Europe

Russian activist arrested for ‘Putin Hitler’ message

A 68-year-old veteran opposition activist was arrested after displaying a sign reading “PUTIN HITLER” from a prominent bridge over the Moskva River in the center of the Russian capital. Grigory Saksonov, also known as Uncle Grisha, climbed over the Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge holding the sign and clad in wetsuit before lowering himself into the water below with a rope. He was pulled out of the river by police and taken away in an ambulance. Saksonov faces charges of “taking part in an unauthorized action” and “disobeying a police officer.” Saksonov’s action came three days before Vladimir Putin presided over the 80th anniversary Victory Day parade in Red Square, a massive spectacle marking the Soviet Union’s defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II. (Photo via Novaya Gazeta)

Europe

Crimean Tatar activists get prison after ‘illegal’ trial

Six Crimean Tatar men received long prison terms from a Russian court, following a trial considered “illegal” by the Ukrainian government and human rights groups. The Southern District Military Court in Rostov-on-Don handed down 14-year sentences to Khalil Mambetov, Refat Seydametov, Osman Abdurazakov, Leman Zekeriayev and Ekrem Krosh. Ayder Asanov was given 11 years. Although accused of “participation in the activities of a terrorist organization” and “preparation for the violent seizure of power” under the Russian Criminal Code, the charges concern their involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir, a transnational Muslim civic organization that is banned in Russia but is legal in Ukraine and most countries around the world. Additionally, the nonviolent activities in question took place in Crimea, which Russia has illegally occupied and declared annexed since 2014. Kyiv, and governments around the world, recognize Crimea as part of Ukraine. (Photo: Crimean Solidarity via KHPG)

Europe

Tatar Mejlis opposes betrayal of Crimea

The representative body of the Crimean Tatar people has vowed to oppose any international recognition of Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The Tatar Mejlis, now sitting in exile in Kyiv, said that any move to recognize Crimea as Russian territory would violate international law. Refat Chubarov, the body’s chairman, asserted in a statement: “Crimea is the homeland of the indigenous Crimean Tatar people and an integral part of Ukraine. Accordingly, no one can decide the fate of Crimea under any circumstances, except for the Ukrainian state and the Crimean Tatar people.” The statement comes amid reports that the Trump White House is pressuring Kyiv to accept a peace formula that includes formal US recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea. (Photo: Crimean Tatar Mejlis)

Europe

Podcast: MAGA-fascism and the future of Europe

The revised deal for US access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth (with no security guarantees for Kyiv) collapsed in the unseemly Oval Office donnybrook, and European leaders now convene their own summit—faced with the prospect of supporting Ukraine without the US. But Hungary and Slovakia represent an authoritarian bloc that supports Ukraine’s betrayal—and Romania could be next to defect to this Russia-aligned bloc. In Europe and America alike, elements of the “tankie” pseudo-left no longer even bother to hide their convergence with MAGA. In Episode 267 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for a clean break at both the international and grassroots levels. Europe must realize that the Atlantic alliance is effectively dead, and there are no prospects of reviving it while Trump is in the White House; whether or not the rumors are true that he was recruited as a KGB agent in the ’80s, he is now on Putin’s side. And progressives must repudiate pseudo-left misleaders who shill for Trump and and spread lies for Putin, and seek a new leadership that mobilizes to oppose them. (Image: Chris Rywalt/CounterVortex, after “Rendezvous” by British cartoonist David Low, 1939)

Planet Watch

Ukraine, Greenland and the global struggle for lithium

In Episode 265 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines Trump’s ultimatum to Ukraine to hand over a large share of its wealth in strategic minerals such as lithium in exchange for continued US military aid—and whether a race with China for control of the lithium and rare earth elements needed for Elon Musk‘s industrial interests might also be the agenda behind the Trump regime’s annexationist designs on Greenland. Trump is meanwhile opening Native American lands in Nevada to lithium exploitation, while Musk’s Tesla has sought to grab a share of Bolivia‘s lithium reserves—now also coveted by China. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon. (Photo: rare earth mine at Mountain Pass, Calif. Credit: Tmy350 via Wikimedia Commons)

Europe

Trump prepares grab for Ukraine’s lithium

As Trump and Hegseth explicitly broach the surrender of Ukrainian territory to Russia, a poorly positioned Zelensky is acceding to demands that he turn a large portion of his country’s strategic mineral wealth over to the US in compensation for military aid. Especially at issue are Ukraine’s significant reserves of lithium—critical to de facto “co-president” Elon Musk’s e-vehicle interests. In announcing a new lithium refinery in Texas, Musk called the mineral “the new oil.” The premium on Ukraine’s strategic minerals is elevated by China’s perceived design to establish control over the planet’s rare earth elements. However, as Zelensky is quick to emphasize, nearly 20% of Ukraine’s mineral resources are in areas under Russian occupation. (Map: ResearchGate)

