Endless provocations and subversive actions of the US and Israel against Iran lead to the Iranian people getting increasingly bitter towards the two countries and their representatives.

Following the blatant US assassination operation against Iranian General Qasem Soleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) special forces, killed on the night of January 3, 2020 by the United States near Baghdad International Airport, another similar assassination attempt was carried out on March 7, near Damascus. According to a statement from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, two Iranian officers were killed in an Israeli air strike there: “IRGC Colonels Ehsan Karbalaipour and Morteza Saibnejad became shahids, the responsibility for their deaths lies with the Zionist regime that launched the missile attack on Damascus. The Zionists will answer for their crimes.”

As early as 11 March, Israeli media reported, citing US intelligence, “Iran may dare to strike directly at Israel. This is how the Islamic Republic wants to avenge the Jewish state for the deaths of two IRGC officers on the outskirts of Damascus.”

And so on March 5, in the US state of Nevada, 21-year-old Nike Nikubin stabbed an American citizen in an attempt to avenge the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani at the hands of the US, local TV channel KLAS reported, citing the Henderson City Police.

And on the night of March 13, some twelve ballistic missiles were fired from the Hasanabad area in the Iranian territory at the Kurdish city of Erbil in northern Iraq, where the US consulate is located. However, some media outlets have highlighted the fact that the shelling took place at exactly 1:20 am, the same time that Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US drone strike on January 3, 2020. The Associated Press reported, citing Iraqi security officials and US officials, that none of the missiles that had exploded near the US diplomatic mission under construction caused serious damage. There were no casualties either. After the explosion, US Air Force planes were airborne.

According to Israeli media, the Saudi Arabian channel Al-Hadath believes that the Iranian missile attack on the US Consulate General in Erbil was in response to the killing of two high-ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Syria on March 7. The Iranians chose to respond with an airstrike not on Israel but on US facilities in Iraq. At the same time, it is acknowledged that the target of the missiles fired at the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan was not only the US consulate, but also the intelligence center of Israel’s Mossad foreign intelligence service in Erbil.

This fact was later acknowledged by an Iranian state channel, which reported that the target of the overnight missile attack was “secret Israeli bases” in Erbil.

Doron Kadosh, Israeli Galei Zahal columnist recalled in this regard that in October 2021, in response to the Israeli bombing in Syria, Iran launched a missile attack on the US Al-Tanf base on the Iraqi-Syrian border. Late last year, the Israeli military estimated that Tehran would not tolerate this any longer and would be striking back at Israel next time. But that has not happened yet. “The word “yet” should be emphasized,” writes Doron Kadosh on his Twitter.

In these circumstances, it cannot be ruled out that, following the Iranian missile strike on the area where the US consulate under construction in Erbil is located, negotiations on the Iranian nuclear deal could be terminated. This, incidentally, is precisely what Israel sought, including through its provocative sabotage attack on March 7, killing two high-ranking IRGC soldiers.

Meanwhile, in these realities, the EU and Washington are losing hope of replacing Russian oil with Iranian oil, with the result that oil prices will continue their unpredictable rise.

As for the US, its retaliatory military action against Iran and in the Strait of Hormuz, which will again become unsafe for navigation, cannot be ruled out. Preparations for such military action have already been announced recently to the Associated Press by Vice Admiral Brad Cooper, head of the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, who said the US is building a fleet of more than 100 unmanned aerial vehicles — both sailing and underwater — to counter Iran. Under the new concept, UAVs will patrol vast maritime areas. It should be recalled that the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet has included in its area of responsibility the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow artery in the Persian Gulf through which more than 20% of the world’s oil shipments pass, with Iran and the US fighting for control of it. The Islamic Republic controls the northern coast of the strait, while the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Oman possess the southern coast.

Against the background of the March 13 shelling of Erbil, it must also be recalled that US troops stationed in this international complex have previously been subjected to missile attacks, which were carried out by means of UAVs. In general, however, the US military presence in Iraq irritates both Shia and Sunni Arabs.

There have already been several recent attacks on US military convoys in Iraq. So, in the last month alone, according to Iraqi media reports, a US logistics convoy was attacked in Salah ad Din province on February 13. On February 22, a roadside bomb exploded near the city of Nasiriya in Dhi Qar province in the south of the country while a US convoy carrying equipment and supplies destined for US troops was passing through. On March 1, a US military convoy was attacked in Iraq’s Al Muthanna province between the cities of Samawah and Nasiriya, and several bombs were detonated in the path of another military convoy in Al Diwaniyah and Al Anbar provinces. Another convoy carrying equipment belonging to the US military was attacked in Salah ad Din province on March 4. On March 8, a convoy carrying equipment was attacked in the city of Nasiriya, about 360 km southeast of Baghdad.

Iranian Major General Rahim Yahya Safavi told the Mehr News Agency on March 7 that the US will soon flee Syria and Iraq, just as it retreated from Afghanistan. According to the Iranian military commander, the US is politically and morally in decline.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Fleeing from wars, armed conflicts and various militant activities, migrants from Africa and Asia continue to make risky attempts to enter the EU by various means, often using risky and perilous routes. However, streams of refugees in Europe have increased in recent days amid the events in Ukraine.

So, after the outright genocide of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine by Kiev’s neo-Nazi authorities, especially in Donbass, where, according to incomplete figures, more than 13,000 citizens of that country have died in the last eight years, almost 200,000 refugees have already taken refuge in Russia in recent days.

The EU media also have their own figures on refugees from Ukraine to Europe. The number of refugees who have arrived in Poland since the start of the military operation is reported to have exceeded 922,000. More than 200,000 Ukrainians have arrived in tiny Moldova with a population of 2.6 million. European diplomacy chief Josep Borrell, who has always stirred up Russophobic hysteria, said at a press conference on March 7 following an informal EU Council meeting in Montpellier that “some 5 million refugees from Ukraine will enter the EU member states.”

However, the EU leadership, which avoids publicizing truthful information about what is happening in Ukraine, deliberately glosses over the fact that thousands of refugees from Ukraine and non-Ukrainians are being returned to their countries of origin by the European authorities. For example, tengrinews.kz has repeatedly reported on the removal of hundreds of allegedly “Ukrainian” refugees from Central Asia from Europe to the capital of Kazakhstan.

The number of similar “refugee” Uzbek nationals has exceeded 2,500. More than 1,400 people are still waiting for their turn in Poland, Podrobno.uz reported on March 4, quoting the Polish Foreign Ministry. The first plane with Uzbek nationals evacuated from Ukraine to Poland left the city of Katowice on February 28, Uzbekistan’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Yusup Kabulzhanov wrote in his Telegram channel.

Tajikistan’s ambassador to Ukraine, Davlat Nazrizoda, told Asia-Plus about Tajik nationals fleeing Ukraine for Europe, who number about 4,000 not counting former citizens of the republic who accepted Ukrainian citizenship. Their evacuation to Central Asia after arrival in the EU is also on schedule.

