The clips suggest captive troops were "killed at close range," the American newspaper insists.

The New York Times says it has verified the authenticity of videos that surfaced online last week, showing the execution of captive Russian soldiers by Ukrainian troops. The men "appear to have been shot dead at close range," according to the newspaper.

The events shown in the clips occurred in the village of Makeyevka in the People's Republic of Lugansk, earlier this month, the newspaper reported on Sunday.

"The videos... whose authenticity has been verified by The New York Times, offer a rare look into one gruesome moment among many in the war, but do not show how or why the Russian soldiers were killed," the NYT wrote, adding that what actually happened to the soldiers remains "a mystery."

"The Ukrainians are in bad shape... It won't be long before the Ukrainians run out of food. It won't be long before they freeze... They have done all that we can reasonably expect them to do. It's time to negotiate.... before the offensive begins, because once it begins, there will be no further discussion between Moscow and Kiev until it is over to the satisfaction of the Russians." Colonel Douglas MacGregor, "War in Ukraine; Quiet Before the Storm", 15 minute-mark

"Strictly speaking, we haven't started anything yet." Russian President Vladimir Putin

The relentless attacks on Ukraine's electrical grid, fuel-storage units, railway hubs, and Command-and-Control centers mark the beginning of a second and more lethal phase of the war. The increased tempo of the high-precision, long-range missile attacks suggests that Moscow is laying the groundwork for a major winter offensive that will be launched as soon as Russia's 300,000 reservists join their formations in east Ukraine. Kiev's refusal to negotiate a settlement that addresses Russia's core security concerns, has left Russian president Vladimir Putin with no other option but to defeat Ukrainian forces on the battlefield and impose a settlement through force-of-arms. The impending winter offensive is designed to deliver the knock-out punch Russia needs to achieve its strategic objectives and bring the war to swift end. This is from Reuters:

Russia is not seeking to depose the current Ukrainian government, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has revealed. He has also expressed confidence that Moscow will achieve its goals in the country, without specifying what they are.

When asked by Russian journalists on Monday whether the Kremlin sees regime change in Kiev as one of its military campaign's objectives, Peskov replied "No, the president has already spoken about that."

The official went on to stress that Russia was determined to achieve its goals in Ukraine, which can be done "by various methods and in various formats."

The UN doesn't have the capability to identify those behind the attacks on the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant (ZNPP), a spokesman for the secretary-general said on Monday. Russia has called on the International Atomic Energy Agency to do its job properly and acknowledge that the shelling came from the Ukrainian side.

Around 30 projectiles struck the ZNPP over the weekend, according to the Russian Defense Ministry. The nuclear energy corporation Rosatom said the damage caused to the facility's spent fuel storage came close to triggering a disaster. Moscow said it was clear the fire came from the Ukrainian-held town of Marganets, but the IAEA has avoided naming any names.

"We have no way to determine" who carried out the attacks, Farhan Haq, deputy spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, told reporters on Monday.

The conflict between Ukraine and Russia will likely end in negotiations, which is why Kiev needs to be supplied with more weapons, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has claimed.

"We all want this war to end," Stoltenberg said in his speech at the 68th Annual Session of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly in Madrid on Monday, adding that it matters to the US-led military bloc how exactly the conflict concludes.

"We need to realize that this war most likely will end at some stage at the negotiating table. But we must also know that the outcome of those negotiations totally depends on strength on the battlefield," the NATO chief argued.

EU-sponsored talks between Serbia and its breakaway region of Kosovo have flopped, the country's media outlets reported on Monday, citing diplomatic sources. The negotiations, in Brussels, came ahead of a new deadline for implementing Pristina's controversial plan to phase-out Serbian license plates, which is firmly opposed by Belgrade

"The solution that has been proposed nullified the Brussels Agreement, which Serbia cannot accept," an unnamed source told the newspaper Blic. "It seems that difficult and uncertain days await us, especially in the north of Kosovo and Metohija."