Europe

Anarchist bloc at Russian exiles’ anti-Putin rally

Thousands of exiled Russian dissidents and opposition figures held a multi-city mobilization against Putin’s regime in several European capitals. The largest march was in Berlin, where speakers included Yulia Navalnaya, widow of martyred leader Alexei Navalny. Participants carried the blue-and-white flag of the Russian opposition, as well as Ukrainian flags, while chanting “No to war” and “Putin is a killer” in Russian. Exiled Russian anarchists organized their own bloc at the demonstration, under slogans including “Death to the Empire,” “No peace under Russian occupation,” “Support resistance against Kremlin,” and “Arms for Ukrainians.” Rejecting recent talk of a compromise settlement in Ukraine, their statement said: “We find it unacceptable to make concessions to the Russian fascist regime.” The statement also made clear their differences with the leadership of the march: “We reject the liberal myth of a ‘Beautiful Russia of the Future’… The empire must be destroyed to its foundations, and only then will a different world be possible on the former ‘Russian’ territories. (Photo: Avtonom)

Europe

Russia: ‘nuclear war by Christmas’

President Joe Biden has authorized Ukraine to use US-supplied Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) for strikes deep inside Russia. In interviews with both the UK’s Times Radio and the BBC news program The World At One, former Putin advisor and semi-official mouthpiece Sergei Markov responded to the move by warning of an imminent Russian nuclear strike—not just on Ukraine but on the United States and Britain. “In the worst scenario, the nuclear war happens before Christmas of this year,” he told the BBC. “Probably you will not be able to say ‘Merry Christmas’ because you will stay in the hole trying to hide away [your] family from the nuclear catastrophe. It can develop very, very quickly.” (Photo of ATACMS being launched: Ukraine Ministry of Defense via Forces News)

Europe

Meloni maneuvers to save offshore migrant camp plan

Italy’s right-wing government, led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, issued a decree aimed at bypassing judicial obstacles to a controversial deal with Albania to hold and process the claims of asylum-seekers intercepted at sea by Italian forces. The move came days after a special immigration court in Rome ruled that the first group of 12 migrants sent to the repurposed military camp at Gjader, Albania, must be returned to Italy. The court found that the migrants’ countries of origin—Egypt and Bangladesh—are “unsafe,” making their offshore detention illegal. Meloni’s decree asserts the executive alone has the power to make such determinations, setting the stage for a showdown between her government and the judiciary. (Photo: Melting Pot Europa)

Europe

Podcast: Tolstoy would shit II

The bellicose and authoritarian Russian state’s propaganda exploitation of the anarcho-pacifist novelist Leo Tolstoy is an obvious and perverse irony. But a less obvious irony also presents itself. Like all fascist regimes, that of Vladimir Putin is stigmatizing and even criminalizing homosexuality and other sexual “deviance.” Following alarming reports of “concentration camps” for gay men in the Russian republic of Chechnya, Moscow began to impose an anti-gay agenda nationwide. A 2020 constitutional reform officially enshrined “traditional marriage,” while a “gay propaganda law” imposes penalties on any outward expression of gay identity, resulting in police raids on Moscow gay bars. The “LGBT movement” has been designated a “terrorist organization”; media depictions of same-sex love are banned as “deviant content.” Yet the venerable littérateur now glorified as a symbol of Russian nationalism may have himself been gay. In Episode 247 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg interviews Javier Sethness Castro, author of Queer Tolstoy: A Psychobiography (Routledge 2023).

Europe

Belarus broaches nuclear strike

Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko charges that Kyiv has stationed more than 120,000 soldiers along Ukraine’s border with Belarus, and says that he is deploying military formations along his own country’s entire border with Ukraine in response. In an interview with Rossiya TV, Lukashenko accused Ukraine of attempting to provoke a nuclear strike from Russia, which has warheads deployed in Belarus. “The worry is that escalation on Ukraine’s part is an attempt to force Russia to take asymmetric actions,” Lukasheno said. “Let’s consider the usage of nuclear weapons. I am confident that Ukraine would be pleased if Russia or we utilized tactical nuclear weapons there. That would bring them joy.” (Map: PCL)

Europe

Pipeline goad of Ukraine’s Kursk incursion?

One day into their unprecedented cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk oblast, Ukrainian forces captured the Sudzha gas metering station—a key node of the last remaining Russian pipeline still sending gas to Europe through Ukraine. The Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod pipeline, built by the Soviets in the 1980s, sends natural gas from Siberian fields through Ukraine to Slovakia, the Czech Repubic, Hungary and Austria. Despite the capture of the Sudzha station, Gazprom hasn’t halted the flow of gas through the station—nor has Ukraine shut the pipeline over the past two and a half years of war, apparently due to pressure from Europe. EU sanctions have only gradually started to affect Russia’s massive hydrocarbons sector. (Image: Soviet postage stamp celebrating the Urengoy-Uzhgorod pipeline. Via Wikipedia)