Citing “atrocities in Ukraine, including in Bucha,” the US government on Wednesday rolled out new sanctions against Russia that include some of the country's top banks, companies and government officials – as well as their family members.

"Today, the United States, with the G7 and the European Union, will continue to impose severe and immediate economic costs on the Putin regime for its atrocities in Ukraine, including in Bucha. We will document and share information on these atrocities and use all appropriate mechanisms to hold accountable those responsible," the White House said. 

President Vladimir Putin’s children and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s wife and daughter were among the Russians listed in the latest round of “full blocking sanctions,” which the White House says intend to impose “severe and immediate costs” on Moscow. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and former President Dmitry Medvedev were likewise sanctioned, for their membership on the Russian Security Council. 

As part of Wednesday’s sanctions, any assets of state-owned Sberbank and privately run Alfa Bank “touching”the US financial system have also been blocked, and any Americans banned from doing business with them. 

The US and its G7 and EU allies “will continue to impose severe and immediate economic costs on the Putin regime for its atrocities in Ukraine, including in Bucha,” the White House said.

US President Joe Biden will sign an executive order Thursday prohibiting any investment in Russia by Americans wherever they are, to “further isolate Russia from the global economy” and “ensure the enduring weakening of the Russian Federation’s global competitiveness.”

Also on Thursday, the US Treasury will announce the list of “critical major Russian state-owned enterprises,” in order to ban any Americans from doing business with them and freeze their assets subject to US jurisdiction.

According to the White House, the US is trying to force Russia to default on its sovereign debt, having banned Moscow earlier this week from using funds under US jurisdiction to make payments. The White House said Moscow will now have to “choose between draining its available funds to make debt payments or default.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Medvedev compared the embargoes against Russia to a medieval inquisition, with the US and its “European servants” needing no evidence to accuse Moscow of “witchcraft,” and the accused getting no due process or the right to counsel. The former president and PM noted that the US, UK and Europe still had functioning courts that could “correct a mistake of the inquisitorial process” and that Russia intends to contest the sanctions that way.

Ukraine has accused Russia of killing hundreds of civilians in the town of Bucha, near Kiev. Moscow has denied blame, accused Kiev of staging a “provocation,” and called for an international investigation into the incident.

Russia sent troops into Ukraine in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Kiev’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements and end the conflict with the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Lugansk. Moscow ended up recognizing the two as independent states, at which point they asked for military aid. 

Russia demands that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and has denied claims it was planning to retake the two Donbass republics by force.

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https://www.rt.com/russia/553410-us-unveils-new-sanctions/

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ALL THE US ASSETS SHOULD BE FROZEN FOR THEIR NUMEROUS ATROCIOUS WAR CRIMES AND KEEPING JULIAN ASSANGE IN PRISON.

By Ted Galen Carpenter

Statements from U.S. and other Western officials, as well as pervasive accounts in the news media, have created a stunningly misleading image of Ukraine. There has been a concerted effort to portray the country not only as a victim of brutal Russian aggression, but as a plucky and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy. The conventional narrative would have us believe that Ukraine is an Eastern European version of Denmark.

The promoters of that narrative contend that the ongoing war is not just a quarrel between Russia and Ukraine over Kiev’s ambitions to join NATO and Moscow’s territorial claims in Crimea and the Donbas. No, they insist—the war is part of a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is a leader worthy of nothing less than Winston Churchill’s legacy. President Biden, in his March 26 remarks on the war, said the conflict was “a battle between democracy and autocracy, between liberty and repression, between a rules-based order and one governed by brute force.”

CNN’s John Blake literally compared Ukraine’s cause to America’s in its Revolutionary War. He claimed Ukrainians “are building their own monuments to democracy, with their blood.” The world, he said, “has been transfixed by their battle to repel the mighty Russian army and preserve the birth of democracy in their homeland.” He added that “the war in Ukraine isn’t just a geopolitical struggle—it’s a call to remember. The courage of the Ukrainian people is a reminder of what the U.S. used to be—a ‘beacon of liberty,’ where virtually every schoolchild memorized the ‘Concord Hymn’ poem inscribed at the base of the Minute Man statue.”