However, even to the uninitiated observer a strong difference in the composition of the “Ukrainian refugees” to Russia and Europe is striking. For example, while the border with the Russian Federation is crossed by women, children and elderly people fleeing extermination by Ukrainian militants, the picture on the border with European states is quite different. They are, as the social media in Moldova in particular point out, mostly sturdy Ukrainian guys of conscription age, clearly not poor and with short Nazi haircuts. This inadvertently suggests that in this case we are dealing with fleeing fighters of numerous nationalist battalions, who openly fear retribution for their crimes as a result of Moscow’s westward push for a special operation to demilitarize and denazify the Ukrainian military. There is a very strong reaction to the use of any language other than Ukrainian when communicating with them and a desire to engage in conflict and violent confrontation with those around them.

There is already a lot of information about their behavior on social media in European countries, which does not describe these Ukrainian “refugees” in a positive light. For example, an Israeli citizen was reportedly killed in late February, according to 9tv.co.il and the international branch of the Jewish volunteer organization ZAKA.  “A 37-year-old Jewish-Israeli man was shot dead while trying to leave Ukraine in the direction of the state border to join a guarded bus convoy and leave Ukraine,” ZAKA said in a statement.

In the Italian city of Bologna, two truckers from Belarus were killed by similar “refugees” near their cars in a car park on March 1. A witness, a CIS truck driver, said the crime was committed by eleven Ukrainians. “A boy was stabbed to death, he was 26 years old. Why? Because he just had Belarusian number plates,” said the driver, who recorded the incident on his phone camera and uploaded it to his Telegram channel named Mash.

On March 4, Italian media reported another incident in a supermarket in Brescia, Italy, where Moldovan nationals were hurt by a radical Ukrainian who started an argument about a military conflict with Russia and, as “an argument for his version of the conflict”, stabbed one of his opponents in the cheek and flank and another in the neck and then fled. It is also reported that Ukrainian refugees in Moldova are behaving brazenly and aggressively, with increasing instances of insults and fights with the staff of institutions. Ukrainian refugees arriving in Moldova complain that swimming pools do not operate in some hotels, they present passports of Ukrainian citizens in restaurants and demand free service. This was reported by a Moldovan volunteer who witnessed the defiant behavior of the so-called “Ukrainian refugees”. Chisinau municipal authorities have even asked the police to beef up security at Ukrainian refugee sites, and local volunteers have requested for the border to be closed.

Angelina Peregenska, a resident of Hungarian Transcarpathia, expressed outrage that refugees from Kiev complain about their reception conditions, “sit in bars and drink vodka”, insult locals and disrespect Hungarian, while already wanting to rule everything.

Tadeusz Rydzyk, a well-known priest of the Roman Catholic Church in Poland and head of the religious and political radio station Radio Maria, has warned his parishioners that yesterday’s illegal migrants from the Middle East and Africa, who unsuccessfully tried to enter the country through Belarus last year, are coming to Poland disguised as Ukrainian refugees.

However, today many media are already talking about Nazi-racial discrimination in Ukraine against foreign nationals who happen to be in the country. For example, dark-skinned Ukrainians fleeing the country in the wake of recent events have faced prejudice because of their skin color, ABC News confirms. As the channel’s correspondent found out, Africans were not allowed on trains leaving for the west, and one group was even almost forced to take part in the defense of Ukraine. Many refugees of foreign origin face racism in Ukraine, ABC News reported in another of its correspondences. In particular, there have been recorded cases of Ukrainian border guards and police giving priority to white citizens and not allowing people of Indian or African descent to pass. Moreover, foreigners are at times insulted and even attacked. However, there has been no active reaction from the “democratic West” on this issue with regard to the Kiev authorities, which amounts in effect to encouragement of Kiev’s Nazi-racial policies.

Most Ukrainian refugees go primarily to Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. They have also started arriving in the Balkans, Radoš Đurović, director of the Serbian Refugee Protection Center, told the Tanjug news agency.

In addition, a massive wave of refugees from Ukraine is gradually sweeping Germany as well, with Berlin becoming the first federal land of Germany to declare it, Süddeutsche Zeitung says. However, most refugees arriving in Berlin by train continue on their way and other federal lands confirm this fact. Germany’s “appeal” to Ukrainian refugees is due to a number of reasons. First and foremost, the desire to get even closer to the historical roots of Nazism. Moreover, Ukrainians are not required to register in Germany. They are entitled to stay for 90 days without a visa and only after that, i.e. if they plan to stay for a longer period, special EU rules start to apply. According to these rules, refugees from Ukraine can stay in Germany for one year without going through the asylum procedure. This period may be extended to three years. They also hope to take advantage of the law on Residence, Economic Activity and Integration of Foreigners in Germany, according to which military refugees are entitled to social benefits and access to the labor market. All costs in this case are borne by the federal lands.

In addition to the current German authorities’ blatant support for the Nazi regime in Kiev, they have made a number of additional “favors” available to such Ukrainian “refugees” with characteristic UPA hairstyles. “We want to apply for the first time the legal framework created after the Balkan wars. This means that refugees from Ukraine will not have to go through the asylum procedure. They will receive temporary protection in the EU for up to three years,” German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser said. In other words, today it is possible for such “UPA boys” to go to the EU quite legally simply on the basis of having Ukrainian citizenship. And stay there for the next three years on welfare.

Therefore, in addition to pumping neo-Nazi-minded Ukrainians into EU territory, this category of “refugees” expects to use the conflict currently taking place to migrate legally to the EU and “join official Europeans.”

And the fact that this wave will thereby cause a rise in crime in Europe and neo-Nazism, which only Russia has so far decided to fight in its special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukrainian society, will become fully clear to Europeans in the very next few days.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Recent developments around Russia’s special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine have dotted the I’s in terms of showing the true political face of the current leaders of many countries and their attitude towards neo-Nazism and the revival of an atmosphere of fascist intimidation of people.

While it has been clear to everyone what the politicians in the Baltic states are, including their longing for their “Forest Brothers” and Hitler’s collaborators, the politicians of several countries, who had previously declared their rejection of neo-Nazism, have shown their real character. In particular, Japan, which, as the Russian embassy in Tokyo stated in its Telegram channel, “has managed to support a Nazi regime twice in less than a century”: the first time it was Hitler’s regime and now it is the Ukrainian government.

It is certainly surprising and upsetting to see the current Israeli politicians who have decided to support the neo-Nazi authorities in Kiev in recent days, despite the violence they have inflicted in Odessa, for example.

But today’s German political establishment has also shown its true face, deciding to stand up for Kiev’s neo-Nazis more actively every day.

Just a year ago, German ambassador to Ukraine Anka Feldhusen criticized a march in Kiev which was held to honor the anniversary of the SS Galicia division. “Waffen SS units participated in grave war crimes and the Holocaust during World War II. No volunteer organizations fighting and working for Ukraine today should be associated with them,” Feldhusen wrote on her Twitter feed in May 2021.

On January 5 this year, commenting on the now traditional annual march in honor of Ukrainian Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera, which took place in Kiev on January 1, German Foreign Ministry spokesman Christopher Burger said that Germany condemns the crimes committed by Ukrainian nationalists, including those led by Stepan Bandera, during World War II. During the briefing, he noted that Berlin “condemns and opposes any form of anti-Semitism and the glorification of Nazi crimes.”

