President Vladimir Putin has signed treaties on the inclusion of four former Ukrainian regions, into the Russian Federation. Friday's ceremony marked the start of the formal process of their accession.

Heads of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, Denis Pushilin and Leonid Pasechnik, as well as the leaders of Kherson and Zaporozhye, Vladimir Saldo and Evgeny Balitsky, signed the documents together with Putin.

The move follows official requests by the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics, as well as the two southern Ukrainian regions, which had declared independence, to join Russia. All four territories held referendums on the issue between September 23 and 27, which saw overwhelming support for the move, according to results announced earlier this week by local election committees.

In Donetsk, 99.23% of the people voted to reunite with Moscow, with Lugansk showing a slightly lower figure of 98.42%. Zaporozhye Region highly supported the idea of splitting from Ukraine and joining Russia, with around 93% of voters backing it. Some 87% voted in favor in Kherson Region as well.

The US stands to benefit economically from the attack on the Nord Stream gas pipelines and has a record of targeting energy infrastructure with sabotage operations, the head of Russia's Security Council said.

"Pretty much from the first minutes after the news of the explosions broke ... the West launched an active campaign for assigning blame. But it is obvious that the primary beneficiary, first of all in the economic sense, was the US," Nikolay Patrushev said on Friday.


He compared this week's incident with the attack on Nicaragua's oil infrastructure in Puerto Sandino in 1983. Back then CIA officers, based on a ship moored in international waters, coordinated a raid by commandos they had trained to fight against the Sandinista government, US press reported at the time. The US spy agency also provided speed boats for the raid, according to a CIA source cited by Associated Press.

Europe's far-right scored another victory this week as Italy's Giorgia Meloni and her party, Brothers of Italy, won big in the country's general election. It marks the first time since 1948, when Italy's anti-fascist constitution came into force, that a party with fascist roots has come to power in the southern European country.

This follows a similar pattern that happened in Sweden two weeks ago, when that country's far-right claimed a significant electoral victory. Seen as a beacon of liberal social democracy in places like the United States, Sweden will now be ruled by once-fringe populist rightists.

We can even see this emerging in historical Eastern Europe, as the latest local elections over the weekend in the Czech Republic saw modest advances for the country's populist opposition. Led primarily by billionaire former prime minister Andrej Babis and his party, ANO, this is by no means a win for the ideological right - but it does show resentment for the prevailing center-right establishment that's in power.

Unwilling to accept the inevitable end of its unipolar hegemony, the West is generating problems and crises everywhere in order to cling to the past, Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Thursday.

"We are witnessing a complex process of a more just world order being established " Putin told the video conference of intelligence and security chiefs of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). "Unipolar hegemony is inexorably collapsing, this is an objective reality that the West categorically refuses to accept, and we see everything that follows from this."

The US and its allies "cling to the past and try to dictate policy everywhere, from international relations and economics to culture and sports," Putin said, adding that the collective West "does not disdain any method of pressuring countries that choose a sovereign path of development, those who do not wish to submit but freely and independently choose their own future, safeguarding their culture, tradition and values."

Washington has accused Russia and China of revisionism and of challenging the "rules-based world order."

The CIS was created in 1991 from the newly independent republics of the USSR. While the West is trying to foment new crises in their territory, Putin noted, there were plenty of real ones dating back to the Soviet Union's break-up.

On September 27, the Israeli Foreign Ministry announced that Tel Aviv would not recognise the results of referendums held in four districts of Ukraine, where even before the results of the referendums were summed up, it became clear that the overwhelming majority of local residents supported the entry of their districts into the Russian Federation.

The Soviet Union severed diplomatic relations with Israel in 1967. Relations were restored only in 1991, shortly before the collapse of the USSR. Today, we can see how "enthusiastically" the Israeli leadership demonstrates its support for Washington's position on many issues. And all this is done for the sake of preserving American hegemony in a unipolar world, in order to please its overseas master, regardless of whether he is a Democrat or a Republican. The main thing is that Israel continues to receive guaranteed assistance from the world gendarme, which ensures the security of Israeli borders, enables the occupiers to pursue a policy of seizing other people's land and property, continue to build illegal settlements, and pursue a policy of looting, oppression and repression against the Palestinian people. Tel Aviv believes that the United States will always protect Israel's interests. After all, Washington invariably uses its veto power in the UN Security Council when voting for any resolution condemning the actions of the Israeli government.

Back in the summer, the Kremlin and the Russian Foreign Ministry expressed regret over the "unconstructive position and policy of Israel in recent months, including in connection with the position of Tel Aviv on the situation in Ukraine". Moscow sharply criticised the statements of representatives of the Israeli leadership in support of the Kiev regime.

