The Russia House had a special guest, Maria Zakharova, the Spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry. What started as a classic interview turned into a remarkable conversation that touched on the very essence of the problems that exist today between Russia and the West, emphasizing the responsibility on the part of the West for these problems, and underscoring how important it is to overcome Russophobia if solutions to these problems are to be found.

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Classical conditioning holds that a neutral stimulus, when associated with a specific response, will over time become a conditioned stimuli which triggers a conditioned response. It’s basic cause-effect relationship analysis. Ivan Pavlov made it a household concept by studying the relationship between a dog’s salivation and the presence of food. “Pavlov’s response” is one thing when it is generated under controlled laboratory conditions. It’s another thing altogether when it occurs in “the wild”, where the impact of conditioned stimuli and its related conditional response often goes unnoticed in a world which overlooks these relationships until it is too late.

In the North End neighborhood of the city of Albany, a seedier section of the capital of New York State where old brick buildings dating back to the late 19th century stand in various states of disrepair, sits a four-ton, 28-foot-tall steel and fiberglass statue of a fox terrier named Nipper, the canine mascot of the Radio Corporation of America (RCA).

Nipper was one of four identical monumental terriers which were perched atop the regional distribution centers of RTA Corporation, an appliance distributor which specialized in RCA products; others graced the skylines of Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York City. Overtime, the other Nipper statues succumbed to time and waning economic fortune, their buildings being abandoned and eventually torn down, together with the statues. Only in Albany did Nipper live on, and in the process became an iconic landmark of the city itself, which has adopted Nipper as its unofficial de facto mascot.

Nipper is named after a fox terrier owned by Francis Barraud, an artist from Liverpool, England who, in 1898, upon seeing Nipper listening to a wind-up cylinder phonograph playing a recording of his owner’s voice (Barraud’s brother), captured the moment in a painting, “His Master’s Voice.” The painting later was used as the basis for trademarks of several companies, perhaps none more famous than RCA.

The cause-effect relationship between an owner’s voice and a pet dog is well known to anyone who has ever owned a dog—the master calls the dog’s name, and the dog responds by running to the sound of their master’s voice.

Dogs are conditioned to comprehend changes in the tone of their Master’s voice, knowing when the master is pleased or angry, and responding accordingly.

This is the byproduct of what is known as “classical conditioning”. Right about the time Nipper was captured tilting his head to the sound of his master’s voice, a Russian physiologist, Ivan Pavlov, was conducting research into the salivation of dogs. After inserting a small test tube into the mouths of his canine test subjects, the dogs were then fed with a special mix of powder made from meat. The experiment was predicated upon the assumption that dogs would salivate when presented with the food. But Pavlov soon discovered that the dogs began salivating when they heard the footsteps of his assistant down the hallway, who was bringing the food. Pavlov soon realized that stimuli that the dogs associated with food would trigger the same physiological reaction as the food itself—the classic “Pavlovian response.”

There are many scientific terms which came into being because of Pavlov’s work, and the work of psychologists who followed up on his findings. These are:

Neutral Stimulus (NS), a stimulus that initially does not elicit a particular response or reflex action. For example, in Pavlov’s experiment, the sound of his assistant’s footsteps was a neutral stimulus initially, as it did not cause the dogs to salivate.

Unconditioned Stimulus (UCS), a stimulus that naturally and automatically triggers a response without any learning needed. In Pavlov’s experiment, the food was the unconditioned stimulus as it automatically induced salivation in the dogs.

Conditioned Stimulus (CS), a previously neutral stimulus that, after being repeatedly associated with an unconditioned stimulus, trigger a conditioned response. For instance, in Pavlov’s experiment, the assistant’s footsteps became a conditioned stimulus when the dogs learned to associate it with food.

Conditioned Response (CR), a learned response to the conditioned stimulus. In Pavlov’s experiment, salivating in response to the assistant’s footsteps was the conditioned response.

Unconditioned Response (UR), an automatic, innate reaction to an unconditioned stimulus. In Pavlov’s experiment, the dogs’ automatic salivation in response to the food is an example of an unconditioned response.

According to Pavlovian theory, conditioned stimulus and conditioned response can occur in a vacuum, meaning that rather than being the byproduct of the intent of a laboratory experiment, the unpredictable reality of life can produce the same result, often without the subject realizing it.

Misophonia is a disorder where one has a decreased tolerance to specific sounds and things that can be sensed that are related to them. Misophonia is often triggered by post-traumatic stress. Many military veterans suffer from a form of misophonia; I, for instance, am triggered by the sound of helicopters.

We Americans like to see ourselves as happy go lucky people. An attribute that is often associated with Americans is their constant smile, and their willingness to engage in conversations with complete strangers as if they were life-long friends. While the United States is a diverse nation, possessing no single accent, the collective range of the American way of speaking is easily discernable as uniquely American, distinct from other forms of Anlo-Saxon linguistic expression.

Our speech has become a unique identifier and is often used to depict Americans when seeking to describe the “happy American” or the “ugly American”, and every variation of American in between. In movies American tourists are often identified by their uniquely American way of speech.

Using Pavlovian cues, the American voice, in and of itself, is a neutral stimulus.

Hunger, fear, anger, frustration, sadness.

These are emotions that can be triggered automatically by unconditional stimuli that are naturally seen as eliciting these emotions—the lack of food, war, altercations, loss.

Over time, if the unconditional responses which trigger the aforementioned range of emotions become linked to the sound of an American voice, then, according to Pavlov, we have achieved what is known as a conditioned response (the emotions) triggered by a conditioned stimulus (the sound of an American voice.)

So here is a Pavlovian experiment for my fellow Americans to consider:

We give voice to positions, ideas, and concepts using our unique way of speaking.

These positions, ideas, and concepts are heavily influenced by Russophobia, resulting in actions that produce events and actions inside Russia capable of triggering emotions which are the logical byproduct of unconditioned responses.

Over time, the people of Russia come to associate the sound of an American voice articulating these positions, ideas, and concepts with the events and actions which generate these negative emotions.

In short, the Russian people have developed a Misophonic reaction to the sound of our voice.

Think about it.

We are trying hard to repair relations between Russia and the United States.

We are trying to reach out to the Russian people to convince them that we are able and willing to live together in peace and harmony.

But the very sound of our voice triggers a response that is repulsive to the Russians.

We are our own worst enemies.

There are mixed opinions on whether a conditioned response can ever be disassociated with a conditioned stimulus.

In short, this means the sound of an American voice may always be found to be repulsive by Russians of the current generation.

We Americans need to do better.

We need to think of Nipper, and his adorable tilt of the head, and understand that the depiction we find so endearing was born of a conditioned response to a conditioned stimulus based upon love.

If we can’t get the current generation of Russians to stop recoiling at the sound of our voices, then let us try to ensure that future generations of Russians will not have the same conditioned response.

The problem isn’t the Russian people.

The problem is us.

We need to do better.

We need to start viewing the Russian people as people deserving of respect, admiration, friendship, and love.

If we can do this, then we are creating a conditioned stimulus which is capable of producing a conditioned response, in short, a situation where the Russian people look forward to hearing, seeing, and meeting their American counterparts.

Because, at the end of the day, it is not about the sound of their voices that matters as much as the intent behind the sound.

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The Russia House had a special guest, Maria Zakharova, the Spokeswoman of the Russian Foreign Ministry. What started as a classic interview turned into a remarkable conversation that touched on the very essence of the problems that exist today between Russia and the West, emphasizing the responsibility on the part of the West for these problems, and underscoring how important it is to overcome Russophobia if solutions to these problems are to be found.

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Des Grecs et des Romains imitons le courage ;

Attaquons, dans ses eaux, la perfide Albion.

Que nos fastes, s'ouvrant par sa destruction

Marquent les jours de la victoire !

Of the Greeks and the Romans let’s imitate the courage!

Let’s attack in her waters the perfidious Albion!

May our annals opening with her destruction

Mark the days of victory!

Marquis de Ximenès (1726-1817), L’ère républicaine (The republican era)

The perfidy of the British is well-known, with the term Perfidious Albion dating back to the decision on the part of England in 1793 to join in with the alliance aligned against the forces of the French revolution. The spirit of that betrayal lives on today, made ironic by the fact that the modern manifestation of Perfidious Albion is now a joint enterprise involving the French, who have aligned themselves with the British to oppose the efforts of President Donald Trump to pursue peace with Russia by ending the war in Ukraine.

When it comes to the so-called “Ukraine Project”—the unofficial term used to describe the decades-old undertaking on the part of the United States and its erstwhile European allies, led by the UK and France, to use Ukraine as a vehicle to undermine, contain, and—ultimately—destroy Russia, uninformed observers are often distracted by the intellectual misdirection that the perpetrators of this project undertake which turns logic upside down by portraying Russia as a fake nation led by a brutal autocrat out to conquer Europe, and Ukraine as an enlightened collection of quasi-Europeans who not only share the same values as their western brethren, but are willing to serve as the shield that protects Europe from the scourge of the Muscovite hordes.

The “Ukraine Project” is comprised, at its core, of a fundamental lie—the existence of a viable nation state called Ukraine.

But the reality is that Ukraine is little more than the artificial construct of a succession of outside agencies—the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Bolshevik Russia/the Soviet Union, and the so-called “collective West” comprising the US and Europe—each of whom has sought to weaken and subordinate what they call Great Russian chauvinism, and what the Russian people call the Russian nation.

It is the latest manifestation of this project that is at issue today, derived from the deranged mind of George Soros, who in 1993 opined publicly about what he had been working to achieve behind the scenes—a new world order managed by the Trans-Atlantic military partnership known as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, or NATO.

Soros envisioned a world in the post-Soviet era where NATO, as the only functioning management system capable of fulfilling the destiny of the collective West to achieve global domination, sought to subvert a weakened Russia by stripping it of its former allies and partners, and then turning these one-time friends against them in a violent confrontation designed to wear Russia down and, ultimately, break it apart.

Soros worried about the United States, especially when it came to balancing the legitimate national interests of the United States, which never included having its young men die on foreign shores, and those of their erstwhile European allies, who twice in the 20^th century undertook conflicts which resulted in American boys perishing on foreign soil. In his 1993 article, “Toward a New World Order: The Future of NATO,” Soros spelled out how this American hesitation could be avoided:

The United States would not be called upon to act as the policeman of the world. When it acts, it would act in conjunction with others. Incidentally, the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the Partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act. This is a viable alternative to the looming world disorder.

All that was needed was a compliant source of Eastern European manpower.

Enter Ukraine.

Thirty years later and Soros’ evil scheme is playing itself out on the killing fields of Ukraine and Russia. The collective West found their source of compliant Eastern European manpower and engaged them in a textbook proxy conflict with Russia which has seen more than a million Ukrainian soldiers sacrificed along with hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of NATO “technical capabilities” in a losing cause.

Not only has Russia refused to be defeated, but instead had turned the tables on George Soros’ “Ukraine Project,” handing the collective West a humiliating lesson in the difference between a legitimate nation comprised of people united in their culture and heritage (Russia) and one which was manufactured from the minds of those who sought to harm Russia by inventing a national identity born not from common values, but generated from the terror of those who were creating this false nation. George Soros and his NATO minions had created a Frankenstein’s monster, a grotesque collection of people united only by the hate they were taught from a young age to feel toward Russia.

And now it is time for Frankenstein’s monster to die.

The experiment has failed.

But rather than accept this failure and move on to the next phase of Trans-Atlantic geopolitical evolution, Soros and his minions, led by France and the UK, have turned on the United States, seeking to implement a part of the contract regarding the creation of Frankenstein’s monster that never existed—to draw America into this proxy conflict, to create the conditions for having American blood once again shed on European soil.

This is the perfidy of France and the UK.

They knew going in what the rules of the “Ukraine Project” were—a proxy conflict, born of George Soros’ warped mind, which used Eastern European manpower and NATO military technology to kill Russians in numbers sufficient to bring down the Russian Federation.

Now, faced with the consequences of their failure, these modern-day incarnations of Dr. Frankenstein cannot do the honorable thing by acknowledging their failure and putting their fake nation state down. Instead, they wish to extend the monster’s suffering by infusing it with the blood of American youth.

Fortunately, the United States has new leadership.

President Donald Trump has rejected the “Ukraine Project” in its totality, opting instead to seek peace with Russia on terms that promote economic co-prosperity over military confrontation.

One would expect our long-term “friends and allies” in NATO, led by the French and the British, to understand this—after all, the rules of the game were always designed to keep America from becoming a direct participant in the proxy war that served as the culmination of the “Ukraine Project.”

Instead, they sent their respective leaders—Emmanuel Macron for France, and Keir Starmer for the UK—to the White House to try and convince President Trump that Frankenstein’s monster was worth saving.

Then they dispatched the monster himself—Volodymyr Zelensky, the living manifestation of the sick, perverted, artificial construct of what is called Ukraine.

But President Trump saw through the perfidy and sent all three packing.

And now it is up to the United States to do what these would-be Dr. Frankenstein’s cannot—put the monster out of its misery.

Like the Frankenstein of lore, Ukraine will not die easily. It will try to kill its creators, something both Europe and the United States must be on guard for.

But Ukraine will die.

The “Ukraine Project” has failed.

What emerges in its stead remains unknown—a new monster? Or something real, legitimate, born of culture and values derived from historical norms, and not manufactured from the terror of men trying to create a monster for their sick geopolitical games.

This is the final stage of the modern manifestation of Perfidious Albion, where the British and French demonstrate to the world that they stand for nothing but betrayal, and can never be counted as true friends of the American people.

George Soros envisioned a world order where the NATO military alliance, led by France and the UK, took advantage of a compliant United States to lure us into a proxy war with Russia.

This is not the action of either a friend or ally, but rather an enemy, someone hostile to legitimate interests of the United States which should never again manifest themselves in conflicts that have Americans dying in Europe’s wars.

The consequences of this modern enactment of Perfidious Albion should be the abandonment of NATO and all that it stands for, and the ushering in of a new era of American greatness where we make common cause with those who seek peace and economic prosperity, and not those who aspire to construct monsters designed to kill.

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For three years I helped lead the charge for improving relations between the US and Russia. Now, with peace at hand, I reflect on the reality that the role of rogue peacemaker may no longer be in vogue.

Last night myself and my friend and fellow independent journalist, Garland Nixon, made our way to the Russian Embassy in Washington, DC, the invited guests of the chargé d'affaires, Alexander Kim, and the Defense Attaché, Colonel (promoted to Major General) Pavel Terkin, to celebrate Defender of the Fatherland Day.

