The militarization effort is being driven by Germany, France and the UK, Russia's top diplomat has said.

Euro-Atlantic international organizations have failed to deliver stability and security to the region, and now their members are preparing for a major new war, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said.

The top diplomat delivered the remarks on Saturday during a Q&A session at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum in Türkiye. Lavrov criticized what he described as "Euro-Atlantic structures," including the EU and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), stating that the groups have ultimately failed to deliver on their proclaimed goals.

Lavrov said:

"The security issues after the Second World War in our common region were defined in terms of Euro-Atlantic logic. NATO and the EU were essentially European. The EU recently signed an agreement with NATO. The EU is now part of Euro-Atlantic policy - there is no doubt about that - including making its territory available for the alliance's plans to move to the East, to the South, I don't know where else."

Lavrov was apparently referring to the Joint Declaration on EU-NATO Cooperation inked in early 2023.

"I believe all these Euro-Atlantic structures have failed. They have failed to strengthen security and stability. The Euro-Atlantic structures have ultimately succeeded in precisely the opposite, stoking international tensions and 'remilitarizing' Europe. All the efforts of this Euro-Atlantic community are focused on preparing for a new war. Germany, together with France and Great Britain, is leading this process."

White House special envoy Steve Witkoff has departed Russia in the same secrecy that surrounded his arrival on Friday, after spending more than four hours talking with President Vladimir Putin behind closed doors in St. Petersburg.

The marathon talks - the third known meeting between the two - were held in Putin's hometown, with both the Kremlin and the White House offering few details about the substance of the discussions.

Here's what we know so far:

Surprise visit to St. Petersburg

Witkoff's latest trip to Russia came without prior public announcement. Air traffic monitors tracked a plane linked to the US envoy flying from Florida to St. Petersburg overnight. He was later spotted alongside Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev, walking out of a hotel in the city center before the talks. Previous meetings between Witkoff and Putin had taken place in Moscow.

Kremlin sheds some light

The Kremlin confirmed that the four-hour discussion focused on "aspects of the settlement of the Ukraine conflict," but declined to provide further details. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov previously said topics could also include normalization of US-Russia relations, a possible in-person meeting between Trump and Putin, and concerns Moscow wanted to convey directly to a trusted Trump representative.

President Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for Republican President William McKinley, highlighting his use of tariffs as a model for economic policy. But critics say Trump's tariffs, which are intended to protect U.S. interests, have instead fueled a stock market nosedive, provoked tit-for-tat tariffs from key partners, risk a broader trade withdrawal, and could increase the federal debt by reducing GDP and tax income.

The federal debt has reached $36.2 trillion, the annual interest on it is $1.2 trillion, and the projected 2025 budget deficit is $1.9 trillion - meaning $1.9 trillion will be added to the debt this year. It's an unsustainable debt bubble doomed to pop on its present trajectory.

The goal of Elon Musk's DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) is to reduce the deficit by reducing budget expenditures. But Musk now acknowledges that the DOGE team's efforts will probably cut expenses by only $1 trillion, not the $2 trillion originally projected. That will leave a nearly $1 trillion deficit that will have to be covered by more borrowing, and the debt tsunami will continue to grow.

Rather than modeling the economy on McKinley, President Trump might do well to model it on our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, whose debt-free Greenbacks saved the country from a crippling war debt to British-backed bankers, and whose policies laid the foundation for national economic resilience in the coming decades. Just "printing the money" can be and has been done sustainably, by directing the new funds into generating new GDP; and there are compelling historical examples of that approach. In fact, it may be our only way out of the debt crisis. But first a look at the tariff issue.

Calin Georgescu has claimed his opposition to the supposed plans led to his candidacy being invalidated by the "globalist mafia".

Calin Georgescu, a former Romanian presidential candidate whose bid was controversially invalidated earlier this year, has claimed that NATO wants to "launch World War III from Romania." In an interview with US journalist Tucker Carlson, he said his staunch pro-peace stance was among the main reasons why he was barred from running for president.

The right-wing politician, known as an outspoken critic of NATO, the EU, and Western support for Ukraine, scored a surprise win in the first round of November's presidential election, receiving 23% of the vote. However, the country's Constitutional Court swiftly moved in to annul the result over alleged "irregularities" in his campaign. Later, Georgescu was stripped of his right to run for office.

Appearing on Carlson's podcast on Thursday, the former Romanian presidential candidate alleged that NATO wants to "launch... World War III from Romania." The politician cited the fact that the "largest military base of NATO is in Romania," coupled with the 380-mile (612 km) long border that his country shares with Ukraine.

Turns out, out-competing China is the reason for Trump's "return to 19th-century tariffs." But as we've been seeing, Trump "flinched" when the US bond market spiked, something he apparently didn't expect to happen. And so now, just a couple of weeks after the introduction of tariffs, the US government is "pausing" the tariffs - and even exempting from tariffs the bulk of key imports the US depends on from China.

