Ukraine's Grievances

"It has already been confirmed during repatriations that the bodies of 20 people handed over to us as our deceased soldiers are Russian."  

"They threw the corpses of their citizens at us. This is their attitude toward war; toward their soldiers."

"And this is already documented."

"Sometimes these bodies even have Russian passports."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

https://t.me/V_Zelenskiy_official/14801 

 

In a numerically large prisoner exchange, including the bodies of dead combatants, Ukraine discovered that in their haste and negligence, Russia sent along to Ukraine the corpses of some twenty Russian servicemen, along with Ukraine's own. Ukraine describes the exchange as symbolic of Moscow disorganization in organizing large exchanges of wounded prisoners-of-war and the remains of troops fallen in battle. 

 

Bizarrely, among the dead sent to Ukraine was an Israeli citizen. Identities of the bodies were not disclosed. The Russians, for their part, denied that they had carelessly or inadvertently sent along the remains of Russian soldiers, insisting that the entire number of those sent to Ukraine were Ukrainian in origin. 

 

A Russian passport and ID found with one of the 20 dead Russians was shown as evidence of the Ukrainian claims, however. The document showed the man to whom it belonged had come from the Moscow region. Direct peace talks taking place in Istanbul have produced only the exchanges of the dead and wounded soldiers on both sides; no other tangible results have been seen to credit the talks with having achieved.  

 

A photo of the passport belonging to a Russian soldier whose body was handed over to Ukraine during a military remains exchange, published on June 19, 2025. (Ihor Klymenko / Telegram)

 

Ukraine and Russia had agreed to exchange bodies of fallen soldiers in a 6,000-for-6,000 format as a result of the second round of negotiations in June. Ukraine had expressed concern that the sheer numbers involved would place a strain on time required for forensic examinations and the investigation of the dead identities. Russia's plan, suspected Mr. Zelenskyy, was to accommodate the U.S. insisting on peace talks, to persuade the U.S. not to impose more sanctions. 

 

While Russia proceeded with its war on the winning edge. Placing Ukraine "in a really difficult situation" deciding whether to continue the Istanbul-based negotiations leading to precisely nowhere, other than enabling Moscow to continue stalling as though it was involved in the talks with the sincere intention of contemplating a ceasefire, even as the Kremlin is convinced that Putin's 'special military operation' is on the verge of winning.

 

Stopping just short of explicit support for the strikes that Israel has hit Iranian nuclear sites, IRGC bases, airfields and naval bases, Mr. Zelenskyy declared Ukraine in support of stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. His more basic concern is the effect that this new conflict in the Middle East will draw attention away from Russia's conflict imposed on Ukraine.  

 

President Trump has had a rocky relationship with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. UKRAINIAN FOREIGN MINISTRY/AFP via Getty Images

 

"Of course, we are against Iran having nuclear weapons. That is, if today they can attack any country, or they can provide weapons to Russia or another country, or even not a country, but a terrorist organization, we do not know to whom they can provide weapons. So this is very, very dangerous."

"Iran gave the Russians everything to kill us. They gave them martyrs, they gave them missiles, and they gave them licences."

"This means that, perhaps, they will provide nuclear weapons and all the experience to their allies. And you hear and understand who their allies are. They are not our allies. They are our enemies." 

"The fact that their production capacities have now become weaker [after Israeli airstrikes at Iranian production facilities] is [a] positive for us."

"But at certain points it may already be too late [since Iran transferred the technology to Russia]."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy  

Pointing out Russia's pact with Iran and North Korea where Iran has supplied Russia with the missiles it hits Ukraine with and North Korea has sent its troops to aid Russia in battle with Ukraine, viewing them all as an evil triumvirate Ukraine must grapple with. Iran-produced Shahed drones have been modified by Russia, using them hundreds at a time to barrage Ukraine. An intermediate-range ballistic missile,the Oreshnik, is being produced by 39 Russian companies; the missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. 

 

A serious escalation occurred in November when Russia attacked Ukraine with the missile. "And therefore it is absolutely incomprehensible why sanctions should not be imposed urgently" on the 21 companies producing the Oreshnik missiles not yet under sanction by the West. At the same time rumours that Patriots air defence systems were destroyed in recent Russian drone and missile barrages, were dismissed.

 

Ukraine, stated Mr. Zelenskyy has begun the use of domestically produced interceptors to shoot down Shahed drones, seeking financing from Germany to speed up production of the weapons. He has, as well, asked western partners to set aside 0.25 percent of their GDP in support of Ukraine's local defence industry. 

 

"Putin really wants us to be without America. For President Trump, the Israel-Iran issue is certainly a higher priority today. The Russians will not be able to really support Iran, because they do not have the forces. But they will pretend to be trying. And this is also a sign, I think, to President Trump."

"I really do not want Trump to negotiate with the Russians against this background not in the direction of Ukraine."

"Therefore, I emphasize once again, from our side we are giving signals and we want nothing to be a cover-up, so that President Trump chooses the historically correct step. Since it is historically right to be with us. Because Putin is an aggressor. And in any case, the aggressor will lose."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

Remembering ... Forgotten

The gentleman will please remember that when his half-civilized ancestors were hunting the wild boar in Silesia, mine were princes of the earth. Judah Benjamin, in reply to a taunt by a Senator of German descent.

