Donbass Is Behind Us – The unofficial anthem of Donbass

Reading time: 2 minutes

This song, “Donbass Is Behind Us”, dedicated to the 77th anniversary of liberating Donbass from the fascist invaders, came out in the fall of 2020 and quickly became an unofficial anthem of Donbass.

July 3rd, is Independence Day of the LPR, Lugansk People’s Republic. Here’s a translation of the song, performed by Natalia Kachura and Margarita Lisovina, to English.


Backup at Rumble.
Source of the video: “Донбасс за нами” официальный клип
Translation, adapted to preserve rhyme and rhythm, and subtitles by Putinger’s Cat

🇷🇺 🇷🇺 🇷🇺

In total darkness, came awake the Beast,
And he announced to God a heavy price.
Everyone bent, even brothers in Christ,
Everything bent, but not my Motherland.

A leap year brought rich harvest to the land,
And death was drunk, having a feast of blood,
The sky was bending under clouds of lead,
Everything bent, but not my Motherland.

Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Donbass is behind us, and with us is God!
Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Russia is with us, and with us is God!

Here, fathers’ memory was not betrayed,
Grandfathers’ land stayed in descendants’ hands,
Words can’t describe the heavy price they paid,
Not sparing own lives for the Fatherland.

And now, once more, Russia’s strength fills the hands,
For life and death for Motherland are grand.
Holding the sky, through centuries, she stands,
My unbroken and unconquered land.

Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Donbass is behind us, and with us is God!
Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Russia is with us, and with us is God!

Perhaps, we’re meant to perish on the cross,
But we won’t ever be seen kneeling down.
Out in a bloodied field, alone, for all,
Holding the sky, Donbass is holding ground.

Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Donbass is behind us, and with us is God!
Half the sky’s on fire, half the sky’s in smoke,
Russia is with us, and with us is God!

🇷🇺 🇷🇺 🇷🇺

Liberation of Debaltsevo railway station on September 3, 1943. Painting by Ivan Ryzhkov, 1947. Photo by Sergey Kopylov, 2015.

85 years later, Germany is once again preparing to bomb Russia

Reading time: 5 minutes

An article by political scientist Vladimir Kornilov for RIA Novosti on June 22, 2026, and translated by us for our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

“Marching towards abyss”. AI-generated image by RIA Novosti.

June 22nd. The Day of eternal remembrance, the day of national mourning, and at the same time, the day as a symbol of the indomitability of our people. The day when each of us remembers our ancestors who died in the Great Patriotic War. And as you know, “there is no family in Russia without own hero to be remembered…”

Since the collective historical memory of that war and the Great Victory over a Europe united by Nazism is the core of our state, Europeans will always fight against our monuments. It is enough to recall what was done in recent years with monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators in the Baltic States, Poland, the Czech Republic and Ukraine after the victory of Nazi ideology there.

Admittedly, Germany has stayed away from these trends for a long time. First of all, in connection with the publicly recognised collective guilt of the Germans for the crimes of the Second World War. But as anti-Russian hysteria escalates, the process of liberation from these self-restrictions is rapidly gaining momentum there.

At the very beginning of the SMO, the then German Chancellor Olaf Scholz made a speech in which he repeatedly made references to the history of the Great Patriotic War. And some media interpreted the speech precisely as “Germany’s rejection of historical guilt towards Russia.” Note that Berlin has repeatedly officially announced that its sense of historical guilt over the Holocaust determines its policy towards Israel. And recent statements by the Luftwaffe commander about his readiness to bomb St. Petersburg and Kaliningrad indicate that the shackles of collective responsibility towards Russia and the Russian people have finally been thrown off.

The Germans have not yet encroached on monuments to Soviet soldiers, being limited by their laws and international obligations to preserve graves. But a different kind of encroachment began there. So, recently, a heated debate has unfolded in Germany around the monument to the Soviet Soldier-liberator in Berlin’s Treptow Park. Moreover, these debates were started by Ukrainian activists who did not like the Soviet symbols and the fact that the memorial complex was covered with Stalin’s quotations.
Continue reading

The Unknown Cold War. Film 1. ‘Unthinkable’ Allies. An RT Documentary

Reading time: 3 minutes

‘Unthinkable’ Allies is the first documentary in The Unknown Cold War series. The film explores how decisions made by Western leaders in the 1940s led to an era of nuclear tension.


Backup at Rumble.
Watch the feature on the RT.Doc website.

In the summer of 1945, the leaders of World War II’s victorious powers – the USSR, US, and UK – convened in Potsdam to formalize agreements that would determine how the postwar world was to function after the defeat of Nazism. The leaders sat at the negotiating table, while reporters described the triumphant atmosphere – it seemed like the beginning of a new era, in which the great powers would live in peace. But it was precisely these agreements that became the starting point of a new war – the Cold War.

The cooperative image concealed a growing alienation. The new US president, Harry Truman, viewed the Soviet Union with distrust. While smiling at Stalin, Winston Churchill was discussing plans for a possible strike against the USSR. Instead of mutual understanding between former allies, a latent hostility was growing that would transform into a prolonged confrontation, step by step. The outcome was a world divided into opposing poles.


