I was surprised a few weeks ago to get an invitation from Yana Lantratova, Russian Federal Commissioner for Human Rights, to deliver a speech on human rights to the International Youth Festival in Ekaterinburg. It is approaching 20 years since I was last in Russia, and I tend to avoid invitations from governments. But on reflection, I decided that the current official Russophobia of the West and the constant state of propaganda for war with Russia to which we are subjected make an overwhelming reason to go and take a look at the state of the country.
For the record, my travel and accommodation were paid for by the Russian state. I am long enough in the tooth that I do not think that in any way influenced what I said while I was there, nor what I write about it now. It undoubtedly influenced what I did while I was there because the Russian state organised my programme, though taking into account my requests. That is all information that you might wish to hold in your mind as you read this.
It would not be quite accurate to say that I went straight from a hospital bed to the aircraft, though there were only hours in between, my having been struck down with a particularly unpleasant bronchitis and a number of complications. I just had time to shower, pack, and hunt down the proliferation of electrodes and gauze and strip dressings in the shower, before leaving Edinburgh on the 22.00 Saturday night flight for Dubai, still coughing rather spectacularly.
I had been asked whether I wanted a hotel room in Dubai airport for a ten-hour stopover, before the flight to Ekaterinburg, and I had declined, not wanting to cause extra expense. This turned out to be a mistake. I had arrived on Emirates, but it turned out the next leg was a codeshare with FlyDubai, a kind of UAE version of Ryanair. I was therefore not allowed to hang around the materialist wonders of Dubai Airport, but consigned to Terminal 2.
This involved walking a considerable distance to find one particular lift, which I then took down three floors. Wandering around some kind of gloomy basement area devoid of signage, I then had to find my way around several corners to another lift, which I had to take up again one floor, arriving in one of those tarmac-adjacent steel and glass corridors equipped with hard steel benches, of the kind familiar to budget airline travellers around the world.
There I had to wait for 25 minutes for a bus, which took me and a few dozen other strap-hanging passengers to Terminal 2. The journey was of several miles and took a full half hour, on a vehicle which I am pretty sure had less suspension than the baggage carts which kept passing us. We passed through the entrails of the airport, its engineering, baggage, fuel, chartering, civil aviation administration and other areas, frequently stopping and lurching off again. I should not have been surprised if we had driven through the kitchens.
Eventually we were dumped out at the long, low bleak hall that is Terminal 2. Dubai as a whole is the most soulless place on earth, a thoughtless piling up of all the material things beloved of the most empty-headed worshipper of wealth. It runs on the tears of a vast exploited underclass. There is nowhere on Earth better at ruthlessly putting the socially inferior in their place. Having transited between terminals in scores of airports all round the globe, I have never encountered anything like Dubai in its complete refusal to pretend to make the experience pleasant or customer friendly. You know you are in the cheap seats.
It was at 2am the next morning that a pretty dazed Craig finally arrived in Ekaterinburg. What struck me most about the flight was realising just how far East we were as we transited the Aral Sea, about 90 minutes from landing.
Things looked up as I was met at the airport door and taken down to an official car on the tarmac. This whisked me to the VIP lounge, a separate building on the airport complex. Entering there, I had the first encounter of a kind that had been worrying me about the trip, as I explained in bad Russian that I have a pacemaker and could not go through the metal detector. In fact, this was greeted with immediate understanding and ropes were moved without fuss, so I could walk round the machine. This was to be my constant experience.
My programme stated that my arrival was organised by the Deputy Minister of Foreign Economic Relations of Sverdlovsk Region, Mr Ilya Skidin. I did not expect that to mean that he would be there shaking my hand at 2am, but there he was, and we sat down in capacious soft leather armchairs while waiting for my luggage to be retrieved. Ilya spoke excellent English and was wryly welcoming. He introduced me to Margarita and Irina, who were to be respectively my interpreter and my fixer, throughout the visit.
Margarita spoke English with no hint of any accent, and proved to have the best command of nuance and timbre of any interpreter I have ever known. She is freelance and had been hired by the Human Rights Commission for the occasion: most of her work is for private sector firms and for international institutions, particularly the IMF. Irina understood English pretty well but was reticent to speak it – rather my position with Russian. Once the baggage had been acquired, I met with the final member of what was to be our team, Ulugbek, a cheerful driver from Kyrgyzstan.
In my room at the Congress Hotel was waiting for me something I had requested in advance – a laptop and a phone. I have already had the experience of being detained at a UK airport under Section 7 of the Terrorism Act. This allows the police to confiscate your electronics without a warrant – which has happened precisely to me – and gives them powers to demand all PINs and passwords. You also have no right to remain silent when questioned. These powers have been used against so many people I know – George Galloway, Richard Medhurst, John Laughland, Kit Klarenberg, Johanna Ross to name but a few – that I had little doubt my electronics would be confiscated again on return to the UK. So I decided to travel without any.
I assumed, whether rightly or wrongly, that the Russian state would be monitoring every action on the laptop or phone. But as the British state at home, and indeed multiple Western states, have had surveillance on me for years, this was hardly a new feeling or problem. I was in any event too tired to use either that morning, and my alarm seemed to wake me for breakfast seconds after I set it and closed my eyes.
We now headed to the Governor’s Office for my first meeting, with the leadership of the law faculties of the Boris Yeltsin Urals Federal University, the Yakovlev Urals State University of Law and the Alekseev private law research centre. This was chaired by the Deputy Governor of Sverdlovsk, Vasily Kozlov, who spoke good English and was very affable.
I gave a very brief discursion on the current crisis in international law: the inability of the international community to restrain the Genocide in Gaza, the blockades of Venezuela and Cuba, the attack on Iran and US insouciance on the closure of Hormuz, the denial of the Dover Strait to Russian shipping. I also spoke of increasing authoritarianism in Western countries, particularly the reduction of protections for freedom of speech. I also raised the question of access to justice for poor people in terms of legal aid, for both criminal and administrative cases.
This was a rather scattergun approach, but on this first morning I wasn’t quite sure what to say to this particular gathering that would attract their interest. But in fact I received some clear and stimulating replies. One professor said he did not accept that international law was in crisis, and that people had been writing of the crisis in international law for at least seven centuries. The institutions and legal instruments were sound and temporary noise need not be over-analysed.
Representatives of all these institutions said that they had previously had good working ties with European and British universities and institutions, but that these had been cut by the European side. There were also now almost no European students. This led to a female professor at one of the universities setting out very plainly that the curriculum had consequently changed. They used to teach international and comparative law very much based on the Western liberal tradition of jurisprudence.
This had now changed and they looked more in comparative law at other, more successful models of the relationship between the state and individual, such as the Chinese model. This represented a different way of thinking at the most fundamental level, and posited an entirely different balance between the interests of the individual and those of the collective.
This was quietly and dispassionately spoken, but here on day one you could not have had a more eloquent and relevant example of how Western hostility, sanctions and withdrawal was turning Russia away from Europe and into the very thing the West claimed to fear.
I was to give a lecture later in the programme to their assembled international law students, and everyone seemed genuinely enthused about that, including me. We finished with a group photo. The lady in the centre next to me is Tatyana Merzlyakova, the Sverdlovsk regional commissioner for human rights, of whom much more later, and next to her the Deputy Governor.
After the meeting we walked through a large web of corridors until we emerged in part of the building which is the Governor’s official residence, in the beautiful Sevastyanov Palace. We passed through a splendid ballroom with gilded columns and balconies and spectacular crystal chandeliers, before arriving in an elegant circular dining room which I suspect was within the rotunda in this stock photo.
Deputy Governor Kozlov was a genial host, and much of the time was spent discussing the rather spectacular repast of multiple local dishes – just the starters they gave me would feed me for a week. The meal was served without alcohol, which is a very definite change in Russian official culture over the last 20 years. I learnt that Sverdlovsk Region has a slightly smaller population than Scotland, but distributed over three times the area. It is extremely rich in minerals, timber, water and other environmental resources and a major agricultural producer.
Ekaterinburg was founded by Peter the Great specifically as a steel production centre in an effort to rival the industrial power of Sweden. More recently the bulk of Russian military production was famously relocated there during WW2, beyond the reach of German invasion, and it remains an important centre of the defence industry. Ekaterinburg marks what was the traditional border between European Russia and Asian Russia – somewhat confusingly as it lies 2,000 miles East of the Bosphorus. Ekaterinburg is just on the Asian side of the Urals watershed, and the waters of its river, the Iset, joining up with other great rivers, eventually flow into the Arctic.
Modern geology regards the division as irrelevant as there are no separate plates, and regards the whole as Eurasia.
The previous day the First Ministers of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland had held a summit to determine the right of their peoples to self-determination, and this had been featured with striking prominence in Russian media. The main Channel 1 television news had it as a lead story with a detailed explanatory piece of several minutes, and this appeared equally true across all channels.
The news also covered a meeting between Foreign Minister Lavrov and the Ambassadors of several states. In this meeting Lavrov told the Ambassadors that Russia viewed the question of the Independence of Scotland in the light of the UN Charter principle of self-determination. It is very significant both that Lavrov chose to raise this with the Ambassadors, and that Russia’s main media then highlighted it as a major point of the meeting.
Kozlov asked me about Scottish Independence and I told him that, while I could not give a precise date or method, I had no doubt it was inevitably coming. I quoted the consistent majority support for Independence in the polls and the complete dominance of pro-Independence sentiment among younger people. I also said that the United Kingdom had always been an imperialist construct and was still at the centre of much neo-imperialist mischief in the world today. But as the British Empire had crumbled away, so eventually would the metropolitan. Scotland, Wales and Ireland were the first colonies and would recover their freedom.
Deputy Governor Kozlov assured me of his longstanding personal support for Scottish Independence and said that it was a cause well understood by the Russian people.
Tatyana Merzlyakova, the Sverdlovsk state commissioner for human rights, had been with us throughout these meetings and appeared to be deferred to by all. Kozlov assured me that the organs of government in the region all listened to her very carefully and almost always took her advice, as he did himself. I was to see much more of Tatyana over the next few days.
After lunch we drove to the Museum of Civil and Military Equipment. This housed a remarkable collection of vehicles, in particular some massive mining dump trucks which are the largest in the world, and one of which held the world record for transporting 560 tonnes of material in one lift. Moving indoors there was a really remarkable collection of automobiles from all round the world, from the earliest days of the internal combustion engine right up to modern times.
I skipped the collection of armoured vehicles and howitzers and (with some regret) steam locomotives, and breezed past the extraordinary assemblage of military aircraft in the yard. The museum director was so kind and enthusiastic I felt compelled to show rather more interest than I felt. We spent a long time looking at the Buran, the old Russian version of the space shuttle, and I recalled that the West had for many years been highly dependent on Russia’s International Space Station and launch vehicles for space exploration, a cooperation the West was not looking to reciprocate now it was again taking the technological lead.
I saw only a tiny percentage of this remarkable collection, which extraordinarily has been built up by a local private metals and mining conglomerate. The motivation for taking me there seemed to be a genuine keenness to give me experiences I might enjoy and to show off Ekaterinburg. We then swept off to the next destination, about 20 minutes’ drive through woods.
When the Romanov Royal Family were murdered in Ekaterinburg, the Bolshevik perpetrators had removed the bodies to a local mine. There they had been butchered, covered in sulphuric acid, burnt and thrown down a mineshaft (though some of the remains were taken on to a further site for disposal). That shaft in Ganina Yama was our next destination, and a monastery of seven churches was built on the surrounding site in 2016.
The Royal Family has been canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church and are viewed as saints. It was somewhat difficult to pin down as the reason for their canonisation was the pain and suffering of their martyrdom, and the precise distinction between saint and martyr is perhaps not exactly the same in Orthodox tradition as it is in Western Catholic tradition. But they are effectively saints. There is a tradition in Russian Orthodoxy of canonising national leaders – I was rather surprised to find that the distinctly earthbound warrior Alexander Nevsky, for example, is also a saint.
Tatyana accompanied me and it was plain that the religion and the slain Royals meant a great deal to her, as they appeared to do to most of those visiting. It was a very solemn place. I therefore listened with respect to our earnest young guide, and it did not require fakery to feel affected at the site where the children were dismembered. Only in the car after we left did I venture that perhaps it is much easier to feel warmth towards a Royal Family once they are gone. In the UK we do not have that luxury.
We next drove back to central Ekaterinburg to a restaurant for dinner which very much specialised in local food, and the table groaned with multiple examples of pickles and raw, lightly smoked or frozen fish of many varieties. Eating frozen flakes of raw fish is very much a Urals thing. I was very pleased we were joined again by Deputy Minister Ilya Skidin, genuinely because he is very good company and also because it gave me somebody I could drink vodka with, without which I find this particular kind of Russian diet somewhat difficult to tackle. Margarita and Irina had been with me the whole day. Tatyana was still going strong and we were swapping stories of human rights cases, and Ilya and I put the world economy to rights.
So ended a very pleasant first day in the hands of the Sverdlovsk Governorate.
I have not mentioned that the weather had been cool and wet throughout day one and my cough was not improving. I rather struggled out of bed the next morning, managed to get locked out of my room following breakfast and reported to Irina and Margarita fifteen minutes late. We now drove on some forty kilometres to the International Youth Gathering.
This took place in an enormous exhibition centre outside Ekaterinburg. There were reportedly 10,000 participants from 190 countries, and there were some national delegations milling around in flags and costumes, although the majority of the young people I spoke to were already resident in Russia, mostly as students. The exhibition was “international” in the sense of its congregation, not of the exhibits – while I probably eventually saw only about half the stalls, all I saw were Russian and designed to showcase Russia to the World.
My programme had me touring the exhibition from 10:30 to 12:00, and I genuinely enjoyed this. I spent most of this time in the technology section, where there were both exhibits and genuine experts willing to discuss matters such as nuclear fusion and plasma drives (though I left a ten-minute chat about the latter painfully aware I had not understood a word of it). I had a more useful chat on the difficulties of transporting and storing the hydrogen for fuel cell vehicles.
As in Venezuela, I was struck at a number of stalls by the way that Western sanctions had caused an explosion of technological development in payment systems, though I found everybody appeared blithely unaware of the civil liberties issues around fully digital and identity-linked currencies. I was however able to get a very useful explanation of the current state of BRICS international clearing operations.
A large rather scared-looking rabbit attracted my attention, and he turned out to be central to an exhibition on tissue regeneration. The technology has been developed by Rosatom to generate organs from tissue, is dependent in some way on DNA imprinting, and is said to be fundamentally different from stem cell technology. The rabbit was apparently the chief living recipient, was much older than you would expect him to be, and had homegrown replacement parts. He was a very famous rabbit and President Putin had met him twice.
The young lady explaining all this to me said that the technology might currently enable humans to live until 122 years old. I asked her why on earth anybody would want humans to live to 122 years old? Was the planet not fully burdened with humans already? There would be a massive explosion in numbers. Where would you put them all?
She looked rather nonplussed by this, as though nobody had put this to her before (which hardly seems likely). She replied that she herself would love to live to know her great-grandchildren. I suggested she might feel differently when she reaches my age. She presented me with a pair of replacement rats’ veins she had grown personally from the cells of a living rat. I reflected that I had not anticipated that my life would ever include being given rats’ veins by a beautiful young lady, and decided to move on.
At noon I was taken back to the entrance to meet with Yana Lantratova, the Federal Commissioner for Human Rights. The programme had us meeting together for half an hour, then visiting the stand of the Russian Federal Commission for Human Rights where the process for individuals to launch a case or an appeal would be shown.
Yana arrived, a very glamorous young woman in a designer outfit that bore its large label on the outside. She appeared warm and friendly as she shook my hand with an open smile, then disappeared into a huddle with a cloud of advisers. After I hung around a few minutes, Irina and Margarita explained to me that Yana had not previously known she was to give a talk alongside me, she had only expected to be introducing me, therefore she needed to prepare. I was to go to the speakers’ lounge and wait.
So we wandered up to the speakers’ lounge, where I sat for an hour or so drinking tea and doing nothing in particular, which suits my talents. Then suddenly I was hustled very quickly down to the exhibition hall, where I was wanted to hear Yana give a tour of an exhibition on Ukrainian atrocities against civilians in the Donbass.
Her tour was well underway when I arrived, and much of it was harrowing. She spoke of attacks on citizens of Donbass from 2014 onwards, and of a Ukrainian attack on an educational institute in Starobilsk in May 2026 in which 25 teenagers had been killed in multiple waves of drone strikes. She also spoke of glorification of Nazism in official commemorations and literature in the Ukraine, and had exhibits to illustrate all of these points.
I know the points she was making to be true, and while it is one side of a story, it is the side which is never heard in Western media, while the reverse story is relentlessly pushed. But I found myself personally in a strange position. I had been rushed in and physically pushed through the press of cameramen to be with her in shot as she spoke at the exhibits she had reached when I had arrived, but she did not acknowledge me in any way and when she moved on to the next exhibition I was faced with the prospect of physically jostling to remain in the limelight, which I declined. I watched the rest of the tour of exhibits with the small crowd of public following.
After this tour, we proceeded to the lecture theatre where we were to speak, in a discussion hosted by Evgeny Popov, a Russian federal MP. The talk was billed as a “discussion” between Yana and me on the subject of “The current state of human rights in the world”. I had been told we would open with 20 minutes each, and then take questions and respond to each other. I never write a prepared speech. I had however been given by the organisers a list of proposed speaking points – which related entirely to the Ukraine.
I did not object to any of them as they all appeared to be gleaned from my writings, but they seemed rather over-detailed for a general talk on human rights in the world. I sat down and, as is my usual technique, mapped out a few guiding words to carry me through a 20-minute talk.
These are the notes I wrote:
HAGUE GENOCIDE
LOST CONTROL NARRATIVE
REPRESSION THROUGHOUT WESTERN WORLD
TERRORISM CHARGES
MACKLEMORE
NON-FUNCTIONING OF WESTERN DEMOCRACY
UKRAINE
BANNING OF PARTIES – CHURCH – CULTURE
BALTIC STATES
MOLDOVA
DRUMS
CUI BONO
Drums being a reference to the Western beat for war with Russia, and cui bono of course who benefits from the warmongering?
