To resume peace talks with Kiev, Moscow will wait for either a change of stance by the current Ukrainian president or for a new leader, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. This comes after President Zelensky signed a decree ruling out negotiations with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Even before the launch of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine in late February, Moscow “was the supporter of the idea of achieving the terms put forward by the Russian side through diplomatic means,” Peskov told journalists on Tuesday.

Russia is still ready to look for a negotiated solution to the conflict between the neighbors, according to the spokesman. But “it takes two parties to negotiate,” he noted.

SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk has proposed a plan to end the conflict in Ukraine. The billionaire suggested that new elections be held in the four regions that recently voted to join Russia, while Ukraine would commit to neutrality and relinquish its claim to Crimea. 

Musk posted an outline of his plan on Twitter on Monday, suggesting that Russia “redo elections of annexed regions under UN supervision,” with Moscow withdrawing from these areas if voters choose.

Crimea would be declared “formally part of Russia, as it has been since 1783,” until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gifted the peninsula to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. 

RUSSIA MADE SOME MIGHTY SACRIFICES TO ELIMINATE HITLER. RUSSIA MADE SOME MIGHTY SACRIFICES TO DISMANTLE ITS COMMUNIST USSR AND RETURN THE INTEGRITY OF GERMANY AS A MASSIVE GIFT. ALL RUSSIA GOT IN RETURN SO FAR, 77 YEARS AND 30 YEARS RESPECTIVELY LATER IS THE PRESENT GERMAN SUPPORT FOR THE NAZI GOVERNMENT IN KIEV. NOT A GOOD LOOK AND A TOTAL LACK OF GRATITUDE. FOR THIS OF COURSE ONE HAS TO THANK THE US EMPIRE, WHICH FOR ALL ITS CLAIM OF FREEDOM HAS BEEN A FASCIST TOTALITARIAN INVADER/DESTRUCTOR OF MANY COUNTRIES. THE US EMPIRE POLLUTES THE SPIRIT OF FREEDOM AND FAIRNESS WITH A STATED EXCEPTIONALISM AND A DECEITFUL HOLLYWOODIAN NARRATIVE.

Vladimir Putin’s speech from the Kremlin last Friday, delivered to the nation and the world as four regions of Ukraine were reintegrated into Russia, was another stunner, in line with numerous others he’s made this year, demonstrating a fundamental turn in the Russian president’s thinking over the past eight months. 

The implications of this new perspective warrant careful consideration. Putin has taken to looking forward and seeing something new, and in this he is hardly alone. 

By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News

Toward the end of 2019, an article titled Lessons in how to hate China was published in Pearls and Irritations. Those lessons have been learned and learned well. Three years is a short time but the collective memory is also short. China is now the accepted enemy and the likelihood of war is spoken of more openly.

BY William Briggs

IF YOU'VE LIVED THROUGH AN AUSSIE BUSHFIRE AND CAN TELL THE TALE, YOU WOULD BE RIGHT IN EXPRESSING A SIMILAR VIEW AS THE CARTOON ABOVE... OF COURSE THE PLANET IS NOT GOING TO BURN DOWN LIKE A JOE FARMER BARN FULL OF STRAWS ALIGHT. GLOBAL WARMING IS NOT A BONFIRE AS DEPICTED. IT'S A MORE COMPLEX PROCESS IN WHICH BUSHFIRES BECOME MORE INTENSE, FLOODS AND DROUGHTS MORE FREQUENT — AND THE 500-YEAR HURRICANE HAPPENS EVERY TUESDAYS. THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRIALISATION AND GLOBAL WARMING IS UNDENIABLE UNLESS YOU'RE A LEARNED IDIOT LIKE Alex Epstein, THE WORDS OF NON-WISDOM OF WHOM WE REPUBLISH HERE FROM THE LOONY MISES INSTITUTE THAT HAS LOST THE PLOT.

SHOWING WHAT THE OTHER SIDE THINKS IS OFTEN ENLIGHTENING AND SPURS THE DESIRE TO BECOME ANGRY.... HERE IS ALEX'S BULLSHIT:

The old world broke this week. It was blown up cynically by someone who thought this would advance their agenda the most. 

The act of vandalizing a major piece of physical infrastructure, targeting civilian populations, isn’t unprecedented in history, but it does signal that everything we thought we knew about the rules of the current game was wrong.

Well, for most people anyway. 

When I spoke in June at the Ron Paul Institute Conference on Foreign Policy I described the game of geopolitics as a seven-player game of the ancient Chinese game, Go. 

BY Tom Luongo

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major and Woerner

On the 12 December 2017 the National Security Archive at George Washington University posted online 30 declassified US, Soviet, German, British and French documents revealing a torrent of assurances about Soviet security given by Western leaders to Gorbachev and other Soviet officials throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991. Some of the documents have been publicly available for several years, others have been revealed as a result of Freedom of Information requests for the study. See the briefing here.

Declassified UK’s Matt Kennard sits down with the former president of Ecuador who in 2012 granted the WikiLeaks publisher asylum and now lives in political asylum himself.   

By Matt Kennard 
Declassified UK

More recently, we have been looking at a fake story about North Korea supplying arms to Russia, which the author believes to have originated from a Telegram channel of dubious validity. Unfortunately, the story had two curious sequels.

As long as the fact this war was provoked remains unacknowledged by the side that provoked it, the sane path of detente will look like reckless appeasement and nuclear brinkmanship will look like sanity.

Vladimir Putin has approved the annexation of four territories in eastern Ukraine, whose addition to the Russian Federation now await authorization from Russia’s other branches of government.

Australia will impose another round of financial and travel sanctions on Russia following the Kremlin's move to sign treaties annexing four occupied regions of Ukraine.

In the Georgievsky Hall of the Kremlin, a ceremony was held  on Friday to sign agreements on the admission of the Donetsk People’s Republic, the Luhansk People’s Republic, the Zaporizhia Region and the Kherson Region to Russia and the formation of new subjects of the Russian Federation.

September 30, 2022

For several years, the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) managed its contacts with sources through a network of fake websites. However, after Iranian counterintelligence officers cracked their system and shared their findings with Beijing, at least two dozen CIA operatives were hounded out and killed.

That story was first made public in a Yahoo News report in 2018, but researchers wanted to know more. Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto announced its findings on Thursday, publishing them in a statement in lieu of a full report.

Today the Fitz gives up. What is the world coming to?

Author and former international rugby player Peter FitzSimons will step down as the public face of Australia’s republican movement after seven years at the helm.

Weeks after the Queen’s death spurred renewed debate about the British monarch’s role as Australia’s head of state, FitzSimons announced he would not renominate to chair the Australian Republican Movement (ARM).

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