A Ukrainian drone raid last week devastated a college dormitory in Starobelsk, in Russia's Lugansk People's Republic, killing 21 students - most of them young women - and injuring dozens others.

The attack was a deliberate "double-tap" that included two more waves of drones targeting civilians and first responders who raced to the scene, according to Russian officials. Russia branded the raid a "terrorist attack" and a blatant war crime. Horrific footage from the scene backed up the accusations.

However, speaking at an emergency UN Security Council session, Ukrainian envoy to the UN Andrey Melnik dismissed Moscow's account, denigrating a "so-called incident" in Starobelsk as "a fake story" and accusing Russia of spreading "yet another propaganda narrative."

In the first step towards shifting aid further into the shadows, the House's 2027 NDAA would all but fuse the two countries' armed forces together

At a time when the American public is expressing unprecedented levels of distrust in the Israeli government, Congress just proposed tying the U.S. to the Israeli military more than ever before.

Buried in the House's version of the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) released on Tuesday, is section 224, entitled "United States-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative." The provision would arguably do more to intertwine the U.S. military with the Israeli military than the more than $200 billion (inflation adjusted) in military assistance Israel has received from the U.S. since its founding in 1948.

In May 2026, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX) led a group of 30 House Democrats in sending a formal letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio demanding the United States end its decades-long policy of nuclear ambiguity regarding Israel. Castro explicitly cited the ongoing U.S. and Israel military conflict with Iran, noting that "fighting this war side by side with a country whose potential nuclear weapons program the United States government officially refuses to acknowledge risks miscalculation" and potential nuclear escalation. The signatories cited the classified 1974 Special National Intelligence Estimate confirming Israel had nuclear weapons and asked eleven specific questions, including whether Israel had communicated nuclear red lines to U.S. officials.

One of the indicators of the ongoing shift in the global balance of power is the diminishing influence of Israel over US policy and on the overall situation in the Middle East.

A crucial sign of the emerging divergence between US and Israeli policies was the conversation between Donald Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu on May 20, during which the American president informed his Israeli counterpart that Washington was preparing to reach an agreement with Tehran and would no longer continue military actions against Iran.

Reporting on this, the Jerusalem Post underscored the Israeli leader's evident displeasure, describing (in Hebrew) how "his hair was burning on his head".

In 2023, Commander Cornelis van der Klaauw of the Royal Netherlands Navy and an expert on strategic communication and information operations at the NATO Joint Warfare Centre wrote in an article 'Cognitive Warfare':

"The reason why cognitive attacks go unnoticed by their targets is that cognitive activities bypass the conscious mind and directly target the subconscious of a person. In fact, within the subconscious mind, the primary target is the amygdala. ..., neural nanotechnology can be used to bring nano-sized robots close to a neuron via the bloodstream and make it possible to link the human brain directly (i.e. not intercepted by our senses) to a computer, making use of artificial intelligence in the process."

He concluded his study:

"While other domains can provide tactical and operational victories, the human domain is the only domain in which we can secure a full victory."

Klaauw wrote his article at a time when the EU was moving towards declassifying neurotechnologies that enable remote control of human brain activity, and apparently therefore at its behest. On December 9, 2023, the European Parliament issued a press release stating that it had reached a political agreement with the Council of the European Union "on a bill to ensure AI in Europe is safe, respects fundamental rights and democracy."

The proposed bill was intended to ban "AI systems that manipulate human behaviour to circumvent their free will." According to the press release the deputies "agreed" as well on "clear obligations" with respect to "AI systems used to influence the outcome of elections and voter behaviour." See this.

Israel has been added to a UN blacklist of countries that commit sexual violence in warzones for the first time.

A report by the office of Secretary General António Guterres said the UN had last year verified 31 cases of sexual violence perpetrated by Israeli forces against Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank. It said 13 of the cases had occurred in 2025, and 18 in the two years prior.

The UN said its report should be seen as "indicative of incidents and patterns" rather than comprehensive.

Israel said it rejected allegations of sexual abuse and intended to break off relations with the secretary general's office.

Israel's ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, accused Guterres on Thursday of spreading antisemitic lies. The Israeli UN mission said it will refuse contact with his office as long as he serves as head of the international body.

The report said the cases the UN had verified were carried out against 14 men, seven women, nine boys and one girl. The violations included rape, gang rape, forced nudity, and violence to genitals committed by officers from the Israeli military, police and prison service.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has ordered the military to occupy 70% of Gaza, in violation of the US-brokered ceasefire deal between West Jerusalem and Hamas, which allows Israel to control no more than 53% of the enclave.

The 2025 agreement, backed by a UN Security Council resolution, envisioned a phased Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in exchange for Hamas disarming and relinquishing control of the territory. Instead, sporadic fighting has continued, with Israeli forces steadily pushing deeper into the enclave.

