and did not have or claim to have foreknowledge of hacking. He played no meaningful role. It’s part of the Times legend that he did, however, so Charlie twisted the prose like a pipe cleaner to fit the few remaining usable factoids.

The irony is that while Papadopoulos was not the real beginning of Russiagate, the story Durham told about the U.S. acquiring a large chunk of intelligence from Russia far earlier in 2016 likely was. This was real intelligence concerning Russia that was embarrassing to Clinton, not Trump. Even at this late date, after so many Russiagate stories the paper screwed up, they continue to vomit up this nonsense. Give back your Pulitzer, you clowns!

By Larry Johnson, Substack, 7/22/25

The West continues to operate under the delusion that it has the military strength and political support to bully Russia into a ceasefire. The latest example comes from General Christopher Donahue, commander of U.S. Army Europe and Africa, who made an incredibly dangerous assertion during a speech to the Association of the U.S. Army’s inaugural LandEuro conference in Wiesbaden, Germany last week. Donahue stated that NATO land forces have developed the capability to strike and seize Russia’s Kaliningrad exclave “in a timeframe that is unheard of”—faster than ever before. He touted NATO advances in rapid land-based operations and emphasized that Kaliningrad—a heavily militarized Russian enclave surrounded by NATO territory—could be neutralized from the ground much more swiftly than previously possible. He said:

“We can take that down from the ground in a time frame that is unheard of – faster than we’ve ever been able to do.”

Donahue’s statement was not intended to suggest that NATO had imminent plans to launch a first strike; rather it was a warning to Russia about the alliance’s readiness in the event of further aggression, especially against the Baltic states. Commentators and officials interpret these remarks as reassurance to NATO partners and a signal to Moscow that any attack on NATO would prompt a decisive and rapid response. Regardless of Donahue’s intent, this is a reckless, dangerous statement in light of his position as the head of the US European Command. While it may have boosted morale among the Lilliputian Baltic nations, the Russians viewed it as a serious threat and a provocation.

Son of the New American Revolution is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Russian authorities responded that any military assault on Kaliningrad would be treated unequivocally as an attack on the Russian Federation itself. Leonid Slutsky, chair of the Russian parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee (a senior figure who often reflects Foreign Ministry rhetoric), explicitly stated:

“An attack on the Kaliningrad Region will mean an attack on Russia, with all due retaliatory measures stipulated, among other things, by its nuclear doctrine…. The American general should consider this before making such declarations.”

A parliamentary defense committee member called the threats “essentially a declaration of war.”

Donahue’s remarks, beyond being incredibly stupid, displayed the arrogance and contempt that US political and military leaders have for Russia. To make matters worse, NATO is conducting, or will soon conduct, a military exercise that simulates invading Kaliningrad. The Russians have taken notice and do not dismiss this as an idle threat. One retired Russian intelligence officer reacted by saying:

“And what would happen to Washington or New York if we deployed our troops in the ocean, for example, including the submarine fleet, and rehearsed strikes on New York and Washington. How would Trump react?”

I think we know the answer to that rhetorical question… Trump would attack. Now that Russia is mass-producing the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, Putin has an option other than going nuclear. The Oreshnik can hit any target in Europe — i.e., it is a hypersonic version of an intermediate range ballistic missile, except it can be maneuvered while in flight and a single missile can deliver multiple warheads. The West does not have any defense against this missile. I wonder if Donahue understands that?

By Ken Klippenstein, Website, 7/28/25

The United States has quietly deployed nuclear weapons to the United Kingdom for the first time since 2008, or 17 years ago.

The move has taken place literally without comment by Congress and very little from the American press, both of which seem more interested in Jeffrey Epstein than the threat of thermonuclear war. 

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, apparently busy with more important things — like fussing with military grooming standards and doing pushups with the troops — has said nothing about deployment of new nuclear bombs to Britain. President Donald Trump hasn’t said anything either, most likely because he doesn’t even know it’s happened.

