If you follow the western media's coverage of the war in Ukraine, you'll probably come to one clear conclusion: Things aren't going to plan for Russia. If you're embedded into the world of Twitter, you'll probably even think Moscow is losing. There's enough reason to believe it at face value: An apparent plan to occupy Kyiv and the North of the country seemingly failed, resulting in Russia's withdrawal, whilst Putin's forces appear to have suffered more than expected losses and the Black Sea flagship, the Moskva has been sunk. This is coupled with reporting which repeatedly assumes that Putin aspired for the war to be swift, short and painless, depicting him as miscalculating, mentally deteriorating and falling into an a quagmire of his own making.

Except that isn't the case. Whilst it is true indeed that wars never do go according to plan, and always do surmount to unanticipated costs, it is nonetheless also a reality that the western media coverage of the conflict has been nothing short of a blatant war propaganda and psychological warfare campaign, which has coincided with a deliberate campaign to censor the other side of the story. It is ultimately preposterous to assume the media could even contemplate being impartial when given the severity of the conflict, they are under enormous social and political pressure to "take a side" and vest in what they hope to be Putin's looming failure.

Especially since the onset of GWOT (Global War on Terror) at the start of the millennium, no one ever lost money betting against the toxic combo of hubris, arrogance and ignorance serially deployed by the Empire of Chaos and Lies.

What passes for "analysis" in the vast intellectual no-fly zone known as US Think Tankland includes wishful thinking babble such as Beijing "believing" that Moscow would play a supporting role in the Chinese century just to see Russia, now, in the geopolitical driver's seat.

This is a fitting example not only of outright Russophobic/Sinophobic paranoia about the emergence of peer competitors in Eurasia - the primeval Anglo-American nightmare - but also crass ignorance about the finer points of the complex Russia-China comprehensive strategic partnership.

As Operation Z methodically hits Phase 2, the Americans - with a vengeance - have also embarked on their symmetrical Phase 2, which de facto translates as an outright escalation towards Totalen Krieg, from shades of hybrid to incandescent, everything of course by proxy. Notorious Raytheon weapons peddler reconverted into Pentagon head, Lloyd Austin, gave away the game in Kiev:

We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can't do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine.

So this is it: the Empire wants to annihilate Russia. Cue to War Inc.'s frenzy of limitless weapon cargos descending on Ukraine, the overwhelming majority on the road to be duly eviscerated by Russian precision strikes. The Americans are sharing intel 24/7 with Kiev not only on Donbass and Crimea but also Russian territory. Totalen Krieg proceeds in parallel to the engineered controlled demolition of the EU's economy, with the European Commission merrily acting as a sort of P.R. arm of NATO.

Amidst the propaganda dementia cum acute cognitive dissonance overdrive across the whole NATOstan sphere, the only antidote is served by sparse voices of reason, which happen to be Russian, thus silenced and/or dismissed. The West ignores them at their own collective peril.

In imperial history there is nothing new in cases of dementia in rulers attracting homicidal psychopaths to replace them. It's as natural as honey attracts bees.

When US President Woodrow Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke on October 19, 1919, he was partially paralysed and blinded, and was no longer able to feed himself, sign his name, or speak normally; he was not demented.

While his wife and the Navy officer who was his personal physician concealed his condition, there is no evidence that either Edith Wilson or Admiral Cary Grayson were themselves clinical cases of disability, delusion, or derangement. They were simply liars driven by the ambition to hold on to the power of the president's office and deceive everyone who got in their way.

President Joe Biden is seeking $33 billion in additional aid to Ukraine and new authority from Congress to seize and sell property linked to wealthy allies of President Vladimir Putin, as the Russian military intensifies its offensive.

Biden's proposal, however, risks getting tangled in a long-simmering partisan dispute over immigration and Covid-19 funding.

NATO allies have pledged and provided more than $8 billion in military assistance to Ukraine so far, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said.

A top Ukrainian negotiator said additional military success was key to negotiations with Russia.

