By Drago Bosnic | October 8, 2026

London insists that “the growing economic toll reflected the central role of cyber attacks in Russian and other states’ efforts to inflict damage while remaining below the threshold of conventional conflict”. Once again, the UK’s almost unimaginable level of hypocrisy becomes all the more apparent with such claims. As previously mentioned, what should Moscow do when UK-sourced missiles and drones hit Russian oil refineries, natural gas facilities, civilian infrastructure and civilians themselves?

Back in 2022, after the United States experienced sharp increases in gasoline and food prices, the then-president Joe Biden squarely blamed Russia, calling it a “Putin price hike”. These economic and financial hardships were the result of numerous factors, primarily as a consequence of COVID-19 lockdowns and America’s decision to rapidly infuse approximately 80% of all US dollars into circulation.

The resulting inflation caused the aforementioned price hikes. As the consequences largely coincided with the start of Russia’s strategic counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Ukraine, the Biden administration thought it was the perfect opportunity to pin it all on President Vladimir Putin. Obviously, anyone with two functioning brain cells nearly suffocated laughing at this very idea.

Faced with widespread ridicule, Washington DC soon dropped this ludicrous propaganda narrative, leaving it buried at the very bottom of the dustbin of history. Or so we thought. Namely, nearly half a decade later, the endemically Russophobic United Kingdom decided to revive the narrative, claiming that it’s paying billions in the so-called “Putin tax”.

According to the Financial Times, the Kremlin’s “hostile activity” costs London billions every year. Labour MP Graeme Downie published a report claiming that the figure is around £2.5 ($3.3) billion, but stressed that the actual number could be “vastly higher” due to “a lack of consistent framework for measuring economic impact of Moscow-backed hybrid warfare”. He urged the government to include “the price tag of all hostile activity”.

Downie, the vice-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on rearmament, titled the report “The Putin Tax” and tallied “the cost of disruption, recovery and investment in resilience” resulting from what he called “Russian hybrid warfare against the UK”. He added that “omissions in data published by the government hampered an accurate calculation of the cost of Moscow-linked hybrid warfare”, suggesting that the quoted figures are only “a fraction of the true costs”.

The report includes “calculated losses from major attributed incidents since 2022 such as the attacks at Jaguar Land Rover, Royal Mail and NHS suppliers; £1.47bn in losses from Russia-linked cyber attacks, based on industry analysis and threat intelligence; and £250mn-£500mn from damage to subsea communications cables and related infrastructure”.

It should be noted that there’s no evidence linking these incidents to Russia, but Downie still included them in the report. Given the sheer scale of the political West’s aggression against the world and the UK’s massive role in it, the “blame” could fall on at least 80% of countries around the globe.

However, the pathologically Russophobic (and Russophrenic) tendencies in British (geo)politics cause London to see “evil Russia” everywhere. Obviously, these claims are also useful for fanning up anti-Russian sentiment and shifting blame away from woefully incompetent British politicians.

Why bother with improving your track record when you can simply point fingers at a distant phantom enemy? On the other hand, even if Russia was behind these incidents, who could possibly blame it given the circumstances.

Namely, the scale of British involvement in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict is such that it could effectively be viewed as a declaration of war. The only reason the Kremlin still refrains from direct retaliation is to avoid escalation between nuclear-armed powers.

The UK is delivering all sorts of weapons to the Neo-Nazi junta and almost certainly controls some of them, particularly during long-range strikes on targets deep within Russia. Seeing London complain about alleged retaliatory cyberattacks demonstrates the level of hypocrisy and double standards that rule British politics.

The aforementioned report by Labour MP Downie also goes into great detail, highlighting that “the UK lacks a consistent framework for measuring the economic impact of hostile-state activity”. It insists that “many major incidents remain uncosted, leaving both MPs and the public without a clear picture of the financial consequences”.

Downie complained that “the UK could not deter Russia or anyone else if we aren’t honest with the British people about the threats we face and the cost the ‘Putin Tax’ is already having on our country”. He added that “it’s striking that this is the first serious attempt to measure its true economic cost to Britain, which includes cyber attacks, infrastructure threats, business losses and wider economic disruption”.