The past three years has seen consistent nuclear brinksmanship over Ukraine, with Putin and company making constant threats (and Washington under the Biden administration counter-threatening). Moscow has threatened to alter its own nuclear posture to “counter” NATO, including making its first deployment of nuclear arms to Eastern Europe (in Belarus) since the end of the Cold War.

“Our relevant departments are monitoring developments in this area and formulating tasks to ensure our security against the backdrop of what is happening,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov says.

Moscow has been actively preparing nuclear storage facilities in Belarus, though experts like Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists believe that the warheads have not yet been deployed. The U.S. sent new B61 nuclear bombs to its base at RAF Lakenheath, where F-15E Strike Eagles are deployed, earlier this month.

The world’s two largest nuclear powers beefing up their nuclear warfighting capabilities in Europe might seem like something Congress would want to weigh in on; but the two officials in charge of the Armed Services Committee, Senators Roger Wicker and Jack Reed, haven’t said a word about it. Neither even responded to my request for comment about the new deployment.

In fact, no one in Congress has. And it’s not like they’ve got anything better to do, having knocked off for an over month-long recess that ends on September 1. But who wants to do homework during summer break? Certainly not Congressman Eric Swalwell, who posted a video of himself lifting weights on X with the caption:

“I should be working right now. But Republicans shut down Congress. So instead, I’m pumping iron at the gym.”

From Hegseth to Swalwell, our leaders are working out while Rome smolders.

Meanwhile in the UK, the Chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament Tom Unterrainer called the new American deployment “a major escalation in nuclear dangers” and is demanding that Prime Minister Keir Starmer publicly acknowledge it so there can at least be a debate.

Per Unterrainer’s statement:

“It is completely inappropriate for the public to be finding out about such a major escalation in nuclear dangers via reports in British newspapers and the assessments of security experts.”

He makes a good point: it really is a disgrace that we often only learn about national security matters of immense public interest like this when the details tumble out into the open source record, as happened here. In this instance, aviation enthusiasts earlier this month noticed a C-17A Globemaster III depart from Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, home to the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, before landing at the British air base Lakenheath, which is also known to have contracted for new nuclear storage sites to be built (thanks to another unintentional disclosure). 

We know everything about Hegseth’s interest in things like false eyelashes, but knowing about the Pentagon’s change in nuclear posture shouldn’t have to happen by accident.

The UK Defence Ministry responded to inquiries by local experts by saying that it can “neither confirm nor deny the presence of nuclear weapons at a given location,” a statement echoed by the Pentagon as a matter of course. They could confirm it — if sufficient pressure was put on the military by their civilian leaders (or by members of the supposed coequal branch of government). But there isn’t pressure, so the deployment of nuclear weapons will be known by the Russians, and by the experts, but not by the people.

Better put pressure on the civilian leaders, then. Not just in the Defense Department, but Congress as well, which seems to think it can get away without exercising oversight of the national security state on even the most obvious matters of public interest, as this case shows. 

If pressed, apologists for congressional laziness might argue that American nuclear weapons are already currently deployed to Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, and (very precariously) to Turkey. But unlike the UK, all of these countries are vulnerable to local politics and European anxiety about nuclear war, so the prospects of their being thrown out is somewhat possible. 

But now that Europe and NATO has adopted an all-for-one-and-one-for-all policy in response to the Ukraine war, where “solidarity” is more important than sanity, throwing the UK into the mix all but ensures that the controversial nuclear bombs will likely remain forever. In the case of the UK the United States has a partner that embraces nuclear weapons (having its own arsenal), but one who will stand against others who agitate to remove theirs. 

The other possibility for the future is that the UK deployment is to allow nuclear bombs to be removed from the other countries, NATO then being able that the UK-based nuclear bombs makes sufficient linkage between what happens in Europe and Washington.

In either case, nuclear war in Europe is back on the table, launched in London, so one-for-all the Europeans are working against their own security.