Yana had still not said a word to me since the brief introduction, and something felt off even as we entered into the hall. The format was very much a modern Davos-style arrangement, with white leather chairs on a dais for the speakers, and simultaneous interpretation. Yana was introduced and rather overran her 20 minutes. She spoke exclusively of Ukraine, of the origins of the conflict, of the repression of the rights of Russians in the cultural, political, religious, educational and economic fields, of the attacks on the Donbass, of the genuflection to Ukrainian Nazism and of the extraordinary warmongering of the European Union and its politicians.
She spoke elegantly and well and said almost nothing with which I had any disagreement.
I then spoke and started by saying I had been considering what a young international audience could possibly find interesting in hearing an old man from Edinburgh address them. I then recounted my being in the Hague for the opening days of the South Africa vs Israel genocide case, gave some of the key facts, and moved on to my experiences of being in Southern Lebanon, and having been present when a twelve-year-old child was shot (but thankfully not killed) at Kfar Kila on the front line.
I spoke of how the access to true information by young people on Gaza from their mobile phones had broken the hold of state propaganda and placed populations at odds with a Zionist billionaire-controlled political class that they could not influence. The Western political elites had therefore responded with a wave of repressive legislation and arrests that had given the lie to the myth of Western democracies. I spoke of the 3,500 arrests of peaceful people in the UK under terrorism legislation for support of Palestine Action.
As I spoke, I was aware of Popov, the chairman, becoming visibly agitated. He was shifting uncomfortably on his seat and several times held up his microphone as if he wished to interrupt. I was determined not to allow him to, and was careful not to pause between thoughts and sentences. I referred to Western lies about Ukraine and Western claims of Russian genocide in Ukraine which are plainly untrue.
I said that in the fog of war it was difficult to get a true picture of casualty figures in Ukraine, but total deaths on all sides were around 400,000. Deaths of children on all sides were around 800 children. These precise figures might be disputed by either side but were certainly not out by orders of magnitude.
Any child’s death was terrible and there may well be individual instances of war crimes, but about 0.2 per cent of the dead as children was not abnormal in war.
Compare this to Gaza, where approximately 36% of the dead are children. This too could be disputed in precise numbers – and many bodies still lie unrecovered – but was not order of magnitude wrong.
The gap between 0.2% and 36% cannot be closed by any amount of marginal adjustment of the figures, whether from Ukraine of Gaza. Nobody could seriously dispute the fundamental difference. That massive killing of children is the difference between a war and a genocide.
Popov looked extremely anxious as I said this, presumably because this is not the Russian line on casualty figures, but he did not interrupt me until a few moments later when I said no nation has a perfect human rights record, including Russia, and the need for Yana Lantratova’s office as Commissioner for Human Rights was evidence of that. At this stage Popov outright interrupted and said that Russia strove for perfection in human rights, but we were out of time.
I had been given a substantial list of questions to be asked after the talk, which were evidently now not going to happen. But Popov said there was just time for one quick question, and the choice is very instructive. He asked for my opinion on Scottish Independence.
I said that as a Scot, I naturally wanted the freedom of my native land, and that the UK was the centre of much Western Imperialism and a main source of NATO warmongering. This drew the first heartfelt applause of the day from the audience. We then left the stage and Popov and Lantratova went off, again not saying a word to me.
I recovered the phone I had left with Irina, and she said it had been buzzing non-stop. There was a long stream of messages that had arrived as I was speaking. Do not mention Palestine! Lay off Palestine! Stop speaking about Palestine! Ukraine! If you need another example use Western Sahara! Talk about Ukraine!
Obviously my talk had caused some panic. It is worth noting that nobody had said to me not to mention Palestine before I stood up (or I would have refused the invitation).
I did not feel good about causing problems for the hosts who had been so very kind to me. I was left with the local team, who stoutly said that I had done nothing wrong, and Tatyana said she had told “them” that I had every right to say whatever I want.
I cannot pretend I know the reason for the extreme sensitivity on Palestine, but it is worth noting that in two days in the exhibition halls I did not see, among hundreds of socially aware international youth delegates, a single keffiyeh, which is improbable in any youth gathering in 2026.
We went on to give an interview to a local youth radio station, which went extremely well. They were very well informed on my history and views, had no worries about discussing Palestine or anything else, and it was a refreshing and enjoyable relief of the tension.
We then went on to the Russian History museum, where I toured an exhibition of the birth of the Russian nation in the fusion of Viking and Slavic cultures in Novgorod and Staraya Ladoga from the time of Rurik. The exhibition absolutely fascinated me, consisting of finds from recent very extensive archaeological digs. There is something deeply fascinating in the physical confirmation through finds of written chronicles and oral traditions, and some of the exhibits were extremely well preserved. The professor who escorted me was deeply knowledgeable and I think surprised I was so genuinely interested.
The Minister of Education of Sverdlovsk Region had joined us for this occasion, and the museum tour was to be followed by an event in the same venue, which had been advertised as a meeting with civil society, but heavily tilted towards veterans, families and refugees from the Ukraine war and their representatives. Yana Lantratova and I were both slated to address them and, as this was specifically a Ukraine-related event, it has always been my intention to discuss only Ukraine on this occasion.
Yana gave a very similar talk to the one I had heard twice before that day, with added references to the heroism of those defending Russia. I spoke of the war not having started in 2022, but the conflict dating back to 2014 and beyond. I spoke about the use of Ukraine by NATO to bleed Russia and facilitate its Western expansion, while Ukrainians died to no good purpose. I spoke of the madness of risking nuclear war over the precise boundaries of a state that had never had a historical existence until 35 years ago. I added that by the same token it should not be for Russia to insist on precise boundaries of the Donbass as a precondition of peace.
Peace itself was what the World now desperately needed. It was deeply painful to me to see Russia’s place at the heart of European culture denigrated and denied. It was painful that I came from a country which was pouring money and missiles into Ukraine with the express intention of facilitating attacks on civilian targets deep inside Russia. I spoke again of the devastating effect of authoritarianism and militarism on Western societies. I spoke of the farce of pretending this was a war for democracy when Ukraine had abolished all opposition political parties and groups.
I explained that I had needed to travel without electronics due to my fear of arrest at the airport on return, and outlined the National Security (State Threats) Act 2026 under which I could be jailed for up to twelve years for publishing any information given me by a Russian government source, even if – and perhaps especially if – it were true. Information itself is specifically defined as a “material benefit” in terms of the Act.
There was an interesting discussion afterwards which included several civil society groups praising the work of the Commission for Human Rights, and particularly Tatyana, in projects such as obtaining better access for the disabled to rural healthcare facilities, and providing various aids to the blind. Several veterans thanked me very much for coming, and being prepared to face the Russian people and talk so candidly.
One lady who spoke was from Central Asia and wearing traditional dress, including a hijab. She represented an NGO which works for the rights of national minorities in Sverdlovsk Region. She said they worked for many years with the assistance of British NGOs, but that all help, cooperation and even contact had now been withdrawn, which she very much regretted and which hampered their work on education, health and migrant workers. She asked why this should be. I replied it was obviously extremely disappointing. It was in part a measure of Russophobia in the UK, and of fear of official sanction. It also perhaps reflected the fact that a great deal of the NGO sector in the UK is misnamed and in fact heavily reliant on government finance.
After this meeting concluded, Yana Lantratova presented me with a number of gifts, which she did with grace and humour; a painting, a scarf and some vodka.
She was then hustled out again. My programme said I would be having dinner with her, but after arriving at the restaurant we were told that she would not be joining us. The dinner consisted of Tatyana, Ilya, Irina, Margarita and me and a couple of others from Tatyana’s office, notably Evgeny Batukhin, who had very much become a member of the core team. The dinner was in a delightful restaurant featuring Caucasus dishes, and we had a jolly evening. The topic of what had gone wrong was not taboo, and the general consensus was that Yana was surrounded by a team inclined to panic and be over-protective towards her.
The next morning I woke feeling rather less ill, and looking forward to the day. It started with a visit to the Regional Human Rights Commission offices of Tatyana and her team.
To be honest, I started from a deep scepticism about the genuine independence and commitment to human rights of the Federal or Regional commission. My scepticism was informed by experience of the parallel institution in Uzbekistan, where it was simply window dressing for a deeply authoritarian system. A morning with Tatyana and her team persuaded me I was wrong to be sceptical of them.
If I can give you a single proof of this, it is that one of Tatyana’s team is a highly impressive international human rights lawyer who had four times been to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of clients claiming abuse by the Russian state, and had four times won. Russia’s suspension from the Council of Europe had closed that particular avenue for now, but here she was, still employed in human rights work by the Russian state. That is not the kind of thing you are told in the West about how the Russian state truly functions.
We discussed the kind of classic human rights cases we might consider typical. Tatyana’s team had intervened in the cases of many who had been accused of “publishing false information” over the war in Ukraine. She said that they had been able to convince the courts, even the military courts, that such offences were best dealt with by admonishment and a small fine rather than imprisonment.
But their work went far wider. They dealt, for example, with housing problems – decent housing was viewed as a human right. I met the highly experienced and qualified staff who were working on this – many were lawyers, and almost everyone had a doctorate. They also got involved, for example, over pay and conditions of private sector workers, when employers failed to meet their obligations. The whole gamut of rights for the disabled came under their office. So could cases of environmental protection.
I saw the complaints and requests from citizens piled high on desks; I saw citizen walk-ins being interviewed. I heard accounts of successes, where Tatyana had prevented the privatisation of an emerald mine against which miners were striking, and intervened to stop gold mining contaminating a pristine water source. Evgeny explained to me that Russian government is not a monolith; they have powerful allies but also those who were not appreciative. The total Sverdlovsk team was about 30 professionals, plus a cloud of volunteer NGOs.
I had been expected, but nobody had limited what I could ask, and I was allowed to pull case files at random and ask about them. I left genuinely very, very impressed.
The next event was to be my talk to international law students, which I now noticed was to be another joint event with Yana. Irina told me that this had now moved and would not be at the Urals Federal University as previously planned, but at the new university campus at the Expo Centre where the International Youth gathering was happening. So we headed off there yet again.
On arrival, I bumped into Yana briefly and said hello, but she was once again swept away. I was led into a classroom-style waiting area, and sat there with Margarita and Irina wondering what was happening, as the advertised time for the talk came and went. After some time twiddling my thumbs, I was led into another room, where Yana and Tatyana sat, surrounded by Yana’s staff from Moscow. They looked startled to see me come in, and I felt I was interrupting something. I was motioned to sit in a chair behind Yana and looking at her back. This seemed daft so I stood up and moved the chair round to the front of her – which to be fair, one of her staff helped me to do.
We finally got to have the conversation I felt, rightly or wrongly, that I had been deliberately kept from having with her. I expressed my gratitude at the invitation, delight at how well I had been treated, and admiration for what I had seen of the work of Tatyana’s office.
Yana replied that everybody had been talking about how moving my speech was at the evening meeting on Ukraine the day before. Had I noticed that professional cameramen had actually stepped out from behind their cameras to listen to me? She had not seen that before. I said I was glad if the heartfelt nature of my sentiments had come over. We discussed a little bit what could be done to get others in the West to at least listen to the Russian narrative. She had found Western media entirely hostile. I suggested that mainstream media was currently a lost cause, and much more could be done on social media.
I suggested that presentation should not start from claims of perfection; it was powerful to admit things that had gone wrong. Yana said she always tried to reference mistakes she had herself made. I told a couple of self-deprecating anecdotes about my own cock-ups. I felt that I had finally begun to form a human connection with the person who had issued the invitation to me.
Yana then explained that the coming meeting with students was scheduled for one hour. She would talk for half an hour, then would introduce me. I could speak as long as I liked and leave the remaining part of my half hour for questions. We then went into a classroom which had about 50 chairs, of which about half were full. The audience did not seem very engaged and people wandered both out and in during the event. Yana gave essentially the same PowerPoint presentation I had already seen three times now. At the end of it she introduced me fulsomely, then she and Tatyana stood up and left the room together, much to my surprise.
I was left on my own facing about twenty people who were fairly plainly in the international youth delegate category, and not the international law students I had been expecting to address. I had mentally prepared specifically on international law points, and decided to go through with these. I will not bother you with them except to say that I spoke of the meaningless propaganda designation of “shadow fleet” to justify piracy of Russian tankers. I gave in detail the example of the vessel Smyrtos seized by the British Navy off the Isle of Wight, after its Cameroonian flag registration had been withdrawn while the vessel was at sea, following British and French pressure on the Cameroonian government.
There were no questions from the audience, but afterwards one Russian student came up to me and asked how a person could verify truth from untruth in these difficult times. I stated it was very hard, but my advice was to be sceptical of official narratives. He then made it plain he did not accept what Yana had said about neo-Nazi influence in Ukraine. I told him that my take was that everything that Yana said was true, but of course it was not the whole truth on the subject. Research and an open mind are key.
We then wandered back into the youth festival again. I looked through the literature stall, and placed my left arm in a machine that was said to estimate your medical age. Mine came out somewhat improbably as 48, rather to the consternation of the young lady administering the test. It is good to know that while I am pretty knackered, my left arm still has many years ahead of it.
The next item on the agenda was to be in the audience for a talk Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was to give at the Festival, in the same venue that I had mentioned Palestine. The programme also stated that I would be seated in the audience with Yana Lantratova but, true to form, the enigmatic Yana had returned to Moscow. There was rather an anxious press of people hoping to get in. I met there three of the law academics I had met on the first day. They had just come from the university where they had waited much of the morning with hundreds of international law students who had been awaiting my lecture. They had not been told it was called off until well after its supposed time.
I apologised deeply and said I had no idea at all what had happened. I had been told the venue was switched. This was quite truthful. I do not know if the lecture was effectively cancelled because of me, or just as an administrative convenience for Yana’s programme. I felt very bad to have let the university down.
So I found myself sat in the front of the second row with the indefatigable Tatyana. I was immediately behind the equally formidable Maria Zakharova, foreign ministry spokesperson, and more to the point behind her still more formidable bank of hair.
Lavrov spoke for over an hour, and with the fluency one expects of him, on the arrival of a multipolar world. The Global South and East, he said, were no longer content to be extras in somebody else’s system; new centres of gravity in Eurasia, Africa and Latin America were insisting on their own interests and their own resources. The West treated this as an assault on a birthright rather than as history moving. Sanctions, pressure and the stirring of conflicts were the methods of a dominance that could feel itself slipping.
The UN Charter, applied in full and as a whole rather than picked over for convenient articles, already contained the only workable law of a world of equals: sovereign equality, non-interference, the settlement of disputes without the minority claiming the right to dictate. Reality, he suggested, was forcing even those who had never much believed in that equality back towards the Charter, because the alternative was a permanent emergency in which rules were what the powerful said they were.
Lavrov then answered questions for over a further hour. Unfortunately those asking the questions were the participants in an international seminar for young diplomats that, for some reason, was also taking place in Ekaterinburg. The questions were therefore achingly dull, from young careerists representing the interests of their countries. The tedium was broken occasionally by Lavrov losing patience, but there were a couple of points of real interest to me.
The first was that Lavrov went out of his way to mention Scottish Independence. He mentioned again, as he had to the Ambassadors two days earlier, that the Russian attitude to Scottish Independence was governed by the principle of self-determination as specified in the UN Charter, and that Russia rejected the hypocrisy of Western powers which asserted the principle of self-determination over Kosovo, but advanced the principle of territorial integrity against it when it came to Crimea.
Lavrov went straight on from this point to say that Russia thought UN structures were correct and in general opposed substantive UN reform, but the position of the P5 on the Security Council was interesting. The UK was obviously not the great Imperial power it had been in 1946, and Africa and Latin America were badly under-represented. He mused on this specifically in the context of his immediately preceding remarks on Scottish Independence.
As I have spent the last two years briefing Russia’s most senior diplomats on the question of Scottish Independence and specifically its opening up the question of the UK security council seat, I was obviously thrilled to hear Lavrov voluntarily go there.
Lavrov also spoke of Western illegal interception of Russian oil, and of the legally empty use of the term “shadow fleet”. He narrated the story of the oil tanker seized after its Cameroonian registration was revoked under the pressure of Western powers, while the vessel was at sea. Margarita afterwards noted that Lavrov had spoken in the identical language to me just before on this incident. I said that we were both quoting my blog post. I had not merely published the story, it was I who had researched it and discovered what had happened in Cameroon regarding UK and French aid threats. Lavrov did not namecheck me, but he did separately namecheck John Mearsheimer, a sign that alternative media does count in Russia.
Yet again Yana and her team were hosting me for dinner, with Ilya having finally given up and Evgeny taking over the vodka toasting role. There was no reticence in talking about the misfortune of the cancelled university lecture and what had caused it; though nobody seemed to know much more than I did. Ulugbek drove me back for a relatively early night, while Irina and Margarita went off to buy another suitcase to pack the great volume of gifts I had been accumulating.
When Margarita and Irina arrived the next morning, we noted that the real work of the visit had been done. There were no more meetings or speeches planned. Our first stop was at the Urals Museum of Fine Arts – where yet again Tatyana was waiting for us.
The museum highlighted its collection of fine cast ironware, and particularly a tented pavilion which had won prizes at the Paris Exhibition of 1900. I was given a tour of this by the curator who explained every item in detail. We then looked at a number of other cast iron items, all finished in a charcoal-based black paint.
The sculpture and the casting really were remarkable, and I could fully appreciate the difficulty of achieving such extremely fine detail in cast iron – and was prepared to accept that this was a world best by the local foundries at the end of the 19th century. But what I could not understand was, why? The materials for making bronze were readily available, so why this determination to do something intricate and delicate with extremely difficult cast iron?
We proceeded to look at other items of which the curator was deeply proud, in stonemasonry and local gemcraft. It was indeed impressive and enjoyable. 
We next moved on to the Church on the Blood, the cathedral built on the site of the murder of the Romanovs, after the Ipatiev mansion in the basement of which the murders had taken place was demolished in the 1970s.
The church was much prettier, and less heavy, inside than I expected, with a really pleasant colour palette throughout in light blues and yellows. The lower floor included some wonderful iconography and the actual site of the basement where they were shot, painted and illuminated in a lurid red. You could not enter this area but viewed it from a scarlet platform above. A priest intoned prayers for the dead, in which visiting women joined with wailed responses of Alleluia.
