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Ukraine – Anti-Corruption Independence Restored, Zelenski Weakened, Four Cities Are Falling
On Monday the 21st of July the Ukrainian Secret Service (SBU) searched offices of the independent anti-corruption police (NABU) and anti-corruption prosecutor office (SAPO) and detained several of its investigators. A day later the Zelenski regime pushed a law through parliament which ended the independence of both entities by putting them under control of the prosecutor general.
The move had been planned for months (in Russian) but was executed in haste after NABU and SAPO had served a notices-of-investigation to people near to the president.
But Zelenski had miscalculated the step. There were highly visible local protests and the EU stepped in by threatening to withhold subsidies on which the Ukrainian state depends.
Two days after his strike against the independent anti-corruption entities Zelenski had to pull back. Today the parliament reestablished the independence of NABU and SAPO.
The Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament) has passed a law restoring powers to Ukraine’s key anti-corruption agencies – the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the Specialised Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).
A total of 331 MPs voted in favour of the presidential bill [..]. No MPs voted against the bill, and no one abstained. Nine MPs did not vote.
Under the new law, SAPO will now independently oversee the procedural supervision of NABU investigations – and is no longer under the control of the Prosecutor General.
The new law was signed by the president and is now in force.
By his misstep and its retraction from it Zelenski demonstrated a fatal weakness which his political enemies will soon use to end his control of the country.
Cont. reading: Ukraine – Anti-Corruption Independence Restored, Zelenski Weakened, Four Cities Are Falling
Palestine Open Thread 2025-172
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-171
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Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-170
News & views not related to the wars in Ukraine and Palestine …
Job Application à la Ukraine
An aspirant for the presidency of Ukraine presents his job application via Vogue-Ukraine (in Russian).
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Writes Strana (machine translation):
According to the article's liner notes, in the column, the ambassador "discusses the roots of identity, the power of unity, and the main historical lessons that Ukrainians are forced to learn right now." Zaluzhny also writes a lot about himself: his childhood with a quote from the teacher Vasily Sukhomlinsky, traditions in the family, the first embroidery.
In his opinion, the citizens of Ukraine have learned several important lessons in recent years:
- "we did not allow ourselves to be deceived, because we are the people and the state";
- the greatness and power of the enemy are not always what their leaders and propagandists imagine them to be;
- a neighbor who helps you in trouble helps himself first of all;
- "the enemy, who has not broken you on the battlefield, will immediately begin to break you in the rear", only more insidiously;
- there are no miracles in war.
The magazine accompanied Zaluzhny's column with a photo of him as an imposing bourgeois.
One wonders who is the one who really pushing him.
‘Blind Ideological Zealotry’ Let EU Agree To This Trump Deal
The European Union and U.S. agreed on a trade deal which cements the vassalization of the EU:
After make-or-break negotiations between President Donald Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in Scotland, the pair agreed a US tariff on all EU goods of 15%.
That is half the 30% import tax rate Trump had threatened to implement starting on Friday. He said the 27-member bloc would open its markets to US exporters with zero per cent tariffs on certain products.
Von der Leyen also hailed the deal, saying it would bring stability for both allies, who together account for almost a third of global trade.
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Trump said the EU would boost its investment in the US by $600bn (£446bn), including American military equipment, and spend $750bn on energy.
That investment over the next three years in American liquified natural gas, oil and nuclear fuels would, von der Leyen said, help reduce European reliance on Russian power sources.
Some goods will not attract any tariffs, including aircraft and plane parts, certain chemicals and some agricultural products. A separate deal on semiconductors may be announced soon.
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[A] 50% US tariff Trump has implemented on steel and aluminium globally would stay in place, he said.
The is a very, very bad deal for Europe. It again demonstrates the incompetence of EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
As I have pointed out previously there was and is no imbalance in trade between the U.S. and Europe. There was no need for tariffs or for agreeing to a deal. As the Washington Post concedes (archived):
Cont. reading: ‘Blind Ideological Zealotry’ Let EU Agree To This Trump Deal
Palestine Open Thread 2025-169
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-168
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-167
Taiwan’s Voters Reject Anti-Chinese Recall Plot
In January 2024 Taiwan's current President Lai Ching-te won the election against two other candidates. (Taiwan has no run off elections.)
His Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) though, which supports Taiwan's independence from China, failed to get a majority in parliament. The opposition was thus, by controlling the budget, able to prevent Lai Ching-te from furthering a split from the Chinese homeland.
Like many recent election winners in so called democracies Lai Ching-te set out to manipulate the system to win powers the voters had been unwilling to concede to him. He organized a recall campaign against dozens of opposition lawmakers in the hope to gain a majority in parliament.
The New York Times reporting of it (archived) seemed to be in favor of this:
Voters in Taiwan face a critical decision on Saturday: whether to throw out 24 opposition lawmakers they elected just last year, in an extraordinary recall campaign that could put more power in the president’s hands but add to tensions with Beijing.
The vote threatens to flip the legislative balance in favor of President Lai Ching-te, who wants Taiwan to forge a future separate from China, against an opposition that favors closer ties with Beijing.