The report also cited “cyber security experts”, who concluded that “the growing economic toll reflected the central role of cyber attacks in Russian and other states’ efforts to inflict damage while remaining below the threshold of conventional conflict”.

Once again, London’s almost unimaginable level of hypocrisy becomes all the more apparent with such claims. As previously mentioned, what should Moscow do when UK-sourced missiles and drones hit Russian oil refineries, natural gas facilities, civilian infrastructure and civilians themselves?

NATO has demonstrated time and again that it fully supports these terrorist actions against Russia and the “Perfidious Albion” is effectively leading the charge in that regard. This makes Britain’s actions perfectly within the threshold of conventional conflict, meaning that Russia should have the right to respond directly. And once again, the only reason it doesn’t is to avoid escalation. However, the Kremlin’s patience is running out faster than ever before.

Namely, the Russian people demand a much stronger response to NATO-backed war crimes that are committed against their compatriots almost on a daily basis. Thus, if anyone is faced with a “tax”, it’s Russia and its people. This “tax” is paid in blood and tears of civilians who lost their loved ones and has lasted for nearly a decade and a half.

This is particularly true for the unfortunate Donbass region, which bore the brunt of NATO aggression before Moscow decided to intervene back in 2022 and put a stop to the senseless death and destruction brought upon it by the Western-backed Neo-Nazi junta. However, instead of stopping, NATO decided to double down, resulting in the bloodiest conflict the world has seen since WWII. Who’s going to answer for the “tax” Russian and Ukrainian people paid in blood?

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation | October 6, 2026

Ian Proud’s arrest by secret police at a London airport marks a new low in how far the deep state can go to control a false narrative. But it also shows a new level of fear.

As mad as it sounds, it does appear that Western European nations at least are preparing themselves to go to war with Russia at some point in the not-too-distant future. What is particularly worrying is there seems to be a distinct vacuum in all areas of what we could broadly call ‘media’ in questioning this narrative. Thirty years ago it was considered normal for journalists to be the source of vexing questions towards state actors and to generally be a pain in the arse as they questioned every decision made and every idea presented. It was our job to be anti-establishment and to take a very cynical view of “policy”. There was nothing remarkable about this. It was what we did. Being despised by the greater powers was part of the job; working anti-social hours and having few friends also came with it.

Today there are no journalists in what we call ‘mainstream’ media doing this. They have been replaced by younger, more social-media-savvy ‘content creators’ who believe that journalism is more or less a grammatical role, where the raw material is handed to you with all the information therein, and the role of the journalist is simply to refine it to the style of the day for mass consumption.

The danger of this transition is that nearly all of what we are being presented with as news is actually fake, or at best heavily redacted to keep the masses where the elite want them to be: restrained, prepped and misinformed.

The Ukraine war is an excellent example. The main reason why people in the U.S. and UK are so fabulously biased against Russia and are so sympathetic towards the corrupt elite in Kiev is that for years they have been brainwashed with ‘news’ about Russia which has been negative and which cunningly feeds a racist bias – a prejudice which has been cultivated over at least a decade, if not more. The result is that now a number of lies have become established in newsrooms where journalists, even those who know, simply navigate around nuance and present a fairy-tale story, designed to be understood by the masses who have no other sources of information to even question it.

Just recently, Western news outlets reported a “plague” in Russia, with stories about a “lockdown”, following a case of a worker in a laboratory dying of pneumonia in circumstances which are still not certain. Western media, as part of their role to keep Russia-phobia at its peak, are so locked and loaded that their ‘hair-trigger’ reactions to bad news stories from Russia are understandable. They are also hungry for clickbait, and such stories feed a starved audience which has already had its first fix of such COVID hysteria stories and wants more. The truth is entirely immaterial. Hysteria and lies are what’s being fed at a feverish rate by ‘content creators’ red in tooth and claw, foaming at the mouth with their desire to serve the deep state and the elites who have invested so much in an agenda.