And haven’t these Nazi-glorifying criminals been murdering Jews in the same Odessa in the last eight years? Or their own fellows Ukrainians in the Donbas, where the number of civilians killed at their hands over these eight years exceeds, at the most approximate estimate, 13,000!

And today, the German government has allowed German citizens to take part in combat operations in Ukraine. This was reported by the newspaper Tagesspiegel, citing the country’s Interior Ministry and Justice Ministry.

For a while, Germany refused to supply arms to the Ukrainian army. The statements about not sending weapons to Ukraine were the result of a coalition agreement between the three parliamentary parties in the Bundestag – the CDU/CSU, the Free Democratic Party and the Greens – which, under pressure from the latter, stipulated that Germany would not send arms to countries in conflict. However, Olaf Scholz made a governmental statement at an emergency meeting of the Bundestag on February 27, officially authorizing Germany to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine.

In doing so, Germany, through the decisions of its current authorities, is not just reviving the specter of a cold war, but of a very hot one. This was stated in a commentary circulated by Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova on February 28. “Too many sad associations are raised by the prospect of further “military” pumping of Kiev by Berlin, which, moreover, does not seem to be aware that in the current situation the arms supplied could easily fall prey to neo-Nazis, terrorists and looters on Ukrainian territory,” the diplomat stressed. “Nothing is new under the moon. Once again, as many times in history, the weapons coming from German soil will be directed against Russian soldiers,” the diplomat added.

Against this background, she said, Olaf Scholz’s assurances about the importance of a process of historical reconciliation between the peoples of Germany and Russia sounded particularly cynical. “In this context, the devaluing remarks of Scholz, who during the Munich Security Conference on February 18, 2022 called “ridiculous” the revealed facts of genocide of civilians in the Donbas by the Ukrainian military, become now, alas, understandable,” stressed the Russian Foreign Ministry official.

Furthermore, M. Zakharova pointed out that “the supply of arms to the ideological heirs of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera makes one willy-nilly ask the rhetorical question – how comprehensive and complete the denazification process in Germany itself was after the defeat in World War II?”

Unlike the United States, Germany or Japan, Russia cannot watch idly as torchbearers march under fascist, neo-Nazi banners in modern Europe.

Information about international ties between German neo-Nazis and radical right groups in Ukraine was provided by the former German government a year ago in response to a parliamentary enquiry by the Left Party faction in the Bundestag. The preamble to the response stresses that the right-wing radical regiment Azov (banned in Russia) has long attracted right-wing extremists from Europe and the US – as do affiliated units like the Misanthropic Division or the political movement Tradition and Order, both banned in Russia.

Germany’s steps to support the neo-Nazi Bandera regime in Kiev will definitely have a bad impact on future relations with Russia after the successful completion of the special operation to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine. As will Berlin’s accession to Washington’s numerous anti-Russian sanctions, airspace closures, disconnection of Russia from the SWIFT banking system and so on…

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

It is no secret that members of the current US political elite and their closest relatives are fairly quick to gain business shares in all countries invaded by US occupation forces. This has been commonplace since the Iraqi wars and the destruction of Yugoslavia.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, for example, had a business in “independent Kosovo,” and a semi-clandestine one at that.

Many media outlets are still trying to find out how much former US Vice President Dick Cheney and his family managed to embezzle from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The role in US corruption history of this unscrupulous “businessman politician” who started the war in Iraq is quite truthfully depicted in Adam McKay’s Vice. He is like an octopus, running his tentacles across all key agencies, controlling the situation in the country through his lobbyists and proxies. At his instigation, they undermined unwanted journalists, created one of the world’s cruelest prisons, Guantanamo, tortured prisoners, illegally monitored the emails and phone calls of millions of Americans, falsified intelligence about Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein’s negotiations with terrorists to initiate war, created a myth about the alleged development of nuclear weapons in Iraq…

As for the Biden family, they have long been “in line” for appropriating the benefits of White House aggressive policies for themselves as well, with a particular emphasis on Ukraine, which objectively has many national treasures. Biden has long been one of the key figures in American policy towards Ukraine, dealing with, among other things, major personnel issues within the Ukrainian leadership. It could be said that he has long been the curator of the Ukrainian direction in the American establishment. However, due to his inability to be in Kiev all the time, he had already in 2014 concentrated the keys to the situation in Ukraine in the hands of US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, whom Biden trusted to tackle matters that were not too important.

As for the “family business” in Ukraine, back in 2014 it was entrusted to the son of the current US president, Robert Hunter Biden, who joined the board of directors of Burisma Holdings, the largest private gas producer in Ukraine, immediately after the then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted. Given that the company had been operating in Ukraine’s energy market since 2002, and that in 2013 its natural gas production figure of 1.8 million cubic meters per day was an outright tidbit generating good dividends, the Bidens decided to get their hands on the company. Meanwhile, one of Hunter Jr’s business partners was his uncle, James Biden, with many businessmen and investors having long accused his uncle and nephew of unfair play, resulting in several lawsuits filed against them at the time. After Hunter Biden became a board member of Burisma Holdings, numerous human rights organizations in the US and even White House staff claimed that the appointment could indicate a conflict of interest.

According to some reports, the US president’s son received a salary of $50,000 a month, and in just five years, Burisma Holdings transferred $3.1 million to an account he owned at a US bank, Peter Schweitzer, an associate of Donald Trump’s former political adviser, Peter Bannon, wrote in his book.

But the Biden family’s interests in Ukraine are not limited to energy alone. In Ukraine, for example, with Biden’s encouragement, large-scale production of genetically modified products (GMOs), which had previously been banned in the country and in the EU, has begun. Nevertheless, Kiev started to hand over Ukrainian precious fertile soil to Western multinationals that produce genetically modified products. One of these companies was, above all, Monsanto, a multinational corporation that produces GMO seeds for cereals and vegetables. Joe Biden’s son Hunter was already in 2015 chairman of the board of the US World Food Program and represented Monsanto in Ukraine. At the same time, the corporation has a controversial reputation for producing the deadly chemical agent Orange, which was used by the US military during the Vietnam War to drive Viet Cong guerrillas out of the forests, killing thousands of civilians along the way.

However, it should be remembered that the cultivation of GMOs in Ukraine was included, not without “Biden’s patronage,” in the country’s Euro-Association agreement: Article 404 of the agreement, which relates to agriculture, contained relevant information. It includes, among other things, a provision that has gone largely unnoticed by the general press, the gist of which is that “the two sides will cooperate to expand the use of biotechnology.”

As for the Monsanto Corporation, it has stepped up its activities in Ukraine with the construction of its plants, the first of which was planned for Vinnytsia. Although there is no exact data on how much land Monsanto already cultivates in Ukraine, nevertheless, back in 2014, Elena Fomina, head of the Seed Association of Ukraine, said that the corporation was already present in 11 regions of the country where it grows GMO products.  In any case, the corporation, with Bidens’ active “interest,” was intent on flooding Ukraine, and thereafter a number of other Eastern European countries, with dangerous genetically modified products.

