by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio – Gospa News founder and director
UPDATE ON SEPTEMBER, 7, 2026
«The Iranian judiciary has released the initial findings of an investigation showing that weapons used in a US bombing attack earlier this week on a wedding ceremony in the south of the country were American-made», Iranian Press TV Reported yesterday.
The head of the Iranian judiciary’s local branch in the southern province of Hormozgan said on Saturday that projectile fragments scattered around the site of a wedding ceremony on September 1, killing five people including a children, had been examined as part of the investigation, showing they were manufactured by US company Raytheon.
“The nature of the weapons used in the terrorist attack on civilian gatherings in Kohestak, Sirik, has been fully documented using advanced technical analysis tools and image data processing,” said Mojtaba Ghahremani.
Ghahremani said investigators had carried out a meticulous examination of the inscriptions, barcodes, and other details engraved on the projectile remains, leaving no doubt that the munitions belong to the US military.
He said the type of military thermal battery used in the ammunition revealed that it is from a series of high-voltage batteries used exclusively in the flight guidance systems of precision-guided bombs operated by US military forces.
The official said a military identification code, CAGE Code: 96214, registered on the projectile fragments directly links it to the weapons company Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a major US defense contractor and industrial corporation that manufactures weapons as well as military and commercial electronics.
Much more important than official release is the image and the video from wreckage that at first had induced the experts to identify the weapon as am AGM-84H SLAM-ER cruise missile (read below).
On the tiny identification plate there is in fact the writing AGM – I 154 C-I which corresponds to the glide-bomb AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) produced by Raytheon under the stamp NAVAIR which is the matrix of the American weapons used in the joint activity formed by the US Navy and US Air Force.
The AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon (JSOW) is a glide bomb that resulted from a joint venture between the United States Navy and Air Force to deploy a standardized medium-range precision-guided weapon, especially for engagement of defended targets from outside the range of standard anti-aircraft defenses, thereby increasing aircraft survivability and minimizing friendly losses.
It is intended to be used against soft targets such as parked aircraft, trucks, armored personnel carriers (APCs), and surface-to-air missile sites (SAMs). Prior to launch, it is given a destination through either a predesignated waypoint or a point marked through a targeting pod. It glides, using two wings that pop out for added lift, to the marked destination and dispenses submunitions in a short, roughly linear pattern.
The designation of the Joint Standoff Weapon as an “air-to-ground missile” is a misnomer, as it is an unpowered bomb with guidance avionics, similar to the older GBU-15.
But in this specific case, a more sophisticated weapon was used for the attack on the wedding ceremony…
The AGM-154C uses an Imaging Infrared (IIR) terminal seeker with autonomous guidance. The AGM-154C carries the BROACH warhead. This two stage 225 kg (500 lb) warhead is made up from a WDU-44 shaped augmenting warhead and a WDU-45 follow through bomb. The weapon is designed to attack hardened targets. It entered service with the US Navy in February 2005.
The use of this projectile minimally mitigates the implications of the attack ordered by the US Navy by US President Donald Trump; in fact, autonomous guidance oriented by the target’s heat source implies the possibility of an error that the SALM-ER guided cruise missile does not allow.
Below is a live-fire video released by the Royal Australian Air Force demonstrating the actual use of an AGM 154-C glide bomb
But at the same time, it appears to be a completely disproportionate weapon to hit a transmission tower, which, according to leaks from US officials, was the target of the attack (read detaisl below).
Therefore, the hypothesis of a targeted bombing to destroy a civilian home, as on Qeshm Island, remains valid.
This is why Iran has filed an international complaint for war crimes…
Iran’s Red Crescent Society (IRCS) has called on the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate a US missile attack on a wedding reception in the country’s southern province of Hormozgan, which killed at least five people and wounded 68 others.
The deadly incident occurred when shrapnel from a US attack struck a residential building where a wedding reception was being held in the city of Kouhestak, in Hormozgan’s Sirik County on Tuesday.
In a letter to the ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor, the IRCS said the attack raised serious concerns under international humanitarian law and warranted an independent, impartial, thorough and effective investigation.
“Given the reported civilian character of the location as the venue of a family wedding ceremony, as well as the presence of civilians at the site, the incident raises serious concerns under international humanitarian law and warrants an independent, impartial, thorough, and effective investigation,” the organization said.
The IRCS said preliminary information initially indicated that four people had been killed and 67 others wounded. Iranian health officials later raised the toll to at least five fatalities and 68 injuries, with a child among those killed.
The IRCS warned that the number of casualties could rise because some of those wounded were in critical condition.
FIRST POSTED ON GOSPA NEWS ON SEPTEMBER, 4, AT 7,28 AM GMT + 2 (Italy)
A US-made AGM-84H SLAM-ER cruise missile has been identified among the wreckage following the American strike on a wedding ceremony in Sirik, southern Iran, late Tuesday, adding further evidence of the US military’s role in the attack that killed and wounded civilians.
Weapons analyst Trevor Ball identified the remnants as belonging to the SLAM-ER, a precision-guided, air-launched cruise missile manufactured by Boeing, according OsintWarfare which posted on X the first video of wreckage and was quoted by Al Mayaeedn English Lebanese TV.
Boeing describes the SLAM-ER as being the most accurate air-launched munition in the US Navy’s arsenal;
Trevor Ball, a former US Army explosive ordnance disposal technician who now works as a weapons technical analyst for Armament Research Services, was among the experts asked by Reuters to examine the photographs and video.
“The damage seen appears to be from a munition which detonated on contact with the roof, or just above the roof,”he said, adding it was apparently a direct hit.
VIDEO LEGEND:
1st footage – The US-made AGM-84H SLAM-ER cruise missile has among the wreckage following the American strike on the wedding cerimony
2nd footage – Children’s slippers lie scattered in the aftermath of the US aggression at a wedding in Sirik, where civilians, including children, were killed and dozens more were injured. Footage from the scene shows slippers belonging to women and children amid the destruction.
After this initial analysis, both Iranian and international sources tried to identify the weapon, with some ballistics experts even launching the bizarre hypothesis that it was a ricochet shot, a hypothesis considered unlikely by most, however.
But one thing seems certain…
«A US munition struck a home hosting a wedding celebration in southern Iran directly, rather than ricocheting from another target, weapons experts who reviewed images and video verified by Reuters revealed» Al Mayadeen reported.
The strike in the small town of Kuhestak on Tuesday killed five people and injured at least 70 others.
So on Thursday, US Vice President JD Vance he was induced to declare that Washington was investigating the incident, despite the initially Pentagon deny of any responsibility…
“We’re investigating it because obviously we care. We want to know,”Vance said during a White House press briefing.
«Four military weapons experts who checked visual material told Reuters that the damage was consistent with a direct strike rather than secondary damage caused by a munition ricocheting from another target. Three of the experts stressed that the weapon was likely American rather than a misfired Iranian air defense missile» Al Mayadeen added many hours after its and our first articles posted on September 4, at 7,28 AM GMT + 2 (Italy)
Two US officials, speaking anonymously, said the US military had conducted strikes near Kuhestak on Sept. 1, with the town’s telecommunications tower as a specific target.
Satellite imagery places the tower about 135 meters from the wedding site. Iranian media reported that the tower was struck at about 9:30 pm local time.
But the same expert Trevor Ball debunked US Official speculation…
“The visible blast damage could not result from fragments from the nearby strike on the communications tower striking the area,” he stressed.
AGM-84H SLAM-ER cruise missile is a weapon designed for precise strikes and can be retargeted during flight by a human operator.
Therefore, if it were confirmed that this very powerful rocket, the wreckage of which was found on site, was used, the issue would take on an unprecedented gravity.
Boeing describes the SLAM-ER as being the most accurate air-launched munition in the US Navy’s arsenal; therefore, it can be inferred that it was deliberate, adding to a long list of US strikes on civilian gatherings in West Asia that we summarized in a Gospa News exclusive investigation, focused above all on the previous massacres in Minab school and island of Qeshm, where Trump’s Military used a bunker-bomb of 1ton.
Which is the Trump’s goal of these henoisou war crimes even vs children?
Simple: Terrorize the Iranian population by fomenting a revolution, as attempted in January 2026 by the counter-strategies of the CIA (USA) and MOSSAD (Israel), through the infiltration of well-trained ISIS jihadist mercenaries who used Israeli projectiles, leaving clear evidence of the plot.
The mad ambition of the Zionist terrorist who leads the United States thanks to the votes of the Zionist Lobby is to split the Iranian authorities, as happened in Venezuela, in order to stage a coup like the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
But in Tehran, there is a very serious religious theocracy, armed above all with hypersonic missiles, and perhaps even nuclear ones, donated by Russia, China, or North Korea…
Speaking about the attack, Head of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council Sheikh Amoli Larijani said, “The crime in Sirik and the killing of unarmed women and children embody the savage nature and deceptive self of the United States, and expose the falsehood and audacity of those who trade in human rights.”
A four-year-old child was among four people laid to rest in the southern Iranian city of Kuhestak on Thursday, as grieving families and residents gathered to bid farewell to loved ones killed in a US attack on the area, Al Matadeen Lebanese TV reported.
The funeral ceremonies in Kuhestak, in Sirik County of Hormozgan Province, began at 4 pm from a street at the city’s entrance, with mourners walking together toward the city’s Martyrs’ Cemetery, where the victims were laid to rest.
The authorities identified the four victims as four-year-old Amirali Karimi, 16-year-old Mohammad Mollahi, 43-year-old Kolthoum Mollahi Nezhadnia, and 50-year-old Zarkhatoun Taheri.
According to the announced figures, the US aggression left 68 people injured, several of whom remain under medical treatment. Al Mayadeen’s correspondent reported that the death toll from the US aggression targeting the wedding ceremony in Sirik had risen to five.
Iran has called on the UN Security Council to condemn an unprovoked and deadly US attack on a residential home hosting a wedding ceremony in southern Islamic Republic that led to the martyrdom of five civilians, including a four-year-old child, and injured more than 70 others.
Gholamhossein Darzi, the Islamic Republic’s ambassador and chargé d’affaires to the United Nations, made the appeal in a letter addressed to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and the president of the Security Council on Wednesday following a new wave of such American strikes targeting southern Iranian cities, which together claimed the lives of at least 18 people and wounded 108 others.
The chief commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has said that the blood of those killed in a US attack on a wedding ceremony in Kouhestak, Hormozgan Province, “will never go unanswered” and that it will ultimately “catch up with those who ordered and carried out this heinous crime.”, Iranian Press TV wrote.
State media reports debris recovered from a home attacked in southern Iran during a wedding celebration was “most likely” from a US-made, AGM-154 Joint Standoff Weapon – a guided-glide munition, also Al Jazeera reported before the exatly identification as pieces of a US-made AGM-84H SLAM-ER cruise missile
Broadcaster IRIB said images released by US Central Command of attacks in southern Iran showed a F/A-18 Super Hornet loaded with a similar munition.
The targeted house was 200 metres (650 feet) from a communications tower, and the strike could not have been an error given the munition’s accuracy, reports said.
The Sirik strike came amid a renewed wave of US aggression against Iran, with American forces targeting sites across the country’s southern provinces.
Iranian authorities reported attacks on Bandar Abbas, Jask, Minab, Chabahar, Konarak, Lengeh, Qeshm Island, and other areas, including communications and service infrastructure.
The escalation prompted Iran to launch retaliatory missile and drone strikes against US military positions across the region, including bases in Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, the UAE, and Erbil, in which several US troops lost their lifes in the name of Trump’s Zionist.
The heinous Trump’s Military strikes on civilians in Iran caused a genocide of more than 7 thousand people.
by Fabio Giuseppe Carlo Carisio – Gospa News founder and director
RELATED POSTS
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte Photographer: Dati Bendo © European Union
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday (2 September) that Europe and NATO would increase pressure on Russia after Germany attributed an attempted attack on cargo planes at Leipzig/Halle Airport to Moscow, calling the incident a “new escalation” on European Union soil, writes Catherine Feore.
“This was an attack using military-grade material, carried out by Russian operatives on European Union soil. We will not tolerate it,” von der Leyen said alongside NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in Brussels.
The German government said on Tuesday (1 September) that its investigation and intelligence findings established Russian responsibility for the attempted attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport last month. Russia has denied responsibility.
The meeting took place as foreign ministers and the EU's High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy were meeting to discuss Russia and Ukraine among other issues.
“Had this attack succeeded, this would have resulted in enormous damage and possibly even loss of life,” von der Leyen said. “We stand in full solidarity with Germany.”
“If the intention was to make us think twice about supporting Ukraine, I can tell you it has only strengthened my resolve. Intimidation will not work.”
Von der Leyen said the Leipzig incident was part of a wider pattern of Russian activity confronting Europe, including airspace incursions, drones disrupting airports and interference with critical infrastructure.
“Leipzig marks a new escalation on European Union soil, directly attributed to Russia,” she said.
Von der Leyen outlined three areas for a stepped-up European response: stronger protection of European infrastructure backed by additional sanctions on Russia, increased air-defence support for Ukraine, and an acceleration of Europe’s own defence build-up in close cooperation with NATO.
Infrastructure and sanctions
First, von der Leyen said Europe must strengthen the protection of infrastructure that could be targeted by Russian hybrid operations and be prepared to respond more quickly when attacks occur.
“We must treat our everyday infrastructure as frontline targets, and protect them accordingly,” she said.