From the looks of things we seem to be living in an age of serious oversimplification of history by the Liberals United of the Collective West or perhaps it has always been so? We are surely living in very turbulent times because all around us there is a plethora of overwhelming political issues which call for longstanding debates on all sides

Take, for example, all those insinuations spread by the "Putin paranoia" peddling tabloids that Vladimir Putin lost "his" war in Ukraine surpass anything imaginable. If one only listens attentively and tries to count the number of times Western puppet-like leaders parroting the semantic abracadabra collocation "Putin's war, Putin's war, Putin's war" as if it were the Sound and the Fury's Benjamin Benjy Comson muttering his feeble-minded thoughts in each and every of them. Now the pulp fiction tabloids came up with yet another unintelligent idea aka psyop, for the gullible masses of the West, to shovel into the headlines that both GRU and CIA work together in Ukraine for the benefit of each other's bogus business and political dealings there, which is simply out of any thinking category.

All these tabloids of the lowest kind, which give the freedom of speech a whole new satirical meaning, regrettably, keep extolling the Russian retreat from Kherson a few days ago, even though none of us can be fully aware of the real reasons and the good reasons for the Russian retreat, given the current state of affairs there. Even a retired Polish military general did warn the Polish at least that the Russian retreat from Kherson is Surovikin's military trap (Kudos to General Sergey Surovikin, the Armageddon, from the bottom of my heart).

On a related note, if we consider Alexander Dugin's emotional reaction to that retreat, yes, Dugin did get rather upset because of the illustratively symbolic significance of the Kherson retreat for Russia per se. One of Dugin's recent articles might be one of the most superb of his articles ever that this grim state of affairs in the world is the direct headlong conflict in between the West and the East along the lines of the Biblical Good vs Evil or alternatively the Divine vs the Diabolic. One has to be a most profound connoisseur of Dugin's work in his most philosophically prolific lifetime to be able to fathom the depth of his thought. But even to a layperson, this article is a crash course into the contemporary state of geopolitical and historical affairs and its profoundly philosophical meaning of biblical proportions. This conflict in between the East and the West is surely beyond any reconciliation at least not in the foreseeable future.

The seventeenth G20 Heads of State and Government Summit held in Bali, Indonesia, on 15-16 November stands out as a consequential event from many angles. The international politics is at an inflection point and the transition will not leave unaffected any of the institutions inherited from the past that is drifting away forever.

However, the G20 can be an exception in bridging time past with time present and time future. The tidings from Bali leave a sense of mixed feelings of hope and despair. The G20 was conceived against the backdrop of the financial crisis in 2007 — quintessentially, a western attempt to burnish the jaded G7 by bringing on board the emerging powers that stood outside it looking in, especially China, and thereby inject contemporaneity into global discourses.

The leitmotif was harmony. How far the Bali summit lived up to that expectation is the moot point today. Regrettably, the G7 selectively dragged extraneous issues into the deliberations and its alter ego, North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), made its maiden appearance in the Asia-Pacific. Arguably, the latter must be counted as a fateful happening during the Bali summit.

If anyone wants to see just how far that Martha's Vineyard "stunt" initiated by Florida's governor, Ron DeSantis has gone, take a look at what's going on in France and Italy:

According to the U.K. Express:

A diplomatic row between France and Italy erupted last week when Rome forced Macron's hand to accept a humanitarian rescue ship, the Ocean Viking with 234 migrants aboard, after Italy had refused it a port for weeks.

The presidents of Italy and France sought to tamp down tensions over migration Monday by asserting the need for "full cooperation" on a host of issues and the importance of strong bilateral relations after days of diplomatic barbs over the fate of migrants crossing the Mediterranean. In response to Italy's demand France accepted migrants from the Ocean Viking rescue ship, President Emmanuel Macron retaliated by suspending its participation in an EU solidarity pact to accept 3,000 relocated migrants this year from Italy and sent officers to reinforce its southern border crossings and prevent migrants from entering.

Elon Musk has reinstated Trump's Twitter account, and Trump has declared his candidacy for the 2024 US presidential election. With the US mid-term votes not yet fully 'counted', and the Brazilian government cracking down on mass demonstrations against their 'free and fair' presidential election, what way forward for 'free speech' and democrats (actual ones - not to be confused with Democrats)?

Elsewhere in this week's NewsReal run-down of events in Clown World, Joe and Niall take in more strange 'jungle' analogies from European leaders lecturing Asian and African audiences, violent riots in Iran where 'mystery snipers' are targeting both protesters and security forces, and the Turkish government blaming the US government for last week's terror attack in Istanbul. An outrageous claim, surely?...


Running Time: 01:47:58

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