None could have been more greatly taken by surprise and mortally offended than secular Jews in civilized, cultivated Germany - who considered themselves more affected and deeply steeped in modernity and creative energy and intelligence by their venerated generations of German citizenship than their Jewish heritage - to discover that they were regarded as mere Jews, fit for nothing but eradication by the Third Reich.

Their steep complacency at having attained acceptance at the highest levels of German society, academia, political life and wealth would be shattered by the reality of the military-political juggernaut that would overtake Europe and reach out to Asia, enveloping as it progressed, the near east and North America.

The intellectual vastness and social connections to the master race admitted of a moral certainty of racist exceptionalism that excluded Semites from the stellar genetic superiority of the Aryan race of supermortals.

You call me a damned Jew. My race was old when you were all savages. I am proud to be a Jew. John Galsworthy, Loyalties, Act. II.

Hungarian and Czechoslovakian Jews considering themselves culturally superior to Polish and Italian Jews never imagined their countries would accept that they were dross too, to be disposed of summarily along with their Latvian, Ukrainian, Bulgarian and other European countries' Jewish counterparts.

The massive round-up, degradation, humiliation, scorning, enslavement in ghettoes and death-camps located around Europe with infamous names like Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka, with their slave labour, their medical experiments, their punishments and starvation rations, their gas chambers and chimneys puking the dark detritus of burnt bodies in a ghastly parody of orderly convention, bespoke the Nazi ideal of eradicating the impediments to the attainment of human perfection.

The Jews are among the aristocracy of every land; if a literature is called rich in the possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a national tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which the poets and the actors were also the heroes. George Eliot, Daniel Deronda

The quietly determined theatre of extermination became a subterranean affair of cleansing the world of a plague, a dread scourge of those posing as human whose subhuman facade had been revealed by Nazi ideology that wallowed in the worship of pride, pursued perfection, and visualized a very exclusive and choice Utopia. The very physical characteristics of the perfect Nordic male would effectively have excluded the German chancellor.

And the Jews, en masse, no offence, merely acknowledgement of the most appalling inferiority soiled by genetic traits betraying their unworthiness of sharing the air, the water and other precious natural resources, were specifically chosen, in their totality, for annihilation, to make the world of the truly entitled by nature and inheritance, a better place.

Who hateth me but for my happiness?
Or who is honoured now but for his wealth?
Rather had I, a Jew, be hated thus,
Than pitied in a Christian poverty.
Marlowe, The Jew of Malta

One might think that a collective representing the world's religious leaders would seek to intervene. They did not, presumably on the presumption that God would look after His own. The saving grace being that a small but noted number of religious and their laity took it upon their consciences and moral certainty to act on their own to save whom they could among Jews.

Suavity toward the Jews! Although you have lived among them, it is evident that you little understand those enemies of the human race. Haughty and at the same time base, combining an invincible obstinacy with a spirit despicably mean, they weary alike your love and your hatred. Anatole France, The Procurator of Judea

As in medical science, when an anomalous, sinister, threatening bacteria or virus emerges to threaten humanity as a horrible existential pandemic, all scientific and technological means must be harnessed toward the imperative of destroying the threat to the well-being of humanity's continued existence...

And, since time immemorial Jews, with their strange religion insisting on an especial status with their Maker, and exhibiting typically hideous traits offensive to others already held a tradition of suspicion and rejection, there was little problem in reaching international consensus that Something Must Be Done.

When people talk about a wealthy man of my creed, they call him an Israelite; but if he is poor they call him a Jew. Heinrich Heine

If my theory of relativity is proven successful, Germany will claim me as a German and France will declare that I am a citizen of the world. Should my theory prove untrue, France will say that I am a German and Germany will declare that I am a Jew. Albert Einstein

That 'something' emerged as an exquisitely planned and executed genocide. So expertly dedicated to its task, it succeeded in destroying resources to the military deeply engaged in challenging and overcoming resistance to German fascism's indomitable need to conquer the world and to dominate it for at least a thousand years.

And while it hampered the military, it succeeded in its exemplary mission to rid the world of a menace. The Jews sacrificed for the salvation of world civilization.

A hopeless faith, a homeless race,
Yet seeking the most holy place,
And owning the true bliss . . . .
Or like pale ghosts that darkling roam,
Hovering around their ancient home,
But find no refuge there.
John Keble, The Christian Year: Fifth Sunday in Lent

The tradition of a two-millennium-old story of sacrifice and redemption repeated. World Jewry has never recovered its numbers. The Jewish population of Israel, established post-war as the traditional homeland of the Jews, and considered by Jews to be its only safe haven on Earth, is now roughly reflective of the numbers that perished in the Holocaust.

And Israel shall be a proverb and a by-word among all people. Old Testament: 1 Kings

The invidious scourge of ethnic hatred known as anti-Semitism lives on, succeeding once again in the temporary wake of post-Holocaust remorse. The world and its affairs returned to normalcy.

Still on Israel's head forlorn,
Every nation heaps its scorn.
Emma Lazarus, The World's Justice

 

Extinguishing Iran's Nuclear Ambitions

"I suspect this is much less about Netanyahu's influence than Trump's own view of the Iranian nuclear program, his memory of the assassination plot against him in 2024 by Iranian agents and the success of the initial Israeli operations."