This would be my third consecutive visit to the Russian Embassy to celebrate this auspicious occasion, a day dedicated to those who serve Russia in the armed forces of the Russian Federation. The holiday marks the occasion of the first mass mobilization of citizens into the Red Army held in Moscow and Petrograd in 1918. Celebrated originally as Red Army Day, and later as Soviet Army and Navy Day, the holiday took on its current name in 2002 by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who decreed it to be a State Holiday.

For two decades the Russian people would mark this day with toasts, honoring the memory of those who had served the Fatherland in the past, and those who served it in present times. Whereas May 9 (Victory Day) had captured the imagination of the Russian people, Defender of the Fatherland Day was celebrated in a more muted fashion.

Until the Special Military Operation.

Russia’s initiation of military operations against Ukraine transpired on February 24, 2022–one day after Defender of the Fatherland Day. The Russian nation celebrated their service men and women one day, a nation at peace. And woke up the next day, a nation at war.

By the time Defender of the Fatherland Day, 2023 rolled around, Russia was a nation isolated from the western world, treated as a pariah state by the United States. Ambassador Anatoly Antonov, one of the Russian Federation’s best experts on the United States, was deliberately cut off from the normal channels of diplomatic interaction, a veritable prisoner in an Embassy that had been conceived in the spirit of détente and consummated in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when US-Russian relations were generally described as “friendly.”

The Russian Defense Attaché, Major General Evgeny Bobkin, had likewise been blackballed by the Defense Attachés’ Association, an association of top international military officers in the US capital whose dean is selected by the US Defense Intelligence Agency, who voted to expel him in March 2022, shortly after the SMO began.

The Defender of the Fatherland celebration is held in the “Golden Hall” of the Ceremonial Building of the Russian Embassy. This grand venue is marked by the elaborate enamel paintings that decorate the side walls of the ballroom. The left wall, as you enter, is comprised of images of the ancient cities that comprise the “Golden Ring” that surrounds Moscow. The right wall contains images depicting the 15 capital cities of the former republics of the Soviet Union.

As told to me by Ambassador Antonov, Russia’s first President, Boris Yeltsin, ordered the paintings covered up, since they depicted a Soviet past he had repudiated. However, on his first visit to the embassy after becoming the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin ordered the room to be restored to its former glory, and the paintings are on full display today for visitors to admire.

The Defender of the Fatherland celebration of 2023 was one defined by a war in Ukraine that had grown into a proxy conflict between the collective West and Russia. The setting could only be described as simultaneously patriotic and defiant, with my Russian hosts going out of their way to make a linkage between the Ukrainian conflict and the war against Nazi Germany.

Anatoly Antonov’s speech was diplomatically defiant, chastising the US and its European allies for forgoing the bonds of the alliance that had defeated Nazi Germany in favor of supporting the modern-day successors of Nazi Germany—Banderist Ukraine—against their former Russian ally and friend.

The Defender of the Fatherland Day celebration was supposed to be a grand affair, attended by the diplomatic elite of Washington, DC society. But on this occasion the “Golden Hall” was only half-full. While the friends of Russia from the so-called “Global South” were in attendance, there were no official representatives from either the US or Europe present.

I joined a handful of stalwart Russian-American citizens who braved the scrutiny of the FBI to make entrance into a compound that had, for all sense and purpose, become enemy territory from the perspective of the United States.

I was very much a fish out of water, a stranger to the surroundings, proceedings, and personalities. Sensing my isolation, I was taken under the wings of a cadre of Russian officers led by Colonel Semen Volkov, a paratrooper who introduced me to his fellow officers of the Russian Defense Attaché office. My Russian being what it was, and Colonel Volkov’s English being only marginally better, the evening devolved into an exchange of short military-themed anecdotes punctuated regularly by toasts to the glory of the Russian soldier/sailor/airman/Marine.

The culminating moment came with the final toast of the night, which I had recorded as a video. When the celebration ended, and I bid farewell to my hosts and new friends, I posted this video on my social media. The firestorm it generated in terms of those who liked it and those who condemned it served as the perfect illustration of the controversy that is attached to anyone promoting peace in a time of war.

By the time Defender of the Fatherland 2024 rolled around, my profile as an erstwhile peacemaker had grown exponentially. My profile had exploded at home and abroad, and I had two high-profile trips to Russia under my belt, including one which saw me address 25,000 Chechen soldiers and visit the territories of Crimea and New Russia.

I came prepared, bringing a bottle of bourbon for Colonel Volkov and his comrades. Armed with recent experiences and insights, my ability to interface in a more comprehensive way with my hosts made this evening one to remember. The sense of patriotism and defiance still existed, but my Russian hosts were buoyed by the success of their nation in withstanding the military, economic, and diplomatic onslaught at the hands of the collective west. I was still an American operating in near total isolation from my fellow countrymen, who were still absent from the ceremony. But the cause of peace resonated even stronger this year, and the overall mood in the “Golden Hall” was one of prideful optimism.

Before departing, I gathered Colonel Volkov and his comrades together to record our final toast.

Once again the responses on social media were either intensely supportive or damning.

During the celebration I was approached by General Bobkin, who extended an invitation for me to attend the Moscow International Security Conference in August. I was already scheduled to attend the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum in June, and the BRICS summit in Kazan in October. The Moscow International Security Conference gave me entree to the three most prestigious forums regarding Russia and the world. I was excited for the approach of summer and the unique opportunities that would unfold.

Unfortunately, none of this was meant to be. The US Department of State seized my passport as I was preparing to board my flight to Saint Petersburg, and in August the FBI raided my home, alleging that I was working as an unregistered agent of Russia.

There was a price to be paid for advocating peace in a time of war. The Russian government seemed at a loss when it came to me. They more than anyone knew I was not their “agent,” and yet to say anything would, from their perspective, only make things worse for me. I was invited to receptions—Russia Day in June, and a piano concert in September—but the atmosphere was markedly different. There was hesitation on the part of the diplomats where once there was a sense of common purpose.

The exception to this hesitancy was the officers of the Defense Attaché’s office. Major General Bobkin, until his departure in the summer of 2024, and his replacement, Colonel Terkin, were as friendly and receptive as ever, and Colonel Volkov and his comrades were my constant companions. We talked about military service, the war in Ukraine, and the prospects for peace. But we talked as friends, a completely different plane to that of professional colleagues.

The election of Donald Trump, and the dramatic progress being made in terms restoring a sense of normalcy to relations between the US and Russia, created a whole new tone and atmosphere surrounding the Defender of the Fatherland 2025.

In 2023 and 2024, when I entered the grounds of the Russian Embassy, there were a few diplomatic vehicles dropping off guests, and a short line of people waiting at the security checkpoint. 2025 saw Garland and I wait in a line for nearly 30 minutes to be cleared into the embassy grounds, and the ceremonial hall was packed with attendees. There were still no representatives from either the US or Europe, but as Bob Dylan famously noted, the times were indeed a’changing.

There was a positive vibe which infused the evening, even though Russia had not sent an ambassador to replace Anatoly Antonov when he returned home last fall.

The recently concluded talks between Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Riyadh, backed by a positive 90-minute phone call between President Trump and President Putin, brought with it a sense of cautious optimism. The Russian Embassy staff had, since 2016, been whittled down by more than 400 persons. Life for Russian embassy employees and their families had become extremely difficult—restrictions on travel were suffocating and demoralizing, and the inability to function as their posting intended had brought with it a loss of purpose.

The prospect of seeing the embassy brought back to full strength and cleared to engage with the US government in the full range of diplomatic duties and responsibilities was a discernible morale booster.

There was work to be done, and there was much that remained uncertain.

But peace, not war, infused the festivities.

I watched the evening’s events with a sense of joyful sadness.

We had come so far from that first fretful evening two years ago.

It had not been an easy path for anyone.

The Colonels and I had served as rogue peacemakers, working outside normal channels to build a common purpose founded on our mutual sense of duty to our respective nations.

I watched as the representatives of nations that had previously been subdued now openly celebrated with their Russian hosts.

Diplomatic norms were returning.

The age of the rogue peacemakers was past.

If things progressed along the trajectory they were currently on, next year the “Golden Hall” would be filled with American diplomats and officers, engaged in the critically important task of restoring and sustaining relations with the Russian Federation.

And I and the others who had braved adversity to help create the conditions for this very opportunity would be relegated to footnote status.

Which was ok.

But sad in a way.

I had brought with me a bottle of bourbon—Colonel E. H. Taylor “Small Batch”—for Colonel Volkov and the other officers of the Russian Defense Attaché office (I had bequeathed a bottle of Weller’s Special Edition to Colonel Terkin.)

My Russian hosts had prepared a special gift for me as well—a bottle of “Kuz’kina Mat” (“Kuzma’s Mother”) contained in a metal vessel that was a scale model of the 50-megaton Tsar Bomba, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested.

“Kuzma’s Mother” was a nickname given to the Tsar Bomba by Russians in the know. The reference to “Kuzma’s Mother” relates to an angry outburst by Nikita Khrushchev on June 24, 1959, when he told Vice President Richard Nixon, during a visit to Moscow, “I’ll show you Kuzma’s Mother!”

Interpreters were at a loss as to how to interpret this phrase to Nixon, who was left wondering who this Kuzma was, and what his mother looked like.

But the reality is that “to show Kuzma’s Mother” was a Russian idiom for “I’m going to show you,” a threat.

And what Khrushchev was threatening to show Nixon and the world was the Tsar Bomba.

What Colonel Terkin presented me with was an extremely rare bottle of “Thermonuclear Vodka.”

“This vodka is not to be drunk lightly,” Colonel Terkin told me, the seriousness in his voice evident. “This is a special gift to someone who knows both war and peace. Save this bottle for the most special of occasions, something that is of such magnitude that you feel compelled, as Khrushchev did, to pound the table and tell them you’re going to show them ‘Kuzma’s Mother’!”

Duly chastened, I took the time to admire this gift and reflect on the magnitude of the moment.

Colonel Terkin and I had just finished a lengthy conversation about what life would be like for he and his men once things got back to normal. They had a job to do, a job that required them to coordinate with their American military counterparts on issues deemed important by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

The days of spending extensive time with a rogue American peacemaker were over.

But this did not mean that there was no longer a role for this rogue.

What Colonel Terkin was telling me is that I would need to go find a task worthy of standing before the world and telling them, “I’ll show you Kuzma’s Mother!”

“This bottle is shaped like a nuclear bomb,” Colonel Terkin said. “Maybe its contents can be drunk when there are no more nuclear bombs in the world.”

The Defender of the Fatherland Day celebration was scheduled to run from 6 pm until 8 pm. By the time Colonel Terkin and Colonel Volkov had presented me with the bottle of “Kuzma’s Mother,” it was already well past 8 pm. Colonel Volkov ushered me over to a table where Russian and Kazakh officers had gathered. The bond between the two nations was unmistaken as toasts were made and shot glasses of vodka discharged.

I gathered Colonel Volkov and his comrades together for one last toast, which per tradition I filmed and posted on social media.

It was time to go.

Colonel Volkov mustered everyone who remained—the officers, their wives, and their guests—for one last toast, which ended in the traditional recitations of “Urrah, Urrah, Urrah!”

I found Garland, and we bid our hosts farewell.

As we left the Ceremonial Building of the Russian Embassy, the sounds of the last “Urrah” still echoed in my ears.

These were good people, I thought.

The best.

I had become somewhat melancholy during the evening, confronting the evidence of my soon-to-be obsolescence.

But I felt the heft of the box containing “Kuzma’s Mother” in my hand.

I wasn’t obsolete.

Peace could never be obsolete.

I’m going to show you all “Kuzma’s Mother!”

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That Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s political fortunes have been on a downward trajectory over the course of the past year is undeniable. The accelerated collapse of Zelensky as a legitimate governing authority in Ukraine that has transpired over the course of the past few days was unimaginable. That Zelensky would double down by carrying out a personal attack against Donald Trump is unthinkable.

Back in the summer of 2023, I tried to warn the American people, and the world, about the illegitimacy and inherent instability of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. I helped write and produce a two-part exposé of the one-time comedian titled “Agent Zelensky.”

Part One was well received when I published it on YouTube.

Too well received.

The Ukrainian intelligence services, which had flagged me as a Russian disinformation agent and marked me for death by putting me on an infamous liquidation list, reached out to their FBI contacts in the Legal Attache office of the US Embassy in Kiev, and demanded that action be taken.

The appropriate authorities at YouTube were approached by the FBI, and soon the Agent Zelensky video was removed from the platform.

Part Two of Agent Zelensky suffered the same fate within hours of being published.

Then the Department of Justice tasked the FBI with eliminating the source of Agent Zelensky—me.

They targeted me for allegedly being an unregistered agent of the Russian government, trampling my status as an independent journalist whose speech was protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.

The FBI raided my home and seized my computers, all to intimidate me while the Department of Justice scrambled to make a case against me as an unregistered Russian agent.

They failed.

And now there is a new sheriff in town—President Donald Trump.

Trump has decriminalized free speech and shut down those in the Department of Justice who violated free speech protections for political purposes.

Moreover, Trump has come to the realization that Volodymyr Zelensky is an unstable person whose ongoing role as President of Ukraine is detrimental to the national security of the United States.

The fate of Zelensky will be decided in the coming days.

And, as such, there is no better time than the present to expose the corrupt roots of this corrupt dictator by republishing Agent Zelensky so everyone has access to the truth about the madman responsible for the deaths of more than a million of his countrymen and who helped bring the US and Russia to the brink of a world-ending nuclear conflict.

Enjoy the film.

This time, the FBI is not watching you.

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As a fan of the Ukrainian television series, Servant of the People, I can’t help but be struck by the irony of an actor who played a president transitioning into an actor who became a president. Scripts, however, are one thing. Reality is something completely different. And Volodymyr Zelensky’s last scene, unlike the character of Vasily Goloborodko he played in the series, will not have a happy ending, but rather be the stuff of nightmares.

By any standard, the tenure of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been quite a ride.

In March, 2018, coming off a three-season run as the star of the popular Ukrainian television series Servant of the People, Zelensky’s handlers filed paperwork which established a new political party in Ukraine, Servant of the People, which was little more than a ploy to politicize the role played by Zelensky in the series, an everyday Ukrainian man named Vasily Goloborodko—who went on to become President of Ukraine—so that the new Ukrainian “everyman”—Zelensky—could turn theater into reality.

The gambit worked, and in April 2019 Zelensky was elected over the unpopular incumbent, Ukrainian chocolate oligarch Petro Poroshenko.