In a March 26 USA Today op-ed, John M. Bridgeland, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council under President George W. Bush, similarly expressed fawning admiration for Zelensky and Ukraine’s alleged commitment to democracy. “The world is seeing the bravery of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainian people, who are willing to die to defend their democracy and freedom,” he wrote. Indeed, Bridgeland said, “No cost is too high [for Ukrainians] to defend their democracy and beloved Ukraine.”

Fox News contributor and former CIA station chief Dan Hoffman contended that “What scares Vladimir Putin at the heart of this conflict is democracy. It’s not that NATO represents a threat.” He added that “Putin couldn’t stomach a democracy on his border with a Russian-speaking population and commercial links to Europe. That’s why he launched this brutal attack which has caused so many Ukrainian civilians, innocent civilians, to die.”

The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country’s mere existence terrified Putin may be a comforting myth to U.S. politicians and pundits, but it is a myth. Ukraine is far from being a democratic-capitalist model and an irresistible magnet for Russia’s groaning masses. The reality is murkier and troubling: Ukraine has long been one of the more corrupt countries in the international system. In its annual report published in January 2022, Transparency International ranked Ukraine 123rd of the 180 countries it examined, with a score of 32 on a one to 100 point scale. By comparison, notoriously corrupt Russia ranked just modestly lower, 139th, with a score of 29.

Ukraine’s track record of protecting democracy and civil liberties is not much better than its performance on corruption. In Freedom House’s 2022 report, Ukraine is listed in the “partly free” category, with a score of 61 out of a possible 100. Other countries in that category include such bastions of liberal democracy as Rodrigo Duterte’s Philippines (55), Serbia (62), Hungary (59), and Singapore (47). Interestingly, Hungary—which has been a target of vitriolic criticism among progressives in the West because of Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s conservative social policy—ranks eight points higher than Ukraine, which is the recipient of uncritical praise from the same Western ideological factions.

Even before the war erupted, there were ugly examples of authoritarianism in Ukraine’s political governance. Just months after the 2014 Maidan revolution, there were efforts to smother domestic critics, which accelerated as years passed. Ukrainian officials also harassed political dissidents, adopted censorship measures, and barred foreign journalists whom they regarded as critics of the Ukrainian government and its policies. Such offensive actions were criticized by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, and other independent observers. The neo‐​Nazi Azov Battalion was an integral part of President Petro Poroshenko’s military and security apparatus, and it has retained that role during Zelensky’s presidency.

Indeed, some repressive measures deepened under Zelensky even before the outbreak of war with Russia. In February 2021, the Ukrainian government closed several (mostly, but not entirely pro‐​Russia) independent media outlets. They did so on the basis of utterly vague, open‐​ended standards. Zelensky has now used the war as a justification for outlawing 11 opposition parties and nationalizing several media outlets. Those are hardly appropriate measures in a democracy, even in wartime.

It is entirely appropriate to sympathize with Ukrainians who are experiencing terrible suffering as a result of Vladimir Putin’s decision to launch a war. Whatever the level of provocations from the United States and its NATO allies, and Ukraine’s willingness to collaborate in those provocations, Russia’s response was over-the-top. It created a dangerous breach of the peace in Europe and a humanitarian catastrophe. However, one can condemn Putin’s actions and even cheer on Ukraine’s military resistance without fostering a false image of Ukraine’s political system. The country is not a symbol of freedom and liberal democracy, and the war is not an existential struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. At best, Ukraine is a corrupt, quasi-democratic entity with troubling repressive policies.

Given that sobering reality, calls for Americans to “stand with Ukraine” are misplaced. Preserving Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity most certainly are not worth the United States risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia.

Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 950 articles on international affairs.