The EU already has rapid response teams that can assist member states faced with such attacks, she said, arguing that Europe’s ability to prepare and respond would itself act as a deterrent.
Von der Leyen also said the EU was ready to intensify economic pressure on Moscow through sanctions. “Our sanctions have weakened Russia’s economy. We can use more sanctions and have them ready to impose as soon as such dangerous, life-threatening acts are attributed,” she said. “Every loophole Russia exploits is one we must close.”
European foreign ministers were discussing new listings in Ireland on Wednesday, she said, while the Commission was examining further ways to “cut deeper into Russia’s war chest”.
More air defence for Ukraine
Von der Leyen said her second priority was strengthening support for Ukraine, announcing that the EU had received a new request worth several billion euros for air-defence capabilities.
“Today, I can confirm that we have received a new payment request,” she said. “It is worth several billion euro, and would cover Ukraine’s air defenses, including the highly advanced PAC-3 Patriot air defense systems.”
Member states were considering the request, she said.
“I can say that it’s going in the right direction.”
Von der Leyen also pointed to European work with Ukraine on the FRIO project to develop anti-ballistic missile defences, as well as the EU’s €90 billion support loan.
“Since June, we have issued €8.5 billion for drones and missiles for Ukraine from this loan,” she said, adding that the funding could also be used to buy fighter aircraft from European industry.
Faster European defence build-up
Von der Leyen’s third priority was to accelerate Europe’s defence build-up alongside NATO, with air defence at the centre of the effort.
“Air defenses are critical,” she said. “We need a faster, more integrated alert system across Europe, and then we must intercept the threats faster.”
She pointed to the EU’s €800 billion defence investment plan, including €150 billion through the SAFE instrument, as a way for European countries to increase defence investment jointly.
“We are in a new era of European security,” von der Leyen said. “European investment in defense strengthens NATO and re-energizes our industrial base.”
Rutte backed von der Leyen’s assessment of the threat, saying Russia had become “increasingly reckless” as its war against Ukraine continued.
“We have seen more drones and missiles crossing into our airspace along our eastern flank, creating increased risk,” Rutte said.
“And we have also seen an increase in malign activities targeting our territory directly, whether it is fires set in factories producing defense equipment for Ukraine, or indeed the Russian hybrid attack in Leipzig.”
“The examples are many. The dangers Russia poses are clear,” he added.
Rutte said NATO was working “around the clock” to ensure it could protect its population and said Moscow would fail if it hoped attacks such as Leipzig would undermine Western backing for Kyiv.
“If Russia thinks we will be divided by the threat, or if they think we will be deterred from supporting Ukraine, they are mistaken,” he said. “Our unity is unshaken. Our support to Ukraine is clear.”
Rutte said NATO allies had agreed to provide at least €70 billion to support Ukraine this year and the same amount next year, with the EU loan forming a “crucial element” of that support.
The NATO chief also backed the push for additional air defence and increased defence production, saying higher spending had to translate into additional military capabilities and greater industrial capacity.
Von der Leyen said the EU and NATO would not be intimidated into reducing their support for Ukraine. “Europe and NATO will not just maintain our pressure on Russia; we will increase it,” she said. “We will not stop — not until Russia stops bombing and killing innocent children, men and women in Ukraine. We will continue, we will prevail, and we will deter anyone who attacks our freedom and our security.”
A suspected underworld revenge attack linked to fugitive drug trafficker Jos Leijdekkers, known as “Bolle Jos,” left a security guard dead and two police officers wounded in the quiet Dutch village of Overasselt in the early hours of Sept. 1, 2026. Surveillance cameras captured vans full of masked men carrying assault rifles during the attack, which is raising fears that Netherlands is devolving into a narco-state.
— Remix News & Views (@RMXnews) September 2, 2026
Dozens of armed drug gang members opened fire in the small Dutch town of Overasselt.
Footage shows multiple vans filled with masked men armed with assault rifles.… pic.twitter.com/ShudqYyHFg
Around 4:00 a.m., two vans pulled up and a large group approached a farmhouse previously tied to a drug lab. The surveillance footage shows the group approaching a parked car with its interior light on. Five shots were then fired, according to the Dutch police report on the incident.
A 51-year-old man from nearby Wijchen, hired as a security guard after an earlier attack on the property, was murdered. Neighbors reported hearing dozens of shots, with one neighbor telling Dutch media he heard 37 shots before police arrived.
The first officers responding to a report of a suspicious situation came under immediate fire. Colleagues dragged the wounded officers to safety while still being shot at. One officer initially suffered life-threatening injuries; both were later reported out of danger.
Police launched a nationwide manhunt involving helicopters, dogs, special intervention units, and roadblocks on the A73 and A76. Warning shots were fired during searches of cornfields, gardens, and other sites. The operation led to the arrest of 34 suspects at multiple locations, including a cornfield near the scene, Nijmegen train station, and highways in Limburg.
The suspects included Dutch, Belgian, French, and Algerian nationals. Weapons, vehicles, and data carriers were seized. A large-scale investigation team (TGO) has now been formed, with all detainees remaining in custody.
The incredible violence has sparked reactions all the way from local police officials to the country’s justice minister.
Deputy Police Chief of the East Netherlands unit Jolanda Aalbers described the night as “indescribable.”
“For colleagues this is a truly intense incident. Colleagues were wounded and they were brought to safety by other colleagues at risk to their own lives. It was a real act of heroism. We are grateful that the wounded colleagues are out of life-threatening condition.”
Justice Minister David van Weel condemned “horrible violence” and said “we do not tolerate this,” according to Dutch news outlet NOS.
He also described the scale of the violence as “unprecedented” for the Netherlands.
“The fact that you have hordes of dozens of young people walking through the streets of a village and immediately opening fire on the police is unprecedented and new,” he said. He spoke of a suspected criminal settling of accounts involving international drug cartels that operate across borders.
Deputy Chief Prosecutor Monique Vinkesteijn called it a “long-running conflict.”
She said that suspects face charges including murder or manslaughter, attempted murder, conspiracy, and preparation of a kidnapping. She described ten different crime scenes, underlining the sprawling and complex nature of the crime. She said investigators were working to link each suspect to specific locations.
Mayor Joerie Minses of Heumen municipality, which includes Overasselt, called the violence “un-Dutch,” “completely unacceptable,” and something that “goes beyond all bounds.”
“What happened last night does not fit Overasselt,” he stated.
He now says he may want to close the farmhouse entirely, which has a documented history of trouble.
In 2019, a professional drug lab was found in shipping containers near the farmhouse after a fire. In 2024, armed men were found at the gate of the house.
In July 2025, an attacker fired at least 25 rounds from an AK-47-style rifle at the house, resulting in the conviction of a 21-year-old from Amsterdam. Residents then hired private security.
There are now questions about what prompted such a large-scale attack from the drug gangs. Dutch media, citing police sources, linked the attack to a dispute over an 812-kilogram cocaine shipment seized on Aug. 29 at the French-Spanish border. The drugs were in a Dutch-registered truck traveling from Africa via Portugal.
The masked gang members may have been seeking a missing portion of the load or confronting an intermediary connected to Leijdekkers’ network. Leijdekkers, one of the Netherlands’ most-wanted fugitives, has been convicted in both the Netherlands and Belgium, including a 14-year sentence in the Belgian Costa case involving Antwerp port cocaine trafficking. He faces decades in prison for other crimes as well. He is believed to be in West Africa. Police have not officially confirmed the Leijdekkers link.
The post ‘Horrible violence’ – 1 security guard murdered and 2 police officers wounded after dozens of armed gang members open fire in quiet Dutch village appeared first on Remix News.
by Carlo Domenico Cristofori
Amid the diplomatic escalation between Russia and Germany over a drone incident at Leipzig airport, blamed by Berlin on Moscow without providing the slightest evidence but sufficient to close Russian consulates (read here), Italy too finds itself increasingly exposed to reprisals threatened by Russian President Vladimir Putin for the wild speculation of the “weapons demon” Guido Crosetto, Minister of Defense.
“Any military facility in Ukraine is a legitimate target for us. British ones, or any other,” Putin reiterated this a few days ago, taking aim at Great Britain—which is prepared to supply nuclear warheads to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
While the United Kingdom remains the primary orchestrator of the hybrid war against Russia—a role confirmed by the arrest in Ukraine of officers from the British military intelligence agency MI6 (which had recruited Zelenskyy himself as a secret agent in 2020) and by former Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s open support for the fierce neo-Nazi fighters of the Azov Battalion—Italy is attempting to enter a dead-end tunnel of speculation regarding drones.
This speculation has been fueled by the arrival in Kyiv of former CIA Director Mike Pompeo—who served as Secretary of State during the first Trump administration—in his capacity as a consultant for FirePoint, a company within the orbit of Pentagon contractors…
Anglo-American intelligence agencies have been suspected not only of training various far-right nationalist groups within the Ukrainian National Guard (responsible for the killing of Italian reporter Andy Rocchelli during the Donbas Civil War on May 24, 2014) but also of orchestrating the bloody 2014 coup and supporting terrorist attacks carried out by Ukrainian intelligence services (both the domestic SBU and military GRU) against the Russian civilian population and Moscow’s army commanders.
Mykhailo Fedorov lasted just six months as Ukraine’s defense minister before Zelensky fired him amid bitter clashes with the military leadership.
«Now he is turning the same wartime machinery into a private defense-tech business — with Palantir CEO Alex Karp as his first major investor» News-Pravda has reported in the lates days publishing a photo of the meeting.
American AI industry Palantir, one of the main AI partner of Israel Defense Forces and Benjamin Netanyahu Zionist regime, was denounced for complicity in war crimes in Palestine… (read below)
“You and your colleagues are launching a company that I think will be defining for the world, bringing your knowledge and acumen about the art of war as a product to allied countries,” Karp told Fedorov. That “product” was developed on Ukraine’s battlefield.
On September 1, 2026, Mykhailo Fedorov—Ukraine’s Minister of Defense until last July—announced the launch of a military technology company in which Karp himself will be the first investor.
The company aims to translate Ukraine’s wartime experience into products for Kyiv and its allies, including combat robotics, interceptor drones, and low-cost, AI-guided missiles. Plans also include an investment fund and a think tank, though the company’s name and financial figures have not yet been disclosed.
This happened a few days after that Fedorov has become an adviser to Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto.
“I met with Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto. I thanked Guido for his personal support and his offer for me to become his adviser on defense innovation. I am grateful for the trust and strategic partnership. In this role, I will help Italy develop modern warfare technologies and improve its defense sector,” Fedorov wrote on Telegram.
Palantir is already embedded across Ukrainian government agencies, while its infrastructure underpins the Brave1 Dataroom, where companies train military AI on real combat data. Karp says he and Fedorov have worked together for “half a decade.”
But Fedorov’s meeting with Karp appears to have been launched under the banner of Italy’s war mission against Russia.
READ MORE – ITALIAN ARMY CHIEF IN KIEV
Leonardo SpA, the Italian industrial group operating in the defense, security, and aerospace sectors, is majority owned by the Italian government with a 30.2% stake, but without parliament approval has opened a new subsidiary, Leonardo Ukraine, directly in Kiev, aiming to collaborate with the Ukrainian defense industry, particularly in drones and other military technologies.
We recall that minister Crosetto, founder of Brother of Italy far-right party, was blamed by many newspaper for conflict of interests due to, before to entry in Meloni Government, he was the AIAD president which represented th Italian Industries Association for Aerospace, Defence and Security, but above all because he was a overpayed advisor of Leonardo spa, main partner of Rheimetall which opened some factories in Ukraine.
Leonardo Ukraine, registered in the commercial register since May 20, is not only aiming to establish relations with the Ukrainian Brave1, or to test the new “Michelangelo Dome”, the multi-layered and multi-domain missile air defense system which is estimated to have 21 billion euros of potential commercial opportunities over the next 10 years.
Leonardo thus intends to build increasingly strong relationships with the Ukrainian state hub Brave1 Dataroom, created with the country’s Ministry of Defense, its intelligence agency and the US company Palantir.
Brave1 is a Ukraninian government initiative aimed at developing defence technologies, implemented by the Innovation Development Fund and initiated by relevant state authorities and components of Ukraine’s security and defence sector. Initially, it was a grant program for defence startups. We have already become the largest angel investor in Ukrainian defence tech, having issued over 750 grants amounting to 3.7 billion UAH, around $82,000.
In this exclusive video shared on YouTube by UATV Espanol lift the veil of secrecy for the first time on the latest development in the Ukrainian defense industry: the unique “Litavr” interceptor drone from F-Drones, created specifically for the cost-effective and efficient hunting of enemy kamikaze drones like the “Shahed.”
Thanks to the BRAVE1 defense cluster, Kiev army gained unprecedented access to this fully encrypted technology, capable of speeds up to 350 km/h, operating at altitudes up to 9,000 meters, and automatically locking onto targets using the Pixel Lock (Last Mile)
It should be remembered that Ukrainian drones are being launched indiscriminately at civilian residences, even killing children, with the sole aim of triggering a reaction from the Russian population against Russian President Vladimir Putin and provoking reprisals that would justify further investments in weapons by EU and NATO countries.
Palantir is the industry, removed after various investigations from many European countries.
«The Spanish government is ordering state-backed companies to cut their ties with US defense contractor Palantir, Spain’s El Confidencial newspaper has reported. The move follows similar bans in France and Germany» RT has reported some weeks ago.
