The US is taking hostile steps against Russia that are worse than during the Cold War, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has determined. However, Washington is hurting itself in the process and will ultimately have to acknowledge Moscow's legitimate interests, he said, during an interview with Russian media on Thursday.

Explaining the economic damage stemming from West versus Russia confrontation, Peskov told news agency RIA Novosti:

"We are not even close to the culmination of the crisis. Or rather they have not. We are in a more stable state thanks to macroeconomic measures taken by the government."

Peskov believes the current amount of pressure against Russia is unprecedented. Nothing of the kind was done "even during the Cold War" or to any other nation on Earth he said. The US and its allies seek to "strangle" Russia with their restrictions, he added.

"The anti-Russian sanctions are obviously creating problems for us, but in the long run they will cause problems just as serious for the nations who adopt those sanctions. Europeans have felt it more than the Americans did so far, but the economic burden of antagonizing Russia will increase for all of them."

He stressed that the problems were only partially explained by the Ukraine crisis and that Western leaders contributed to them by making a series of mistakes over the past several years.

Ukrainian soldiers holed up at the Azot chemical plant in Severodonetsk have foiled the evacuation of civilians through a humanitarian corridor provided by Russia, a military commander from the People's Republic of Lugansk (LPR) has said.
Aleksandr Nikishin, of the LPR's second army corps, told journalists:

"The evacuation of civilians from Azot has been completely thwarted by the opposing side. One person - a 74-year-old man - has gotten out of the plant."

It happened before 8am local time when the Russian humanitarian corridor was to become operational. The man walked out "by accident" as he was unaware of the planned evacuation, saying that Ukrainian troops hadn't informed the civilians inside about it, Nikishin claimed. And at around 8:10am Kiev's forces at the plant began firing at Russian positions from a tank, a howitzer and a mortar.

"The evacuation of people is impossible under such circumstances and a decision was made to close the humanitarian corridor."

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has slammed Western countries for their approach to the conflict in Ukraine, suggesting that waves of foreign arms shipments will only result in more bloodshed.

Speaking to reporters at his daily press briefing on Monday, Obrador addressed the Ukraine-Russia conflict. While he stopped short of singling out any countries, he said those sending weapons to Kiev - a policy strongly favored by the United States and most of its NATO allies - are helping to rack up casualties on all sides.

"How easy it is to say: 'There I send so much money for weapons, I provide the weapons and you provide the dead.' It is immoral," he said, adding "Couldn't the war in Ukraine have been avoided? Of course. The policy failed and look at the damage it causes, the loss of human lives."

The president did not elaborate on how the hostilities could have been averted, but went on to say that "the same policy must no longer continue," claiming it is driven by "elites" and not "the people."

Though Mexico has stated that it does not support Russia's attack on its neighbor, it has refused to join a Western sanctions spree targeting the Russian economy and has refrained from weapons transfers to the government in Kiev.

The FBI knew the Trump-Russia collusion narrative was utter bunk even as it suggested otherwise to Congress, the courts and the public early in 2017. Evidence revealed by special counsel John Durham proves it beyond dispute.

At RealClearInvestigations, Paul Sperry lays out the case.

Declassified for Durham's probe, a March 2017 memo prepared by Lisa Page for FBI head James Comey's meeting with Congress' "Gang of Eight" — the bipartisan House and Senate leaders who oversee the most classified stuff — was a total cook-up job.

It advised Comey to present accusations that Trump's campaign chair Paul Manafort and foreign policy adviser Carter Page were working with the Russian government as coming from a confidential Russia-based source with real intel-community chops. In fact, the FBI had already established that the root source was US-based former Brookings flunky Igor Danchenko's utterly speculative gossip with an ex-girlfriend and a Democratic Party hack.

Canada is poised to become the first country in the world to require that a warning be printed on every cigarette.

The move builds on Canada's mandate to include graphic photo warnings on tobacco products' packaging — a policy that started an international trend when it was introduced two decades ago.

"We need to address the concern that these messages may have lost their novelty, and to an extent we worry that they may have lost their impact as well," Minister of Mental Health and Addictions Carolyn Bennett said at a news conference Friday.

The speaker of the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, may have created the defining acronym for the emerging multipolar world: "the new G8".

As Volodin noted, "the United States has created conditions with its own hands so that countries wishing to build an equal dialogue and mutually beneficial relations will actually form a 'new G8' together with Russia."

This non Russia-sanctioning G8, he added, is 24.4% ahead of the old one, which is in fact the G7, in terms of GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP), as G7 economies are on the verge of collapsing and the U.S. registers record inflation.

The power of the acronym was confirmed by one of the researchers on Europe at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Sergei Fedorov: three BRICS members (Brazil, China and India) alongside Russia, plus Indonesia, Iran, Turkey and Mexico, all non adherents to the all-out Western economic war against Russia, will soon dominate global markets.

Fedorov stressed the power of the new G8 in population as well as economically: "If the West, which restricted all international organizations, follows its own policies, and pressures everyone, then why are these organizations necessary? Russia does not follow these rules."

The new G8, instead, "does not impose anything on anyone, but tries to find common solutions."

The coming of the new G8 points to the inevitable advent of BRICS +, one of the key themes to be discussed in the upcoming BRICS summit in China. Argentina is very much interested in becoming part of the extended BRICS and those (informal) members of the new G8 - Indonesia, Iran, Turkey, Mexico - are all likely candidates.