Realizing in recent months the damage to the Biden family business that could be inflicted if relations between Moscow and Kiev were to deteriorate, President Biden has stepped up his efforts to deploy all possible US and EU administrative resources to counter Russian policy towards Ukraine, including using the sanctions factor to put pressure on Russia to his advantage. Moreover, the damage to the people of Ukraine from Kiev’s blatant neo-Nazi policies, as well as from the use of GMO products, was blatantly disregarded by Joe Biden, overshadowing his purely personal interest in the sanctity of profits from his family business in that country. And pumping Ukraine full of loans, which Kiev and its people will objectively never be able to repay, leaving it with a foreign debt of over $57 billion, gives Biden confidence that his Ukrainian wealth will increase and can soon be sold off against the country’s debts to foreign buyers. For this reason, Biden’s zeal to “protect Ukraine’s interests” only increases every day, and his price will be known after the corruption investigations conducted by journalists.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Russia’s recognition of the independence of the LPR and DPR caused some confusion in Tel Aviv, where at first nobody was in a hurry to make a statement. Moreover, after intense consultations in Israel’s Foreign Ministry and National Security Council, local officials were forbidden to provide comments by the ruling coalition, leaving the Jewish nation-state in a very uneasy situation. On the one hand, they did not want to spoil relations with Russia and harm the joint projects that had already been launched. On the other, they feared that silence over Donbass would provoke tensions in further communication with Western allies and, above all, with the US, for whom Ukraine has long been not just a bargaining chip but an instrument of confrontation with Russia, that would be used to stir Russophobic sentiments through the remotely-controlled Kiev authorities.

In this regard, at the February 27 politico-military cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett asked ministers not to speak publicly about Ukraine, stressing that: “Israel is not a party to this conflict, please remain silent.”

The Israeli position on the escalating tensions between Moscow and Kiev became a little clearer after the start of the Russian Defense Ministry’s special operation to denazify and demilitarize Ukraine, as Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid condemned the attack in a statement, saying that war is not the way to solve conflicts.

In doing so, the current authorities have neglected the fact that for the past eight years Moscow has been urging the international community to use diplomacy for ending the active nazification of Ukraine. It has been taking place all these years at the intense instigation of the US and Western countries, resulting in the deaths of thousands of Donbass civilians at the hands of Right Sector (banned in Russia) Nazis and Bandera militants.

However, Tel Aviv’s stance further underlines the fact that there’s a double standard in its approach, as Israel itself and its leaders have repeatedly expressed their intentions to use armed countermeasures against Iran and have carried out numerous terrorist attacks against Iranian military and political representatives. Moreover, neither Washington, nor its Western allies, nor the UN and the world community in general, have ever officially censured Tel Aviv for these provocative and subversive actions against Iran. As for overt military operations against Iran, Tel Aviv has avoided them only because it fears the devastating consequences of retaliatory military response that Tehran is capable of mounting. Nevertheless, the bogeyman of the Iranian nuclear threat is still actively used by Tel Aviv today, gathering a “pool of supporters” in armed opposition to Iran, in particular through the Washington-initiated “Abraham Accords” – i.e. strengthening Israel’s multidimensional cooperation with several Arab states.

In late February, the Israeli Foreign Ministry rejected a request from the US State Department and did not co-sponsor a resolution condemning the Russian invasion in mild terms, which was put to a UN Security Council vote. However, Washington has since initiated a series of “clarification talks” with the Israeli political establishment on how to behave in today’s situation. Also the German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, who has thrown away his former German identity to become a fierce supporter of White House politics for his own political ambitions, was asked to make a “surprise visit” to Israel to persuade Tel Aviv to vote in favor of a UN resolution condemning the Russian operation in Ukraine.

As a result, on instructions from Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid at the UN General Assembly, Israel decided to support a resolution condemning Russia. However the Tel Aviv statement was not voiced by Israeli Ambassador to the UN Gilad Erdan, as his deputy Noah Furman took this task in order to reduce “the irritation factor for Russia.” Thus Israel, which had previously tried to deal with the consequences of the actions of fascists and manifestations of neo-Nazism, has now officially stood up for the neo-Nazi authorities in Kiev, officially glorifying such fascist thugs as Bandera and Shukhevich.

And here the current Israeli authorities have blatantly ignored the attitudes of their own population to the rise of Nazism and anti-Semitism in Ukraine in recent years. Moreover, Moscow’s current special operation is precisely aimed at countering this, while this criminal policy of Kiev has been encouraged by the West for eight years now!

In this regard, it would be appropriate to recall at least the recent events of the annual Hasidic pilgrimage to a small Ukrainian town, Uman, Cherkasy region, whose locals, in a fit of neo-Nazi indoctrination by the Ukrainian authorities, opposed the arrival of believers from the Promised Land. Religious Israelis then voiced their harsh accusations to president Vladimir Zelenski. Hasidism is a powerful current in Judaism, according to which everyone can achieve personal holiness. For one of its branches, the Breslov Hasidim, the holy place is Uman in Ukraine, where the founder of their movement, Rabbi Nachmani, is buried, and a pilgrimage to his tomb at least once in a lifetime is considered a God-given deed. However, amid an upsurge of Judeophobia in Ukraine, a rabbi was beaten in the summer of 2020 in the same town of Uman; the police have not found the perpetrators.

Furthermore, it is unlikely that the people of Israel can indifferently watch as monuments are erected in Ukraine to those who exterminated Jews by the tens of thousands, burned, stabbed, shot, and buried them alive in mass graves. The names of these executioners, whose hands are up to their elbows in Jewish blood, are used to name streets and schools in the cities. Due to the policies pursued by the Kiev authorities, these murderers are now heroes for Ukraine. And the fact that the current president of Ukraine is an ethnic Jew means absolutely nothing. After all, this man betrayed not only his own blood but also his own kinship, effectively spitting on the grave of his grandfather who fought against Nazism.

It would seem that Israel should be sounding the alarm, calling on the entire civilized world to pay attention to the crimes that are taking place in Ukraine with the connivance of the Kiev authorities and their US sponsors. And heirs of the executioners are now literally dancing on the graves of murdered Jews there, encouraging anti-Semitism: regular desecration of Jewish graves, monuments, and domestic anti-Semitism. This, in particular, is confirmed by Eduard Dolinsky, Director of the Ukrainian Jewish Committee, who, on his Facebook page, clearly demonstrates that modern Ukraine is a completely anti-Semitic country, where the memory of murderers of the Jewish people is honored and protected and monuments are erected to them, often even on the site of the mass graves of the Jews they murdered.

But current Israeli officials do not hear Eduard Dolinsky and do not want to know the true situation in Ukraine. They prefer to listen to Washington’s fakes and betray the memory of the Jewish people who suffered under fascism, and to stand up for the Nazi authorities in Kiev at the behest of the White House.

Not long ago, former US President Donald Trump said: “America will not be held hostage by nuclear blackmail.” The same position was previously held by Tel Aviv. However, having taken the path of criticizing Russia over its fears of Ukraine getting nuclear weapons, Israel itself will now no longer have the right to resent the possibility of Iran arming itself with a nuclear bomb, since it chose to suit the political whims of the current rulers in Washington!

As for further engagement with Moscow, Israel has needed it more than Russia in recent years, especially in developments in neighboring Syria. However, with Tel Aviv adjusting its attitude to Russia’s objective fears due to NATO’s provocative eastward expansion and the growing neo-Nazi and nuclear threat from Ukraine, Israel can now hardly expect Moscow to understand its concerns about extremist manifestations from Syria and the previous reaction to the Israeli army’s missile and air strikes on Syrian territory.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Although the associations with racial discrimination in the US are primarily related to the country’s black population, the problem is much deeper and more serious.