- Key Developments

• Biden Ukraine Aid Risks Slowing as GOP Balks at Covid Tie-In
• Old-Fashioned Artillery Proves a Big Plus for Ukraine's Force
• Germany Closer to Backing EU Push to Sanction Russia's Sberbank
• German Parliament Backs Heavy Weapons Supplies for Ukraine
• Europe Seeks to Draw Tougher Line on Russian Gas Threat

2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.

The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.

Shortly thereafter the first shots in the present war were fired on the Russian-sympathetic Donbass region by the newly installed Ukrainian government. The shelling of the Donbass which claimed 14,000 lives has continued for 8 years, despite attempts at a cease-fire under the Minsk accords which Russia, France and Germany agreed upon but Ukraine backed by the US refused to implement. On February 24, 2022, Russia finally responded to the slaughter in Donbass and the threat of NATO on its doorstep.

The billionaire entrepreneur, and new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk is unlikely to succeed in bringing the "free speech" he has promised to the platform, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. He expressed doubts whether a "full palette" of opinions could be presented on any Western social media.

"Russia's attitude towards this company is based on the actions of this company, on censorship, selective repressive actions against the company's clients, on the distortion and manipulation of information.

"There's a question about whether a full free palette of different points of view is possible on Western social networks. We doubt this. Let's see what happens under the new owner. Now, given that this is a global company, we have already heard official voices from Europe that they will not allow absolute freedom there."

The senior EU official cautioned the billionaire against being too lax on content moderation, suggesting the platform could face a ban should it fail to abide by the bloc's rules. The EU has recently adopted the so-called 'Digital Services Act', a package of regulations designed to force social network platforms to police their content much more aggressively and to cooperate closer with regulators.

Russia's Defense Ministry claimed on Thursday that Ukrainian forces fired more than a dozen missiles overnight at the city of Kherson in southern Ukraine, which was seized by Russian troops in early March. The ministry said in a statement that Russian air defenses intercepted the rockets.

According to Moscow, late on Wednesday the Ukrainian military launched at least two 'Tochka-U' ballistic missiles as well as 12 missiles from a high-powered multiple rocket launcher, apparently targeting residential areas of Kherson. The incoming rockets were, however, shot down by the Russian forces deployed in the city. A video released by the Russian Defense Ministry appears to show the aftermath of the shelling, with what looks like missile debris seen in the footage.

The ministry branded the attack a war crime, saying the

"criminal, indiscriminate strike by the nationalists targeted residential areas along Ushakov Avenue, as well as nurseries, schools and other social infrastructure." The attack represented a "direct violation of international humanitarian law."

Intelligence obtained by Russia suggests that Poland and the US are working on a plan for Warsaw to regain control of Ukrainian areas that Warsaw considers as "historically belonging" to it, Moscow's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) chief Sergey Naryshkin has said.

According to the alleged plan, the first stage of this "reunification" will see Polish "peacekeepers" deployed in western Ukraine under the pretext of "protection from Russian aggression," Naryshkin outlined in a statement on Thursday.

The details of the operation are now being discussed between Warsaw and the US government, he claimed, adding that the operation is designed to be executed without a NATO mandate, and only volunteer states taking part.

Warsaw has so far been unable to find any other nations to join its cause, he added. But the Polish authorities are unconcerned by this, as they want to minimize the number of "unnecessary witnesses" to their actions. Despite their publicly declared goal of countering Moscow, the Polish troops would be deployed in parts of Ukraine where they'll have almost no chance of engaging Russian forces, Naryshkin explained.

The value of U.S. military equipment abandoned in Afghanistan is reportedly more than $7 billion, according to a new Pentagon report.

The U.S. gave $18.6 billion of equipment to the Afghan security forces over the course of 16 years beginning in 2005 and ending in August 2021, according to the report, which was first viewed by CNN. Out of that equipment, $7.12 billion-worth was left behind when the Biden administration completed the U.S. military withdrawal from the country last year.

Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) is accusing certain people of targeting him with a "coordinated drip campaign" in an effort to undermine his bid to seek reelection this year.

"They're going to drop an attack article every one or two days just to try and kill us with a death by 1,000 cuts, and that is really their main strategy," Cawthorn said in an April 26 statement on Instagram.

Cawthorn, 26, has been facing backlash over several controversies, including being detained by police in North Carolina over possessing a loaded gun at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport earlier on April 26.