Following our first two interviews here and here, we wish to turn once again to esteemed luminary, political scientist and senior political advisor, Professor Sergey A. Karaganov* to discuss the topics of Russia's historic civilisations, Siberia and the process of Siberianisation, and the essence of a New Civilisational Platform for the Russian Federation.

Prof. Sergey Karaganov, in an interview with Nora Hoppe and Tariq Marzbaan, outlines Russia's civilizational turn: rejecting Western liberalism, embracing its multiethnic spiritual heritage, Siberian future, and its Eastward path to revive a mission of service over consumption.

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Russia's historical civilisations

HOPPE/ MARZBAAN: You mentioned in our last interview with you that Russia is the proud heir of two great civilisations - the Mongol and the Byzantine civilisations...

The Byzantine legacies...
What did Russia inherit from Byzantium beyond Orthodox Christianity, other than its influence on the arts and architecture?

PROFESSOR KARAGANOV: Let me begin by saying that if we want to get to the deep origins of the identity of Russia, the Russians and other peoples of the Russian Empire and the USSR, as well as very many other peoples of Eurasia, we must go back to the end of the first millennium BC and the beginning of the first millennium AD. At that time, the vast spaces from Mongolia to the Carpathians and beyond, and then toward Iran and even India to the forests of today's Russia were roamed by Scythian tribes that left a significant cultural layer and a huge number of burial mounds. The Scythians were a very interesting people. Unfortunately, they did not leave literary texts, although they left a lot of household items testifying to their high culture. There is also the famous Scythian gold. These tribes, which made up a soft empire, laid the foundation for most of the peoples in Central Eurasia from Mongolia through Iran, Phoenicia, Byzantium, and Southern Russia, approximately to present-day Hungary. The Scythians spoke a language that apparently had Eastern Iranic roots. Now we are rediscovering within ourselves these roots that unite us with the peoples of Eurasia.

Moscow's newer fighter planes outrange their US-made counterparts in both radar and strike capability, Colonel Yury Ignat has said.

Ukraine's Western-supplied F-16 fighter jets are outmatched by Russia's newer aircraft and missile systems, the head of the Communications Department of the Ukrainian Air Force, Yury Ignat, has said.

Washington gave its NATO allies the green light to send their surplus US-made jets to Ukraine in 2023.

"We are getting Western equipment, we are getting aircraft. Today, we have F16s, we already have Mirages," he said in an interview with the outlet Ukrainian Pravda published on Tuesday. "They have already been in use. We understand that they are not the newest."

Ignat stressed the importance of the detection range of the jets' radar, and the strike range of its weapons.

"Unfortunately, Russia has planes today that see further, and missiles that shoot further. Even compared now with the F-16," he said.

At least ten people have been killed in a shooting at a school in the Austrian city of Graz, according to local authorities. The incident occurred around 10am local time at BORG Dreierschutzengasse, a secondary school in the Lend district.

Police confirmed that shots were fired inside the building, prompting a major response involving multiple units, including Cobra special forces and police helicopters.

Graz Mayor Elke Kahr later confirmed ten people have been killed in the attack: one adult and nine students, including the suspected gunman. Media reports state that about 30 more people, both students and teachers, were injured in the shooting and taken to hospitals in Graz, with at least two in critical condition.

According to police, the shooter was a 21-year-old Austrian citizen from the Graz-Umgebung district. His name has not been released. He used two legally owned firearms in the attack before shooting himself in a restroom. Authorities said he had no prior police record.

A French middle school student launched a deadly knife attack on a teaching assistant during a routine bag check on Tuesday, Haute-Marne police have said.

The teacher was rushed to hospital but died later from her wounds. An officer involved in apprehending the 14-year old attacker was also injured in the incident, local daily Journal de Haute-Marne (JHM) wrote, citing a correspondent on the scene.

The attack comes amid a widespread concern with escalating knife crime in the country. French police have been stepping up random bag searches in schools to battle the increasing number of incidents.

An Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner bound for London crashed on takeoff at Ahmedabad airport in India. 232 passengers and 12 crew members were on board, officials say.

An Air India plane bound for London's Gatwick airport with 232 passengers and 12 crew members on board has crashed on takeoff at Ahmedabad airport on Thursday.

There were 169 Indian nationals, 53 British nationals, one Canadian national and seven Portuguese nationals on board, according to the airline.

The injured are being taken to the nearest hospitals. A dedicated passenger hotline has been set up for those affected.

Police have been attacked with fireworks, bottles and bricks as violence erupted for a third night in Northern Ireland.

The worst of the disorder was in Ballymena, but unrest also spread to other towns on Wednesday evening.

In Larne, masked youths attacked a leisure centre and set it on fire. The centre had been providing emergency shelter for families following the clashes earlier this week, the council said.