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https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/whitewashing-ukraines-corruption/

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One should refer here to the way HAWAII became a US State... IT WAS UGLY, corrupt and sheer robbery....

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BY Gordon Duff

Self-proclaimed political scientists give us definitions of Naziism. A real definition is quite different and easily discerned as accurate.

Naziism: A falsely deemed “political movement” typically organized and controlled by criminal elites. Naziism is based on black propaganda formulas that exploit ethic, racial and class hatreds to weaponize population sectors that are conditioned by broad control of media employed to induce generalized fear. (author)

Here in the US, the government is, after years of blissful ignorance, beginning to recognize the fundamental threat of Naziism and its incompatibility with elected governments and personal freedoms.

Naziism, as practiced, is a cult that attracts the ignorant, the fearful and the hate filled. In order to support the growth of Naziism, for reasons we will look into, certain governments, the US and most NATO allies, but others as well such as Brazil, have built their foreign policies around support for generalized injustice.

The Ukraine War has brought about a reassessment of the war on Yugoslavia for sure. NATO destroys Yugoslavia then spends two decades destroying the radical Islamists it destroyed Syria to save.

But the real issue is the love affair Democratic President Joseph Biden has for Nazis in Ukraine while defending his administration from Azov affiliated organizations inside the US.

Some say Biden is suffering from dementia but the most like diagnosis is schizophrenia. From NATO funded Bellingcat, dated February 2019:

Newly uncovered evidence going back to 2015 suggests that the Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement has been systematically co-opting American right-wing extremists to advance the former’s own international agenda. In audio statements uncovered by Bellingcat, this agenda was summarized by the International Secretary of the political wing of Azov, the National Corps, as “world conservative revolution,” aimed to “defend the white race.” These new findings are separate from the recently reported ties between Azov and American violent neo-Nazi group the Rise Above Movement, and members of the American alt right.

In October 2018, an FBI criminal complaint unsealed in connection with the arrest of members of the violent neo-Nazi group Rise Above Movement (RAM) pointed to said group’s contacts in Ukraine. Members of RAM who were charged in the US in connection with violence at political rallies, including in Charlottesville, traveled to Ukraine in 2018 to meet key figures of the Azov movement.

Mind you, these groups that were trained by Israeli Mossad and supplied by the US and UK with the best in military technology have, for years, trained domestic terror organizations in the US and Europe including those that attacked the US government on January 6, 2021.

All the organization cited as allied with Azov and other Zelenskyy-backed Nazi groups are also closely affiliated, in the US with the Trump organization and the Israel lobby but not the ADL, the “mouthpiece” for the Israel lobby.

More schizophrenia, as America’s powerful Jewish lobby is fully behind Nazi efforts in Ukraine and finances American Nazi groups with endless millions in “laundered” Bitcoin while bashing the same groups they pour money into as “anti-Semitic.”

Stranger still, the same groups are also working closely with America’s oil companies to keep oil supplies down and soaring profits through the roof.

It doesn’t take much of an imagination to note that something is certainly going on behind the scenes. If one were to accept Russia’s point that their move into Ukraine was necessitated by Biden’s hardline statements about bringing Ukraine into “Nuclear NATO,” then one might begin to ask if this war, one Russia claims was engineered in Washington, may well not be the product of a marriage between right wing extremists and Nazi’s who are now powerful in the US and the oil lobby.

One might also see a role for Saudi Arabia here as well as one for Israel, a nation busy arming nations like Azerbaijan, Turkey and, of course, the Ukrainian Nazi militias.

This makes the Ukraine War one engineered by global organized crime to manipulate markets, sell arms and destabilize Western Europe with refugees in order to push forward right-wing extremism across Europe and North America, and this means Canada as well.

Reports received out of Mariupol have demonstrated advanced training in battlefield electronics and guerilla warfare. Then other questions are asked, from Vox.com 2015:

It’s never good news for the rule of law when an oligarch sends armed men in combat fatigues to occupy a state-owned oil company. That’s what just happened in Ukraine, where billionaire Ukrainian/Israeli oligarch Igor Kolomoisky appears to have sent members of his private army last week to temporarily take over the offices of oil company UkrTransNafta in order to protect his financial interests in the company.