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This weekend, two dozen Nationalist Party lawmakers face recall votes; an additional seven will next month.
To supporters, the “great recall” campaign reflects the vigor of Taiwan’s democracy, which emerged in the 1980s after decades of authoritarian rule under the Nationalist Party. Although a successful campaign would help Mr. Lai, many activists promoting the recalls say they are acting independently.
“We’re building a decentralized grass-roots movement,” said Molly Kuo, an organizer of one of the recall efforts in New Taipei. “We’re witnessing a deepening of democracy.”
A "decentralized grass-roots movement" that is running a well organized, millions of dollars campaign against parliament members of one specific party ???
Recall of a significant number of opposition lawmakers would make it much easier for Mr. Lai to push his agenda, which includes shifting Taiwan’s economy further from China. He could also appoint his preferred judges to Taiwan’s high court.
The recall votes were held today and the results are in. The voters did not fall for it.
In a rather pathetic attempt to cover the loss of its campaign the DDP party is urging everyone to not see the whole affair as what it is:
The defeat of a recall campaign against 24 KMT lawmakers should not be interpreted as the outcome of a struggle between political parties, the DPP argued Saturday.
Results showed all 24 legislators survived the vote, with anti-recall votes surpassing pro-recall in every election district, per the Central Election Commission.
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Speaking to reporters Saturday evening, DPP Legislative Caucus Secretary-General Rosalia Wu (吳思瑤) called on the public not to rush to conclusions.
The party’s secretary-general, Lin Yu-chang (林右昌), echoed her remarks, saying the recall votes had not been a fight between political parties, so the result should not be interpreted as a victory or a defeat for one party or another, the Liberty Times reported.
Sure.
As Arnaud Bertrand comments:
[This] couldn't be more ironic coming from the same party that explicitly framed the entire campaign as exactly this: presenting themselves, the DPP, as heroically trying to "save Taiwan's democracy" from the KMT, painting them as existential threats because of their pro-China bent. But now that they lost they suddenly want to pretend it was all just a non-partisan civic exercise.
The NYT report, written before the voting, noticed that this outcome would have consequences:
Widespread rejection of the recalls could hint at tepid support for Mr. Lai’s party ahead of local and presidential elections, experts say.
With his anti-China position Lai Ching-te is the U.S.' preferred candidate. As he is now likely to lose the next presidential election Taiwan should watch out for some of the usual U.S. directed manipulations.
Famine In Palestine – 400,000+ Are Already Dead
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The fanatical colonial settlers of the Zionist entity have become a danger to all other people. They must be dispersed.
Gaza has passed the tipping point to famine:
Once this tipping point is passed, famines tend to follow a catastrophically self-reinforcing pattern, which is already visible in Gaza. A slow creep of death yields to swift mass mortality as organs fail, immune systems collapse and victims lose the will to go on. Once famine begins, deaths tend to rise exponentially, meaning that waiting for confirmation that the technical line has been crossed to take remedial action could condemn thousands of people – especially young children – to death.
If nothing is done there will be, not just thousands, but several hundred thousands of dead in Gaza.
I am embarrassed to live in a 'western' country where the government claims moral superiority but rejects to do anything about this.
Added:
Back in February Trump said that there were 1.8 million people left in Gaza.
I headlined:
Trump Wants To Take Over Gaza, Announces 500,000 Dead
In 2023 the internationally acknowledged Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics' count of the population of Gaza was standing at 2,226,544. Trump wants to remove all Palestinians from Gaza and gives their number as 1.7 or 1.8 million:
Reporter: How many people are you thinking need to leave Gaza?
Trump: “All of them. Probably a million seven, maybe a million eight. They’ll be settled in areas where they can live a beautiful life.” (video)
This is an acknowledgement, by the president of the United States, that the genocidal Zionists have murdered up to 500,000 people in Gaza.
Steven Donziger's calculations now confirm that range.
SHOCK: Israel Has Killed 20.7% of Gaza's Population. That's 434,000 People. – Donziger on Justice, Jul 22 2025
Here is the latest data, updated as of yesterday (July 21): based on a statistical model developed by a prestigious medical journal called The Lancet, Israel has killed roughly 434,800 people in Gaza since the country’s military started to attack the territory on 8 October 2023. That’s 20.7% of Gaza’s entire pre-conflict population dead. Over half are women and children.
If the same level of killing and indirect death that took place in Gaza during the 594 days of the conflict happened in the United States proportional to population, roughly 70 million Americans would have been killed.
Ukraine – Zelenski’s Backtracking Shows Fatal Weakness
Two days ago the (former) President of Ukraine Vladimir Zelenski dismantled the 'independence' of the specialized police (NABU) and prosecution (SAPO) organizations which are supposed to fight high level corruption.
It took less than 24 hours from the introduction of the law to get it passed through parliament and signed by the president. NABU and SAPO are now under the control of the prosecutor general who is under the direct control of the presidency.
There is no straight answer yet as to why Zelenski decided to do this right now.
