Recently the news about the assassination of Colonel Ivan Voronych from Ukraine’s SBU in Kiev, on July 10, has made the headlines. Several hours later the Ukraine authorities said the men suspected of killing Colonel Ivan Voronych were liquidated. The assassination was caught on surveillance cameras. Colonel Ivan Voronych, who commanded a special operations unit, was hit by a few bullets, almost point blank. What does that event imply?

If it was Russia’s FSB (Federal Security Service or Федеральная служба безопасности) who were behind the assassination, then it means that they have very good intelligence inside Ukraine’s SBU (Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrainy or Служба безпеки України). They must have one or a few moles providing them with the necessary data about the individual officers and their responsibilities. Surely, the man earmarked for liquidation was selected with a purpose: Colonel Ivan Voronych may have been a mastermind behind some of the attacks within Russia. If that is the case, then Ukrainian officers – especially those responsible for actions in Russia – might become a bit nervous. Suspicion in their ranks has certainly crept in, while countermeasures are certainly being taken.

The assassination might also trigger a series of similar events. Up to now it seems that Russia has exercised restraint when it comes to hitting the commanders and leaders. That may have changed and so we are in to witness more actions like that. If so, then it might also imply that the Russian side feels relatively secure: they wouldn’t begin chasing after Ukrainian military and civilian leaders without feeling relatively secure at home, without feeling that their leaders are well protected. That assumption, if correct, entails that the prevalence of Russia over Ukraine extends beyond the military in the strict sense of the word and encompasses intelligence.

Judging by the available footage from the surveillance camera, Colonel Ivan Voronych was neither protected by anybody nor did he have a weapon on him. He was casually dressed, unsuspecting or not much suspecting. That is to say he felt himself secure enough to move about on his own.

If the assumption that Colonel Ivan Voronych was behind some of the actions carried out inside Russia is correct, the killing might put a brake on executing other actions that are being planned. It might have a deterring effect. On the face of it, Ukrainian officers might maintain a bellicose attitude – what else can they do while confronting the public? – but the psychological factor of being the next on the hitting list will certainly be brought to bear.

Some commentators say that the dirty phase of the ongoing war has begun, a phase of assassinations of top civilian and military leaders.

The shares of the German car giants have been in decline for three years. At the same time, you can see that hardly anyone in the world (in terms of sales figures) is buying American car brands apart from Americans. Well, Tesla was an exception and Ford Mondeo and Mustang fans are not representative either. This is why American cars are hardly considered in future predictions for developments on the market. The Japanese are getting more and more expensive, while the Koreans are (still) getting better. In the queue to the customer, the Chinese are doing best, as the graph below illustrates. It turns out that Tesla has also been on a downward trend for three years, even if the brand has always been a symbol of the progressive West, which was supposed to only use electricity.

Tesla may have been hurt by its owner’s meddling in politics. Musk has leaned to the right and exaggerated, Jaguar has leaned to the left (with its LGBT commercials) and its sales figures have also dropped significantly as a result. Slowly, managers, and probably in other industries such as fashion, are realizing that meddling in politics is hurting them and perhaps it will be them (as lobbyists and influencers, to put it mildly) and not the masses who will make politicians change their minds.

The fact is that the Chinese giant BYD is now opening most of the car showrooms in Europe. But I’m not very interested in what European politicians will do about it (I’m sure – nothing at all). I am interested in what the Koreans will now do to defend their strong position on the market. 

What are these characteristics of the present-day collective West? Democracy? Not really. Freedom of speech? Certainly not. Freedom of association? Go and check out. Peaceful policies? Give me a break! What strikes the eye are these:

① green economy;

② rainbow sexuality;

③ ethnic replacement;

④ women empowerment; and

⑤ hostility to Russia.