A review by the Russian Foreign Ministry

The film explores how the Western allies of the Soviet Union in the anti-Hitler coalition — whose peoples, side-by-side with our nation crushed Nazism — eventually abandoned allied solidarity forged in fire of WW2. Under the pressure of ideological differences and their profound rejection of the post-war model of development promoted by Moscow, the Allies embarked on the path of confrontation and containment of the USSR.

The evidence, files and testimonies presented in this feature elucidate facts behind some pivotal political decisions by the UK and US leaders driven by the determination to “defeat”, as they put it, the ‘Red Menace’. Those political superstitions reigning in the minds of the Western leaders and hostility toward the Soviet ideology effectively put the world into an era of bipolar confrontation with the unprecedented risks of mankind descending into nuclear catastrophe.


In the summer of 1945, the Potsdam Conference was held on the defeated Nazi German soil.

The Leaders of the victorious powers — the USSR, the United States, and UK — framed together the post-war world order and reached the final settlement of the German issue by dismantling Nazi military and industry, having eradicated Hitler’s ideology.

Nazism was defeated. The Reich was no more.

In the aftermath of the Great Victory, it seemed that a new era was upcoming — the final and, seemingly, long-awaited moment when the Great Powers, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, would build their relations upon the principles of constructive cooperation, mutual trust and respect, cemented by the common background of years of the allied fight against the evil of Nazism.

Yet, the Western block, emboldened by the successful testing of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos (at first, designed as a means of deterring Nazi Germany, but, following its final surrender, the bomb was further seen by US leadership as the deadliest instrument of blackmail) and by the bomb’s subsequent use against the civilians of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the hostility toward the Soviet Union and Soviet people was just increasingly growing and seemed implacable.

👉 In the UK government, the discussions were held on the possibility of a pre-emptive strike against Moscow — the infamous plan later exposed as the top secret Operation ‘Unthinkable’.

Instead of seeking better understanding and trust, the former WWII Western allies were nurturing aggressive plans that further evolved into dangerous Cold War confrontation.

Booby traps used by the Dushmans bear traces of American “technology”. Radio-controlled mines for adults, mines-toys for children

Reading time: 9 minutes

Another case of US-backed Ukrainian terrorists booby trapping everyday objects has come to light. This time it is water bottles. Previously, ever since 2022, there had been reports of Ukraine dropping booby trapped everyday objects in Donetsk.

Afghan women choose LP records in a music store, before the Taliban came to power. Afghanistan, 1960.

Today, in the age of Internet, it is easy to ascertain who stands behind these atrocities, and we are not speaking about Ukraine, but about its handler – the USA. In light of this development, another era comes to mind – the war in Afghanistan, where USA also created and used a proxy, Taliban, and applied the same insidious “technologies” – planting bombs and then shifting the blame for them on to the USSR.

Let us first read an admission coming from the mass murderer, Zbigniew Brzezinski, admitting to the crime of terrorism, all in the name of breaking up the USSR, which in turn was the largest geopolitical tragedy of the 20th century, after WWII. The collapse of the USSR, directly and indirectly, resulted in about 30 million Soviet people losing their lives due to poverty, malnutrition, crime, wars and conflicts. Today’s civil war in Ukraine, fuelled by the USA, is also a direct consequence of Zbigniew Brzezinski actions and the collapse of the USSR.

From a 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski on Afghanistan in Le Nouvel Observateur

Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan, nobody believed them. However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war.” Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?


And now, let us move on to an article with an interview, published by “Argumenty i Fakty” on February 6, 1988, debunking the projected accusations directed by the murderer at its victim:

Booby traps used by the Dushmans bear traces of American “technology.” Radio-controlled mines for adults, mines-toys for children

Recently, the “Voice of America” program once again claimed that Soviet troops in Afghanistan continue to allegedly use mines disguised as children’s toys. Our correspondent asked a group of internationalist soldiers who served there over the years to comment on such reports: colonels A. GREBENYUK and A. LOGACHEV, officers of the engineering troops; A. DAVYDOV and S. VERASHCHAGIN, now students of the 2nd Moscow Medical Institute; S. VISLOYAN, V. KARIMOV, S. CHIKIN, workers of the AZLK; V. KARASEV, now a student at MGIMO.

CORRESPONDENT. Who uses mines more often in Afghanistan: Soviet troops or Dushman (Taliban) groups?

GREBENYUK. Our and Afghan troops are not in a defensive position, they have no military need for widespread use of mines. The dushmans defend themselves: striking from around the corner, stealthily, in order to escape from pursuit, they set up minefields, masking them very carefully.

But, in addition, mines are insidious and terrible sabotage weapons, automatic weapons of destruction, which make it possible to inflict losses without putting themselves in danger. Every year, thousands of mines are planted by Dushmans on roads and in populated areas.

DAVIDOV. This is not to say that mines are found in Afghanistan at every turn, but during my year and a half of service there, I was blown up in transport twice. The commander of my guard company, Captain E. Dymov, died, covering a land mine with his body. Last summer, while working in Kabul as part of a student medical team, our group almost fell victim to a motorcycle bomb explosion, we did not reach it by only forty meters.