The contrast between Russia and the West is interesting, though, when we look at media. In Russia just recently, the BBC correspondent based in Moscow made the internet buzz on social media with his short interview with Russia’s foreign minister, who was kind enough to answer his loaded question about Russia’s war ideology with Ukraine. What absolutely no one noted was how Russia is happy to accommodate foreign journalists who have such a distinct agenda to feed the Russia-phobia back home, while Russian journalists have been banned in those EU capitals for years. Old Europe, which once held such values as a free press so dearly, has adopted the Soviet model, while Russia is actually more advanced when it comes to such tenets of what we expect in a democracy. Russia has no fear of the awkward questions, unlike the West.

We should be asking ourselves who really benefits from a war with Russia.

Is it too sceptical and ‘conspiracy theorising’ to assume that the industrial military complex has been successfully lobbying for such a war for AT LEAST a decade, and critically, it succeeded in convincing the intelligence and military establishment in the UK to use its leverage with media to provide journalists with the raw material which enhances a prejudice against Russia?

Normally such an idea could be dismissed as pure nonsense. But just consider how far the UK, for example, has gone to eradicate all media coverage which could be deemed as at least leaning towards Russia – or even simply just holding the UK government to account by asking the questions that British journalists have stopped asking. If the elite in the UK who control the loss-making newspapers (think about that) are so sure of their rationale that Russia is the enemy whom we must go to war with, why are they so terrified of journalists – or anyone, for that matter – simply holding a view which questions the narrative?

I can’t be the only Western pundit who believes that double agents Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were not poisoned with nerve agent Novichok in Salisbury in 2018, which was reported at the time as “sparking a huge diplomatic crisis between Britain and Russia”. Isn’t the real story that British security chiefs decided, upon discovering that Sergei Skripal was actually a triple agent who was feeding information back to Moscow, that he was dispensable? And what better way to supposedly teach the Russians a lesson, while blaming Moscow for his death, than to murder him and his daughter using a nerve agent which either was Novichok – which a British lab just down the road from where the Skripals lived had conveniently sitting in a fridge – or a similar poison? What’s important to note about Novichok is that the victims usually die instantly upon contact with it. What is likely is that the Skripals were not poisoned by the Russian drug but a British version of another nerve agent. It is a shocking example of how poor British journalism is that hacks in the UK simply report the Skripal incident of Novichok poisoning without a single shred of evidence to back it up. They don’t even add a note of scepticism in their reporting about the drug and who is “claiming” that it is Novichok.

We see the same shocking level of atrocious, biased reporting about the Ukraine war, which the British public were simply told through the media narrative was an “invasion” by Putin’s army. No background, no nuance, no glimpse of Russia’s perspective, as no one can cope, it would seem, with the story being clouded by facts.

And it’s the same with the Russia “plague” story, as it was with the RAF base “attack” story recently, which was probably just local thieves buying contraband gasoline from corrupt U.S./UK soldiers looking to make a quick buck at the UK base. Notice how quickly Trump used the story as a basis to move all U.S. bombers off the base and back to U.S. soil, where they are completely useless in his so-called Middle East war. For Trump it was an opportunity for another media stunt which keeps him on the front pages and everyone guessing. He was probably grateful to the British for being offered the raw material. Another problem of this new generation of journalists is how compliant they are to report “news” which isn’t news at all, but just material used as a distraction, one day at a time. Trump is a master at manipulating media with this game, usually saying something so stupid and so controversial, which draws journalists away from doing real journalism. If you can occupy journalists with writing up stories about the latest idiotic comment or statement by Trump, then you control them as you control their time.

Just look at how the Epstein story is not being reported and investigated. How Trump got off scot-free, as since February 28th journalists’ attention was diverted to the war with Iran – which is one of the reasons why Trump keeps this story alive with constant troop movements and talk of a massive attack after midterms. People have not made the link with the Epstein material being leaked and the war with Iran kicking off practically on the same day.

For the British, the “Russians are coming” story has no cynical write-up by journalists who are 100 percent compliant with its erroneous narrative. The fear of elites in London is palpable, though, that it will always be questioned by fringe actors taking up bandwidth on social media. In the past this was the RT correspondent in London, who was able to ask difficult questions and generally be a thorn in the side of the Westminster village which controlled journalists like rats held in a basket. The main reason why RT was kicked out of the UK was that it offered a style of reporting on UK politics which had since left us thirty years ago – such is the murky world of the deep state and how it saw how in Brussels journalists could be manipulated until they become stenographers for it.