Although he campaigned heavily on a platform that promoted peace with Russia over the ongoing fighting in the breakaway Donbas region, within weeks of becoming president, Zelensky had taken a hard tack to the right, promising to wage war with Russia over the disputed territories.

And in February 2022, the actor-turned-President got his wish.

He immediately fell into his designated role, operating from a script written for him by his western handlers (it was the CIA who manufactured the now-famous line, “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride”), rejecting an alleged offer from the United States to evacuate him from Kiev, which was at the time under attack by Russia.

As it turns out, both the offer of a ride and Zelensky’s sharp retort were works of fiction—neither occurred but rather were brought to life by a compliant media which published verbatim the narrative fed to them by unnamed US intelligence officials working in the US Embassy in Kiev.

But the CIA script writers could not make the military pressure placed on Ukraine by the Russian Special Military Operation go away, and less than a week after the Russian assaults began, Zelensky was compelled to dispatch a delegation to Gomel, Belarus, to begin negotiations designed to bring the conflict to an end. These negotiations eventually moved to Turkey where, in late March, the two sides had hammered out a comprehensive peace agreement, the so-called “Istanbul communique,” which would have brought the conflict to an end on terms which, in retrospect, were extremely favorable to Ukraine.

But Zelensky’s new western production had decided that the pilot of a Russian-Ukraine conflict was too profitable not to be converted into a series, and so Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the UK, flew to Kiev and convinced the actor-turned-president that the show must go on.

And go on it did.

The collective west, now fully backing the new Zelensky series as an action-based drama, poured billions of dollars into production, transforming a simple tale of surviving against all odds into a David-versus-Goliath epic.

Zelensky himself was recast as a Churchillian figure, a larger-than-life character whose exhortations to “fight them on the beach” quickly captured the imagination of the world.

The first season was a huge success, with Zelensky leading his embattled troops to victory, reclaiming lost territory in Kharkov and Kherson, and setting up a climactic second season which would see Ukraine roll on to victory.

The producers went all out promoting the second season, complete with trailers depicting the victory of Ukraine’s military over Russia in what was being billed as the “2023 Summer Counteroffensive.”

But production ran into some insurmountable obstacles. The budget for the “2023 Summer Counteroffensive” was more than the underwriters were willing to spend, and then there was a writer’s strike which saw major changes in the script—rather than delivering a dramatic victory, the drama would devolve into a bloody stalemate.

The problem was the audience had been sold on the original script, which had been reflected in the trailers. Denied their victory, viewership began to decline, and money for the show’s grandiose episodes declined.

Unable to provide victory, the screenwriters worked on turning the action drama into a character-driven show. This required re-writing the Churchillian figure Zelensky had grown accustomed to playing into a more tragic character who saw his dreams of glory slip through his fingers.

Season Three tried to squeeze as much entertainment from this approach, but to no avail.

The producers were being bombarded with counter-offers of new programing, including a big-budget concept surrounding a tale of reconciliation between brothers who had once been friends, but were now violently opposed to one another.

The real-life Servant of the People had lost its appeal.

Its underwriters were cutting off the funds.

Producers and screenwriters were jumping ship to join the team pushing the tale of brotherly reconciliation.

Which left the remaining production team with the problem of how to wrap up not only Season Three, but the series as a whole.

Back in 2018 the producers of Servant of the People solved their problem by transitioning from the screen to reality, turning Vasily Goloborodko into Volodymyr Zelensky.

They wrote nightmare scripts, creating scenes that depicted the rise and fall of Zelensky’s character, only to have the series end in victory.

But there isn’t a screenwriter in existence who can turn the real-life drama of Voldymyr Zelensky into a happy ending.

Goloborodko’s nightmare, which began Season Three of the television version of Servant of the People, has become Zelensky’s reality—hemmed in on all sides by people who seek to depose him, with no way out.

Instead of a carefully scripted narrative, Zelensky has turned to drug-fueled impromptu ad libs which have turned tragedy into farce.

Where once the world cheered on the Churchillian hero Zelensky portrayed, they now have nothing but pity for the despicable character Zelensky plays today.

We are now in Season Four.

There is one last act to be had before the series can be closed down, and the producers are considering competing scripts.

One has the tragic hero flee to a life in exile, where he can reflect on the causes of his collapse.

The other, written by admirers of the HBO series The Sopranos, has a more bloody, fatal ending for the everyman-turned-dictator.

But the bottom line is Season Four of the real-life version of Servant of the People will not end well for Zelensky.

And the reality is none of those who once sold him as the second coming of Churchill will give a damn.

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President Trump says he wants to work with China and Russia on the issue of “slowing down, stopping and reducing nuclear weapons.” Trump went on to declare that “there’s no reason for us to be building brand-new nuclear weapons…We already have so many you can destroy the world 50 times over, 100 times over.” He also said he would urge Russia and China to join him in cutting their respective military budgets by half.

This is the most important statement made by an American president in decades, because from this can come a movement to save the world from the threat of nuclear annihilation. But such a dramatic departure from past practice threatens the Military Industrial Congressional Complex (MICC), that massive monolithic edifice to greed and war which President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned his fellow Americans about in his farewell address delivered in January 1961.

To overcome the considerable obstacles that the MICC will put in the way of Trump making any progress on this bold world-saving initiative, the president will need to turn to the same allies he relied upon to win the White House back from the deep state that blocked his reelection in 2020—the American voter. From a domestic point of view, Trump faces a two-front war. The first is against a deeply entrenched nuclear war establishment whose budget and underlying justification thereof have gone unquestioned and unchallenged for decades. The second is a fight over public opinion which has been shaped by decades of domestic propaganda that make nuclear weapons, and their underpinning mission of global annihilation, appear to a normal part of the American national fabric.

To win on the first front, President Trump will need to combine the tried and true lessons drawn from the experiences gained by implementing previous arms control treaties, especially in the field of compliance verification, with a bold new approach which alters the scope and scale of disarmament so that the world breaks free of dogma which makes nuclear-based deterrence the norm, and instead puts the US and the world on a path of implementing the vision set forth in the nuclear nonproliferation treaty of a world free from the threat of nuclear weapons.

To prevail on the second front, President Trump will have to take his case to the American people, holding a series of massive outdoor rallies in states where the nuclear weapons enterprise has fortified itself politically. Such rallies, when combined with town hall meetings and targeted media appearances, can build a foundation of popular support for arms control that can overwhelm the prejudices that have been ingrained in the political DNA of most Americans by the propaganda machine of the MICC.

These campaigns should be conducted in concert, so that each feeds off the success of the other, creating the kind of political synergy that will be needed to achieve the kind of sweeping changes necessary to walk America away from a nuclear weapons enterprise that could only be sustained by making America an enemy of peace and stability, a nation constantly in search of enemies to justify the enormous expenditures nuclear weapons capability incurs.

China appears to have poured cold water on Trump’s disarmament ambitions, with Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, declaring that the United States should take the lead in the reduction of nuclear weapons and military spending, noting that China’s nuclear arsenal was but a fraction the size of either those of US or Russia.

But rather than shy away from engaging further, Trump should call the Chinese bluff by working with Russia to extend the New Start treaty—the last remaining arms control agreement between Russia and the US—for another five-year period (the New START treaty expires in February 0f 2026). By extending New Start (implementation of which has ceased in the aftermath of the deterioration of US-Russian relations during the Biden administration), Trump would prevent a new arms race between the US and Russia, creating the kind of stability necessary to achieve his broader disarmament objectives.

Once Trump re-engages with Russia on New Start, he can begin crafting a new paradigm for the kind of global reduction/elimination of nuclear weapons he seeks. One of the problems with Trump’s trilateral approach toward global disarmament is that it ignores the role played by the remaining nuclear armed nations of the world (declared or, as in the case of Israel, undeclared), as well as nations like Iran which are believed to be on the cusp of attaining nuclear weapons capability. Any trilateral approach toward nuclear disarmament involving the US, Russia, and China that does not factor in the impact of the nuclear arsenals of India and Pakistan, North Korea and Israel, or France and Great Britain, cannot achieve its maximum potential for nuclear arms reduction because the impetus for retaining a nuclear stockpile sufficient to deter these outside threats remains.

One approach Trump could take is to use his suggested trilateral format not only as a basis for three-way reductions in nuclear arms, but also as a framework for a broader global approach toward disarmament where the “big three” nuclear powers work in concert to support regional nuclear disarmament initiatives. For instance, the United States could take the lead in linking the nuclear arsenals of France and the UK into a global nuclear disarmament agreement. Russia could take the lead regarding the nuclear arsenals of North Korea and Israel, while China could head up the India-Pakistan problem set.

Balancing the demands for trilateral nuclear disarmament involving the US, Russia, and China with those that will emerge regarding the remaining nuclear powers is conceptually too much for the existing arms control establishment to handle. Indeed, one of the main impediments to meaningful arms control is the US arms control community, which has stopped working to eliminate nuclear weapons and instead seeks to justify their continued existence in the name of arms control.

President Trump will need a new foundation of intellectual development regarding a new paradigm of arms control to embrace if his vision is to be realized. Here he has no greater ally and champion than Tulsi Gabbard, his new Director of National Intelligence (DNI). Under the umbrella of the DNI, Trump should create a new arms control support staff which seeks to combine arms control specialists capable of engaging in non-traditional approaches to arms control with intelligence analysts who monitor the various geographic-oriented problem sets a global nuclear disarmament agenda would encompass. A national intelligence officer for global nuclear disarmament could be appointed to head this staff, which would take the lead of identifying potential obstacles to achieving Trump’s global nuclear disarmament goals and provide analytical support to identified policy leads within the Trump administration so that they could resolve actual and potential issues using the tools of diplomacy.

Back in September 2024 I initiated Operation DAWN, a project which sought to mobilize citizen support for preventing nuclear war and leveraging this constituency into producing genuine policy changes. Operation DAWN was successful in putting the prevention of nuclear war on the election issue map and promoting serious policy changes that helped forestall a potential nuclear conflict between the United States and Russia.

I am announcing today that I am kicking off Operation DAWN 2.0, the focus of which will be to mobilize public support for President Trump’s global nuclear disarmament initiative. This will be done by engaging in educational programs designed to inform the public at large about the danger of nuclear war, the need for nuclear disarmament, and the necessity of effective arms control.

In support of this effort, I am pleased to announce that I will be publishing a book on the dangers of nuclear war, Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, in partnership with my long-time publisher, Clarity Press.

Highway to Hell is the third book in what will become a three-book series on nuclear war and disarmament published by Clarity Press (the first two being Scorpion King, published in 2020, and Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published in 2022.)

I will also be working on organizing a traveling panel of experts who will take the message of nuclear war prevention and the need for nuclear arms control on the road to communities around the country to promote a broader discussion on the issue.

And I will continue to take the lead in trying to provide the antidote to the poison of Russophobia that the nuclear weapons establishment relies upon to infect the minds of American citizens with fear that is then exploited to justify the continued investment in nuclear weapons that threaten our very existence, and which President Trump is looking to eliminate.

Projects like these do not happen on their own. I am humbly requesting that those of you who so graciously supported the anti-Russophobia work I have engaged in previously, and who helped make Operation DAWN the success it was, continue to provide support so that we can eliminate the scourge of Russophobia and bring to fruition the nuclear disarmament vision of President Trump. And for those of you who have not financially supported my past endeavors, for whatever reason, I would ask that you take the time to reflect on what it is I am trying to accomplish here, and how your support could help push me across the finish line.

Or, better said, push us across the finish line.

Because preventing a nuclear war and promoting nuclear disarmament is a team sport.

Join the team!

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The Biden administration unleashed the full force of the US Department of Justice against me. Merrick Garland, a man who at one time was in line to be a Supreme Court Justice, oversaw this effort. Pam Bondi, Donald Trump’s newly sworn in Attorney General, has initiated actions which should see these investigations terminated and justice served.

On February 5, 2025, shortly after she was sworn in as the 87th Attorney General of the United States, Pam Bondi signed off on several memoranda, including “Restoring the Integrity and Credibility of the Department of Justice” and “General Policy Regarding Charging, Plea Negotiations, and Sentencing.”

In the “Restoring integrity and Credibility” memo, Bondi declared that “the reconciliation and restoration of the Department of Justice’s core values can only be accomplished through review and accountability.”

She further declared that “The Department of Justice will not tolerate abuses of the criminal justice process, coercive behavior, or other forms of misconduct.”

In furthering these declarations, Bondi authorized the creation of a Weaponization Working Group, whose mandate will be to “[c]onduct a review of the activities of all departments and agencies exercising with the heads of such departments and agencies and consistent with applicable law, to identify instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been designed to achieve political objectives or other improper aims rather than pursuing justice or legitimate governmental objectives.”

In accordance with the guidance set forth in the February 5, 2025 Memorandum regarding “General Policy Regarding Charging, Plea Negotiations, and Sentencing,” Bondi directed that “Recourse to criminal charges under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) and 18 USC § 951 shall be limited to instances of alleged conduct similar to more traditional espionage by foreign government actors,” further directing that, with respect to FARA and § 951, “the Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, including the FARA Unit, shall focus on civil enforcement, regulatory initiatives, and public guidance.”

There can be no doubt that the investigation which prompted the FBI to execute a search warrant on my private residence falls under the purview of the directions issued by Attorney General Bondi in these memoranda.

According to The New York Times (“US Investigating Americans Who Worked with Russian State Television,” August 21, 2024), the search of my home was part of a “broad criminal investigation” designed to signal “an aggressive effort to combat the Kremlin’s influence operations leading up to the presidential election in November.”

According to statements made to The New York Times by unnamed US law enforcement personnel, I was being targeted because of my role as a “critic of American foreign policy.”

If the reporting of The New York Times is accurate, then the execution of the search warrant against my private residence was a byproduct of the work carried out by the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF).

The role played by a free press is critical when it comes to the preservation of deocracy in the United States, especially when it serves in its role as a watchdog over the functions of government.

As Justice Hugo Black wrote in his opinion regarding the 1971 Supreme Court decision in The New York Times, Co vs The United States, “The press was to serve the governed, not the governors. The Government’s power to censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain forever free to censure the Government. The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”

The Department of Justice/FBI targeting me under FARA has nothing to do with the legitimate pursuit of justice, but rather the illegitimate abuse of power to censor and suppress a critical voice seeking to censure the government, especially when the government was engaged in deception which could result in the American people being sent off to distant lands to die in avoidable war.

President Trump has singled out the Biden administration’s policies regarding the conflict in Ukraine as “bad policy,” citing the tragic loss of life that has occurred because of this conflict.

