This week, Ukraine’s Ministry of Finance, led by Sergey Marchenko, signed an agreement with the financial group Rothschild & Co for the purpose of preparatory consultancy for the privatization of the Ukrainian state banks Ukrgasbank and Sense Bank, two of the largest banks in the Ukrainian financial system. Rothschild & Co will carry out an inventory of these banks’ assets, as well as an assessment of their financial health, organize the information, and attract buyers for the acquisition. In practice, Rothschild & Co will end up determining the buyer(s), thanks to its privileged role in this operation, as well as its institutional weight.
The Ukrainian government claims that the operation is necessary to reduce the role of the State in the Ukrainian banking-financial system and to attract foreign investment, in accordance with recommendations forwarded by the IMF.
In most other countries, these sudden privatization operations always generate large waves of protest organized by unions, social movements, and opposition parties, but the privatization of some of the main Ukrainian banks is advancing without any popular reaction, a symptom of Ukraine’s transformation into a dictatorship through the recourse to a permanent state of exception.
This is not the first Rothschild operation in Ukraine.
Since at least 2015, the financial advisory institution Rothschild & Co has acted practically as an “appendage” of Ukraine, assuming the responsibility of “guiding” the Ukrainian government in financial matters, especially in relation to the restructuring and renegotiation of its debts. In the past, Rothschild & Co also acted in the unbundling of Naftogaz, Ukraine’s main state oil and gas company. This unbundling consists of the “separation” of Naftogaz’s various activities into subsidiaries to facilitate the sale or concession of activities considered “non-essential.” In the same period, Rothschild Trust received the shares of Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian president at the time, in the company Roshen, the country’s main confectionery. “Received” here is a key verb because, in fact, there was no “sale” of the shares, but a simple handover, which is extremely peculiar and suggests the existence of some kind of more obscure relationship between Poroshenko and Rothschild Trust.
Shortly after the Orange Revolution, Nathaniel Rothschild and his merchant bank JNR entered Ukraine in partnership with the American company Vanco Energy (connected to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney) to take control of Ukrainian oil in the Black Sea.
This is the same Nathaniel Rothschild who in April 2022 said that Vladimir Putin was the most dangerous man since Hitler, and that “Ukraine is an essential piece that we cannot lose on the geopolitical chessboard.” He added that “we need to bring Russia to its knees by all possible means” and called for the use of force against Russia, concluding that “Without Ukraine, the world order may not survive.”
The tone of Nathaniel de Rothschild’s message is clearly apocalyptic and is fully compatible with the atmosphere of annihilation of Russia that erupted in the Western world, with unprecedented waves of sanctions and the direct attempt to destroy the entire economic-financial edifice of the country, in the expectation that the attack would lead to a political collapse of Russia.
Why is Ukraine so important to Nathaniel de Rothschild? This is a mystery difficult to resolve.
At the beginning of this year 2026, hundreds of thousands of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails were released, and among them were found several messages exchanged between Epstein and Arianne de Rothschild, president of the Edmond de Rothschild bank. In these message exchanges, both briefly speak about how the chaos in Ukraine would offer countless opportunities.
The Rothschild interest in Ukraine seems much older, however. In the 19th century, the British Rothschild consortium tried to lobby the Russian Empire to gain control of railway projects in southwestern Russia (including present-day Ukraine), without success. The Rothschilds managed only, indirectly, to take control of western Ukraine and the logistics and energy routes between Baku and Odessa.
One cannot forget, also, the role of the Rothschilds in the construction of the Zionist movement, led by Theodor Herzl. Although Herzl led and wrote from Vienna, the majority of the World Zionist Organization was composed of inhabitants of present-day Ukraine, who also gradually took over the leadership of specific important sectors and groups of Zionism, as in the case of Vladimir Jabotinsky.
Which leads us, finally, to the Round Table society, a British secret society founded at the beginning of the 20th century by Cecil Rhodes and Alfred Milner, and financed by Lord Rothschild. The Round Table aimed to spread and entrench British influence around the world and to strengthen the alignment between the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, and served as the seed of other “elite clubs,” such as Chatham House and the Council on Foreign Relations.
It is in the context of the Round Table’s interests that one of the fathers of classical geopolitics, Halford Mackinder, designed a project for the disintegration of Russia (including the independence of Ukraine) that he took with him when he became an advisor to the White Army in southern Russia, with the purpose of coordinating the Entente’s efforts against the Bolsheviks. Mackinder’s effort failed in 1920.
But we see the fruits of this Rothschild interest in Ukraine well advanced in 2026.
The Pentagon has fired its top military strategist as Washington draws up contingency plans for a possible escalation of hostilities with Iran.