① Green economy is an obsession. It has been an obsession for decades now. It began long ago, with an ozone layer – do you you still remember that craze? Already in the eighties of the previous century we learned that the planet earth was allegedly exposed to the pernicious sun rays. Refrigerators were kept responsible for it. Strictly speaking, a chemical compound used in them. Then came the news about acid rains, about the shrinkage of the Amazon forest, about this and that. Then alternatively global warming and global freezing. We were told with all seriousness that we only had a decade or so before we all would die miserably because of the degradation of the environment. There were people, especially young impressionable women with pseudo-education, who believed it all and had genuine panic attacks. No wonder: the doomsday was about to hit the planet anytime soon. Unlike their ancestors those young impressionable people did not expect the Final Judgement that used to be associated with the end of the world. Those young impressionable people – scared pout of their wits as they were – wanted to destroy the industry around them and put the technological clock back. Windmills and bicycles were to become the basis of the new era. (But still, they loved to listen to music using their most advanced technological devices…)

② Strange as it might appear the Western part of humanity sort of suddenly discovered the multiplicity of biological sexes. There were not two of them, but three, thirteen, thirty, and rising. Where did such a proliferation of biological sexes come from? Why did it emerge in the modern times? The answer was deafening: humanity has always had more than two biological sexes. They have always existed in the underground, suppressed by patriarchy, the Christian churches, and generally the mental backwardness of the preceding centuries. Literature and history began to be analyzed through the lens of the multiplicity of biological sexes: suddenly we began to learn that this and that scientist, writer, painter or inventor was gay while all the novels and poetry contained concealed messages of alternative sexuality. The United Nations issued school syllabuses aimed at educating almost babies about the many biological sexes and the possibility of changing them on demand. It began to be preached that there is no difference between boys and girls, between men and women. Serious people, university professors and top politicians began having trouble defining the term woman.

③ This went hand in hand with intense ethnic replacement. All of a sudden people from the Third World began to be imported en masse to Europe and the United States along with Canada, allegedly because of wars and persecution. Well, wars have accompanied humanity since Adam and Eve and somehow there was no regular and constant influx of foreigners from countries thousands of miles away, from other continents. At first, cities, then towns and eventually villages began to darken from one day to the other. This darkening could be observed very well if you looked at the sports teams. The French football team is a prime example: it infrequently happens that there is not a single white player. The incompatibility of the newcomers with the host nations was obvious to everyone trusting his senses but not to the powers that be. Riots in the suburbs? No, these are peaceful demonstrations. Heightened levels of crime? These are perpetrated by the French and the British, the Germans and the Swedes. You don’t believe it? Look into their passports! No-go zones? These are but areas of cultural diversity. Forget about the freedom in your economic activity: you need to employ “people of colour” or else you are going to be denounced as a racist.

④ The political class is gradually being saturated with women: we need women, more women, women everywhere. (Actually, not everywhere, not in the coal mines or on construction sites, but that’s a digression). Some look like have-been models, others like… hags. Women are allegedly as good as men, especially in positions of power. Women have been exploited and suppressed for millennia, but that needs to be redressed, and redressed it is. Women will lead us along the lines of feminist policy-making, and along the lines of combating toxic masculinity. Surely it was men who have made all the wars up to now? With the era of women, the world will experience peace, heavenly peace. Women do the same kind of job with the same quality (if not, of course, better) and they are paid less! That must be put to rights. Forget about the freedom in your economic activity: you need to employ women or else you are going to be denounced as a misogynist.

⑤ Russia is such a big country where men rule and where no rainbow sexuality is allowed to display intimate acts in the public. Russia is a country that has always had bad press in the collective West irrespective of whether it was tsarist, Bolshevik or capitalist. It needs to be subjugated and fragmented, it needs to let itself be controlled. If it refuses, it is painted as a tyranny, as an aggressor, as the mainspring of all backwardness. Besides, Oceania needs to have Eurasia, in the capacity of a bitter enemy. An enemy – an out-group – unites Western citizens – an in-group – around their incompetent leaders. An enemy diverts attention from ethnic replacement and failures of green economy, an enemy allows for expenditure on the military things and easily explains economic shortcomings. An enemy is a blessing! A few years back an attempt was made to reset the world by means of David 19. The attempt was partly successful: it wiped out lots and lots of businesses. Yet, David 19 did not solve all the old and emerging problems. These can be solved with the aid of a formidable enemy, with the aid of war.

Such are the five shades of the collective West. Can anyone challenge this depiction? 