"They are not asking for anything other than the bombing of Fordo. Nobody is talking about an invasion or anything like that."

"Many if not most Americans understand that a nuclear Iran is particularly dangerous, and that the regime is deeply hostile to the United States."

Eliot A. Cohen, former U.S. State Department adviser, international relations expert, Johns Hopkins University, Washington 

 

"[Netanyahu had been clever in his relationship with Trump, appealing to his] vanity [with charm as well as] using his weaknesses."

"He knew Trump's personality and knew that Trump might come on board if there was a chance of claiming glory in some way or claiming some sort of credit." 

Yossi Mekelberg, Middle East expert, Chatham House think-tank, London 

Iranian flags fly as fire and smoke from an Israeli attack on Sharan Oil depot rise, following Israeli strikes on Iran, in Tehran, Iran, June 15, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a brilliant tactician and a student of human nature, and both are priceless attributes in a leader of any nation, but an ultimate requirement in the leader of Israel, the Jewish state that has since its 1948 reimagining as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people, declaring itself a state following the UN's Partition declaration, required time and again to defend itself against the reaction of the surrounding theocracies, oil kingdoms and sheikdoms of the Middle East, where a Judaic presence on 'land consecrated to Islam' would not be countenanced.

 

From the very moment that the government of Israel launched a massive aerial storm against the Islamic Republic of Iran, which had declared time and again that its mission was to annihilate Israel, and whose efforts to acquire nuclear weaponry warned the Jewish state that it had only so much time and not more to defend itself against another Holocaust, Benjamin Netanyahu used all the wiles at  his disposal to court the American president who has been more sympathetic to the threat of Jewish existentialism than any of his predecessors. 

 

People watch from a bridge as flames from an Israeli attack rise from Sharan Oil depot, following Israeli strikes on Iran, in Tehran, Iran, June 15, 2025. Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS

 

Never has it been an inconvenient time to have friends in high places, but seldom has the time been as ripe to call upon the friendly empathy and fierce military power in the possession of such a friend than at the present time. In the space of less than two years, Israel has faced a pogrom of an extent never imagined outside the Holocaust when October 7 was perpetrated on southern Israel by Hamas in Gaza, followed by 

rocket assaults from Hezbollah in Lebanon, augmented by Yemen's Houthi missile attacks and lastly an aerial attack by the very source of the proxy threats, the Islamic Republic of Iran.

 

As Israel mounted its defense, then its offensive, deftly using technological enterprise to surprise and disable its enemies one by one, leaving each a fragment of their former arms-bristling threats, it was time to turn its attention to the puppet-master itself. And in a brilliant display of aerial acrobatics and technological inspiration, the Islamic Republic was introduced to its own existential agony when its leading military, political, scientific and police agencies and their authorities were reduced to rubble.

 

Missiles fired from Iran in the night sky over Jerusalem on June 14, 2025 as Israel and Iran exchanged fire a day after Israel unleashed an unprecedented aerial bombing campaign that Iran said hit its nuclear facilities, killed top commanders and dozens of civilians. Menahem Kahana/AFP via Getty Images 

The flaw in the reckoning was the impenetrability of the Fordo nuclear site built deep into the side of a mountain. The New York Times reported that reaching out to President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu had asked for the use of American bunker-busting bombs able to reach the depths of Iran's underground nuclear facilities. But was refused. Trump, after all, had campaigned on a promise not to recommit the U.S. to any unpopular wars in the Middle East.

 

"I may do it, I may not do it", he informed reporters at the White House asking whether he had decided to commit the U.S. on airstrikes in Iran. His final decision, he responded, would come "within the next two weeks". Openly praising the success of the boldly successful Israeli air campaign targeting key military personnel, destruction of Iran's air defences and repeated strikes on nuclear sites, it was  clear that the president was awaiting his own opportunity.

 

Last weekend a poll by survey group YouGov for The Economist magazine found fifty percent of American respondents view Iran as an "enemy", while another quarter claimed it to be "unfriendly". Only16 percent felt the U.S. military "should get involved in the conflict between Israel and Iran". Majorities of Democrats, Independents and Republicans to various degrees opposed military intervention.

 

Reuters

 

That was then. This is now, when the decision to relieve the tension was made. Israel, after all, had paved the way, cleared the skies over Iran, taken out the missile launchers, subdued the Islamic Republican Guard Corps, bombed their military bases, destroyed their air force, hit their naval assets, sent their leaders into hiding and if not now, then when? 

 

President Donald Trump on Saturday announced to the world that the United States had carried out a "very successful attack" on three Iranian nuclear sites, including the difficult-to-strike Fordo. "This is an HISTORIC MOMENT FOR THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, ISRAEL, AND THE WORLD. IRAN MUST NOW AGREE TO END THIS WAR", he posted on Truth Social.

 

 

Russia's Africa Corps

"The usage of plausible deniability is now replaced by managed visibility."

"The transfer of Wagner assets in Mali to Africa Corps, which is a state co-ordinated mechanism of influence is more than symbolic, as it demonstrates a strategic transition from proxy to a power chain operated by the government."

"It is not unlikely to expect that the Africa Corps could present a more professional approach, but the operational playbook of including violence will remain intact."