That the Department of Justice would seek to silence my voice through this flagrant abuse of judicial power during a presidential election where the issue of the Ukraine conflict with Russia was front and center, represents a flagrant disregard for the role of an informed citizenry in exercising our right and responsibility to freely elect to public office those whom we believe best represent our values, and to hold those thus elected accountable for what they do in our name.

There can be no doubt about the righteousness of Pam Bondi’s actions in shutting down the FITF, restraining the excesses associated with the enforcement of FARA, and creating a weaponization working group within the Department of Justice to investigate any excesses and violations carried out by the Department of Justice and the FBI as stipulated in her cited memoranda and the relevant Executive Orders signed by President Trump on January 20, 2025.

While Pam Bondi’s instructions regarding the creation of the weaponization working group, and the underlying principles it enshrines as set forth in President Trump’s two executive orders regarding “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” and “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government” help create the conditions for terminating the unjust and unconstitutional conduct of persons affiliated with the Department of Justice and/or FBI, the proof, as they say, is in the pudding.

As such, I have written a letter to Pam Bondi requesting that she investigate the circumstances surrounding the weaponization of the Department of Justice as regards the Biden administration’s efforts to intimidate and silence my voice, and that actions be taken to terminate the underlying investigations, restore my property and reputation, and to hold those who violated my civil liberties accountable for their actions.

This letter is published below:

Attorney General Pam Bondi
Department of Justice
Office of the Attorney General
200 I Street, SE
Washington, DC 20530

William Scott Ritter, Jr.
45 Dover Drive
Delmar, New York 12054

February 10, 2025

Dear Attorney General Bondi,

Congratulations on being sworn in as the 87^th Attorney General of the United States.

I am writing to respectfully request that, in accordance with the guidelines set forth in your February 5, 2025, Memorandum “Restoring the Integrity and Credibility of the Department of Justice”, an investigation into the conduct of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) Unit of the National Security Division of the Department of Justice and the Albany Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) be initiated as it relates to the execution of a search warrant at my private residence on August 7, 2024. The role of the United States Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of New York should also be investigated in this matter.

According to the Senior FBI agents present, the search warrant was executed due to concerns over my failure to comply with FARA. The specific conduct cited related to my work as a journalist covering topics related to US-Russian relations.

The goal of these inquiries should be to terminate all investigations initiated by the Department of Justice and the FBI against me under FARA, and to hold those responsible for any violations of my civil rights accountable for their actions.

The search of my home and the underlying investigation of my work as a journalist represent a blatant violation of my civil liberties and constitute the very weaponization of the Justice Department and FBI to silence critics of the government which President Trump banned through executive order.

The actions of the Department of Justice and the FBI cast a shadow over my life and work. Until which time the Department of Justice formally closes the underlying investigation which prompted the FBI’s raid on my private residence, I will labor under a cloud of unwarranted suspicion which negatively impacts my ability to effectively interact with various communities in the United States and around the world.

I request that the Department of Justice issue a formal statement declaring that all the investigations upon which the authorization of the search warrant used by the FBI to raid my home are closed. I also request that all materials seized by the FBI during the search of my private residence be returned—computers, cell phones, etc.—as well as all documents that the FBI agents seized during their search.

I would also request that the Department of Justice investigate what role, if any, was played by its personnel or personnel from the FBI in the seizure of my passport by agents of Customs and Border Protection on June 3, 2024, and, if there was a connection, that the appropriate instructions be issued to facilitate the expeditious return of my passport.

I would also request that appropriate punitive action be taken against all people under your jurisdiction who facilitated and/or participated in violating my Constitutional right of free speech due to investigations carried out under the authority of the Department of Justice and the FBI.

Thank you again for your courage and dedication to justice in the United States of America as reflected in your actions to reverse past wrongs and preserve the Constitutional rights enjoyed by all US citizens.

Sincerely,

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Today I am announcing the launch of an exciting new project, The Russia House with Scott Ritter. This is a subscription based service using the social media platform Telegram.

The Russia House is a collaboration between myself and Alexandra Madornaya, a long-time senior administrator of my Telegram channel. Alexandra has, over the course of the past year, expanded her involvement in my efforts to combat Russophobia by editing a series of video “shorts” related to my past travels to Russia. She was scheduled to provide extensive video editing support for the visit to Russia I was planning in June-July 2024 that was aborted when the US government seized my passport on June 3, 2024. Her skill and judgment, when combined with her knowledge of Russia and dedication to the mission of improving US-Russian relations, make her the ideal partner for this project.

As currently structured, The Russia House will publish new content twice a week. On Tuesday there will be a topical article the content of which is unique to the project. And on Thursday an hour-long podcast will be published which includes commentary and an interview with a Russian subject matter expert related to the topic covered by the Tuesday article.

As the project grows, so too will the products we will offer, including the prospect of 90-minute documentaries derived in part from the interviews conducted as part of The Russia House project.

The Russia House with Scott Ritter represents a continuation of the important work of helping overcome the Russophobia that exists in the United States and the West which serves as an impediment to the furthering of better relations between Russia and the West. Its success, of course, hinges on the quality of the product published as part of this project. But quality production does not happen in a vacuum, and the sustainability of The Russia House will ultimately depend upon the creation and sustainment of a viable subscription base.

The Russia House with Scott Ritter will strive to provide unique, quality articles and interviews that are both timely and informative and incorporate high-quality production values. Alexandra and I welcome you to embark on this journey of discovery and together help overcome the intellectual corrosion brought on by the ignorance generated by Russophobia today.

I have been wrestling with the issue of Russophobia in the United States for some time now. As someone who cut his academic teeth studying Russian history in college, and who, at an early stage in my development as an adult had the opportunity to live and work in Russia during the Soviet era, I have a deep, yet admittedly incomplete, appreciation for Russian culture, language and history. This appreciation has empowered me to make informed judgments about Russia, its political leadership, and its people, especially when assessing the interactions between Russia and the United States today.

Void of this background, I would expect that I would be susceptible to the Russophobia emanating from the US government and echoed without question by a compliant mainstream American media. With it, I am able to see through the falsehoods and mischaracterizations that appear deliberately designed to warp the sensibilities and logic of Russophobia’s intended audience—the American people.

I wrote these words back in February 2023 in an article I posted on Substack, The Red Scare 2.0: Russophobia in America Today.

Little did I know that this article would trigger the Department of Justice to order the FBI to execute a search warrant of my home under the pretext that I was serving as a willing unregistered agent of Russia and, as such, in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act, or FARA.

My crime?

Interviewing the Ambassador of Russia to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, and coordinating with his office to incorporate an article the Ambassador had written on the topic of Russophobia in America into the body of the article.

According to the FBI agents who searched my home, I was suspected of “taking direction” from the Russian government when I exchanged emails with a Russian diplomat about how best use the information contained in the Ambassador’s article—I wanted to make sure that by rearranging the order of some of the sections I was quoting I wasn’t misrepresenting or mischaracterizing the Ambassador’s message.

Which, of course, as a journalist, is my duty and responsibility—make sure that the source is being quoted correctly.

The case against me fails on every possible front, and the Department of Justice knows this.

As the FBI knows full well (they had, on their own admission, been monitoring my emails for at least two years), the contact between myself and the Russian Embassy (including the Ambassador) was initiated by me for the purpose of researching the topic of Russophobia.

The concept of me taking “direction” from the Russians is facially absurd.

Moreover, the methodology I use to coordinate with sources quoted or otherwise incorporated into the article is what colloquially is known as “journalism,” the functional aspect of what the Constitution, in its First Amendment, calls a “free press.”

But the FBI didn’t force their way into my home on August 7, 2024, and rummage through my earthly possessions to further a non-existent FARA violation case.

No.

The FBI violated my home—and my rights as an American citizen—because it wanted to intimidate me.

To make me think twice about making “informed judgments about Russia, its political leadership, and its people” to “see through the falsehoods and mischaracterizations” the US government and its compliant servants in the mainstream media “to warp the sensibilities and logic of Russophobia’s intended audience—the American people.”

I am not easily intimidated.

However, I am not suicidal, either.

Shortly after the FBI raid on my home, on September 4, 2024, the Department of Treasury designated 10 Russian individuals and two Russian entities as “Foreign Missions” as part of a “coordinated US government response to Moscow’s malign influence efforts targeting the 2024 presidential election.” This designation subjected any individual who made “any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any designated person” subject to sanctions or to become subject to an enforcement action.

In the spring of 2023 I began a collaboration with Solovyov Live, a podcast hosted and directed by Vladimir Solovyov, a popular Russian media personality known to be close to the Kremlin. The purpose of this cooperation wasn’t to further Russian domestic propaganda, but rather to bring Russian voices and perspective to a western audience. While picking the guests was a collaborative process, with Solovyov Live’s producer, Peter Ermolin, often taking the lead given his proximity to the people we wanted to interview, the interview topics and questions asked were mine alone, with zero input from, or editorializing by, the Solovyov Live team.

The result was a unique podcast, The Scott Ritter Show, which delivered informative interviews with prominent Russian political, academic, military, and social figures. I received no compensation for my role in this production. Rather, I viewed the act of providing these interviews to a western audience as serving the greater good by helping dispel prejudices built on ignorance that helped promote and promulgate Russophobia in the West.

While Solovyov Live was not listed by name among the sanctioned entities identified by the Department of Treasury in its September 2024 sanctions announcement, the authors specified that “any entities that are owned, directly or indirectly, individually or in the aggregate, 50 percent or more by one or more blocked persons are also blocked.”

Given the focus of attention that had been given to me by the Department of Justice and the FBI, I notified Solovyov Live that I would have to suspend production of The Scott Ritter Show until which time I could conduct the due diligence necessary to ensure that Solovyov Live’s financial arrangements did not make it, and by extension me, subject to sanctions (while I received no income from The Scott Ritter Show, it could fall under the category of “services” as regards to the new sanction designations published by the Department of Treasury). Unfortunately, Solovyov Live was unable to provide the required documentation, and The Scott Ritter Show was terminated.

In the five months that have passed since the end of The Scott Ritter Show, there has not been anything like the interviews I conducted available to a western audience. While the Department of Justice has defended its actions as necessary to protect the integrity of the 2024 presidential election, I believe the purpose was far more nefarious—to aid and abet the continued amplification of Russophobia by the Biden administration and its compliant allies in the mainstream media to keep the American public from asking questions about US-Russian relations the government did not want to answer.

One of the defining issues on the latter stages of the 2024 presidential election as far as US-Russian relations were concerned was the threat of nuclear war. Had The Scott Ritter Show been in production, the American audience would have had access to interviews with senior Russian military and political figures who could have countered the misinformation and lies being told by the Biden administration about the war in Ukraine, and the danger of nuclear war brought on by the aggressive and provocative policies being implemented by the US in Ukraine.

To this day, the American population, and indeed most of the world, remains ignorant over just how close the world came to a nuclear conflict between Russia and the US.

This is the danger of Russophobia, and this is why Russophobia must be fought.

It is, literally, a matter of national security which cannot be entrusted to the US government but rather falls upon the shoulders of the American people to execute.

And it is in this spirit and with this purpose that The Russia House with Scott Ritter is being launched. It is a continuation of the process of bringing Russian voices and perspective directly to the American people, and the citizens of the West as a whole, so that they may discern for themselves whether they want to give credence to the content provided and, if not, provide a foundation of fact-based information upon which they can construct a countervailing argument.

“Nothing in this world is harder,” the Russian writer, Fyodor Dostoevsky, wrote in his classic navel, Crime and Punishment, “than speaking the truth.”

Dostoevsky went on to elaborate on the topic of truth in The Brothers Karamazov, writing

A man who lies to himself, and believes his own lies becomes unable to recognize truth, either in himself or in anyone else, and he ends up losing respect for himself and for others. When he has no respect for anyone, he can no longer love, and, in order to divert himself, having no love in him, he yields to his impulses, indulges in the lowest forms of pleasure, and behaves in the end like an animal. And it all comes from lying - lying to others and to yourself.

The Russia House with Scott Ritter will undertake that hardest of tasks—telling the truth, understanding that the consequences of failing to do so can be catastrophic for all mankind.

The “truth” in this case is not measured by the words spoken by those being interviewed, but rather the integrity shown in presenting these words so they can be honestly and truthfully evaluated by our audience. It is up to the audience to decide what weight, if any, it wishes to place on the content of the interviews and articles published as part of The Russia House project.

It is the job of Alexandra and me to ensure that these words are presented as honestly as humanly possible.

A final note on why The Russia House with Scott Ritter is a subscription service.

As illustrated by the experience with The Scott Ritter Show, the US government is making it as difficult as possible for normal collaboration between US citizens and Russian entities, whether individual or otherwise. A product like The Russia House, if done professionally, requires a commitment of time and resources which is unsustainable as a part-time activity. It also requires that the focus of effort for this project—the front lines, so to speak, be inside Russia, where most of the voices we are trying to bring forward are located. Moreover, because of US economic sanctions, it is impossible for me as an American citizen to provide financial support to this project. As such, The Russia House with Scott Ritter is financially grounded in Russian reality. The Telegram channel is owned by Alexandra, and all financial aspects of the project are managed by her to the exclusive benefit of her and the project.

Although I am an equal partner in the project, this partnership exists in terms of content formulation and the intellectual product produced.

Financially, I have no interest in this project, nor can I until the underlying political realities that constrain economic interaction between Russia and the West are altered in a way that decriminalizes such activity.

But The Russia House is positioning itself for a future where such constraints no longer exist. As such, your subscription will not only allow Alexandra to sustain her work and commitment to the project, but enable The Russia House project to prepare for a time when travel and collaboration is not impeded by bad policy.

An investment in The Russia House with Scott Ritter not only serves the cause of overcoming Russophobia in the US and West today but also helping build the foundation for better US-Russian relations in the future.

Alexandra and I thank you for your interest in and support of this exciting new project.

Welcome to The Russia House.

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When societies lie about death, the deception leads to the collapse of the very cause they purport to support.