Thoughts occasioned by the panel discussion held during the 2025 Petersburg international economic forum

During the 28th St Petersburg International Economic Forum 2025, after the opening speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin there was a panel discussion attended by the representatives from Bahrain, China, Indonesia, South Africa and Russia in the person of Vladimir Putin. He answered the questions that were put to him by the moderator. Here are the take-aways of what the Russian leader had to say in no particular order.

① Yes, the new world order is in the making, but neither Russia nor China are creating it. Russia and China are merely assisting in the process because Moscow and Beijing have understood its inevitability – “like the inevitability of the rising of the sun,” to quote Putin – while there are forces in the world which cannot come to terms with the emerging changes. Russia and China only help to make the process develop smoothly, with the process itself being natural.

② The leitmotif of Russian foreign policy is the principle that all nations should have security guarantees or security arrangements, but never at the cost of the insecurity of other nations. NATO expansion is an example of creating a zone of security for some at the cost of pushing others in the zone of insecurity.

③ Russia does not want an unconditional surrender of Ukraine: though Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same nation, independent Ukraine is going to exist; yet, precisely because Ukrainians and Russians are one and the same nation, the whole of Ukraine is in a sense Russia, belongs to Russia. When Ukraine gained its independence in 1991, it was agreed by the superpowers that the country would remain neutral, no part of military alliances and have no nuclear weapons. This should have been abided by.

④ War in Ukraine continues because of the stubbornness of the Ukrainian side. Ukrainian stubbornness is in turn predicated on the pressure from the West. The Russian president mentioned by name British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and previous American President Joe Biden as the main factors rendering Ukrainians incapable of negotiating; he also mentioned the sum of 250 billion dollars that the West spent on Ukraine to turn the country against Russia. The longer the duration of the war, the worse position will Kiev have in negotiations. Here, President Vladimir Putin made a hint by quoting the Russian saying which states that wherever a Russian soldier sets his foot, this territory becomes Russian. A message to Ukrainians to stop hostilities before they lose much more.

⑤ Asked about the possible use of the so-called dirty bomb by Ukrainians, Vladimir Putin said that Russian doctrine specifies two things: first, Russia always responds to an assault, and second, Russia retaliates in a mirror fashion (tit for tat).

⑥ Russia regards Iran as a friendly state. Russia built in Iran one nuclear power station and is about to build two more. American and Israeli attacks on Iran have not and will not cause Russia to withdraw its workers and engineers from the country. Russia has vested interests concurrently in Israel and Iran. Why? Because on the one hand there are two million Russian-speaking Jews in Israel (out of the total of 10 million inhabitants of the country, of which Jews make up approximately 70%) and Russia does not forget that these people originate from Russia; on the one hand the population of the Russian Federation is 15% Muslim (Tatars, Chechens and many others), which positions Russia quite close to the Islamic and Arab world.

⑦ Yes, the development of the events in Ukraine and the Middle East is bringing the world closer to the outbreak of the Third World War, sadly. The world needs a peaceful solution.

That’s the summary of Putin’s responses. How well do they reflect reality?

Yes, Russia is a diversified country, but unlike its Western counterparts, it is diversified due to its long history. Russia does not have Muslims primarily because it imported them from abroad as the Western countries have been doing for a couple of decades and continue to do so. To the contrary, in the Middle Ages Russia was conquered by Muslim Mongols and remained under the Mongol (Tatar) yoke for centuries until it gradually began to reconquer its territory, a process reminiscent of the Spanish Reconquista. While the Spaniards got rid of the Muslim population – either expelling them or compelling them to accept Christianity – Russia subdued the remnants of the once powerful Mongol state and let their descendants live in Russia without demanding that they accept Christianity. During the time of the Soviet Union many of Muslim nations received autonomy within their own republics. The only Muslim states conquered by Russia were those living in the Caucasus and the vicinity.