"The brutal counter-insurgency tactics, such as massacres and collective punishment, are structural, not just personal." 

Security researcher Nicholas Chkhaidze, Tbilisi 

 

"The Kremlin will continue to provide direct support to Africa Corps, they'll continue sending in shipments of equipment and weapons."

"We'll see a steady pace of violence by the al-Qaida group in resistance to the involvement of Russia."

Beverly Ochieng, Africa analyst, Center for Strategic and International Studies 

The Russia-backed Wagner Group says it is leaving Mali after more than three and a half years of fighting Islamic extremists and insurgents in the country   ABC News

 

"Africa Corps is a Russian military company that was created in early 2024 as a replacement for the Wagner Group. This organization reflects Russia’s desire to extend its military influence on the African continent and to provide legitimacy to its official and public presence in the face of the European and American presence. Africa Corps is deployed in 5 countries: Libya, Burkina Faso, Mali, Central African Republic and Niger. Libya represents the core of the corps due to the previous activity of Wagner elements in the city of Tripoli…. Another factor in the choice of Libya as the headquarters of this corps is its strategic geographical location due to its connection with the Mediterranean coast, which ensures military supply lines and movement of corps members to other countries The Africa Corps’ modus operandi is entirely dependent on providing military support to African countries such as instructors and weapons. The company also is concerns with the development of strategies in cooperation with the Ministry of Defense, such as is the case in Mali and Niger… In short, the Africa Corps represents the new incarnation of Russian military influence in Africa."

Foreign Military Studies Office -- U.S. Army, Training and Doctrine Command

 

Russian Deputy Defence Minister Yunus-Bek Yevkurov (left) is heading the newly formed Africa Corps, which under his leadership is set to become a key entity through which the Russian state will project power in West Africa.

 

Russia now is openly expanding its military footprint in Africa with the rise of a paramilitary force controlled by the Kremlin. The Africa Corps force is purposefully being used by Russia to increase influence in francophone West Africa, as France's colonialist interests are waning. The Russian defence ministry, operating Africa Corps, is filling the gap left by mercenary group Wagner, founded by the late Yevgeny Prigozhin, after it announced its departure from Mali. 

 

Expanding its presence as Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger led by juntas after coups between 2020 and 2023, have turned from France and moved closer to Russia. Dmitry Peskov speaking for the Kremlin, explained Moscow's intent to develop comprehensive cooperation with African countries: "This cooperation also extends to such sensitive areas as defence and security", he expanded.

 

Despite the shift, analysts have no expectation that the Russian paramilitary groups mean to change its tactics of human rights violations. Half of Africa Corps' personnel are Wagner veterans, prioritizing those who had fought in Ukraine, consisting mostly of former convicts. In its three years in Mali, Wagner kidnapped, detained and tortured hundreds of civilians. Victims spoke of waterboarding, beatings with electrical cables, and being burned with cigarette butts.

 

"In the eyes of the population, this is merely a name change with no positive developments in one of the worst security situations in ten years", stated Bakary Sambe, executive director, Timbuktu Institute think tank in Dakar. For Malians, the distinction between the two Russian paramilitary groups was superficial.

 

"The handover to Africa Corps means that Russia is comfortable having a ministry of defence asset openly operating there", remarked Christopher Faulkner of the U.S. Naval War College. The Central African Republic is the "last bastion" of Wagner operations in Africa, according to the Institute for the Study of War. And there too, the Russian defence ministry plans to replace Wagner with Africa Corps. 

 

Posters across Bangui are reminiscent of old Soviet propaganda. The posters read: “Central African Republic is hand in hand with Russia” and “talk a little, work a lot.” - Credit: Sebastian Shukla/CNN

"[The shift to more overt Russian state presence in Africa could lead to] myriad domestic and geopolitical risks for the Kremlin." 

"The risk to Russian prestige may lead Russia to get more deeply entrenched in long-term conflicts to 'save face', which would ensnare the Kremlin in its own series of 'forever wars'."

"Wagner was more immune to such long-term entanglements and even abruptly withdrew from places, such as Mozambique, when the benefits outweighed their costs."

Institute for the Study of War 

Iran's Bluff

"Wise individuals who know Iran, its people and its history never speak to this nation with the language of threats, because the Iranian nation is not one to surrender."

"Americans should know that any military involvement by the U.S. will undoubtedly result in irreparable damage to them."

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Israeli air-defense systems are activated to intercept Iranian missiles over Tel Aviv on June 16, 2025.  Photograph by Menahem Kahana / AFP / Getty

 

The Trump administration's calls for the Islamic Republic to surrender, even as it is being battered by Israeli airstrikes, urging the time is right to bring the crisis to a stop and prevent a greater number of human casualties has been summarily dismissed by the regime, with the country's theocratic leader warning military involvement by the Americans would cause "irreparable damage to them". 

 

For its part, Israel has lifted some of the restrictions it was forced to impose on daily life in the Jewish state, since the Israeli strikes on Iran were initiated almost a week earlier. That lifting of restrictions suggests that the missile and drone threats emanating from Iran's retaliatory attacks in response to the Israeli air barrage have eased up. 