Le Monde, 7/20/25

Sections reserved for soldiers are at capacity. Across the country, teams of architects have been working on memorials that reflect not only the scale of the ongoing carnage but also the evolving ideas about national identity.

It’s a sandy track, well-hidden among the pines, off the highway connecting Kyiv to Odesa in the Hatne region. The outline of a newly dug off-ramp, carved by bulldozers and still unmarked, signals the start of a massive construction site. This is the highway exit that will serve as Ukraine’s future national military memorial cemetery. The project is enormous, highly sensitive and not just because environmental activists and residents of the small village of Markhalivka – 40 kilometers from the capital, but right at the base of the future cemetery – worry about deforestation and the loss of their rural quiet.

In the village, only a new brown sign, the color used to mark national sites, marks the road that leads trucks to the site. It reads in English: “National Military Memorial Cemetery.” A first section, designed to hold 10,000 graves and already laid out with broad granite paths, benches and lime trees, is due to receive its first burial this summer. But in the long term, “130,000 or even 160,000” people will be laid to rest at this future burial ground, explained architect Serhi Derbin, clad in khaki linen trousers and a straw panama hat, under the blazing July sun.

“Here will be the main entrance,” explained the young man leading this project, which has a budget of more than €37 million. “Below, there’s a shelter for 300 people, in case of bombardment.” The reinforced bunker is a first for a cemetery. Over there, a “house of mourning” for ceremonies, should it be cold or rainy. “And here, the memorial,” the architect continued, sweeping his arms wide to indicate the 120 hectares set aside for the future cemetery, and the 260-hectare estate beyond.

Perhaps the construction projects rising across Ukraine say more about the scale of the slaughter than statistics ever could. The number of soldiers killed in action since the start of the Russian invasion remains a closely guarded secret. In February, President Volodymyr Zelensky mentioned more than 46,000 Ukrainian military personnel killed and 380,000 wounded since February 2022, not including the “tens of thousands” listed as “missing” or held captive by Russian forces. The real death toll is likely much higher.

Passion for ‘memorial subjects’

The giant cemetery project, overseen by the Ministry for Veterans Affairs but closely monitored by the president’s office, has not emerged without controversy. “One day in June 2023,” recalled Anton Drobovych, former president of the National Institute of Remembrance, “I got a call from Bankova Street [the seat of the Ukrainian presidency]. They told me the memorial would be built at Bykivnia,” a site near Kyiv where victims of Stalin’s purges in the late 1930s were buried. At the time, Drobovych was serving with “the paratroopers” in the Zaporizhzhia area during the Ukrainian counteroffensive. He jumped: “You want to build a cemetery on what used to be a mass grave? That’s a grave, historic mistake!”

After much hesitation, public petitions and local protests, the Hatne site was chosen. “I was the only competitor, architects here have little interest in cemeteries,” admitted Derbin. Head of a Kyiv real estate project agency, he has been passionate about “memorial subjects” since 2021, working on projects like the towering flagpoles overlooking the cities of Dnipro and Kryvy Rih. War, unfortunately, has brought new perspectives. In Yahidne, a village near Chernihiv where 350 parents and children were held captive in the school basement in March 2022, and 27 died, he is preparing a museum to commemorate the occupation and Russian war crimes.

Each sector of the future Hatne military cemetery will be organized around a central columbarium, designed to encourage more Ukrainians to consider cremation, a practice that remains uncommon. Temporary white oak graves will hold the first “heroes” as well as the remains of unidentified soldiers. “No more than a year,” warned Derbin. “We are in the 21st century. In the age of DNA research, we reject the outdated “unknown soldier” concept.” To aid future identification, details that could help identify the deceased – distinctive marks (tattoos, scars, etc.) and genetic fingerprints – will be inscribed on the headstones of these anonymous graves.