We then proceeded to the museum in the nearby Archbishop’s residence, where there were a number of interesting exhibits and photos, including an alleged telegram from Zinoviev in St Petersburg to Lenin in Moscow, which appeared shorter and more explicit than the famous Zinoviev telegram of 16 July 1918. Other items – family ration books, embroidery by the girls, a birthday card from the Tsarevich to his father – are affecting but less historically interesting.
I was left again pondering where all this Tsarism stands within Russian nationalism. The cult of the Royal Family is of course particularly centred on Ekaterinburg. Russia is not a secular society – in opinion polls around 80% of Russians describe themselves as religious, the large majority of them Orthodox but including a large Muslim minority. Religiosity is not declining, and the position of the Orthodox within Russian nationalism appears to have government support, including a strong emphasis on conservative family values. At a time when the nation is embroiled in a war and facing threats of much wider attack, that narrative is important.
I think we can say that official history designates the Bolsheviks as bad guys. When I last visited Russia I found the human rights community concerned at a possible rehabilitation of Stalin. That does not seem to have happened in any wide sense, though the achievements of the Second World War are still more central to the national narrative.
I had made one final request before departure, and that was to visit a supermarket. I wanted a normal supermarket for everyday Russians, and found one from a national chain that sits somewhere about the Morrisons market position. The car park was full, but not of new or high-end cars. I had deliberately avoided an elite supermarket.
I found it extremely well stocked, with everything that you would find in your local supermarket. Fruit and veg were priced lower than in the UK, and there was no shortage of imported exotic fruits. In dairy, there was a very good selection of locally produced fresh goods, again cheaper than the UK. Foreign brands like President and Parmalat were readily available, and seemed to me very slightly more expensive than in the UK.
There was no sign of any absences through sanctions – Lipton’s tea and soft drinks, Coca-Cola from Abu Dhabi or much cheaper Dobry Cola produced by the local ex-Coca-Cola bottler. Sanitary products and OTC medicine appeared perfectly normal. Wines were very similar to what you would find in your local supermarket, both in range and price. There were several blended and malt whiskies, a bit cheaper than in the UK. Beer ranged from 50 pence for 330 ml of a local brew, to £1.80 for a Grolsch.
The most startling exception was the meat counter, where again everything was available and very much cheaper than in the UK, perhaps half the price. In short, the majority of staples – milk, oil, cheese, meat, vegetables, local fruit – were substantially cheaper than in the UK, while other products were on balance a little cheaper.
It is also worth noting that eating out was far cheaper than in the UK. For the standard of restaurant we had been frequenting, prices were about half. It was also notable that we were, every single time, immediately offered Grey Goose vodka and French wine in restaurants. You had to positively request Russian.
It is often worth noting at this point that I witnessed absolutely no queues for fuel at garages. The streets were very clean. Housing and public buildings looked in excellent condition, with no signs of dilapidation, including in large public housing blocks. I saw no homeless person or beggar and encountered in four days of going all round the city and outside it, not one single bump or pothole. As a public good, the city appeared in far better condition than those of the UK.
We went on to an interview with a local television station, which was very enjoyable and overran from 15 to 40 minutes. We then had our final lunch together as a team, for which Tatyana rejoined us – she had been away most of the morning preparing election observation duties. I then returned to the hotel and changed into my kilt and full Highland rig. The final item on our agenda was a ballet Gala at the Opera House and performance of Le Corsaire.
Here I am arriving with Tatyana and Evgeny. I am sorry for the absence of Irina from all these photos – it was her taking them! 
This was a world premiere of a new adaptation. I am afraid to say I did not find it terribly successful. It combined a radical new treatment, with a new score, elements of modern dance, container ships, supercars, people trafficking and very dodgy racial stereotyping of Arabs, with long segments of the original ballet with original costumes, music and choreography. The effect was dissonant and largely nonsensical. The second half was very largely from the original. The professional standards in all disciplines were high, though the prima ballerina in particular appeared more at home in the modern segments.
It was the season opening gala and therefore brought out the local elite in full fig, both the Bohemian artist set and the wealthy oligarch set, the latter with a stunning display of trophy wives and girlfriends and great glitter of jewellery. I did not feel in the least out of place in my kilt, and posed with a great many people for selfies in the reception. Byron of course was a Scot, so there is that excuse.
The kilt being a great icebreaker I had any number of enjoyable conversations. One that particularly stuck with me was with a clinical psychologist whose main practice is administering polygraph tests. She said that couples frequently come to her for joint testing over infidelity or marital dispute and she always tries to persuade them not to do it. It almost never helps and never ends well, if not over the suspected event then over something else. I am obliged to say I did not meet anybody who was more impressed by the ballet than I was; Russians tend to be refreshingly candid.
But here is a thought. Here with my nationality obvious from my attire, and throughout my visit when I had met scores of people in everyday situations, I received no hostility from anybody. On the contrary I received constant kindness, hospitality and consideration. This from a population which is acutely aware that it is under missile attack with missiles supplied from the UK, and where the Western powers, including the UK, are openly and regularly threatening war.
Yet in this circumstance I did not only encounter zero personal reserve or hostility, I did not hear a single threatening or aggressive posture. Officially, Lavrov spoke of a multipolar world, support for the United Nations, the rule of international law and the rejection of violence. Nobody at any stage, including injured veterans from the Ukraine War, spoke of a desire for war or made any threat against the West. The war in Ukraine itself was not glorified but viewed as an extremely unfortunate necessity which everybody wanted to end as soon as possible.
I returned to the hotel after the ballet and packed, before they drove me to the airport. Irina and Margarita stayed with me right until I boarded the plane approaching 3am. We drank malt whisky and camomile tea which Tatyana had called to order for me before the journey. I left with real regret at parting from newly made friends, and a feeling of astonishment at the drive to paint these people as enemies, barbarians and people we must kill.
I have given an honest account of what I saw and what I did. Yes, I was on an official programme, but I encountered scores of people, many of whom were not following an official narrative. I acknowledge that I did not have a chance to look at issues like conscription, or the ability of opposition political parties to contest the elections.
But then you do not need me to do that. The BBC, the Guardian, Reuters, CNN are all present and travel and report across Russia, and regularly bring you the propaganda picture. You can read it any time. But consider this. Russia Today and Sputnik Radio were closed down in the UK, totally. There are no Russian journalists free to operate in the UK unless they write the British government line, while British journalists, including the totally hostile, still operate in Russia. I could read the super-Russophobic Guardian in Russia anytime, with no VPN. Those facts in themselves are sufficient to destroy the simplistic narrative of “free West vs authoritarian Russia”, and should at least make you realise that there is more to see and hear than the Western narrative.
As Western elites struggle to hold the consent of their populations during a period of declining standards of living for ordinary people and a massively expanding wealth gap to the billionaire class, they need an enemy to focus hatred and resentment away from themselves. They use immigrants at home and Russians abroad. I just spent a few days with those Russians, and could not have met more warm, human, decent and well-motivated people. I met with kindness and consideration even when I didn’t fit entirely into their agenda. I encountered no xenophobia, no hate and no extremism, and absolutely no desire for war.
Russian people are like us. They want peace, happiness and a decent society for their children to grow up in. They have the same problems as the rest of us in facing up to the excesses of late stage capitalism. They too like us struggle against the authoritarian instincts of a political elite.
Russians are not our enemy. Do not let people try to convince you that they are.
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Hi Craig, over the years you have proved to be a thoughtful critic of the failings of western and capitalist governments : Neoliberalism, Zionism and the greed that has brought us to the verge and possibly beyond of climate breakdown. But a human rights conference in Russia?! Who are you trying to kid? It’s rather a case of out of the frying pan, into the fire, wouldn’t you say?
Another thing. You accuse the billionaire classes of distracting attention away from inequality by stirring up russiaphobia, but fail to point out that Donald Trump, the oligarchs’ president, is pro putin, anti Ukrainian, and that others in his entourage, including Musk and Vance, are anti European, anti EU and routinely exaggerate the UK s social problems to lend succour to the UK far right. The west has many problems, but if you think Russia is better, well, let’s just say I think you’re mistaken.
Do you honestly think that Trump is pro putin, anti Ukrainian ? You know this is the person who just signed off on more punishing sanctions against Russia and who is continuing to supply arms to enable the head crook in nazistan to strike deep inside Russia.
Stevie Boy
September 22, 2026 at 16:57
Trump seems totally under Putin’s influence. Blackmail or a psychological kink?
Trump also has a grudge against Zelenskiy for not collaborating with some anti-Biden plot.
“Trump seems totally under Putin’s influence. ”
but then anyone who is not a frothing Russophobe seems totally under Putin’s influence to you.
It is a pernicious myth that the ills of the world are the fault of a few evil people in charge and, if we could only get rid of them, we could advance to the sunlit uplands of peace and prosperity. In reality, the people at the top are the product of the system that put them there. Nine times out of ten, replacing them changes nothing, as the replacement of Starmer with Burnham demonstrates. The system is still the same, so the product is still the same. Why is that? Because the system selects, promotes, and metabolizes only those whose psychological profiles can execute the systemic mandate without flinching.
Well, that is why I set out the circumstances right upfront so you could form your judgement on that from the beginning.
Human rights in Putin’s Russia???
The poet Jenia Berkovich is serving a 6 year sentence for writing anti- war poetry.
The old Craig would have stood outside her prison in protest.
The new Craig apparently prefers junketing
with apparatchiks.
Putin is responsible for more deaths in Europe than anyone since Stalin. This fact does not seem to trouble the majority of the contributors to this blog including Craig.
I do not think any part of the article suggests that Russia is “better”. I do not think there is any evidence to suggest Trump is pro Putin – on the contrary Trump is not pro anyone bar himself. In any case what Trump presents does not seem to stop the underlying US long term goal of achieving regime change in Russia and its Balkanisation. USA is still up to its hilt in helping Zelenski to prolong the conflict in one way or another with that long term goal in mind. In the same way that it continues to plot long term and incrementally against China. Trump’s posturing actually helps more than hinders deep state USA activities in pursuit of those goals as it is covering them up quite well.
Thanks, Craig, a most interesting read, including the rather mysterious Yana and her disappearing act. It reminds me of time spent in Russia, with the earnest, serious and often very well educated civic and bureaucratic class. That attitude and background, whatever the political shortcomings, is so refreshing when you compare it to the careerist, money-grubbing and often poorly educated or informed class of officials we seem to be saddled with (luckily there are still some exceptions). But that sense of moral purpose and the belief in institutions like international law – however threadbare and sneered at they are here – feels relatively sane in comparison to the political climate of gangsterism Trump and Netanyahu represent. Of course Putin isn’t exempt either, but the most disheartening thing is your evidence of the withdrawal of many lower lever links to research and development – all of which are clearly dual benefit to both sides. Such an unnecessary, mean and self-harming policy.
The Foreign Office will be quietly gnashing their teeth that you haven’t followed the prescribed line, and have given us a glimpse of a society we are generally uninformed about. Of course it isn’t perfect, and no doubt you saw it from a rather privileged perspective, but it is clear that ordinary citizens everywhere have a more in common than the oligarchs and plutocrats who are destroying our world would have us believe.
Do keep up the reportage when you get these opportunities.
“but the most disheartening thing is your evidence of the withdrawal of many lower lever links to research and development – all of which are clearly dual benefit to both sides. Such an unnecessary, mean and self-harming policy.”
It does seem to me that bureaucratic small-mindedness is very much a British tradition, hence the expression “jobsworth”.
Somewhat off topic, but capitalist scumbag and tax “exile” Ratcliffe says he’s shutting down his industrial operations in Hull (https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cw305ynd69n6o), blaming soaring gas prices. (As if ordinary humans don’t already know that.) And in what appears to be a total coincidence (yeah, right) Burnham addresses the problem: not by going to the nearby source of plentiful, cheap gas–Russia! who are quite willing to do business–instead, he sucks up to president Whump, the source of Imperial Evil. Russia might well demand that the UK stop supplying weapons to the Ukronazis, who seem more intent on killing civilians than addressing the reasons for the conflict. And we can’t have that, can we? Any more than we can stop doing business with the preposterously evil zionist entity in the ME. Much better to declare octogenarian protesters a threat to the state and lock them up. BTW, I no longer live in the UK, but if I did I’d be voting for all the Celts to go their own way asap and leave Angerland to stew in its own stupid juices.
Allowing personal persecution to blind oneself to mass atrocities elsewhere is an ethical failure. When a commentator focuses entirely on domestic grievances to the point of serving as a rhetorical buffer for a far more violent enterprise abroad, the net balance of their advocacy shifts heavily toward enabling harm over reducing it.
Last night an influential Labour figure Paul Richards (Treasurer of the Fabian Society and previously a Labour special adviser) was on national television and said this:
‘I think the British will rise to greatness against Russia. We would have to lock a few people up. Pro-Russian voices. People who say there isn’t a threat. People who say don’t go to war for Burnham.’
Watch it here:
https://x.com/JamesMelville/status/2102322263877943479
This is the prevailing climate in British public life. It’s why Craig’s account of his visit to Russia has been suppressed to a more extreme extent than anything he has ever posted on Twitter/X.
‘We would have to lock a few people up. Pro-Russian voices. People who say there isn’t a threat. People who say don’t go to war for Burnham.’
“Western values” on display.
Unfortunately Mr. Murray, what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If we decry the Israeli Government funding junkets for British MPs to Israel, then we can certainly decry “Mother” Russia funding a junket for you. Let’s at least try to be consistent here… It is not merely about accepting that you are “long enough in the tooth” (in this instance, perhaps the opposite of being “brought in from the cold”?) but about the PERCEPTION of bias. You should know that, what with your journalistic standards. Yet you brush it off. Perhaps not surprising for someone who did a volta face and declared that Putin was in fact correct to invade Ukraine. Will you be doing another volta face and declare that Israel was in fact correct to invade and occupy Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, launch illegal war on Iran…? Come on now
Not only have you deployed some of the same legal precedents as Yaxley-Lennon* (and sought to defend one of his fellow far right extremists, Farage, to boot!) but now you accept junkets from his paymasters. Hmm.
*and why wouldn’t you if the tool is available
” If we decry the Israeli Government funding junkets for British MPs to Israel”
Do we? or do we decry what they say about Israel when they get back?
BTW It’s “volte face”. Volta was an Italian scientist after whom the unit of electrical potential difference is named.
We do indeed, Bayard, not just what they say but they fact that Israel paid for them to go out there in the first place.
Noted, thank you for correcting my spelling mistake.
“We do indeed, Bayard”
Is this the royal “we”, or the nanny’s “we”? cos it sure as shit ain’t the first person plural, ‘cos that would include me and I don’t.
The Neo-Nazi’s are on big trouble now as Russian forces surround Dobropoyle – one of the three strongholds of the Neo-Nazi forces in the Donbas – along with Kramatorsk, and Slavyansk, Dobropoyle makes up the main Neo-Nazi defensive line – Aleksandrovka is also in the RF’s crosshairs its an important village on strategic routes.
Lately, Azov has been avoiding fighting in the fron lines; instead, they send the mobilized folks there. One of the units in the Dobropoyle kessel is the ill-famous 425th “Skelya” regiment, the one that drew attention for their brutal treatment and torture of the grunts.
Yuri.
That’s correct – the 4th 15th and Skelya (425th Separate Assault Regiment) national Guard Brigades are now trapped (encircled) in Dobropoyle – many trapped in Dobropoyle will surrender to the RF, because they’ve been pressganged into fighting in the first place.
Republicofscotland
September 22, 2026 at 18:38
Neo-Nazis me arse.
Give it a rest Ros…
If you have evidence that Ukraine is governed by Nazis then have at it…
Otherwise….
Jk Redux
Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence announced personnel system reforms with the goal of eventually filling 30% to 50% of positions in assault and infantry units with foreign recruits. This is intended to ease the strain on domestic manpower and allow long-serving Ukrainian soldiers to rotate out of active combat. When you have to hire a foreign army to die for you, maybe it’s time to seek peace? And no, N.Koreans preventing incursions into Russia, isn’t the same
50%! At what point is it officially a multinational force?
Currently, it’s an estimated 16,000 foreign troops. Plucky Ukrainians not so much, it appears. When Russia claim they are already fighting NATO in Ukraine, they aren’t wrong.
Goose
September 22, 2026 at 22:27
About the neo-Nazi thing? Where are the Ukrainian Nazis?
Unless all foreigners are…. Nazis?
I tell you, those NSDAP guys are everywhere…
Are there any Nazis in Russia?
Were there ever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collaboration_in_the_German-occupied_Soviet_Union
Read this finally https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nazis-in-ukraine-military/
Do not give us references to Wiki, they are controlled by the Ukrainian lobby in the US/Canada.
Here’s a nice video from an event from Feb 2022, immediately prior to the Russians direct entry into the war.
https://youtu.be/FDJnDIoCkHI?is=spPpqwc7vL016Weh.
The speaker is Yehven Karas, founder/leader of neo-nazi group S14 (also C14).
He talks about Ukraine starting the biggest war in Europe for over 60 years, for Western sponsors; about how the neo-nazi element was why the Maidan coup was successful (something NNs and Ultranationalists were rewarded for with positions throughout the security establishment, and a partial normalisation of them and their ideas in previously non-extremist parties); about the new alliance of Turkey, Poland, Britain & Ukraine; utterly naively about having the most Javelins on the continent (expiring seconds it turned out)–Notice the glance to the viewers left at this point, is he checking with a minder, acknowledging the person in the room responsible; someone in the audience or the guy to his left in glasses? Could he be an involved Brit.
Yehven is now a Major and commander of the 413th Separate(?) Battalion. He was called the “happiest man in the world” by his now wife, as Ukraine burns around him and men, who have no desire to fight a war they know is not for them, are mercilessly pulled from the street every day, significantly thanks to fanatical energetic fools like him, who prostituted themselves and Ukraine to the West, seemingly in the belief they are going to outwit Global Capital and be free to build a powerful Ukrainian state that will bring “both joy and problems for the whole world” once their “certain” victory is achieved.
Thank You Yuri – for that excellent link.
Yuri K
September 22, 2026 at 23:50
That link (thanks) claims that many Ukrainian soldiers are ultra nationalist and that some display far right iconography.