Accounting for the dead is one of society’s most important functions—it brings closure to the cycle of life, creating a sense of purpose and belonging essential to the normal functioning of families and communities. The dead were people with names and histories which those close to them would mourn and remember. But when the death toll becomes unmanageable, the names and histories of the departed are forgotten as the normal rituals associated with human death are brushed aside in favor of the exigencies of mass burials. During the Black Plague in the 14^th century, body collectors removed the dead to prevent the spread of disease and, oftentimes, because the families no longer existed to manage the issue of burial. Civilized society hung on the edge of survival as entire institutions were depopulated. Today in Ukraine, the dead are either buried in cemeteries whose capacities are overflowing, or simply abandoned on the battlefield, forgotten. Ukrainian society hangs on the edge of survival. The difference between the Black Plague and the situation in Ukraine today is that the Black Plague was an act of God, the spread of a pestilence which societies at that time were not equipped to handle. The conflict in Ukraine, however, is one hundred percent man-made, an avoidable disaster perpetuated by those for whom death became an accountant’s game, ignoring the basic human need for end-of-life closure. The dead of Ukraine have become simple cyphers to be manipulated by political forces who care nothing for the population from which the horrible cost of war has been extracted. Moreover, by allowing the numbers associated with the dead of Ukraine to be manipulated for political purpose, these accountants of death have deceived themselves, creating a situation where the cause they purport to support collapses around them from the weight of their own deception.

Back in November 1967, during the height of the Vietnam War, General William Westmoreland informed a gathering at the National Press Club that the war would be wrapped up in two year’s time. According to Westmoreland, who viewed the conflict in Vietnam as a war of attrition, the US had taken the number of soldiers available to the enemy (the National Liberation Front, NLF or Viet Cong, and the North Vietnamese Army, or NVA) down from 300,000 in 1966 to around 200,000 in 1967. The numbers game had reached the all-important “crossover point” - estimated to be at 200,000 - below which the enemy could not recover. Westmoreland predicted that 1968 would be a year of “mopping up,” with the enemy defeated by 1969.

Instead, 1968 saw the enemy launch the Tet Offensive, with the combined NLF/NVA strength estimated to be at around 600,000—twice the estimated number of troops the US assessed in 1966, and three times the order of battle assessed for 1967.

Sam Adams, a CIA intelligence analyst assigned to the Southeast Asia Branch of the Directorate of Intelligence, started questioning the assumptions being made by Westmoreland and the US military and political command about the enemy order of battle. What he found was that the US leadership was deliberately under-reporting enemy strength, and over-reporting enemy losses, in order to create the conditions on paper that assuaged the dictate from the White House to bring the Vietnam War to an end. Westmoreland himself had been briefed on the true state of affairs in May of 1967, but purposefully continued the deception, setting the US up for embarrassment and defeat. Thousands of American lives were lost as a result.

A day after being sworn in as the 47^th President of the United States, Donald Trump addressed the press about the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. “We have numbers that almost a million Russian soldiers have been killed,” Trump declared. “About 700,000 Ukrainian soldiers are killed. Russia’s bigger, they have more soldiers to lose but that’s no way to run a country.”

The next day, Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, stated that “I’m going to do Russia, whose Economy is failing, and President Putin, a very big FAVOR. Settle now, and STOP this ridiculous War! IT'S ONLY GOING TO GET WORSE. If we don't make a ‘deal’, and soon, I have no other choice but to put high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions on anything being sold by Russia to the United States, and various other participating countries.”

Dmitri Peskov, the spokesperson for Russian President Vladimir Putin, was dismissive of Trump’s bluster. “He likes these methods,” Peskov said of Trump, adding “at least he liked them during his first presidency.” Rejecting Trump’s rants as irrelevant to the larger issue of a peace negotiation, Peskov declared that “We’re waiting for signals that are yet to arrive.”

If anything, Trump’s indifference to accuracy and truth when it comes to the comments he makes about the number of dead that have been produced on either side of the conflict can do little to engender confidence on the part of the Russians that the policy formulations being prepared by Trump are remotely close to being derived from the kind of present reality that the Russians insist serve as the foundation of any possible negotiation.

Back in May 2023, during a CNN Town Hall meeting, then-candidate Trump, when speaking about the Russian-Ukraine conflict, said “I want everybody to stop dying. They’re dying. Russians and Ukrainians. I want them to stop dying. I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” Trump went on to say. “I think in terms of getting it settled so we can stop killing all those people.”

In a paper published in April 2024, America First, Russia & Ukraine, retired US Army Lieutenant General Keith Kellogg, who has emerged as Trump’s go-to man for policy analysis on the Ukraine conflict, quoted Ukrainian intelligence when assessing that Russia had lost some 200,000 dead and another 240,000 wounded in the Ukraine conflict. Kellogg also noted that Ukraine had lost around 100,000 dead and up to 120,000 wounded in the fighting. These figures inform Trump’s thinking regarding the state of the war in Ukraine.

However, just as General McNamara had relied upon falsified numbers in calculating a timeline for conflict termination in Vietnam, the numbers Trump relies upon are also deliberately cooked to create a perception of Russian weakness and frailty that is exploitable through a show of American strength and resolve.

But nothing could be further from the truth.

Kellogg’s paper is an exercise in uninformed, politically-driven nonsensical propaganda. None of his underlying “facts” about Russia are accurate, and all of his foundational “facts” regarding Ukraine are constructed from misinformation produced by Ukrainian propaganda and given voice by a compliant mainstream media and an intellectually corrupted American intelligence community (a glaring example of this is Kellogg’s use of the oft-quoted phrase attributed to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky from February 2022: “The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride.” The CIA has acknowledged that Zelensky never said this; the quote was manufactured by an intelligence officer stationed at the US Embassy in Kiev.)

And yet Trump is relying on this information to shape his perceptions and impact his judgment when it comes to formulating policy for achieving conflict termination in Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that he is ready and willing to engage in negotiations regarding bringing the conflict in Ukraine to an end. However, he has stipulated that any such negotiations must be premised on the present reality on the ground in Ukraine and, by extension, inside Russia.

As things stand, Russia is decisively winning the war of attrition that has defined the Russia-Ukraine conflict. While Russian casualties are severe, they do not come close to matching the numbers being fed to Trump by Keith Kellog (a more realistic assessment holds the number of Russian dead at around 95,000). The Ukrainians, on the other hand, are being eviscerated, with between 700,000 and 1.1 million of its soldiers having been killed. Hundreds of thousands more have deserted the Army, and even forced conscription can’t generate the numbers necessary to replace battlefield losses.

If Trump moves forward with negotiations premised on such fantasy-based drivel, he is setting himself up for failure. And while failure in this sense won’t necessarily translate into thousands of American dead, as was the case with McNamara, it would result in tens of thousands or more Ukrainians and Russians dead—but especially Ukrainian—putting the lie to Trump’s oft-declared sentiment of giving a damn about human life and wanting to stop the killing.

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How far will President Trump go when it comes to protecting the free speech right of all Americans, and holding to account those officials who have violated them?

On the evening of January 20, 2025, the newly sworn in President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, made his way into the Oval Office of the White House, where he took a seat at the desk recently vacated by his predecessor, Joe Biden. There, Trump proceeded to sign a series of executive orders designed to undo the policies of the Biden administration and set the United States on a new course designed to “Make America Great Again.”

Like millions of Americans, I watched as the president worked his way through the stack of documents, announcing each one before signing off. Of all the executive orders Trump signed off on that night, two resonated with me personally—those dealing with “Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship” and “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government.”

You see, for the past four years, under the leadership of former President Joe Biden, I have seen my freedom of speech infringed upon by a weaponized federal government. While a candidate for president, Trump had spoken out frequently in defense of free speech. Moreover, having himself been under the crosshairs of federal agents operating at the behest of a politicized judicial branch, Trump had firsthand experience of what it was like to have the government target you simply because it did not agree with your position on certain issues.

The texts of the two executive orders were, at first blush, encouraging. In his order restoring free speech and ending federal censorship, Trump declared, “The First Amendment to the United States Constitution, an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference. Over the last 4 years,” he noted,

the previous administration trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms, often by exerting substantial coercive pressure on third parties, such as social media companies, to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve. Under the guise of combatting “misinformation,” “disinformation,” and “malinformation,” the Federal Government infringed on the constitutionally protected speech rights of American citizens across the United States in a manner that advanced the Government’s preferred narrative about significant matters of public debate. Government censorship of speech is intolerable in a free society.

Trump then declared that it was the “policy of the United States to secure the right of the American people to engage in constitutionally protected speech; ensure that no Federal Government officer, employee, or agent engages in or facilitates any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; ensure that no taxpayer resources are used to engage in or facilitate any conduct that would unconstitutionally abridge the free speech of any American citizen; and identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to censorship of protected speech.

Trump further declared that “No Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary to…this order.”

To enforce this order, Trump authorized the Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of executive departments and agencies, to “investigate the activities of the Federal Government over the last 4 years that are inconsistent with the purposes and policies of this order and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken based on the findings of the report.”

The next order signed, which addressed the weaponization of the Federal Government, started out in a powerful fashion. “The American people,” Trump declared, “have witnessed the previous administration engage in a systematic campaign against its perceived political opponents, weaponizing the legal force of numerous Federal law enforcement agencies and the Intelligence Community against those perceived political opponents in the form of investigations, prosecutions, civil enforcement actions, and other related actions. These actions,” Trump noted,

appear oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives. Many of these activities appear to be inconsistent with the Constitution and/or the laws of the United States, including those activities directed at parents protesting at school board meetings, Americans who spoke out against the previous administration’s actions, and other Americans who were simply exercising constitutionally protected rights.

The prior administration and allies throughout the country engaged in an unprecedented, third-world weaponization of prosecutorial power to upend the democratic process. It targeted individuals who voiced opposition to the prior administration’s policies with numerous Federal investigations and politically motivated funding revocations, which cost Americans access to needed services.

Through this order, Trump sought to create “a process to ensure accountability for the previous administration’s weaponization of the Federal Government against the American people.”

According to the president, it is “the policy of the United States to identify and take appropriate action to correct past misconduct by the Federal Government related to the weaponization of law enforcement and the weaponization of the Intelligence Community.”

As such, the president ordered the Attorney General, in consultation with the heads of all departments and agencies of the United States, to “take appropriate action to review the activities of all departments and agencies exercising civil or criminal enforcement authority of the United States, including, but not limited to, the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Federal Trade Commission, over the last 4 years and identify any instances where a department’s or agency’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order, and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the Counsel to the President, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of this order.”

Likewise, the Director of National Intelligence, in consultation with the heads of the appropriate departments and agencies within the Intelligence Community, was ordered to “take all appropriate action to review the activities of the Intelligence Community over the last 4 years and identify any instances where the Intelligence Community’s conduct appears to have been contrary to the purposes and policies of this order, and prepare a report to be submitted to the President, through the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and the National Security Advisor, with recommendations for appropriate remedial actions to be taken to fulfill the purposes and policies of this order.”

The question that emerges from the signing of these two orders is whether Trump will follow up on the content of these documents.

In my case, I would like answers to the following questions:

To what extent, if any, did the Biden administration put pressure on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter/X, YouTube and others, to suppress my free speech rights?

Did the Biden administration communicate with any social media companies “to moderate, deplatform, or otherwise suppress speech that the Federal Government did not approve” which I was engaged in?

I am particularly interested in interaction between the Biden administration and Twitter/X regarding my stance on the Bucha massacre. Which resulted in my suspension from that platform not once, but twice.

I am also interested in any communication between the Biden administration and YouTube regarding the airing of a two-part documentary, “Agent Zelensky,” which was very critical of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. After being well- received, both in terms of critical acclaim and number of views, YouTube deplatformed the documentary, demonetized my account, and eventually banned me from the platform altogether.

I would likewise like to know if President Trump believed that the coordination between the US State Department, the US Embassy in Ukraine, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the Department of Justice, together with the US intelligence community, using permanent staff or contracted proxies, and the Ukrainian government which resulted in the creation and maintenance of several lists—including one which, with the support of the US State Department, labeled US citizens as “information terrorists” requiring summary justice (i.e., death), and another which did not shield its role as a de facto “hit list,” violates the new orders in so far as federal resources were involved in facilitating work designed to punish US citizens with the ultimate sanction—death—for the “crime” of exercising their right of free speech.

I’m particularly interested in the opinion of the president when it comes to Tulsi Gabbard, his pick for Director of National Intelligence, and Tucker Carlson, his close ally, since they both have had their names placed on these lists.

I would also like the Attorney General to review the enforcement practices of the Biden administration regarding the Foreign Agent Registration Act, and particularly how this law has been weaponized by the Biden administration to punish and prosecute American citizens for speech protected by the First Amendment, especially when performed in the context of journalism.

My house was raided by the FBI using FARA as a pretext; in conversations with the senior FBI agents present, the justification for this raid stemmed from an article I published on my Substack which addressed the issue of Russophobia in America, and which incorporated material I had received from the Russian Ambassador tot the United States at the time, Anatoly Antonov, whom I interviewed for this article.

The president, through these orders, has directed that “no Federal department, agency, entity, officer, employee, or agent may act or use any Federal resources in a manner contrary” to these orders.

It is my experience that numerous federal departments and agencies, together with federal officers and employees, routinely violated my free speech rights and weaponized law enforcement and intelligence agencies against me to punish me for the crime of speaking out in a manner which contradicted the official politically acceptable narrative.

Will they be held to account by the Trump administration in accordance with the mandate set forth in these two new executive orders?

I’ll take this moment to remind President Trump that one of the “crimes” I was accused of committing by the Ukrainian government which put me on their State Department-funded death lists, was to claim that the Russian-Ukrainian conflict was a direct result of NATO expansion.

Which is, of course, the same assessment put forward by President Trump.

If you were an average American citizen, Mr. President, your name would be on that list.

Now is your chance to stand up in defense of the average American citizen and shut these lists down while terminating all connectivity between the US and Ukrainian governments which target US citizens for speaking out against Ukrainian propaganda talking points.

“The First Amendment to the United States Constitution,” you wrote, “an amendment essential to the success of our Republic, enshrines the right of the American people to speak freely in the public square without Government interference.”

You promised to defend this right.

Prove it with action, not just words.

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Thank you!

Your donations helped make 2024 a very eventful and productive year. Your continued donations can help make 2025 just as successful—or even more.

The entire Ask the Inspector/U.S. Tour of Duty team thanks you from the bottom of our hearts.

And if humanity had any sense, they’d thank you as well.

Because your donations helped pave the way for peace between the United States and Russia, and helped avert a nuclear war.

And we plan on doing the same thing in the year to come.

2024 was a year of great trial and tribulation for the Ask the Inspector/U.S. Tour of Duty (ATI/USToD) team. Throughout 2023 we had raised donations in support of a campaign we called “Waging Peace” which got its start in May 2023 when I made my initial visit to Russia as a guest of Alexander Zyrianov, a Russian businessman from Novosibirsk. “Waging Peace” was a campaign designed to address the problem of Russophobia here in the United States—the irrational fear of Russia, born of ignorance, which the US government used to engender support for policies promulgated on the notion that Russia was an enemy of America.