Yet even with this new Stalinist style of media control in the UK, the state is wobbly. Even with the impressive set-up it has now of total media dominance, where journalists pump out total garbage about the Ukraine war or what they are told to write about the Middle East, still the fear is there.

The example of video blogger Ian Proud, a former UK diplomat once based in Moscow, is worrying but poignant. Simply going to Moscow to attend a conference where Putin was speaking was enough to have him get the full Stasi treatment at Heathrow airport – detained and all digital content seized.

Proud’s YouTube interviews, with his dowdy style of presenting, are proving to be popular as he simply offers a more sober view of both Russia and the UK Foreign Office, his former employer. These interviews are getting the attention of UK spooks, who are so nervous about the truth getting out about Russia and the shameful lies which are being packaged now for the British public, that they had to give Proud the American prison ‘shake down’ routine. Britain, a country which once was a beacon for the world with its view of liberty and in particular its passion for free speech, has fallen to a level which we can only compare to a West African country which has just had a new dictator installed, complete with black aviators and epaulettes. What the Proud Heathrow airport case shows is that this new regime in power will stop at nothing to control a narrative, and that the last bastion of free speech – YouTube podcasts – is the next target. The more successful Proud’s channel becomes, the more inevitable it is that he will be forced to leave the UK and settle in Russia to continue practising free speech. The shoulder tassels of Britain’s deep state will not sleep well until the country has a media narrative which would make Joe Stalin blush – and British journalists are helping them with this goal.

BND chief Martin Jaeger’s claim comes as his agency pushes for more funding and expanded powers

RT | October 5, 2026

Martin Jaeger arrives to speak in the annual open hearing of Germany’s three intelligence services at the Bundestag in Berlin, Germany, October 5, 2026 © Getty Images ; Sean Gallup

Germany could become “embroiled in a violent conflict with Russia,” the country’s foreign intelligence chief has warned, claiming that a mysterious drone incident at Leipzig airport is an example of the “real and imminent” threat posed by Moscow.

Speaking to lawmakers at a parliamentary hearing on Monday, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) head Martin Jaeger declared that “the confrontation we are facing with Russia has taken on a new, more dangerous dimension.”

“Germany is in danger ​of becoming embroiled in a violent conflict with Russia – the attempted attack in Leipzig ⁠is just one example,” he continued, referring to the discovery of an explosive-laden drone next to a Ukrainian transport plane at the city’s airport in August.

German authorities have not released any evidence linking the incident to Russia, and Moscow has described the episode as a “hastily cobbled-together provocation” serving “exclusively the aims of Kiev and the militaristic wing of the European political class.” It is “obvious that Germany is pursuing a further course of escalation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last month.

Nevertheless, Jaeger claimed that Russia is “waging a shadow war,” and that there is a “real and imminent” threat of attacks against targets in Germany. “No other country currently poses such a direct, comprehensive, and concrete threat to Germany,” he added.

Jaeger is one of dozens of Western political, military, and media figures to accuse Russia of waging a “hybrid war” or “shadow war” against Europe in recent weeks. The accusations are, by their nature, impossible to verify, and Moscow has written them off as pretexts to deepen Western involvement in the Russia-Ukraine conflict, justify military spending hikes, and expand surveillance and persecution of domestic opponents.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has explicitly and without evidence described the country’s most popular political party, the right-wing AfD, as “Russia-backed.” Martina Rosenberg, the head of Germany’s Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD), alluded to this claim during Monday’s briefing, telling lawmakers that the country is “threatened by diverse dangers from both outside and within.”

Jaeger, Rosenberg, and domestic intelligence (BfV) chief Sinan Selen all praised Merz’s recent efforts to grant the BND greater offensive powers, and called for further strengthening of the MAD and BfV’s capabilities.

Despite their allegations of “hybrid war,” European leaders have repeatedly stressed that they do not believe Russia to be planning any actual attacks on NATO territory. The BND has seen “no indication of an imminent large-scale Russian attack on NATO territory,” Jaeger added on Monday.

Amid an unprecedented escalation in the West’s rhetoric toward Russia, RT is tracking the statements, accusations, and threats in our ongoing ‘Escalation Watch’ special. Keep an eye on it here as we sort the facts from the propaganda and debunk the psyops in real time.