That certainly doesn’t prove that they are Nazis.
Still less does it prove that the Ukrainian State is pro Nazi.
Given the shit that Russia has inflicted on Ukraine over the last 10-20 years it shouldn’t be a great surprise that some front line soldiers have adopted extreme hostility to Russia.
Not praiseworthy but not surprising.
I suppose that you would kick these soldiers out of the UA and replace them with Democratic Socialists from California?
“Where are the Ukrainian Nazis?”
“I see no ships”. Try looking with the eye that isn’t blind.
“That certainly doesn’t prove that they are Nazis.”
Ah, I see we are in nit-picking mode now. No, it doesn’t prove that they are members of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, but the word “Nazi” has moved on from that strict definition now, like words tend to do. Try looking up what “silly” and “idiot” used to mean.
Bayard
September 23, 2026 at 17:42
So what is your up to date definition of “Nazi” in the context of a country fighting off an invasion by a Slavic neighbour whose population is three times its own?
Edgy tattoos and flags don’t quite meet the standard of intending the eradication of whole ethnic groups and pursuing world domination…
Though Yevgeny Viktorovich Prigozhin occasionally gave the impression that he was inclined in that direction…
“Are there any Nazis in Russia? Were there ever?”
Wherever the Nazis conquered, there were collaborators, most notably in Ukraine. There would have been English and Irish collaborators, too, had Germany successfully invaded the British Isles.
“So what is your up to date definition of “Nazi” in the context of a country fighting off an invasion by a Slavic neighbour whose population is three times its own?”
In the context you give, there isn’t one. You seem to be starting from the viewpoint that it’s OK to be a Nazi, so long as you are fighting Russians. Well, I know now what side you would have been on in WWII, you and that “Слава Україні!” guy.
“Edgy tattoos and flags don’t quite meet the standard of intending the eradication of whole ethnic groups and pursuing world domination…”
Why have we suddenly shifted the subject to Israel?
@Yuri K et al.
Another Marta Havryshko from last week:
“Volodymyr Zelensky: The Jewish Face of a Far-Right Renaissance in Ukraine
How Neo-Nazis Gained Military Power and Legitimacy Under Ukraine’s Jewish President”
https://martahavryshko.substack.com/p/volodymyr-zelensky-the-jewish-face
+
“Rabbis and nazis
Anti-semitic Azovites vs philosemitic Christofascists?”
at least his previews are for free.
https://eventsinukraine.substack.com/p/rabbis-and-nazis
p.s. Thanks for the RS link
JK redux:
Rather not tempt us.
Or you’ll be drowning in evidence 😂
AG
September 24, 2026 at 01:01
Bayard when asked:
“So what is your up to date definition of “Nazi” in the context of a country fighting off an invasion by a Slavic neighbour whose population is three times its own?”
replied:
“In the context you give, there isn’t one. ”
Enough said.
Every country has a few neo-Nazis.
https://www.counterextremism.com/blog/violence-oriented-right-wing-extremist-actors-russia-wagner-group-part-1
The propaganda meme with Ukraine is that they have much more influence than they really do but that’s part of the rationale necessary to excuse the illegal and unprovoked invasion.
“but that’s part of the rationale necessary to excuse the illegal and unprovoked invasion.”
Do try to keep up to date. The war against fascism ended in 1945 with the Russians victorious. Nazism has never been cited as a reason for the invasion, except as a straw man for people like you. You’re gonna need a bigger bale.
“Bayard when asked:
“So what is your up to date definition of “Nazi” in the context of a country fighting off an invasion by a Slavic neighbour whose population is three times its own?”
replied:
“In the context you give, there isn’t one. ”
Enough said.”
Sorry, I was forgetting that you struggle with English. To clarify: I said that because the two things are orthogonal. The context as given has no effect on the subject that the context is supposed to refer to. It’s like asking, “So what is your up to date definition of “Nazi” in the context of a ocean liner that’s just hit an iceberg at speed?”, or “So what is your up to date definition of “Nazi” in the context of a children’s school that has just been destroyed by a bomb with all the children in it?”. Unless the definition is variable depending on the context, in which case the definition is meaningless, the question itself is meaningless. It’s like the old trope about one man’s terrorist being another man’s freedom fighter. Again, the two things are orthogonal. Someone can be a terrorist and a freedom fighter, a terrorist, but not a freedom fighter or a freedom fighter but not a terrorist. Unless there is a suggestion that it’s OK to be a terrorist, so long as you are also a freedom fighter, then there is no connection between the two. The same applies to the definition of Nazis and the context in which they operate.
Nazism has never been cited as a reason for the invasion,
Really? I thought Putin himself said the joint aims were to ‘demilitarize’ and ‘deNazify’ Ukraine. Is that something else he got wrong.
Ah, threats from the establishment – I must be doing something right.
God bless you Craig.
I read this all, which took a while – all worthwhile. Although I disagree with you on left politics and some other matters, I believe you to be honest, the best of sorts and on the same side in most things that matter. I’ll post a link to this in a couple of places.
“Or do I annihilate the Islamic Republic and do it quickly…”
Trump speaking at the UN today.
Imagine the international media and political furore had Putin made such a statement about Ukraine, before the UN. And Burnham sits alongside Trump as if this is all perfectly normal. Burnham also stated, “Iran can never become a nuclear power!” Why not? And why is for the UK, busily upgrading its own nuclear deterrent, to forbid a much larger nation – both in terms of land area and population – from acquiring that which we dubiously insist is vital for our own protection? White colonial-era type arrogance writ large, isn’t it.
The fact this threatened genocide is priced in, as just ‘Trump being Trump,‘ is atrocious.
In 2021, during Biden’s term, when Trump looked politically finished due to mounting legal problems, Burnham tweeted:
Any UK politician who gave Trump the time of day should be ashamed right now.
And then they wonder why there is declining trust in politicians.Amusing how people using it in replies. I suppose he deserves some credit for not deleting it, although maybe it was an oversight.
Our politicians are, rightly, obliged to be pragmatic
Burnham knows now, as he did earlier, that DT is an untrustworthy loathsome person who should be in gaol. But he’s the president, we have to do the best we can.
What’s the difference between pragmatism and just being a puppet ?
Burn’em is, apparently, the PM. He represents the UK and it’s people. He needs to grow a spine and some balls and stop embarassing us on the world stage. Not a leader, not even a manager, Trump recognises his vassals.
I guess though it’s difficult to change the habits of a lifetime for Andy Pandy.
“White colonial-era type arrogance writ large, isn’t it.”
Yes. Same attitude to the natives. Same forked tongues. Same sense of entitlement. Conditioned at the same schools even.
Similarly apparently it’s fine for Britain to supply one side in the war but as wicked as wicked can be for Iran and North Korea to supply the other.
Whitehall mentality in a nutshell:
We rule the world, the world we rule!
Amusing how they think the UK should set the rules globally for AI too. This , despite not having any major fabrication facilities or infrastructure, or competitive frontier model sovereign AI company. “We can be the bridge between the US and China” they say – why the hell would anyone want the UK in that role? Nvidia wanted to buy IP developer, UK-based ARM at one point and the govt intervened to prevent it.
Trump said he wanted ASI renamed just ‘SI’ because he doesn’t like the ‘artificial’ part. SI is already used for the International System of Units (SI) is the globally accepted standard metric system used for science, commerce, and everyday measurements. He changed the commonly known and understood US Department of Defence (DoD) for the Department of War (DoW) risking confusion with the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Idiocy reigns.
“SI is already used for the International System of Units (SI) is the globally accepted standard metric system used for science, commerce, and everyday measurements. ”
Ah, but the US doesn’t use SI units, so that’s a non-problem.
Brian Red
Have you noticed how Burnham has speech disfluency; the constant use of ‘err’ to signal he’s not finished talking yet and is just gathering his thoughts? You’d think someone would say to him, it would better to have silent pauses than constantly saying “err”.
Piers Morgan is Mr Creepo – fawning to Donald Trump and now to the moneybag-taking British “king”:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cr93e2nz0281o
Mind you, Morgan did get arsy about his former hero Trump when he thought Trump was on his way down, so perhaps he’ll clean his brown tongue where the British royal family are concerned, some day.
Was it Private Eye that described Morgan as someone whom even his friends think is a c***?
Monarchy does this to people : makes them cloyingly servile. Even a cynical, combative old hack like Piers Morgan.
He’s frequently joked publicly on his exclusion from official honors lists, noting he has never been offered titles such as a knighthood or an MBE.
The argument for why monarchy should be abolished:
Throughout most of history, monarchy was rarely consensual and was instead built on coercion, military power, and hereditary privilege. While some early societies practiced forms of elective monarchy, the vast majority of historical monarchs ruled without the explicit consent of the governed.
To justify ruling without popular consent, monarchs historically relied on several powerful mechanisms:
Divine Right: Rulers claimed their authority came directly from God, making them unaccountable to their subjects.
Military Might: Control over the military and police forces allowed monarchs to suppress dissent and enforce obedience.
Feudal Obligations: Society was structured around rigid hierarchies where peasants traded labor and obedience for physical protection.
A fascinating and enlightening read – I look forward to comments from a friend in Moscow, to whom I will send this article.
… a little later (having forgotten to hit ‘send’)… it’s apparently not reachable there. Is this blog hosted in the UK? Apparently it’s not getting out. I doubt it’s blocked at ghe Russian end.
That’s one of the ironies. This blog has been blocked in Russia for nearly 20 years because of the things it says about Alisher Usmanov! But everyone in Russia just gets it with a vpn.
Not true. I’ve read your blog from Russia since I discovered it (do not remember when but a while ago). Russians do not bother with small fish like you, they only block big stuff like FB or youtube.
That’s strange Yuri/ I have had reports of it being blocked for many years, and I could not access it when in Russia. I could access the Guardian. Are you sure you are not using a VPN?
Also I asked my hosts if they could get it unblocked. They didn’t come back to me and say it isn’t blocked.
Blog uses Cloudfare I think access to which was blocked in Russia last year.
New laws allow the authorities to monitor user traffic and penalize people for reading banned material.
Little wonder your hosts didn’t want to talk about it.
Apparently, Russian ISPs are throttling certain sites and services such as cloudflare by limiting data transfer to 16Kb thus whilst not blocked per-se, this breaks the functionality of many websites.
https://blog.cloudflare.com/russian-internet-users-are-unable-to-access-the-open-internet/
I also checked at this site and it seems to show that https://www.craigmurray.org.uk is not blocked. Scroll down the page linked below and you can check any site’s accessibility from Russia. I am out of my depth here so best get your website people onto it. Perhaps there is a way to make it more accessible from Russia.
https://enterno.io/en/articles/cloudflare-in-russia
“New laws allow the authorities to monitor user traffic and penalize people for reading banned material.”
Now, now, Pears, you know that nobody takes any notice of unevidenced assertions, least of all from you. Can’t you even come up with a link to the BBC or the Daily Express?
Any such blockings in Russia are recent developments. Nothing was blocked before the SVO.
I was first alerted to Craig’s blog at the time of the Salisbury poisonings. At that time it was as easily accessed here in Moscow as, say, The Guardian.
However on my computer I now need a VPN to reach the site. But that also applies to Alexander Mercouris, George Galloway and Sebastian Sas who are regularly translated on Russian platforms. As indeed is Craig occasionally, so I don’t think there is anything personal in it.
ahahahaha check the pipsqueak armchair critics n ” reasonable criticism ” anal retentives freaking-out ’cause Craig accepted a legitimate invitation by * our * longest Brit State designated * enemy * to speak at an event, and coming back to report…..REVELATION…….turns out Russian people are JUST LIKE ANY OTHER PEOPLE!!! Come on down Moses, your time has come.
Gotta laugh, we’re currently witnessing the most comprehensive, morally disgusting & potentially catastrophic propaganda exercise in any of our lifetimes – set to make even the ‘ Saddam’s got WMD ‘ *sexy dossier *of utter pish look like a bit of innocuous pranking: eg fckn ( should be ) laughable chinless snob Jacknob Pees Mogadon giving it ” round up the enemies within ( eg anyone who’s ever read a novel by Dostoevsky or listened to music by Stravinsky ) and sling ’em in an Internment Camp, ideally somewhere in Jockland “; the MSM is spewing out torrents of Russophobic bile and war with Russia being *normalised* and made to seem inevitable, like it’s ‘ just one of those things ‘, like ‘ oh, it’s been a wee while eh? must be time for another war, put the kettle on, love ‘.
All that shit going on and there are people on here who have the gall to find fault with Craig going on a fact-finding mission and subsequently writing about his experience and impressions of his trip with his characteristic honesty and perceptive observations, and at a time when not a single Russian journalist is even allowed to work in the UK let alone have the access to relevant spokespeople here as their West equivalents do in Russia. Imagine a Russian journalist being invited to attend a talk in the UK by the equivalent of Sergei Lavrov ( aye, there is no UK – or West generally equivalent to that vastly experienced, thoughtful and intelligent diplomat; who makes his supposed counterparts in the West look exactly like the clueless, schoolboy/girl bluffers that they are ). It just wouldn’t happen.
Here’s a few tips for the sidelines-snipers……if you can’t stand to hear ANYTHING positive about Russia/Russian people, if it makes you uncomfortable to learn that the latter are just as ‘ flesh & blood ‘ vulnerable and fallible as any/everyone else; maybe just stick to reading/watching the UK MSM and a-la McLuhan slip into your biases and prejudices like you do a warm bath – don’t forget your ducks.
Try pressing your fingers in your ears a bit harder if you happen to encounter seditious speech, eg ‘ Russia does not want/need to invade Europe ‘, whilst simultaneously shouting ‘ na na nana na ‘ REALLY LOUD!
Do something really positive, don’t wait for Conscription, march you own sons n daughters down to the nearest Recruitment Office n get ’em all signed-up n ready to defend our precious Oligarchy, in, eh……where is it again? …..ah right, that gaff the Guardian not so long ago named ‘ the most corrupt country in Europe ‘ oh, you mean Ukraine? yeah, that’s the place; I hear they’re also *quite* passionate about their fanatical Anti-Semite National Hero – Bandera by name, and prone to a bit yr common-or-garden Fascism, eg torchlight parades n shades of ye olde Nuremberg Rallies of yore n burning alive those they consider insufficiently Ukrainian/sufficiently Russian. Def sounds like a country worth dying for, huh?
Get to it lads. Their Country Needs Your Young. chop chop
If the West is interested to move the average russian from supporting the politics of Putin why on earth did Ukraine then intensify the drone barrage against Russia on the days leading up to the election? Why did the EU and Nato past weeks intensified their scaremongering and threats against Russia? What kind of sick political message is that to the average russian voter? The behavior of the Ukraine/EU/Nato of course only played right into the worldview Putin want to project for the russian people!
It is dangerous how little foresight the West have. There seems to be a strong Dunning–Kruger effect at play within the EU leadership, believing they know what is going in the world and believe they are taking the correct measures, meanwhile their behavior only makes them weaker and make the world more dangerous.
‘They’ live happily in their little bubble where everything they believe is echoed back at them by their comrades as they listen to their favorite tunes from whining Ed and read about equality from honest Jason in their fossil free electric mansions. All their intelligence is artificial and comes via the rantings of the orange narcissist pedo. War is peace …
We are doomed as a society, we can’t patch this up, we need to start from scratch.
‘ We are doomed as a society, we can’t patch this up, we need to start from scratch.’
Agreed on the first and second parts of that sentence; not sure about the third. That is…..( n sorry if I’m taking you a bit too literally, Stevie ) we can never really ‘ start from scratch ‘ , as we can never unknow what we know – despite what appears like overwhelming evidence to contrary re the War Psychosis currently and the absolute horror of actual war being extensively documented, for centuries. But that doesn’t contradict the initial statement, for the simple reason that those driving the war madness will not themselves be fighting/dying in it, nor any of their family members. * They * know all right, but for the reasons just given, don’t care.
To really start from scratch would require, among other prerequisites, returning to pre- Global Capitalist times – and without re-establishing Feudalism, obv; because pretty much all of our socio/political ills stem from that/this system. At least superficially they do. I reckon the more fundamental error/problem is the underlying dominance of the Materialist Paradigm, of which Capitalism is more a symptom than a cause. And nowhere is that issue being addressed, at least in political discourse.
No, we can’t go back to some fantasy prelapsarian golden age ( I know yr not suggesting such a thing ) before Materialism/Capitalism ruled the World – as it undoubtedly does now – but we absolutely DO need to find alternative paradigms to the in-every-way exploitative, Ecocidal, humanity-crushing lunacy that we have – more-or-less – had imposed on us and which we have been unable/unwilling to admit is failing us – and the planet – to evermore drastic degrees. And even if we do so admit, there are less and less means to do anything to change it.
Nothing short of a revolution in consciousness will suffice. Being honest about what’s going on is the first step.
” we ” are def not the good guys anymore – if we ever were in the first place?
“for the simple reason that those driving the war madness will not themselves be fighting/dying in it, nor any of their family members. ”
Nor those supporting it, it seems. However back in the days when it was the custom for the king or chief to lead his troops into battle, there weren’t noticeably less battles. I think Scotland lost one or was it two kings that way.
At least ten Scottish kings died in battle and as many were murdered.
Good points. As I think the article shows, Western policy appears intent on creating the monster in order to be able to fight it.
‘Creating the monster so as to pretend to fight it’ might be nearer the mark. Burnham’s pronouncements on ‘disinformation’ are really just an updating of the heresy laws which saw witches ducked in the pond, the better to fight evil.
At the moment the UK is around 3,000 miles from the front line so posturing is relatively easy, a bit like football fans throwing insults at the away support from the safety of their own terracing. Despite the cheerleading of our warmongers there does not seem to be any appetite amongst the support to meet up for a ‘ruck’ after the game. But a few reputations can be enhanced and a fair bit of money collected, as Tommy Robinson discovered from his days as a football hooligan.
“If the West is interested to move the average russian from supporting the politics of Putin..”
I don’t think the West wants to move the average Russian, who is powerless. They wish to help Ukraine fight off an invader. I say ‘help’ because Ukraine is responding with ingenuity as well as patriotic heroism to their situation. Here is a BBC report about their race to develop new defenses against faster drones.