 

A photo released by the Israeli air force, showing fighter jets taking part in Operation "Rising Lion," which targeted nuclear sites in Iran for strikes, on June 13, 2025. EYEPRESS NEWS VIA REUTERS CONNECT

 

U.S. President Donald Trump at the outset of the Israeli bombing campaign distanced himself from the attack that surprised Tehran on Friday; more recently, however, he has alluded to the potential of greater American involvement, that he wants something "much bigger" than a ceasefire. More military aircraft and warships of the American fleet have been sent to the region.

 

President Trump had demanded that Iran surrender without conditions, warning Khamenei that American intelligence knows where he has sequestered himself ostensibly in safety from Israeli bombing, but does not at present plan to assassinate him: "at least not for now". In response, Khamenei dismissed the "threatening and absurd statements". 

 

U.S. intervention, warned an Iranian diplomat would risk "all-out war". Thousands of American troops are based within range of Iran's missiles, in nearby countries. That implied threat carries its own risk to Iran since the US. counter-threatened a massive response to any such attack occurring. Another defiant Iranian official declared the country plans to continue enriching uranium for 'peaceful purposes',  ruling out demands that Iran abandon its disputed nuclear program.

 

The most recent Israeli strikes struck a facility making uranium centrifuges, and another producing missile components. Israeli military officials observed that their defences had intercepted ten missiles overnight aimed at Israel in retaliatory barrages, much diminished from the previous nights' attacks. Israel, according to the UN nuclear watchdog agency, struck two centrifuge production facilities in and around Tehran.

 

 

Several nuclear and military sites have been struck in Israel's air campaign, killing top generals and nuclear scientists. At least 585 people have been killed and over 1,300 wounded, according to an Iranian human rights group based in Washington. Some 400 missiles and hundreds of drones have been fired by Iran in retaliatory strikes, killing at least 24 people in Israel, and wounding hundreds more.

 

Schools remain closed in Israel, with many businesses remaining shut, but the ban on gatherings and office work for all but essential employees has been eased, signalling confidence on the part of the Israeli military that its attacks have served to limit  missile capabilities in Iran. While in Iran shops are closed, and people wait in gas lines, packing roads leading out of the capital, Tehran.

 

Israel launched its strikes on Iran to prevent them from building nuclear weapons when negotiations between the U.S. and Iran over a potential diplomatic resolution made no  progress over two months. Trump had set a 60-day window for the talks to succeed, after which Israel's campaign was initiated. Iran, while insisting its nuclear program is peaceful, is the only non-nuclear-armed state to enrich uranium up to 60 percent, a technical step from weapons-grade levels of 90 percent. 

 

 

"One of the Most Terrifying Strikes"

 

"[The assault was] one of the most horrifying attacks on Kyiv [with over 440 drones and 32 missiles launched across Ukraine overnight]."

"Such attacks are pure terrorism. And the whole world, the United States and Europe must finally respond as civilized societies respond to terrorists."

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

 

"[This was a] massive and brutal strike [timed deliberately to coincide with the G7 summit]."

"Putin does this on purpose... He sends a signal of total disrespect to the United States and other partners who have called for an end to the killing."

"Only strong steps and real pressure on Moscow can prove him wrong."

Ukraine's  Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha

A partially destroyed residential building after a mass Russian missile and drone attack overnight in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 17, 2025. (Katya Denisova/The Kyiv Independent)

 

On Tuesday, an overnight Russian missile and drone bombardment of Ukraine killed 15 people, and injured another 156 residents of the capital city, Kyiv. A nine-story Kyiv apartment building was demolished in the deadliest attack on Ukraine's capital this year. As explosions sounded across the Ukrainian capital for close to nine hours, dozens of apartments were destroyed, according to Kyiv City Military Administration head Tymur Tkachenko.

 

More than 440 drones and 32 missiles were fired overnight June 17, making the Kyiv attack "one of the most terrifying strikes" on the  capital, quoting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The Interior Ministry reported that 139 people were injured, while Mayor Vitali Klitschko announced an official day or mourning for Wednesday.

 

Two rounds of direct peace talks have failed to produce any measure of progress in ending the war, entering its fourth year. Civilian areas of Ukraine have repeatedly been hit by Russia with missiles and drones, killing more than 12,000 Ukrainian civilians, according tot he United Nations, even as Russia claims that it targets only military sites.

 

Recent months have seen Russia step up its aerial attacks, launching close to 500 drones at Ukraine on June 10 in the largest overnight drone bombardment of the war. April 24 saw Russia pounding Kyiv as well, on that occasion killing at least 12 people. Long range intensified strikes coincided with a Russian summer offensive on eastern and northeastern sections of the 1,000 kilometre front line where Ukraine, short-handed, needs additional military support from Western partners. 

 

Firefighters extinguish burning parked cars next to a heavily damaged residential building following the Russian missile strike on Ukraine's capital of Kyiv on June 17, 2025. (Genya Savilov/AFP via Getty Images)

 

Doubts have been fueled over uncertainty lingering on U.S. policy on the war, on how much assistance Kyiv can count on. New sanctions were announced by the United Kingdom Tuesday, on Russia's defence industry and its oil-carrying 'shadow fleet' of some 500 ships of uncertain ownership, allowing Moscow to evade  sanctions.

