There is one feeling I often recall from having lived and worked in Ukraine — to be precise, in its most nationalist, full-of-itself city, Lviv — for a total of five years in the 2000s: Thank God, at least there’s no violence!

That is what I, some other foreigners, and quite a few Ukrainians, too, were thinking and even saying then. The country was politically and even culturally polarized, extremely corrupt, and a sham ‘democracy’ even more fake than most of the rest.

Dependence Day: A generation after the Soviet Union fell, Ukraine is a ruined proxy of the West

Ukraine could have bridged East and West. Instead, corruption, nationalism, and Western meddling left it broken

BY Tarik Cyril Amar

Hop on a new adventure: let’s look at RIC (Russia-Iran-China), the new Primakov triangle, as I have defined them, in a more playful way.

These three civilization-states that are coordinating the new phase of Eurasia integration, and also established as full BRICS and SCO members, as in fact The Three Musketeers.

What the Three RIC Musketeers Are Really Up To

By Pepe Escobar

Strategic Culture

As highlighted by delightfully insightful West Asia analyst AHHfrican, the Three RIC Musketeers are already applying in full force timely shortcuts towards a new international order via three velvet-wrapped titanium nutcrackers.

The titanium nutcrackers are being applied respectively by Iran, Russia and China on the Strait of Hormuz, SWIFT and the U.S. Treasury.

The United Kingdom's new prime minister, Andy Burnham, is visiting Ukraine on Monday, on his first international trip since taking office.

Burnham, who will co-chair a meeting of the Coalition of the Willing, a group of Ukraine's foreign backers, is also set to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

HELLO! can confirm King Charles was first made aware of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's plans to relocate to the UK last Sunday. The monarch welcomes the opportunity to see more of Harry and his family in a private and personal capacity. 

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster’s July 2026 appointment of Darline Graham to fill the remainder of her late brother Lindsey Graham’s Senate term – and her subsequent decision to run for the seat – may seem unusual. After all, Darline Graham has no experience in elected office and was virtually unknown outside of the small circle of people who knew her from her time heading the South Carolina Commission for the Blind, or the slightly larger group of people who knew her as Lindsey Graham’s sister. 

Darline Graham’s inherited Senate seat revives the ‘widow’s mandate’ with a sibling twist

Gibbs Knotts AND Christopher A. Cooper

Beyond the New Cold War: The Rise of Competing Power Corridors

BY Abbas Hashemite

For a quarter century the United States has told the world, and itself, a simple story about its role in the Middle East. On September 11, 2001, it was attacked by Sunni jihadists, and it answered with a generational war against Sunni Islamic extremism — al-Qaeda first, the Islamic State later. Trillions of dollars, two invasions, a global drone and surveillance apparatus, and a lengthening list of designated terrorist organizations were all justified by that threat. This was the declared war, and it was real in its public form.

Feeding the Enemy: How Washington’s Obsession With Iran Subverted Its Own War on Sunni Terror

by Larry C. Johnson

Poland started to construct a defensive barrier along its border with Russia and Belarus in 2024. The East Shield defense system will eventually be around 800 kilometers long, and is intended to protect this country on NATO's eastern flank against attack from the east.

Jeffrey Sachs delivers a blistering assessment of Donald Trump, arguing that the president’s leadership and use of power raise serious concerns about the state of American politics.

Sachs describes Trump in deeply critical terms and argues that the larger problem goes beyond one individual. He says Trump is also a symptom of what he calls a deeply corrupted political system, pointing to presidential war powers, Congress, checks and balances, and America’s long-running foreign policy.

Sachs also sharply criticizes media coverage of Trump, questioning what he sees as the normalization of increasingly extreme rhetoric and decisions. He challenges journalists and political leaders to ask harder questions about presidential power, accountability and the consequences of America’s foreign policy.

HERE WE GO AGAIN. HERE IS A BAD PROPAGANDA PEACE BY CNN AND ZAREED [FAREED ZAKARIA]... WE HOPED THAT ZAREED WAS MORE INTELLIGENT THAN AN ORDINARY WANKER BUT WE FAILED IN THIS ASSESSMENT... "ZAREED" OF COURSE DOES NOT EVEN MENTION PROPERLY THE PEACE TREATY IN ISTAMBUL THAT BORIS JOHNSON SCUTTLED...

THIS PEACE AGREEMENT WAS DESIGNED TO RESTORE THE MINSK AGREEMENTS OF 2014 AND 2015, WHICH GAVE THE DONBASS TO UKRAINE IN AN AUTONOMOUS FORMAT, AND WERE SIGNED UPON BY GERMANY, FRANCE, RUSSIA AND UKRAINE — AND CONFIRMED BY THE UNITED NATIONS. BUT AS USUAL, THE WEST — ESPECIALLY GERMANY AND FRANCE — HAD BEEN DECEPTIVE... MERKEL AND HOLLANDE ADMITTED TO IT. 

AND YES PUTIN HAD TO CONTROL SOME DISSENT IN RUSSIA... WHO DOES NOT TRY TO PREVENT DISSENT — ESPECIALLY WHEN FOMENTED BY THE CIA AND MI6? OR EVEN PURE GREED OF THE OLIGARCHS?

A confronting display can be reconsidered. Removing a documented critique of the war on Gaza from a public library collection would be another matter entirely.

Sydney’s Waverley Council, which includes Bondi Beach within its boundaries, has removed a book on the war on Gaza, titled How to Sell a Genocide, from its library shelves, pending review. This followed a complaint from a survivor of last year’s Bondi Beach massacre.

The Israeli military has announced it will open criminal investigations into two high-profile attacks on Palestinians during the Gaza war.

In a report published Wednesday, the Israeli military said it had reviewed 150 incidents involving its troops in the Palestinian enclave and had made decisions about five of the cases.

Israeli military to open criminal probes into 2 Gaza attacks

Natalie Muller Reuters, AFP and AP

The investigations will focus on the killings of 5-year-old Palestinian girl Hind ⁠Rajab and 15 emergency aid workers in Gaza. The decision came after a review of 150 incidents concerning the conduct of Israeli troops.

Duncan Chapel — a member of the British section of the Pabloite international network and a regular contributor to International Viewpoint and Anticapitalist Resistance — has published a libel against imprisoned Ukrainian anti-war socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk.

His aim is to sabotage the growing international opposition to Bogdan’s persecution by the Zelensky regime, injecting poisonous misinformation and lies into the public discussion of the case. 

A case of political sabotage: Duncan Chapel’s filthy provocation against imprisoned Ukrainian socialist Bogdan Syrotiuk

BY WSWS International Editorial Board

He is acting as a political provocateur, whose actions serve the interests of the fascistic Ukrainian regime and NATO.

As the deadly Israeli occupation of Southern Lebanon continues, the fabulously wealthy banker-turned-“philanthropist” Antoun Sehnaoui has assembled a network of business and media operatives in Washington – and a fascist Christian goon squad in Beirut – dedicated to doing Israel’s dirty work.

In late July, Lebanese daily L’Orient Today exposed a wealthy banking heir named Antoun Sehnaoui as a driving force behind recent efforts to push the country to normalize relations with Israel as the apartheid state continues to occupy hundreds of square miles of southern Lebanon.