Слава Україні!
“They wish to help Ukraine fight off an invader. ”
If they really wanted to do that, they would have insisted that Ukraine make peace in 2022. Please explain why it is a better course of action (not for you, obviously, you aren’t going to be in the firing line, you have the reckless courage of the non-combatant, but for yer average Ukranian male) to fight an invader and lose thousands of lives than to negotiate with them, so they go back to the country they came from.
Bayard
September 23, 2026 at 17:58
“negotiate with them, so they go back to the country they came from.”
The Putin regime has no intention of “going back to the country they came from” without taking large chunks of Ukraine with them.
“The Putin regime has no intention of “going back to the country they came from” without taking large chunks of Ukraine with them.”
I am afraid that is part of the alternate reality in which you live. As I live in the real world and not planet Russophobia, then there is not much point discussing this further. My leg is wet enough already.
M.J
For the russian voter the acts by the West and Ukraine of course means alot. It is a blunder, from the side of the West, to carry on like they do proving Putin is right – that the West is not only out to get him but Russia as such, that is also the inevitable sentiment when Ukraine, with their drones, keep striking civilians and civilian sites like gas depots, hurting the average russian citizen.
One could exclude every real or alleged poltical suppression inside of Russia, nevertheless, a pro-Western Russian candidate will struggle hard to win votes with a pro-western ideology.
“I don’t think the West wants to move the average Russian, who is powerless. ”
I’m glad you agree that the West doesn’t give a shit about the average Russian. Nor the average Ukranian, obviously, or it wouldn’t have fomented a war that has killed so many of them. It does make you wonder what the point is of the war in Ukraine.
Partly it’s for political & propaganda reasons to shore Zelensky up internally and secure more aid that’ll be promptly used up, stolen or pissed-away far ahead of schedule. Prompting another round of screeching, begging & boasting.
Plus you’re trying to analyse the thought processes of an egomaniacal tyrant loaded off his tits on cocaine and a comprador clique of.degenerate spivs, liberast cargo-cultists and Bandera-Nazis.
China would be crazy to agree an inspection framework for AI, as the U.S. would just cheat. Does anyone think inspectors are going to be going into GCHQ and the NSA ,to see if they are abiding by the spirit of any AI International treaty? When it comes to democratic accountability, the U.S and UK govts keep their people in the dark and winner-take-all (FPTP) two-party systems – where each party covers for the sins of the other – mean there is no enduring electoral consequences for criminal malfeasance or lying.
Take the example of chemical weapons and the OPCW.
Andrew Hugg, a U.S. Army Branch Chief of Nuclear and Chemical Surety, was placed on administrative leave earlier this year(2026). He claims the U.S. still possesses nerve agents, in violation of the OPCW, and says a US Army chemist recently died from exposure.”We (US Army) have placed Mr Hugg on administrative leave while we conduct a thorough investigation into this matter,” US Army spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said in a statement to OMG.
Reports also alleged that Hugg was escorted out of the Pentagon after a video of him boasting to a woman over a meal, was released.
He also alleged that the US military used nerve agents, saying they have such material in their Maryland facility.
“So with this chemical [Sarin], this nerve agent… Your lungs won’t work. Your head won’t work. Nothing will work,” Hugg said.
“But we have it here. It’s here in Maryland. It’s in Maryland,” he added.
He then describes an alleged incident involving a lab chemist who was allegedly exposed to such chemicals after not wearing the required protective gear.
“She’s a lab chemist. She’s supposed to wear all this gear and she’s like, ‘I don’t like it.’ She just wore, like, Crocs and her own clothes. So it soaked in her clothes and it soaked through on her skin… So, she could literally start touching stuff and other people would touch, like, a door and then people would die,” he added.
If the US failed to meet their obligations under the OPCW while accusing Russia. Isn’t it possible the ‘novichok’ evidence, was in fact something US made and smuggled in, in say a diplomatic bag?
And how much of a disappointment is Burnham already.
I suppose it was too much to hope for someone who’d radically change our foreign policies. But someone a tad less gullible and a bit more skeptical of securocrat assertions about Russia, China and Iran would have been a huge improvement. MI5 have recently been rebuked or repeatedly lying under oath, to protect a machete-wielding neo-Nazi informant. Has Burnham, or any politician, even mentioned the fact?
Burnham stood outside No.10 promising the most radical changes in 40-years, and he’s basically already slumped back into bland, continuity Starmerite centrism. Hugging Zelensky yesterday, as if the massive corruption scandals, involving sums up to $100 million engulfing Ukraine and Zelensky-appointee close-associates, are somehow all imagined or fake news. And prattling on at the UN, about the Russian threat and Russian disinformation. It’s convenient for politicians to label stories about their possibly corrupt dealing, as Russian disinformation, as von der Leyen does, when asked for transparency around her Pfizer contract negotiation, text messages.
Burnham’s Ministry of Truth
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/sep/23/andy-burnham-national-centre-russian-disinformation-deepfakes
The UK is going in the wrong direction. We actually need a ‘free speech’ first amendment equivalent to protect people expressing opinion, and to improve civil liberties for citizens against state harassment and security state overreach. Not more empowerment of the most regressive, reactionary forces in the UK.
Politicians stating we are in an information war with Russia and China, I’d imagine creates howls of derision in Moscow and Beijing, “what are they smoking?” they’ll ask. “We aren’t even doing anything, and these clowns are so paranoid, they’re destroying themselves with imaginings; accusing each other”.
Can anyone think of one planted piece of disinformation, by Russia, that has got widespread traction in Europe?
Can’t think of one single story.
Is there skepticism about state narratives, with explanations provided for that skepticism, absolutely. But that’s not Russian disinfo. Like how the British Army Chief Nursing Officer Alison McCourt CBE, just so happened to be in the precise location,at the precise moment the Skripals fell ill; a one-in-a -million probability, that no one thought to even mention, until her daughter slipped up and revealed the fact. Stretching credulity or what?.
Staff at this new centre will be sat around saying err, I can’t find any disinfo, so what are we supposed to be countering boss? Dunno, go to Craig Murray. org and hassle someone on there. Okay boss, on it, *signs in as JK redux*. /S
The fact that Alison McCourt happened to pass the Skripals on that day was almost certainly just a coincidence* Goose. If need be, the British security services could have had more than enough medically trained personnel on hand to attend to the Skripals before the paramedics arrived, and got them to give false names & addresses to the police; they didn’t need to employ the Army’s Chief Nurse. In any event, she didn’t do that much since at that point Sergei wasn’t in that bad a condition (he was capable of standing). It was actually another passer-by, Dr Helen Ord, who saved Yulia’s life by using a suction device to remove secretions from her airway, preventing her from choking to death.
As I keep mentioning, anyone who’s interested in what happened to the Skripals (as well as Dawn Sturgess, Charlie Rowley & Nick Bailey) in 2018 should read this:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/forums/topic/the-salisbury-poisonings-episode-was-all-staged/page/6/#post-103404
The truth is highly likely much worse than most people on here think.
* Bizarre coincidences do happen. For example, did you know that two out of the three tallest Americans ever to play in the NBA were either killed or rendered quadriplegic in completely separate cycling accidents in Utah in 2021? Well now you do.
Re-lapsed Agnostic
If the skeptics are right. It’d be so serious though, for all involved, with deep international ramifications for the UK’s trustworthiness. I think, if a PM were told it was a ‘framing’ exercise, they’d simply cover it up to protect the agencies and UK’s international reputation. And the UK doesn’t have a written constitution and proper judicial oversight to overrule the executive and order a full criminal investigation if, say a whistleblower emerged. This is why there is so much resistance to a written constitution – the current uncodified arrangements, permit criminality and cover-ups in the ‘national interest’ whatever they think that is.
If the doubters are correct, it would only emerge in the event of a revolution. Some secrets are simply too dangerous, too dark to emerge, because, they’ll undermine the U.S.’s and UK public perception of ourselves, as the ‘good guys’.
The same people may be deciding on whether we have a nuclear war with Russia.
Thanks for your reply Goose. In the unlikely event that a whistleblower does emerge, where would he or she find an outlet for their revelations? The UK MSM wouldn’t touch it – and might well inform MI6, leading to whistleblower perhaps getting the same treatment as poor Gareth Williams. Of course, they may be able to find an audience with our host (and convince him that Dawn Sturgess was killed with Novichok without repeatedly being called ‘fucking stupid’), but then the authorities could just dismiss them as a fantasist, along the lines of the fantasists our host has entertained in the past, such as Donald Morrison of Benbecula.
Nevertheless, some superlunary justice may be at work. For example, the head of MI6 at the time of the Skripal incident, Sir Alex Younger – who’ll very likely have signed off on the placing of the perfume bottle in the bin – died a few months ago of pancreatic cancer (which is fairly horrible) at the age of just 62. His death, untimely as it was, wasn’t as untimely as that of his young son, who died in a motorcycle accident in Stirlingshire nine months *to the day* after Dawn applied the fatal dose of nerve agent to her skin. It seems to me that, whilst not appearing to be in any great rush, The Avenging Angel of Dawn Sturgess isn’t ****ing about.
Goose
September 23, 2026 at 11:13
I don’t think that the mods allow multiple user IDs?
So JK Redux is all there is I’m afraid….
Of course, Paul Mason is in favour.
I’d imagine many who work in these agencies will be concerned about a public backlash. It’s been tried before, in East Germany, and the STASI weren’t exactly popular. I believe politicians have been completely misled as to the scale and origin of content they don’t like. Which is, in fact, domestic in origin e.g.. Crewkerne Gazette’s AI generated content, and not some nefarious Russian or Chinese plot.
X already have sketchy “Blacklists” and Visibility Filtering: practices, where certain high-profile or influential accounts were placed on “do not amplify” or visibility-filtering lists, limiting their appearance in trends or search results without user notification.
Adding another layer of officialdom, to further police social media, is outrageous.We need a written constitution to codify our rights.
A British counter disinformation centre is long overdue, and very welcome. – Emily Thornberry
A case of the cure being worse than the ‘alleged’ disease.
It’ll result in either: no one expressing opinions, or people who do, being investigated and harassed for holding dissenting views. Because actual state disinformation is so scarce, so thin on the ground, western intel agencies have long hyped the ‘covert’ and hybrid Russian threats,because the military threat, as we’ve seen in the quagmire that is Ukraine, isn’t all that scary.
Ask them to show you this ‘disinformation’ and they’lll point to some story printed in a minor Latvian newspaper five-years ago.
Stating the bloody obvious.
Who decides what’s truth ? BBC Verify and the professional liar Marianna Spring ?
This is how it works in practice:
“Brussels sourced all of its “reasons and evidence” for sanctioning the billionaire from “mass media and social media publications.” In a letter to the European Council last month … this evidence has been proven false in courts in all 27 EU member states.”
https://www.rt.com/news/646059-eu-sanctions-usmanov-france/
Guilty until proved innocent, welcome to the West.
Stevie Boy
The ‘truth’ isn’t static, it’s dynamic, as more information emerges. For example, anyone pushing the lab-leak theory during covid was accused of pushing misinformation or disinformation by these self-appointed arbiters of truth. Now it’s a widely held view among officialdom that covid emerged from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which was conducting risky ‘gain-of-function’ research on behalf of American biotech – thus, both China and the US had a mutual interest in downplaying it.
They are claiming the Kremlin spends around £1.3bn each year on manipulating information. But that figure is unsourced and it’s the entire media budget i.e. for things like RT which is worldwide. The BBC generates a total annual income of approximately £5.96 billion, according to its Annual Report and Accounts for the 2025/26 financial year, including £3.87 billion from the compulsory television licence.
Is the BBC not pushing state propaganda? When was the last time they invited Craig on Question Time, or hosted a debate on Ukraine or mentioned the corruption there? The truth is, RT probably has less editorial control freakery, than the BBC does.
The BBC argues it is fiercely independent ,while employing people like Mark Urban and Paul Mason.
“Pull the other one, it’s got bells on”
Burnham said Russia was spending more than £1 billion a year to “spread lies”, including the use of bots, fake websites and falsified articles.
He described it as an “insidious campaign” to stoke division and sow despair.
Absolute codswallop. Has he ever watched RT? For years they met OFCOM rules.
And yet, Israel DOES spend £730 million per year on PR to defend its genocide. Is that okay with Burn’em ?
“He described it as an “insidious campaign” to stoke division and sow despair.”
Can’t have Johnny Foreigner doing the job of our security services!
Funny thing is in all probability any sh*t the Russians could make up wouldn’t be worse than the actual truth these ghouls are so hellbent on hiding.
This is all about regime security as is the current war-talk with an utterly clapped-out unpreparable military.
As everything else fails and crumbles to dust, the propaganda, surveillance and secret police apparatus will be lavishly funding until even *that* becomes untenable.
The UK is sinking into a lake of its own stupidity.
He may as well announce a new centre tasked with monitoring Loch Ness for any signs of Nessie.
The UK is strugging financially and he’s chucking money away chasing Russian disinformation there’s little evidence actually exists.
Ask any politician to give you concrete examples of this Russian or Chinese disinformation, that they insist we’re being deluged with, and they’ll look at you as if you’ve asked them to explain partial differential calculus in layman’s terms.
Er, Nathan Gill, they may say after a while. But that idiot has nothing to do with online disinformation.
Has the quality of politicians ever been lower in the UK?
Russians would be rubbish at it anyway. Just like someone from the UK who maybe has a first in the Russian language, would be rubbish at interacting with and manipulating ordinary Russians.
It’s nonsense. We are expected to believe Russia is failing abysmally in Ukraine, but somehow is excellent at manipulation; forcing Europe and the UK to prop up candidates in Moldova etc. And therein lies the real reason this myth about Russia’s meddling excellence persists : It allows the EU to meddle in elections itself, to prop up pro-EU candidates who’d otherwise risk losing to various anti-EU populist parties and candidates as per Romania.
See how it works? You hype the threat to justify your own meddling.
Britain is largely deindustrialised but it does have a booming industry producing state departments and units that try to control how British people think and discuss domestic and international politics.
The trouble is, these agencies MI5, MI6 and GCHQ compete with other govt departments, like Health and Education in the spending review, so there is a perverse incentive for people like Sir Ken McCallum to hype up threats to preserve or increase their budget allocations. Once you set something up it’s hard to disband, because they fight their corner and so it will be with this silly disinfo centre.
in the Grayzone’s aricle from Kit Klarenberg, in leaked emails between Manningham-Buller and McCullum, she wished him well in the spending review.
There’s no mainstream party challenging or pushjing back either. Why don’t the Lib Dems, Greens or SNP at least ask for evidence of this Russian disinformation we’re supposedly being swamped by?
It’s the modern-day equivalent of Iraq’s WMD – everyone knew he had them and anyone saying otherwise was treated like a heretic. And then when the truth emerged, these same moronic politicians, insisted they were only repeating what they were being told at the time. This, after pouncing on anyone challenging what became known as the dodgy dossier.
For too many UK politicians, Russian bot = anyone who disagrees with me.
“There’s no mainstream party challenging or pushjing back either. Why don’t the Lib Dems, Greens or SNP ask for evidence of this Russian disinformation we’re supposedly being swamped by?”
Goose
You all but answered your own question in the above sentence – all are complicit – the Russia bad guy narrative, no matter whether there’s evidence to back it up or not – such as the drone bollocks spewed by Merz in Germany – without a single shred of evidence to back it up.
Meanwhile Burnham at the UN said that Westminster aided Moldova in its elections to stop Russian interference in them – the real truth is that over half-a-million Moldovans found it nigh impossible to vote in the election in Moldova, which is quite a lot of folk in a country with only 3.5 million population – so I take it EU and Westminster machinations returned the pro-EU puppet Sandu back into power.
Also Burnham nodded like the donkey he is at Trump – when Trump said the Chagos deal was a bad deal and he wasn’t happy with it – Trump then added something will need to be done about that deal, and again the donkey Burnham nodded in agreement – of course Trump is no stranger to breaking deals, such as the (JCPOA) deal, and Westminster didn’t get its moniker Perfidious for nothing.
No party really respects civil liberties.
If we had a written constitution, it could potentially rein in much of this endless legislative overreach. Every UK govt pumps out law after law, restricting and regulating every facet of our behaviour. In ways most European countries, with codified constitutional limits, simply don’t. If Labour could, they’d pass a law making it illegal not to walk in a straight line.
And then they wonder why so many dislike Westminster.
RoS
What will this new centre do? If it’s above board and tackling genuine disinformation(assuming it exists) why not make it all totally transparent?
Scots know all about how The Institute for Statecraft ran the Integrity Initiative, a Fife-based anti-disinformation project. It’d be negligent of Plaid, the SNP and parties in Northern Ireland not to inquire as to its role .
Much too easy, for authorities to pretend Russian, or more recently allegedly Iranians, are somehow responsible for the rise support for independence.
Goose.
I found it comical and farcical at the same time when the donkey Burnham spouted this – talk about the teapot calling the kettle black.
“In Burnham’s speech, he accused Russia of running a disinformation campaign.”
We we have to remember Goose is that Westminster and its security services are Scots enemies not Russia or Iran – its not Iran or Russia that have held Scotland fast and asset stripped it for centuries, its not those nations that committed a genocide North of the Central Belt, it wasn’t those nations that set up over 400 military bases (Cantonments) after Culloden and who could forget that piece of shit – the Butcher Cumberland – who had countless Scots murdered.
Of course many Scots don’t even know their own history.
Anyway I’d imagine the donkey Burnham – will want to use this centre to try and further discredit any comments that don’t fit the narrative, it will also be used to shut down websites that report the truth, and to ostracise and possibly arrest dissenters.
RoS
He’s a less skilled, less informed politician than Starmer was. He blundered in Northern Ireland, by saying a border poll was ‘off the table,’ as if totally at his personal discretion and not enshrined, as it is, in the GFA – How did he not know that? A truly radical Labour leader would be perfectly comfortable with Scottish and/or Welsh independence were that the settled will of the people there. It’s only British nationalists who think Scotland, Wales or N.Ireland leaving the UK is somehow a mortal threat. Basically, because they view those nations as conquered.