In the 19th century Russia had the largest Jewish population in the world. How did that come about? Well, Jews were dispersed across Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa after the Romans destroyed their temple in Jerusalem at the beginning of the first millennium. They settled in all European countries where they sooner or later found themselves on a collision course with the host nations. Gradually, they were evicted from all Western European nations – Spain, France, England, Germany – and moved east where they found refuge in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the second largest state by area in Europe in the 15th-18th centuries. It was here where Jews created a state within the state with their own parliament, own tax-collectors, separate villages and towns, and of course separate culture. When towards the end of the 19th the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was partitioned by Prussia, Austria and Russia, the overwhelming majority of Jews found themselves within the Russian Empire as Russia took the largest portion of the Commonwealth. There were so many of the Jews in Russia that they posed a problem to the authorities which in an attempt to protect the Russian uneducated peasantry from exploitation decided to restrict the area where Jews were allowed to live. This area was called the Pale of Settlement. This Pale of Settlement stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea along Russia’s western borders. The area was huge (larger than any European state) and there were many exceptions allowing Jews to leave the Pale and settle elsewhere, but still some of the Jews resented it a lot, feeling disadvantaged. That is one of the reasons why so many of them joined the communist movement and took part in the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, which not without a justification is called by some not a Russian but a Jewish revolution. In the early years of the Soviet Union the Jews occupied many key positions in the party, the government and the police (Trotsky, Bukharin, Yagoda, Sverdlov, Litvinov, Andropov and many, many others); they were numerous among artists, writers, film directors and composers, and among scientists (film director Eisenstein, physicist Sakharov). With time they were largely purged from the party and the government and they began to resent to Bolshevik – socialist – Soviet state in turn. Many tried to flee to the West and many succeeded. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they emigrated en masse to Israel. Of course, their mother tongue was not Hebrew nor even Yiddish but Russian and so they continued and continue to this day to speak Russian in Israel, print newspapers and broadcast radio and television channels in Russian.

Jewish and Russian ethnic and cultural factors on the one hand and Muslim and Russian ethnic and cultural factors on the other hand dovetail to a large extent. Ethnic and cultural? Also economic! Almost all Russian (and Ukrainian) oligarchs are Jewish (Abramovich, Berezovsky, Khodorkovsky in Russia, and Kolomoyskyi in Ukraine to name the few more familiar), while one of the Ukrainian oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov is Muslim. There are Jews who support the United States in the conflict in Ukraine, but there are also Jews that side with Russia in the same conflict. They may have feel predominantly Jewish, but their Russian sentiment or nostalgia has not disappeared in thin air. As hard as it is to believe there are Russian Jews who hate the Jewish president of Ukraine because he fights against Russia!

The same feelings are true of post-Soviet Muslim countries in Central Asia – Kirghistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan – and one Muslim post-Soviet country in the Caucasus: Azerbaijan. As penetrated as they are by the Western intelligence, many representatives of those nations can still speak Russian and preserve sentiment about the times when their countries were part of the Soviet Union.

Yes, Russia is somehow present in Israel; yes, Russia is also a part of the Muslim world. And, yes, Russia is to Ukraine as the United States is to the United Kingdom. Just as the United States (and Canada) is a historical descendant of England and Scotland (and Ireland), so Russia (known also as Great Russia) emerged as a part of the Kievan Rus’. And just as the United States became far more powerful than its parent – the United Kingdom – so, too, Russia (centered around Moscow) has become much more powerful than its parent country Kievan Rus’ (which is why the latter is also known as Little Russia). Kievan Rus’, or Russia, centered around Kiev was not conquered by Russia: it was conquered by the Mongols and remained under the Mongol yoke for centuries, as mentioned above. Then it was joined to the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. With the weakening and fall of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russia centered around Kiev was ultimately incorporated to the Russia centered around Moscow.

Yes, the new world order is in the making. It is in the making not because Russia and China want to impose it: it is in the making because it has always been in the making and will always be. There was never a time of prolonged stability. Think of the history of the Jews that has been plotted in brief above: at the beginning of our era they lived in the Holy Land (present-day Israel). Then they were dispersed in Asia, northern Africa and Europe. They would relocate from place to place in Europe as they would be expelled from all the places they would settle. Eventually they landed up in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, and then Russia, and from there after two thousand years many of them found their way back to the Holy Land.