The disorder first began on Monday after a peaceful protest over an alleged sexual assault in Ballymena, County Antrim.

AI is doing to the universities what Gutenberg did to the monasteries

By the late middle ages monasteries were spectacularly wealthy. They were immune from taxation, and possessed vast land holdings thanks to generous donations made over the centuries by nobles looking to assure themselves a comfortable place in the afterlife. Many of them performed economic functions, such as brewing beer or providing financial services; some performed charitable functions, distributing alms to the poor or operating hospitals; some performed spiritual functions, such as hosting holy relics or maintaining elaborate ritual vigils to intercede with God on behalf of the people. But their primary utility, from the perspective of the wider society, was as repositories, preservers, and disseminators of knowledge. Their scriptoria ensured that books were copied from one generation to the next, preventing knowledge from being lost. The monastic focus was naturally religious, but their monopoly on literacy and information reproduction meant that if you needed a secular work to be replicated for wider distribution, the monastery was the only place to go.

Emboldened by the cultural ferment of the Reformation, in 1534 the British Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy, recognizing King Henry VIII as the head of the new Church of England following his break with Rome the year before on account of Pope Clement VII's refusal to annual his marriage to Catherine of Aragorn. Immediately following this, the king dispatched his chief minister Thomas Cromwell (a distant ancestor of the Lord Protector) to visit England's monasteries in order to gently remind them of their duty to submit to and obey their new religious authority, and more importantly, to inventory their finances. The monasteries of England and Wales held a quarter of the arable land, and their interiors were lavishly appointed with silver and gold; an English proverb held that if the Abbot of Glastonbury were to wed the Abbess of Shaftesbury, their heir would be richer than the king. This would of course have required both Abbot and Abbess to flout their vows of chastity, and perhaps this proverb was also a subtle dig at the widespread perception that monastic orders held their vows quite lightly. Thus, Cromwell's delegates were also directed to investigate the moral state of the monasteries, examining the prevalence of superstitious practices such as the veneration of relics, the piety with which their monastic vows were being kept, and searching for evidence of dissolute sexual behaviour.

Gov. Gavin Newsom was in his element this week. After scenes of burning cars and attacks on ICE personnel, Newsom declared that this was all "an illegal act, an immoral act, an unconstitutional act." No, he was not speaking of the attacks on law enforcement or property. He was referring to President Donald Trump's call to deploy the National Guard to protect federal officers.

Newsom is planning to challenge the deployment as cities like Glendale are cancelling contracts to house detainees and reaffirming that local police will not assist the federal government.

Trump has the authority under Section 12406 of Title 10 of the U.S. Code to deploy the National Guard if the president is "unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States."

The Administration is saying that that is precisely what is unfolding in California, where mobs attack vehicles and trap federal personnel.

Fears of a serial killer prowling New England are growing again after another woman was discovered dead under circumstances her family described as "suspicious."

The body of Adriana Suazo, 21, was found by a passerby on June 1 in the woods of Milton, a Massachusetts suburb about eight miles south of Boston, according to the Norfolk District Attorney's Office.

It remains unclear what led to the death - Suazo's body showed no signs of trauma, according to the state's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner - but it marks the 13th body to show up with little explanation in the bucolic northeast region this year.

Although the late John Le Carre is no longer around to knock out another Soviet-era spy novel with George Smiley and Karla, his services are no longer required with the latest story about sexploitaiton and the British PM. The British press and Mi5 are happy to take his place!

Since writing previously about the strange case of Ukrainian rent boys being arrested in connection with the torching of properties owned by Sir Keir Starmer and a car he sold to a neighbour, it is perhaps unsurprising that the UK's security services have stepped in.

And yet their role, rather than get to the truth of the matter, seems to be the exact opposite.

Since the event happened on the 8th of May, cynical observers may ask why is the UK press not looking into it? The reality, sadly, is that the British press are mostly playing a servile role to the office of the British PM in ignoring the story completely as, if it transpired that Starmer is both gay and a victim of blackmail by male prostitutes, then it is unlikely that he will survive this year in office, according to George Galloway who is following the case and is boiling with rage at the impotence of British MPs.

But there is little chance of such a salacious story breaking out, given how venal the British press are, particularly to the deep state which feeds them with titbits (often scraps of fake news) as a payment for continuing to process the manufactured consent which distracts the British public away from the real stories. Fake news, in other words.

How long did it take before the deep state in the UK could manufacture a comical fable of Russia being behind this attack carried out by the unlikeliest of 'agents'? Barely two weeks.

According to the Daily Mail, security services are now examining the "link" between the attacks, which have now arrested a total of four suspects, and the Kremlin.