How insecure are those who think like that? It’s the same mob who get so upset over any mention of sovereignty of the Falklands. I personally couldn’t give two hoots if we share sovereignty with Argentina; and I think asserting sovereignty to extract oil, off the coast of Argentina, is a highly provocative step. Didn’t Gordon Brown as PM, once moot a deal to share any revenues from proven oil fields once, and iirc Argentina rejected?
He even referenced Brexit, hinting that was somehow Russia’s doing.
The fact is, Cameron staged a referendum in an attempt to heal divisions within in his own fractured party. The Tory press Sun, Mail; Express, Telegraph , Times had campaigned against the EU for decades. And the referendum had no super majority requirement. Russophobe Richard Dearlove campaigned for Brexit remember, was he secretly working for Russia too? Absurd, idiotic, revisionist stuff from Burnham, isn’t it.
The Tory press poisoned British perceptions of the EU over decades, not Russia.
Goose.
Gone are the days when leaders needed to be well informed and up to scratch, now all that matter is compliance, Burnham was a like for like swap for Starmer – all that mattered was that he do what he was told on issues that others want achieving.
On the below Goose.
” It’s only British nationalists who think Scotland, Wales or N.Ireland leaving the UK is somehow a mortal threat. Basically, because they view those nations as conquered.”
Is NI even a country, wasn’t it illegally hewn from Ireland? as for Scotland – Westminster just can’t afford to let it go, I know that sounds as though somehow Scotland has some sort of wealth, (which for me, and many many Scots it does) but if Scotland were the basket case Westminster and their puppet colonial admin at Holyrood says it is – why didn’t Westminster cut Scotland loose decades or centuries ago.
No Westminster relies on revenue from Scotland in many forms – from whisky tax – to our energy.
On the Malvinas/Falklands, the current Argentine president Milei – who very pro-Israel got a bit upset a few months back when the very same Israelis began drilling for oil off the coast of those islands – there must be oil their right enough, and Trump who is also pro-Israel has all but change his tune on those islands and their sovereignty – he upset Whitehall by saying he didn’t think England could even muster a force to confront Argentina if they took the islands back.
“If we had a written constitution, it could potentially rein in much of this endless legislative overreach.”
Ha, bloody ha. Who do you think would be writing the damn thing?
“But someone a tad less gullible and a bit more skeptical of securocrat assertions about Russia, China and Iran would have been a huge improvement. ”
and would never have got within sniffing distance of the levers of power.
“Can anyone think of one planted piece of disinformation, by Russia, that has got widespread traction in Europe?”
Well there’s that story about Russia winning on the battlefield and the front line going westward. That seems to have got serious traction. The there’s the busification myth, as if those nice Ukranians would do that to their own people. There’s all those manipulated photos showing Ukranian soldiers with Nazi symbols, that’s so obviously fake, a child (at least one with right-thinking parents) could spot it. The list is endless.
Can anyone think of one planted piece of disinformation, by Russia, that has got widespread traction in Europe?
A good point for once. Very few have actually been taken in by Russia’s claims that its economy is booming, that Ukrainian drone/missile strikes have done only superficial damage, that two of their agents took a day trip to Salisbury just to look at the spire of the cathedral or that Russia is not complicit in torture and suppressing opposition politicians.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/03/12/russia-digital-iron-curtain-falls-on-internet-freedom-protection-day
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Jwx8nC6RZo
Thanks for pointing out just how pathetic the “Russian disinformation threat” is. I take it you agree that all the things I listed, which do get serious traction, are not, actually disinformation at all.
If that’s what you want to believe.
I read your article and enjoyed it. It shows what a rich and complex world we live in. It is good to hear the typical attitude of a Russian is to want the conflict in Ukraine to end soon and not think of the general population in the UK as their enemy.
Agree totally with the UK state needing enemies at home and abroad to justify their own behaviours.
Thank you for this excellent report of your experiences in and around Ekaterinburg Craig. I enjoyed the responses you received to your slight diversion to describe the difference between Genocide as carried out in Ghaza, the west bank, Lebanon and Syria and collaterally/accidental killings during Russias war with Ukraines regime and the EU spend thrift on ever more fiendish weaponry.
The warm support for Scottish Independence from the English Yoch, especially coming from Lavrov (do I smell a ploy 😌) realising that the right to self-determination is universal, as are human rights, however different countries interpret them or enact them.
This almost seems like a repeat of when you whored yourself out to the Republicans to put pressure on Biden for Assange’s release; you wanted something and for it you were willing to lend your support to Trump, about whom you could not have been more profoundly wrong at the time (even though it was perfectly obvious then to anyone paying attention that he’s a Mobster). I say almost because while it’s clear you want Scottish Independence with Russia/China’s backing, it’s something a little too nebulous a QPQ for such whoring. Which leads me to ask: are you planning on sending your sons to be educated in (and die for) “Mother” Russia ( = Putin and his Oligarchs)…?
This wasn’t an invitation…it was an order.
What a load of total shite. Who-the-fuck-are-you to be throwing such insults at our host – ‘ whoring ‘ FFS; who are you, Mary Whitehouse’s incel grandson?
Tell us, what you ever done for the betterment of humanity – waved a * Trans * flag at a Pride Bacchanalia? wrote a ‘ strongly worded letter ‘ to the Guardian ( then instantly regretted doing so ) ? Would it have been better if Assange had stayed in jail, rather than people like Craig ( knowingly ) getting down n dirty for J.A’s benefit; whilst ineffectual prigs like you can only wring yr hands in faux-concern whilst polishing your imaginary virtue?
Craig was jailed for telling the truth; what sacrifices have you ever made in the causes of Justice & and a better world?
And why shouldn’t Craig, or anyone else ‘ want Scottish Independence with Russia/China’s backing ‘ ; are those two countries just too, well, unprogressive for you; is there maybe not enough Greenwash or TWAWash for your tastes?
Scottish Independence will not come about because the ‘ backing ‘ of Russia/China/Iran or Outer Mongolia for that matter; but it will do no harm to have a much support as possible within the U.N.
“Craig was jailed for telling the truth; what sacrifices have you ever made in the causes of Justice & and a better world?”
Come on, give him a break, he’s bravely come on this blog to make comments like that. That’s quite a lot of time given up when he could have been looking at one of those websites.
Aye, well, maybe I was a bit harsh wae yr man there, B; I mean, he probably spent a LOT of time getting his nails manicured before typing that brilliant piece of Pulitzer Prize winning whining
The only way that could shame Craig is if he shared your high regard for the Genocide Democrats and the western liberal governments who aided them in Gaza.
oh you mistake me, zoot, I don’t hold (most of) the Democrats in high regard – the recent anti-Zionist arrivals, yes, but the rest no. But somehow I very much doubt that Palestinians are thankful for genocidal Trump and the ultraEvangelical Republicans…
I don’t hold anyone threatening Nuclear Armageddon* in high regard at all, including Russian generals interviewed by Mother Russia First Mearsheimer
*for thee but not for me in the case of that General.
Like if that happens, Murray will just brush it off as “oh it’s so unfortunate but they really had no choice…”
Murray apparently holds the Russian Elite in such high regard, I expect he’ll soon be seeking Elliot and Cummings’ help in establishing Scottish Friends of Russia
NaTF,
Russians were almost annihilated as a people by a fanatic invasion from the west within living memory. Consider then how they perceived the incessant creep towards them of a vehemently hostile military alliance and then the events on their border from 2014. RlThe US and Britain have never experienced anything like what Russians suffered in WW2, yet we know how they would respond to threats and endless provocation of this magnitude.
Russia’s response was a very long time coming and it is still mercifully restrained because they know that in NATO they are dealing with genuine psychopaths. A single Russian missile hitting Berlin, London or Washington would trigger a response so overwhelming that humanity would be lucky to emerge from it at all. And yet munitions manufactured and guided by NATO powers are now routinely hitting Moscow.
Europe’s ruling elites (with no democratic legitimacy, they hold favourability ratings of 15-30%) openly state their aim of dismembering Russia. To give their intentions teeth, they have embarked on an armament drive that now exceeds the annualised increases in military spending in the years immediately preceding the First World War.
Even the tensest moments of the Cold War, which we now know put us seconds away from annihilation, provide no precedent for the scale of the folly unfolding today.
Since there is no meaningful anti-war movement in Europe, we have reached the incredible point where our main barrier to nuclear annihilation is the thinning patience of the leadership in the Kremlin. Have we ever faced a situation so brittle and been so deeply unprepared to confront it?
PS I am glad you have not forgotten what the US Democratic Party is. Even its tiny number of transgressors on Israel enthusiastically support its hardcore zionist leaders like Hakeem and Kamala. They are the thinnest application of lip gloss to the same old foul genocidal beast.
You are so totally indoctrinated by ignorance and prejudice against Russia that you actually think there would be something wrong with ‘ establishing Scottish Friends of Russia ‘ – bahahahahaha. Why-the-fuck SHOULDN’T there be such a thing?
What has Russia ever done to Scotland – or rUK for that matter. I’ll tell you as you’re obviously too far gone in your Russophobic pathology to know/admit the truth……N.O.T.H.I.N.G – that’s what Russia has ever done to Scotland/rUK: in fact Russia has long contact with and respect & admiration for aspects of Scottish Culture/History, eg Scottish Philosophers and Poets like Hume and Burns; the latter almost an adopted National Bard. Yet there you are, babbling the most barrel-scraping Propaganda 4 Idiots whilst imagining you’re making some kind of valid point.
‘ Mother Russia First Mearsheimer ‘. Christ! is there no end to your ridiculous miscomprehension? I’ll save myself time by answering that…..no, there isn’t.
I’d cease & desist if I was you. You’re embarrassing yourself
“What has Russia ever done to Scotland – or rUK for that matter.”
Well there was the Crimean War, for starters. Britain was spoiling for a war and Russia had just invaded the Danubian Principalities Britain demanded that they withdraw or there would be war. They did. Britain felt cheated as its casus belli had evaporated and declared war anyway, having hastily cobbled together a new set of demands. Fast forward 170 years or so and it looked like the Russians were going to pull the same trick in the same place and pull out before a proper war could be declared. Boris to the rescue and the wavering Ukranian government was firmly dissuaded from agreeing to any such thing. Blasted Russkies, almost depriving the UK of the opportunity to organise more glorious blunders!
Nota Tory Fanboy.
F*ck -You.
If China and Russia can help Scotland restore it sovereignty then so be it – they are not my enemy or the enemy of Scotland in general, as for our host, you couldn’t lace his boots – now piss-off.
Lear, Lear, Lear.Old king.
Hide him away. Drooling, drib..
………………………………………………….bling, chaff in the Wind.
Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia have a long history of Nazism – and the war on Russia will undoubtably be fought in Eastern European nations – nations that have a deep grudge against the Russian Bear.
“The Baltic states have secretly asked the European Commission for hundreds of millions of euros to boost their defense against drones, citing an alleged Russian threat.”
https://www.iltalehti.fi/politiikka/a/4010e5bf-cc8e-42b5-a410-26d69ab46061
“According to sources, the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has received the letter.”
They are looking for a whopping 500 million Euro’s – the same unelected von der Leyen – gave the little dictator running the failed state of Ukraine – a humongous 3.3 billion Euro’s after the little unelected dictator called her up, and asked for the money – the European taxpayer – is being robbed just as much as the US taxpayer
“The Baltic states have secretly asked the European Commission for hundreds of millions of euros to boost their defense against drones, citing an alleged Russian threat.”
“We want to be able to afford golden toilets, too”
The main news story on BBC tonight : UK military jamming other nations’ satellite signals. On what authority and for whom?
This as Russia is struggling to maintain control of its domestic “Rassvet” low-Earth orbit satellite network, with multiple spacecraft failing to reach target altitudes or deorbiting prematurely.
Failed Altitudes: None of the 16 satellites launched in July 2026 reached their expected operational orbit. Out of 32 total satellites launched by Bureau 1440 this year, only 12 have achieved sustainable operational orbits.
It the UK is involved, it’s surely a declaration of war..
This illustrates the problem with BBC reporting. They just put some information out there, then fail to ask all the obvious questions. Given the escalation risks and likely tit-for-tat response from Russia, this should be debated in parliament. Parliament may be stuffed full of party hack, useless, empty careerist suits, we know that, and no wonder it’s been sidelined as a decision making forum. But nevertheless, if some hothead at the MoD wants to stumble the UK into war by jamming satellites, it should be brought before parliament and debated.
Goose
Here’s one better than that.
“The UK has launched a new military space squadron, the No III Space Effects Squadron, to protect critical satellites and defend UK interests in space. This squadron, part of the Royal Air Force (RAF), will use advanced technology, including electronic warfare, to disrupt, degrade, and deny hostile activity targeting British interests in space. The squadron’s establishment follows a government strategy committing £7.8 billion in funding to the UK space sector up to 2030, aimed at enhancing national deterrence and supporting the UK’s space capabilities.”
Biggles in Space lol – that lot can’t even fill in pot holes or get the trains to run on time – the real question is where is the £7.8 billion quid really going to?
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/sep/23/uk-raf-military-squadron-protect-satellites-in-space
77th Brigade now in Space : combating Alien disinformation..
But wait, there isn’t any alien disinformation, you say.
Shush, they reply, that inconvenient fact never stopped us on Earth.
The BBC had someone on their news channel, talking about Burnham’s new Ministry of Truth, and when pressed for an example of foreign meddling, the best the anti-disinfo guy could come up with, was some document that got leaked in the 2019 general election, a leak attributed to Russia. That’s nearly seven years ago!
Works by dazzling other satellites preventing them viewing military bases and special forces movement. And prevents them sending signals.
Sounds like a recipe for major escalation. Jamming GPS or equivalents, over your own territory while at war and defending against incoming missiles is one thing. However, a third party, like the UK, jamming on Ukraine’s behalf is asking for trouble. The US and UK and Europe have a lot more to lose if LEO becomes a minefield : launches become impossible. SpaceX would be pretty much fucked, as would the US economy. And it’s easy for a relatively unsophisticated country with satellite launch capability, like Iran or N.Korea to sabotage by putting millions of ball-bearings into an elliptical, low-earth orbit rendering it impassable for tens of years or centuries. This combined with destroying underseas single and multi-mode fibre-optic cables, and the UK, Europe and US will be hurting.
The US delegation walks out during Iranian president’s UNGA speech.
Pure arrogance, that reflects poorly on the US. The fact 31% of Americans support this illegal, unjustified, unprovoked war is shocking. Scott Bessent, a man who you can imagine Christian Bale channelled in American Psycho, is threatening any country that allows Iranian airlines to land, with secondary sanctions. The US is already enforcing an illegal trade embargo of Iranian oil.
What have the Iranians done to the US to deserve any of this? And why does the UK and EU think it OK? The US is currently run by a bunch of psychotic ghouls, isn’t it. I’d hand over Chagos and tell the US if it wants to use Diego Garcia it can negotiate with Mauritius. Why should the UK pay $100 million per year for 99years?
“What have the Iranians done to deserve any of this?”
Kicked out the Western oil companies, it’s the inforgiveable sin.
You can just imagine Netanyahu boasting privately, “I own this guy” talking about Trump.
No American president has ever been so masterfully manipulated and wrapped around the finger of a foreign leader, to do his bidding, to the extent Trump has by Netanyahu.
And the EU offers absolutely no pushback with von der Leyen and Kallas at the helm. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Americans didn’t choose those two, as well; with the influence they exert over European heads of govt through NATO, including now the hapless Andy B.
‘ Scott Bessent, a man who you can imagine Christian Bale channelled in American Psycho… ‘. ahaha, AYE! I’ll never be able to look at that arrogant clown again without his coupon superimposed on ‘ Bateman’s ‘ during the mirror scene. In fact, I’ll now just call him Scott Bateman
Robert Hughes
Bessent managed Soros’s London office operations. He was the key strategist and leading member of George Soros’s team that shorted the British pound on Black Wednesday (September 16, 1992), helping net a $1 billion profit.
i. Bessent helped spot the weak Bank of England.
ii. Soros Fund Management borrowed billions to short sterling.
iii. The UK exited the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
iv. The trade yielded roughly $1 billion in profit
He’s utterly ruthless, clearly, and seems to almost take sadistic pleasure in the economic pain he’s inflicting on ordinary Iranians and about new measures he has planned. I can’t say what I really think of that .
Goose.
I’ve seen Bessent-Bateman described as a ‘ Former Hedge Fund Manager ‘ which can be considered a synonym for, well, ‘ American Psycho ‘; and, yes, his highly-inflated sense of his own amazingness is palpable, as is his total disregard for the lives of what he no doubt considers ” The Herd “.
Hopefully his narcissistic hubris will, eventually, be * rewarded * by a solid kick in the metaphorical goolies by karmic avenger – Nemesis.
“No III Space Effects Squadron”
Is that the “Number 3 Space Effects…” or the “no ill space effects…”
What could possibly go wrong? I mean the Russkies are never going to retaliate against our satellites, are they? Don’t be stupid!
Bayard
I wonder why they’ve chosen to not only announce they’ve got this capability, but used this capability against adversaries?
It’s odd, because the UK is probably the most secretive country in Europe with all sorts of ‘national security’ exemptions carved-out of FoI. The MoD is known for its DSMA-Notices issued over less. So why are they going public?
Could it be, they fear an adversary state overreacting to jamming, by blowing their satellite out of orbit? Intriguing.
Entirely possible, that with the rising price of diesel plus the rising bond yield (borrowing cost) interest rate, Burnham is forced out in just a few months. . .
We’re going through PMs like political speed dating.
Burnham announces the National Centre for Information Defence
We already have:
The National Security Online Information Team (NSOIT)
Government Communication Service
Media Monitoring Unit
Research, Info + Comms Unit
Defending Democracy Taskforce
Joint Election Security / Preparedness Unit
FCDO Info Threats + Influence Directorate
NCSC
GCHQ
Social Cohesion Taskforce
How much money are they wasting, chasing something that either doesn’t exist, or if it does, doesn’t justify all those? OTT much?
“How much money are they wasting, chasing something that either doesn’t exist, or if it does, doesn’t justify all those? OTT much?”
Look up “sinecure” ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinecure .
The human rights body you visited might well be earnest and serious, but it seems that culturally they’re not disposed to focussing on their own countries shortcomings, do you think? I imagine there was no display of Russian war crimes whereas there was for Ukrainian
In contrast to western human rights orgs which generally focus on western shortcomings (rightly so to hold our governments to account).
