Ukraine's President Zelensky hopes that NATO will assist Kiev in forcefully expelling Russia from Crimea and re-taking control of the breakaway Donbass. This dangerous fiction could lead to the destruction of his troubled country.

The following are the words and actions that the historians who may one day come to write how mankind blundered its way into a major conflict in 2021 will need to know, to understand its origins and the parts played by the shortcomings and strategic missteps of ill-suited leaders.

On March 24, 2021, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed into law Decree 117/2021, "On the Strategy of de-occupation and reintegration of the temporarily occupied territory of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol." While the stated primary goal of this decree is the "restoration of the territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognized state border, ensuring the state sovereignty of Ukraine," the reality is that the issue of restoring Ukrainian "territorial integrity" is merely a vehicle toward "gaining full membership of Ukraine in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization."

Without coming right out and saying it, President Joe Biden seems ready to let lapse a May 1 deadline for completing a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. Orderly withdrawals take time, and Biden is running out of it.

Biden has inched so close to the deadline that his indecision amounts almost to a decision to put off, at least for a number of months, a pullout of the remaining 2,500 troops and continue supporting the Afghan military at the risk of a Taliban backlash. Removing all of the troops and their equipment in the next three weeks — along with coalition partners that cannot get out on their own — would be difficult logistically, as Biden himself suggested in late March.

"It's going to be hard to meet the May 1 deadline. Just in terms of tactical reasons, it's hard to get those troops out. And if we leave, we're going to do so in a safe and orderly way."

James Stavridis, a retired Navy admiral who served as NATO's top commander from 2009 to 2013, says it would be unwise at this point to get out quickly:

"Sometimes not making a decision becomes a decision, which seems the case with the May 1 deadline. The most prudent course of action feels like a six-month extension and an attempt to get the Taliban truly meeting their promises — essentially permitting a legitimate 'conditions based' withdrawal in the fall."

There are crosscurrents of pressure on Biden. On the one hand, he has argued for years, including during his time as vice president, when President Barack Obama ordered a huge buildup of U.S. forces, that Afghanistan is better handled as a smaller-scale counterterrorism mission. Countering Russia and China has since emerged as a higher priority.

Two top Republicans continued to push the Secret Service for answers on any involvement it may have had related to an incident in which Hunter Biden's gun briefly went missing after being thrown in the trash in Delaware after the federal agency said it had no record of its agents being involved.

Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, who released a report last year detailing Biden's shady business dealings, have been pressing for answers from the Secret Service following reports that agents may have attempted to intervene on Biden's behalf in 2018 when they no longer protected now-President Joe Biden or his family. Grassley and Johnson said in their new letter:

"We received the U.S. Secret Service's March 31, 2021, response to our March 25, 2021, letter regarding reports that Secret Service agents were involved in an October 2018 incident regarding Hunter Biden's discarded firearm when he was no longer a protectee. Although Secret Service could not locate any records about the alleged October 2018 incident, questions still remain regarding whether any individuals connected to the Secret Service were aware of or took any action relating to this matter. It would seem particularly unusual and inappropriate if any individuals connected with the Secret Service were involved in light of your office's acknowledgement that" it hadn't found any relevant records.

The Iranian foreign ministry has confirmed that an Iranian cargo ship believed to be covertly deployed for military use off the coast of Yemen has been attacked, in an incident that threatens to inflame a proxy war between Iran and Israel.

Officials in Tehran said on Wednesday that the MV Saviz had been targeted in the Red Sea, a day after media reports said the ship had been damaged by limpet mines. Images broadcast by Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency showed parts of the ship on fire. Tasnim said an explosion had targeted the hull.

In a state TV report, an anchor cited a New York Times story, which quoted an anonymous US official telling the newspaper that Israel had informed the US it attacked the vessel on Tuesday morning. The strike on the vessel came as Iran and world powers sat down in Vienna for a first round of talks about the US potentially rejoining the 2015 nuclear deal. Israel is bitterly opposed to a return to the agreement.

Asked by reporters on Wednesday if Israel, Iran's arch foe, was involved in the attack, the country's defence minister, Benny Gantz, twice refused to comment on it specifically. However, he added: "The state of Israel must defend itself. Every place we find an operational challenge or operational need, we will continue to act."

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Tuesday ruled out the Biden administration playing any role in a "vaccine passport" system as Republican governors in particular balk at the concept. Psaki told reporters at a briefing:

"The government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential. There will be no federal vaccinations database and no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.

"Our interest is very simple from the federal government, which is American's privacy and rights should be protected so that these systems are not used against people unfairly."

The White House has been clear that it would defer to private companies if they wanted to implement some type of vaccine passport system in which individuals would have to provide proof that they received one of the coronavirus shots.

The federal government will provide guidance about privacy related to the coronavirus vaccines, Psaki said, though she did not provide a timeline.

