President Vladimir Putin said on Friday Russia's armed forces, backed by its nuclear arsenal, were ready to meet any aggression, declaring at a pro-Kremlin youth camp that foreign states should understand: "It's best not to mess with us."

Putin told the assembly, on the banks of a lake near Moscow, the Russian takeover of Crimea in March was essential to save a largely Russian-speaking population from Ukrainian government violence.

He said continued fighting in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian separatists launched an uprising in April, was the result of a refusal by Kiev to negotiate.

Russian and Iranian Foreign Ministers Sergei Lavrov and Mohammad Javad Zarif during their meeting in Moscow on August 29 will discuss the Iranian nuclear program, the situation in the region and preparation for the Caspian summit, which will be held in the Russian city of Astrakhan in the autumn this year.

Russian-Iranian relations based on principles of friendship and mutual respect for interests of each other, political contacts and practical cooperation have been actively developing in recent time, the ministry said in a statement on Thursday in connection with the planned visit by the Iranian foreign minister to Moscow.

A number of important documents are expected to be signed during the Caspian summit, the ministry said.

Russia and Iran seek to unite efforts to accelerate their social and economic development, first of all to increase bilateral trade volumes. Russian-Iranian cooperation may have a positive effect on the situation in the Middle East and create additional conditions to ensure security and stability in the region, the ministry said.

Most of us woke up this morning to news that the UK had raised its terror threat level from "substantial" to "severe." Considering the competence and trustworthiness of the nation's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, there must be some specific threat they're concerned about to justify instilling fear in a population of 65 million. Nope.

Although the new threat level rates the risk of an attack on the UK to "highly likely," Home Secretary Theresa May stated that "there was no evidence to suggest one was imminent." Well then.

It makes you wonder if the the change in threat level is being used in part to justify the extraordinary $80 million sum spent on building a fortress around the Newport and Cardiff city centers in Wales, which many are describing as "similar to the Berlin Wall," or a "zoo," in an unprecedented display of protection for many of the world's most corrupt politicians.

[Editor's note: This is possibly the best video presentation on the truth behind 'ISIS/IS' available. Spread it far and wide.]

The Islamic militant group ISIS, formerly known as Al-Qaeda in Iraq, and recently rebranded as the so called Islamic State, is the stuff of nightmares. They are ruthless, fanatical, killers, on a mission, and that mission is to wipe out anyone and everyone, from any religion or belief system and to impose Shari'ah law. The mass executions, beheadings and even crucifixions that they are committing as they work towards this goal are flaunted like badges of pride, video taped and uploaded for the whole world to see. This is the new face of evil.

Would it interest you to know who helped these psychopaths rise to power? Would it interest you to know who armed them, funded them and trained them? Would it interest you to know why?

The newest crisis in the Middle East has pulled the U.S. into yet another insoluble military problem. Obama is again considering a bombing campaign in Syria after infamously not bombing the country last year. This time, however, he's not targeting his enemy Bashar al-Assad, but his enemy's enemy - ISIL - now referred to as the Islamic State.

By attacking the Islamic State in Syria, Obama will become a de facto ally of the Syrian government, just as Obama and ISIL were de facto allies when they were both targeting Bashar al-Assad. Most Americans are likely fed up with Obama's zig-zagging foreign policy, and with each new U-turn support drops for the next war.


But the U.S. has no plans to leave the Middle East to its own devices, and "fixing" the current problems will mean that Obama will need to tear up the patchwork of alliances previously pieced together amid past U.S. wars. The next U.S.-led "solution" will only compound the catastrophe, and continue the senseless logic of permanent war.

The situation has become so absurd that the U.S. is now spending millions of dollars bombing U.S.-made military equipment in Iraq - itself worth millions, previously gifted to the Iraqi government and then taken by ISIL.

Remember when August was considered a 'slow-news month'? Neither do we! Hot on the heels of last week's failed attempt to smear the Russian humanitarian aid convoy as a 'Russian invasion of Ukraine', US-led hysteria reached fever-pitch yesterday when blanket media coverage once again shrieked 'Russian invasion of Ukraine!' Citing 'US intel' about Russian troop movements and Porky-shenko's alleged claim that Russian military had crossed into Ukraine, the US government called - via puppet state Lithuania - an emergency UN Security Council meeting to discuss the "thousands of Russian troops crossing into Ukraine". "10,000" Russian troops in a full-scale ground invasion became "1,000" Russian troops, which became grainy satellite images of dubious quality, which became USA's UN lobbyist for perpetual war, Samantha Power, posting tweets from the UNSC meeting that amounted to 'Russia is a poopy-head'.

The timing reflects the extent to which Kiev has lost military control of the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, now called Novorossiya, to say nothing of political influence over the people living there. As a result of this consolidating of the 'reality on the ground', the peace talks between Russia, the EU and other Eurasian partners in Minsk this week, and the upcoming EU Summit in Brussels and NATO's Summit in Cardiff next week, this latest volley of propaganda fired at Russia by the US empire-builders is a sign of their desperation to prevent the inevitable: rapprochement and back-room deals between the EU and Russia.

On August 7, Aleksandr Zakharchenko was made Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Donetsk People's Republic, replacing Alexander Borodai (now deputy PM). The man who assumed leadership of the Donbass Militia in April, unifying the rag-tag groups of fighters into a single fighting force, Igor Strelkov, has been replaced by Vladimir Kononov. The leadership in Lugansk has experienced a similar shuffling of personnel. Considering Strelkov's reputation in the region, this came as a shock to many, with rumors of his being seriously wounded in battle. (These rumors have been denied by Novorossiyan sources). But if recent events are any judge, the new leadership has signaled a turning point in the war of independence being fought in the Donbass.

