Kiev is facing a shortage of foreign military assistance next year, as some donors are “struggling to secure funding and others balk at increasing financing,” Bloomberg reported on Friday, citing anonymous sources.

The Ukrainian military overwhelmingly depends on foreign aid for its hardware, with over 80% coming from abroad, according to Defense Minister Rustem Umerov. The bulk of the military assistance in 2025 will come under a $50 billion loan, which G7 nations want to make against the profits from frozen Russian assets, the Bloomberg report said.

The scheme, which Moscow has described as theft, is yet to be finalized and will not be enough to meet Ukraine’s needs, the outlet said. The $50 billion would be roughly equivalent to what the West provided in the first six months of 2024.

In key Western nations, circumstances are working against continued funding for Kiev, the outlet said. In the US, there is the possibility that Donald Trump will be reelected president – the former leader has accused America’s EU allies of not pulling their weight on Ukraine. Germany, France, and Italy are in political turmoil. The UK, one of the staunchest supporters of Kiev, is set to cut spending across the board.

Meanwhile, Russia plans to spend 6.2% of its GDP on defense in 2025, which amounts to around $142 billion. “Russia’s economy is on a war footing, while Ukraine’s allies are not,” Bloomberg said, citing one of its sources.

The warning comes as Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky is touring the US to promote his ‘victory plan’ against Russia. President Joe Biden, who met with Zelensky on Thursday, has authorized the release of $8 billion in Congress-approved aid, days before the end of the fiscal year would have made much of the funds no longer available to his office.

But the White House would neither endorse the ‘victory plan’ nor grant permission for Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia with Western-supplied weapons, which Zelensky has been demanding for months.

Reports in the Western media reflect skepticism regarding Zelensky’s plan and growing pressure on him to drop his maximalist goals and redefine what ‘victory’ in the conflict entails.

https://www.rt.com/russia/604760-ukraine-weapons-donations-bloomberg/

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Multiple occurrences of war crimes have been attributed to far-right regiments in Ukraine, including the use of cluster munitions and documented instances of torture.

Anti-Russian sentiment has deep roots in modern Western society, owing in part to the country’s military power and historical status as a foil to Western Europe.

In recent years this struggle has acutely played out in the country of Ukraine, which the United States has worked tirelessly to pull into the Western orbit. 2014’s Euromaidan coup installed a fiercely anti-Russian government in the Mariinskyi Palace, empowering Ukrainian nationalists with grievances against Moscow dating back to Nazism’s mid-20th century march across the continent.

The development led to significant hostility toward ethnic Russians in the country, especially in Ukraine’s eastern provinces. Atrocities such as the Odessa Trade Union House massacre demonstrated the physical threat posed to Russo-Ukrainians, while the banning of the Russian language in schools and places of business illustrated what observers claimed was a broad suppression of Russian culture.

In the United States, anti-Russian sentiment dating back to the Cold War has been rekindled by claims of Russian interference in US presidential politics – a narrative frequently not borne out by investigations into the matter. Widespread Russophobia has heightened the typically militaristic tenor of Western news reporting, causing coverage of the Ukraine conflict to fall even below the standards of typical war coverage in the United States according to Covert Action Magazine managing editor Jeremy Kuzmarov.

The analyst joined Sputnik’s Fault Lines program Wednesday to discuss the state of journalistic reporting on the ongoing conflict.

“I think that the media coverage has been absolutely abysmal,” claimed Kuzmarov, an author of several critical books on US foreign policy. “We've had a decade of Russophobia that we've discussed on the show that's really impacted people considerably. And there's been a total blackout.”

“As far as Israel-Palestine, it has gotten through because of the brutality of the Israelis,” he continued. “Some of it has been reported in mainstream media, the bombing of hospitals and things like that. But there's been a total blackout on the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian military, including the neo-Nazi Azov battalion*.”

“Especially liberal media has been particularly biased and Russophobic, like MSNBC and CNN, as well as alternative media like Democracy Now! that has a following among activists who are more in the peace movement – there's nothing on that network ever. They've never interviewed Eastern Ukrainians who've been victimized by the Ukrainian military or endured shelling of their cities.”

