Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said on Saturday that the latest European Union sanctions against Russia will cause more harm to the EU than Russia.

Zakharova added that the EU's "dictatorial" behavior reveals how Brussels is "denying" member states of their right to "protect their interests."

She also warned the EU of the "heavy price" the Europeans must pay for the accession of Ukraine and Moldova to the bloc.

"It goes as far as absurdity, when through some unscrupulous manipulations - when certain heads of state and government are not present at the table, - some legally questionable and obviously politicized decisions are made, which are as follows: on the start of pre-accession negotiations with Ukraine and Moldova, which not only fail to meet the EU's elementary criteria but directly run counter to them, as well as on another 'package' of unilateral restrictive measures against Russia, which, like all the previous ones, will cause bigger harm to the European Union itself," the diplomat said.

"This dictatorial behavior of Brussels reveals in all its magnitude that the member states are denied their democratic right to a dissenting opinion and the protection of their own interests."

I have covered previously at Armageddon Prose the well-documented strategy of the Israeli Netanyahu regime to provide material and political support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip going back many years.

The utility for the Israeli government, obviously, of propping up Hamas is that, by virtue of maintaining a designated terrorist organization as the de facto governing body of the Strip and creating political separation between the Strip and the West Bank, which is governed nominally by the Palestinian Authority (a puppet regime of the Israeli state), handing off political autonomy to a unified Palestinian state (the so-called "Two State Solution") becomes a much harder sell.

What kind of a monster, after all, could advocate legitimizing a terrorist organization as a bona fide government of a sovereign state?

Washington's shameful behavior marks a new low for the Biden Administration...

The first week in December of this year was all about America's apparent inextinguishable love for the state of Israel. After a short pause to exchange hostages for prisoners, the Israelis re-launched their drive to exterminate the Gazans and steal what remains of their land and property. President Joe Biden, ably assisted by his ever-present sidekick State Department honcho Antony Blinken, welcomed the Jewish state's onslaught by pushing the pedal to the metal on aiding the loveable Bibi Netanyahu while at the same time suggesting that the twenty thousand dead Palestinians and counting just might be a tad too much.

Of course, the suggestion was limited to demonstrating what a great humanitarian, who is up for reelection, now sits in the Oval Office and was not supported by any real consequences for Israel should it ignore the advice, which it did. Biden then demonstrated where his heart truly was by expediting through the State Department a new shipment of munitions, an apparent gesture that keeps on giving to help the war effort, with some reports suggesting that upwards of two hundred US military aircraft have already made deliveries of more than 15,000 bombs to help Bibi kill more Pals.

The promise of weapons to fight Russia for "as long as it takes" was false, the Belarusian president has claimed...

Promises of support given by the US and its allies to nations that used to be parts of the USSR are empty, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said on Thursday, citing Ukraine as an example of trust being betrayed.

Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky was promised arms and money to fight Russia, with Western leaders stating it would last "for as long as it takes" to prevail. The aid is now dwindling, proving that Kiev was misled by the West, Lukashenko noted, and leaving Ukraine "standing with its legs split off the road."

He claimed he had warned Zelensky: "some turmoil will happen, or something else - and they (the US) will forget about you. And here you go." The Belarusian leader was referring to the Middle East crisis and the dispute over domestic policies in the US derailing White House attempts to appropriate continued funding for Kiev in Congress. He added that Ukraine's president is now "walking around hat in hand, poor man."

"They backstabbed him, just like in Afghanistan," Lukashenko said, predicting that Ukrainians "will be clinging to plane landing gear and falling" the way some Afghans did in 2020, when the US was pulling its troops out amid the takeover of Kabul by Taliban fighters.

Kiev's limited resources could force its troops to retreat in the coming months, James Stavridis was warned...

Ukraine is unable to reclaim land taken by Russian forces and will likely have to accept territorial concessions before the conflict winds down, ex-NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis has argued.

Writing in a Bloomberg op-ed published on Thursday, Stavridis painted a gloomy picture for Ukrainian troops, saying there is little reason to expect "significant shifts" on the battlefield in the near future, even after months of costly offensive operations.

"Ultimately, Ukrainian forces seem unlikely to be able to expel Russia from much of the currently occupied portion of the nation. Kiev might consider temporarily or even permanently ceding Crimea" in exchange for Ukrainian membership in the European Union and NATO alliance.