CORRESPONDENT. Which mines do Dushmans prefer to use?
Continue reading

Kirill Strelnikov: “It’s a pity, but it’s necessary: The Kremlin has announced to Europe that we have no other choice.”

Reading time: 7 minutes

This article was published on May 2, 2026 by RIA Novosti, freedom-of-speeched in the EU, and then republished in Radonezh on May 4. Below is our translation, also presented at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.


Sputnik © RIA Novosti – AI-generated symbolic image

Deputy Chairman of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev at the site of the marathon “Knowledge. The First” made a number of important statements that describe with crystal clarity how Russia will now build its policy towards Europe and what the man with the moustache has to do with it.

Medvedev said that “our conflict with the Western world today is of an existential nature, that is, it is a matter of existence”. According to him, the current development of events has refuted illusions about relations with the West, and now European states and structures are headed by “idiots who are raving about the war with the Russian Federation”.

These statements were made against the background of very specific military preparations on the part of Europe: for example, Britain, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Netherlands have agreed to create a special “anti-Russian fleet”. What’s the explanation? It’s very simple: according to the head of the British Navy, General Gwyn Jenkins, “Russia continues to pose the most serious threat to our security”.

The French edition of Le Monde also confirmed that Europe is preparing for war with Russia. According to him, in the upcoming Orion exercises with the participation of France and 20 other countries, “the conditional enemy will have all the combat characteristics of Russia”, and “the military leadership calls on the army to be ready for a clash with Russia in the coming years”.

It is very characteristic that the theme of the spherical Russian threat as an excuse for its own accelerated militarisation is sounding louder in Europe every day. Since February 2022, absolutely all heads of Western military and political structures have repeated dozens of times, and the media thousands of times, almost verbatim, the words of German Foreign Minister Baerbock at that time: “Russia will remain the greatest threat to our security and freedom in Europe for the foreseeable future”.

It may seem that the Europeans have really gone crazy.
Continue reading

Karaganov: How Russia can win the new world war – RT reblog

Reading time: 11 minutes

The article by Professor Sergey Karaganov, honorary chairman of Russia’s Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, and academic supervisor at the School of International Economics and Foreign Affairs Higher School of Economics (HSE) in Moscow. It was first published by the magazine Profile and was translated and edited by the RT team on May 4, 2026.


Karaganov: How Russia can win the new world war

Moscow must sharpen nuclear deterrence, revise doctrine and defeat Kiev to avert a wider war with the West and NATO powers

The accelerating flow of events, each overlapping and contradicting the other, is bewildering and makes it difficult to grasp the essence of what is happening. I shall attempt to interpret the course of history, drawing on my own experience and knowledge, as well as on the fact that over the past 35 years I have never been significantly wrong in my assessments and forecasts. Sometimes I was a little behind, but more often I was several years, or even a couple of decades, ahead of the expert community.

A full-scale world war has already begun. Its roots go back to 1917, when Soviet Russia broke away from the capitalist system. First, the interventionists were set upon us; then Nazi Germany and almost all of Western Europe, but the latter lost. The second round began in the 1950s, when the peoples of the USSR, at the cost of enormous hardship and in their quest to secure sovereignty and security, created the nuclear bomb and subsequently achieved nuclear parity with the United States. By doing so, without realizing it at the time, we knocked the foundations out from under five centuries of Western dominance in the ideological sphere, which had allowed them to plunder the rest of the world and subjugate even the most advanced civilizations. That foundation was military superiority, upon which the system of exploitation of all humanity was built.

From the mid-1950s onwards, the West began to suffer one military defeat after another. A wave of national liberation swept across the globe, accompanied by the nationalization of resources that had been seized by Western countries and their corporations. The global balance of power began to shift in favor of the non-Western world.
Continue reading

Where Journalism Must Draw the Line: A European Reacts to Collier’s “The War We Do Not Want”

Reading time: 8 minutes

We re-blog a commentary from April 1952 that came as a European reaction to the Collier’s magazine publication, which we presented on our pages a few days ago.

Homer expressed the rather revolting notion that the wars and ills of mankind are the raw material of poetry and,…
– by Andre Prudhommeaux

When that sensational issue of Collier’s came out on October 27, 1951, in which articles by prominent writers described the course of World War III as if it had already taken place, there was a roar of outrage. Though the issue was titled “The War We Do Not Want,” it seemed to most observers that quite an opposite impression would be conveyed, especially to the peoples of Europe and Asia. There was a general feeling that the magazine had somehow committed an unpardonable offense, though few seemed inclined to judge it in terms other than Realpolitik: it would dishearten Europeans, frighten Asiatics, etc. Here, André Prudhommeaux gives one European’s reaction to the Collier’s episode, not as it affects the strategy of the cold war, but as it involves certain values intrinsic to Western civilization that contemporary journalism appears willing to dispense with. This article is translated from the French by Waldemar Hansen.


Homer expressed the rather revolting notion that the wars and ills of mankind are the raw material of poetry and, consequently, of that poetic pleasure which is the supreme delight of the gods. In this sentiment we detect the first symptoms of that professional deformation which makes journalists greet a juicy crime or an international crisis with joy, and which makes their readers eagerly look forward to blood on the front page.