NABU had just recently released corruption allegations against then deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, a person who is near to Zelenski. There are rumors that NABU was preparing to release accusations against other members of Zelenski's inner circle.
Some speculate that NABU was to be used to restrain Zelenski from making concessions to Russia. Others speculate that NABU had to be reigned in because it was used to pressure Zelenski towards a peace plan.
Either way Zelenski will have hoped that the U.S. would not respond to the move. NABU and SAPO were created on behest of then Vice-President Joe Biden and played a role in the Russiagate allegations against Donald Trump. Biden had used NABU and accusations of corruption to control politics in Kiev. The European Union, Zelenski may have thought, would not protest because that would endanger its efforts to use Ukraine to fight Russia.
Those calculations have been wrong (archived):
Cont. reading: Ukraine – Zelenski’s Backtracking Shows Fatal Weakness
Palestine Open Thread 2025-166
News & views related to the war in Palestine …
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-165
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Open (Neither Ukraine Nor Palestine) Thread 2025-164
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Ukraine – Zelenski Ends Independence Of Anti-Corruption Institutions
Last Friday I reported about a fight between the Zelenski regime on the one side and some oligarchs and U.S. aligned non-government-organizations on the other side.
An intense information operation has been launched to remove Ukraine's (former) President Vladimir Zelenski from office. Behind it are a cabal of Ukrainian opposition figures in coordination which western media and parts of the Trump administration.
The current campaign follows a earlier one which was directed against Zelenski's main advisor and head of the office of the president Andrei Yermak.
Pieces in western media had attacked the Zelenski regime with accusations that it was seeking control over the independent anti-corruption institutions which had been established after the Maidan coup. Anti-corruption investigation had lately been moving in on some persons near to Zelenski himself.
Excursus:
In most countries one will find on vertical judicial construct in the form of the police doing criminal investigations, prosecutors directing the police while building court cases against perpetrators and a hierarchy of courts to judge about those.
After the U.S. directed Maidan coup in 2014 the U.S. government, in form of then Vice-President Joe Biden, set out to gain complete control over Ukraine.
It insisted on creating a second, completely separate legal vertical in Ukraine focused solely corruption.
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The National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) investigates cases of corruption especially of officials in higher position. The Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor Office (SAPO) assembled cases to go to court. The High Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine is judging over them.
The vertical was designed to be independent of the Ukrainian government and state. A special Civil Oversight Council – not the parliament - is nominally in control of it. But the effective control was always with the U.S. embassy in Kiev through the various anti-corruption NGOs and media it was financing in Ukraine.
In 2020 the Constitutional Court of Ukraine judged that much of Ukraine's 2014 anti-corruption reform and the new vertical formed through it were unconstitutional. This led to a constitutional crisis which is still unresolved.
Over time the anti-corruption vertical had turned out to be as corrupt as the politicians and high level officials it was designed to keep under control.
End-excursus
Zelenski's opposition was using the anti-corruption complex, the attached NGOs and media to keep some pressure on the government.
Last week's public-relation attack by the opposition against Zelenski, via the Financial Times and other media, was supposed to gain it support from U.S. and European governments. However throughout the weekend no western support in form of public statements etc was received.
The Zelenski regime interpreted this as a green light to take down the last institution in Ukraine which is not under its direct control.
On Monday it launched its all out assault:
Cont. reading: Ukraine – Zelenski Ends Independence Of Anti-Corruption Institutions
Not Knowing The ‘Enemy’
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.
If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
I am always amazed how little western governments are aware of their own (lack of) capabilities as well as of the nature and capabilities of their 'enemies'.
They tend to not know the basic economic and sociological facts about their opponents. They operate on whatever nonsense they have come to believe about their 'enemies'. They overestimate their own position, miscalculate and are astonished when, as a result, the factual situation turns against them.
We may recount, as Tucker Carlson does here, that the U.S. was "assured by some of the dumbest people on the planet, who currently serve in the United States Senate, that Russia was merely 'a gas station with nuclear weapons'."
Sanctions were imposed on Russia but failed to trouble it. They hurt those who imposed them the most.
The Trump administration recently put a 50% tariff on all goods from Brazil (even though it has a trade surplus with that country). This was to punish its government and judiciary for pursuing charges against the former president Jair Bolsonaro for plotting a coup after he had lost the elections.
Brazil is a nationalistic, well developed country which is allergic to interference by foreign powers. Anyone knowing that fact could have anticipated this reaction:
Cont. reading: Not Knowing The ‘Enemy’
Palestine Open Thread 2025-163
Salt in Their Hands – Mo Abualruz
In Gaza’s dusk where silence swells,
The children wait by broken wells.
No bread to break, no songs to sing,
Just buzzing drones and circling wing.
They gather near the aid-line fence,
Starved eyes behind a wire’s defense.
A bag of rice, a shattered tin…
But boots and bullets thunder in.
Cont. reading: Palestine Open Thread 2025-163
Ukraine Open Thread 2025-162
News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
The MoA Week In Review – OT 2025-161
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