 

President Zelenskyy, appearing by invitation at the G7 conference in Alberta this last few days, is concerned that Ukraine's plight not be put on the back burner in the face of more recent conflict involving Israel's pounding of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the past week in a concerted drive to destroy the reign of the Islamic Republic and its focus on acquiring nuclear weapons, which have been seen as a red line, given Iran's frequent threats to annihilate Israel.

 

North Korea is set to send thousands of military construction workers and deminers in support of Russian reconstruction work in the Kursk region of Russia. Seven thousand troops have already been forwarded by North Korea to aid Russia's war against Ukraine, as well as a vast amount of conventional weapons. Pyongyang and Moscow announced their soldiers fought together to repel an incursion by Ukraine into Russia's Kursk border region.

 

Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu stated that North Korea is to set to dispatch 1,000 deminers along with 5,000 military construction workers in "a kind of brotherly aid", to the Kursk region, according to Russian state news agency RIA Novosti.

 

South Korean, U.S. and Ukraine assessments have revealed that roughly 15,000 North Korean soldiers have been deployed to Russia. And according to South Korea's spy agency, about 600 North Korean soldiers have died on the Russia-Ukraine battlefronts.  

 

The aftermath of the Russian missile attack on a residential building in Kyiv, Ukraine on June 17, 2025. (Anna Donets / The Kyiv Independent)

 

Global March to Gaza : Pouf!

"We were stopped at a checkpoint, they took our passports, they have detained us."

"They have put us in a barrier like animals."

"As a Canadian citizen, I am reminding you [Canada's Foreign Affairs Department]of your duty to act when Canadian[s] are in danger in Egypt."

Torontonian Nour Hadidi

 

"[Egypt retained] the right to take all necessary measures to preserve its national security, including the regulation of the entry and movement of individuals within its territory, especially in sensitive border areas."

Egyptian Foreign Ministry 

 

"Avoid all travel to northern Sinai due to terrorist activity and ongoing military operations by the Egyptian Armed Forces."

"Canadians who choose to travel to the region do so at their own risk."

Global Affairs Canada, travel advisory 

Demonstrators stand at a checkpoint at the Suez Canal city of Ismailia, Egpyt, where activists are being detained and had their passports confiscated. (Submitted by Tatiana Harker)

 

"A lot of people are being detained, left in the [heat] without any answers, for two to three hours."

"The [Canadians] have been contacting the Canadian embassy in Cairo with no answer whatsoever."

"Our government is completely ignoring us."

We're not expecting to breach the siege. We're not expecting to breach the borders. We're doing it in a [peaceful] humanitarian way. 

Tatiana Harker, Palestine Vivra Montreal 

 

"Several people had their phones taken then returned."

"We suspected they have installed new SIM  cards with spyware."

New Brunswick professor Jeff Houlihan 

 

"Some have been waiting for hours detained at a checkpoint between Cairo and Ismailia]." 

"Some people have been told to get their passports back, they have to get on a bus to the airport to be deported."

Ontario physician Yipeng Ge 

Members of a convoy of at least 1,500 people, including activists and supporters from Algeria and Tunisia, shout pro-Palestinian slogans as they gather on their way to Gaza's Rafah Crossing with Egypt, in Zawiya, Libya, on Tuesday. (Yousef Murad/AP)

 

The Canadian protesters who gathered at the Rafah crossing in Egypt expecting to make their way into Gaza in solidarity with Hamas, and who sneeringly refer to Canada as a supporter of 'genocide' and itself an illegally constituted country which colonized the northern half of North America, illegally appropriating it from Canada's Indigenous people on whom a 'cultural genocide' was perpetrated are now bleating heartbreakingly at an official Canada that prewarned entry to Egypt under present conditions would be a their own risk and is failing to provide consular services to them. 

 

They don't feel that it is their own responsibility to manoeuvre themselves out of a compromised situation they willingly entered. Egypt has made it clear that it will not permit invaders, even those who call themselves humanitarian rescuers of Palestinian babies from the malign clutches of despised Israel which in their worldview has no moral right of legitimacy to presume it must respond to the slaughter of Israeli citizens with the intention to neutralize completely the violence that Palestinian leadership and Palestinian terrorist groups have subjected it to for decades.

 

The intention was to march in solidarity of numbers representing a mixture of nationalities aspiring to give moral and practical assistance to embattled Palestinians caught in their government's spiderweb of terror prodding Israel to respond to the October 7 declaration of war with its own version of a final conflict to extinguish the threat that refused to go away on its own. The trouble with the best laid plans of mice and men is not to consider what other mice and men on their very own territory might deem as offensive to their own positions.

 

And so, Egyptian authorities and locals interdicted the intent of the organized demonstration of solidarity with Gaza. What they accomplished for themselves was arrests, detentions, and confiscation of their passports by Egyptian security officials -- among them an estimated 40 Canadians of the almost-100 that had originally set out with the international group that called themselves principled humanitarians. 

 

The Instagram account linking Canadian participants in the Global March to Gaza spoke of "harrowing" treatment meted out to its members, in Egypt. Quoting one unidentified "member of the Canadian delegation" who detailed the scene of participants forced onto waiting vans, having refused to board them voluntarily. "They eventually dragged us up violently into vans. They treated my black Muslim sisters horribly especially" read the account.