The situation may be even more frightening than it sounds.

Kolomoisky funds and directs a large private militia that has been helping the Kiev government fight against the pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Militias like his — and there are dozens of them — are a source of deep concern to analysts who believe they could threaten Ukraine’s long-term stability.

Are these private armies willing to follow Kiev’s orders without question? Or will they go their own way when their own interests are at stake? Kolomoisky’s antics at the oil company’s offices, in which he appears to have used his private army to protect his personal financial interests, look an awful lot like the latter.

Bands of thugs that became armies

Kolomoisky, an oligarch who is also the governor of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, is a significant backer of the pro-Kiev private militias fighting in the country’s east. He funds the Dnipro Battalion, a private army that, according to the Wall Street Journal, has 2,000 battle-ready fighters and another 20,000 in reserve. Newsweek reported that Kolomoisky has funded other militia groups, as well like Azov.

For those unaware, it was Koloimoisky that employed Zelenskyy as a “comedian” and later groomed the budding Miami Beach oligarch, and we are speaking of Zelenskyy, for his role of wartime leader as well.

Conclusion

There is a term “strange bedfellows,” possibly Shakespearian in origin (The Tempest 2:2) continually comes to mind when we examine 21st century Nazis and their supporters.

In America, all Nazis are from the Republican Party, the party of Christian Zionism and “Big Business.”

After all, weren’t America’s rural Christians and their friends in “big business” behind Hitler, not only before World War 2 but during as well?

How many remember Hitler as Time Magazine’s “Man of the Year” in 1940?

Hitlerism, to rural Americans, later to be grouped under the term “Christian Evangelists” represented eugenics, breeding a master race of Anglo-Saxon whites while sterilizing or even killing others, Native Americans, African Americans, Jews, Hispanics, Catholics, Gypsies/Roma and Slavs.

Christian Evangelists are tireless list makers.

Today, its Jews and “liberals,” with a continued focus on African Americans and now Muslims as well. The fear that immigrants will storm in and take those jobs, killing cattle with hammers or shoveling manure, drives millions of Americans into the hands of right-wing causes, all of whom now openly espouse Third Reich values.

Behind it all, dating back to the late 19th century, a core of American oligarchs, Schiff, Morgan, Harriman, Bush, Rockefeller, Koch, Dupont, so many more, orchestrated the growth of Naziism in Germany and sought to manage Hitler.

Worse still, America’s policies after World War 2, taking in Nazi war criminals, building the CIA out of Gehlen’s Abwehr and embracing a military industrial complex built on Nazi values, have managed to infect 21st century America as well.

Gordon Duff is a Marine combat veteran of the Vietnam War that has worked on veterans and POW issues for decades and consulted with governments challenged by security issues. He’s a senior editor and chairman of the board of Veterans Today, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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https://journal-neo.org/2022/04/06/ukraine-s-nazi-legions-a-real-threat-to-america-and-the-world/

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BY Vladimir Platov

In recent days, a wave of false accusations against Russia emegerged in the West, alleging that its military committed war crimes in Bucha, Ukraine, during its special operation to denazify Ukraine. This is despite the fact that, in addition to official statements by the Russian authorities about the fake nature of these allegations, a senior Pentagon official has already stated that the US has no independent confirmation of the information spread by Kiev about civilian casualties in this Ukrainian town. Moreover, a former UN inspector for monitoring of the elimination of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction Scott Ritter explicitly pointed out that the Ukrainian authorities are known for loud propaganda statements and should present medical evidence before making any allegations about the events in Bucha.

Nevertheless, it is not only the White House-controlled media in the US and Western Europe that are actively involved in this smear campaign promoted by Washington. For example, US President Biden suddenly woke up and once again allowed himself insulting remarks and unsubstantiated accusations towards the Russian leader, and on April 4 also began “commenting” on the situation in the Ukrainian town of Bucha.