You mean like those displays of British War Crimes you see in UK Museums and public buildings? oh, wait…..trying to think if I’ve ever actually seen such national mea culpas anywhere in the UK……nope, I don’t believe I have. Never mind though, Russia should display such things because, er….look, just because, ok!
‘ Western human rights orgs ‘ might……but do Western Governments ever? And even if they did/do, does that ever stop them repeating such crimes, eg as they have for the last few years by aiding & abetting the Israeli genocide of Palestinians?
I find it’s more honest and – at least potentially – more productive to focus on the failings, lies and crimes of * our own * governments than those of their foreign counterparts: such flaws being the business of the respective foreign populations to address, not the business of meddling hypocrites who almost never act out of genuine concern, but rather out of self-interest.
GALLOWAY SUPPORTS THE RUSSIAN SMO!!!! Quick someone call Agent Rees-Mogg, get this traitor arrested, hung, drawn & quartered!!! FFS, grow up
Hi MartinU:
Mr Murray writes in his piece and I quote “If I can give you a single proof of this, it is that one of Tatyana’s team is a highly impressive international human rights lawyer who had four times been to the European Court of Human Rights on behalf of clients claiming abuse by the Russian state, and had four times won”
Hope that helps.
From a journalistic perspective, taking up a wined and dined state trip to Russia and publishing a sympathetic article…
I noticed George Galloway has also come out to explicitly support the Russian invasion of Ukraine, seemingly after some pampering.
Don’t you feel your part of the same pampering project?
What project are you part of ?
M: Being influenced is dangerous to impartiality, that’s why being very up-front about the hospitality is important.
Do you think the industrial scale hospitality to our elected representatives by Israel is equally concerning? Virtually all of them get treated to regular junkets worth many thousands of pounds. Very rarely does this get mentioned.
I suggest this is vastly more corrupting than some hospitality to a blogger who’s views are well known anyway, and do not appear to have been altered in the slightest by this trip.
From a journalistic perspective, taking up a wined and dined state trip to Russia and publishing a sympathetic article…”
What should he have done, published an article unsympathetic to Russia, even though it was not true? Is that what a “journalistic perspective” is, telling lies to please your masters?
Its about time people stood up to Trump.
” A federal judge just ordered the Trump administration to let CNN, MS NOW and Politico back into the White House, effective IMMEDIATELY
Judge Timothy Kelly ruled their press passes were pulled without “constitutionally adequate due process,” since the reporters weren’t told they could appeal until days after the passes were confiscated.
Trump banned the 3 outlets last Friday in a social media post over their “constant ‘reporting’ FAKE NEWS!” and promised “Other Fake News Media Outlets to follow.”
In court, the Justice Department argued the outlets had endangered national security.
Their lawyer pointed out that national security never came up until after they sued, as if “a light bulb went off.”
The judge wasn’t buying that argument either.
The CNN story the administration flagged, about a bunker being rebuilt under the East Wing, came out months before the White House happily renewed that reporter’s pass this summer.
Judge Kelly also handled the 2018 case when Trump booted CNN’s Jim Acosta, so he’s seen this movie before.
Source: CNN / Writer: Julie”
Professor Jefferey Sachs, tell it like it is.
“A president stood at the UN and claimed the right to annihilate a civilization. Congress said nothing. That is the constitutional order collapsing in public.
“I shuddered then, and I shudder now that a president of the United States can stand at the podium of the UN General Assembly speaking to world leaders in a language of annihilation of other countries and of sending them to hell. It was ghastly, unprecedented, totally disgusting, disgraceful for the United States. But I would also say a measure of how broken the constitutional order of the United States is.
Trump basically said, like a madman, which I think arguably he is, that he and he alone will decide the survival of Iran. He said that he has a big, big choice to make. Maybe Iran will be a great country. Maybe Iran will be annihilated. Maybe Trump will send it to hell. And not only was the language vulgar in a way that I certainly could never in my lifetime have imagined coming from a president of the United States or anybody standing at the UN podium—because what Trump said was odious and completely in violation of every religious, moral, ethical, and legal standard that we have in this world—it was also a measure of the brazen collapse of our Constitution.
Is there a political system where one man decides the fate of another civilization? Is that how the American system works? Of course the answer is no. The founding fathers who rebelled against a mad King George III were very explicit in the Declaration of Independence, celebrated this year 250 years after its issuance. We’re in the 250th anniversary, one that Trump says is about our freedom. It was explicitly that King George arrogated, took on the authority to put the military above civil rule. And when the founding fathers wrote the US Constitution, they assigned specifically the power to declare war not to the commander-in-chief, but solely and exclusively—and not by choice, not if they care about it or want to or want to delegate it or not, but solely—to the United States Congress.
And Trump said yesterday he doesn’t care what the public thinks. He doesn’t care what the vote is. He says it doesn’t even cross my mind. And he said earlier this year, when he was asked, well, are there any limits on your power? He thought about it. He said Yes, my morality, but it’s my will. It’s what I want to do. Otherwise, no, there are no other limits.
What did our Congress do on that occasion? I can tell you, as we know, that the majority party in both houses simply remained silent. That is a violation of their sacred oath of office, which is to uphold the Constitution. Trump yesterday said he’s going to have the difficult choice of whether to annihilate, by the way, one of the most ancient civilizations in the world, 5,000 years old, twenty times older than the United States of America. And what did our Speaker of the House say? Well, he said nothing, of course. What did our Senate majority leader say? He said, of course, nothing. What did all of the party of the president of the United States say, the members of Congress? They said, of course, nothing. This is worse than the Roman Empire. There was a Senate that actually still said something. Our Senate says nothing.
We are so broken that not only do we have a madman in power, but there is no respect for our constitutional order. And the president can make statements as he made yesterday, unprecedented in the chamber of the General Assembly in front of the world leaders, speaking like the worst tyrant or gangster imaginable, and not a murmur from the Republican Party which dominates the House and the Senate. You know, I am not partisan. And a Democratic president who dared to be as absolutely mad and deranged as this president would probably find subservience in that party too. So I’m not even making a partisan point. I’m making a point about the collapse of our constitutional order.
Have we come to a point where one man, who I happen to think is utterly incompetent, utterly sociopathic, actually—when people are killed under his order, not a moment of reflection or remorse when 150 schoolgirls are murdered, and he knows the truth. He says, yeah, the Iranians probably did it. We’ll find out. No, not any control at all in our system of government.
So for me, you asked how I feel. I shudder at the last 24 hours, both at what the president said. It made my skin crawl. I was sitting there in the chamber listening to this madness. I mean it really, psychopathic madness, speaking in this way, with a vulgarity that is unimaginable. But then I’ve shuddered since then at the lack of response by the leaders, the majority leader of the US Senate, the Speaker of the House, Supreme Court justices, anybody to say no. In our system of government, it’s not one person who decides on the fate of another civilization.
We are a country, we say, first of all, of representation, and the American people are aghast at this. They oppose it overwhelmingly. They do not support this war of Netanyahu and Trump, which is a two-person war of murder and destruction and assassination of leaders of another country. They do not support it. And the constitutional order is that we are a representative government, and our representatives have an oath of office that only they can declare war. So where are they standing up to say No, you don’t have a penny to spend on this? We control the power of the purse. The tens or hundreds of billions of dollars that Trump has wasted of American income in this flagrant war of whim. Where is Congress to say you have no authority whatsoever to spend that because only we can decide on the spending and only we can declare war.
So this is the grim fact. It wasn’t just the awful statements. That was my first reaction. But then I thought, what have we come to when one person can make a statement like this and then remain essentially unchallenged in the United States system of government?”
Annihilation is not diplomacy. Congressional silence is not restraint. A constitutional republic cannot survive if one man claims the power to decide whether another civilization lives or dies.”
A group of Democrats did issue a statement to the U.S. armed forces, on their right to disobey unlawful orders.
If Trump ordered a nuclear strike on Iran, potentially killing millions, he’d bring eternal ‘holocaust-type’ shame to America. There could be a worldwide boycott of everything associated with the U.S.. Europeans and their leaders, even servile creeps like Burnham and Badenoch, would have no choice but to endorse the boycott. Plus it would be the end of NATO; there’ d be massive public protests, forcing US troops out of Europe and their basses and embassies to close. There’d be huge anti-govt protests in the U.S. too, and renewed interest in California secssionist movements.
Iran poses no threat whatsoever to the U.S, you have to believe those around Trump would intervene by resigning and then calling for his impeachment. Trump claims if his party loses both houses in November, he’ll do what he wants regardless. But his personal ratings are utterly dire ~29%, the Democrats would control the funding for his wars. If he used or even sought to use nuclear weapons, they’d impeach him, with vast U.S. public support for doing so and he’d probably end up living out his days in jail.
Nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort, used when a capital is about to fall. They’re not toys to be experimented with.
Western intel agencies, like the CIA and MI6, will also be mindful, that if the U.S.. uses them wholly inappropriately, it’d be a greenlight for Putin to wipe out Zelensky and his govt, forcing Kyiv’s immediate unconditional surrender. Assuming there is someone left to speak for Ukraine.
“Nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort…”
The only use of an actual nuclear weapon “in anger” so far has been the USA on Japan. It was not used as a weapon of “last resort” then but as a real world test of the weapon’s capabilities and consequences. An experimental evaluation, if you will. Two times.
Even the possession of nuclear weapons is used in anger as a threat. “Our words are backed by nuclear weapons!”
Unfortunately, the nuclear technology cat can never be put back in the bag.
ps. Many would say even the testing of nuclear weapons was use in anger.
Today’s are far, far more powerful and thus usage requires a much higher bar.
And Japan attacked the U.S., a fact they’ve relied upon for justification. Not that i think that use was justified, it wasn’t, imho. Robert Oppenheimer, the”Father of the Atomic Bomb” apparently wasn’t happy about their use either, reportedly suffering profound internal distress.
On Russia and Burnham’s absurd nonsense of a speech at the UN yesterday. Good post here : https://x.com/agent_of_change/status/2102870105684090940 that wins praise in the comments below as ‘post of the day’ from George Galloway, no less. All absolutely true; especially the part about Corbyn being subjected to a genuine disinformation campaign by Friends of guess who.
“The only use of an actual nuclear weapon “in anger” so far has been the USA on Japan.”
No. They didn’t use it in anger. It was a planned test and demonstration of their power, mainly aimed at the USSR. That is worse.
Goose.
Trump won’t even acknowledge responsibility for the killing of the children in Minab – he’s still spouting the narrative that Iran did it – today I read that it wasn’t a double tap on the school, but a triple tap, one on the kids, then one on the parents/rescuers, and finally one on the emergency services – that is a Zio-Monster tactic.
Trump has bombed schools and even a cancer hospital in Iran – he welcomed Xi from China to the US the other day, and he had a B1 Lancer bomber fly overhead as he and Xi stood there, the bomber flew so low that Trump actually cringed on camera as it passed overhead, Xi didn’t flinch at all, he’s probably seen it all before.
“But his personal ratings are utterly dire ~29%”
That’s scary, that nearly 30% of the US public still support this overgrown spoilt child. What would he have to do to get it down to 10% or even just to 20%?
Republicofscotland:
I saw that too and exhaled in relief.
“ Congressional silence is not restraint “
Sachs won’t say it.
But the silence is CONSENT.
Everytime it’s consented.
When did Congress ever not?
To all.
I am reading the statement that the Russian Federation’s Foreign Minister Mr Sergei Lavrov gave the U.N
The statement is posted under the heading “What Lavrov Told the UN Security Council” at Consortium News. This is an opportunity to review the actual text put forward by the lead diplomat of the Russian Federation unmediated by the U.K media. Examining the facts presented and critically evaluating them will at least open up the imaginative space for allowing us to entertain a dialogue with Russia about their interpretation of the current state of affairs and how we got this point (if we have the courage and honesty to do so).
They are currently discussing Burnham’s proposed Ministry of Truth on BBC 2 Politics live. How someone such as the otherwise intelligent Baroness Helena Kennedy can be so profoundly ill-informed and quite frankly, thick, on this subject, Idk? Russian meddling is unproven. But it has been raised to uncontested fact, simply by claim repetition, that would do Joseph Goebbels proud. That and idiotic elite groupthink. Even Kennedy, who asserted ‘we all know’ as per Iraq’s WMD, later said she had no evidence and we need to find out. Which is it?
She blithely repeats Burnham’s £1.3 billion on propaganda lie. When that’s the budget for RT – production costs, producers, presenters, other staff for a global channel. A channel that operated within OFCOM’s impartiality rules here, until the security services decided for us they wanted it silenced. GB News is far more politically biased.
We risk talking ourselves into war with Russia and on a fucking pack of lies. Infuriating.
They’ll end up monitoring and policing legitimate dissent, if they aren’t doing that already? Why make enemies out of intelligent people? Do they want people to side with Russia and China if war comes?
Here is a post made in reply to Paul Mason’s expressed support, that encapsulates the problem with policing truth :
Quote :
Would the new ministry, had it existed in 2002, have backed the invasion of Iraq on the false WMD claims? Or would it have bravely stood up against the barrage of lies fired from the US national security state.
Iraq is the perfect example really, as Burnham voted for the Iraq war with nary a doubt.
No need to even go back to Iraq. Could just ask Mason (or Baroness Helena) whether Burnham’s new ministry of truth will suppress, launder and deny his government’s ongoing participation in the Gaza Genocide, as all the existing state propagandists on BBC News, Politics Live, Newsnight, Today, etc do.
As I stated above:
Russians would be rubbish at meddling in UK politics anyway. Just as someone from the UK. who maybe studied Russian and has a first in the Russian language would be rubbish at interacting with, and manipulating, ordinary Russians.
It’s nonsense. We are expected to believe Russia is failing abysmally in Ukraine, but somehow is excellent at manipulation; forcing Europe and the UK to ban and prop up candidates in Moldova etc. Therein lies the real reason for this myth about Russia’s meddling par excellence, why it persists : It allows the EU to meddle in elections itself, on preemptive preventative grounds; to prop up failing unpopular pro-EU candidates, who’d otherwise risk losing to various anti-EU populist parties and candidates, as per what was about to happen in critical to NATO, Romania.
See how it works? You hype the Russian ‘meddling’ threat to justify your own stymieing of candidates and meddling.
I think the UK political obsession with outside political interference is because of the death of genuine politics in the UK – the death of political choice.
When there were huge ideological differences between the two main parties, they felt passionate about and argued over those differences. Now, all the parties offer the same economic formula: the same fiscal policies(with slight tweaks) ; support for BoE independence, deciding monetary policy; the same welfare policies; the same foreign policies. The same authoritarian law & order policies.
What the hell else have they got to concern themselves with, other than imagining some evil outside country may be trying upset their cushy, stitched-up, no choice political system?
Anyone who thinks saying all that about the state of Westminster politics represents classic Russian tropes, have sadly, been brainwashed themselves, possibly by their superiors?
That criticism of the state of our political choice is perfectly valid, it’s reflected in low turnouts, and heard on most doorsteps; it’s why Reform emerged from nowhere to briefly dominate, and why the Greens and Plaid Cymru, in Wales, thrashed Labour in the Senedd and English Local elections. People at the MoD can put their fingers in their ears and scream ‘Russian bots’ as much as they like, but they are fighting the widely held views of their own population.
GCHQ must have all the data for international traffic, to and from Russia. Plus that from VPNs and likely access to X’s server data and know the truth, which I’d imagine show no such coordinated activity.
And yet… they let ministers spout this BS about massive Russian interference. It’s as though the solemn pledges made ‘about how ‘lessons will be learnt’ after the Iraq WMD dossier tissue of lies fiasco, meant nothing, and history is repeating. What is the point in having intelligence agencies that don’t present truthful intelligence to decision makers? There should be transparency if ministers try to suppress the truth, because it doesn’t fit govt narratives. If something as serious as war and peace is at stake.
And, in so doing, create more animosity in the general public towards them…. which further cements that nationalist sentiment in the peasants, as they regard us all. What would they do without some foreign – and/or internal – enemy!
Yeah, we’ve got a relatively small number of people deceiving and duping and manipulating tens of millions of people (and that’s just in the UK) – ie politicians and the MSM, as they have done for donkeys, along with their army of shills on social media platforms and in the comments sections of blogs like Craig’s, in more recent years.
Ah, I see Goose has posted two more comments whilst I was typing out me above comment, so just to be clear, I was responding/replying to Goose’s 13.44 comment.
Boris Johnson, who I’m sure everyone here would agree, is a total Russophobe and hates Putin. He bowed to Labour demands and looked into the interference claims, while in office. He stated they were completely unfounded, seeking to dismiss Labour’s extraordinary assertions about possible Russian interference with regards to the Brexit vote.
This is what the Putin-obsession does to people, it’s like a mind virus among western politicians; a hunch or feeling, becomes an outright assertion of fact. Psychologically, it’s because of the way groupthink reinforcement works. It’s dangerous obviously, because it leads to false accusations, reactions, pre-emptive actions or even war, based on nothing but false beliefs.
And THEY of course – and their counterparts in other countries to some extent or other – are our biggest enemies by a country mile or two…. but unfortunately the vast majority of people don’t have the faintest clue. And THAT of course is why they attack and vilify and smear truepers like Julian, and Craig, for example, who expose them – and their lies and falsehoods and machinations – for what they are – ie mass-murdering war-mongering fear-mongering hate-mongering totally evil inhuman psychopathic monsters.
Allan Howard
There is amplification of the far-right, especially around immigration, but who needs Russia when Elon Musk’s algorithms promote and boost such posts.
Many politicians would no doubt love to go after anti-EU, AfD supporting Musk, but they fear he’s too powerful, too rich, too well-connected to Trump’s admin, so they settle on blaming Russia. A country with no major presence on X, no control over X or its algorithms. Russia’s social media footprint in the West is insignificant, so just where is all this mis/disinfo?
Sky News : BREAKING: A total of 781 migrants crossed the English Channel on Wednesday – the highest number for a single day this year.