White stone

Burial space is running out across Ukraine. In Lviv, a major city in western Ukraine, the city hall avoided controversy by involving families in its plans. A year ago, it began a wide-ranging public consultation to rethink the redevelopment of its “Field of Mars,” a plot with 1,000 graves adjacent to the famous Lychakiv Cemetery, the city’s version of Paris’s Père-Lachaise Cemetery, where sculpted tombs and statues tell the story of a vanished century: writers’ quills, violins, sheet music and manuscripts. Around 6 pm, as the workday ends, a stream of cars comes to lay flowers on the fresh graves that have appeared since February 2022, their yellow and blue flags – or red and black nationalist flags – snapping in the wind. Here, no two graves are alike.

For 12 months, the families of the deceased gathered in Lviv city hall’s vast hall with a team of architects to rethink a cemetery that had sprung up too quickly. “Lighting, flowers, the stone – we discussed everything. Sometimes widows would come with four children,” recounted Anton Kolomeitsev, the city’s architect. The winning design, chosen on May 30, underwent revisions, but the final plan is now set. Each plot will be redesigned with terrazzo stone, juniper bushes among the graves, niches for candles and so on.

But the “Field of Mars” faces another problem. “There are already only 40 plots left. That will last barely two months,” admitted the young Kolomeitsev in his stylish, minimalist office in the 19th-century city hall. The city is now also planning a new military cemetery. “It will be built somewhere in the city or outside Lviv – an announcement is imminent.” It will likely follow the new trends of Ukrainian funerary aesthetics: park-like spaces, large esplanades for ceremonies, white stone…

Read more Subscribers only War in Ukraine: No peace, even in death, in Hroza village

All graves are the same size, regardless of the rank of the deceased. And, for the vast majority of believers, they are decorated with “Cossack” crosses – the Maltese cross shape – a military tradition from the 19th century. The benches near the graves, where families once shared a meal or a glass of vodka, have disappeared: “That was a Soviet tradition,” explained Derbin, “because it was the only place the KGB wouldn’t listen in.”

American influence can also be seen. “I visited Arlington Cemetery near Washington,” said Kolomeitsev, “where veterans of all American wars are buried. Here in Lviv, we too had to answer a difficult question: How do you bring together the dead from various conflicts since the early 20th century?”

Families of veterans of the Donbas war in 2014 want their loved ones included in these new cemeteries. And what about those who defended Ukraine outside front-line brigades – civilians who gathered intelligence for the Ukrainian military in occupied territories, volunteers who evacuated the wounded and families, raised donations or built drones, Ukrainian journalists reporting on Russian war crimes? The debate has not yet officially begun, but the idea has been gaining traction in Ukrainian society. “Military memorials are bricks in the wall of national identity,” argued Drobovytch.

Building cemeteries in Ukraine also means marking, in real time, the shifting frontlines of war – even in the worst ways. In Milove, on the Russian border, architect Derbin’s “bell of memory,” dedicated to Ukraine’s liberators in World War II, has already been toppled. “Before the major invasion [in February 2022], I designed the ‘Avenue of Heroes’ honoring those killed since 2014 in Sievierodonetsk.” That gallery of portraits was dismantled by Russian forces. “They want to erase memory and memories,” sighed the Kyiv architect. “I try to chase the dark thoughts from my mind, but I have no doubt that ‘they’ will bomb a cemetery one day.”

YouTube link to Redacted’s interview with John Kiriakou on possible CIA involvement in Ukrainian protests against Zelensky here.

By Oliver Boyd-Barrett, Substack, 7/30/25

Oliver Boyd-Barrett is an academic who analyzes and critiques propaganda.

On the battlefield, Russian forces are reliably confirmed to have a strong presence to the south of Pokrovsk and to be fighting Ukrainian forces in the center of Pokrovsk Reports suggest that Russia forces are now moving north of Pokrovsk with a view to outflanking cities in Donbass such as Sloviansk and Kramatorsk that are still held by Ukraine, as Russians move north from Pokrovsk, and north and east of Kamianske in Zaporizhzhia.