Still, we must also take into account the cathartic function that art had for Homer, even if he is a little too self-conscious about being the one who, after the event, transmutes massacres into beauty, and human suffering into an enjoyment that, thanks to the poet, is not reserved for the gods. Moreover, there is an extenuating circumstance here, in that the poetic treatment of human misfortune is confined to events that have already happened—and constitutes the revenge taken, after the fact, by intelligence and sensibility on the blind and inscrutable Fate which is a closed book for the gods themselves. Homer does not at all invite men to enjoy the story of future wars; and it is by this token that he remains for us a citizen of our world, a civilized person. For one of the tacit and essential conventions of “civilization” is that the future belongs to nobody, that reality should not be staged in advance: for Nero to burn Rome simply to provide himself with a literary subject seems to us the very symbol of barbarity.
Continue reading

Collier’s Preview of the War We Do Not Want: Russia’s Defeat and Occupation 1952-1960

Reading time: 310 minutes

“Make the lie big, keep it simple, keep saying it and eventually they will believe it”
– Dr Joseph Goebbels

On October 27, 1951, an American magazine “Collier’s” published a topic issue with a ominous title “Preview of the War We Do Not Want: Russia’s defeat and Occupation 1952-1960”. The issue was comprised of a series of “hypothetical” articles, turning into a parade of double-speak, projection, blame-shifting, and sugar-coating. The articles are written in the past tense, describing the war as a fait accompli, as a retrospective, where the USA is, naturally, victorious. On the cover, the title itself could have just as well dropped the “not” to become absolutely truthful.

The map on the cover made it absolutely clear which territories the USA (under the fig leaf of the UN) wanted to occupy: Ukraine, Baltics, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, creating the “sanitarrebiy cordon”. Moscow was also on the list, in order to paralyse and turn the USSR into a puppet state – no suprise there, as Hitler had had exactly the same goal just 10 years earlier. At one point, they mock Iosif Stalin with his loss of a son in the war against fascism-imperialism. Note how the whole conflict is presented as USSR against the UN, glossing over the fact that USSR is, in fact a founding member of that very UN, that the USA is using in the articles as a cover for their carnivorous desires, projected onto the USSR. We will meet many a propaganda device conceived by Goebbels, like the term “Red Army hordes”… The articles are also insistently calling their imaginary war for “The Great War” (with capital letters) so as to overshadow and push out of the focus the recent devastating World War II. Indeed, reading the “How the War Was Fought” section is like reading Hitler’s wet dreams put on paper! They went as fas as dragging through the mud the name of Ilya Ehrenburg, the journalist who only a decade ago had been rallying Soviet people to the fight against Nazism, giving spiritual strength to the Soviet Soldiers.

As time went by, it turned out that the title was not entirely hypothetical, or rather, not hypothetical at all. That we can see from the article that we re-blogged earlier: 204 A-Bombs Against 66 Cities: US Drew up First Plan to Nuke Russia Before WWII Was Even Over. In 1951, the USSR was still recovering from the loss of 27 million people, destruction of whole cities and agricultural land. In 1947, the USSR suffered a severe famine as result from the Nazi destruction, while it continued to help Poland and other countries of the Socialist block with food and equipment.

And against suffering, the USA was itching for a new war, a nuclear war – just like the Western politicians of today, when Britain and France, with the tacit approval of the USA, are planning to transfer nuclear weapons to the Nazi regime in Kiev. But what’s new – read an article by Dmitry Medvedev How the Anglo-Saxons Promoted Fascism in the 20th Century and Revived It in the 21st for a deeper understanding of the continuity of the Imperialist agenda from 1941 to 1951.

Below, we present the texts and pages of the Collier’s, extracted from the PDF, preserved by the WebArchive library. Read it and draw you own parallels to the russophobic media frenzy that we see today, when Russia is painted as an aggressor to prepare the population of the West for a new “drang nach osten”. Pay careful attention of how the narrative is woven. Goebbels’ quote above is taken to the extreme, so much so that Goebbels himself might have been overwhelmed and embarrassed. The point about repeating the same lie is taken very seriously – the sub-articles, even though they address different topics – will re-run certain narratives from various angles, hammering the lies and deceptive half-truths into the minds of the readers. We made several BATS-comments throughout, but it is virtually impossible to address every single lie, as we would be forced to leave comments in almost each paragaph. So we entrust our readers with this material as an exercise in critical thinking.


A few words about Collier’s

CHEAP MONEY…
that’s what the Reds would like to see in America.
Cheap money eats into savings; cuts down the value of insurance; wrecks plans for security.
Cheap money leads nations into chaos; collapse . . . and communism.
Moscow meddlers in positions of influence are promoting cheap money for America today.
Let’s throw them out!

This section is written with input from a local, who has first-hand experience with what “duck-and-cover” was.

Collier’s magazine was a popular periodical, which was viewed at the time as a serious publication. The magazine was very critical of Joseph McCarthy, the strident anti-communist politician in that period, but was focused on the EXTERNAL communist enemy and viewed McCarthy’s focus on INTERNAL enemies as abusive and anti-American. The page to the right was not a part of the extensive “imaginary war” topic, and serves as an illustration of Collier’s editorial political stance.