But above all Palantir was one of the AI company denounced for war crimes and genocide in Gaza inside the UN Dossier by Francesca Albanese, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territory occupied.
The same American company has also been heavily criticized in the USA for its collaboration with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) officers accused of murdering illegal immigrants and even making unjustified arrests of children.
Italy’s strengthening ties in the drone industry follows the arrival in Ukraine of former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, former Secretary of State in the first Trump administration, confirming once again that Rome is not influenced by Washington but rather steered by Langley, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency, which back in 1943, when it was still called the OSS, organized the Allied landings in Sicily thanks to Lucky Luciano’s mafia and the Anglo-Italian Freemasonry…
To understand Fedorov’s role, it must be remembered that he was fired by Volodymyr Zelensky who is considered a British secret agent of the military counterintelligence MI6 and, therefore, must look after London’s interests more than those of the CIA.
Carlo Domenico Cristofori
Excerpts by Ahmed Adel originally published on VT UnCensored Foreign Policy
All links to Gospa News articles or video have been added in the aftermath
Italian media report plans to sell four batteries of the newest SAMP/T NG system, also known as “Mamba,” to Ukraine, claiming its performance rivals or even surpasses that of the American Patriot system in some respects. However, these new missile and air defense system deliveries to Ukraine are unlikely to significantly impact the battlefield. Rather, they are primarily aimed at enabling Western countries and their military industries to profit.
Not only are four batteries insignificant and unlikely to alter the course of the war, but they will also be top targets for Russia’s armed forces and will be destroyed in a short period of time. For this reason, Italy’s decision should be viewed as an economic move rather than a political one. In fact, the delivery is expected to be financed through European Union loans.
La Repubblica reports that Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed in July to procure four new SAMP/T NG batteries capable of intercepting ballistic missiles. The system, produced by the Franco-Italian consortium Eurosam, is the next generation of European air and missile defense.
SAMP/T NG is a significantly improved version of the SAMP/T system already in use in Ukraine. Compared with the previous version, SAMP/T NG offers greater range and engagement altitude, as well as improved performance against ballistic targets. The maximum range of the SAMP/T system with the Aster 30 missile is up to 100 kilometers, while the newer SAMP/T NG version has a range of about 150 kilometers.
According to La Repubblica, Ukraine already has two SAMP/T batteries delivered by Italy and France, but since the summer of 2025 it has faced a shortage of Aster 30 missiles due to reduced European stocks. Missile production has since been accelerated, enabling Rome and Paris to continue deliveries.
Yet, despite the acceleration, Ukrainian air defenses remain in poor condition. Although Ukraine still has Patriot systems, it is short on missiles, as they have already been depleted. Italy plans to transfer Aster 30 missiles from its military stocks to Ukraine by October, while France would temporarily provide two additional SAMP/T batteries from its arsenal, to be replaced later with new systems.
According to La Repubblica, the entire operation, including newly produced systems, is expected to be completed by 2027. The operation will cost three billion euros and will be structured as a purchase financed by a loan from the European Credit Fund for Ukraine.
by Ahmed Adel originally published on VT UnCensored Foreign Policy
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Vladimir Putin’s latest comments come as Russia faces signs of growing war fatigue and economic pressure.
The post Putin says Russia is winning Ukraine war, rules out talks with ‘terrorists’ appeared first on BOL News.
TEHRAN: A U.S. missile strike hit a residential home hosting a wedding celebration in southern Iran on Tuesday, killing four people including a child and wounding more than 50 others, the Iranian Red Crescent said. Shrapnel from the attack struck the home in the city of Kuhestak, in Sirik county of Hormozgan province, where a ... Read more
The post US strike on Iranian wedding kills 4, including child, Red Crescent says appeared first on BOL News.
KARACHI: State-run Pakistan LNG Limited (PLL) has issued a fresh tender to procure one spot cargo of liquefied natural gas for delivery between September 4 and 8, as global supply disruptions stemming from the Middle East war continue to strain the country’s gas-fired power generation. PLL invited bids from international suppliers for a single cargo ... Read more
The post Pakistan returns to spot LNG market with fresh tender as power generation takes a hit appeared first on BOL News.
CHICAGO: Corn and wheat futures have rallied to their highest prices in more than three years, though the factors driving the gains for each crop remain distinctly different. Wheat futures settled Friday at $7.84 per bushel, up 3.1% on the day, after hitting an intraday peak of $7.9025, the highest level since Feb. 14, 2023. ... Read more
The post Corn, wheat prices surge to multi-year highs on divergent supply threats appeared first on BOL News.
by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News
After 6 months and $35.7 BILLION in spending, the Zionists’ war against Iran has only made matters in the Middle East worse than they were before the war started.
Oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz is still restricted, driving up energy costs, with Iran still fully in control. No oil was restricted from passing through the Persian Gulf before the war started.
Russia has benefited from all of this military spending, as it has diverted funds and weapons from Ukraine, and earlier this week the head of the CIA made a secret trip to Moscow, allegedly because they received intelligence that Russia was about to start attacking NATO countries.
China has found many ways around the disruption of oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz, and has reportedly imported close to the same amount of oil flowing through the Persian Gulf as before the war.
Meanwhile, U.S. military members in the Navy have suffered very poor conditions from long deployment at sea leading many to suicide attempts, and it was just reported in The Guardian that the U.S. Navy has had to divert funds from their payroll to pay the costs of this war.
Here are some of the articles I have posted on our Telegram Channel recently.
Exclusive: Experts and former officials say accounts are running dry, and funding a war with no clear endgame is the main challenge
From The Guardian.
Excerpts:
Donald Trump’s war on Iran has driven the US military into a severe financial crisis, with the US navy forced to transfer money from its payroll and other sources to cover the costs of combat, according to documents seen by the Guardian, and interviews with navy officials, contractors and defense analysts.
The US-Israeli operation, which has depleted US munitions stockpiles and prompted retaliatory Iranian strikes that have wrecked strategic bases across the Middle East, is piling pressure on budgets across the military.
One Pentagon memo about navy funding seen by the Guardian warns that there are “shortfalls in payroll” accounts due to the department “raiding” them to fund combat operations.
Experts and former officials say the accounts are running dry. “The piggy bank is broken,” said Harlan Ullman, a retired naval officer. Ullman is a member of the National Commission for the Future of the Navy but he said he is not speaking on the commission’s behalf.
One official and one navy contractor said non-emergency maintenance on shore-based facilities has been deferred because of the cash crunch.
When Trump started the war on 28 February, it quickly strained the military’s existing budgets – particularly that of the navy, which not only helped launch the initial wave of attacks but was later responsible for an extensive naval blockade. The White House eventually asked Congress for emergency funding to pay for the war efforts, but prospects that the request will be approved are dim amid the unpopularity of the war.
A navy official who was briefed on how the service is planning to address the shortfalls said money is shifted around in imaginative ways.
“The money for payroll,” he said,
“was robbed to pay for overseas contingencies and is being backfilled by money that hasn’t been spent. They are backfilling payroll so we get enough money in our paycheck.”
From The Cradle.
Excerpts:
China has received about 1.2 million barrels of Iranian oil per day this year so far, just a touch less than during the same time in 2025, according to information from industry data provider Kpler, cited by the New York Times (NYT) on 25 August.
According to Muyu Xu, a senior Kpler oil analyst, large quantities of oil are now sitting on ships and in storage tanks near the Malacca Strait and South China Sea.
“Up-to-date volumes are difficult to measure because ships have become increasingly skilled at evading detection,” Xu was cited as saying by NYT.
The number of barrels of Iranian oil received is only “slightly less” than last year.
“Iranian oil is frequently transported to waters off Malaysia, where cargoes are transferred between vessels before continuing to Chinese ports,” the US outlet writes.
NYT added that the “Trump administration risks a clash with Beijing as it tries to cut off Iran’s economic lifelines without upending a fragile US–China truce,” referring to the US–Chinese trade and tariff war that is currently on hold.
Beijing has strongly condemned Washington’s declaration of a new economic war against Iran.
China warned Washington on 25 August that it is ready to respond to “maximum pressure” and “economic isolation” pursued by the US.
“An economic war and maximum pressure will not help resolve the issue,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian.
“They will only further intensify contradictions and conflicts, cause risks to spill over, disrupt the global economic and financial order, and harm the legitimate rights and interests of other countries,” he added.
“China is closely following the relevant developments and will take all necessary measures to firmly safeguard its own rights and interests.”
From OilPrice.com
Excerpts:
The war with Iran has handed Russia a strategic advantage in Ukraine. Washington is burning through the weapons Europe needs to deter Russia, moving military capacity into the Gulf and simultaneously telling NATO governments to take over more of their own defense.
CIA Director John Ratcliffe flew to Moscow this week precisely because of the connected nature of these two problems. He met Russian foreign intelligence chief Sergei Naryshkin in the first known visit by a CIA director since William Burns traveled there in late 2021, just before Russia invaded Ukraine.
Ratcliffe warned Moscow against attacking a NATO member and tried to bargain for support against Iran, likely using talks with Ukraine as bait. Washington asked Kyiv to suspend strikes during the visit.
Trump has called the trip “semi-routine” and says he is not worried Russia will attack NATO, but the circumstances suggest otherwise.
Air defense is the immediate challenge, with Patriot interceptor stocks in Europe “beyond critical”, depleted by the war in Iran. U.S. forces now have very limited ability to defend against even a single Russian ballistic missile strike, and there are not enough Patriots to absorb a sustained attack.
The Pentagon and NATO may dispute that assessment or attempt to frame it in softer language, but there is no dispute that large numbers of interceptors have been moved out of Europe and used in the Middle East.
It will take years to replace them at volume.
From OilPrice.com
Excerpts:
Hormuz is “open”, but nowhere close to functioning normally.
The U.S. has cleared mines from the internationally recognized shipping lanes and can technically get vessels through, but Iran’s military capability will still keep most commercial operators away.
Only five commodity vessels crossed on Tuesday, compared to some 130 ships a day before the war.
Iran is offering a temporary and limited corridor while making full normalization conditional on sanctions relief, an end to the U.S. blockade and, now, an end to Israeli operations in Gaza, Lebanon and Syria.
The Israeli demand is a non-starter. Washington cannot guarantee that Israel will stop military operations in three separate theaters, and Israel has shown little willingness to comply at any point in this war.
But Trump has rejected the notion of a return to the previous June agreement, which gave Iran quite a lot more in terms of concessions than Washington appears to be willing to offer now.
The administration is now betting that economic ostracism and the blockade can force Tehran back on worse terms. Iran is betting on the opposite: that it can withstand the economic pressure longer than Washington and the Gulf can tolerate a crippled Hormuz.
Saudi Arabia reiterated Thursday that it will not normalize relations with Israel without an independent Palestinian state, just as Trump made normalization a condition for the kingdom’s nuclear deal with Washington to take effect.
Trump has formally sent the 30-year civilian nuclear agreement to Congress, starting a 90-legislative-day review that could clear U.S. companies to export nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia.
Riyadh wants nuclear power to reduce the oil and gas burned for electricity and preserve more hydrocarbons for export, while Washington wants U.S. companies building the kingdom’s nuclear fleet rather than China or Russia.
Congress now has the nuclear agreement. Trump still needs a Saudi-Israeli normalization deal that Riyadh says requires a Palestinian state.
Turkey is spending $2.4 million to strengthen its lobbying position in Washington as Ankara and Israel compete over U.S. policy in Syria and the wider region.
The Turkish Defence Ministry has hired Ballard Partners, one of the best connected firms in Trump’s political network, for $200,000 a month to lobby the administration and Congress.
Turkey wants back into the F-35 program and is considering disposing of its Russian S-400 system to remove the main U.S. obstacle, but the lobbying push comes as Ankara has a much larger fight with Israel over Syria.
Israel is trying to stop Turkey from establishing a deeper military presence there, while Washington has backed Ahmed al-Sharaa and relies heavily on Turkey to help rebuild and train the Syrian military.
Ankara has assembled a lobbying team built for that fight. It includes former Democratic congressman Robert Wexler, a longtime Turkey advocate with strong connections in pro-Israel circles, and former Trump National Security Council official Thomas Boodry.
Ballard itself has unusually close ties to Trump: White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and former Attorney General Pam Bondi both worked for the firm.
Israel has spent decades building influence over U.S. Middle East policy. Turkey is now ready to compete in spending.
From PressTV
Excerpts:
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf has reposted his previous comments on social media, warning that no one will be able to sell oil in a region where the Islamic Republic cannot do so.
Qalibaf on Friday posted his X message dating back to July 22, after US Central Command (CENTCOM) Commander Admiral Brad Cooper claimed American forces had full control of the Strait of Hormuz and halted Iran’s oil exports.
“The equation of this war is clear: either all or none!” he said.
“In a region where we don’t sell oil, no one else will sell oil either.”
He also noted that the security of the Strait of Hormuz, a strategic waterway responsible for a fifth of global oil demand, lies in the absence of terrorist US troops.
“If our security is not ensured, no infrastructure will be safe. Security of the strait depends on the absence of US forces. We have said many times that the situation in the strait will not return to what it was before the war.”
This article was written by Human Superior Intelligence (HSI)
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The post Iran Still Controls the Strait of Hormuz 6 Months After the War Started – U.S. Navy Takes Funds from Payroll to Cover War Costs first appeared on Health Impact News.