Even The Guardian, which is “friendly” to the current government in Washington, stresses that racism is rampant in the United States and that from the very beginning the US was built on the idea of white supremacy. This overt and deliberate racism has been practiced for longer than unconscious or hidden racism. Even though it has been almost 70 years since the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the US state laws establishing racial segregation in public schools are unconstitutional, the racial lines drawn 400 years ago still divide the nation, proving that the country’s current political elite’s rhetoric about freedom and equality is just empty words.

But alongside the black population, Asians are also targeted for racial discrimination in the US, which is by no means the result of policy in only recent years. After all, since the late 19th century there have been restrictions and special measures against the Chinese in the United States at the state level. Thus, when the gold rush broke out in California in the 1850s and caused increased demand for workers in mining and railroad construction, this dangerous and low-paying niche was filled with Chinese immigrants.However, the media’s portrayal of the typical Chinese grotesquely exaggerated aspects of Chinese identity that Americans found sinister or highly exotic. In such circumstances, conflicts with Chinese immigrants became very common. One of such episodes was the murder of a Chinese immigrant Ling Sing by a white American George Hall, after which in 1854 the decision of the Supreme Court of California in the case of People v. Hall de facto gave carte blanche to anti-Asian violence by virtue of the ruling that the Chinese are “a race of people defined by nature as inferior and who are incapable of progress or intellectual development after a certain moment.”

Two decades later, the infamous “Chinese Massacre” took place in Los Angeles on the night of October 24, 1871, and no one was held responsible. This atrocity rightly became one of the bloodiest pages in the history of the city.

Four more years later, in 1875, the Page Act, the first restrictive federal immigration law in the United States, was enacted and applied mainly against the Chinese, aiming to limit Asian immigration.The Page Act marked the beginning of legal discrimination against the Chinese: in 1882, an overwhelming majority in Congress voted for the adoption of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned the Chinese immigration for 20 years.

Then on September 2, 1885, in Rock Springs, Wyoming, 150 white miners attacked their Chinese counterparts, which led to the death of 28 Chinese workers, 15 injured and several hundred more driven out of the town.

Nowadays, the Asian-American community is a diverse and rapidly growing racial group in the United States. The data released in 2019 showed that 23.2 million people in the United States identify themselves as Asian Americans. They represent 19 different groups of Asian origin, with Chinese Americans being the largest of them, followed by Indian Americans and Filipino Americans.

The US RAND Corporation recently presented a report on this problem, where anti-Asian racism is defined as discriminatory acts committed against people who are considered Asians living in the United States. These manifestations of anti-Asian racism have noticeably intensified with the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. First, the White House initiated the trade war with China, followed by the coronavirus conflict, and then Beijing was officially accused of bearing responsibility for the terrible consequences of the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic and the deaths of more than 100 thousand Americans from Covid-19. As these events unfolded over recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in Sinophobia.

According to experts, in recent years a surge in hate attacks against Asian Americans and people from the Pacific region has been recorded almost throughout the United States, and could to some extent be provoked by negative statements by former President Donald Trump who accused China of spreading Covid-19. It is also reported that during the period from March 2020 to September 2021, there were more than 10,000 such incidents in the US.

However, the anti-Chinese racial wave about the alleged “Chinese virus” initiated by 45th US President Donald Trump’s remarks is also rooted in history. In 1900, a bubonic plague outbreak struck San Francisco, and the first victim was a Chinese immigrant, after which the accusation of allegedly bringing the virus was quickly brought against the Chinese community.

As for the manifestations of anti-Chinese racism in the United States, the statistics for 2021 showed that the number of attacks in San Francisco alone, directed against people of Asian origin and committed with racial motives due to the outbreak of Covid-19, increased several times, Insider reports. This was announced by the city authorities at a special press conference on January 25 with the participation of police representatives. The information at the conference clearly illustrates that the animosity toward people of Asian appearance in the United States is growing against the background of the Covid-19 pandemic. At the same time, in 2021 the number of attacks and other crimes committed against them on the racism and ethnic hostility grounds increased more than sixfold in San Francisco alone. The city officials have pledged to strengthen security to ensure the protection of all Asian Americans.

In an attempt to contribute to countering racial manifestations against Asians, ballet companies in the United States suddenly began to revise the image of Asians in The Nutcracker, trying to fight old stereotypes about Chinese culture, writes The New York Times. Some famous groups, inter alia, the New York Ballet, have adjusted Chinese dance, abandoning the thin hanging moustaches of male dancers, which were previously used as a traditional element of Asian culture. The scene “Confiturenburg, the Palace of Sweets” of this ballet was updated with a new character – an energetic and superhero-like cricket named Green Tea, whose mission is “countering stereotypes about Chinese culture.”

Some troupes have almost completely reworked Chinese dance, believing that this way it will find a greater response from a modern audience. So, the Tulsa Ballet company, in their quest to abandon the “outdated image” of Asians, filled its production with elements of martial arts, guided by a choreographer from China, and classical Chinese dance. And Colorado Ballet presented “The Nutcracker” with new costumes that were also present in the Chinese dance.

Teachers and students of Butler University in Indianapolis this year made a decision to rename the famous “Tea” stage into “Dragon Beard” in honor of popular Chinese sweets. And the mythical figure of the Monkey King from classical Chinese literature became the basis for the choreography in this updated scene. The Boston Ballet added a new pas de deux scene based on a traditional Chinese ribbon dance.

But all these demonstrations against old stereotypes about Chinese culture cannot yet solve the main problem of the racism spreading in the United States. Therefore, the Asian community in the United States continues to protest against racial manifestations and hatred. Some famous personalities have joined the struggle. Philip Lim, a successful fashion designer, Daniel Day Kim, a Hollywood actor, and other Asian American celebrities in their interviews and online videos are calling for a stop to hatred. The anti-hate campaign is a real hit. #StopAsianHate gave a rise to a social movement

But according to the American media it is clear to everyone that much remains to be done to eradicate racism from the political ideology of the United States.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The next Turkish general elections are scheduled for June 2023. The incumbent Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan plans to run as a People’s Alliance presidential candidate, a coalition that had been formed by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been in power since 2003 (first, as prime-minister). In 2007, he pushed through amendments to the Constitution that would mean that the president would be elected by popular vote (earlier the president was elected by parliament). In August 2014, he won the first direct presidential election in the country mustering 51.8% votes. In 2018, Erdogan won snap presidential election on the first ballot enlisting the support of more than 52.5% voters.

However, in today’s crisis-ridden Turkey, Erdogan’s popular support is dwindling. The latest polls conducted in Turkey by independent research organizations attest to an aggravating social and political crisis in the country, with some experts saying that internal situation could exacerbate, a development that would entail further crackdown by the current authorities on the opposition. According to a slew of analysists, the Turkish economy has entered a period of a prolonged recession that is in part driven by the increasing side effects of the current economic growth model and social and economic fall-out from the ongoing COVID-19 global pandemic. The country has faced double-digit inflation, rising unemployment, weakening of the national currency and outflow of foreign investment. Analysts say that Turkey’s economic prospects look increasingly bleak amidst wide-spread youth unemployment and exacerbating poverty.