The intersection of the new G8 and BRICS + will lead Beijing to turbo-charge what has already been conceptualized as the Three Rings strategy by Cheng Yawen, from the Institute of International Relations and Public Affairs at the Shanghai International Studies University.

Cheng argues that since the beginning of the 2018 U.S.-China trade war the Empire of Lies and its vassals have aimed to "decouple"; thus the Middle Kingdom should strategically downgrade its relations with the West and promote a new international system based on South-South cooperation.

Looks like if it walks and talks like the new G8, that's because it's the real deal.

The U.S. government is quietly encouraging agricultural and shipping companies to buy and carry more Russian fertilizer, according to people familiar with the efforts, as sanctions fears have led to a sharp drop in supplies, fueling spiraling global food costs.

The effort is part of complex and difficult negotiations underway involving the United Nations to boost deliveries of fertilizer, grain and other farm products from Russia and Ukraine that have been disrupted by President Vladimir Putin's invasion of his southern neighbor.


U.S. and European officials have accused the Kremlin of using food as a weapon, preventing Ukraine from exporting. Russia denies that even as it has attacked key ports, blaming the shipment disruptions on sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies over the invasion.

The EU and the U.S. have built exemptions into their restrictions on doing business with Russia to allow trade in fertilizer, of which Moscow is a key global supplier. But many shippers, banks and insurers have been staying away from the trade out of fear they could inadvertently fall afoul of the rules. Russian fertilizer exports are down 24 percent this year. U.S. officials, surprised by the extent of the caution, are in the seemingly paradoxical position of looking for ways to boost them.

The U.S. push underlines the challenge facing Washington and its allies as they seek to increase pressure on Putin over his invasion but also limit the collateral damage to a global economy heavily dependent on commodity supplies from Russia ranging from natural gas and oil to fertilizer and grains. Prices for all of those have spiked further since the war started in February, a point Putin regularly makes in his public efforts to undermine support for sanctions.

Washington sent a representative to U.N.-led talks in Moscow earlier this month on the supply issues, according to people familiar with the situation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss matters that aren't public. Inadequate fertilizer deliveries this year could also affect next year's crops.

Pope Francis has doubled down on prior controversial statements suggesting the Russia-Ukraine conflict is largely NATO's fault, asserting also that "war cannot be reduced to distinction between good guys and bad guys" - as the Vatican's own headline to the interview reads.

In statements published Tuesday by the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, the Roman Catholic leaders said that the Russian invasion was "perhaps somehow provoked" while again saying there were signs that NATO had been "barking at the gates of Russia" in the run-up.

The pontiff still condemned what he called the "ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops" while warning against a pure 'good vs. evil' fairytale narrative of the conflict.

Just like with his initial similar comments made at the start of May, these latest statements have triggered outrage among Western pundits who've called for escalating military support to Ukraine at the expense of dialogue with Moscow toward negotiating a settlement to end the war:

"We need to move away from the usual Little Red Riding Hood pattern, in that Little Red Riding Hood was good and the wolf was the bad one," Francis said. "Something global is emerging and the elements are very much entwined."

Richard Horton, the Editor-in-Chief of the Lancet, once observed:

The history of medicine is littered with wonderful early results which over a period of time turn out to be not so wonderful - or in fact even adverse... there are a whole string of recent examples where preliminary data led to a lot of excitement and caused changes in clinical practice and then eventually we realised they had done more harm than good. Why is it we never learn these lessons?

The pharmaceutical industry makes drugs for medical purposes. The industry campaigns hard for stronger patents throughout the world, though many economists are highly critical of patents in medicine. In some cases, patented drugs sell for thousands of times as much as they would cost if there were no patents. The industry illustrates some of the worst aspects of corporate power, corporate crimes, and 'free lunches' (or rents) that enrich executives and shareholders.

Social Costs, Private Profits

The early stages of drug research and development are often funded publicly, with universities and governments throughout the world paying much of the costs. Corporations often become involved only after early tests show promise. As one commentator pointed out:

The whole ecosystem in which innovation is housed - patents, copyright, finance, universities, research, knowledge transfer, ownership rules, regulation to ensure common standards - is co-created between the public and the private.

However, the companies that receive the patents keep the profits. Once they have a patent for a drug, companies can charge whatever will maximise their profits. In other words, whatever richer people can afford to pay.

The "collective West" and many NATO countries have finally begun to receive objective information on the goals and results of Russia's special military operation to denazify Ukraine. Instead of openly Russophobic coverage of these events by representatives of the current military-political elite of the EU and NATO and, above all, the United States, the true policy of the Nazi authorities in Kiev has begun to be more and more actively criticized by the population of Western states.

Despite the widespread anti-Russian sanctions regime imposed by Washington, which affected, among other things, the press and the blatant blocking of Russian media in the West, the change towards a positive perception of the justification and legitimacy of Moscow's actions in Ukraine has occurred for a number of reasons. An undoubted role in this was played by the official statements of Russian politicians, their objective and regular coverage of the true results of the special operation being carried out by Moscow. As well as the enthusiastic reaction of the inhabitants of those Ukrainian regions liberated by Russia from the criminal actions of the Nazis and their repressions, who suffered for eight years from the excesses of the authorities in Kiev, systemic destruction by bombing, hunger, and non-payment of pensions and social benefits. Without any reaction by Western politicians condemning Kiev.