Russia’s Future Cancelled youtu.be/_-sSb74sNlY?si=2WJk… via @YouTube

Russia Hides More youtu.be/6UjYbvFgtIQ?si=Mshh… via @YouTube

Russia's Economy is Dying. End the War. A forceful editorial in the Russian daily Nezavisimaya gazeta on 20 October points out that the Soviet Union collapsed because it did nothing but spend money on defence. The leader begins thus: "In discussing the perspectives for the Russian budget under conditions of almost zero economic growth one increasingly hears the assertion that 'money for the defence of Russia is sufficient in any circumstances'." The editors point out that the collapse of the Soviet Union was brought about by misallocating investment in favour of defence and at the expense of the civilian sector of the economy. But that this assertion is completely untrue. In fact by the early 1990s it was obvious that prioritising defence was a disaster. "Thus at the beginning of the 1990's our society faced the fact that massive budget outlays on defence and security did not guarantee the safety of the state. Thus the thesis declared today that 'there is in any event enough money for the defence of the state' needs to be supplemented by an important condition - 'only if the state itself does not begin to fall apart for internal reasons.'" As the Soviet Union approached collapse, "it did not enter anyone's head to demand increases in state expenditure on defence or state security." Instead the demand for reform took precedence. The message to Putin is obvious. The war has to stop or there will be nothing left of the country. And if he takes no action he will inevitably find himself facing demands for reform. And those demands in the early 1990's brought down an entire political system. Prioritising defence within NATO at the expense of everything else could put us in a similar position. This will come as bad news to establishment Western commentators - ill-informed Conservative MPs such as Bernard Jenkin and even the newly appointed head at the Centre for Policy Studies Liam Halligan, who usually thinks for himself - encouraged by Whitehall disinformation. They repeatedly assert that Russia is in fine fettle economically and that it can and will continue fighting the war against Ukraine until the cows come home. What this means is that the bargaining power of the West in negotiating a peace is far stronger than given credit for. Peace does not have to mean Ukraine surrenders. It means President Trump has a much greater hope of ending the war than when he was first elected into office and boasted that he could bring peace in 24 hours. "Проблемы развития не исчезают по причине их игнорирования Почему чиновники и экономисты забывают опыт финансирования военных расходов во времена Советского Союза" 20.10.2026 18:28:00

Will Mr Naryshkin's intelligence service now own up?

The Russian press is reporting on peace efforts in Kyiv by the Patriarch of Jerusalem and the Papal Nuncio in Ukraine trying to square the difference between Putin and Zelensky. It ends with the quote "Nihil est in religione, quod non fuerit in vita." Nezavisimaya gazeta: Переговорщики не от мира сего Версия для печати Обсудить на форуме Зачем Рим и Иерусалим направляют своих эмиссаров в Москву и Киев Милена Фаустова

From Washington Free Beacon: The U.N. internal investigation into whether its own staff at the embattled United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) participated in Hamas's Oct. 7 massacre was hamstrung and ineffective from day one, according to an independent U.S. review of the U.N. probe, congressional communications, and Western diplomats who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon. The shoddy probe ultimately enabled the United Nations to claim that in 9 of the 19 cases under review, the evidence was "insufficient to support" staff involvement in the terror spree, a finding meant to exonerate the agency and discredit Israeli intelligence.

"US threatens Miliband with reprisals over Israel sanctions" headlines an article in The Telegraph online today. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict dates back to a crucial switch in British policy in the 1920s after the Balfour Declaration of 1917 envisaged sharing Palestine between incoming Jews and resident Arabs. When Leo Amery, Jewish by birth, became Secretary of State for the Colonies in the mid-twenties, he switched policy in favour of Zionist as against non-partisan Jewish settlement. Later, on the eve of war, the British changed their mind once again, when it was already too late to end a process that had an immense dynamic of its own. This baleful inconsistency sounds all too familiar. Milliband's bad judgement and unerring ineptitude now combine to damage Britain's national interests once again. Perhaps the Middle East is too important for Great Powers to leave alone. But somehow their policies live up to that salutary comment by the weary former Prime Minister of Russia Chernomyrdin: "We hoped for the best, but things worked out as they usually do."

Hubris: The American Origins of Russia's War Against Ukraine is out in a Harvard paperback in the United States on 22nd of this month.

Even if the Bank of England is not interested in accumulating gold, there is nothing to stop private citizens from doing so as long term investments to escape the unavoidable depreciation of paper money that our governments have been practising since time immemorial. A leading personality in the business, American Rick Rule, is worth a look. He argues that only a tiny percentage of Americans are invested in gold, well below the historical average, which is four times that level. One can find his interviews on YouTube. Another big figure is the South African Francis Hunt, who goes under the name Market Sniper. There are also excellent, sober advisory services available to which one can subscribe, if one ventures out into investing in gold or silver mines, which are significantly under-valued compared to the share market in general. Just a thought...

The extraordinary achievement at local polls in Germany by the right-wing populist party AFD has been described in the Russian press as "a political Stalingrad" for the Chancellor and leader of the Christian Democrats. Читайте на WWW.KP.RU: kp.ru/