Still, American rhetoric about "beating China" is picking up steam, and sounding increasingly aggressive. Separately, Trump has issued Iran with a 2-month ultimatum to "make a deal over nuclear power, or else!" Of course, Iran DID have such a deal, until Trump tore it up in 2017, but that glaring inconsistency aside, are the US "make a deal" ultimatums to these two countries, Iran and China, connected in some way?

Worryingly, it appears that they are, and it's all to do with waning US influence on global energy markets...


Running Time: 01:53:08

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The recent case of 15 uniformed first responders killed on their way to work is but the latest in a long, long line of similar crimes

The Israeli army has executed 15 Palestinian medics in Gaza, buried them and lied about them being "terrorists." For those paying attention, this barbarism is not new, only the latest war crime committed by Israel in a litany of war crimes over the decades.

The combination of the medics being tied up, executed and buried in a mass grave was so horrific that even usually indifferent global media reported on it, albeit without the outrage that would have accompanied such reports were the perpetrator an enemy of the West. (Warning: disturbing video.)

Trump tells Mexico to give Texas the water they are owed under a decades-old treaty

President Donald Trump threatened to impose tariffs, and possibly sanctions against Mexico, if it continues to rob South Texas farmers of Rio Grande water promised under a decades-old treaty.

In a post on Truth Social on Thursday, Trump proclaimed that Mexico owes Texas 1.3 million acre-feet of water under the 1944 Water Treaty, though Mexico was violating their obligation.

"This is very unfair, and it is hurting South Texas Farmers very badly," the president wrote. "Last year, the only Sugar Mill in Texas CLOSED, because Mexico has been stealing the water from Texas Farmers. Ted Cruz has been leading the fight to get South Texas the water it is owed, but Sleepy Joe refused to lift a finger to help the Farmers. THAT ENDS NOW!"

The Toddler Temper Tantrum-style Trump Tariff Tizzy (TTT), now accelerated to 145% - and counting - is yet another thunderous trademark pigeon smashing the chessboard gambit.

It won't work. Trump claimed that China would call him to "make a deal". That's reality show territory. Reality is more like the statement by the Customs Tariff Commission of the State Council: "Given that U.S. exports to China already have no market acceptability under the current tariff rates, if the U.S. further imposes additional tariffs on Chinese goods, China will simply ignore them."

Translation: keep vociferating/tariffing. We don't care. And we will stop buying from you. Anything.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry: A "tariff-wielding barbarian can never expect a call from China."

Basic numbers. China's GDP for 2025 is projected at 5%. U.S. imports account for at best 4% of Chinese GDP. China's share of total exports to the U.S. dropped to 13.4 per cent in 2024.

Goldman Sachs - not exactly a CCP "mouthpiece" - has just projected that TTT will cost China only 0.5% of GDP in 2025, while costing no less than 2% of U.S. GDP. Talk about blowback.

Still, from now on, what matters most for Beijing is to keep diversifying the supply chain.

Asia-wide, the extra wheels are in motion. President Xi Jinping will soon start an ASEAN mini-tour (Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia). The Shanghai Cooperation Organization - increasingly focused on geoeconomics - is about to meet. The EU, for all the mendacity of its "elites", is absolutely itching to strike trade deals with China.

Zhao Minghao, deputy director at the Centre for American Studies at Fudan University, in Shanghai, refers to the current incandescence as "a game of strategic resolve."

Previously, the eminent Wang Yiwei, international relations star professor at Renmin University in Beijing and an expert on the New Silk Roads, noted that the current tariff rate already made China's exports to the U.S. "almost impossible".

This analysis noted how China started to deal with TTT with a "courtesy before force" approach, then turned to "we don't care", while cultivating "the art of timing" in its asymmetric attack on U.S. stocks.

A fascinating window on the real wheels of Chinese trade is offered by a timely visit to the vast Yiwu International Trade City, the largest concentration of small traders on the planet.

Less than 10% of Yiwu's phenomenal amount of business involves the U.S. Among the 75,000 business operators in Yiwu Small Commodity City, only a little over 3,000 do business with the U.S.

No matter which administration is in power, the "free American world" will always be ready to unleash a conflict with "tyrannical and oppressive Iran".

Here we go again

It was only a matter of time: the United States of America has re-launched its aggressive rhetoric against Iran, re-launching the war provocations.

The reasons for re-launching the front are already known. This time the problem for the USA, which is 12,000 kilometers away from Iran, is the nuclear weapons issue. The whole world's watchdogs feel obliged to bark every time someone does something different from what they want.

Keith Kellogg, US President Donald Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, suggested British and French troops could adopt zones of control in the country, in an interview with The Times newspaper published Saturday.

Kellogg suggested they could have areas of responsibility west of the Dnipro river, as part of a "reassurance force", with a demilitarised zone separating them from Russian-occupied areas in the east.

"You could almost make it look like what happened with Berlin after World War II, when you had a Russian zone, a French zone, and a British zone, a US zone.

"You're west of the (Dnipro), which is a major obstacle. The force would therefore not be provocative at all to Russia."

He suggested that a demilitarised zone could be implemented along the existing lines of control in eastern Ukraine, The Times said.

Kellogg later clarified on X that the United States would not be providing troops.