I returned to Russia—again, as the guest of Alexander Zyrianov—in December 2023, and remained through January 20, 2024. This was done with the support of ATI/USToD donations, and the visit played a huge role in advancing the “Waging Peace” mission. There were many highlights of this visit, but one that stood out was my meeting with Ramzan Kadyrov, the head of the Chechen Republic, and my impromptu speech in front of 25,000 fully armed Chechen soldiers where I called for an end to the war in Ukraine and their return to a peaceful life with their families.

I returned from my second trip full of energy and ideas on how to proceed with the “Waging Peace” mission. Alexander Zyrianov and I had agreed that there should be a third “Waging Peace” trip to Russia, this one an expansive journey involving the ATI/USToD team which would last more than 40 days and take us “from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea and Everywhere in Between.” With the help of the generous donations from our supporters, the ATI/USToD team began preparations to bring a documentary film crew with us to capture the experience (which included such planned events as broadcasting ATI from each Russian city/destination we traveled to, and implementing an ambitious “pen pal” program which would help connect Russian and Americans committed to the cause of peaceful coexistence based upon mutual respect for, and understanding of, the culture, values, and history of our two nations. In addition to the planned “Waging Peace” documentary, the ATI/USToD team was planning to delve into the world of self-publishing, where we would release an accompanying book, the publication of which would be timed with the release of the film.

There were other related projects as well—a unique soundtrack for the documentary which would involve the noted music producer (and a friend of the ATI/USToD team) Malcolm Burn, working with Russian artists, and plans for a “Yalta 2.0” conference on international law, which we were planning in cooperation with the Crimean Governor, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and the Center for Citizen Initiatives, an American non-profit with experience in Russia.

We spent a great deal of money and invested untold hours of time in preparing for this adventure. Unfortunately, the US government had other plans—I was prevented from boarding my flight out of JFK on June 3 by three armed Customs and Border Protection officers, who seized my passport under instructions from the State Department.

Apparently the “Waging Peace” project, and its underlying mission of defeating Russophobia in America, was too great a threat to the US Government, committed as it was to a proxy war against Russia using Ukraine that was designed to achieve Russia’s strategic defeat.

It appeared that there were similar sentiments in certain circles inside Russia as well—on the same day that the US Government seized my passport, the Russian FSB arrested Alexander Zyrianov on manufactured charges of corruption. While these charges have since been shown to be false, Alexander remains in pre-trial detention because of new charges leveled against him by local Novosibirsk politicians who felt threatened that Alexander’s star had begun to burn too brightly.

The seizure of my passport and the arrest of Alexander Zyrianov was a heavy blow to the ATI/USToD team—many thousands of dollars had been spent in support of a project the fruition of which was now very much in doubt. Undaunted, we regrouped and jump-started a new project, “Operation DAWN,” based upon four basic questions being asked of the American electorate in the upcoming 2024 Presidential election: What would you do to save Democracy, America, and the World through your vote in November? Working together with Gerald Celente, the editor of Trends Journal and the long-time host of an annual peace rally in Kingston, New York every summer, the ATI/USToD team began advocating against nuclear war, and making this opposition a key issue in the upcoming election.

Apparently, this was too much for the US Government, which on August 7 ordered the FBI to execute a search warrant at my home in Delmar, New York, ostensibly on suspicion that I was acting as an agent of the Russian government, in violation of the Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) as part of a larger scheme to interfere in the 2024 Presidential election. No charges were filed, but my personal electronics (computers and cellphone) were seized, along with the entire archive I had relied upon to counter the US government’s lies about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

Rather than allowing ourselves to be intimidated by such strong-arm tactics, the ATI/USToD team doubled down on our activism, speaking out in defense of our First Amendment right to free speech—and that of others, such as the Uhuru-3—and aggressively pushing forward with “Operation DAWN.”

On September 28, we kick-started the “Operation DAWN” campaign in Kingston, New York, with a four-hour rally that combined music with impassioned presentations dedicated to the cause of peace and saying no to nuclear war. I, Gerald Celente, Judge Andrew Napolitano, and Joe Lauria each delivered powerful presentations which were delivered to an enthusiastic live audience as well as hundreds of thousands of viewers who tuned in to the live-streamed event. I took the opportunity to premier an anti-war music video featuring a song written and sung by my daughter, Patricia, and illustrated by her sister, Victoria, and Victoria’s fiancé, Sam, which was ably produced by Malcolm Burn, who graciously provided his home recording studio for our use. Country music performer Garret Steele entertained the crowd in between presentations, and we were all thrilled by the guest appearance of Roger Waters, who spoke to the crowd live via video before playing a music video he had prepared specially for the occasion.

We were just getting started. On October 26 the ATI/USToD team organized a panel discussion/brunch at the Tudor City Steakhouse in downtown Manhattan, which furthered the underlying theme of saying no to nuclear war and which served as the core message of “Operation DAWN.” The event brought together such notable speakers as Judge Andrew Napolitano (“Judging Freedom”), Dennis Fritz and Larry Wilkerson (from the Eisenhower Media Network, which co-sponsored the event), noted podcaster/activists Garland Nixon, Danny Haiphong, and Russell Dobular, independent congressional candidates Diane Sayer and Jose Vega, WBAI radio host Randy Credico, and the hosts of ATI, Jeff Norman and myself, for an afternoon of informed discussion and dialogue.

On election night the author joined Gerald Celente, Joe Lauria and Garland Nixon for a six-hour marathon live panel discussion about the election results and what it meant for the United States going forward.

We followed this up with a post-election, three panel extravaganza, hosted at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, where we gathered some of the top military, political, and social activist personalities in the alternative media world for a major live-streamed event intended to sustain the anti-nuclear war momentum we had helped achieve through the election of Donald Trump. This event was preceded by meetings with congressional members and their staffs, where specific policy options were discussed that could help prevent a nuclear war from breaking out between Russia and the US prior to Trump taking office.

While preventing nuclear war was the primary objective of “Operation DAWN,” it was advanced hand in glove with the cause of defending free speech. The US government’s unrelenting efforts to intimidate me into silence underscored the reality that void of free speech, the “No Nuclear War” platform embraced by “Operation DAWN” would be criminalized by a US government unable and unwilling to engage on this subject based upon the facts.

The FARA argument used by the FBI to justify the raid on my home in August was the centerpiece of a prosecution undertaken by the Justice Department targeting the Uhuru 3 (Chairman Omali Yeshitela, Jesse Nevel, and Penny Hess), a black nationalist group falsely accused of being Russian agents under FARA. While a jury had found the Uhuru 3 not guilty of the charge of being Russian agents, because of muddled jury instructions, they found the defendants guilty of conspiring to be foreign agents of Russia.

Given the direct relationship between the Uhuru 3 case and the allegations of FARA violations being hinted at about me by the US government, I took a special interest in the proceedings, calling the trial of the Uhuru 3 the “trial for the United States of America.” We used the ATI platform to talk with Chairman Omali and the other Uhuru 3 defendants, and I participated in a rally in Washington, DC in support of the Uhuru 3. I was also present at the sentencing of the Uhuru 3 in Tampa, Florida, where the judge, realizing that justice had not been served, set down for the defendants an all-probation sentence.

To sum up, 2024 was a year of unfulfilled expectations combined with new opportunities that led to great successes.

In short, I give the ATI/USToD team a solid “A” grade for effort, and a similar grade for results.

None of this could have happened without the generous donations of our supporters and subscribers.

2025 looks to be a year of great opportunity. Not prone to stay idle, the ATI/USToD team is starting the year running, hosting Ania K, my co-author and collaborator for our new book, Covering Ukraine, for a week-long book tour in the United States that will see events in New York City (January 15), Washington DC (January 19) and Poughkeepsie, New York (January 21). The purpose of the tour is far more than promoting book sales—the goal is to use the opportunity of having myself and Ania K on stage together to not only talk about the Ukraine conflict and the prospects for peace now that Trump has been elected, but also the power of collaboration when it comes to alternative media.

We will continue to promote alternative media collaboration, furthering the “family of podcasts” cooperation that we began last year, which saw podcasts hosted by Judge Napolitano, Gerald Celente, Graland Nixon, Wilmur Leon, Danny Haiphong, Jimmy Dore, Nima Rostami Alkhorshid, Cynthia Pooler, Ania K, Rachel Blevins and others work together to bring viewership to ideas and messages of mutual value. Because of this partnership, the ATI/USToD team has been able to reach audiences that number in the millions, outstripping mainstream media outlets such as CNN and MSNBC.

In the coming year, the ATI/USToD team will look to expand its reach, looking for new opportunities on Telegram and X, and to enter into an exciting partnership with the Eisenhower Media Network.

We will also continue our collaboration with Malcolm Burn, where we have plans for an exciting foray into musical diplomacy.

We will likewise be working with social activists to improve our outreach capabilities, including an exciting project in collaboration with Jose Vega that will take us into the brave new world of self-publishing.

“Operation DAWN” will continue to be a top priority, where we will hold the Trump administration’s feet to the fire when it comes to preventing nuclear war, while expanding our efforts into arms control and the need for nuclear disarmament.

2025 will also see the “Waging Peace” project resurrected, with plans to travel to Russia already underway. This effort, however, will be difficult so long as my good friend, Alexander Zyrianov, remains imprisoned. The wheels of justice turn slowly, but I remain optimistic that Alexander will soon be released back into the arms of his loving wife, and that we can resume our collaboration on bringing the people of our two nations together in peace.

The year ahead is full of hope and the promise of peace. But this lofty objective cannot be achieved without hard work. The ATI/USToD team is ready to continue to work hard for peace. We expect that the year will be full of challenges, and we are confident in our ability to overcome them all.

But we can only do this with the continued generous support of our supporters and subscribers.

Your investment will not be in vain.

Last year you helped prevent a nuclear war and successfully defended free speech.

This year?

The sky is the limit.

With your help.

Thank you very much,

The ATI/USToD Team
Scott Ritter, Jeff Norman, Ryan Milton, Jose Vega, Jelena K, Alexandra Madornaya, Jon Curl, Adam Marksby and Morgan Blythe.

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“May you live in interesting times.”

Said to be a curse, this apocryphal saying, attributed to China, is in fact more than likely the product of an Englishman’s imagination. It is, however, accurate nonetheless, especially if one’s understanding of the definition of the word “interesting” takes a more morbid approach toward what is capable today of “arousing curiosity or interest” or “holding or catching the attention.”

By any account, 2024 was an “interesting” year. We began with dual conflicts in progress—the Russian “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, and the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza.

But there were other conflicts as well, those that operated below the event horizon of most Americans. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, contested results stemming from a flawed election that took place in December 2023 led to a fresh outbreak of fighting in the eastern part of that troubled nation, continuing three decades of warfare that has killed millions and currently is responsible for the displacement of some 7.2 million civilians.

And in Sudan a Civil War raged with all the brutality that can be mustered when conflict becomes based upon ethnicity. With tens of thousands killed and millions more displaced, the conflict in Sudan had all the earmarks of a genocide.

Interesting times, indeed.

But then the Houthis shut down Israeli-affiliated shipping in the Gulf of Aden, and Iran launched not one, but two, missile strikes against Israel, and things became even more interesting.

The US-led “rules-based international order” found itself challenged in unprecedented fashion by a new multi-polar forum, BRICS, which held its annual summit in the Russian city of Kazan, demonstrating once and for all that the western efforts to isolate Russia in the aftermath of its 2022 invasion of Ukraine had failed.

China flexed its muscles in the Pacific, asserting its sovereignty over Taiwan and the disputed islands, many of them man-made (by the Chinese) in the South Pacific, and North Korea continued to expand its nuclear-capable ballistic missile arsenal.

In the United States, politically motivated lawfare sought to disrupt the presidential aspirations of Donald Trump while the Democratic Party carried out a de facto coup, replacing the senile Joe Biden with the incompetent Kamala Harris without any of the normal trappings of democratic due process.

Donald Trump won—convincingly, throwing the entire American establishment into a panic.

And, to top things off, the Biden administration, seeking to cement its policy legacies in a way that Trump would not be able to readily undo them, pushed the United States to the brink of a nuclear war with Russia.

It is with good reason that the newborn 2025 looks back on 2024 with fear and trepidation.

But when he turns his gaze toward the year to come, things become even more “interesting.”

Benjamin Netanyahu continues to rule over an Israeli nation defined by genocide and empowered by an incoming Trump administration that has staffed its senior policy posts with the staunchest of Zionists.

Donald Trump hasn’t even been sworn in as President and he has turned the world upside down with threats to use military force to invade, occupy and annex Greenland (a territory of Denmark, ostensibly a NATO ally!) and to seize control of the Panama Canal, the control of which the US transferred to the Panamanian government in 1999.

Trump has pledged to bring an end to the war in Ukraine, but neither Volodymyr Zelensky, the erstwhile President of Ukraine, or Vladimir Putin, the legitimate President of Russia, are on the same page when it comes to a cessation of hostilities, meaning that the war in Ukraine will drag on for months to come.

Trump claims he wants to resume his bromance with North Korean leader Kim Jung-un, but Kim has become cozy with Putin.

And Xi Jinping and his behemoth Chinese economy looms large in the background, identified by Trump as the greatest threat to the United States, and as such his greatest challenge.

The old wars continue to rage, and the potential for new conflicts is an ever-present reality.

It’s no wonder the poor baby 2025 pooped his diapers in fear!

2025 is going to be very interesting indeed.

We live in interesting times.

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Donald Trump enters 2025 with a perceived mandate for change and a doctrine predicated on the mantra “peace through strength.”

Perhaps the biggest change sought by Trump is to divorce the United States from its Cold War-era marriage to a trans-Atlantic military alliance—NATO—that lacks any present-day purpose other than to stimulate an atmosphere of confrontation with Russia.

The question remains as to whether Trump’s mandate is strong enough to bring about this divorce, and whether the precepts of “peace” will win out over those of “strength” if this mandate is challenged at home and abroad.

Donald Trump is a man on a mission.

He is also a man driven by an ego which may outstrip the ability of the nation he will be sworn in to lead on January 20, 2025, to match.

Trump simultaneously seeks to disengage the United States from global hot spots that have come to define present-day national security priorities while promoting a new foreign policy centered on solidifying American dominance over its immediate spheres of strategic interest, including taking an aggressive stance on expanding the territory of the United States to include Greenland and the Panama Canal.

To accomplish this expansive goal, Trump and his foreign policy/national security team will need to go against the grain of decades of policy imperatives that have, over time, been used to define US national security interests.