On July 23, the U.S. Department of Defense published a new list of organizations that, according to its assessment, pose a threat to U.S. national security or are engaged in problematic activity. The list includes Moscow State University, Bauman Moscow State Technical University, the Higher School of Economics, Ural Federal University, and numerous other universities and research institutes. The Pentagon believes that these organizations may aim to steal American intellectual property, research data, technologies, and scientific innovations. The Department therefore urges American universities, research institutes, and individual scholars receiving Department of Defense funding not to collaborate with them in any way, exchange data, or provide financial support. Notably, this list is not identical to existing U.S. sanctions lists (read more: “Scientific Front: Who in Russian Science Ended Up Under Western Sanctions — and Why”) and it appeared at a time when, according to Reuters, the U.S. administration has significantly reduced efforts to enforce sanctions against Russia. T-invariant explores what this new policy means for American and Russian academia, how it differs from sanctions law, and who is likely to be affected.
T-INVARIANT BRIEFING
The restrictions certainly apply to:
- Researchers affiliated with the listed organizations and working in physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, technology, and defense-related fields.
- American universities and colleges receiving funding from the U.S. Department of Defense.
They are highly likely to affect:
- All employees of listed institutions, regardless of their academic discipline.
- Students of the listed universities when applying to conferences or submitting articles to journals affiliated with American universities or companies.
- Universities, colleges, research institutes, think tanks, and other organizations worldwide that receive funding from the U.S. government.
The restrictions might affect:
- Students and graduates of these institutions when applying to American universities.
- Universities in third countries participating in projects funded by the U.S. government.
- Researchers at other universities and institutes in Russia, Iran, and China.
The list was issued as an implementation of Section 1286 of the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of 2019. The NDAA is a law that is issued every year and that determines the structure and budget of the U.S. military, including troop numbers, defense spending, modernization programs, and other issues. However, alongside military provisions, Congress also includes neighboring measures, such as foreign policy objectives, and funding allocation. The 2019 NDAA received broad bipartisan support and was signed by President Donald Trump. Compared with previous versions, it increased the military budget, while shifting America’s strategic focus in foreign policy away from counterterrorism toward long-term competition with China and Russia, with considerably greater emphasis on China. This legislation was especially discussed in the media due to the restrictions of Section 889 targeting Chinese technology companies such as Huawei and ZTE.
As part of the same great power competition strategy, Congress included provisions designed to protect American academic research from foreign influence and intellectual property theft. Section 1286, which received the updated list of “problematic organizations,” is titled Initiative to support protection of national security academic researchers from undue influence and other security threats and it specifically addresses universities conducting defense and technology research. Although Congress passes a new NDAA every year, the Pentagon continues updating the same list of the Section 1286 of NDAA 2019 because the 2019 law explicitly requires the Department of Defense to revise it on a regular basis. The July 23 publication is therefore not a new law, but the latest update of an existing mechanism. Being published every year, these updates all have special emphasis, relevant for the moment. For instance, the 2025 version is primarily aimed at preventing foreign influence over research sponsored by the Department of Defense.
Such activities as funding sanctioned organizations, or exchanging data, were already prohibited by sanctions laws. Also, scholars employed by those organizations could not participate in conferences, or get published in the leading journals if they maintained formal affiliations. There are three fundamental points of difference between the new Pentagon list and sanctions: who is affected, who enforces the law, and what the consequences of violations are.
Who is affected?
Previous sanctions and earlier lists (such as the 2023 Section 1286 list) targeted a relatively small number of universities involved mainly in military technology development or, in Russia’s case, in promoting state propaganda. Moreover, the restrictions were generally limited to individual representatives or to specific institutes. Before the new list appeared, the largest Russian research center to be included in such restrictions in its entirety was Skolkovo, which was added in 2023 – and in that case, it was hardly surprising.
This time, however, the Pentagon included 13 Russian universities as whole bodies, and those were not only institutions specializing in engineering, physics, and biology, but also several major multidisciplinary universities, including Moscow State University (MSU), the Higher School of Economics (HSE), and Ural Federal University (UrFU). Several of China’s leading multidisciplinary universities, including Fudan University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University, were also added. HSE employees, speaking on condition of anonymity, told T-invariant that until now they had been able to collaborate with Western universities as private researchers without listing their affiliation, they participated in conferences online and sometimes even in person, conducted joint research, and published articles.
However, the wording of the new document makes it possible to extend the restrictions to employees of the listed organizations themselves. This means that concealing one’s institutional affiliation and presenting oneself as an independent researcher may no longer be sufficient to circumvent the restrictions: any collaboration between American researchers and scholars who are simply employed by universities on the list falls under Pentagon restrictions. Moreover, even though most organizations on the list conduct research in physics, technology, and such, the policy could affect physicians, historians, and even scholars of the Swahili language.
Who enforces the restrictions?
Another noteworthy aspect is that these measures operate through the National Defense Authorization Act, meaning they are administered by the Department of Defense, unlike the traditional sanctions system. Sanctions are often described as decisions made by the U.S. government as a whole, but departments matter. In reality, Sanctions legislation is passed through Congress or came in force by a presidential decree, and enforcement is typically carried out by either the Treasury Department or the Department of Commerce. But this list is neither a sanction imposed for specific actions, nor a punishment for participating in war or violating the law. Instead, it is presented as a preventive measure designed to protect American research and technology from national security threats. Meanwhile, the official sanctions lists themselves do not receive any updates, and President Trump has repeatedly signaled a willingness to improve relations with leaders of countries that remain under U.S. sanctions.
The Department of Defense is publishing this update because it is legally required to. At the same time, it does not provide any specific evidence demonstrating that every organization included is “engaging in activities that threaten U.S. national security interests.” The use of national security and foreign influence concerns as justifications for government intervention in science, media, and business is all too familiar from the Russian experience and feels rather unsettling. That is why it is important to understand what this policy means not only for Russian science, but also for American academia.
[[socialnetworks]]
After taking office, President Trump began exerting significant pressure on American universities. His primary targets were campus protests and the promotion of woke ideas concerning equality and the rights of gender, racial, and sexual minorities. The principal tool was the threat of cutting off federal funding. Yet even during Trump’s first presidency, the administration had already started intervening in universities through the concerns of espionage, and in 2018, the Department of Justice launched the China Initiative. According to the MIT Technology Review, the effectiveness of the initiative is highly questionable, partly because the Department of Justice never clearly explained its concrete objectives beyond broad references to protecting American technology and combating espionage. It also failed to clarify the criteria used to initiate investigations. Information about many cases never appeared on official government websites, some records were removed following media inquiries and requests for comment, and only about one quarter of the cases received actual convictions. Moreover, many prosecutions had no obvious connection to national security. This precedent is especially significant in light of the new Section 1286 list, as a precedent. As follows from the name of the programme, approximately 90% of those prosecuted under China Initiative were scholars of Chinese origin, and members of Asian diasporas were subjected to disproportionate scrutiny by law enforcement. MIT Technology Review argues that one of the initiative’s most damaging consequences was the brain drain of highly qualified researchers from the United States. Scientists and scholars were leaving because of the discrimination and pressure from the law enforcement, and it became harmful for the American science itself.
During President Biden’s administration, the espionage agenda receded somewhat into the background, but it reemerged, as Trump took office again. On March 26, 2026, the House Committee on Education and the Workforce heard reports on the activities of foreign intelligence services on university campuses. Once again, the discussion focused primarily on alleged espionage involving Chinese students, the recruitment of American students on campus, and cases in which researchers were drawn into projects without being informed on the true purpose of the research. It is worth noting that in his opening remarks, the committee chair emphasized that international collaborations should benefit America rather than its rivals. This idea contradicts the traditional understanding of academia as a transnational space for free exchange of knowledge. International conferences, academic and cultural exchanges, collaborative research, and multinational projects have advanced and benefited science worldwide for decades. As with the China Initiative, extending the logic of national security into universities and scientific research challenges this principle and contributes to the isolation of American science.
At the same time, it would be wrong to deny that espionage, foreign interference in academia and business, and theft of American intellectual property do exist. Roughly one quarter of China Initiative prosecutions ended in convictions, and over the past year, several cases have emerged involving Chinese intelligence agents infiltrating American academic institutions. But these cases differ in one respect, crucial for the NDAA 2019 list: the spies concealed their connections to Chinese universities, military structures, or intelligence agencies. They would typically enter the United States as students, visiting researchers, fellows, or even professors while hiding their institutional ties. They transferred research data and intelligence to the Chinese government, smuggled research materials into or out of the country – it seems that Ksenia Petrova was detained because of this atmosphere of heightened suspicion within academia.
There were also cases of recruiting American students and professors, but it generally happened through malign foreign talent recruitment programs, in which American researchers participated without being informed who would ultimately receive the results of their work or for what purpose. The 2024 version of the Pentagon list was specifically aimed at preventing this practice.
An even more common instrument of espionage has been cyberattacks, like the case reported recently by The Insider. In this case, Microsoft uncovered a scheme that allowed hackers to gain access to data from every device connected to compromised hotel Wi-Fi networks during academic conferences.
Journalist Roman Dobrokhotov described the method for the TVRain channel: “When you try to log in, your credentials get stolen. In the worst case scenario, you’re prompted to download software or click ‘OK’ or ‘YES,’ and a real spyware virus gets onto your laptop. It steals all your passwords and captures everything you type on the keyboard. If a conference has a thousand participants, it is enough just for two or three people to download the malware for the operation to succeed.” According to The Insider, “the group primarily targets governments, diplomatic missions, NGOs, and IT companies in the United States and Europe in order to collect intelligence supporting Russian foreign policy.”
All of these espionage cases share an important point: every time, the perpetrators concealed the affiliations with the organizations they were truly working for, they frequently used false documents, or even operated remotely. This raises a doubt as to the effectiveness of a ban on cooperation with specific universities. Such a policy is unlikely to counter the methods actually used to steal research data.
How grave are the consequences?
The third major difference between this list and sanctions packages lies in the mechanism of the restrictions: the Department of Defense does not put a ban on the activities of the listed organizations, but it is restricting its own ability to fund them. The universities included in the list, their employees, or American scholars – none of them will face prosecution by law enforcement. However, the Pentagon restricts its ability to provide funding to universities, institutes, or individual researchers who continue collaborating with listed organizations or their employees, or who use their equipment.
At first glance, it might seem that losing such a niche source of funding would hardly affect fields unrelated to the military. For instance, professor of Russian literature Oleg Lekmanov, who taught at Princeton University, expressed precisely this view: “As I see it, this is not relevant to the humanities, because no one from the military sector offers us funding in the first place.” However, the Pentagon has numerous programs and foundations that finance research, and not only in fields related to defense, but also in biology, psychology, medicine, linguistics, the social sciences, and area studies. For instance, Natalia Korbo, a former targeting analyst for the U.S. State Department Economic Bureau, confirmed to T-invariant that the Department of Defense supports an exceptionally broad range of projects, particularly in STEM – science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
Moreover, funding extends well beyond STEM disciplines. For example, the Minerva Initiative distributes long- and short-term grants for research intended to help the Department of Defense better understand future challenges and prepare for them. Thus, the participating projects cover a range of disciplines. According to Science, Minerva allocated $24.8 million in 2024 alone to projects involving artificial intelligence, climate change, and migration. Yet, the Science reports that the initiative had already begun drastically reducing its funding, even for projects that appeared directly relevant to defense interests. Among those unexpectedly terminated were studies examining the factors that motivate military personnel to remain in service and the conditions that prevent the collapse of international alliances. And now, it might become even more difficult to obtain Pentagon funding, since applicants will have to demonstrate that no member of a project is affiliated with any organization on the list of “the undesirables.”
Apart from research, the Department of Defense provides funding for educational purposes. It awards scholarships to undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students studying languages and regions considered “critical to America’s security,” and it sponsors academic centers devoted to these fields.
Judging by the Trump administration’s foreign-policy priorities, particular attention is currently being drawn to South America and the Indo-Pacific region. At the same time, the Middle East, Central Asia, and Russia remain areas of strategic interest as well. Consequently, the publication of the NDAA 2019 list will affect not only researchers in biochemistry, physics, engineering, and technology, but potentially also scholars studying Latin American music or Chinese dance if their academic center receives Pentagon funding.
Moreover, it is unclear whether the funding will be lost only by a project or an institute who maintains ties with a banned organization, or the research of the whole university will be considered compromised in case one body continues collaborations. It is entirely possible that if even one department within a university depends on Department of Defense funding, restrictions on collaboration with listed organizations could apply to the university as a whole.
Furthermore, the preamble to the document contains another provision that may substantially broaden its practical impact. Formally, the list applies only to Department of Defense grants, scholarships, contracts, and other financial support. However, it also warns that cooperation with listed organizations may negatively impact scholars’ eligibility for federal funding. And that is a much more serious prospect. The U.S. federal government finances roughly half of all research and maintenance expenditures at American universities and colleges. Federal money also supports countless scholarships, research grants, and academic conferences. In this light, universities will hardly risk losing access to federal funding, even if the document merely warns of possible consequences rather than imposing an explicit prohibition.
Denis Simon, Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft in Washington, argues that the U.S. government has effectively stopped distinguishing between leading civilian universities and institutions engaged in security-related research. He also believes American organizations will most likely interpret the conditions of the NDAA 2019 list very broadly. Simon further suggests that universities may begin limiting interaction not only with the organizations explicitly named on the list, but also with other research institutes in Russia, China, and Iran.
