VD AMOK

04/06/2026

BBC Russia Editor Steve Rosenberg:
Writing in the journal Russia In Global Affairs, which has close links to the country's foreign policy establishment, political scientist Vasily Kashin recently concluded: "The goal of eliminating the anti-Russian regime in Ukraine at the current stage is fundamentally unachievable without the complete military occupation of the entire country, including the western part, for a long period. For Russia this is technically impossible."
A few days later, pro-Kremlin tabloid Moskovsky Komsomolets quoted political commentator Alexander Nosovich: "The expert community is split between those in favour of continuing the special military operation until the goals are achieved, and those who believe it's time to end it, since the worst-case scenario is not even defeat, it's an endless special operation."

Russia is intensifying attacks in Ukraine but more than four years of war are causing concern even among Putin loyalists.

19/05/2026

Released files belonging to the Information Research Department (IRD), a clandestine anti-communist propaganda unit which operated in the Foreign Office between 1948 and 1977

Exclusive: Top secret files expose how the UK government forged documents, controlled news agencies, and cultivated journalists amid the Cold War struggle for influence and power.

11/05/2026

Trita Parsi: "The war in Ukraine shattered a core assumption about great-power dominance: that size and military strength are enough to impose one’s will. Ukraine showed otherwise. With the right strategy, geography, and resolve, a weaker state can survive and blunt - and in key respects even defeat - a much stronger adversary.
The United States now faces an uncomfortable parallel. The war with Iran is exposing similar limits to American power."

For states that had opted to depend on US protection, this should be a wake-up call

10/05/2026

Mark Galeotti: "The Russian security system is carefully organised to minimise the risk of a coup. Various military and paramilitary forces balance each other, and the FSO is packed with loyalists and empowered to monitor whomever it feels it must.
While Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries did turn in 2023, this was a mutiny, not a coup: the goal was not to topple the president but to persuade him to abandon his support for Shoigu. In any case, the 2,000 or so men who neared Moscow would have had no chance of taking the city, let alone ousting Putin.
Presenting Shoigu as a particular putschist is especially laughable. Fairly or not, he has faced the brunt of criticism within the military for the bungled initial invasion and subsequent failures of leadership, strategy and supply. There has been a comprehensive campaign to sack, prosecute or dismiss his cronies within the ministry. Those officers with whom he was associated, including Chief of the General Staff Gerasimov, whom he appointed, have pointedly disassociated themselves from him.
It is hard to impossible to imagine that he has the authority and credibility within the high command to stage a coup, let alone the freedom of operation to do so without coming to the attention of the informants, wiretaps and email interceptions of DVKR, the Federal Security Service’s Military Counterintelligence Department. Name notwithstanding, it is there more to snoop on the soldiers than protect them from foreign spies.
Besides, those claims about Putin’s security which can be externally validated look distinctly questionable. Contrary to the claims, for example, Putin – who for years has been cutting back on travel and public engagements round the country – has maintained a programme of public events, including his recent meeting with the Iranian foreign minister in St Petersburg.
This may be more dodgy intelligence, coming as it does after a Swedish report that dramatically overstated the pressure on the Russian economy. There is a desperate appetite in Europe for a deus ex machina, for some miraculous end to the Ukraine war. The thought of Putin being toppled by a coup or the country imploding certainly fits the bill. This would hardly be the first time intelligence agencies succumbed to the temptation to provide their masters with what they want, not need, to hear.
Yet with the news that Nato has been meeting with film and television producers in the hope of influencing their output, it is also worth bearing in mind that this may be a deliberate deception. Maybe the idea is to put thoughts into people’s minds. Maybe it is to get Putin to turn on Shoigu, who is a personal friend, and get the rest of the elite wondering if they might be next. This would hardly be the first time we have seen such misdirection in the covert shadow wars waged by the spooks."

It is hard to impossible to imagine that Sergei Shoigu has the authority and credibility within the high command to stage a coup

06/05/2026

“If you thought you were buying American loyalty, now you’re going to think that all that an American base does is make me a target, while the US is just as likely to sell me down the river" (retired British Air Marshal) https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/gulf-states-fear-an-emboldened-iran-is-taking-advantage-of-a-hesitant-u-s-5f0d9ec1

Governments friendly with America are worried about Tehran’s strikes on the United Arab Emirates.