Look at Russia itself. In the Middle Ages it began as a conglomeration of closely related principalities of which Kiev was regarded as the most important. Internecine fights and the Mongol invasion impeded the development of Russia as such, splitting it into roughly three parts: one incorporated into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one under the direct Mongol yoke and one, which gradually emerged as an independent state, later to “collect” all the other Russian territories. Kiev began as the mother of Russian towns or cities, then – after it had been razed and burnt to the ground by the Mongols – its status fell to that of a provincial town; then it rose again as a big capital city of Soviet, and then independent Ukraine, to be threatened in its political status at present. Kiev was in the hands of medieval Russians, Poles, and again Russians. In the twentieth century it was briefly occupied by Poles (1920) and Germans (1941-1943). It might be occupied again by Russians.

Within roughly the last hundred years China evolved dramatically. It began as a weak state controlled by the Western powers, then it was partially conquered by Japan, then it saw a civil war and the ultimate victory of communism. Communism brought the notorious cultural revolution, poverty and international isolation of the country. Then the Middle Kingdom rose like the phoenix from the ashes: preserving its communist rhetoric, it began a rapid capitalist-like development, became a nuclear and recently cosmic superpower and became a real threat to Japan, which once controlled huge parts of it, and the United States, which once used to keep China submissive.

What about the United States? It seems to slowly becoming the shadow of its former self. The country began as the famous thirteen colonies. The country was born in an act of collective treason: the British subjects who settled on the new continent rebelled against their king on the old continent. They created a republic and… a nation, which in itself is laughable. If Americans were a nation at that time, then the East and West Germans were separate nations between 1949-1991, in which case the unification is a misnomer. Anyway, the thirteen original colonies expanded in terms of territory. With no initial interest in European problems (they used the continental Napoleonic wars to purchase a quarter of the continent – Louisiana – from the French!), the United States slowly let itself be drawn into international matters. The two world wars served as two powerful springboards for the United States to assert itself as a superpower. This superpower has brought about the collapse of its main rival – the Soviet Union. Today?

Today this superpower is losing its global control and it is decaying from inside. The demographic (low birthrate), the ethnic (fewer and fewer white Americans), the moral (LGTB, feminism, open satanism, racism against whites), the economic (outsourced industry, shrinkage of the middle class) and the military (failure in Vietnam, in Afghanistan) debacles coupled with an image of a rogue state (punitive military actions against Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.) and the intensification of censorship are all the signs of an oncoming and imminent collapse. Was this collapse caused by China? Hell no! It was the United States itself that strengthened communist China! Was the collapse caused by Russia? Still less so! It was Russia in the form of the Soviet Union who was defeated by the United States, and it is Russia that is still defending itself against the United States in one way or another. The new world order in which the United States is going to play an ever smaller role is in the making due to factors other than Russia or China. What are these factors? Perhaps they are psychological: capitalist greed (hence the outsourcing of the industry to China), perhaps the moral putrefaction caused by affluence (was this not the cause of the fall of the Roman Empire, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Imperial Russia?), perhaps the social stratification between the super rich few and the very many very poor, perhaps over-confidence and self-pride.

Was it not overconfidence that made Ukraine resist Russia for the last three years? Was it not self-pride that makes Europe lust for war no matter how big is the human and material cause? If Europe falls – which will be a component of the emerging new world order – it will not be because of Russia or China. Europe will fall and already is falling because of itself. Ethnic replacement, LGTB anti-morality, legalization of the termination of pregnancy on demand, bellicose leaders, green economy, curtailment of the freedom of speech and association and many other factors are at play here. These are the signs of decay, these are the signs of the new world order in the making. If Russia or China will have a part in bringing about this new word order, then only in the sense of putting the finishing touches. The Mongols would not have conquered medieval Russia had it been morally strong. Prussia, Austria and Russia would not have partitioned the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had it been internally strong. The barbarians would not have conquered Rome had it been… But it was not. It let itself slide into the abyss of moral weakness. So are the United States and Europe about to see their demise unless – after the period of deterioration – there emerges a Vladimir Putin. If the West is to survive, needs someone of that calibre. Russia, too, was in a state of decay before the year 2000.