A similar concern is expressed by Evgeny Roshchin, Visiting Fellow at the Center for Global Policy of the SAIS School of Advanced International Studies: “On the one hand, the document concerns the research funded through Department of Defense grants. On the other hand, the disciplinary boundaries are not specified. That means it could apply to virtually any field of research, including economics, if it is financed through Pentagon grants. Researchers applying for federal grant competitions will also have to disclose all of their connections with people affiliated with organizations on the list. The existence of such connections may reduce their chances of receiving funding. I believe this will become the main deterrent. Of course, everything will depend on how the rules are applied, but the policy could seriously damage academic cooperation, because some researchers might choose to abandon perfectly legitimate collaborations simply to avoid the risk.”
According to research data, international collaboration is a significant driver of scientific progress. Natalia Korbo believes that while some restrictions are understandable, a blanket prohibition is deeply misguided:
“I understand the logic behind banning joint research in fields like bioengineering or physics, although spies are smart enough not to be affiliated with problematic institutions. But prohibiting all collaboration is simply foolish. It will harm both American science and scientific research worldwide. The restrictions will absolutely affect cultural studies as well. Even the closure of the Confucius Institutes had negative consequences for Americans themselves. Yes, those institutes promoted the Chinese government’s propaganda, but in most American cities they were also the only places where people could learn Chinese. These kinds of bans, like the TikTok ban, are often poorly thought out and produce enormous collateral damage.”
A similar view is shared by Anton Kapustin, professor of physics at the California Institute of Technology: “First, I believe these are serious restrictions, and they extend well beyond defense-related research. Originally, they applied only to projects sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense. But similar restrictions have since been introduced for grants from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, and other agencies. In practice, they now affect almost all federal grants. Second, the list of proscribed entities grows every year. Now it includes MIPT, HSE, and Moscow State University. If a student has co-authored publications with researchers from these institutions, any American university will think twice before admitting that student to a PhD program, because it will most likely be unable to pay their stipend using federal grant money. There are still many uncertainties, of course, but I think universities will prefer to be overcautious. And obtaining visas will also become more difficult for such students. So the consequences could be very serious.”
Thus, for Russian researchers, the publication of the list may result in profound professional difficulties. But how capable are these restrictions of protecting American interests? And is the loss of cooperation with Russian, Iranian, and Chinese colleagues truly significant for U.S. science?
Entrepreneur Oleg Tinkov argued in an interview with journalist Mikhail Fishman on TV Rain, that Russian universities continue to produce exceptionally strong specialists: “Whatever we may say about Putin’s Russia, or Russia in general, its universities and education – especially in mathematics, computer science, physics, and chemistry – remain exceptionally strong, even compared with the United States. I still think Russian education firmly belongs among the world’s top five, and specialists from Russia are highly valued.”
Academic collaborations with China seem to be even more important for American science. Over the past decade, Chinese science has dramatically strengthened its global position. China ranks second in the world in the number of scientific publications. In 2024, for the first time, Chinese researchers published more papers in leading natural science journals than American scientists did, exceeding the US by 17%. Niccolò Pisani et al. emphasize that China’s success has been driven largely by international collaboration and sustained government investment. Consequently, the restriction of scientific cooperation with China can also have an objective of slowing China’s scientific progress. But such a strategy is likely to have limited effectiveness as long as other leading countries continue collaborating with Chinese researchers. Meanwhile, American science itself risks losing specialists and forfeiting one of its greatest competitive advantages: participation in the global scientific community.
As Denis Simon argues, “the policy is likely to accelerate the fragmentation of the US-China scientific relationship, including in fields that have traditionally relied on open exchanges and multinational research teams. It could also limit US researchers’ access to some of the world’s most productive scientific institutions.” Simon also questions whether the policy is genuinely capable of slowing China’s scientific development.
The publication of the 2025 Section 1286 list may therefore substantially limit cooperation between American researchers and colleagues from Russia, Iran, and China. Although at first glance, the restrictions appear to apply only to defense-related research, they are likely to affect a much broader range of academic disciplines. The precedent of prosecuting cases unrelated to security topics, set by the China Initiative, demonstrated that a program announced with narrow security objectives could, in practice, be applied much more broadly. Meanwhile, the threat of losing Pentagon funding and risk of losing eligibility for other forms of federal support are sufficiently serious that many universities are likely to abandon collaborations with listed institutions simply to avoid the risk. The inclusion of major civilian universities such as Moscow State University and the Higher School of Economics potentially affects thousands of scholars who have no connection to military research. It will be harder if possible to participate in American conferences, conduct joint research, or publish in academic journals, even if they present themselves as independent researchers and do not list their institutional affiliation. Even the students from these universities, even though the restrictions do not formally prohibit them from applying to American colleges or universities, may face indirect consequences if institutions, fearing the loss of federal funding, begin extending these restrictions to graduates of listed universities as well. The policy may also affect universities outside the United States that are closely integrated into the American academic system, particularly those receiving U.S. funding. Such institutions may likewise begin limiting cooperation with researchers affiliated with organizations on the list.
Ultimately, the measures intended to protect American science may not only create serious obstacles for researchers from Russia, China, and Iran, but they may also undermine one of the fundamental strengths of American academia itself – international collaboration and the free exchange of knowledge.
The post New “Undesirables”: Why the Pentagon Is Restricting Cooperation with Moscow State University and Higher School of Economics appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.
A common type of billboard seen these days in the streets of Tehran in Iran. Image source.
Comments by Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News
Sam Parker of Behind the News Network has just published an excellent article based on Zbigniew Brzezinski’s 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard.
Brzezinski’s book warned that if the U.S. ever attacked Iran, it could lead China and Russia to unite with Iran and against the U.S. to prevent Iran’s downfall.
In a 2012 interview about his book, Brzezinski said:
“By 2025, the US could lose its position as the world’s dominant power, leading to a more chaotic and conflict-ridden international system.”
That “prophecy” has been proven true today, and it is a far different reality than what the Christian Evangelical Christians are saying about prophecy and Iran.
The Christians seem to forget their Biblical history, because historically, Israel has been conquered by Iran (Persia), and Iran has never been conquered by a world power since then.
In the 8th Century B.C., the Assyrian Empire, which included Persia, carried into captivity the northern 10 tribes of Israel.
Then in 586 B.C., Jerusalem fell to the Babylonian Empire, which included Persia, and just a few years later Persia dominated the area and it became known as the Persian Empire. Cyrus, the Persian King, is the one who allowed the Jews to return to their homeland and rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem.
From the time of the Roman Empire through to the British Empire, Persia (Iran) has never been conquered, and has never been a colony of either Britain or the U.S.
It is one of the two non-Arab countries in the Middle East that has never been conquered by Western nations, and is the remnant of a former great world empire. Turkey is the other one, being the remnant of the great Ottoman Empire, which eclipsed even the Roman Empire at its height.
The Christian Evangelical Zionists who follow the modern-day Dispensationalism theology, which allows them to condemn whole ethnic groups of people as evil, such as the Palestinians and the Iranians, are on the wrong side of history, and will soon find out that they are also on the wrong side of God’s plan for the end times in the future.
Many of them will follow their leader and savior Donald Trump to the end, “trusting the plan”, which leads directly to Hell.
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by Sam Parker
Behind the News Network
Excerpts:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a grand master of US imperial strategy in the Cold War, put forward some of the most insightful analysis for us to understand America’s war on Iran.
In his 1997 book The Grand Chessboard, Brzezinski identified Iran as one of the “critically important geopolitical pivots” in what he called the “Eurasian Balkans”—a region of power vacuum and power suction stretching from Central Asia to the Persian Gulf.
Brzezinski wrote:
“Iran dominates the eastern shoreline of the Persian Gulf, while its independence, irrespective of current Iranian hostility toward the United States, acts as a barrier to any long-term Russian threat to American interests in the Persian Gulf region.”
Back in 1997, Iran was simultaneously a threat to US interests and a geopolitical buffer against Russian expansion. Brzezinski never thought that US policy makers would be so unwise as to push Iran toward Russia that directly contradicts US strategic interest, against any strategic logic.
Brzezinski’s most prescient warning appears in The Grand Chessboard:
“Potentially, the most dangerous scenario would be a grand coalition of China, Russia, and perhaps Iran, an ‘antihegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances… Averting this contingency… will require a display of U.S. geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”
“The three grand imperatives of imperial geostrategy are to prevent collusion and maintain security dependence among the vassals, to keep tributaries pliant and protected, and to keep the barbarians from coming together.
Henceforth, the United States may have to determine how to cope with regional coalitions that seek to push America out of Eurasia, thereby threatening America’s status as a global power.”— Zbigniew Brzezinski.
Fast forward 30 years, the current reality is:
Brzezinski’s warning has materialized.
One high-profile Chinese commentator noted, “Trump’s war against Iran may be the stupidest strategic mistake in American history” because it accelerates this anti-hegemonic coalition.
From a 2012 interview about his book Strategic Vision on the Charlie Rose show:
“He advocated deterrence over preventive war, arguing that starting a war to prevent nuclear acquisition ‘will certainly plunge the region into protracted and unpredictable hostilities‘”.
This contrasts sharply with current Israeli and US strategy of regime change through assassination and unprovoked war – exactly the kind of escalation Brzezinski warned against.
In Strategic Vision, Brzezinski diagnosed the fundamental problem facing the US:
“By 2025, the US could lose its position as the world’s dominant power, leading to a more chaotic and conflict-ridden international system”.
For all his foresight, he skipped forecasting the US itself would be the source of global chaos and conflicts.
Back in 2012, Brzezinski attributed the potential decline to US militarism (wars in Iraq and Afghanistan), unilateralism (vastly worsened under Trump), the 2008 financial crisis, and polarized domestic politics (also vastly worsened since then).
He noted,
“Unless we overcome the currently paralyzing divisions within our own society… the United States will find it difficult to set its house in order and to play a constructive world role”.
How prescient.
These failures taught Brzezinski that military solutions to Iranian problems are usually catastrophic. His later advocacy for engagement and deterrence reflects this hard-won wisdom – wisdom ignored by US policymakers.
In fact, successive US administrations since 2012 have pursued the polar opposite of Brzezinski’s recommendations:
In the end, Brzezinski’s warnings are unheeded.
The current crisis validates his prophecy and suggests that without a course correction, the “strategic vision” of American decline will become self-fulfilling.
One of Brzezinski’s most prophetic concepts in the book is the “global political awakening”.
He argues that for the first time in history, the entire world’s population is politically conscious and reachable through the press and social media.
This means that traditional “imperial” maneuvers (like the 1953 coup in All the Shah’s Men) are no longer possible because the local population will inevitably resist and mobilize against the imperialists and neo-colonialism.
We are seeing this clearly in the Iran war.
Despite the mass protests of economic hardship and corruption, the Iranian population has rallied around the flag and resisted capitulation under intense US and Israel bombing rampage.
Brzezinski posited that Iran prefers a balance between East and West. However, by using military force in 2026, the West effectively forced Tehran to abandon that balance and seek a “security guarantee” from Beijing and Moscow, fulfilling Brzezinski’s nightmare of a unified, anti-Western Eurasian bloc.
As the US wages war on Iran, China is following Brzezinski’s predicted script: keeping a low profile while securing long-term energy contracts and security arrangements in the Persian Gulf.
China’s deepening involvement in Iranian oil infrastructure (like the Alborz platform) is the physical manifestation of the “Eurasian integration” Brzezinski was worried about.
China is turning Iran from a “geopolitical pivot” into a “Chinese bridgehead.”
China also gains from American exhaustion. The depletion of US arsenal further weakens its position along China’s shores.
Brzezinski specifically used the year 2025 as the tipping point in his book. He argued that if by this time the U.S. had not revitalized its domestic economy and fixed its “ignorant garrison-state mentality,” it would lose its role as the global arbiter.
Reading this today, the current conflict looks less like a localized war and more like the “post-America scramble” he predicted – a chaotic period where regional powers like Iran and global powers like China test the crumbling foundations of the old-world order that favors the US and its vassals.
Iran’s historical experience as a crossroads civilization (the “Eurasian land bridge”) taught it that direct conflict with superior powers is suicidal.
Instead, Iran has built a network of proxies reflecting ancient Persian diplomatic traditions, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, and Shiite Militias in Iraq/Syria.
These proxies provide Iran with buffer space and multiple points of leverage against its opponents.
Iran has long held a “No East, No West” Doctrine. This reflects Iran’s historical position between competing empires (Roman/Parthian, British/Russian, US/Soviet).
Today, Iran maintains ties with Russia and China while maintaining an independent posture, demonstrating continuity with its non-alignment tradition. This pillar of strategy may become less tenable as reconciliation with the West seems out of the question for now.
This article was written by Human Superior Intelligence (HSI)
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Smolny Beyond Borders, an online education project, has launched the Smolny Associate Degree program, with applications open through July 31. Over two years, students choose courses across a range of fields — the social sciences and humanities, the natural sciences, the arts, and literature. Graduates receive an Associate of Arts degree, which qualifies them to apply as transfer students to U.S. universities, entering in their second or third year (including Bard College, which will also offer third-year admission to its online program). T-invariant spoke with Denis Skopin, a philosopher who teaches at Smolny Beyond Borders, and Philip Fedchin, manager of the Smolny Beyond Borders Initiative and an online-education specialist, about how a liberal arts program was built in exile, whether serious humanities research is still possible in Russia today, and what the future holds for distance learning.