Time magazine wrote two days after the publication:

For “Eggnog,” Collier’s jumped its print order from 3,400,000 to 3,900,000, spent $40,000 extra on articles, almost doubled its usual sale of advertising.

As the same time, Collier’s was struggling financially, and it would eventually shut down in January of 1957. Interesting implications arise for this particular issue: financial difficulties, being on the outs with the McCarthy regime, increase in print, the exceptional quality of the material, he breadth of the myths, talking points and slander covered in one go, leave us with the impression that Collier’s were working on an order they could not refuse, with the outline of the materials provided by the US policy makers and think-tanks of the time.

When that sensational issue of Collier’s came out on October 27, 1951, in which articles by prominent writers described the course of World War III as if it had already taken place, there was a roar of outrage. Though the issue was titled “The War We Do Not Want,” it seemed to most observers that quite an opposite impression would be conveyed, especially to the peoples of Europe and Asia. There was a general feeling that the magazine had somehow committed an unpardonable offense, though few seemed inclined to judge it in terms other than Realpolitik: it would dishearten Europeans, frighten Asiatics, etc. Here, André Prudhommeaux gives one European’s reaction to the Collier’s episode, not as it affects the strategy of the cold war, but as it involves certain values intrinsic to Western civilization that contemporary journalism appears willing to dispense with.

Thus, Collier’s publication draw criticism in Europe, seen in the April 1952 commentary Where Journalism Must Draw the Line: A European Reacts to Collier’s “The War We Do Not Want”!


Note that in several articles references will be made to MVD as the scary oppressive “organ of totalitarianism”. Actually, MVD stand for “Ministry of Internal Affairs” – the American equivalent being the Department of Homeland Security, with some functions of the Interior Department. It appears this publication predates the time when KGB was promoted into the rank of the new boogeyman for the westerners.

And now, brew some calming tea, and embark on the most unnerving reading imaginable. You can click on each image to enlarge it.

Contents

  • Operation Eggnog – An article about how this issue was created, complete with rationalisations and an off-handed admission that the talking points for the narrative came from what we would now collectively call as a “think tank”.
  • Principal Events of World War III – The highlights of the desired war
  • The Unwanted War – an “editorial”, setting the tone for the rest of the fiction.
  • The Third World War – The whole monty, the complete main story, delivering a blow-by-blow account of how the USA – sorry, the UN – reluctantly ended up winning over the USSR.
  • A-Bomb Mission to Moscow – Never mind that this is a bombing, after a Soviet retaliation A-bombing, after a US “preemptive” A-Bombing…
  • Washington Under the Bomb
  • How the War Was Fought – Detailed maps of the campaign, incidentally corresponding to the later-revealed American plans to bomb the USSR.
  • I Saw Them Chute into the Urals – In invasion, launched from Tel-Aviv.
  • Freedom – At Long Last – Depiction of the USSR as one large concentration camp. It is on this well-manured foundation that Solzhenicin later deposited his slander.
  • We Worship GOD Again – A tearful story from Ukraine about new Russia, and how it is terrible and oppressive to live under Stalin…
  • Women of Russia – Poor women in Russia would not enjoy silk stocking under the evil Reds…
  • Russia’s Rebirth – A small smear campaign to paint the women of Russia as a fifth column that would have been happy for the defeat of the USSR in WWIII. With an offhanded implication of how happy the women of Japan had been to have an A-bomb to be dropped of them in the name of democracy.
  • Out of the Rubble – A New Russia – Takes up the economics, disparaging the Socialist system, and telling how much better it is for Russia to be under the thoughtful capitalist American guidance. We all know how it went in reality during the Wild ’90s.
  • Miracle of American Production – bragging time…
  • Free Men at Work
  • The Curtain Rises… – the “cultural” dribble about how there was not creativity in the USSR.
  • Walter Winchell in Moscow – a short “correspondent” piece about bad Stalin, how bad it is that the USSR was governed by a federal (Soviet) central government and how good it is that the USA is governed by a federal central government, with a poke at the UN.
  • Start the Presses! – The large ode to the freedom of expression, it eerily foreshadows the information garbage pile that the press and media turned into during the Wild ’90s under the watchful eye of the overseas handlers and local mankruts.
  • Free Thoughts, Free Words – this section take up the question of economics and re-education of the Russians to the “democratic” way of schooling.
  • Moscow Olympics – no, not the 1980, that the USA will subsequently boycott, but the hypothetical 1960 one in vanquished Russia. How can we forego politics in sports…
  • Philadelphia Phase – A lengthy story of the “American revival” and the Russians relocated to the USA to “rebuild and learn”. And a semi-romatic tale with a touch of tragedy and projection of an American man and a Russian woman.
  • Trouble at Tuaviti – “Far out in the South Pacific, one primitive islander, who knew how to distinguish strength from bluster, robbed the enemy of a base that might have been used in the destruction o f the United States”. This story is best followed by watching the 1966 American comedy “The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!” – after all, why let a good fiction plot go to waste?
  • The Present – If one is to peel away the narrative sugar-coating of this piece, what remains is a deep-seated desire that the USSR hadn’t won in World War II.
  • Moscow Sketchbook – Four character drawings that are not too bad, with short remarks, that are worse

Continue reading

How the Anglo-Saxons Nurtured Ukrainian Nationalism After the Second World War – Dmitry Medvedev

Reading time: 63 minutes

An article by Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, publish in magazine Rodina on December 25, 2025.