04/05/2026

"The threat assessment above points to a direct conclusion. Western counter-terrorism policy has not been designed to prevent this outcome. It has, in measurable ways, accelerated it"

On April 25, armed groups launched near-simultaneous attacks against military installations and key strategic sites across Mali. Claimed by Jama'at Nusrat

24/04/2026

Kom vrijdag 24 april om 1800 uur naar het Spui voor het 88e vredesprotest!

Met ex-hoogleraar, vakbondsactivist en Russische vluchtelingen

Vredesprotest op het Spui met Russische vluchtelingen Alexander en Aikui, vakbondsactivist Michel Eggermont en ex-hoogleraar Henk Overbeek, van 1800-1900 uur.
Emeritus hoogleraar internationale betrekkingen Henk Overbeek gaat in op de oorlogen tegen Iran en Oekraïne en de dringende noodzaak dat de Nederlandse regering zich losmaakt van het internationale beleid van de Verenigde Staten.
Vakbondsactivist Michel Eggermont neemt ons mee in de discussie binnen de vakbeweging over de opstelling tegenover de militarisering en de bezuinigingen.
Vluchtelingen Alexander uit Ufa (de hoofdstad van de Russische republiek Basjkirië) en Aikui uit Novoshakhtinsk (een Russische mijnstad aan de grens met Oekraïne) vertellen over hun protest tegen de oorlog en het geweld in Rusland.

​Blue dog

De muziek is deze keer van Blue Dog - Matthias Konecny - zingende Amsterdamse klimaatartiest wiens liederen een bastion vormen tegen cynisme, een pleidooi voor realisme, soms bijtend satirisch, dan weer troostend, voor als de waarheid pijn doet.

Stop de oorlog Amsterdam vrijdag 24 april 2026 18 uur op het Spui protest tegen meer dan 4 jaar oorlog in Oekraïne. Met sprekers, dichters, muziek en 2 minuten stilte voor de slachtoffers van beide kanten

14/04/2026

Gideon Rachman (Financial Times): "Trump clearly hopes that the economic pressure exerted on Iran through the blockade will force the Islamic republic to back down quickly. But the Iranian regime is resourceful, ruthless and fighting for its life. Iran also has a cushion of income generated by its recent oil sales at inflated prices and can generate some revenue through gas exports by pipeline.
If Trump’s blockade fails to bend Iran to America’s will, the US will then face some very difficult choices. The president has floated the possibility of devastating Iranian infrastructure and sometimes suggests that a military operation to open the strait would be easy.
But the truth is that if these were good or workable options they would have been tried already. Even if the US succeeds in sending some warships through the strait that will not guarantee the safety of commercial shipping. Iran does not have to sink or block every tanker. A few attacks with drones or speedboats would continue to make tanker traffic all but uninsurable.
If the US then decided to escalate further — by carrying through on Trump’s threats to take out Iranian power plants and desalination facilities — the Iranians have threatened to target similar facilities in the Gulf. Without the fresh water generated by desalination plants, life in the UAE and Saudi Arabia would be pretty impossible."

A global energy crisis is only just beginning. Political turmoil will follow

11/04/2026

Politics of civilisational threat

"But the social meaning of the war remained visible even at the moment of de-escalation: Associated Press, reporting on April 7, said strikes destroyed half of Tehran’s Khorasaniha Synagogue and nearby residential buildings, while the BBC showed Iranians forming human chains at bridges and power plants after Tehran urged people to gather outside potential US and Israeli targets. In other words, the threat to destroy civil infrastructure did not remain at the level of rhetoric: it entered directly into the field of mass fear, symbolic defence, collective exposure and the widening destruction of social life itself.
To understand why this war between two unequal sides has lasted so long, it is necessary to distinguish between air supremacy and air superiority. Air supremacy means an enemy has effectively no functioning airforce, no viable radar network and no surviving missile architecture. It is the ‘empty room’ scenario: the dominant force flies where it wants, when it wants, at little cost. Air superiority is weaker than that: one side remains dominant, but still faces some resistance. Air denial is different again. It does not require control of the skies: it only requires making the skies sufficiently dangerous that the stronger power cannot operate as if risk has disappeared.¨

The most revealing feature of the fragile US-Israeli two-week ceasefire with Iran is its vagueness. Yassamine Mather assesses the internal and regional effects of the war

11/04/2026

Veel universiteiten vergaren en delen kennis over de migratie naar Europa. Maar daarmee houden ze een dodelijk systeem in stand, vindt Stop Wapenhandel.