CODEPINK recognizes that the future of Ukraine, Russia, the Global South, and the entire world depends on a diplomatic resolution to this war. NATO has never been a force for peace and never will be. The war-hungry organization has shunned all attempts at peace talks and diplomacy. The future of the planet depends on the dismantlement of NATO.

The global vision that Stoltenberg articulates encourages conflict and militarization while propounding a fantastical image of Western benevolence. He excuses every violent and illegal action taken by the US and its NATO allies since the end of the Cold War, for the purpose of making Russia’s invasion of Ukraine seem like a war crime of unprecedented criminality and scope.

Those who were enthusiastically awaiting Wagner’s entry into Moscow are angry, offended, and demoralized. But Putin’s supporters are no less demoralized. The president, whom they considered a resolute and courageous leader, has shown himself to be weak and inconsistent. Ending the mutiny by agreement looks like a humiliating outcome for both sides.

We can say No to NATO and Russia Out of Ukraine. We can oppose oligarchs in DC, London, Kyiv and Moscow. We can support the people of Ukraine and the people of Russia while condemning the war crimes of all governments. We can always find options other than war and we can always believe peace is possible.

The playbook the pimps of war use to lure us into one military fiasco after another, including Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, does not change. Freedom and democracy are threatened. Evil must be vanquished. Human rights must be protected. The fate of Europe and NATO, along with a “rules based international order” is at stake. Victory is assured.

The aim of the Ukraine government, the EU, the US government, the multilateral agencies and the American financial institutions now in charge of raising funds and allocating them for reconstruction is to restore the Ukrainian economy as a form of special economic zone, with public money to cover any potential losses for private capital.

In his latest column, Boris Kagarlitsky casts his critical eye on the forces of right-wing populism in Russia today and its leading figures Igor Strelkov and Yevgeny Prigozhin. They may rail against corrupt elites, Kagarlitsky explains, but the change they seek is superficial, a mere changing of the guard; above all they fear the social transformation to which disorder is liable to give rise.

Konstantin Bogomolov recently published an article denouncing his one-time ideological allies in Russia’s liberal intelligentsia for their attitude towards the Russian people and the war in Ukraine. Bogomolov was out to provoke, yet beneath its insulting rhetoric, his article contained a germ of truth about the prospects for Russia ever turning into a liberal democratic state.

The US is using what remains of its strength to try to restore its global position. This aggressive drive is fueled by its long history of wars which helped to recast American society into one managed by corporations and the state. What is paradoxical is that its imperial ideology happens to be not fascism but a form of liberalism refitted for rationalizing military and political expansion.

The attacks on Belgorod provide some tactical advantages to Ukraine. On the other hand, they enable the Russian authorities to paint Ukraine as a “terrorist state” and strengthen Moscow’s propaganda narrative that Kyiv is in league with neo-Nazis. Rather than weakening support in Russia for the war, these attacks may therefore have the opposite effect.