Once the naked hatred of German journalism prompted Vladimir Zelensky’s most fervent British backers to criticize Ukraine’s “gamification of killing” Russians, things went from bad to worse for Kiev – on the battlefield and in the diplomatic arena.
Vladimir Zelensky’s long-range strikes against Russia have already provoked a fearsome response from Moscow, but the Ukrainian leader doubled down this week, with his forces killing more than a dozen civilians in drone raids on Tatarstan and Krasnodar.
Russia responded by wiping out military-industrial and dual-use facilities in Kiev and Zaporozhye and destroying port infrastructure on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. RT has already covered Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian ports in detail, which Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said will intensify in an interview released on Friday morning.
“We will not sink to their level,” he told the Russian media, referring to Ukraine’s targeting of civilians. “Instead, we will adopt much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine. We are already doing this, and they are already moaning.”
Zelensky’s moaning, as Lavrov calls it, has been directed at his Western donors, who possess a dwindling supply of Patriot interceptor missiles that could help repel Russia’s missile barrages. However, the US used the bulk of the world’s Patriots in its war on Iran, and the Europeans aren’t in the mood to share. Moreover, as RT explained, Zelensky’s math is fundamentally flawed. Even if he were to get all the missiles he wanted, he’d only have enough interceptors to repel two attacks at best.
With all other options exhausted, Ukraine reportedly asked Russia for a truce with regard to attacks on shipping in the Black Sea. Moscow rejected the proposal, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accusing Kiev of “brazen acts of terrorism” against civilian ships and ruling out “half-measures that merely grant the Kiev regime a temporary breathing space.”
At a time when Ukraine needs all the help it can get, Zelensky seemingly went out of his way to further irritate one of his most important backers. Poland is one of only three European countries that have given Patriot missiles to Ukraine this year. This week Kiev repaid Warsaw’s generosity by exhuming the remains of Nazi collaborator Evgeny Konovalets – who gave the Third Reich intelligence used to carry out the mass murder of Poles – from a grave in Rotterdam, while announcing he would be buried with full military honors in Ukraine.
Diplomatic relations between Poland and Ukraine are already strained due to Kiev’s stubborn veneration of Nazi collaborators, and the Polish public’s goodwill toward Ukraine is evaporating. According to a poll published on Wednesday, 67% of Poles support the deportation of unemployed Ukrainian men living in Poland as refugees.
Across the Atlantic, US Vice President JD Vance reportedly gave Zelensky a dressing down for attacking Black Sea shipping. According to the Financial Times, Vance’s patience reached its limit when Ukrainian forces attacked ships bound for a partly US-owned terminal in Russia’s port of Novorossiysk.
Diplomacy paid off for the US this week when Russia agreed to release former US Marine Robert Gilman, who was arrested in 2022 after a drunken assault on a policeman in Russia. Gilman was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and arrived back on US soil on Tuesday.
Welcome home, Robert Gilman! 🇺🇸After more than four years detained in Russia, American citizen Robert Gilman is finally back on U.S. soil.Thanks to the Trump Admin, another American is safely home where he belongs.God bless Robert Gilman, and GOD BLESS AMERICA. 🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/Tn8C8h9QBD
“After my discussions with President Vladimir Putin, Russia has agreed to release him, very much on a humanitarian basis,” US President Donald Trump stated. “We appreciate this decision.” US envoy Steve Witkoff apparently played a central role in the negotiations and thanked Putin for his “personal engagement throughout this process.”
Gilman’s mental health has reportedly deteriorated in incarceration, and he is expected to receive treatment at home in Texas.
Thousands of Germans protested in the eastern German state of Saxony this week, demanding lower energy costs, tougher migration policies, and an end to reckless military spending. What Chancellor Merz’s government offered instead was a suite of new powers for the country’s foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, the BND and BfV respectively.
Under the new legislation tabled by Merz’s Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt, the BND will be permitted to carry out offensive cyberattacks on Russia and other foreign adversaries, while the BfV will be allowed to infiltrate Germans’ smartphones and computers. The new powers were described as “a revolution” by Dobrindt. Moscow described them as another example of Germany’s “rabid militarization,” while Germany’s right-wing AfD warned that they will turn the BfV “from an early warning system of democracy into an architect of a totalitarian reality.” We’ve seen this before in Germany, and it did not end well.
The BfV’s new powers will likely be turned against the AfD, the country’s most popular political party and a poll-topper in Saxony. The agency has already tried to list the party as a “right-wing extremist” group and been granted permission to surveil the AfD’s Bavaria chapter.
As Europe tears itself apart, the Middle East’s Sunni powers are drawing closer together – with profound implications for the region. Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, and Pakistan signed the ‘Mecca Pact’ this week, agreeing to treat an attack against one member as an attack against all three. However, it remains unclear how the three countries would react to such an attack. The so-called ‘Islamic NATO’ has already been criticised in Iran as a “paper agreement” that will make Saudi Arabia no safer than the presence of American troops on its soil.
In Moscow, experts at the Middle East Studies Center analyzed the pact and broke down its implications. Writing exclusively for RT, the center’s president, Murad Sadygzade, explained how its members will have the task of deterring both Israel and Iran – all without overt US involvement. The center’s vice-president, Mishel Bychkova, views the pact in narrower terms: as an opportunity for Türkiye to leverage its massive defense industry and consolidate its growing power in the region.
If any country is concerned about the pact, it’s India, foreign policy analyst Robinder Nath Sachdev told RT India on Tuesday. With a nuclear-armed Pakistan strengthening its alliances, New Delhi must work out what it needs to do “to counter this new reality, which is a worrisome reality,” he said. He added that India will have to look at “our other partnerships with other nations, including, of course, Russia.”
As the fallout from Tucker Carlson’s political manifesto continues to settle, historian and RT columnist Tarik Cyril Amar looked at why Israel is potentially more worried about a third-party challenge by Carlson than the US Republican establishment is. Meanwhile, RT’s Rick Sanchez sat down with Carlson himself for an exclusive, hour-long interview.Carlson ruled out any plans to run for president, but unloaded on the US’ “criminal” leadership class, the “permanent bureaucracy,” and the Democrat/Republican consensus on money and foreign policy that has created a “one-party state posing as a democracy.” The conservative journalist revealed how Israel had attempted to recruit him to share the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020, and promised to keep speaking out against the neocon “war lobby” and Israeli influence in Washington, no matter the risk.
“What are you going to do about it? Kill me? OK, I’m not afraid of that. I’m a Christian. So I’m just going to keep talking,” he told Sanchez in one particularly powerful exchange.
The US-Israeli alliance seemed to meet its limits this week when a group of armed Israeli settlers laid siege to three Palestinian families in their homes in the West Bank village of Qusra. As it turns out, one of these families had relatives living in the US, and the response from Washington was unusually sharp.
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee – who has previously equated Tucker Carlson’s criticism of Israel with antisemitism – described the settlers as “unsettlers” and “Israeli terrorists,” saying that “doing this to this family’s home is criminal.” Huckabee is typically supportive of the illegal settlement of Palestinian land, and his condemnation of this incident looked like an attempt to draw a line between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ settlers as much as a message to West Jerusalem.
RT’s Charlotte Dubenskij traveled to Qusra, but was unable to reach the besieged Palestinian homes despite her having received clearance from the IDF due to Israeli settlers who harassed her crew. Watch the full encounter below:
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