 

"They have beaten people. I have seen one woman that was beaten in her face in front of me", German organizer Melanie Schweizer said, describing activists being "pushed" and "dragged" onto deportation buses in a video. Ottawa physician Yipeng Ge who recently described Canada on social media as a white supremacist "settler colonial state" needing to be destroyed was also detained. Ge, prominent in the anti-Israel community, posted support letters from two NDP MPs, Leah Gazan and Alexandre Boulerice.

 

Egypt's ambassador to Canada, Ahmed Hafaz, was appealed to by MP Leah Gazan to help ensure the Canadian activists would be released, and to see that they would be allowed to continue their march through the Sinai peninsula up to the Egyptian border with Gaza. Intended partially as a critique of Egyptian government policy, the Global March to Gaza, was not a great hit in Egypt which maintains a heavily fortified border with Gaza. 

 

Members of a convoy of at least 1,500 people wave Palestinian flags from a bus as the group travels towards Gaza [Yousef Murad/ AP]

 

Biting The Bullet

 

"All gatherings, including synagogue services and public assemblies, are strictly forbidden at this time."

"Residents are urged to keep at least one phone on in every household to receive real-time alerts."

"It is also recommended to keep a radio tuned to an open emergency frequency." 

Israeli Home Front Command notice

 

"President Trump has deftly used the Israeli attack to, in effect, say to the Iranians: 'I am still ready to negotiate a peaceful end to your nuclear program and you might want to go there fast -- because my friend, Bibi is C-R-A-Z-Y."

"I am waiting for your call." 

Mockup of imagined call from Trump to Ayatollah Khamenei: NYT columnist Thomas Friedman 

Israeli security and rescue forces at the scene of a ballistic missile impact in Rehovot, June 15, 2025. (Yossi Aloni/Flash90)

 

Attack sirens sound throughout Israel these days on a regular basis. Messages reach Israelis  constantly from the Home Front command urging people to be aware and to make themselves knowledgeable about the risks they face now that the Israel Defense Forces have been committed finally by the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to square off with the Islamic Republic of Iran with the intention of destroying the Islamist Theocracy and its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, along with the country's nuclear sites, military bases, weapons depots and select military leaders.

 

People are being urged to shelter in place with news of a major attack expected. Messages update Israelis over the massive attacks the Israeli Air Force is engaging in over Iran and retaliation is expected with all its devastating potential. Reservists have received call-up notices and present at their bases. Israelis value their safe rooms, installed in their homes, if they're fortunate. Enter, seal the door shut, and look around at their preparations; fresh water, food, emergency batteries. Or head straight over to community-based shelters and bide the time there until it's deemed safe to emerge.

 

Responders are seen next to a damaged building following a strike by an Iranian missile in the Israeli city of Petah Tikva, east of Tel Aviv, on June 16, 2025. (Jack GUEZ / AFP)

 

They call their loved ones wherever they live around Israel, to ensure that there have been no casualties among them. The Israeli precision strikes on Iranian targets are discussed and hopes expressed that this will be a mercifully short conflict, and everyone can be released in good order from the unbearable fear and tensions that have descended. Some among them even extend their concerns to the Iranian civilian population for whom the IRGC and the Ayatollahs have been a dreadful life burden. The shorter the conflict, the fewer the civilian victims -- whether in Israel or Iran.

 

Israelis take shelter in a bomb shelter during a barrage of Iranian ballistic missiles, in the city of Bat Yam, on June 15, 2025. (Gili Yaari / Flash90)

 

The waves of Israeli attacks targeted the top echelons of the Iranian military, air force and civilian leadership. The Iranian chain of command has been decimated. The nuclear scientists instrumental in developing the country's nuclear capabilities were targets as well. Key nuclear sites were set on fire, and massive secondary explosions rocked the nearby areas. Air bases were bombed, and planes on the tarmac destroyed. Iran's state news broadcaster was bombed.

 

Swarms of drones were launched at Israel from Iran and inside Iraqi territory. It takes seven hours for these missives to reach Israel. Ballistic missiles can reach Israel within a two-hour period, and they do. Yemen too has sent missile fire into Israel. Israelis expect that most of these weapons of destruction will be intercepted before they can reach their targets, and most are -- an estimated 90 percent of them. The few that do get through hit apartments and other civilian infrastructure, resulting in injuries and thus far, a handful of deaths.

 

Residents shelter in  Jerusalem school during a missile attack, June 16, 2025. (Zev Stub/Times of Israel)

 

The Jihadist Theocracy of Iran ... Fading

"We're geared to do whatever is necessary to achieve our dual aim, to remove ... two existential threats - the nuclear threat and the ballistic missile threat."

"We did act - to save ourselves, but also, I think, to not only protect ourselves, but protect the world from this incendiary regime."

"We can't have the world's most dangerous regime have the world's most dangerous weapons."

"Iran will pay a very heavy price for the murder of civilians. We will also achieve our goal. We are here because we are in an existential battle, which today is understood by every citizen of Israel."

"Think about what would happen if Iran had 20,000 missiles like this [that hit the northern Israeli community of Bat Yam]. It would be an existential threat to Israel. That is why we launched a war of salvation against a dual annihilation threat, and we are doing so with strength." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu  

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits homes hit by Iranian projectiles on Sunday, June 15, 2025.