T-INVARIANT BACKGROUNDER
Denis Skopin
Born in 1976. Graduated from Nizhny Novgorod State Linguistic University. Defended his dissertation in philosophy in Paris in 2012. From 2012 to 2022 he taught at Smolny College (the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences at St. Petersburg State University), most recently as an associate professor. He was fired from St. Petersburg State University after taking part in the protests against mobilization in September 2022. He has lived and worked in Berlin since 2023.
Philip Fedchin
Born in 1972. Holds a degree in art history from St. Petersburg State University and a master’s degree in international relations from the University of Limerick. From 1998 to 2020 he taught at Smolny College, serving as associate dean in 2011. Since 2020 he has worked as an online-education specialist at Bard College Berlin. Since November 2022 he has directed the Smolny Beyond Borders project.
T-invariant: Smolny College was one of Russia’s leading centers of humanities education. What were the milestones in the development of liberal arts education in Russia?
Philip Fedchin: Smolny College was founded in 1997, and the first class of degree students enrolled two years later. In 2011 the program became a full faculty of St. Petersburg State University — the Russian equivalent of a school or college. Together with Bard College we ran dual-degree programs at the bachelor’s level (all of our programs) and, in later years, at the master’s level (two of the seven). At any given time the college had as many as 600 students enrolled and about 150 instructors. All told, it offered 14 undergraduate majors and seven master’s programs. Over the years, Smolny graduated more than two thousand students. It was a one-of-a-kind experiment in interdisciplinary education on the liberal arts model. Two other institutions also tried to reproduce that model — Shaninka [the Moscow School of Social and Economic Sciences — T-invariant] and RANEPA [the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration — T-invariant]. At a certain point Smolny became one of the city’s leading centers of cultural and intellectual life, with a brilliant teaching staff and exceptionally strong students. But in June 2021, when Bard College was declared an “undesirable organization,” our project took a devastating blow.
T-i: What exactly did you do to get on the wrong side of the Justice Ministry? Why go after some of the world’s leading universities?
Denis Skopin: Officially, Bard College was declared “undesirable” because its activities “pose a threat to the constitutional order of the Russian Federation.” That formula can be stretched to cover just about anything. But as far as I know, the real reason was that Bard received funding from the Soros foundation — and the foundation itself was already on the list of “undesirable” organizations by then. It’s worth noting that this was only a pretext: the leadership of St. Petersburg State University had known perfectly well about Bard’s ties to the Open Society Foundations long before 2021. At the time it looked as though that fact was simply put to use to destroy an independent school, at the very moment when an attempt was under way to spin it off from the university and create a separate liberal arts institution. In hindsight it’s perfectly clear that the direction the college was taking, along with our partnership with Bard College — an institution whose policy rests on respect for human rights and academic freedom — ran counter to the “party line.”
T-INVARIANT BACKGROUNDER
The liberal arts are a model of higher education built on broad study across the humanities, the social and natural sciences, and the arts. The aim is to develop students’ critical thinking and communication skills, along with their ability to analyze information and draw conclusions. Within this model, students design an individual course of study and sample a range of disciplines. The system spread most widely at American colleges and universities in the mid-twentieth century. The first year — and very often the second — involves no specialization: during that period students are meant to work out what actually interests them. After the second year, a student declares a major. Because electives account for such a large share of the workload, students can often add a minor as well, and sometimes even a second major (a double major). The key point is that students make all of these decisions themselves, though with guidance from an academic advisor. Smolny College was the first program in Russia to operate on the liberal arts model. Today there are no institutions left in Russia that work this way.
T-i: Do you follow the academic work of your former colleagues who stayed in Russia? Is the range of what they can research narrowing under the pressure of repression? And is it still possible to do serious work in the humanities today, so long as you steer clear of obviously taboo subjects like the war or gender studies?
DS: I personally know a lot of competent, decent teachers who stayed in Russia. These are anti-war people, and their situation right now is not one you’d envy. The leading prewar educational projects in Russia have all fallen apart, one way or another. Smolny is gone. Shaninka has been shut down. HSE [the Higher School of Economics — T-invariant] has been thoroughly “purged” of disloyal faculty members. Russian higher education has withered before our eyes, in the space of just a few years. Faculty members who remain in the country can no longer say what they think. Before the full-scale invasion it was still possible, even as Russia was rapidly turning autocratic. Yes, there was administrative pressure, there were attempts to control what got taught, but what goes on in the administrators’ offices is one thing and what goes on in the classroom is another. Now that has changed: you can’t speak frankly with students, because sooner or later someone will report you. As the old line has it, “If twelve of you are plotting a conspiracy, one of you is bound to be a traitor.”
Researchers in Russia today are arguably worse off than they were in the Soviet Union. Back then, for instance, holders of a Doctor of Sciences degree [the higher of Russia’s two doctoral degrees — T-invariant] could order scholarly literature from abroad. Today Russian scholars’ access to foreign libraries is severely restricted. If you’re a historian or a literary scholar, say, some 80 percent of the foreign scholarly literature you need to read isn’t in Russian libraries, and you won’t find it in open access either. And that’s before you get to how much harder it now is for a Russian scholar to publish with a serious international academic press. My own book, for example, came out with Routledge in 2022, literally a month before the big war started. I find it hard to imagine a scholar living and working in Russia getting a monograph published by a Western press today.
T-i: What’s the bigger obstacle to cooperation between Russian and Western researchers: pressure from the authorities, or Western partners’ unwillingness to deal with an aggressor state?
DS: There is pressure from the administrations of Russian universities, but Western universities are hardly likely to work with scholars based inside Russia right now either. Before the full-scale invasion there were any number of joint projects, especially with Europe, which is right next door. After February 2022, collaborating with Russian institutions — state universities above all — simply became toxic. Which means that a researcher working with scholars in Russia has to be absolutely certain about the people involved: certain they haven’t signed pro-war letters or taken part in hounding their anti-war colleagues. Nobody can offer that kind of guarantee. So Western scholars don’t want to take on the responsibility. Of course, individual scholars had personal ties with Western colleagues, and those haven’t gone anywhere. But direct collaboration is on pause.
[[socialnetworks]]
T-i: Given everything you’ve described, how did your project come about in the first place? And tell us how it differs from other educational initiatives in exile — the Free University, for instance.
DS: In February 2022 the college was shut down in all but name. Officially it still exists, but in reality it’s a ruin, and as early as this year students will no longer be taught under the old liberal arts curriculum. The colleagues who left became the backbone of Smolny Beyond Borders. The core of our project consists of people who worked at Smolny College itself, and we’re carrying on the tradition Smolny had before the full-scale invasion. We started out as a set of standalone online courses, but last year we launched our first degree-granting online program.
That’s what sets us apart from many other online education projects: we are first and foremost an academic project. We don’t just let people sit in on our courses — we give our students a way to take their first step toward the global higher education system. We hold the relevant U.S. accreditation. Along with the Associate Degree, we also offer shorter certificate programs.
PREVIOUSLY IN T-INVARIANT
“Professors have no right to drag ideological preferences into the university.” Marina Kalashnikova on the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences in Montenegro
“Come New Year’s, an owl will fly in from the Ministry of Magic with a letter saying the license is gone.” Shaninka faculty on how the authorities destroyed one of Russia’s most important universities
T-i: So this is a full-fledged online bachelor’s degree?
DS: It’s more like the first stage of one. Our program runs two years, and graduates receive an Associate of Arts degree, which allows them to continue their studies in person at one of the institutions affiliated with Bard College (assuming, naturally, that the transfer goes through). Starting in September 2027, Bard Global Degree plans to open a full online bachelor’s program, into which our graduates will be able to transfer as third-year students. That degree will have three broad majors: 1) philosophy, politics, and economics (PPE); 2) literary and media studies; 3) data science.
T-i: Plenty of applicants will choose an online program over an in-person one. What do you see as the prospects for distance higher education in exile?
DS: I think the remote format creates obstacles and opens up new horizons at the same time. Among the drawbacks is the physical and psychological strain on students, who have to spend several hours a week in front of a computer. As a teacher, I miss the live, human contact with students that the classroom always provided. That said, online learning has obvious advantages. Above all, it’s far cheaper: a university doesn’t have to maintain a campus or buy equipment, which means those costs aren’t passed on to students. Online education has also long since become mainstream — practically every large university now has a unit devoted to it. Tellingly, most Russian faculty members who left after the full-scale invasion began — around 90 percent, I’d guess — now work in online education projects in one form or another. For them it’s both a way to survive and a new professional niche.
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T-i: How closely does your curriculum follow Smolny College’s?
PF: The structure of the Smolny Associate Degree is identical to that of comparable Bard College programs, since the degree itself is Bard’s. But the teaching is done primarily by our own instructors. Not exclusively, though — Associate Degree students can also take courses from the Global Higher Education Alliance for the 21st Century network, which widens their options considerably.
T-i: Do students pay tuition at Smolny Beyond Borders?
PF: Tuition is €5,000 a year. But we aren’t counting on tuition to bring in any real income, and we encourage everyone who can’t pay anything at all to apply.
All of our students currently receive substantial discounts, up to 100 percent, depending on what they can afford. In effect, you can complete two years at an American college practically for free (setting aside what a laptop and an internet connection cost) and then either try to transfer to a regular in-person institution — where tuition is a different matter, and whatever discounts exist depend on the school you’re transferring to — or apply and enroll as a third-year student in the online bachelor’s program, on roughly the same terms you had for those first two years.
T-i: What share of the prewar teaching staff now works at Smolny Beyond Borders? Do you hire instructors who haven’t taught in other liberal arts programs before?
PF: Of our 30 current instructors, roughly half once taught at Smolny College or were directly connected to it. But we also have people who taught at the European University at St. Petersburg, at Shaninka, and elsewhere.
T-i: The Associate Degree offers a wide range of courses, from philosophy to data science. On the one hand, that looks appealing to a Russian applicant used to narrowly specialized degree programs. On the other, plenty of people will ask themselves: “And what are my job prospects once I finish?” A lot of people have switched into survival mode, and it can feel like this is no moment for philosophy or art history — far better to study something applied that pays off quickly.
PF: If you look at global university rankings, American universities are at the top — and their undergraduate education is built on precisely this liberal arts model. Students get to choose a specialization not when they apply but later, once they’re already at the university, after a year or two. A student first picks a few individual courses, tries out different fields, and only then, on the strength of that experience, chooses a major. The Associate Degree is exactly those first two years, and the point is to help students figure out what actually interests them. This trend didn’t emerge in a vacuum: it answers the demands of the labor market and, above all, the needs of students themselves. And yes, one important point. When someone claims a program embodies liberal arts principles, I usually suggest asking a simple question: what share of their coursework do students genuinely choose for themselves? If it’s less than half, it’s liberal arts in name only. In our case, of the 64 credits in the two-year program, only 13 are required courses. In other words, students choose three-quarters of their courses on their own, with a single additional constraint on the remaining 50 credits — they must take at least one four-credit course in each of the four distribution areas (mathematics and the natural sciences, the social sciences, literature, and the arts).
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T-i: How will events in Russia shape your project’s fate and trajectory? Take two extreme scenarios five years from now: either Russia enters a period of sweeping change and democratization, or the country goes down the North Korean road. Would either affect you, or are you building your educational path independently of what happens in Russia?
PF: If positive change does come to Russia, I’m confident that the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Sciences will quickly be restored to its former shape. And that would mean not just the revival of one school but the full implementation of the model within the official educational standards. The thing is, when the plan for a new university built on Smolny was being drawn up, an enormous amount of work went into developing a new educational standard. In the end it never came to anything, but what’s written down doesn’t disappear — those ideas can perfectly well be taken up again in the future. Much of what made Smolny College interesting was precisely that it ran a liberal arts and sciences model inside a Russian university.
As for the North Korean scenario, our program was international from the outset, and we’re part of the Bard Global Degree project, whose whole purpose is to build a model for supporting displaced students and displaced scholars in a range of contexts. And while we do enroll students located in Russia in courses outside the Associate Degree, for the Associate Degree itself we accept only applicants who are outside Russia, for obvious reasons. In that sense we work with the diaspora — and given that all the program’s required courses are taught in English [except one — T-invariant], internationalization is a natural process.
The post <h1>Smolny in Exile: From a St. Petersburg Faculty to a Global Online College</h1> appeared first on Т-инвариант / T-invariant.
In 1993, Marina Bykova became the youngest scholar in the humanities in Russia to earn a Doctor of Sciences degree [Russia’s higher doctorate, awarded years after the Ph.D.-equivalent candidate’s degree — T-invariant]. Today she is a professor at an American university and editor-in-chief of the influential international journal Studies in East European Thought. For many years her professional life has been devoted to building and sustaining dialogue between the Russian philosophical tradition and the international academic community. It is a singular and often difficult mission — keeping intellectual bridges open at a time when political conflict is tearing apart the usual academic ties. In an interview with T-invariant, Marina Bykova reflects on why Russian academia has been paralyzed by fear, how the cultural project of the “Russian World” turned into a political ideology, what happens to philosophy when it loses its autonomy, and how the experience of the Soviet “sixties generation” of philosophers [shestidesyatniki, the reform-minded intellectuals who came of age during the post-Stalin Thaw — T-invariant] helps us understand the relationship between philosophy and power today.
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Science Under Sanctions
T-invariant: Let’s start with your work as a journal editor. Before you became editor-in-chief of Studies in East European Thought, you ran another journal devoted to philosophy in Russia, didn’t you?
