China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has agreed to attend next month's Ukrainian peace conference in Switzerland with one proviso, that Russia be invited. Mao said that Beijing supports the "timely convening of an international peace conference that is recognized by both the Russian and Ukrainian sides."

That sounds reasonable, after all, one would expect that peace negotiations would include the representatives of the warring parties. But that is not the case here. And while more than 90 countries have confirmed that they will attend the upcoming meetings, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has excluded the one nation whose presence might make a difference. Russia.

Naturally, many analysts are puzzled by Zelensky's omission which precludes any possible settlement or end to the hostilities. Simply put, the fighting will continue until Russia and Ukraine conduct bilateral negotiations and reach an agreement.

So, what is going on here?

Brussels is reportedly considering whether to subject the Russian-made platform to its 'disinformation' laws

EU officials are considering listing Telegram as a "very large online platform," a move that would open the privacy-focused messaging app up to stringent censorship rules, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday.

Bloomberg's report cited anonymous sources who claimed that Brussels has reached out to Telegram in a bid to establish how many people regularly use the platform. Telegram claims that it has around 41 million monthly active users, a figure that places it below the EU's 45-million-user threshold for strict regulation under its Digital Services Act (DSA).

The European Commission currently counts 19 "very large online platforms" and search engines, including Amazon, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Slovak PM Robert Fico's independent stance earned him the wrath of NATO and the EU. Did a Western-directed plot to remove his troublesome government from office trigger his assassination attempt?

On May 15, Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was almost murdered in broad daylight. While shaking hands with supporters during a public appearance, a gunman shot him twice in the abdomen and once in the shoulder. The attack left him fighting for his life while authorities raced for clues, and many observers at home and abroad puzzled about the would-be assassin's motives and whether foreign actors were in some way responsible for the attack. And despite the shooter's instantaneous arrest, those questions still linger weeks later.

Fico, a veteran Slovak political figure, was re-elected in September 2023 amid a wave of public resentment over the proxy war in Ukraine, pledging to end arms supplies to Kiev and anti-Russian sanctions. On the campaign trail, Western leaders, journalists and pundits aggressively stoked fears of the "pro-Putin," "populist" candidate returning to office. Ukraine's Western-backed "Center for Countering Disinformation" publicly accused him of spreading "infoterror" back in April 2022.

Is this the last summer of relative peace?

The satanic cabal known as "politicians" that roost over the populations of the West have discovered the joys of war-talk, and they can't start World War Three fast enough. But why this sudden push? Even leaders of countries that are mere specks of dirt on the map (Estonia, for instance) squeak about "bringing Russia to its knees." Sure, Western politicians are lapdogs of Washington, but why this naïve war-talk? Is it just deep duncery (usual for the Western politician), or is something more sinister afoot?

We use the term "satanic" purposefully. We have long known that the Western powermongers are neo-Malthusians — that is, they all believe that the planet has too many people and we need to do something to bring the population down. The less people living on the planet is better. This is the guiding principle behind every aspect of modern life, so that every political, social, and even cultural decision is guided by this principle. Culling humanity is the grand, moral goal — the postmodern utopia, where we only have as many people as we need. The "we," by the way, are the powermongers. What's the point of having millions of useless eaters, they reason? Culling the herd is good management of nature (the planet): Woke husbandry pushed to its ultimate limit. Such overarching evil can only be satanic.

And then along comes this war in Ukraine. Here is a country that is not part of the EU, nor a member of NATO, but all the Western politicians latched on to it, because it was "existential" somehow for each of them. For places like Canada, the UK, New Zealand to be truly safe, Ukraine must win. If it loses, well, it's slavery and the dull road to the Gulag, for the whole world. It's absurd really that we are ruled by such morons who spew endless lies which are sadly believed, and therefore the general populace keeps electing them dutifully (but let's not digress).

The entire war in Ukraine, for the West, was a round-robin of wonder weapons that were going to "bring Russia to its knees" — so many that it's now hard to keep track... there were HIMARS, Leopards, Abrams, Patriots, Bradleys, and let's not forget the much-bruited 61 billion that was going to be the bee's knees of military might which was going to undo Russia lickety-split; and of course the much-awaited F-16s. To be charitable, let's not forget the various armchair journo-strategists who have been meaningfully employed for the past two years; anyone that can put two (or less) words together has advice to offer on to conduct the war. It's tiresome to even parse the endless strategies spun out. Are these people being paid by the word, one might begin to wonder? (By the way, you can easily spot these experts — they love to use the term, "geopolitics").

This past Sunday in Doha, I had a meeting with three high-level representatives of the Taliban Political Office in Qatar, including a founding member of the body (in 2012) and a key official of the previous Taliban government of 1996-2001. By mutual consent, their names should not be made public.

The cordial meeting was brokered by Professor Sultan Barakat, who teaches at the College of Public Policy at Hamad bin Khalifa University - set in an outstanding, immaculate campus outside of Doha which attracts students from across the Global South. Prof. Barakat is one of those very few - discreet - players who knows everything that matters in West Asia, and in his case, also in the intersection of Central and South Asia.