Daniel Davis / Deep Dive – October 3, 2026

By Ricardo Martins – New Eastern Outlook – October 2, 2026

It was common practice during the Cold War to exaggerate the threat from the Soviet Union. Nowadays, Russia has assumed that role. Although the circumstances have changed, some of the political methods employed to create a sense of insecurity are still remarkably similar.

Europe is not formally engaging in preparations for war since it desires one. Instead, the governments of Europe and the institutions of the EU describe their rapidly growing defence policies and war preparedness as being aimed at deterrence, on the basis that Europe has to become strong enough to avoid a bigger conflict.
NATO does likewise, presenting itself as a defensive alliance whose role is to deter aggression. Nevertheless, the extent and the terminology used in Europe’s present military transformation should be examined. If preparedness becomes a top political concern, if huge amounts of public money are channelled into defence industries, and if support for Ukraine becomes more and more tied to Europe’s own security, then a significant question arises: where does deterrence cease and the political preparation for war begin?

The question is especially relevant to the EU, which has throughout its history been based on reconciliation, economic interdependence and a rejection of war.

From a peace project to a defence project

The European Union is experiencing a deep change in the way it views security. This change is no illusion. As part of the ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030 programme the European Commission plans to commit up to 800 billion euros towards defence spending, and the EU has set up a 150 billion euro SAFE lending facility to assist with military investment and joint procurement. The various EU institutions have made it clear that the aim is to eliminate capability gaps, boost the European defence industry and enhance deterrence.

The language that goes with this transformation is just as important. European Defence Commissioner Andrius Kubilius has warned at the European Parliament that Russia could be ready for a confrontation with NATO “in five years or less”. He has also invoked Jean Monnet’s wartime “Victory Programme” analogy, arguing that Europe needs a comparable transformation of its defence industry.

The official view of the Commission is that the issue is one of deterrence and not about starting a war. However, a military system which is intended to deter war needs to have weapons, logistical support, industrial capacity, troops and operational plans. As these capabilities increase, so too does the institutional ability to conduct war.

A paradox arises since Europe claims it is arming itself and preparing its hospitals to receive 2,000 wounds per day – as it is the case in Germany — in order to maintain peace while at the same time setting up a more and more integrated belligerent European defence structure. The EU is considering not just an increase in weapons but also the creation of a European Defence Union, a European Security Council, common procurement, military mobility and a closer relationship between European institutions and NATO.

The fact that this might constitute a necessary adaptation to a new security situation also brings up a more general issue concerning European identity: is the European Union still mainly a peace project which happens to have military capabilities, or is it instead becoming a geopolitical and military actor for which readiness for confrontation is becoming increasingly important?

Is Russia a threat, an adversary, or a permanent enemy?

Here, there is a mixture of perceived threats, old ressentiments and Russophobia in play. The threat perceptions are not the same throughout Europe. Because of historical reasons, such as foreign occupation and Soviet domination, Poland has long viewed Russia differently from countries such as France and Germany, which after the Cold War initially placed greater emphasis on economic engagement and interdependence with Moscow. But that distinction has changed dramatically.

Germany, in particular, has moved from the Ostpolitik-era logic of engagement towards a confrontational security posture. Under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Berlin has described Russia as a serious threat, committed to a major expansion of defence spending, and taken a leading role in sustaining military support for Ukraine. Germany has also intensified defence cooperation with France, including discussions on nuclear deterrence and European capabilities. Germany has also established a permanent military presence in the Baltic States, with a brigade of around 5,000 soldiers being stationed in Lithuania.

The military buildup that Poland has since carried out has depended largely on the United States and South Korea, highlighting a further weakness: even though the EU has aimed at setting up a European defence industry, European manufacturers have not always been able to provide weapons at the speed and on the scale required by countries that have been rearming since 2022.

A more serious issue is that those who question the military escalation are seen as showing a lack of strength, a state of naivety or a failure to have sufficient solidarity with Europe — what then becomes of democratic debate? French Socialist Ségolène Royal.

The danger of making war readiness a political culture

That is exactly the reason why Europe’s present-day transformation should be subject to democratic scrutiny.