As an information and analytical Turkish portal Duvar reported on February 18, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced the results of the “2021 Life Satisfaction Survey,” which revealed that the proportion of Turks who say they are “happy” has decreased from 59.6 percent to 49.3 percent in the past 19 years. In other words, the survey covers the period when Turkey was ruled by the Justice and Development Party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The study also questioned Turks regarding their “life expectations in the upcoming year.” The results showed that the proportion of those who said “it could get worse” increased from 9.3 percent in 2003 to 33.8 percent in 2021.

According to a recent report by the Istanbul Municipality’s Planning Agency (IPA), most people in this Turkish metropolis are left “desperate and hopeless” by the state of the economy, with a large proportion claiming last month that their economic outlooks are bleak.

Given these circumstances, the opposition is calling on Erdoğan to step down, and the police have investigated people for using social networks to organize demonstrations. In addition, the debates regarding Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s right to run for president again are raging on, with the elections scheduled to take place in 2023. The sticking point is that according to the Constitution, the leader of the republic cannot be elected for more than two terms if the elections are proceeding according to the schedule. For that reason, Erdoğan’s critics think that he may not legally run in the upcoming elections while many, including MPs, some of whom represent opposition parties, believe otherwise.

The president’s ally and leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, Devlet Bahceli, claims that nothing impedes Erdogan to run for office again. He made this statement after one of former ministers and members of the Justice and Development Party Ertuğrul Günay had said that if the election were to be held as scheduled, the incumbent leader could not run for president and would be able to do so only in case of snap election.

Bahceli and other Erdogan’s allies argue that the president was elected only once since the reform of the political system had taken place, which allegedly offsets the Constitution’s disputed paragraph in his specific case. At the same time, the MHP leader stressed that if there were a need to introduce constitutional amendments to extend the president’s term, his party and the AKP would do their best to make that happen. Some critics, however, say that such amendments would require a two-third parliamentary majority with MHP—AKP falling short of this number in the Grand National Assembly.

However, the opposition reacted to this bickering with surprising indifference. This could be explained only by the fact that Erdogan is swiftly losing support of Turkey’s population as opposition strongly believes that he would lose.  At the same time, as for the reasons for the incumbent president’s dwindling popular support, the opposition has been citing not only Turkey’s deteriorating social and economic prospects due to Erdogan’s domestic policy blunders. A role in this process was also played by the Turkish authorities’ brutal crackdown on dissent that has only picked up steam after an attempted coup in 2016 and mass purges with thousands of Turks ending up behind bars. Neither does Erdoğan gain support by imposing religious way of life on the society considering that his push to islamize the country is frowned upon not only by the youth, but also by senior citizens that are used to the secular order. Besides, Turks have been witnessing ever-lasting major corruption scandals which force the most prominent members of the ruling AKP party to skedaddle, with some of them establishing new political organizations. These include former Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, former Foreign Minister and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, and others who were at the root of the AKP. They argue that Turkey needs an entirely new vision for the future, claiming that “Erdoğan has exhausted the resources to continue his geopolitical experiment” and that its “economy cannot withstand his ambitious foreign policy.”

At the same time, with Erdogan still in power, there is an apparent lack of charismatic political leaders, which gives the incumbent president a chance to splinter the opposition and win the 2023 elections even against the backdrop of his dwindling popularity. All opposition figures operating in the country are not independent and try to entrench themselves in electoral terms as they rely on various alliances with Western external forces. The political landscape is shaky, a situation that was clearly understood by the US which made a “sudden” U-turn in the Eastern Mediterranean towards Turkey, saying that it no longer supports the Greek-Israeli EastMed gas pipeline project. Moreover, according to US-based Foreign Policy magazine, Washington has faced the danger of losing Turkey and is now trying to hinder its “rapprochement with the East” and therefore undoubtedly will make efforts to ensure Erdogan’s victory at the upcoming elections.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

At the end of December 2021, the Biden administration, in another of its now blatantly false propaganda campaigns, tried to convince the world of the supposedly “humane treatment of the people of Afghanistan.”

It should be recalled that at the time the matter concerned the delivery of one million doses of coronavirus vaccine produced by the US company Johnson & Johnson to Kabul as part of US humanitarian aid. Moreover, the damaging health effects of this particular US vaccine were openly discussed in the US itself even back then, leading, among others, to the closure of vaccination centers in North Carolina and Colorado, which was covered by none other than The Wall Street Journal. Even then, about a hundred complaints received by the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention after the use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine prompted its medical staff to take a closer look at this anti-Covid-19 drug and “duly appreciate” the Biden administration’s “humanitarian gift” of this brand of vaccine to Afghanistan. At the time, there were also suspicions as to whether this “donation move” was not only a way for the United States to get rid of a failed vaccine, but also an opportunity to thereby “punish” Kabul for the scandalous expulsion of the US troops from that country in August.

And here is new evidence of the alleged “humane attitude of the White House towards the Afghan people” demonstrated on February 11 by President Joe Biden signing an executive order blocking $7 billion in assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan, which are held in American financial institutions. As a result, these assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan will remain in the US. Half of them will be held “for possible compensation of claims in US courts,” and about $3.5 billion will be put into a US trust fund “to help Afghans.”

It is remarkable that Biden signed the order just hours before the US Department of Justice was to present to a federal judge an action plan regarding the frozen funds, amid urgent calls from US lawmakers and the UN to use them to address the dire crisis that has worsened since the Taliban (a movement banned in Russia) seized power in August last year. According to senior US administration officials, the money blocked on US territory was deposited in Kabul’s accounts as a result of two decades of foreign financial support, thus legally justifying the US’s right to solely dispose of these finances. With the signing of this order, all of the foreign holdings of the Central Bank of Afghanistan held in the US will now be transferred to a single consolidated account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Washington notoriously froze Afghan funds held in the US since the Taliban came to power, explaining that the new Afghan government is not recognized as legitimate by the world community. However, the worsening humanitarian situation in Afghanistan has led to increased pressure on Washington by the UN and other states not indifferent to the plight of ordinary Afghans.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova has already accused Washington of exacerbating the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and hindering the restoration of normal life in the republic, as the situation is largely the result of a failed US and NATO campaign. “The $7 billion seizure of assets held by the Central Bank of Afghanistan in the United States, announced by President Biden’s executive order, raises questions about the sincerity of White House statements about the desire to help stabilize the country,” Zakharova said.

The decision by the head of the White House to divide the amount in half is also noteworthy: the first half is to be distributed to the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. However, there were no Afghan nationals among the perpetrators of the biggest terrorist attack in US history. “Why should the Afghan people, who were in no way involved in organizing these attacks, now have to pay for them?”, Zakharova notes. In addition, according to Maria Zakharova, Washington’s claim that it has the right to give the second half of the $3.5 billion in aid to Afghans as humanitarian aid cannot be called anything but a mockery, as the money already belongs to the Afghan people.

But another remarkable thing is that when Joe Biden blocked the Afghan funds held in the US, he did not say a word about the reparations to be paid to Afghanistan by the US itself for the military and material damage that the US-led armed coalition was inflicting on this country and its people for 20 years!