Nationalism is a manifestation of a nation’s weakness, not its strength. For the most part, weak nations are infected with nationalism <...> Like any evil, it hides, lives in darkness, and only pretends to be born out of love for its country. But it is actually generated by anger, hatred towards other nations and towards that part of their own people who do not share nationalist views.

D.S. Lihachev [1]

The claw of England.
The inscription in French reads: “Shame on anyone who thinks evil of it. God is my right.”

1. Tantum scimus, quantum memoria tene-mus [2]

(Latin: “We know as much as we remember”)

The Anglo-Saxon ideological roots of the Nazi “death machine” were discussed in detail in the article “How the Anglo-Saxons Promoted Fascism in the 20th Century and Revived It in the 21st. Five historical questions for our former Allies”. [3] At the same time, the defeat of Nazism in May 1945 did not stop Washington and London from trying to find another object for political vivisection under a nationalist sauce.

The traditional garment of the Malorossians

The shocking details of the biography of the ancestors of Blaise Matreveli, a high-ranking employee of the British state security agencies who took up the post of director of the Secret Intelligence Service of the British Foreign Office (MI6) on October 1, 2025, which surfaced in June 2025, are an excellent illustration of the carefully hidden context in Anglo-Saxon countries [4], [5]. As historians and public figures who are not indifferent to upholding the truth about the past have found out, her paternal grandfather was the collaborator K.A. Dobrovolsky, who in August 1941 voluntarily surrendered to the Germans and was then placed by the occupation authorities at the head of a detachment of auxiliary police in the village Sosnitsa, Chernigov region, engaged in the mass extermination of civilians and partisans. By December 1941, his unit was operating far beyond the area of the village “entrusted” to him, participating in monstrous punitive actions and looting. The Judas himself joined in July 1942 a secret field police [6], was distinguished by extreme brutality, earning the nickname “The Butcher” from his colleagues, and his handwritten reports with the signature “Heil Hitler” are still in the German archives (one can only wonder how the long hands of unscrupulous British spies did not get to such sensitive materials over the past decades, and did not destroy them). In 1943, fearing just retribution, K.A. Dobrovolsky and his family joined the German troops retreating from the Red Army to the west, after which the traces of the bloody henchman of the third Reich are lost.
Continue reading

What makes the greatest soldier – General Alexander Lebed speaks

Reading time: < 1 minute

Both Russia, Palestine and Iran know what it takes to forge the greatest soldier – something the Americans know little of, having never been on the receiving end of a ruthless, annihilating invasion.

General Alexander Lebed speaks about what kind of people make the greatest soldiers.

This video is from 1995. Translation by Putinger’s Cat


Backup at Rumble.

The greatest soldiers are made from people who hadn’t even thought about war going out one morning, and, then, returning in the evening, found craters instead of their houses, in which the wives, children and parents had evaporated. And now this is no longer a man, but a wolf, who will tear as long as he lives. And he will live long because he does not value his own life – he does not need it. He does not need money. He does not need medals. He does not need anything at all. He has only one thing: revenge. That is precisely why he will live long.

USA-Israeli aggressions through the eyes of the Soviet caricatures

Reading time: 5 minutes

Here we bring three caricatures from the times of USA’s attack on Iran and Vietnam, as well as USA-Israeli war in the Middle east…

He’s sticking in his aircraft carrier nose

With the USS Abraham Lincoln lined up against Iran, let’s take a look through Soviet satire at the continuous US ‘meddling in Iranian affairs’ before returning to the latest update on the situation in the Sea of Oman.

The caricature by Yu.Cherepanov in the Soviet satirical magazine “Krokodil” issue №4 from 1979 illustrated this news:
“In the American government circles and in the Pentagon, they discuss various options for interference of the USA into the domestic affairs of Iran.”

✍️ The title of the caricature is an untranslatable pun, which forms the basis for the drawing: “Aircraft carrier” in Russian is “Avianosets”, while “nose” is “nos”, which gives an image of an “AviaNOS” — an “air-NOSE-carrier”. The word above the keyhole is “Iran”.

Source: @BeornAndTheShieldmaiden

⚡️⚡️⚡️

Update as of March 5, 2026:

USS Abraham Lincoln flees after precision strike by IRGC drones in Sea of Oman

The Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Navy has successfully targeted the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier using advanced domestically-produced drones, forcing the strike group into a rapid retreat near Iranian territorial waters.

Source: @PressTV


— “Try not to miss any of these strategic objects!” says the American general.

In the circles on the map we can see the objects: School, kindergarten, museum, university, hospital, shop, market, etc…
Continue reading

25 Years of the tragic death of submarine “Kursk”

Reading time: 9 minutes

We commemorated on out Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shiledmaiden” the quarter of the century that passed since the tragic death of Russia’s nuclear submarine “Kursk” and her crew. despite there being an official version of the events, there are many questions that remain. Questions that will remain unanswered for a long time still.