However, Moscow has repeatedly stated that one of its top objectives in the current military operation is to ensure Ukraine remains neutral toward the US-led military bloc, making it unlikely the Kremlin would ever accept such an offer.

The United States' proxy war in Ukraine against Russia has cost the lives of up to 400,000 Ukrainian soldiers. In the last six months alone, it is estimated that over 120,000 Ukrainian troops have been killed in a failed counteroffensive.

Even Western media are coyly admitting the grim reality of failure after much-vaunted predictions last year of imminent victory against Russia.

Yet nearly two years after the conflict erupted, the leader of the puppet regime in Kiev persists in begging for billions more in funds from his Western sponsors to continue the bloodbath - the biggest armed confrontation in Europe since the Second World War.

The hostilities can be traced back to the 2014 coup in Kiev orchestrated by the CIA and precipitated by the European Union and Washington trying to cleave traditional Ukrainian relations with Russia. Those hostilities culminated in February 2022 in what can be seen as a U.S.-led proxy war against Russia. A war that has failed for the Western powers and needs to be peacefully negotiated to spare further death and destruction.

This week, however, saw Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky going to Washington "cap in hand" to plead for $60 billion in additional funds. His begging mission failed. The U.S. Congress refused to pass the supplemental bill requested on his behalf by President Joe Biden for Ukraine.

After that humiliation, Zelensky then turned his solicitation to the European Union. The EU, by turn, failed to agree on a requested fund for $54 billion for Ukraine.

As a sort of consolation prize, the EU leaders at their two-day summit in Brussels declared that Ukraine could start negotiations for eventually gaining access to the 27-member bloc. That decision was bombastically hailed as "historic" but it seemed more theatre than substance given that the negotiations will take several years to conduct and there is no guarantee at the end of the tedious process that Ukraine will actually gain EU membership. Will Ukraine even exist as a state in a few years, as our columnist Stephen Karganovic ponders in an article this week?

'....Advent, apocalypse and the mask is off.'

Ukraine is forcing its troops to defend a tiny foothold on the Russian-controlled bank of the Dnieper, the president has said

The Ukrainian leadership has grown desperate in the wake of its failed summer counteroffensive, Russian President Vladimir Putin told the press at his 'Results of the Year' media event on Thursday.

Putin spoke about an ongoing operation in which Kiev has sent its troops on a "one way trip" to a tiny beachhead on the Russian-controlled bank of the Dnieper River in Kherson Region.

How many casualties has Ukraine suffered?
How many causalities has Russia suffered?

Answering these questions is critical to determining the best and most moral path forward for Ukraine and the United States.

Estimates of Ukrainians killed in action (KIA) range from a low of just over 30,000 to a high of over 400,000.

Obviously, these two estimates can't be reconciled. And it really, really matters to the people of Ukraine which one is closer to the truth. While 30,000 deaths is tragic, anything approaching 400,000 KIA and the accompanying hundreds of thousands of causalities [sic casualties] is a humanitarian catastrophe that makes talks of continuing offensive operations next year, or even believing in a stalemate, wishful thinking that will result in even more fruitless Ukrainian deaths.

Unsurprisingly, since the war began, the United States and its allies have unswervingly pushed the narrative that Russia is incurring far more casualties than Ukraine. This casualty narrative was critical to maintaining any plausibility that Ukraine could defeat a country that has four to five times more men of military age and that was recently rated as having the world's most powerful military. Hence, given the need to maintain the plausibility of a Ukrainian victory, it isn't surprising that NATO intelligence asserted that the battle of Bakhmut saw Russia losing at least five soldiers KIA for every one of Ukraine's.

"Society lives and acts only in individuals.... Everyone carries a part of society on his shoulders; no one is relieved of his share of responsibility by others. And no one can find a safe way out for himself if society is sweeping towards destruction. " — Ludwig von Mises

Remember, you are a sovereign individual and the blob in our nation's capital city is an undifferentiated mass of feckless protoplasm. You contain a cosmos of ideas and aspirations. The blob is an agglomeration of sham and failure. The blob stands for itself, not for our country. You and I can stand for our country.

Remember, also, that the economy of our country at its best was the sum of choices made by sovereign individuals, while the economy of the blob is a gelatinous buildup of unsound hypothesis having nothing to do with the pursuit of happiness. We sense this in the menacing rumors of a Federal Reserve digital currency, which entails the rehypothecation of our hopes and dreams into the blob's waste-stream, turning everything we do — it can't be put delicately — into shit.