The US-based news outlet CNN was embarrassed in late 2022 when, during a piece celebrating Ukraine’s advance in the Kherson region, footage aired by the network appeared to show a man with a Ukrainian flag giving a Nazi salute to a crowd of revelers. The incident was one of many demonstrating the significant influence of neo-fascists in Ukraine’s military and society – a fact that Western media has increasingly taken great pains to ignore.

“Today, increasing reports of far-right violence, ultranationalism, and erosion of basic freedoms are giving the lie to the West’s initial [post-Maidan] euphoria,” The Nation reported in 2019. “There are neo-Nazi pogroms against the Roma, ... book bans, and state-sponsored glorification of Nazi collaborators… What Ukraine’s far right lacks in poll numbers, it makes up for with things Marine Le Pen could only dream of – paramilitary units and free rein on the streets.”

“Post-Maidan Ukraine is the world’s only nation to have a neo-Nazi formation in its armed forces,” the report noted. Multiple occurrences of war crimes have been attributed to far-right regiments in Ukraine, including the use of cluster munitions and documented instances of torture. One video from late 2022 showed the summary execution of several surrendering Russian soldiers, who were shot in the legs before being gunned down. Such cases have received little attention as media focuses on often dubious pro-Ukraine stories.

Western portrayals of the Ukraine conflict as a struggle for democracy and human rights are belied by the actual nature of the Ukrainian government, which has legitimized neo-Nazi gangs in the domestic as well as the military sphere. Five years ago Kiev announced the National Druzhina paramilitary group would serve as poll watchers in the country’s national elections. The group swears fealty to politician Andriy Biletsky, who once vowed Ukraine would “lead the White Races of the world in a final crusade…against the Semite-led Untermenschen [subhumans].”

“There's a deeply ingrained Russophobia that goes back to Cold War and Hollywood film and how they present the Russians as the enemy in a demonized way,” said Kuzmarov, who claimed that anti-Russian sentiment has prevented an honest discussion about the nature of Ukraine’s government. “That has seeped so deeply in our culture that Americans can't wake up and smell the coffee as to what's gone on here, the catastrophe, the Vietnam-type situation that they support in Ukraine.”

The analyst observed that the conflict has become deeply polarized in the United States, noting it is “becoming a popular issue for the Republican Party now. That may be one reason why the young lefties aren't coming strong against the Ukrainian war, because the main politicians speaking out against it are people on the right. People they hate [like] Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump, and Robert Kennedy, who defected into the Republican Party.”

https://sputnikglobe.com/20240926/pervasive-russophobia-drives-total-blackout-of-ukraines-war-crimes--analyst-1120291546.html

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

THESE ARE QUESTIONS FOR ALL THE JOURNALISTS, OPINIONATORS AND PUNDIT OUT THERE IN THE WESTERN WILDERNESS.

CAN RUSSIA LOSE THE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE?

IF YOU ANSWER YES, YOU ARE AN IDIOT....

SHOULD RUSSIA LOSE THE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE?

IF YOU ANSWER YES, YOU HAVE LEARNT NOTHING FROM HISTORY...

WHY HAS RUSSIA LAUNCHED A MILITARY OPERATION IN UKRAINE?

IF YOU ANSWER "REVIVE THE RUSSIAN EMPIRE", YOU ARE MORE OF AN IMBECILE THAN YOU APPEAR...

WHO STARTED THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE?

IF YOU ANSWER RUSSIA, YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE OR A VICTIM OF AMERICAN PROPAGANDA STARTED IN 1917....

WHAT WOULD RUSSIA DO IF IT LOSES THE WAR AGAINST UKRAINE?

IF YOU ANSWER CAPITULATE LIKE GERMANY IN 1945, YOU ARE DELUDED LIKE A DEAD MONKEY....

COME ON — THINK, THINK, THINK.....

CONCLUSION: RUSSIA CANNOT LOSE THE WAR IN UKRAINE.

SO, PLACE YOUR TINFOIL HAT ON AND CHANNEL SOME COMMON SENSE IN YOUR BRAIN — OR YOUR ARSE IF YOU PREFER.

GUS LEONISKY

POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.