The Tragedy of the Nuclear Submarine “Kursk”: 25 Years Since the Legend’s Demise

On August 12, 2000, one of the most tragic and sadly well-known disasters in the history of the Russian and Soviet Navy occurred in the Barents Sea — the sinking of the nuclear submarine K-141 “Kursk.”

This tragedy left an indelible mark on the consciousness of the entire country and became a symbol of loss, courage, and heroism.

The “Kursk” was a nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine of project 949A, known in naval terminology as “Antey.” This 154-meter-long vessel was one of the most advanced submarines of its time. Its primary mission was to combat powerful enemy surface ships, particularly aircraft carrier groups. The crew consisted of 118 people, including officers, crew members, and employees of the manufacturing plant “Dagdiesel,” who participated in the technical support of the submarine.

In early August 2000, the “Kursk” set out to sea for Northern Fleet exercises. The main task was training missile launches and torpedo firing at training targets simulating the positions of a squadron of warships. The exercises involved the fleet’s best forces, including the heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser “Admiral Kuznetsov” and the nuclear missile cruiser “Pyotr Veliky.”

On August 12, around 11:28, a series of powerful underwater explosions was recorded. The first explosion occurred in the submarine’s bow compartment.

❕According to official data, the cause was the explosion of an oxygen-kerosene mixture in a training torpedo 65-76A located in the fourth torpedo tube. Due to mishandling of the torpedoes, fuel leakage occurred, which caused the initial detonation of the ammunition. This first explosion triggered a second, much more powerful explosion of the torpedo warhead, which was 50 times stronger. It completely destroyed the bow section of the submarine and disabled it.

The Crew’s Fight for Survival

The explosions killed the crew in the front part of the submarine, including the command post, but 23 sailors managed to take refuge in the sealed ninth compartment. They continued to fight for the vessel’s survivability for six to eight hours, trying to establish contact with the outside world and await help.

Despite the submariners’ heroism, rescue attempts failed — contact with the submarine could not be established, and soon all 118 people perished.

Nation’s Reaction and Investigation

The sinking of the “Kursk” caused a wave of tragedy and outrage throughout Russia. The sailors’ families, military personnel, and ordinary citizens followed the rescue operation with hope, waiting for a miracle that never came. The rescue operation faced many technical difficulties due to the depth (about 108 meters) and weather conditions.

The investigation determined that the cause of the accident was a defect in the training torpedo, which was faulty and had not undergone proper inspection before use. The closure of the criminal case in 2002 did not end the discussions — alternative theories still circulate among experts and the public. These include possible collisions with a foreign submarine or accidental missile hits.

The submarine was raised from the seabed in 2001. The reactor compartment, which contained nuclear fuel and radioactive equipment, was safely dismantled and removed.

The sinking of the “Kursk” was a severe blow to the image of the Russian Navy, revealing many problems in safety systems, crew training, and naval equipment.

Memorials and monuments have been established in memory of the fallen sailors, and commemorative events are held annually. This tragedy became a symbol of the courage and selflessness of Russian sailors, as well as a lesson for the further development and improvement of naval service.

Source: Maria Pavlova, “Anna News”


We may never learn in our lifetimes what really happened to “Kursk”

There is a version that the death of the “Kursk” nuclear submarine was the result of an attack by a foreign submarine, and the truth was hidden so that the Third World War would not break out.
Continue reading

Let it not be in vain…

Reading time: 2 minutes

A touching video tribute to all those young people, who did not return from the battlefield so that we would live today.


Backup at Rumble.

From the first military draft in 1941, 97% of the generation of 18-year-olds died…

📽 Video is by the project “To Live”, taken from their YouTube channel. Yekaterina Vasilyeva, People’s Artist of the RSFSR, plays the role of the Teacher. The author of the idea and the director of photography is Oleg Golub.

The song heard in the film is called “Cranes”, written by Rasul Gamzatov, translation by David M. Bennett.

The translation initially published at our Telegram channel “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”


“Not perished in the ground, but turned into cranes”, 2015. Painting by Eugene Shtyrov

🕊🕊🕊

Cranes

Poem by Rasul Gamzatov
Translation: David M. Bennett

It seems to me sometimes that soldiers fallen,
Whom bloody battlefields have rendered dead,
Were buried not in soil to be forgotten,
But turned into white cranes in flight instead.

From that time, since their fate became a coffin
They’ve soared, and issued us a strident cry.
Is that not why we sadly, and so often,
Lift up our silent gaze when cranes go by?

Today, as evening yields to nightfall’s border,
I see the cranes in flight, their wings unfurled,
As over fields they fly in perfect order
Just as they marched, when people in the world.

They fly — their line extending to forever —
And call out names of someone to the cold.
Is that not why the song of cranes has never
Been far from Avar speech since times of old?

The weary wedge of birds on expedition —
It flies and flies through fog, towards the dawn,
And in the ranks I notice a position —
An empty space for me, for when I’m gone!