To “amplify” this campaign, the White House urgently called in its “loyal squires”, not only from Poland and the Baltic States, but also from London, Paris and Berlin.

As a result, he was fairly quickly joined by Emmanuel Macron, who is suffering more losses every day in his failing popularity in France on the eve of the imminent presidential election. This is especially true against the background of increasing separatist sentiment in Corsica, galloping poverty and inflation – the highest since 1985, according to French media estimates – the result of Macron’s disregard for his country’s interests and his outspoken allegiance to Washington in his anti-Russian sanctions policy, to the detriment of France. However, Macron’s decision to join in supporting this provocation by Washington is unlikely to help him win the upcoming presidential election, as there is always a price to pay for supporting fakes…

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who, unlike his predecessor Angela Merkel, also actively seeks support for his vassal allegiance to Washington for his European “rule”, has also joined this provocative campaign around Bucha. He forgot that Germany’s entire current economy is sustained by Russia’s energy resources, and the latter may eventually tire of such multiple overtly hostile moves by official Berlin. And in response, Moscow is capable of shutting off the “energy tap” for Scholz, so that it is no longer Washington but Germany’s own people who decide his future fate, in retaliation for the impoverishment of Germans in recent weeks due to his anti-Russian sanctions policy.

But the undisputed leader in supporting this provocation in Bucha was London. And not just in the personal insinuations and appeals of Boris Johnson and a number of other British politicians, whose anti-Russian sanctions have, according to The Guardian, left low-income Britons with a dilemma – heating or food. But also by leading the unfolding of Kiev’s provocative propaganda on Bucha, and guiding the perpetrators of this anti-Russia campaign. It was for a reason that on March 24, on the eve of the “provocation in Bucha”, the British government announced its intention to allocate an additional £4 million to strengthen its information warfare against Russia.

It comes as no surprise therefore that, in response to Russia’s demand for a UN Security Council meeting to discuss the “events in Bucha” objectively, it was unprecedented in Security Council practice for the British representative to reject such a proposal. With this move, the British representative to the UNSC not only compromised the country’s role as current UNSC president, but also clearly confirmed London’s own complicity in the provocation and its reluctance to discuss “the events in Bucha” in this regard for fear of further revelations and Britain itself being exposed.

But against all this background of the Bucha provocation promoted by the US and its allies, the clear coincidence of its timing with the demonstrative and unprecedented reduction of the number of Russian embassies in Europe by the said “allies” is noteworthy. Meanwhile, there is a clear desire on the part of the West to shift the focus of global attention not only to condemning Moscow’s actions today, but also to limit the activity of Russian diplomatic missions in Europe to counteract the anti-Russian information warfare.

However, the inevitable question arises: what, after all, caused such a hasty and clearly failed fake propaganda “operation in Bucha” with the urgent involvement of all forces and means, by Washington?

The answer is simple. This is, of course, primarily a desire to urgently reduce the heat of the already mounting international censure of the US for developing and preparing to use bioweapons through its large network of secret US biolabs in Ukraine and in a number of other countries along the borders of Russia and China. For it was precisely to prevent Washington from unleashing a biological war that was behind Moscow’s current special operation in Ukraine. Moreover, it was Moscow who provided the international community with documented evidence that Britain and the US were involved in the joint development of bioweapons. So was Germany, which was implementing its own biowarfare program in Ukraine, as Russia’s permanent representative to the UN in Geneva, Gennady Gatilov, said. Gatilov further pointed out that the project was financed by the German Foreign Ministry and the Bundeswehr.

It is therefore not surprising that Britain and Germany are so zealous in promoting Washington’s Bucha provocation, as they fear further revelations because of their involvement in the development of bioweapons in Ukraine.