Increasingly Russians encounter Ukrainian positions that are no longer defended or poorly defended. Some reports suggest that in effect Ukraine is expecting to retreat west of the Dnieper where it may already be working to establish a major new line of defense. Reports also seem to be converging in agreement on the increasing superiority of Russian drones, in quantity and impact. Russian drone production facilities in Kazan are expanding. The best of Ukrainian forces is said to be being transitioned to the Sumy region, which is critical to the defense of Kiev, which is likely to be Zelenskiy’s paramount concern.

Rumors – fed both by a recent story by Seymour Hersh and by a Russian intelligence statement – are swirling of destabilization in Kiev and the possible overthrow of Zelenskiy in favor of General Zaluzhnyi, currently Ukrainian ambassador to the UK. Such a development, long anticipated, in itself means little. The installation of a new President by coup would simply replace on illegitimate leader, Zelenskiy, with an even more illegitimate leader. The new leader would still be accountable to the kinds of western intelligence, Banderite militia and comparable sources of pressure against making considerable concessions to Russia’s demands as articulated by Putin in July of 2024, and there are few indications to suggest that those demands will be reduced any time soon – quite to the contrary, they will have increased in line with military advances – I dont expect to see Russia give up any territory.

We wait to see whether Trump will move, as he has threatened, to impose further sanctions on Russia, and on the major clients for Russian oil (China, India, Turkey). Russia and China have made it clear that they will not be intimidated. Trump had already been talking about imposing 25% tariffs on India; India has expressed exasperation with US negotiators and their terms and will almost certainly be enraged if Trump now imposes further heavy sanctions on them for their purchase of Russian oil, especially if they end up being charged more than China.

Predictably, the price of oil is rising. Europe, along with being subjected to tariffs of 15% are also committed to spending $750 billion on US LNG (even though there are insufficient European ports available for processing LNG), thus increasing their dependence on US oil very considerably). This will place additional strain on US production and US prices at a time when many experts believe that peak shale oil production in the US has passed and that from now the amount of available oil will be in decline.

On the Middle East, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has said that the UK will join France in recognizing a Palestinian state in September if there is no ceasefire agreed by that time. This makes the question of an absolute – the right to national recognition – conditional on what another state, Israel, does or does not do. In reality of course, the UK has more responsibility (yes, OK, it is complicated) than other nation for the original creation of Israel in 1947 (not accompanied, note, by a UN insistence on nation for Palestine) and for the civilizational injustice to the Palestinians that has resulted and is now made egregiously worse as a result of the genocide, a process to which the UK has contributed by its disastrous loyalty to Netanyahu, its direct complicity in making its Cyprus base available for Israeli planes and its transfer of intelligence about Gaza collected by the RAF to Israel. And in so many other ways.

Elsewhere in West Asia, there is growing confirmation that proposed US long lease of the Zangezur corridor in Armenia, along Iran’s border, between Turkey and Azerbaijan, is indeed intended to be a new and significant front in the West’s long-term aim to surround Iran and Russia, perhaps igniting a conflict no less threatening than the West’s proxy war with Russia over Ukraine. The corridor will greatly facilitate the possibility of transfers of military personnel and materiel right to Iran, where Iran must rightly be concerned about the loyalty of its 20 million Azeris in its north even as it continues to send back to Afghanistan a potential four or more million undocumented Afghans, under national conditions of increasing temperatures and water shortage.

Meanwhile to the south and west of Iran the destabilization and possibly ultimately balkanization of Syria is in rapid progress. We learn today that the horrific and brutal slaughter of Druze in the southeast of Syria was the result of a carefully planned joint operation between Israel and the terrorist and illegal HTS regime in Damascus in which the Kurdish SDF also participated alongside HTS forces in a bid, among other things, to consolidate Israeli control over southern Syria and to create a direct line of progress for Israel toward northern Syria and eastwards into Iraq. The US and Israel continue to intimidate the government of Lebanon to crush the country’s major force for civil order, Hezbollah.