Meanwhile, the Middle East quartet countries at their last meeting in Oslo in November 2021 expressed deep concern over the events in the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Of particular concern were the numerous instances of arbitrary actions by the Israeli authorities in the West Bank, especially the beginning of the construction of new settlements. The quartet called on all parties to take additional steps to address these challenges, while emphasising the need to do everything possible to avoid unilateral steps that could lead to escalation and undermine the chances of a peaceful solution to existing problems.

We all remember well the statements made by Ukrainian Ambassador to Tel Aviv Evgeny Korneychuk in December last year during the celebrations dedicated to the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. The Ukrainian ambassador said that his country "may soon recognise Jerusalem as the only capital of Israel", expressing hope for the opening of a diplomatic mission of Ukraine in Jerusalem next (at that time), 2022, during the visit of the Ukrainian president.

In his remarkable book, The Psychology of Totalitarianism, the Flemish psychologist Mathias Desmet explains how collective psychosis can cause people to lose their critical faculties. He cites a famous experiment in which a person can be made to say that one line on a diagram is the same length as another, when in fact it is longer, if seven or eight actors have pretended to come to the same conclusion before him.

Desmet is writing mainly about the coercive psychosis of Covid. But the same arguments apply to the current collective psychosis about Russia. For years and decades now, we have been fed horror stories about Russia. These have of course only increased in intensity since the invasion of Ukraine. We have now reached a situation in which entire sections of the media, and their respective national governments, claim to believe things which are simply impossible.

The latest example is the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines. Russia has been immediately blamed but the accusation is not credible, for the following reasons. I defy any person endowed with normal critical faculties to show the opposite.

MEP Nathalie Loiseau of France is lobbying for individual sanctions on all observers of the Russian-organized referendums in the Donbass region. She has singled out journalist Vanessa Beeley not only for her coverage of the vote, but for her reporting on the foreign-back war against Syria's government.

A French Member of European Parliament (MEP), Natalie Loiseau, has delivered a letter to EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Borrell, demanding the European Union place personal sanctions on all international observers of the recent votes in the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics and certain Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine.

Obtained by The Grayzone from an EU source, the letter is currently being circulated among European parliamentarians in hopes of securing a docket of supportive signatures.

"We, as elected members of the European Parliament, demand that all those who voluntarily assisted in any way the organization of these illegitimate referendums be individually targeted and sanctioned."

Russia's adversaries in the West are willing to create crises and unleash violence anywhere in the post-Soviet world, Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed on Thursday.

Addressing a meeting with the heads of intelligence for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), Putin said Russia's "geopolitical adversaries" are prepared to turn any country "into a ground zero of a crisis," and to unleash "bloody massacres," Putin said by videolink.

"We also know that the West is devising scenarios for inciting new conflicts in the CIS. But we already have enough of them."

He pointed to the current military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, as well as "what is happening on the borders of other CIS countries," an apparent reference to recent border clashes between Armenia and neighboring Azerbaijan, as well as between Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The US Senate approved $12 billion in new economic and military aid for Ukraine Thursday as part of a stopgap extension of the federal budget into December.

The measure, agreed by senators of both parties, includes $3 billion for arms, supplies and salaries for Ukraine's military, and authorizes President Joe Biden to direct the US Defense Department to take $3.7 billion worth of its own weapons and materiel to provide Ukraine.

It also provides $4.5 billion for Kyiv to keep the country's finances stable and keep the government running, providing services to the Ukrainian people.

It comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin plans to declare the annexation of parts of Ukraine occupied by Russian troops on Friday.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced:

"Seven months since the conflict began, it's crystal clear that American assistance has gone a long way to helping the Ukrainian people resist Putin's evil, vicious aggression. But the fight is far from over, and we must, we must, continue helping the brave, valiant Ukrainian people."

IDF commanders in the West Bank have been given the green light to use armed drones to carry out targeted killings of Palestinian terrorists, with the approval of Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Aviv Kohavi.

According to sources, commanders will now be allowed to use the platforms not only as cover and intelligence for forces during operations but also to carry out strikes should armed gunmen be identified as posing imminent threats to their troops.

The order comes as Israeli security forces have encountered a significant rise in shooting attacks and massive gunfire during arrest raids, specifically in the northern West Bank cities of Jenin and Nablus.

On Wednesday, four Palestinians were killed and 44 others injured during an arrest raid that saw heavy gunfire targeting troops who had entered Jenin's refugee camp to arrest Abd al-Rahman Hazem, brother of the terrorist who killed three civilians on Tel Aviv's Dizengoff Street in April.

Kohavi later met with Central Command chief Maj.-Gen. Yehuda Fuchs and West Bank Division Commander Brig.-Gen. Avi Blot, and was presented with an updated assessment of the region. During the meeting, the use of the aerial platforms was discussed by the senior officers.