In seeking to bring an end to the Ukraine conflict without accomplishing the underlying goals of the US and its western allies, namely the strategic defeat of Russia, Trump is opening the door for the potential normalization of relations between Russia and the US and, by extension, Russia and Europe.

This is a two-step process.

First and foremost, Trump must find a formulation for conflict cessation which simultaneously recognizes the reality of Russia’s victory over the collective West.

This means that Russia will need to get the vast majority of what it is seeking when it comes to the Ukraine conflict—Ukrainian neutrality (no NATO membership), permanent international recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, Kherson, Zaporizhia, Donetsk and Lugansk, the lifting of all sanctions linked to the Special Military Operation, and political control over the future of what remains of Ukraine, including constitutional changes requiring “denazification.”

Trump will promote such a deal as a major victory, since he has cast himself as someone who did not promote this conflict, and as such should be credited with creating the conditions for peace.

The next step is perhaps the most challenging: divorcing the United States from NATO.

The Ukraine conflict has underscored the reality that post-Cold War NATO is an organization lacking in a viable mission. What was once a defensive alliance focused on protecting Western Europe from Soviet expansion, NATO has become little more than a tool of the very kind of US-led foreign adventurism Donald Trump claims he is seeking to walk away from.

The rub is that the political and economic elite of Europe who are responsible for NATO allowing itself to be redefined as a tool of American empire will not willingly yield to Trump’s strategic vision. NATO, facing the diminishment of US investment into the alliance, will seek to restructure the defenses of Europe predicated on the very threat model Trump, through his peace initiative regarding Ukraine, seeks to dismantle.

Europe, however, is not able to bear the financial burden of such an undertaking, and any effort to build a massive new European military designed to confront a manufactured Russian threat will by necessity require the reallocation of limited fiscal resources away from the kind of social and infrastructure investments the bulk of the European population are demanding from their governments, making any effort to do so the equivalent of political suicide.

Trump’s goal is to make NATO politically and economically unsustainable. To do this, he must get Europe to acquiesce to a vision that reverses decades of policy predicated upon Russia as an existential threat, as well as getting congressional support for divorcing the United States from a trans-Atlantic alliance that has served as the core of American national security policy for 80 years.

It is unlikely that Europe will go gently into that good night.

Instead, there will be a period of political and economic turmoil as deeply entrenched elites seek to retain their positions of power and influence in the face of unyielding geopolitical reality that dictates otherwise. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom—traditionally the core of what constitutes European political, economic and military power—are all in what appears to be irreversible decline, generating domestic political fallout that will ultimately prove fatal to the current ruling class.

One of the largest obstacles Trump faces in trying to oversee what amounts to the euthanasia of post-War European power structures comes not from the European continent, which frankly speaking is virtually powerless to prevent such an outcome in the face of American indifference manifesting itself in a refusal to underwrite the costs associated with sustaining the NATO alliance. Rather, Trump will face pushback from within the halls of Congress. Here, decades of a symbiotic relationship between those who control the power of the purse and those responsible for defending the nation have produced a war-based economy that feeds upon conflicts promoted by elected officials whose positions are dependent upon the support of the warmongering class.

This is precisely the threat to American democracy that President Dwight Eisenhower warned of in his farewell address to the nation in January 1961.

Trump gave voice to this threat in a video statement released on March 17, 2023. “Our foreign policy establishment,” Trump declared, “keeps trying to pull the world into conflict with a nuclear-armed Russia based on the lie that Russia represents our greatest threat. But the greatest threat to Western civilization today,” Trump noted, “is not Russia. It’s probably more than anything else ourselves and some of the horrible, USA-hating people that represent us.”

Trump pledged “a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist, neocon establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars, pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad, while they turn us into a third-world country and a third-world dictatorship right here at home.”

Trump added that NATO’s role needs to be re-explored, and that the State Department, “defense bureaucracy” and intelligence services must likewise be overhauled.

Trump accused this “establishment” of wanting to “squander all of America’s strength, blood and treasure, chasing monsters and phantoms overseas while keeping us distracted from the havoc they're creating here at home. These forces,” Trump concluded, “are doing more damage to America than Russia and China could ever have dreamed.”

The stakes in this game of political dominance are as high as they can get—left unchecked, the “establishment” could very well lead the United States down the path of inevitable nuclear conflict with Russia.

Trump has articulated a desire to take a different path.

His mantra of “peace through strength,” however, is a double-edged sword.

As currently configured, Trump’s strategic vision appears to seek to trade the loss of the post-War trans-Atlantic alliance that has defined American national security for eight decades for peace and stability in Europe, for the assertion of a new Monroe Doctrine where the United States rules as the unquestioned power over not only the sovereign territory of the American homeland, but also America’s neighbors to the north and south.

Trump’s gambit is predicated on Congress being willing to accept the proposed acquisition of Greenland and the declared re-acquisition of the Panama Canal, as well as the promise of American dominance over the North and South American continents, as a fair exchange for the loss of Europe.

But Trump’s gambit is also predicated on the fact that any massive restructuring of American geopolitical priorities will inevitably disenfranchise existing power elites to the benefit of a new “establishment” elite.

The deeply entrenched current elites will not yield the field without a fight.

Moreover, the exchange Trump is proposing assumes that the United States can negotiate a smooth exit from Europe void of any entanglements. One of the biggest hurdles in this regard is Trump’s oversized ego and notoriously thin skin. “Peace through strength” is as much about perception as it is about reality, and the concessions Trump will be compelled to make to Russia to bring the Ukraine conflict to a quick and decisive conclusion require, at a minimum, the appearance that what happens is all part of the Trump “design.”

Russia has already thrown a wrench into the works by rejecting out of hand a peace proposal assembled by the Trump national security team-in-waiting, an outcome which most likely proves fatal to Trump’s stated objective of ending the Ukraine conflict on “day one” of his presidency.

If only it were that easy.

The fact is it may very well take between six months and a year after Trump is sworn in for the Ukraine conflict to wind down on terms acceptable to Russia. Trump would be well-advised to engage with the Russians early and realistically to bring an end to the fighting in the shortest timeframe possible. Only after that can he begin the process of divorcing the United States from the dysfunctional union it maintains with NATO. And, like any long-time relationship, this divorce will take time. But the dissolution of NATO is all but assured once the Ukraine conflict is concluded. Trump can literally hand off the proceedings to his “lawyers” and get on with the courtship of his new conquest—greater America.

Which, of course, brings a whole other meaning to the concept of “Make America Great Again.”

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“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trails of Nazis after WW 2) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”

Captain G. M. Gilbert, US Army psychologist, Author of Nuremburg Diary

In September 1995 I was working for the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), charged with eliminating Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. I was the primary liaison between UNSCOM and Israeli intelligence at the time and would make frequent trips to Israel which could last between a few days and a few weeks. During one of these visits, I invited my wife Marina to join me over the weekend. Marina is a devout Georgian Orthodox Christian and was thrilled about the opportunity to see the Holy Land firsthand. We walked the “Via Delarosa” (the “sorrowful way”) in Jerusalem, tracing Jesus’ journey to his crucifixion. We dipped our feet in the River Jordan at the spot John was said to have baptized Jesus. We toured the Sea of Gallilee, visiting the various sites of Jesus’ ministry as recorded in the Bible.

All these experiences resonated deeply with us both.

But it was the excursion my wife made to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, located on Mount Herzl, in western Jerusalem, that made the deepest impression. It was there that Marina came face to face with photographs of some of the child victims of the Holocaust. Marina had given birth to our twin daughters in February 1993, and at the time of her visit to Vad Vashem our girls were 2 and a half years old—the same age as some of the children in the photographs on display at the center. Marina saw our daughters in the eyes of these children, and immediately broke down and cried.

She was overcome with empathy.

In the summer of 1997, I found myself in Baghdad at the head of an inspection team whose purpose it was to confront the Iraqi government with its inconsistent and often contradictory information about the disposition of weapons of mass destruction-related materials in the summer of 1991. Armed with defector reports and satellite imagery, I had been able to find caches of unaccounted missile production equipment, and unravel the deceit of senior Iraqi officials that had served as the foundation of their narrative for more than six years running. My inspection team was not very popular among the inner circle of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As a means of putting pressure on me and my team, the Iraqi government would air video clips of our inspection, accusing me and the other inspectors of working for the CIA, and blaming us for the ongoing suffering of the Iraqi people at the hands of western sanctions. This led to several death threats and at least one attempted assassination attempt on me and my team by disgruntled Iraqi civilians who took the accusations of the Iraqi government to heart.

Rather than back down or hide, my team and I took the opposite approach—we made our presence in Iraq as high-profile as possible, part of my “Alpha Dog” approach to inspecting, which had us figuratively “pissing on the walls” of Iraq in order to leave our mark, and to make sure the Iraqis knew who was in charge when it came to the implementation of our mandate.

At night, when the inspections were finished, and while the “news” of our efforts were being broadcast on Iraqi television, my team and I would drive to the center of town in our ubiquitous white Nissan Patrol SUV’s, with the black “UN” letters painted on the sides and our tactical markings displayed on the roofs and hoods in grey duct tape (these were the team designations for each vehicle—A-1 for “Alpha One,” etc. My vehicle was marked with a “W” for “Whiskey”). We would park on the side of the road next to whatever restaurant we had picked to dine in that night and walk in with all the cockiness of John Wayne and his cowboys (indeed, the head of the UN Humanitarian Mission in Iraq had recently called us “cowboys” in an interview he gave for Le Monde. We decided the title, meant to be an insult, fit us well).

One night, as we sat in a popular roast chicken establishment, the television started playing a “news special” which singled me out for attack. The inspectors and I watched the crowd as they watched the TV screen, where our photographs were displayed along with a running narrative of our many “crimes.” The mood in the restaurant darkened considerably, and someone recommended that we leave while the leaving was good.

“No,” I countered. “We paid for this meal, and we’re going to enjoy it. Fuck these people.”

I was in no mood for showing weakness. We had just spent a day parked outside the Iraqi intelligence headquarters, with our entry blocked by armed guards. At one point we were ushered inside the guardhouse while the police disarmed a man who had driven by with a loaded AK-47, intent on gunning me and the inspectors down.

No sooner than these words had left my mouth, I saw a woman rise from her seat at a table to our front. She was dressed in a black dress, with a black shawl covering her head. Someone at her table tried to pull her back to her seat, but she reprimanded them, and they let go of her arm. She turned and made her way toward my table, her eyes locked on mine.

“Boss,” one of the inspectors, a grizzled British soldier, said. “Incoming.”

“I got her,” I replied. I watched her closely as she drew near, my gaze fluctuating from her eyes and her hands, trying to ascertain her intent. I hadn’t reached a conclusion by the time she halted, standing over me as I sat there and wiped the chicken grease from my face with a napkin.

“You are Scott Ritter?,” she asked, her voice cracking with emotion.

“Yes, Ma’am,” I said, coming to my feet.

“And these are your men? Your inspectors?”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I replied.

“I see you on television every day. They say it is you I should blame for the death of my children.”

“Yes, Ma’am,” I stuttered, not knowing what else to say.

“They want me to hate you.”

“Yes, Ma’am.”

She stared at me, tears welling in her eyes. Her hands were wrapped in her shawl, and suddenly one darted out. If it had been a knife, she would have been able to stab me. But it was just her hand, which she laid on my arm.

“You are doing your job,” she said. “I know this. I know in your heart you mean me no harm. I know in your heart that you did not want my child to die.”

Tears started trickling down her cheek.

“I know you are someone’s son. That all of you,” she said, gesturing to the hard men seated around the table, “have mothers who love you, as I loved my child.”

She looked up at me. “I will pray for your safety, so that you can finish your work, and that sanctions can be lifted, so other mothers do not lose their children to disease.”

She squeezed my arm, and turned away, heading back to her table, where she sat down and sank her head into the arms of the lady seated next to her, sobbing.

I looked down at my unfinished meal, no longer hungry.

“Let’s go,” I said, the anger and cockiness that had defined my earlier tone gone.

We left, each of us reaching into our pockets to leave as large a tip as possible, as if we all were trying to atone for our sins by buying forgiveness.

The crowd in the restaurant let us leave without incident.

As I sat in the Nissan Patrol, heading back to our headquarters building where I would finish the daily inspection report, I could still feel the grip of the lady on my arm where she had squeezed me.

I tried to figure out why she did what she did.

She had every right to hate us. I know that if I was to come face to face with the man responsible for the death of my children, the meeting would not be described as peaceful.

But she chose peace.

She did so in a very public manner, singling me out for the entire restaurant to see.

I wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t stood up.

If she hadn’t confronted me.

What would the crowd have done? I had been caught in several public settings, including a restaurant, when the mood of the crowd soured. Things got real ugly, real fast.

But her intervention prevented that.

She intervened to protect us.

Because she was a mother.

And she knew we had mothers.

She had been overcome with empathy.

Earlier this year I had the opportunity to visit the Donbas region of Russia, including the city of Lugansk. Once part of Ukraine, these territories were caught up in the turmoil that gripped Ukraine following the coming to power in Kiev of anti-Russian Ukrainian nationalists following the US-orchestrated Maidan revolt of February 2014. The Russian-speaking population of the Donbas revolted against the new Ukrainian nationalists, who sought to impose a sort of cultural genocide by banning the Russian language, religion, culture and history. The revolt that followed lasted nearly eight years, culminating in the Russian military intervention in Ukraine and the subsequent annexation of four former Ukrainian regions, or oblasts, including the two—Donetsk and Lugansk—which together form the Donbas.

While in Lugansk I was taken to a memorial dedicated to the children of Lugansk who perished in the fighting that has been raging since 2014. When the monument was installed, back in 2017, there were 33 angels depicted, one for each Lugansk child that had perished in the fighting. Since that time, 35 additional Lugansk children have perished, raising the total number killed to 68.

What struck me when visiting the memorial was how each child’s life resonated with the citizens of Lugansk, as if everyone in the city claimed the lost children as their own. I had witnessed this phenomenon before. Back in 2000, I visited Iraq for the purpose of filming a documentary on UNSCOM and the disarmament of Iraq. While there, I visited the site of the Martyr’s Place Elementary School where, on the morning of October 13, 1987, an Iranian SCUD missile strike killed 22 children and injured more than 160 others as they gathered in the school playground to start the day. At the entrance to the playground was a memorial depicting 22 bronze angels ascending to heaven.

At the time of my visit to Baghdad, some 13 years after the attack, the residents of the neighborhood surrounding the school were still emotional over the loss of life among the children. “They would be young adults today,” one elderly man said. “Just starting their lives.”