Such urgent hyping up by the White House of this provocative propaganda around Bucha was clearly due to the fact that Moscow had also uncovered the Biden family’s involvement in funding secret US biolabs and US bioweapons. This clearly threatened not only the impeachment of US President Biden, but also international sanctions against the US itself for failing to comply with UN conventions on the use and development of WMDs, up to and including the removal of the US from the UN Security Council.

Vladimir Platov, expert on the Middle East, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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https://journal-neo.org/2022/04/06/with-bucha-provocation-the-us-tries-to-hush-up-the-revelations-of-its-bioweapons-development/

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Andrei Tsiganov: Russia Is Regaining Its Sovereignty Thanks to the Sanctions Imposed by the West

BY ROLO SLAVSKIY

Mr. Tsiganov is a political activist in Russia. You may not have heard of him personally, but it far more likely that you have heard of some of the activity that he and his organization have been engaged in. In his own words, Mr. Tsiganov is engaged in a lawfare campaign against Liberal forces in Russia and while there are other conservatives operating in Russia, his organization appears to be the largest and most effective, with some actual victories to their name. The much-derided (in the West) anti-LGBT propaganda law passed in Russia was largely the work of him and his organization and the work of Duma Deputy Vitaly Milonov, who became the face of the law. You may or may not remember the British homosexual comedian Stephen Fry coming to Russia to give the Russian people a stern talking to about the values of tolerance and inclusion.

Recently, Tsiganov was active in the fight against the COVID clampdown in Russia, filing lawsuits and providing an alternative perspective to the WEF with the help of his media resource “Katyusha”, which is quite popular in Russia. As an aside, the Covid hysteria has largely been dropped in Russia as a result of the military operation in Ukraine and Mr. Tsiganov has much to say on this topic, so I hope that we can revisit it with him in depth in the future. This time though, we spoke mostly about the state of the Russian government and the media situation in Russia and the sweeping changes that are occurring in civil society. Tsiganov and his people are a fairly good representative of the views and positions of the large patriotic bloc in Russia, which generally wants the government to adopt a more conservative, sovereign position in its national policies, foreign policy and cultural program.

I hope you enjoy it.

Me [ ROLO SLAVSKIY]: Mr. Tsiganov, what is happening within Russia? The shakeups that we have seen in the last weeks are historic, no? Is Russia finally fed up with Liberalism?

Tsiganov: First and foremost, it is important to understand that there is a stark difference between the “deep nation” and the traitor class — the usurpers of Russia’s financial system, its media, and its culture-creators. Many of these traitors have left the country in recent weeks. True patriots don’t abandon their country. We can also refer to these people as “foam” — the foam on the top of the water. In other words, the foam is leaving the country. Alternatively, these people can be thought of as the sores on the Russian body. Many of them are non-Russians, but all of them are people who do not identify with Russia at all. They just used Russia to earn some money, temporarily. This is a positive cleansing process that is occurring now. We should be very thankful for it. Things would have been better had the West imposed sanctions on Russia earlier.

Take Anatoly Chubais as an example. He was one of the most prominent Liberal western agents. It’s a very good sign that he left. He was part of the pro-Western cultural elite in Russia. However, I hesitate to even use such words to describe him because neither he nor the people like him can be considered “elite” or particularly cultured for that matter. Unfortunately, we have to consider the possibility that some of them have may come back. For example, Vladimir Pozner [Channel 1 TV presenter] returned and thinks that he will be able to adjust to the new reality. His show is back on the air. Ivan Urgent [late night show entertainer who fled to Israel] also said that he might come back.

In the meantime, Konstantin Ernst [Channel 1 CEO] has had charges brought up on him. You have to understand, Channel 1 was pushing anti-Russian news on a state channel.

Me: How so?

Tsiganov: Well, they invited many liberal people, people from the pro-West camp, onto their shows and PR’d them. Take Morgenshtern, as an example. This is an entertainer that popularizes drug use to the youth. The government recently kicked him out of the country.

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https://www.unz.com/article/andrei-tsiganov-russia-is-regaining-its-sovereignty-thanks-to-the-sanctions-imposed-by-the-west/

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