Deterrence becomes a politically dangerous thing when preparedness itself comes to be the main idea of security, when military expenditure starts to compete with other public priorities, and when diplomacy and negotiation are regarded as being of less importance than the building up of military power.

The proper European question therefore isn’t whether Europe is “strong enough” to fight Russia. It is rather what kind of security arrangement the Europeans would like to establish.

The present danger is that, as a result of years of confrontation, rearmament and politics based on the use of threats, Europe might slowly create a political and institutional setting in which war seems ever more certain and peace ever more unrealistic.

Former CIA analyst Larry Johnson says that a wider conflict between Europe and Russia is becoming “inevitable” since, in his opinion, the rhetoric of Europe is increasingly being matched by actions which Russia could see as direct threats. He highlights Germany as especially important, stating that Berlin’s more confrontational rhetoric, its military preparations and its demands on Moscow are leading to a dangerous escalation.

Johnson also sees the capture of Russian ships as a key point of escalation. He maintains that Moscow might view any attempt by Europe to seize its ships as an act of war and could then retaliate against the ships or military assets in question. He also mentions the collapse of diplomatic relations, the rearmament of European forces, preparations for a possible future confrontation, and the increasing pressure surrounding Kaliningrad as factors which reduce the room for de-escalation. In his view, the real danger is not that Russia is seeking war but that European actions are gradually making a direct confrontation inevitable.

Ricardo Martins – Doctor of Sociology, specialist in European and international politics as well as geopolitics

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 Al Mayadeen | October 2, 2026

The European Union has begun assessing contingency scenarios in case German Chancellor Friedrich Merz leaves office or becomes increasingly focused on domestic political difficulties, Politico Europe reported Friday, citing diplomats and European officials.

According to the report, governments in two European countries have held internal discussions on how a possible end to Merz’s chancellorship could affect EU policymaking.

The discussions reportedly reflect growing concern in Brussels over political instability in Germany following major electoral setbacks for Merz’s governing conservatives and renewed tensions within the coalition.

Recent regional elections have weakened Merz politically. Reuters reported that the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) suffered its worst-ever result in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania in September, failing to clear the threshold to enter the state parliament, while the Alternative for Germany (AfD) made further gains.

Berlin’s Political Turmoil Raises EU Concerns

Politico Europe reported that officials consider two scenarios particularly disruptive: Germany being left without an effective leader or a right-wing government emerging in Berlin. However, the report said both scenarios are viewed as unlikely in the short term.

Under Germany’s constitutional system, a chancellor cannot simply be replaced by a successor appointed by the governing party. The Bundestag elects the chancellor, meaning any leadership change would require the necessary parliamentary majority.

For Brussels, the political uncertainty matters because Germany remains the EU’s largest economy and a central actor in negotiations over major bloc-wide policies.

Reuters reported Thursday that Merz is facing growing domestic pressure, while speculation about possible successors has emerged within the CDU. Merz has nevertheless rejected calls to step aside and continues to pursue his government’s policy agenda.

EU Budget Dispute Adds Pressure

Merz’s domestic political position could also affect negotiations over the EU’s next seven-year budget.

According to Politico Europe, Germany is part of a group of member states, including the Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, and Finland, seeking substantial reductions to the proposed long-term EU budget. The report said officials believe domestic political pressure could encourage Berlin to take a tougher negotiating position in Brussels.

The budget dispute comes as EU governments debate competing priorities, including defense, industrial investment, infrastructure, and support for Ukraine.

Military Buildup Remains Central to Merz’s Agenda

Despite the political pressure, Merz’s government continues to prioritize strengthening Germany’s armed forces. Reuters reported that Berlin’s debt-financed investment drive is supporting both infrastructure and military expansion, while the government has committed hundreds of billions of euros to rebuilding the armed forces.

Merz has also reaffirmed Germany’s support for Ukraine and called for stronger European military capabilities, while accusing Russia of conducting hybrid attacks against Europe. Moscow has rejected such accusations.

Any change in Berlin’s political leadership would therefore carry implications beyond Germany, potentially affecting EU budget negotiations, defense policy, relations with Russia, and the bloc’s wider strategic direction.