Former President Donald Trump's senior aide Stephen Miller has launched a new organization that aims to challenge the Biden administration's policies in courts — and is being billed as a conservative American Civil Liberties Union.

Miller, the architect of the Trump White House's immigration policies, launched America First Legal this week, which will work with Republican attorneys general around the country to push back against President Biden's rollback of Trump's policies.

Trump put out a statement Wednesday promoting the project, and urging his supporters to get behind it:

"Stephen Miller is a fearless, principled fighter for the America First movement. He has backbone, integrity, and never gives up. As we know, the Radical Left has been relentless in waging their battles in court. Conservatives and America First supporters badly need to catch up and turn the tables, which is why I applaud Stephen and Mark Meadows for rushing to fill this critical void. The era of unilateral legal surrender must end — and I hope all America First patriots will get behind America First Legal."

Jason Miller, Trump's senior adviser, tweeted about the organization Wednesday morning and linked to a report in the Wall Street Journal about it.

The report said Stephen Miller would enlist lawyers from the Trump administration, GOP attorneys general and other attorneys around the country to help them in their cases against Biden. "Anything the president does that we believe to be illegal is fair game," Stephen Miller told the newspaper.

Tanzania's new president announced plans to appoint a panel of experts to advise her on how best to curb the spread of the coronavirus, reversing her predecessor's denialism of the pandemic.

"We cannot isolate ourself as an island," President Samia Suluhu Hassan told senior government officials in an address televised on state broadcaster TBC1. "We cannot accept everything from abroad, but we also cannot reject everything."

Hassan's predecessor John Magufuli, who died last month, eschewed the use of face masks and advised his countrymen to resort to prayer, steam baths and traditional remedies to safeguard their health. His administration said it wouldn't buy vaccines and stopped publishing Covid-19 infection data in May last year, making it impossible to gauge the severity of the disease.

However, a deluge of patients displaying coronavirus symptoms seeking treatment at public hospitals and daily funeral masses indicated that Magufuli downplayed the severity of the disease. The World Health Organization joined international calls for the nation to change course.

Russia will be forced to protect the residents of Donbass if Ukraine launches full-scale hostilities against the region. That's according to Dmitry Kozak, President Vladimir Putin's deputy chief of staff, who is himself Ukrainian.

Speaking on Thursday, Kozak claimed that a ramping-up of the conflict would lead to the end of Ukraine, with the Kremlin forced to stand up for its citizens living in the territory of Donbass. In recent years, Moscow has made it much simpler for those living in Ukraine to get a Russian passport, and many have taken up the offer.

Ukraine and Russia may be on the brink of war - with dire consequences for the whole of Eurasia. Let's cut to the chase, and plunge head-on into the fog of war.

On March 24, Ukrainian President Zelensky, for all practical purposes, signed a declaration of war against Russia, via decree No. 117/2021.
The decree establishes that retaking Crimea from Russia is now Kiev's official policy. That's exactly what prompted an array of Ukrainian battle tanks to be shipped east on flatbed rail cars, following the saturation of the Ukrainian army by the US with military equipment including unmanned aerial vehicles, electronic warfare systems, anti-tank systems and man-portable air defense systems (MANPADS).

More crucially, the Zelensky decree is the proof any subsequent war will have been prompted by Kiev, debunking the proverbial claims of "Russian aggression." Crimea, since the referendum of March 2014, is part of the Russian Federation.

It was this (italics mine) de facto declaration of war, which Moscow took very seriously, that prompted the deployment of extra Russian forces to Crimea and closer to the Russian border with Donbass. Significantly, these include the crack 76th Guards Air Assault Brigade, known as the Pskov paratroopers and, according to an intel report quoted to me, capable of taking Ukraine in only six hours.

It certainly does not help that in early April US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, fresh from his former position as a board member of missile manufacturer Raytheon, called Zelensky to promise "unwavering US support for Ukraine's sovereignty." That ties in with Moscow's interpretation that Zelensky would never have signed his decree without a green light from Washington.

This Monday, Iran announced the arrest of an "Israeli spy", amongst others working for foreign intelligence agencies, in the country's East Azerbaijan Province, leading to speculation, on what Israel had planned against the Islamic Republic.

According to Iran's media, which quoted an Iranian intelligence minister, the unnamed "Israeli spy" arrested this Monday was operating in East Azerbaijan Province, amongst others in contact with "several foreign intelligence agencies" that were not named. This comes following continuous threats from Israel that assert their willingness to combat "Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon", a claim disputed by all the authoritative organisations on the subject.

Israel has also just unveiled a new "spy aircraft", dubbed the 'Oron', which is allegedly developed to identify targets for attack in Iran and elsewhere in the Middle East. If true, this indicates Israel is developing its capabilities with the objective of striking Iran or assets belonging to Iran, representing a genuine threat to Iranian national security.