(photo credit: PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE)

How much more threatening provocations, bald statements of intent to annihilate its presence, inciting of deadly violence, complicity in training, arming and dispatching satellite terror groups would any country other than Israel reasonably tolerate before finally in the realization that there was no possibility of reaching detente with an avowed enemy and to prevent total existential calamity it must act to protect itself and its population to preempt the inevitable? After decades of incendiary threats, attacks by terror proxies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and the potential of facing a nuclear strike, Israel, left with no other choice, moved to defend itself and extinguish that threat.

 

Friday, 13th of June long before dawn rose to illuminate the day, that pre-emptive military strike was undertaken, reaching deep within Iranian territory toward very specific targets -- the country's nuclear infrastructure, its military sites, and most particularly its organizational capacity in the targeting of its senior military officials, its nuclear scientists and those senior officials in control of state mechanisms geared toward the jihad intentions of the theocratic state.

 

People gather outside an area hit by an Israeli strike in Tehran on 13 June. Photograph: Meghdad Madadi/Tasnim News/AFP/Getty Images

 

Israel is accused by many in the Western media, hinted at by the leaders of allied nations of overstepping its rights in planning and executing a full-scale attack on Iran. But none of these other countries have had to live for years with the Iranian Damoclean sword hanging over them, or responding to strike after strike by neghbouring terrorist groups or their administrations that incite the populace to violence against their population. Urging a ceasefire when Israel has only just launched an operation to nullify the Islamic Republic regime's focus on destroying the Jewish state, is an exercise in futility.

 

The threat against Israel represents a direct and imminent one, but the same surly threats, although not quite so freely expressed, are meant to create disequilibrium within Western democracies for the ultimate purpose of destroying their culture, laws, politics and ideology in favour of that of extreme political Islam as Muslim migration accelerates, creating large political, professional and activist blocs whose favour is sought by politicians with an eye fixed on votes, bypassing the longer stealth picture of overturned traditions and values.

 

Israel's Iron Dome air defense system fires to intercept missiles over Tel Aviv, Israel on Sunday.

Leo Correa/AP

 

Israel's expected, but still shocking decision to launch a full-scale attack on Iran is fully legitimate in the international arena of legal permissibility. Every nation has the inherent right to defend itself under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations. Iran, as the only member of the UN that has openly threatened the annihilation of another UN member, it is understood that the threat goes well beyond rhetoric, but expresses full intention. 

 

According to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Israel is a "cancerous tumour" which "must be  eradicated". Iran has never been content to stop at verbal insults and threats of assault, but has moved to ensure that actual violent attacks take place as precursors to its final intent. In the IRGC's Quds Division's formation, training and arming of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Houthis in Yemen, Shia militias in Iraq, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, a pincer movement closing in on Israel was not only contemplated but put into motion.

 

These are groups whose focus on occasion strayed toward disturbed actions hitting Western interests through Tehran's global network, attacking American troops, disrupting global shipping, and hitting western allies in the Mediterranean, South America and Europe. Which led eventually to October 7, 2023, when Iranian proxy Hamas gave vent to its ambition of fomenting dread terror to a degree not to be outdone in its sadistic savagery, much less imagined that human nature could sustain such a degree of malevolence.

 

Rescue personnel work at an impact site following a missile attack from Iran, in Bat Yam, Israel, June 15, 2025 (credit: RONEN ZVULUN/REUTERS)

 

But it was an event that galvanized a traumatized nation to launch its military in a response to destroy the capacity of the Palestinian terror group to ever imagine a repeat could occur, striking at its leaders, its headquarters, its rocket launching sites, its interminable tunnel system, its weapons depots. And when Hamas was left licking its wounds but still launching missiles, it was Hezbollah's turn after a year of lobbing missiles into Israel, when precision technology placed pagers in the hands and pockets of shocked terrorists for long-range efficiency in administering punishment.

 

Although the Houthis' direct fire into Israel placed an additional burden on Israel to respond to that third front, the fourth failed to fully surge when Syrian opposition groups moved to destroy the Assad regime's hold on Syria. And then it was Iran's turn, to feel the full vibrant, deadly strength of the enemy whose ire it had so carefully cultivated over the years. The International Atomic Energy Agency had declared Iran in violation of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations earlier in the week. In the realization that it had little time left before Iran reached the end stage of producing nuclear weapons, Israel took the initiative.

 

Vehicles jam a highway as a fire blazes nearby in the oil depots of Shahran, northwest of Tehran, on June 15, 2025. (ATTA KENARE / AFP)

 

Necessity moved Israel to destroy the Islamic Republic's aspirations for nuclear achievement; to match nuclear warheads to the technologically advanced missiles it had devised for that purpose. With success, Israel may remove a regime that beggared its nation's culture and economy for the greater interests of forming a Shi'ite cabal capable of undermining and destabilizing the greater numbers of Sunni-led Arab regional governments. Removing the Ayatollahs and the IRGC from power in Iran to free the Iranian population from its stranglehold, relieving the region of the tensions inherent in Iran's bid for conquest, and freeing Israel from the prospect of a nuclear night, would also release the international community from the octopus-probing arms of Islamist state theocratic jihad. 

 

The Iranian regime’s security chain of command that has been eliminated by Israeli strikes, June 14, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)