The US administration’s decision not to return the assets of the Central Bank of Afghanistan is no different from the “behavior of bandits,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said on February 15. The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said that such an example once again confirms that the “rules-based” world order, which the US allegedly advocates, does not protect the rights of the weak and justice, but only supports the hegemony of the United States. He added that as a party to the crisis in Afghanistan, the US should stop exacerbating the suffering of the Afghan people, release those assets, lift unilateral sanctions and acknowledge its obligations to alleviate the humanitarian crisis in that country.

Commenting on Washington’s actions, surprising unanimity was shown by the Taliban and the country’s former authorities. “The theft by the US of money blocked and belonging to the people of Afghanistan and taking possession of it is an indicator of the human and moral decline of the country and the people,” Mohammad Naeem, spokesman for the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, wrote on Twitter. At the same time, former Afghan President Hamid Karzai, according to Tolo News, said: “Washington, for the sake of future generations of Afghans, must immediately return the funds that belong to the people of Afghanistan, not the governments.”

Meanwhile, US and international media stress that the decision to transfer billions in frozen assets from the account of the Central Bank of Afghanistan to other uses is plunging the country deeper and deeper into economic disaster. Not only that, but also that the move will effectively bankrupt the country.

Stéphane Dujarric, Spokesman for the United Nations Secretary-General, recalled regarding Joe Biden’s decision on the Afghan assets: “We have said on several occasions and we’ve called many times for the release of Afghanistan’s frozen assets.” He said the UN believes that humanitarian aid alone is not enough to cover the needs of the Afghan people.

And against this background, attention is drawn to a February 16 initiative by British Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss, who, on behalf of Britain and with the UN, intends to hold an international virtual conference “to help Afghanistan,” in the hope of raising $4.4 billion. Meanwhile, Elizabeth Truss, true to her servile allegiance to Washington, did not even attempt to criticize the blatantly inhumane move by the Biden’s administration to block the Afghan fund, the tightening of the humanitarian disaster in that country by the United States, clearly expressing “solidarity” with the actions of the current US administration. In addition, Elizabeth Truss does not even indicate where or how she expects to use the international funds raised in this way, or whether they will once again be blocked by Washington “for domestic needs” and to at least partially cover the costs of the predatory Afghan military campaign. All this is especially so in view of the provisions of the order signed by Joe Biden on February 11, under which all the foreign holdings of the Central Bank of Afghanistan held in the US will now be transferred to a single consolidated account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

As noted earlier, over the past centuries, there have been various assessments of changes in fertility and their impact on the state structure and social processes. Nevertheless, it has always been recognized that the demographic situation of a country is invariably a key indicator of its development. Therefore, the solution of the most important social issues concerning the development of a country, its economic state and national security depends primarily on the resolution of the demographic issue. As with the development of any economy, the regional and global balance of economic and political power depends to a large extent on demographic and migration processes.

According to UN estimates, the world’s population by 2020 has reached around 7 billion 794 million 800 thousand. China remains the most populous country in the world, with 1 billion 439 million 323 thousand people. It is followed by India with 1 billion 380 million and the US with more than 331 million people. These three countries account for 40.4% of the global population.

It has already been noted that economic factors have a marked influence on the structure and size of the population. According to the World Bank, human resources in developed countries account for 68% to 76% of the total national wealth. In other words, human potential is the main factor of economic growth in the modern world, and the efficiency of the use of all other development resources depends on its condition. This is why fertility drops are attracting attention, primarily with a view of identifying their causes and dealing with them in a timely manner.

According to a United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) study in 19 European countries and in the USA, published by Der Spiegel, the coronavirus pandemic has led to a noticeable drop in the number of newborns in the USA and Europe. The figures show that there has been a sharp decline in fertility since October 2020 in all the countries studied, and in Canada, the lowest since 2006. UN expert Rachel Snow attributes this to the fact that people prefer to avoid pregnancy in unstable times.

Ukraine, the Baltics and Georgia lead in population decline among the former Soviet republics. In the 30 years since the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine has lost 20% of its population. The “anti-leader” of the list is Latvia, which has lost 28.3% of its population, followed by Lithuania (-24.5%) and Georgia (-23.2%).

However, there is a serious variation from country to country in Europe: while Spain reported a 20% drop in birth rates and France a 13.5% decline, countries such as Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands have not experienced strong variations, showing the greatest stability in terms of birth rates.

As for less developed countries, the trend is sometimes reversed. The main reason for this is worse access to contraception, making it more difficult for the local population to reduce fertility at will. This trend in particular can be seen in Bangladesh, Malawi and Mexico.

In the USA, the pandemic has also had an impact on the birth rate: for example, in California it fell by 10.5% and in Florida by 7.2%. According to surveys, many married couples have postponed pregnancy plans because of the epidemiological situation as well as the state’s failed social policies.

Last year, The New York Post reports, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births in 25 US states. The marriage rate is also at an all-time low of 6.5 marriages per 1,000 people. Millennials are the first generation to be primarily single (about 56%). According to Pew, they are not having sex and are more likely to live with their parents than previous generations in their 20s and 30s. The number of such young people tripled between 2008 and 2018. Cities like New York, where young secular Americans are flocking to build their lives, are becoming increasingly childless. There are more dogs than children in San Francisco, says the publication.

Younger generations are reluctant to become parents because they find the current realities unacceptable and the future seems more uncertain than ever, explains MSNBC, an American TV channel. And that should a worrying trend for everyone. As the pandemic has demonstrated, parents, mainly mothers, are thrown out of the workforce, either fired or forced to take care of their children or a sick family. It is now almost impossible to buy a house to raise children unless you have money or relatives to make it happen. Millennials are also faced with such fast-growing student debt that the minimum monthly salary is barely enough to pay the monthly tuition fee.

For the first time since the start of the US census in 1790, the number of white Americans in the country has declined in absolute numbers by 8.6% since 2010, Census Bureau figures show. Whites accounted for 57% (63.7% in 2010) of the US population of 332,278,200 for the first time. Since the 2010 census, the mixed population has grown from 9 million to almost 34 million. In addition, Hispanics and Latin Americans made up a group of 62 million (an increase of 23%), African Americans 46.9 million and people of Asian origin 24 million. The Financial Times published an article stating that Europeans should also “prepare themselves for a demographic replacement by Arabs and Asians.” A recent study found that population growth in the UK is almost entirely due to immigrants and their children, the Daily Mail reports. Experts are sounding the alarm because society is failing to assimilate them.

Financial hardship amid pandemic triggers record low birth rate in England. Statistics for last year show that birth rates in England and Wales have fallen to a record low level since 1938, The Times reports. More than 29% of newborns were born to non-British parents — Pakistanis and Romanians topping the list.  Declining birth rates and an ageing population could hit the UK economy hard in just a few decades, The Guardian points out, citing analysts at the Social Market Foundation. To solve the demographic crisis, the experts call on the government to provide families with childcare support and to develop strategies to stimulate the birth rate, following the example of other countries. Furthermore, according to The Daily Express, a new study has shown that life expectancy in the UK is among the lowest in Western Europe, with two to four years lower in the north of the country than in most European countries. Experts point out that the economic gap between the British north and south has existed for more than 85 years, and it will take about as much funds to close it as it took to reunite Germany.