It is the loss of the children that hits a community hardest. Whether in Lugansk, Baghdad, or Ma’alot, a town in Israel where, in May 1974, Palestinian militants occupied the Netiv Meir elementary school, where they took some 115 persons hostage, 105 of whom were children. The Israeli military stormed the building, killing the three Palestinian gunmen as well as 31 hostages, 22 of whom were children. Israelis were still talking about Ma’alot when I visited in 1995, some 21 years later.

Some things cannot be forgotten.

And even though I was not a witness to any of these events, as a father of twin daughters I felt the pain of those who lost their little ones as if the lives lost were my own flesh and blood.

Because I had empathy.

If the lack of empathy is the principal characteristic of evil, then the ability to empathize must be the trademark of good.

This Christmas season finds the world engulfed in conflict, with tragedy playing out before our very eyes daily.

We wouldn’t be human if we start to become immune to the horror, our senses overwhelmed by the repetitive scenes of death and destruction that we are constantly confronted by. Being physically separated from violence, we have the option to tune out the unpleasant sights and sounds of human suffering.

After all, how many times can we see the torn, lifeless body of a child pulled from the rubble of Gaza and Beirut?

Or from the wreckage of homes in Ukraine and Russia?

Overdosing from senseless tragedy leads to the numbing of our soul, the hardening of our heart, the diminishment of our humanity.

But we must endure, for no other reason than to make sure that those young lives lost did not perish in vain.

We must learn and remember the names of those who have perished, not to serve as fuel for the furnace of hatred that drives one to seek revenge, but because we have a duty as humans to put ourselves in the shoes of those who have lost their loved ones in war, to feel their pain, to understand their loss, so that we know the importance of trying to bring the violence that took these lives to an end.

War is never the solution.

Peace is always the answer.

I often think back to my encounter with the Iraqi mother at the restaurant in Baghdad. It was an ugly time in my life, when I was overcome with a sense of duty that clouded my own humanity. I was so singularly focused on the task at hand—disarming Iraq—that I forgot that there was a human cost associated with my work and that of my inspectors.

I’ve told the story of this encounter a few times, but I always left out one part of the story, because the memory of it rips at my heart to this day.

After the lady squeezed my arm, and started to turn away, I reached out and laid my hand on her shoulder. She spun around and looked at me.

“What was your child’s name?” I asked.

Her eyes filled with tears, but she smiled slightly before answering. “Zaynab,” she said.

“Zaynab,” I repeated. “It’s a beautiful name.”

“She was a beautiful child,” the mother replied.

I don’t tell this part of the story because it takes away from the tough guy, Alpha Dog persona I had developed during that time.

Because when she turned and walked away, she left me standing alone, sobbing.

But we must confront these things.

Zaynab would have been in her late 20’s today, old enough to have found love, married, and began a family of her own.

But it wasn’t to be.

We must remember Zaynab, just as we must remember every child whose life was taken from this earth too soon.

We must empathize with those who have lost their loved ones because of the senseless wars fought by men.

We must make sure that the children who are alive today have the chance to grow up and raise families of their own.

Otherwise, we become the tools of evil, if not evil itself.

Merry Christmas.

Miles for Military is the only nonprofit that provides service members with free round-trip air tickets (if they also perform community service) so they can come home for Christmas and other special occasions.

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In the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 11, Joe Biden tried to start a nuclear war with Russia.

And on Thursday, December 12, Donald Trump did his best to stop it.

If he succeeds, Donald Trump will have saved Christmas.

Take that, Grinch.

This isn’t a laughing matter, and yet, in writing this, I am overcome by a sense of giddiness that only comes when you’ve pulled off something that nobody thought possible.

Back on November 19, in response to news that the Biden administration had given the greenlight to Ukraine to use US ATACMS missiles to strike targets inside Russia, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed off on a new, revised Russian nuclear war doctrine which gave him that option to use nuclear weapons in response to a conventional attack against Russia by a non-nuclear state that was backed by a nuclear power. According to Kremlin spokesperson Dmitri Peskov, the use of US-supplied ATACMS missiles by Ukraine to hit Russian territory could potentially be a trigger for a Russian nuclear response under the revised document.

Later that same day, Ukraine, using intelligence information provided by the US to guide the missiles to their targets, fired several ATACMS missiles against targets in Russia.

Russia retaliated with a new intermediate-range missile—the Oreshnik—which, while capable of carrying nuclear warheads, was outfitted with a new, novel conventional warhead.

The use of the Oreshnik represented the first time in the history of warfare that a strategic missile was used in combat, a major escalatory move by Russia reflecting the seriousness with which they took the ATACMS attack.

On November 26, the Ukrainians struck again, using ATACMS missiles to strike a Russian air defense position in the Kursk region.

The next day, on November 27, Russian General Valery V. Gerasimov, the Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces, called General Charles Q. Brown Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to inform him that Russia was prepared to use the Oreshnik missile to retaliate against any further ATACMS attacks, and that the Russian targets could include locations outside of Ukraine.

The phone call was part of a concerted effort by the Russians to impart on the leadership of the US the seriousness to which Russia attached to the use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine against targets inside Russia.

The next day, November 28, Russia launched a retaliatory strike against Ukraine’s energy grid, crippling large segments of an already diminished infrastructure. But the Russian attack was made using conventional weaponry that Russia had used in the past, not the Oreshnik.

Russia was playing its part to try to deescalate a situation it found to be extremely dangerous.

But the Russian concerns were falling on deaf ears.

General Brown knew what very few outside the innermost circle of American leadership knew—that the CIA, contrary to reports published in the New York Times and Washington Post, did not believe the Russians were bluffing when it came to its threats to retaliate with nuclear weapons should the Ukrainians continue their use of ATACMS missiles.

The CIA had briefed select members of Congress and the White House that it assessed the Russians were serious about their willingness to employ nuclear weapons if the attacks continued.

And General Brown knew that the position taken by the White House was that they were prepared for this.

That they were ready for a nuclear “exchange” with Russia over the issue of Ukraine.

Indeed, on November 20, at a presentation before the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, the Director of Plans for Strategic Command, responsible for executing America’s nuclear war plans, told an audience just that—that the Biden administration was ready to engage in a nuclear conflict with Russia, one that it expected to win.

On December 5, accompanied by the irrepressible Medea Benjamin from Code Pink, her able Washington, DC, Director, Adnaan Stumo, and other volunteers and activists, including Jose Vega and Morgan Blythe, I paid a visit to several congressional representatives and their senior staff to talk about the danger of nuclear war between the US and Russia, and possible ways that such a war could be avoided.

One of the points that I drove home was, in the face of continued use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine against Russia, and void of any possibility of getting the Biden administration to rescind its permission regarding ATACMS use by Ukraine, it was imperative that President-elect Trump issue a statement which distanced himself from this policy, and provided Russia with assurances that a Trump administration would not continue to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS against Russia.

We were assured by several of the people we met with that they would do their best to get this message to senior members of the Trump transition team.

On December 6, Tucker Carlson, the former FOX television star-turned independent journalist who conducted an interview with Russian President Vladimir Putin this past February which garnered over one billion views, was back in Moscow.

In a video posted from Moscow, Carlson declared:

We’ve watched from the United States as the Biden administration has driven the US ever closer to a nuclear conflict with Russia, the country that possesses the world's largest nuclear arsenal. It has accelerated ever since, and it’s reached its apogee so far in the weeks after Trump’s election. He's now the president-elect.

In that time, just a few weeks ago, the Biden administration, American military personnel launched missiles into mainland Russia and killed at least a dozen Russian soldiers. So we are, unbeknownst to most Americans, in a hot war with Russia, an undeclared war, a war you did not vote for and that most Americans don’t want, but it is ongoing. Because of that war, because of the fact that the U.S. military is killing Russians in Russia right now, we are closer to nuclear war than at any time in history, far closer than we were during the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Tucker Carlson was in Moscow to do what the Biden administration wouldn’t—to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov about the threat of nuclear war between the US and Russia.

In the interview, Lavrov declared that Russia was “ready to do anything to defend our legitimate interests,” adding that “We hate even to think about war with the United States, which will take nuclear character.” Lavrov reiterated that Russia was prepared “to do anything to defend our national interests,” adding that Russia would “send additional messages” (i.e., additional Oreshnik missiles) if the leadership in the US and Europe “don’t draw necessary conclusions.”

On December 7, I hosted a series of panels at the National Press Club on the danger of a nuclear war between the US and Russia triggered by the US greenlighting of ATACMS missile targeting of Russia by Ukraine. One of the panels focused specifically on the importance of getting President-elect Trump to weigh in on this issue to assure the Russian government that he did not support these attacks.

On December 11, despite every warning Russia had given regarding its concerns regarding the continued use by Ukraine of US-provided ATACMS missiles against targets inside Russia, Ukraine fired six ATACMS missiles against a Russian airbase outside the Russian city of Taganrog. Russian authorities immediately signaled that they were preparing to respond with several Oreshnik missiles.

On December 12, Time Magazine published an interview with President-elect Trump, whom they had selected as their “Person of the Year.” It was a wide-ranging interview which touched on many topics and issues, including the decision by the Biden administration to allow Ukraine to use ATACMS against Russia.

“It’s crazy what’s taking place,” Trump said, referring to the ATACMS attacks. “It’s crazy. I disagree very vehemently with sending missiles hundreds of miles into Russia. Why are we doing that? We’re just escalating this war and making it worse. That should not have been allowed to be done. Now they’re doing not only missiles, but they’re doing other types of weapons. And I think that’s a very big mistake, very big mistake.

“I think the most dangerous thing right now is what's happening, where Zelensky has decided, with the approval of, I assume, the President, to start shooting missiles into Russia. I think that’s a major escalation. I think it's a foolish decision. But I would imagine people are waiting until I get in before anything happens. I would imagine. I think that would be very smart to do that.”

The interview was conducted on November 25, after the initial ATACMS attacks and Russian Oreshnik retaliation, but before Tucker Carlson’s interview of Lavrov, or my congressional intervention and National Press Club event. Simply put, there are no causal inferences that can be drawn between Trump’s statements and anything that came after. But what is critical is that the efforts of Tucker and myself to get the Russians to be open to the possibility of a new mindset in a future Trump administration helped create an environment where the Russians were ready to receive any declaratory statement by the President-elect which could provide insight into the actions of a future Trump administration when it came to the continued use of ATACMS missiles by the US once Trump took office.

The Time Magazine interview provided just that.

On the night of December 12, Russia launched a massive retaliation against Ukraine for the ATACMS attack on Tagonrog.

Like the strike that took place on November 28, the Russian action was undertaken only using conventional weapons that had already been a part of past Russian retaliatory actions.

Russia did not make use of the Oreshnik missile.

While Russia has not provided any statement which links its decision not to use the Oreshnik missile to Trump’s Time Magazine interview, one can always hold out that such a linkage did occur.

In any event, the Russians are now apprised of the position of President-elect Trump regarding the use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine—Trump is “vehemently opposed” to such action, which he has characterized as “foolish.”

This a major declaration, one which could—even should—prevent the kind of nuclear escalation the Biden administration seems hellbent on engaging in with Russia.

But Trump’s statement cannot be allowed to stand on its own.

It needs to be reiterated by both Trump and his team, so that there is no uncertainty in the minds of the Russian leadership what awaits them if they withhold from undertaking escalatory retaliatory strikes against Ukraine and possibly NATO in response to what will inevitably be additional ATACMS attacks by Ukraine on Russian territory.

The governments of the United Kingdom and France have just authorized Ukraine to use the Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles against Russian targets.

To forestall a Russian retaliation against UK and French targets outside of Ukraine, Russia needs to know whether Trump’s attitude toward ATACMS extends to Storm Shadow, SCALP, or any other foreign-made long-range weapon (the German-made Taurus missile comes to mind).

We all may get to celebrate Christmas this year because of an interview Trump gave to Time Magazine.

But we cannot rest on our laurels.

Keep up the pressure.

Call your members of Congress.

Ask them to support HR 10218, which prohibits the use by Ukraine of ATACMS missiles against Russia.

HR 10218 may not become law, but with enough signatures, it cannot be ignored.

By rallying support around the issue of ATACMS used by Ukraine against Russia, we can raise the profile of this issue and empower those who might otherwise be hesitant to embrace this policy course out of fear of political backlash to add their voices.

And right now, the most important voices that need to be heard are those of President-elect Trump and his national security team.

Saying “no” to ATACMS doesn’t weaken any future American negotiation position regarding the end of the conflict in Ukraine.

It does ensure that such negotiations can, in fact, take place.

Yes, Virgina, there is a Santa Clause.

And he looks like Donald Trump.

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The threat of a nuclear war between the US and Russia is real—on this point, there is rare bipartisan agreement in Congress.

The question which emerges is what can Congress do to reduce this threat. Here the potential paths toward a solution become clogged with political obstacles.

There is a House Resolution that has been introduced by Congressman Higgins, R-Louisiana which is, from the perspective of preventing a nuclear war, the proverbial “cure for cancer.”

HR 10218 (“To prohibit the transfer of Army Tactical Missile Systems to Ukraine, and for other purposes”) (see text) is a carefully—indeed masterfully—crafted piece of legislation which condenses the potential trigger for a US-Russian nuclear conflict down to its most basic component—the use of ATACMS missiles by Ukraine to strike Russian territory. As has been explained in detail elsewhere, the Ukrainian ATACMS attacks on Russia are seen as an attack by the US, making the US a direct participant to the conflict.

If the attacks stop, then the US will no longer be seen by Russia as engaging in offensive military operations against Russian territory.

And as such, the trigger for the release of Russian nuclear weapons will not be pulled.

“Cancer” is cured—there will be no nuclear war.

While there are many procedural obstacles in place that will likely prevent this resolution from becoming law, it is essential that every member of Congress be familiar with the bill’s contents, and its relevance regarding the prevention of nuclear war.

It is essential that every American who reads this post, pick up the phone and call their representative in Congress and insist that they sign on to this bill.

A bill that possesses sufficient signatures from both sides of the aisle takes on an air of political relevance, and its contents cannot be ignored, especially by members of the incoming Trump administration.

A bipartisan bill blocking the use of ATACMS by Ukraine against Russia possessing a respectable number of signatures may not move the needle when it comes to action by the Biden administration, but it could very well influence the appropriate decision makers in the Trump national security team when it comes to formulating policy regarding Ukraine.

If Trump allows Ukraine to use AtACMS on Russian territory, then the risk of nuclear war will continue unabated.

But if the Trump team can be moved to articulate policy which conforms to the substance of HR 10218, the nuclear war can be prevented.

All it takes is for enough Americans to take the time to call their Congressional representatives.

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