Marina Bykova: Yes, before that I was editor-in-chief of Russian Studies in Philosophy; I was invited to take it over in January 2008. By then I had already guest-edited two thematic issues for it at the invitation of the editor at the time, Taras Zakydalsky, a well-known scholar of Russian and Ukrainian philosophy. After his death, the publisher asked me to take charge. The journal had a rather unusual format: it published thematic clusters of articles that had previously appeared in Russian and were then translated into English, mostly from journals such as Voprosy filosofii (Problems of Philosophy), Filosofskie nauki (Philosophical Sciences), and Vestnik MGU (the Moscow University Bulletin). I proposed expanding that model to include original research written specifically for the journal.
T-i: So the journal was a window through which Russian-language philosophy reached Western academia?
MB: Exactly. Most Western scholars had limited access to philosophical literature in Russian, and many of them found it hard to read Russian at all. So our job was to give Western readers a sense of what Russian philosophy was preoccupied with, which problems it was debating, and what intellectual discussions were unfolding inside it.
T-i: How did you manage to keep that format going?
MB: We put out thematic issues, for which Russian authors sent us their articles in Russian. Professional translators then turned the texts into English. But philosophical translation takes more than simply knowing the language; it requires a deep grasp of the subject, the terminology, the context. So I often had to edit the translations heavily, and sometimes essentially rebuild whole passages from scratch. What came out in the end were fully fledged scholarly articles that specialists still use today. The journal’s archive is available on the publisher’s website.
T-i: Why was the journal shut down?
MB: I’ll admit this is still a hard question for me to answer. That journal was bound up with many years of my life, and its closing was painful. But to understand the decision, I need to say a few words about the journal itself. It was part of a large series that originally ran to more than ten titles covering Russian scholarship across the humanities — history, literature, cultural studies, education, and other fields. These journals were founded back during the Cold War and at first served as an important source of material for Sovietology. After the Cold War ended, they retained their significance and continued to serve an important informational function for the Western academic community.
Originally the entire series was published by a small publishing house, M. E. Sharpe, but by the time I was editor-in-chief the titles had moved to Taylor & Francis, which had acquired M. E. Sharpe along with everything it published. In its final years, Russian Studies in Philosophy appeared under the Routledge imprint — one of the leading international humanities publishers — which raised its standing considerably. The journal was widely cited, scored well in the international databases, and consistently ranked highly in Scopus-based metrics, which in turn drew a large number of Russian authors.
BACKGROUND
M. E. Sharpe was an independent American academic publisher founded in the 1950s. It issued a series of journals under the general heading Russian Studies in…, which grew out of American academia’s interest in studying the USSR and Russia during the Cold War. The series included Russian Studies in Education, Russian Studies in History, Russian Studies in Literature, Russian Studies in Critical Thought, and Russian Studies in Philosophy. In the 2000s, a substantial part of M. E. Sharpe’s academic portfolio, the journals included, was acquired by the Taylor & Francis Group, which went on publishing them under the Routledge imprint.
After Russia launched its full-scale war against Ukraine, the publisher sent the editors of every journal in the series a notice that it had decided to discontinue them. Formally, this was presented as a business decision. I managed to win a one-year reprieve, since by that point we already had a fully prepared publishing plan of six issues. Simply abandoning material that authors and editors had worked on for years struck me as impossible. As a result, ours was the last journal in the series to go: it closed only in May 2023.
T-i: And do you think it really was a business decision, or…?
MB: No. My own experience, at any rate, convinces me otherwise. I believe it was first and foremost a politically motivated decision. In January 2019, nearly four years before Russian Studies in Philosophy closed, I had also been invited to head another journal, Studies in East European Thought (SEET), published by Springer. After the war began, representatives of the publisher approached me as editor-in-chief and proposed limiting submissions by authors with Russian institutional affiliations. I asked on what grounds such a measure was being proposed. I was told that the policy followed from the general sanctions regime and from political decisions taken in Europe and North America with respect to Russia. They also stressed that many Ukrainian colleagues categorically objected to publishing Russian authors.
But a scholarly publication is not in itself an expression of support for a state or its policies. I consistently distinguish between philosophical thought and state ideology: the first, by its very nature, presupposes critical thinking and autonomy, while the second seeks to use knowledge as an instrument of political ends. Judging philosophical work primarily through the lens of political affiliation inevitably undermines the very principle of academic freedom.
So my position was a matter of principle: the only criterion for publication in an academic journal should be the quality of the scholarship. I replied that the journal would go on accepting articles from researchers with Russian affiliations. My editorial board fully supported that stance. I also told Springer that if the publisher found this approach unacceptable, I was prepared to step down as editor-in-chief. After internal discussions, Springer decided not to interfere with the journal’s editorial policy. As a result, Studies in East European Thought remains one of the few international philosophy journals where Russian scholars can still publish on standard academic terms.
T-i: Isn’t that dangerous for the authors themselves right now?
MB: That’s a hard question. Situations vary. Some authors prefer to publish under pseudonyms or anonymously; others use their own names and even list their institutional affiliations. We try to take each author’s particular circumstances into account. At the same time, it should be understood that what we are dealing with here is scholarly work and scholarly publication. That said, we are certainly aware that for some Russian authors, publishing in a Western academic journal can itself look like a risky step today.
T-i: Which raises the obvious question: what makes that risk worth taking for them?
MB: For most of our Russian colleagues it is less about building a new reputation than about not vanishing from the international academic landscape. Many are afraid of being shut out of the global scholarly community altogether.
I was also struck by how closely Russian researchers still follow our journal. Although official access to many international databases is now restricted in Russia, scholars find ways to get the literature they need through personal contacts, professional networks, and other informal channels of academic exchange. Springer recently gave me download statistics for individual articles and full issues over the past three years. The largest number of downloads came from Russia and China.
T-i: Even though the journal comes out in English?
MB: Yes. And what is more, our journal is hardly politically neutral. We were one of the first academic publications to respond openly to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — and not merely with a statement. In December 2022 we brought out a special issue, Russia’s War in Ukraine: When Barbarism Takes Over Civilization (SEET, vol. 74, issue 4). I edited it and wrote the introduction. It ran to 22 pieces, including research articles and the proceedings of a roundtable with young Russian scholars. As far as I know, it was one of the first collective — and genuinely international — responses to the war from the philosophical community. That issue mattered not only as an academic reaction to the war but as an attempt to preserve the critical function of philosophical language: the capacity to describe what is happening without substituting ideological formulas and euphemisms for analysis.
Just recently, in early 2026, we put together a special double issue, Aleksandr Dugin and Contemporary Russian Conservatism (SEET, vol. 78, issues 1–2), which I co-edited with my Canadian colleague Jeff Love. The contributors examine in detail the intellectual sources, ideological foundations, and political consequences of contemporary Russian conservatism, along with the role Aleksandr Dugin’s ideas played in shaping it. The issue was important because it analyzed not just Dugin as a public intellectual but the broader phenomenon of philosophical and pseudo-philosophical constructs being turned into instruments of political mobilization. We wanted to show how ideas, once they leave the academic context, can be reinterpreted and put to work in ideological projects with real historical consequences. And of course, in that issue we stated our own position on the Dugin phenomenon openly.
T-i: As far as I know, academics don’t regard him as an academic philosopher.
MB: That’s partly true. But in the West — and this is by no means a new tendency — Dugin is often seen as one of contemporary Russia’s leading intellectual figures, even as the chief architect of the Putin regime. He is frequently called “Putin’s brain,” on the assumption that the key to understanding Kremlin policy lies exclusively in his writings. To my mind, that is a serious oversimplification. The main goal of our special issue of Studies in East European Thought was to show that this picture does not hold up and to subject the Dugin phenomenon itself to critical analysis. We set out to show that Dugin is not an independent philosopher in the strict academic sense, still less a hidden architect of Russian policy, but a political ideologue and polemicist who uses philosophical terminology to construct a particular ideological worldview. Since in the post-Soviet space Dugin is sometimes presented as virtually the foremost authority on Martin Heidegger, we brought in leading Western specialists in Heidegger, the history of ideas, and intellectual history, among them such well-established authors as Mark Sedgwick. In the pages of that issue, researchers analyzed Dugin’s The Fourth Political Theory and his geopolitical concepts in detail, exposing their eclectic, ideologically driven character.
The analysis showed that behind the outward philosophical vocabulary there often lies an arbitrary assembly of disparate ideas, in which quotations from Heidegger, Max Weber, and Max Stirner, torn out of context, are mixed at will with radical traditionalism and far-right political concepts. Our special issue thus made an important contribution to the critical study of the Dugin phenomenon.
We aimed not merely to explain to the Western intellectual community who Dugin is as a political thinker, but to move the discussion out of sensationalist journalism and into the space of serious philosophical and intellectual-historical analysis.
From the “Russian World” to War
T-i: Do philosophers today — you among them — understand what is happening in Russia right now? Why did the war become possible in the first place?
MB: Whatever we do understand as researchers, we ought to be able to explain clearly. That, to me, is where the responsibility of philosophers and humanities scholars lies. I recently wrote an article on the genealogy of the “Russian World” ideology, because it is particularly important today to understand how this concept arose and why it acquired such destructive political potential. What matters to me above all is showing that ideas are rarely born in finished ideological form. They go through a long evolution, in the course of which their original cultural meaning can be radically reinterpreted and harnessed for political ends. That, in my view, is exactly what happened with the concept of the “Russian World.” The paradox is that the idea was originally neither narrowly nationalist nor aggressive. It emerged in the 1990s, during the period of democratic reform, and was largely conceived as a network of cultural centers meant to support the Russian language and Russian culture and to maintain ties with compatriots and Russian-speaking communities outside Russia. It took institutional shape in 2007 with the founding of the Russkiy Mir Foundation, charged with coordinating the promotion of Russian language and culture abroad. That was when the existing Russian Houses [Russian state-run cultural centers abroad — T-invariant], along with newly opened ones, were given fresh impetus, with an emphasis above all on cultural diplomacy, support for the diaspora, and the maintenance of cultural ties with it. There is nothing unique about institutions of cultural diplomacy. Many countries invest heavily in strengthening their cultural presence and deploying the instruments of soft power — China’s Confucius Institute, Germany’s Goethe-Institut, and the British Council, to name a few.
It is important to stress that the “Russian World” project was, in its formative stage, a matter of cultural policy, not political ideology. There is nothing exceptional or nationalist about wanting to support a language, a culture, and ties with a diaspora. Yet it was precisely in that period that the groundwork was laid for the ideological transformation that followed. Why did it happen? The answer, I think, has mainly to do with the crisis of national and cultural identity that Russian society went through after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Soviet identity was gone, and a new one had not yet taken shape. For the first time, Russian society faced the question: what does it mean to be Russian? Out of that situation came the idea of defining “Russianness” not through citizenship but through language, culture, historical memory, a shared cultural heritage, and historical traditions. That search for identity was not in itself nationalist, nor was it peculiar to Russia. Similar processes are typical of societies living through the breakup of states, a change of political system, or deep historical upheaval. What changed the situation was that this cultural concept gradually took on political content. Language and culture ceased to be a space of free communication and became a criterion of political belonging. If millions of people share the Russian language, Russian culture, and a common historical memory, then they can be portrayed as a single civilizational space bound together by a shared history and a special historical mission. An important role in this transformation was played by the Izborsky Club, founded in 2012, which brought together ideologues such as Alexander Prokhanov and Aleksandr Dugin. It was there that the attempt was made to formulate a new state ideology, to explain who the “Russian person” is and what Russia’s special historical mission consists of. And in the process, the notion of “Russianness” increasingly shifted from cultural self-identification and toward political loyalty.
Unlike classical nineteenth- and twentieth-century European nationalism, this concept rested not so much on the idea of common descent or “blood” as on a shared history, the Orthodox tradition, the legacy of Kievan Rus’, and the notion of a single civilizational space of the Eastern Slavs. It is in this context that Putin repeatedly spoke of Russians and Ukrainians as “one people.” In the West the phrase was often rendered as “one nation,” though in Russian narod (a people) and natsiya (a nation) are far from identical. That distinction is essential for grasping the underlying logic of the “Russian World” ideology.
Little by little, the circle of those counted as part of the “Russian World” widened. At first it meant the Russian-speaking population, then the Eastern Slavs, and eventually virtually all peoples historically tied to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. That is how a cultural concept finally turned into a geopolitical project. The result was a fundamental substitution. What began as a program to support the Russian language and culture gradually became an ideology of Russia’s historical exceptionalism, of a special civilizational path, and of political revisionism. This is why the “Russian World” today should be seen not as a cultural initiative but as an ideological project that legitimizes expansionism, rejects the universal principles of international law, and defines itself against the liberal-democratic world order.
T-i: Are there questions about Russia that you keep asking yourself without finding an answer?
MB: There are quite a few. The one that keeps haunting me is how such a destructive war could come to be seen by a substantial part of Russian society as historically necessary. Rationally, much of what is happening is hard to explain in the familiar categories of political or economic calculation.