Netanyahu told the Jordan Valley Conference in the occupied West Bank on Thursday:

"We now control 60% of the territory in the Strip. You know, we were at 50, we moved to 60. My directive is to move to... first of all 70%. Let's start with that."

He added that the territory would be taken step by step. He did not say whether Israel ultimately intends to occupy all of Gaza.

When "blatant falsehoods are being spread, one cannot let them stand unchallenged," says Weidel's spokesman

Alice Weidel, co-leader of the anti-migration Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, has successfully sued the Left Party leader and won a retraction after she spread falsehoods about Weidel on live television.

In mid-May, Ines Schwerdtner, the federal chairwoman of the Left Party, claimed during an interview on Welt TV that Wediel neither resides in Germany nor pays taxes.

"Alice Weidel doesn't even live in Germany, she doesn't pay taxes here," she told viewers. This statement is false. While Weidel spends much of her time with her family in Switzerland, she has her primary residence in Germany and pays taxes in the Federal Republic of Germany. Weidel has been very guarded about the issue over the years, as she faces a high threat level and avoids appearing in public due to the security threat she lives under.

The murder of 21 Russian teenage students at a teacher-training college last week was an abominable moment of truth with far-reaching, grievous implications.

A grim, consequential watershed in the West's conflict with Russia has arrived.

The victims were mainly girls aged between 14 and 18 who were killed when their university dormitory in Starobelsk, Lugansk, was attacked overnight on May 22.

What is absolutely revealing is how the Collective West has shown no remorse or restraint about the crime, going as far as denying responsibility and adding insult to the memory of the dead. The perpetrators have an obscene sense of impunity and inhumane entitlement.

The attack involved 16 drones that targeted the college in a wave of three assaults. There can be no doubt that the air strike was a deliberate act. That makes it an act of cold-blooded mass murder; an act of terrorism.

Vassily Nebenzia, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, stated: "The blood of the children from Starobelsk is on the hands of the West whose nations are supplying the terrorist regime [in Ukraine] with money, intelligence, weapons, and ammunition for years, inspiring it to commit new crimes against the civilian population, and then covering it up by presenting the Kiev regime as a victim."

The corrupt NeoNazi regime in Kiev under Vladimir Zelensky and his cronies is only a bit player in this crime. The regime, which, by the way, gave burial honors to a World War Two Nazi collaborator this week, is merely the scum atop the Western criminal organizations behind this and other atrocities, and indeed the entire conflict with Russia.

Several respected international authorities have repeatedly pointed out that the nearly five-year war in Ukraine that erupted in February 2022 is the culmination of a long-term policy to embattle Russia with NATO aggression. Professors John Mearsheimer, Jeffrey Sachs, Alfred de Zayas, among others, have cogently explained how this conflict in Europe - the biggest since WWII - has come about.

The Kiev regime has been armed to the teeth by the United States and its Western partners, bankrolled by Washington and the European Union, and directed by NATO military intelligence. The attacks on Russian civilian centers could not happen without the direct support of the "Collective West".

It is not Tehran led by unhinged, genocidal megalomaniacs threatening the security of the region and the world. It is Tel Aviv and Washington.
Could it be that Israel's 30-year narrative about Iran - one that persuaded US President Donald Trump to wage a criminal and disastrous war of aggression - was always a fiction, an invention cooked up in Tel Aviv?

Far from Tehran posing an existential danger to Israel, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has claimed for decades, might Israel's real fear be that a stronger Iran would undermine its unique leverage over Washington, threatening its status as the region's sole - and unmonitored - nuclear power?

Might large parts of the globe be facing economic meltdown simply so that Israel can remain the Middle East's top dog - an unaccountable apartheid state committing genocide against the Palestinian people and ethnically cleansing southern Lebanon?

We got a definitive answer last week, care of the New York Times. It is an uncompromising yes to all of these questions.

The newspaper reported that Netanyahu not only mis-sold Trump on the idea of quick regime change in Iran following a short "shock and awe" bombing campaign. He also identified to the White House who was going to replace Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme religious leader.

Extraordinarily, according to the Times, Netanyahu named the man for the job as former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The aim at the start of the air campaign was for Israel to kill Khamenei, then liberate Ahmadinejad from house arrest by striking the guards who were confining him.

Presumably, Ahmadinejad was then supposed to storm the citadel and seize the keys to the palace. But only Khamenei's assassination went according to plan.

Ahmadinejad, who had reportedly been consulted on the scheme beforehand, is believed to have been injured in the Israeli strike near his home. He got cold feet, possibly suspecting he was being set up for assassination too, and went into hiding. His current whereabouts and medical condition are unknown.