Army Lt. Gen. Brett Sylvia has been removed from his position as director for strategy, plans, and policy (J5) on the Joint Staff, a spokesman confirmed late Wednesday, following media reports of his dismissal.
His predecessor, Lt. Gen. Joseph McGee, was forced into retirement a year ago amid reported friction with Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine. Sylvia previously served as vice director of the J5.
The Pentagon did not explain Sylvia’s departure. His responsibilities included developing military strategies and plans to advise the chairman and the US president. He joins nearly two dozen senior military and civilian officials removed during Hegseth’s tenure.
The secretary has portrayed the dismissals as part of an effort to reduce the military’s bloated ranks of generals and make the armed forces more efficient and lethal. Critics, however, have characterized the shake-up as an ideological “purge.”
President Donald Trump has repeatedly raised the possibility of renewing large-scale hostilities with Iran, including resuming the intensive bombing campaign conducted during the first 40 days of the conflict, which the US and Israel launched in late February. A potential escalation could be timed around the November midterm elections.
Military experts have widely expressed concern that another bombing campaign would fail to “finish the job,” as Trump has put it, while further increasing the conflict’s economic toll worldwide. Tehran has repeatedly warned that it is prepared to retaliate against US allies in the Gulf region if it faces renewed attacks.
Conversely, speculation has emerged that Trump could dismiss Hegseth after the midterms, when the opposition Democratic Party is expected to make gains in both chambers of Congress. Critics of the Iran war, including Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, have argued that firing the secretary could help Trump avoid a potential impeachment battle if Democrats take control of the House.
Trump’s public rhetoric remains supportive of Hegseth and his policies.
No wonder our schools incubate antisemitism, says Joe Baron: our institutions have been captured and our culture infected from top to bottom by a new Israelophobic strain of the oldest prejudice in the world.
A group of former US government officials who resigned because of Washington’s policy in the Gaza Strip has urged candidates seeking the 2028 presidential nomination to pledge not to appoint officials they said enabled Israel’s genocide in the enclave, Anadolu reports.
“Senior Biden Administration officials who were architects of the Gaza policy are now actively white-washing their own roles in enabling genocide,” Gaza Resignees said in a statement signed by 12 former officials.
“They violated U.S. and international law by providing U.S. weapons while Israel indiscriminately and disproportionately attacked civilians and civilian infrastructure, and as Israel arbitrarily blocked humanitarian assistance to Gaza,” it said.
The signatories include former State Department officials Josh Paul, Annelle Sheline and Stacy Gilbert, former diplomats Hala Rharrit and Mike Casey, former White House official Anna Del Castillo and former USAID senior adviser Alexander Smith. Also among them are former Army officer and Defense Intelligence Agency official Harrison Mann, former Air Force Maj. Riley Livermore, former Navy Lt. Cmdr. Hani Z. Nofal and former political appointees Tariq Habash of the Education Department and Lily Greenberg Call of the Interior Department.
“Not even two years since the end of their disastrous time in office, many of these same officials appear to be pursuing a path back into the halls of power,” they said.
“The most basic level of accountability, the most minimal level of consequences, is to ensure that those who have wreaked so much harm from within the highest levels of our Government cannot return to it,” according to the statement.
The group said that “Gaza has become a litmus test for the credibility of American politicians and the viability, in particular, of Democratic candidates.”
The pledge asks candidates to acknowledge US “complicity” in Israel’s genocide in Gaza. It also asks them to exclude any past or present political appointee who was “an architect, leader, defender, or key enabler” of the policy.
In a video released with the statement, the former officials took turns reading the call over images of former Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who now sits on the board of directors of the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank.
“We have watched as elite institutions have welcomed these officials,” said Mann, as the video showed former White House Middle East coordinator Brett McGurk, who is now with venture capital firm Lux Capital and a CNN commentator. It also showed former National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and former USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who both joined Harvard Kennedy School after leaving office.
“We have watched as these officials have tried to launder their bloody reputations,” Paul said, with Rharrit adding, “and prepare to re-enter the halls of power.”
“And we say, enough,” the former officials said in the video. “Enough with the culture of impunity in Washington. Enough with policies that break our laws and defy our values.”
“They have blood on their hands,” they added.
Top Biden administration officials at that time acknowledged civilian suffering in Gaza but defended Israel’s right to defend itself following the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack.
US-made weapons were photographed several times in Israeli strikes in Gaza, although US authorities have declined to confirm this.
Since October 2023, Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza has killed more than 74,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and wounded over 175,000, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry. It has also caused widespread destruction affecting around 90% of the territory’s civilian infrastructure.
More than 1,500 Palestinians have been killed in the Gaza Strip since an October 2025 ceasefire went into effect.
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