In the first months of the war, it seemed to me that Russian society was largely hostage to the political regime and to a vast machinery of state propaganda. In other words, I assumed that support for the war was largely coerced. Over time, though, my understanding grew more complicated. Talking with colleagues in Russia, including people from the academic community, I increasingly ran into a different line of reasoning. Many of them do not welcome the war at all. Some say outright that they consider it a tragedy and, quite possibly, a historical mistake. And yet they are convinced that now that the war has begun, Russia cannot afford to lose it. Underlying that position is the belief that Russia’s defeat would mean not just a military setback but the end of the country as a great power — and perhaps a threat to the very existence of the Russian state. I do not share this view, but I think it is extremely important to understand the internal logic of such convictions. If we want to make sense of what is happening, it is not enough simply to declare these views irrational or propaganda-driven. We need to understand how they took shape and why they proved so persuasive to millions of people, including people in intellectual circles. That remains one of the hardest — and at the same time one of the most important — questions for me today.
T-i: What is happening today among Russian-speaking researchers, both those who left and those who stayed? What unites them, and what divides them?
MB: A serious split has opened up in the Russian-speaking academic community, above all between those who left Russia and those who remained. But that line does not map neatly onto attitudes toward the war: among those who left there are people with very different positions, and by no means all of them are willing to voice their disagreement openly. It seems to me that one of the key factors shaping the current situation is fear. And I mean not only political fear in the usual sense of the word, but a deeper, almost existential fear — fear for one’s own safety, for the future, for one’s loved ones. Many of those who emigrated still have ties to Russia. Elderly parents, relatives, property, professional contacts are all still there. On top of that, many are unsure whether their emigration will be temporary or permanent, and they want to keep the option of returning open. All of this creates a climate of self-censorship.
People may disagree with what is happening and still avoid saying so publicly, fearing the possible consequences — not only for themselves but for those close to them. It is this fear — which one might call a biological, instinctive drive toward self-preservation — that largely defines the state of the Russian-speaking academic world today. And what makes it especially paradoxical is that this holds equally for those who stayed in Russia and for those who ended up outside it.
T-i: Émigrés of the White movement also expected to return, yet they spoke and thought freely.
MB: Yes, many in that first wave of emigration [Russians who fled after the 1917 Revolution and the Civil War — T-invariant] also hoped to come back. But the historical situation was fundamentally different: after the Revolution and the Civil War, many of them were stripped of citizenship, of property, and of any possibility of return. The practice continued through the Soviet period: the state restricted freedom of movement and often turned departure into a forced separation from one’s homeland. The border was closed, and emigration effectively meant a final break with one’s former life. But at the same time, those who left gained the freedom to speak, write, and act openly in accordance with their views and convictions. I’m reminded here of a passage in Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s memoirs about his expulsion from the Soviet Union. He wrote that the moment the plane left Soviet airspace, he felt absolute freedom for the first time. He had lost his homeland, but he had gained the freedom to speak and think without fear.
The paradox of the present situation is that open borders have brought not only greater mobility but also a distinctive instrument of political leverage and pressure in the hands of the state. This, to my mind, is one of the most unusual features of the current Russian regime: a new form of political control based not on closing the borders but on maintaining controlled openness. People can leave the country, but the act of emigrating does not necessarily mean freedom from fear. Those who leave find themselves in an in-between state — between physical freedom of movement and a sense of constant vulnerability. Physically they leave Russia, but psychologically and socially they are not always entirely free of the system they left behind.
Self-Censorship Against Philosophy
T-i: What is happening inside the Russian philosophical community?
MB: To be honest, what troubles me today is not so much state censorship as the gradual transformation of the very culture of philosophical thinking. I don’t think what is going on can be explained by direct state pressure alone. Institutional constraints certainly exist, but self-censorship has become a far more serious problem. It is self-censorship that largely sets the intellectual climate today.
Let me give an example from my own experience. In 2022 the centenary of the famous “philosophers’ ships” was being marked [the 1922 expulsion from Soviet Russia of some two hundred intellectuals, most of them deported by steamship — T-invariant], and a major international conference was in preparation. I was invited onto the organizing committee as a representative of the academic community abroad. After the war began, the European participants had to withdraw from the committee, because their universities and government bodies prohibited official cooperation with Russian state institutions. In the end, the only foreign participants left were a retired French colleague and me — there were no such restrictions in the United States. I was asked to give a plenary talk over Zoom and then publish it in Voprosy filosofii. And this is where the mechanism of self-censorship became fully apparent. I was told the text was too critical, that publishing it could put the journal in the line of fire and create problems both for the editors and for the Institute of Philosophy, which publishes it. No one officially forbade printing my talk. The decision was made purely out of fear of possible consequences. That, to my mind, is the most alarming feature of the situation today.
Self-censorship is always more dangerous than censorship proper: censorship restricts what is said from the outside, whereas self-censorship gradually rebuilds and deforms thinking itself. That is why I see self-censorship not simply as a political phenomenon but as a philosophical problem. It changes not only what people say but what questions they are capable of putting to themselves. When a researcher rules out entire areas of reflection in advance as “dangerous” or “undesirable,” philosophy stops doing its central job — subjecting reality to critical scrutiny.
Self-censorship is essentially one of the most dangerous instruments of authoritarian power: it limits not only freedom of speech but freedom of thought, imperceptibly narrowing the very space of what can be asked. Every authoritarian regime seeks to control not only public expression but the conditions under which independent thinking becomes possible. And self-censorship turns out to be a remarkably effective tool of that control.
T-i: How does self-censorship show up in philosophical research?
MB: Self-censorship inevitably changes the intellectual agenda itself. Many researchers try to steer clear of topics that might be read as politically sensitive. That is part of why we are seeing a marked rise in interest in traditional values, in the history of Russian philosophy, in Eastern philosophy and religious thought. I certainly don’t mean that these subjects are unworthy of attention. On the contrary, they are important fields of study. The problem arises when the choice of topic is driven not by scholarly interest but by considerations of safety. The result is that philosophy stops asking uncomfortable questions and starts circling around long-familiar material.
One episode in particular stunned me. Talking with a colleague, I learned about plans for a summer school devoted to Kant’s essay Toward Perpetual Peace. Both the work itself and the subject it raises are exceptionally important — especially now, in the middle of a bloody war. I was excited, and I asked how they intended to discuss the text under present conditions, and how far the ongoing war would become a subject of reflection. What I heard shook me to the core. The plan, it turned out, was to discuss the essay “in purely theoretical terms,” without touching on current social and political realities. That answer became for me a symbol of where Russian philosophical scholarship, and philosophical discourse generally, stands today. And it is very sad, because philosophy exists precisely in order to connect ideas with reality. If philosophical concepts lose all connection to historical experience, they become a purely academic exercise. It would of course be unfair to claim that all Russian philosophers have abandoned this much-needed reflection and blindly support what is happening. They have not. I know many people who stayed in Russia and inwardly refuse to accept the war. But fear — for themselves, for their colleagues, for the institutions they work in — leads many of them to keep quiet, retreating into the internal emigration we know so well from the Soviet period.
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T-i: And do philosophers in emigration discuss the current situation?
MB: Émigrés certainly discuss what is happening far more freely. But another problem arises here. An enormous number of texts about the war, about Russian society, about the Putin regime are being published now. Most of these, though, belong to the genre of opinion journalism or political commentary rather than to philosophical research in the strict sense. And that is entirely understandable. Philosophical reflection requires a certain historical distance. Philosophy does not simply record events; it tries to understand their inner logic, to identify the concepts and structures that become visible only with time. And we are still inside the event itself, which is not yet over. So many of today’s interpretations are inevitably preliminary and fragmentary. This does not mean philosophy is silent. Rather, it is in the process of making sense of what is happening and searching for an adequate language to describe it. I am convinced that the most significant philosophical work on this war and on the transformation of Russian society is still ahead of us.
T-i: But parallels can be drawn.
MB: Parallels are certainly possible, though they have to be handled with great care. History never repeats itself literally. Even so, it is parallels that occupy me most as a researcher today. My recent article is about philosophers of the shestidesyatniki generation and what lessons their experience can offer us now. The main resemblance, as I see it, lies not in the political circumstances as such but in the fact that the question of philosophy’s relationship to power has once again moved to the foreground. The shestidesyatniki, after all, also lived under conditions of limited freedom. During the Thaw there was a sense of intellectual liberation, but it very quickly became clear that this space of freedom had its limits. Philosophers were confronted with the question of how to preserve the autonomy of thought inside a system determined to subordinate intellectual life to itself. That question is still with us today. Present-day conditions are of course different from Soviet ones. But the problem of the relationship between philosophy and power, between independent thinking and institutional loyalty, has not gone anywhere.
What worries me most is that many academic structures today prefer not to resist outside pressure but to adjust to it in advance. This is not only about political restrictions; it is about a willingness to give up their own intellectual responsibility. When a university or a research institute stops deciding for itself what its curriculum contains or what its researchers work on, it risks losing its central function — being a space for the free pursuit of truth.
T-i: Why do the shestidesyatniki philosophers seem so important to you today? What lessons can we draw from their experience?
MB: The shestidesyatniki are often seen simply as a generation of liberals and reformers, but that reading oversimplifies things badly. For me, the shestidesyatniki movement in philosophy was not so much a generation as a distinct philosophical project aimed at restoring philosophy to its true purpose. Their main task was to reestablish philosophy as an independent form of thinking. It is no secret that by the early 1950s philosophy in the USSR had largely turned into an ideological discipline, reduced to commenting on and quoting the canonical texts of Marxism-Leninism. Philosophy had effectively lost its own voice. It was in this context that the famous “Theses on the Subject Matter of Philosophy,” written in 1954 by two junior lecturers in the philosophy faculty at Moscow State University, Evald Ilyenkov and Valentin Korovikov, became such an important event. It is worth stressing that this happened two years before the Twentieth Congress of the Communist Party, where Stalin’s cult of personality was criticized, along with its consequences — including for philosophy, which had been steadily drained of living thought. The authors of the “Theses” called into question the very understanding of philosophy as the handmaiden of ideology. They insisted that philosophy must have its own object of inquiry and its own criteria of truth. They paid dearly for it. They were harshly attacked, and both were forced to leave Moscow State University. But the significance of their intervention lay in more than the specific theses. In effect, these scholars asserted philosophy’s right to exist autonomously, to have its own object of study and its own independent thinking. In other words, this was not about reforming Soviet ideology but about restoring philosophy as an independent field of inquiry — which is impossible without giving philosophy back its principal subject: the human being as a thinking, autonomous subject. That, in my view, is the central philosophical achievement of the shestidesyatniki.
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Stalinist intellectual culture was dominated by the language of collective historical forces, classes, parties, and state interests. The human being as a subject of philosophical thought had all but vanished from philosophical discourse. The shestidesyatniki put the real human being back at the center of philosophical analysis — his consciousness, his freedom, his responsibility. They returned to philosophy not merely the human being as an object of study but the human being as a thinking subject, capable of posing questions independently and answering for his own judgments. It is no accident that turning to the early Marx, and especially to the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, came to matter so much to them. In the young Marx they saw not a theorist of the state machine but a thinker of human emancipation. Many of them therefore set out to analyze not abstract historical laws but the concrete forms of alienation, bureaucratization, and dehumanization in social life.
T-i: And how was it in the sixties?
MB: This is exactly the question that interests me most today. As I said, it seems to me that the experience of philosophers of the shestidesyatniki generation holds two lessons — a positive one and a negative one. And what matters especially is that these lessons did not emerge at the same time. The positive one had to do with the fact that the shestidesyatniki managed to give philosophy back its autonomy and restore the right to think for oneself. The negative one became clear much later — during perestroika, when philosophers themselves encountered an entirely different relationship between philosophy and power for the first time. We know the achievements of the shestidesyatniki well. Far less attention goes to the limitations and internal contradictions of their project. The paradox is that a generation that had fought for philosophy’s autonomy turned out to be largely unprepared for the changes perestroika brought. Faced with a new historical situation, in which the intelligentsia — members of the philosophical intelligentsia included — gained access to political and administrative structures of power, many of them became an integral part of those power structures and lost their critical distance from them. Serving as deputies, advisers, and heads of academic institutes and universities made them active participants in the machinery of decision-making.
Let me stress that there is nothing objectionable in intellectuals taking part in public life as such. Quite the opposite: philosophy that genuinely does any work is never wholly detached from society. The problem arises when the necessary distance between philosophy and power disappears, when the philosopher becomes indistinguishable from those in power and loses the capacity to look critically at them and at their decisions.
This, in my view, is where one of the main negative lessons of the shestidesyatniki experience becomes visible. It has to do not with the mistakes of particular individuals or particular institutions but with a deeper structural danger that accompanies philosophy in every era: the temptation to gain influence, recognition, and institutional support at the cost of one’s own independence.
Kant warned long ago that the philosopher should not become the ruler. The state may turn to the philosopher for advice, but that advice must remain independent of the immediate interests of those in power. By its very nature, philosophy has to remain a space of critical reflection — including criticism of the structures that wield political power.
T-i: And the negative lessons?
MB: This is precisely why the phenomenon of the shestidesyatniki philosophers extends far beyond its own era: it is a distinctive philosophical experience that helps us understand the relationship between philosophy and power. That experience left us with two lessons — a lesson in resistance and a lesson in the seduction of power. The first shows that even under ideological pressure philosophy is able to preserve its autonomy and give people back the right to think in their own name. The second reminds us that the freedom of philosophical thought is threatened not only by censorship and repression but also by the lure of power, which gradually erodes the critical distance philosophy requires. It seems to me that the ability to maintain that distance is one of the most important professional and moral obligations of a philosopher. And in that sense the experience of the shestidesyatniki philosophers remains strikingly contemporary.
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