With my three Taliban interlocutors, we talked extensively about the challenges of the new Taliban era, new development projects, the role of Russia-China, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). They were particularly curious about Russia, and posed several questions.

Professor Barakat is working on a parallel angle. He is conducting the work of the Afghanistan Future Thought Forum, whose 9th session took place in Oslo in mid-May, and was attended by 28 Afghans - men and women - as well as an array of diplomats of Iran, Pakistan, India, China, Turkey, U.S., UK and EU, among others.

The key discussions at the forum revolve around the extremely complex issue of the Taliban engagement with that fuzzy entity, the "international community". In Doha, I directly asked my three interlocutors what is the Taliban's number one priority: "The end of sanctions", they replied.

For that to happen, the UN Security Council must overturn its 2003 decision of designating several members of the Taliban as a terrorist organization; and simultaneously, discrimination/demonization/sanctions by Washington need to go. As it stands, that remains an immensely tall order.

The forum - the next session should be held in Kabul, possibly in the Fall - is patiently working step by step. It's a matter of successive concessions from both sides, building trust, and for that it's essential to appoint an UN-recognized mediator, or "adviser for normalization" to supervise the whole process.

In this case, full support by UNSC members Russia and China will be essential.

With the closing arguments set for Tuesday in the trial of former president Donald Trump, defense counsel are in a rather curious position.

There is still debate among legal experts as to the specific crime that District Attorney Alvin Bragg is alleging.

Trump's lawyers are defending a former president who is charged under a state misdemeanor which died years ago under the statute of limitations. It was then zapped back into life in the form of roughly three dozen felonies by claiming that bookkeeping violations — allegedly hiding payments to Stormy Daniels to ensure her silence about a supposed affair with Trump — were committed to hide another crime.

But what is that second crime?

Even liberal legal analysts admitted that they could not figure out what was being alleged in Bragg's indictment. Now, after weeks of trial, the situation has changed little.

US President Joe Biden has given Ukraine permission to use American-supplied weapons to strike targets in Russia, but only near the Kharkiv region, US officials say.

One official told BBC News his team had been directed to ensure Ukraine was able to use US weapons for "counter-fire purposes" to "hit back at Russian forces hitting them or preparing to hit them".

Russian forces have made gains in the Kharkiv region in recent weeks after a surprise offensive in the area, close to the border with Russia.

On Friday, Ukrainian officials said three people had been killed and 16 injured in Russian shelling of a residential building in a suburb of Kharkiv city.

The US official also told the BBC:

"Our policy with respect to prohibiting the use of Army Tactical Missile System [ATACMS] or long-range strikes inside of Russia has not changed."

When asked by CBS, the BBC's US partner, whether the new policy included attacking Russian aircraft, an official said:

"We've never told them [Ukraine] they can't shoot down a Russian airplane over Russian soil that's coming to attack them."

The White House and state department had no immediate comment.

When the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC) announced he was seeking arrest warrants against Israeli and Hamas leaders, he issued a cryptic warning: "I insist that all attempts to impede, intimidate or improperly influence the officials of this court must cease immediately."

Karim Khan did not provide specific details of attempts to interfere in the ICC's work, but he noted a clause in the court's foundational treaty that made any such interference a criminal offence. If the conduct continued, he added, "my office will not hesitate to act".

The prosecutor did not say who had attempted to intervene in the administration of justice, or how exactly they had done so.

Now, an investigation by the Guardian and the Israeli-based magazines +972 and Local Call can reveal how Israel has run an almost decade-long secret "war" against the court. The country deployed its intelligence agencies to surveil, hack, pressure, smear and allegedly threaten senior ICC staff in an effort to derail the court's inquiries.

The official representative of the Chinese Ministry of Defense, Wu Qian, said that the PLA is ready, together with the Russian Armed Forces, to defend justice in the world.

Wu Qian stressed that the Chinese armed forces are willing to work together with the Russian army to fully implement the important consensus reached by the heads of state of the two states, and together with their Russian counterparts, defend international justice and impartiality, and make every effort to ensure international and regional security.

Earlier, a representative of the Chinese Ministry of Defense explained the stated goals of holding PLA exercises around the island of Taiwan. Wu Qian stressed that the exercises are a necessary, reasonable and legitimate step aimed at combating Taipei's attempt to proclaim "Taiwan independence" by enlisting the support of external forces.

US-funded non-governmental organizations (NGOs) tried to stage "revolutions" in Georgia, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze said on Friday.

Earlier in the day, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the United States announces a comprehensive review of bilateral cooperation with Georgia in connection with the bill on foreign agents and introduces a new policy on visa restrictions.

"NGOs, including those funded from the United States, planned to stage a revolution when they demanded the resignation of the government... There have been two attempts at a revolution, and in the past weeks there has been a third attempt," Kobakhidze told reporters.