The NATO Syndrome, the EU's Eastern Partnership Program, and the EAU

In 2009, Poland and Sweden, ever attentive to the US's geostrategic goals of isolating Russia and gaining control of China thereafter, initiated the Eastern Partnership program, which its sponsors said was intended to tighten ties with former Soviet Republics, such as Moldova, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan, and Ukraine. A trade pact is a part of the Partnership's Association Agreement (AA) deal.

What the Russians saw in the EU initiative was a repeat of the "NATO Syndrome," in that what was promised would soon be betrayed, i.e. no NATO expansion in exchange for a Soviet agreement to the reunification of Germany.

To Russian eyes, NATO's 1999 expansion throughout Eastern Europe and the subsequent celebratory bombing campaign against Serbia, inaugurated just one month later, and the still later Albanian annexation of Serbia's heartland province of Kosovo, were altogether the Clinton Administration's triple-combo opening salvos in an American campaign to recreate the Versailles Treaty's cordon sanitaire. And the 2009 Association Agreement is but a Trojan horse whose only practical purpose is to advance US and EU interests at the expense of the former Soviet republics' naïve hopes and Russian security.

Dangling the Association Agreement's implied - but not certain - right of eventual EU membership before the economically struggling former Soviet republics was but a means to beguile them into the EU orbit and thus US control with a future as NATO base hosts and IMF lab rats.

When the terms of the AA are examined, Russian skepticism is understandable. The 350 laws alone that Ukraine would be required to institute over a ten-year period at a cost of twice the nation's projected GNP in the same time period would overwhelm the struggling country, few of whose industrial and manufacturing products are either wanted or needed in the EU.

But whether or not Ukraine ever managed to fulfill EU conditions for membership would be of no importance to the U.S. Once bound tight with IMF conditions and saddled with World Bank loans and perpetual debt, thereafter the west could leave the AA's signatories to rot in limbo for years while their territory, cheap labor and resources were put to other, alien purposes.

Switching over to EU trade standards and nixing duty-free trade with Russia will cost Ukraine €165 billion over the next 10 years, President Putin warned at a meeting with President Petro Poroshenko in Minsk on Tuesday.

Russia will be forced to cancel all preferential trade agreements for Ukraine's imports and switch to a standard regime when it ratifies its EU trade association agreement in September, the President said.

"In full accordance with the terms of agreement with the CIS free trade zone and WTO standards, we will be forced to cancel preferential imports from Ukraine," Putin said.

Russia will cancel its duty-free relationship with Ukraine, which will lead to import tariffs of up to 8 percent affecting 98 percent of commodities.

Russia insists it needs to protect domestic markets from the flood of European goods on the Ukrainian market, which will in turn make Ukrainian goods less competitive. If the trade corridor of Ukraine is left wide open, Russian, Belarusian, and Kazakh products are at risk.

In response, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said that he would like to establish a monitoring group to assess the actual damage of Ukraine's association with the EU.

"Today we can agree to set up a monitoring group that will assess real and not hypothetical potential damage," said Poroshenko. "After this damage is calculated we can put in protection mechanisms."

Moscow has warned Kiev that signing the Association Agreement (AA) with the EU would be economic suicide, and Moscow is also poised to suffer a €2 billion blow, according to Putin.

"Entire sectors of industry and agriculture business will be hugely impacted, and there will be negative implications on the pace of economic growth and employment," the Russian President said.

Losses will not only be absorbed by Russia, but also by Customs Union members Belarus and Kazakhstan, he added.

The Minsk talks are the first meeting between Putin and Poroshenko since early June when the two informally met on the sidelines of the World War II commemoration ceremony in Normandy.

"The aim, of the unfolding events, - is an internal Slavic war, the final solution to the Russian question."

The events in Ukraine and around the Crimea - "dust" from a long-running project - are part of a plan to eliminate Russia as the only barrier to the North Atlantic elites scheme to dominate the world. Those are the deductions of Andrew Fursov, the director of the Centre of the Russian Studies of MGU (Moscow State University), the director of the Systematic-Strategic analysis Institute, the scholar of the International Academy of Science (Austria), the main editor of the magazine "Востоковедение и африканистика" ("Orientalism and Africanism"), an often guest lecturer in European and American Universities.

© Unknown

(This is a slightly earlier interview with A.I.Fursov, but it goes into a lot more detail about the events in Ukraine. Please note that half a year has passed, and he was right and accurate, about the events which had already happened and are still unfolding - MR)

Q: Andrey Iliych, the main geopolitical question of today is the Russian geopolitics in Ukraine. Let's start our conversation with the analysis of that situation. What happened there?

A: The situation in Ukraine, I would put on a par with the situation in Syria. And if the Syrian question was met with conflicting views - the leaders of the world Capitalism, the Elite, did not want an escalation of the conflict in Syria and its transformation into a regional war - the Ukrainian question was met by the West as one. It is obvious that, economically, Ukraine is of no interest to the northern-Atlantic Elite. It is, rather, a geopolitical necessity to tear Ukraine from Russia, to turn it into an anti-Russian foothold.

NATO is establishing four trust funds to finance the modernization of the Ukrainian armed forces, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Friday.

"We are establishing four trust funds to finance concrete initiatives within four areas; logistics, command and control, cyber defence, and help to military personnel, including wounded personnel," Rasmussen said.

He also said that some NATO member-states "announced concrete financial contributions to these trust funds and it was signalled that more announcements may come forward at the summit in Wales next week."

"The whole purpose of these trust funds is to finance activities that can assist Ukraine in reforming and modernizing the armed forces with a view to making them stronger to defend Ukraine," Rasmussen said.

Earlier on Friday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk said that his government would seek the cancellation of Ukraine's non-aligned status and resumption of the country's course for NATO membership.

Rasmussen also accused Russia of being involved in the Ukrainian conflict.