Unless they do something about this, Labour are going to need more than Burnham’s new Ministry of Truth. The rise of the far-right is entirely predictable, with this daily societal backdrop. They talk about national security, yet have individuals who, for all we know, have possibly carried out atrocities in war zones like Libya and Syria, running up our beaches.
I’ll give another example of why the meddling claims are useful to the EU.
Imagine if Zelensky decided to yield to calls for an election in order to renew his mandate, as Mykhailo Fedorov called for. The EU and UK , France , Germany would sweep in there to prop Zelensky up on the basis of providing electoral integrity. Massive billboards, loads of EU money swashing about EU flags everywhere as in Georgia; positive statements about how Zelensky can lead the country into the EU by von der Leyen and Kallas. Maybe even Mark Rutte popping up, chiming in about NATO membership. In other words, a massive interference exercise, ostensibly provided in attempt to prevent Russian meddling. But the real aim would be keeping their guy in power via an unfair election.
The Russian occupied areas wouldn’t even be voting. So why would Zelensky need all that European leaders and EU technical support? The UK, France and Germany plus von der Leyen and Kallas would do everything to ensure an unfair one-sided election took place, in which genuine critics of the war and Zeklensky’s leadership would be either disqualified or heavily suppressed. And they claim Russia are the bad guys.
The next time someone from the UK MoD pops up and talks about Russia conducting cognitive warfare against the UK. I hope someone asks them, how they are conducting ‘cognitive warfare’ with near no social media presence?
Hiring Uri Geller perhaps, to put ‘divisive’ thoughts in our minds?
Fabulous read and congratulations on your invitation to that event.
Obviously tied in with their elections I suppose, so the messaging is bit more directed?
Learnt something as always with your travelogue and history.
Didn’t know that was where the Romanovs were taken, murdered and BUTCHERED before being burnt and thrown down a well!
It seems remarkably like what a certain group of people are doing to another certain group of people in Gaza. Destroying utterly the children.
It also seems you were able to say what Lavrov is not able to on that stage – having been censured previously.
Lavrov quoted you on the illegality of the Tanker wars and (silently) cited you as author, by having you sat immediately infront of him, just behind the Magnificient Maria!
A great honour, oh you lucky man! being so close to that magnificient mane!
I am sure the great lady would have known you were there and at least turned her head once to acknowledge your presence as Lavrov stated your words.
Congrats again I say – thus one article has been worth my whole year’s subscription!
Please put health first now as the season turns – independent Scotland needs you.
Palestine too. The emerging multipolar world order recognised that.
Disgraceful.
“This morning, Netanyahu’s so-called “Wing of Zion” plane was authorised to use the airspace of three ICC member countries—Greece, Italy, France—en route to New York
Netanyahu was indicted by ICC in November 2024 for war crimes and crimes against humanity”
Courtesy if Matt Kennard
Mamdani is welcoming him to NuttyYahooVille too.
Hypocrisy. Suckers who voted for his supposed Palestine support.
Kaja Kallas posted this on ‘X’ in the last hour:
Europe faces waves of airspace violations and sabotage, but also a relentless stream of Russian disinformation.
That is why the EU today sanctioned Xenia Fedorova [former head of RT France apparently]
We’re defending our information space against fabricated lies and deliberate manipulation. This is deterrence, not censorship.
The EU will continue to counter Russia’s destabilising activities.
————————————————————————————————–
It’s the Nazi playbook repeating, only in the EU. Where is this ‘relentless stream’ of Russian disinformation? I find these relentless assertions vexing, as they offend against the basic honesty we should expect from officials.
i. Create imaginary enemy.
ii. Say imaginary enemy is a threat to our way of life, and wishes to undermine our glorious unity(no evidence of such activity need be provided).
We may as well move straight on to the Ein Volk, Ein EU, Ein Führer! stage.
As much as I can’t stand Trump. if Kamala Harris had won, I expect we’d probably already be at war with Russia given how bellicose the EU leaders are.
The U.S. Democrats started this Russian ‘meddling’ crap, in order to explain away Hillary’s 2016 defeat. Not wanting to admit they picked a terribly divisive candidate and shouldn’t have blocked the popular Bernie Sanders. And our intel agencies, instead of correcting this nonsense, using actual internet traffic data stats, showing v. limited Russian activity. And reminding politicians how Russia don’t own or operate any of the major social media platforms : Facebook, X, TiKTok; Instagram, Youtube, WhatsApp, to manipulate western audiences with, are instead choosing to fan this evidence-free fantasy of Russian information supremacy, for some ungodly reason.
Goose
Absolutely.
Clinton was in 2016 – The Coup was in 2014.
So, via the CIA/MI6 etc and Victoria Nuland’s Cookie Bribe many US actors have been involved in the set up ( some say since 1997 ) of ridding the world of Neutral ( ‘ Non Aligned ‘ ) States – Yugoslavia being the first to be Balkanised.
Trump is only harshly doing what Obama did as well as Biden.
The problem with Trump is that he is using naked hostile violent US Power when they did their Regime Changes a little less violently and mostly away from the cameras.
One of the reasons Julian Assange was locked up.
The Una – Parties both agree on the tactics and the hoped for outcomes of ransacking smaller nations and pretending to be worried about the poor in the fallout of the attacks they made themselves.
The difference these days is that Trump has attacked alongside his friend Netanyahu and although things are utterly terrible for say the Gazans and the Lebanese people ( not much in the MSM about either countries currently) but they watch the news and they are seeing Iran holding their own and the Houthis holding their own too against the West.
Meanwhile the hand wringing Liberals still keep bringing us tragic Gaza stories on the news – a bit like a cat bringing us a bird which the cat killed itself.
Meanwhile Geographic Europe doesn’t know what to do other than issue bellicose words at Russia and China and of course Russia and China spy on us but, we don’t spy on them is the narrative.
We Good – They Evil.
Denmark has caved – the UK will cave on The Chagos Islands without a whimper.
The US and Israel can assassinate whomever they want with no reprocussions.
They can bomb the crap out of anyone they want and the supposed upholders of the alleged ‘ Rules of Law ‘ keep their weasley mouths shut for fear of being sanctioned or de- banked via The Swift System.
Put more simply:
Step out of line an Donald will order The Swift Payment System to tell Bank ABC or C to make you a non existent ex – Citizen.
They do it to countries and other individuals that step out of line.
Why not lower order World Leaders too?
Mark M Cutts
At their recent meeting,Trump said something like, “He[Burnham] understands what he’s got to do” and Burnham just nodded along, like some line manager. Imagine some UK PM saying, “He[Trump] knows what he’s got to do” – It’d be unthinkable, because it’d be seen as laying down orders.
You notice these little things, because the language is unusually discourteous between UK PMs ad US Presidents. They may value the UK’s advice, but I don’t think they have any real respect for the UK. Some will remember uncouth Dubya’s Yo Blair!
Craig raises the hypocrisy in Kallas’s post on X.
I really do think the current ever-ratcheting tensions with Russia, not to mention a very real risk of war, is in major part due to a very, very hawkish EU Commission. The EU’s mediator role has been totally abandoned by Kallas. She has done literally nothing of note to try to end the war in Ukraine. On Israel, she’s loath to criticise too – probably under pressure from the equally ghastly von der Leyen. We just have Kallas’s daily ritual of expressing hysterical rage against Russia. She was a terrible pick for EU chief diplomat, and being from a Baltic state, Estonia, she brings no fresh thinking nor any objectivity whatsoever. Just pure infantile hostility.
At the risk of being accused of misogyny, these EU women are mentally deranged, complete nutjobs.
One wonders if Brussels is actually some kind of super mental hospital for those with nazi leanings !
Even AI search results agree:
The argument that the volume and measurable impact of Russian disinformation are exaggerated is supported by several academic studies and security analyses. While intelligence agencies and governments frequently warn of a massive, “industrial-scale” threat from Russian information operations, empirical research often suggests that the actual footprint and persuasive power of these campaigns are far smaller and more concentrated than popular narratives imply.
As near as western AI will come to saying, they’re lying.
It’d be amusing if some journalist asked Burnham : “Is this Russian disinformation in the room with us now?”
Just to witness his expression. What a plonker he is.
I’d wager Burnham will mention Russian disinfo in his conference speech,:
Conference, I wish to address the twin threats facing the UK today: Nessie and Russian disinformation.
*But there’s no evidence Nessie exists!* a voice in the audience shouts.
Well, let me tell you conference, I’ve seen evidence Nessie does in fact exist, and he’s been recruited to push Russian disinformation!
“Well, let me tell you conference, I’ve seen evidence Nessie does in fact exist, and he’s been recruited to push Russian disinformation!”
He’d never say that, or he’d be accused of gender-stereotyping Nessie.
Goose
September 24, 2026 at 21:35
“being from a Baltic state, Estonia, she *Kallas* brings no fresh thinking nor any objectivity whatsoever” is a non sequitur.
Estonians are wary of Russian aggression all right.
Is that what you meant?
Jk redux
She has so much known Russophobic baggage, she should never have been appointed in the first place.
What hope for peace, when the EU’s chief diplomat quite openly detests Russia and Russians. Her openly expressed long-held view, is that Russia must be totally defeated and then broken up as a country. She takes a harder line than ultra hawks’ John McCain and Lindsey Graham did.
Even her U.S, equivalent, Marco Rubio, allegedly tries to avoid her, because he and the US negotiating team already know what her inflexible positions are on ending the conflict.
Europe needs someone who can travel to Russia, and hasn’t got an axe to grind. Someone from say Spain, Ireland ,Italy or Portugal. As far from the Russian border as possible.
The EU. Where diplomacy goes to die.
Goose
September 25, 2026 at 12:17
Kallas’ Russophobia consists in insisting that Russophone Estonians learn to speak Estonian.
A not unreasonable requirement for citizenship.
Many Russophone Estonians were “planted” there after WW2 – a fifth column that is understandably distrusted by other Estonians.
JK redux
Wouldn’t you agree, that the EU is profoundly out of touch with European public opinion. On both Gaza; where we’ve seen total indifference to the scenes of absolute devastation – there’s been no Commission-led push for EU sanctions on Israel. And in their unwillingness to countenance any peace deal to end the Ukraine conflict, other than a wholly unrealistic total surrender by Moscow. It ain’t gonna happen and Ukraine can’t force it.
The attempts by von der Leyen and Kallas to seize €185 billion to €193 billion of frozen Russian assets in Euroclear in Belgium, to give to corruption-plagued Ukraine puts Europe in the crosshairs. There is absolutely no chance UvdL would win a presidential election if the European people had their say. Ursula von der Leyen and Kallas, are vastly overstepping their sketchy mandate, meddling in NATO as unelected appointees.
Goose
September 25, 2026 at 13:40
Noone is asking Russia to surrender, just withdraw to the status quo ante bellum. Most invaders don’t escape so lightly.
You mention ” corruption-plagued Ukraine ” but ignore far more corruption-plagued Russia.
(Do you believe that Putin amassed his wealth through honest work?)
I have to add that there is a assumption implicit in your post. Namely that supposedly corrupt states are fair game for invasion.
Or have I misread your post?
JK redux
What do you think of the current ‘Russian disinformation’ hysteria?
It reminds me of the Labour antisemitism hysteria(2017-2019). That grew and grew, despite very little source evidence of actual antisemitism. It changed public perceptions, as intended. The public perception polls Channel 4 did, estimated 34%, or put another way, hundreds of thousands of Labour party members, had faced antisemitism accusations, When in reality, formal complaints against members represented a fraction of 1%.
A stepping off point, when many reasonable people lost confidence in the UK as a country where good prevails.
“Kallas’ Russophobia consists in insisting that Russophone Estonians learn to speak Estonian.”
There’s a couple of well-known sayings appropriate here: “Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining.” and “There’s none so blind as them that don’t want to see.”
Bayard
September 25, 2026 at 17:57
“There’s a couple of well-known sayings appropriate here: “Don’t piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining.” and “There’s none so blind as them that don’t want to see.””
That’s not quite the rebuttal that you may have hoped for.
Mebbe quote Kallas arguing for neutering babies born to Russophone parents in Estonia.
That kind of thing….
Goose
September 25, 2026 at 16:57
(Very) happy to doxx myself as not resident in the “UK”.
For a relatively poor country like Russia, using paid and deniable local operators for sabotage is a very rational strategy.
As is paying people in (for the sake of argument) Uzbekistan for €5/hour to post as directed.
The extent to which it is happening? Hoo Nose (sic)…
Jk redux
I know you think Ukraine is some sort of beacon of hope for the entire world and would be an incorruptible democratic paradise, were it not for ‘evil’ Russia. But watch this interview that Tucker Carlson has posted today.
https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/2103530142706356665
She faces charges of treason and risks a long jail sentence. Her alleged crime: criticising Zelensky. Sanctions; including banking sanctions – having her bank a/c frozen – how the hell is Ukraine leveraging such god-like control over western multinational corporations and institutions? There is something going very wrong in the West when extrajudicial punishments can be meted out on behalf of Ukraine and on a whim like that. We’ve seen it with ICC judges. Weaponise financial systems like that and expect powerful alternatives. We know a lot of European politicians care more about Ukraine than their own countries, and think the sun shines out of Zelensky’s arse,
On that.
The weaponization of SWIFT, Visa, Mastercard, and the US dollar as geopolitical tools has driven nations globally to build alternative financial networks. While these actions are intended to target state actors, high-profile incidents—such as a French International Criminal Court judge losing access to his Visa card due to US sanctions—have fueled a wave of “payment sovereignty”.
Seems like the most foolish thing the U.S.could do, by revealing to the world why it is imperative to move away from systems they control.
Governments across the political spectrum are actively decoupling from Western-dominated systems to insulate themselves from potential US coercion.
Goose
September 25, 2026 at 20:27
Oh come on Goose.
A Tucker Carleson vid pressed into service….
The guy is a whore to his own perceived self-interest…
“Oh come on Goose.
A Tucker Carleson vid pressed into service….”
Do we a) say that each other’s sources are both liars,
b) accept that, if you want one side to take any notice of the other’s sources, you must not dismiss their sources as liars, or c) accept that sources in general can’t be trusted and other ways need to be adopted to find out if something is the truth or not, because the argument that all my sources speak the unvarnished truth whereas all yours are unutterable liars is so feeble it wouldn’t convince a relatively intelligent five year old.
“Mebbe quote Kallas arguing for neutering babies born to Russophone parents in Estonia.
That kind of thing….”
She did that? Couldn’t find it on the ‘net anywhere, but here is an example when I put “Kaja Kallas speech” into a search engine (3rd result) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xy4hRWaYYBQ
She is talking about aggression, when countries think they are above international law, invade other countries and kill civilians. Ah, I thought, she must be referring to Israel or the US, since they have spent the last 25 years doing just that (Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine, Venezuela), but no, it’s Russia of course. Talk about the elephant in the room, she wouldn’t mention it if it farted in her face.
I even have serious doubts around the attribution for the so-called hybrid attacks; things like the arson and similar amateurish sabotage incidents across Europe. They typically involve people recruited online, by mysterious Russian speakers – of which Ukraine happens to have millions btw – to carry out non-lethal arson or sabotage. Typically, for the promised reward of the equivalent of a few thousand quid. “It can ONLY be Russia!” all our leaders implore. But doesn’t Ukraine have plenty of incentive to besmirch Russia further, and more importantly, try to drag European countries into their fight, to widen the conflict? Getting extra billions in support for a few thousand quid spent, that’d be a bargain for Ukraine. Hiring rank amateurs online and hoping they don’t screw up, isn’t really ex-KGB Putin’s or any nation state’s style, is it. I’d imagine, if Russia hits the UK, we’ll know about it, because the damage will be obvious and he’ll announce it on Russian television.
Why would a nation state entrust randoms recruited online? Think about it. No intel outfit would, they’d send their own personnel and control all aspects of an operation.
Are people going to find out in 20-30 years that everything done outside Ukraine, was in fact staged by Ukraine in concert with intel agencies and NATO to refresh waning public support for Ukraine and generate anger with Russia?
Two-years in prison for throwing a empty plastic water bottle – shocking.
“A MAN WAS JAILED in the UK yesterday for throwing a plastic water bottle towards a line of police
Del Somerville, a 42-year-old father-of-two, was sentenced to two years in prison for throwing a plastic water bottle at a police line and swearing at officers during an anti-migrant protest in Portsmouth on September 6. “
RoS
The perversely disproportionate sentences are the product of an increasingly politicised judiciary; which itself is a product of executive pressure from ministers and the RW press. Both ministers and press feel free to call out decisions they don’t like. So judges act as if trying to placate these authoritarian noises off.
What a crappy state of affairs.
That would be the big, roughy, toughy police in riot gear. Cannot handle a bit of argy bargy from people who maybe don’t want Gosport to become another beach head for the criminal incomers.
BTW the Haslar Immigration Removal Centre in Gosport is currently being upgraded to provide over 600 beds for the criminals, undoubtably they’ll be in receipt of all the benefits that the people of Gosport cannot access: dentists, doctors, affordable housing, assisted travel, etc.
The 2024 summer anti-immigration protests/riots outside asylum hotels, received some staggering draconian sentences.
It’s all about fear and messaging. Starmer demanded the judiciary ‘throw away the key’ to deter other protests, and the judiciary responded. Were the sentences fair or proportionate, no way.
Hard to believe Starmer was ever a human rights lawyer, the guy doesn’t have libertarian bone in his body. Or was he just undercover ,spying on them? The most ridiculous thing is , if Starmer was a spook, nobody in parliament nor the press would give a damn, or think it worthy of reporting. As though, the twin hats aren’t a huge conflict of interest, when involved in politics. Look how they treated Rory Stewart.
On the subject of fake leaders. Have you seen this video of Badenoch speaking in her real Nigerian accent : https://x.com/RaheemKassam/status/2103032056116588702 The Tories tried putting a community notice on it, but it’s apparently genuine.
Another one who should be returned ?
BBC podcast interview :
I no longer identify as Nigerian, Badenoch says
On not renewing her passport, she said: “I don’t identify with it anymore..”
“I’m Nigerian through ancestry, by birth, despite not being born there because of my parents… but by identity, I’m not really.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c24z77yg16eo
How can someone whose loyalties are based on the audience she’s speaking to, be trusted with power. Saying you are proud of both and it gives you a unique perspective, would be a more respectful way of handling such questions.