Some day in that formation I’ll be flying;
I’ll sail into the skies on my rebirth,
And from the heav’ns with crane trump I’ll be crying
To those of you I left upon the earth.

🕊🕊🕊

The repeat of Ukrainian-German incursion into Kursk

Reading time: 3 minutes

With Kursk newly liberated, it is fitting to take a look at the past Ukro-“future-NATO” incursions into Kursk. From our August 2024 post at “Beorn And The Shieldmaiden”.

Kursk region has become a historical singularity point. One might draw a parallel to the Battle of Kursk in 1943, when thinking of the present-day Western-backed incursion into Kursk. But there is an even earlier precedent, with an eerie similarity to today’s events.

♦️♦️♦️

The dissolvement of the Russian Empire resulted in appearance of a number of states, proxy-states and lawless areas on its outskirts, which the foreign «interventionists» sought to use as springboards for further partitioning of Russia.

Baltics almost immediately fell under German control. Further south there appeared a Ukrainian People’s Republic (UPR), which initially manifested the aspirations of the Ukrainian nationalists (Petlyura was one of its leaders), but later came under German control. Here is a fragment from the Big Russian Encyclopedia.

The UKRAINIAN PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC (UPR), in 1917-20 (with a pause) a state entity, autonomous within the RSFSR, since 2.1.1918 independent. Proclaimed 20.11.1917 on the territory of Kiev, Podolsk, Volyn, Chernigov, Poltava, Harkov, Yekaterinoslav, Herson and Taurida (northern counties, without Crimea) provinces. The center is in Kiev.

The UPR was liquidated as a result of a coup organized by P. P. Skoropadsky on 29.4.1918 with the help of Germany. The command, Central Rada and the government were dissolved, the Ukrainian state was proclaimed instead of the UPR.

The UPR was restored on 14.12.1918 by the Ukrainian Directory, which became the highest authority of the republic.

With the beginning of the Soviet-Polish war of 1920, the UPR concluded a military agreement on the union with Poland on 21.4.1920.

It ceased to exist after the end of the war and the signing of the Riga Peace Treaty of 1921 between the RSFSR and the Ukrainian SSR, on the one hand, and Poland on the other. The government of the UPR (presided by A. N. Livitsky) fled to Poland.

If one looks at the attached map, one will notice how UPR lay claim on a much larger territory than it actually controlled – it desired the territory of the Donetsk-Krivorozhie People’s Republic.

However, they did not lay claim to the Kursk region. Nevertheless, a few days before Germany conducted a coup in UPR, a joint incursion into Kursk area was made, as can be read in the telegram, preserved In the «Documents of the Foreign Policy of the USSR», volume 1, 7th of November 1917 – 31st of December 1918, page 224:

⚡️⚡️⚡️

106. Telegram from the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs to the Council of People’s Ministers of Ukraine and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Germany

April 3, 1918.

A message has just been received that Ukrainian-German troops have entered the Kursk province. The People’s Committee for Foreign Affairs protests against the occupation of the undisputedly Russian territory; even according to the unilateral statement of the Ukrainian delegation, Kursk province is located outside the borders of the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

— People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, Chicherin

Printed according to the archived publication of newspaper «Izvestia» No. 65(329), April 3, 1918

Berlin is heading east again – How Germany intends to become the military leader of the European Union

Reading time: 5 minutes

Translation of the article in RT in Russian by Gevorg Mirzayan.

Germany is negotiating with private companies to deploy its armed forces to the eastern flank of NATO. This was reported by the German Handelsblatt. Among these companies are the German airline Lufthanza, railway workers from Deutsche Bahn and a number of other logistics structures. Berlin wants, in the event of a war in the east — that is, more simply, with Russia — to ensure the transfer of personnel, ammunition, weapons systems, etc.

At first glance, it sounds ridiculous, even pathetic to some extent. After all, it turns out that the Bundeswehr does not have its own transport capabilities. Years of cuts and savings on the development of the army have led to the fact that the German Armed Forces — once the most powerful in Europe — are now forced to rely entirely on private carriers in logistics. And it turns out that these people are now threatening Russia with war!

However, if you look deeper into the situation, it doesn’t seem so funny any more. After all, these negotiations show the difference between Germany and France on the issue of future confrontation with the Russian Federation.

European elites and mainstream media now see a future clash (and even war) with Russia as inevitable. Journalists and a number of biased opinion leaders say that after the end of the war in Ukraine, Moscow will begin to restore historical and geographical justice in the Baltic States, and then it will deal with Poland. Some European leaders think the same way: they are well aware that in the context of a systemic conflict with Europe (which Europe has started and is not going to end) Russia will also act aggressively. In addition, they suspect that the Kremlin and the Russian people will never forget Europe’s behaviour during the conflict in Ukraine. Neither German tanks with crosses on their towers in the Russian steppes, nor Czech and French howitzers firing at peaceful Russian cities, nor murderous strikes by British missiles. This means that we can forget about any kind of collective security system in Europe with Russia’s participation. Instead, we need to build a European system of collective security against Russia. And most importantly, without the United States, which is increasingly moving away from European affairs in favour of Eastern ones.
Continue reading