A sharp drop in life expectancy is increasingly being talked about in Europe, and Sweden is among the countries where it has fallen the most, Sweden’s Svenska Dagbladet reports, citing a study by researchers at Oxford University, published in the International Journal of Epidemiology. Life expectancy fell by more than six months since 2019 in 22 of the 29 countries studied. Among American men, for example, it fell by 2.2 years compared to 2019, while among Lithuanian men it fell by 1.7 years. It is noted, however, that in most countries life expectancy has fallen more for men than for women, one reason being that the pandemic has hit men particularly hard and has caused excess mortality in this group.  As the publication stresses, in theory, Sweden had everything to succeed: a country with a healthy population, good health care, equality and many citizens living separately. The pandemic would not have affected life expectancy so drastically if Sweden, like many other countries, had understood from the start how serious it all was.

People used to want to conceive children, it was the default position of a healthy young person, and our existence depended on it. But now the question for more and more people is: why should we do it at all? This psychological turn has happened for a reason, and against the backdrop of a dramatic shift in the spiritual, cultural and environmental forces surrounding us in recent times. For example, a new survey shows that 39% of Generation Z are in no hurry to procreate for fear of the climate apocalypse, while a study by the Institute for Family Studies found that the desire to have children among adults has dropped by 17% since the start of the pandemic.

All these issues and problems force everyone to think about them and, instead of chasing political scandals, pointlessly inflating countries’ military budgets, turn their energies to improving countries’ social situations, taking care of the health care of parents and children and other factors to prevent a further decline in fertility.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The relations between Ankara and Washington have for many years now been characterized as a  “fragile equilibrium.” Back when Erdogan just came to power, the US supported his Justice and Development Party, which, however, over time stopped being an American project and gained independence. Barack Obama, for instance, hoped that Turkey would become an exemplary democratic country populated mostly by Muslims, a kind of bridge between Europe, the Middle East and the Islamic world. The former US leader considered Erdogan to be a moderate Muslim leader, and named him one of only five colleagues, with whom he managed to build the most friendly and trusting relationships. But gradually both leaders became disillusioned with each other.

Relations between the countries were equally ambiguous during the “Trump era”, especially against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and also after Washington’s recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and the consequent transfer of the American embassy there from Tel Aviv. Erdogan would sharply criticize those steps. The United States, in turn, acknowledged that its ally, previously considered a Western mediator in the Middle East, now seeks to pursue an independent policy.

Of course, the United States needs Turkey as an outpost on the southern flank of NATO, as a security partner. None of the countries want to burn their bridges. In the last decade alone, Ankara spent about $33.5 million promoting its interests in the US, according to documents released by the US Department of Justice under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). These funds were enough for the Turkish authorities to build a stable network designed for the promotion of their interests, which operates at several levels of government: in the White House, in Congress, and in the media. Among Ankara’s political contractors, one can find influential parliamentarians and consultants who take part in the discussion of national security issues, foreign relations, and military affairs. A number of them act as legislative assistants, and some are included in commissions and committees responsible for writing and approving certain drafts. Ankara pays special attention to departments whose competence is international relations, the army and intelligence, as well as appropriations and finances.

Ankara is very active in cooperating with the media, and media control is given special attention by the Turkish Embassy in the United States. In mid-2014, the Ankara diplomatic department hired for such purposes Alpaytac, which coordinated work with the media and organized the publication of articles by Turkish officials on information platforms. Alpaytac reportedly spent $1.4 million on the media campaign in just one year.

Nonetheless, periodic waves of cooling in relations between Washington and Ankara continue to arise.

Thus, recently the United States announced the creation of a forward headquarters of American special operations forces in Albania, which, according to Washington’s calculations, will allow countering the influence of not only Moscow, but also Turkey in the Balkans, and will keep the Albanians “from a too close rapprochement with Ankara.” According to The Insider, Turkey has invested heavily in Albania, as both countries are members of NATO and profess Islam. However, under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey is steadily moving away from the transatlantic alliance, and there are fears that Ankara will drag other NATO members with it.

Wherever Turkey sees prospects for its expansion, it collides with US plans. In the Transcaucasia and Central Asia, in Russia and Ukraine, in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea basin, in Central Asia and the Middle East, in Africa and the Balkans, in China – everywhere Turkey competes with the United States, seeking to reduce the latter’s influence and increase its own. In military terms, Turkey continues to strengthen its ability to solve foreign policy problems by force. A segment of Turkish air defense not controlled by the United States has been created through the acquisition of Russian S-400 systems, reconnaissance and sabotage forces that have lost many valuable specialists after personnel purges in 2016 are being restored, new destroyers and submarines are being built, and military presence abroad is increasing. In January 2020, the Turkish parliament approved the deployment of Turkish armed forces in 12 states: Azerbaijan, Albania, Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Iraq, Qatar, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Syria, Somalia and the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus. Britain encourages Turkey in every possible way, maneuvering in its actions between pushing it away at the right moment for London or colliding with a suitable European country, after which it seeks to enter the space cleared by Turkey, be it Africa, the Middle East, Russia, Central Asia, Transcaucasia or the Balkans.

As a result, the United States is increasingly inclined to believe that Turkey is turning from an ally of the United States into its rival, which is why the strategic plans of these two states clash. This is despite the fact that Turkey retains economic, political and military dependence on the United States and NATO, and Biden’s entourage has already given a command to the allies to do everything possible to keep Turkey in the sphere of influence. However, the vortex of conflict between the US and Turkey continues from incident to incident, with each side accusing the other of provocative behavior.

Erdogan not only saw the gaps formed in the once monolithic system of the Pax Americana world, but also realized that in the new changing world, where tectonic shifts in geopolitical platforms either form new continents or crush those who are between them, Turkey in its former state can just disappear. Therefore, more and more often in the speeches of Turkish politicians one can hear Ankara’s obvious criticism of the United States and the policy pursued by the White House.

One example of this is the statement of the Turkish political scientist Mehmet Perincek in an interview with the Sputnik Azerbaijan news agency on February 7, that, after the shameful defeat of the United States in Afghanistan and the unsuccessful attempt at a color revolution in Kazakhstan, Washington’s plans in Central Asia are completely destroyed. However, according to him, Ankara’s actions can serve as a positive example against this background, in particular, in building up post-war processes in the South Caucasus, rapprochement between Armenia and Turkey.

Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also began to actively support criticism of the United States and the West, emphasizing, in particular, that Western bogeyman stories about Russia allegedly intending to invade Ukraine only lead to increased panic and a worsening economic situation in the country.  In an interview with TRT, Çavuşoğlu said that “unnecessary statements” that Russia would allegedly “invade” Ukraine should be avoided, as this would cause unrest in the country and economic damage to it.

On February 8, Secretary General of the Turkish Vatan (Motherland) party, Dogu Perincek, spoke out against the position of the United States and NATO, predicting the “death” of NATO in the event of the expansion of the North Atlantic Alliance to the east. He also urged to prevent the arrival of NATO forces in the Black Sea, pointing out that such a move by Brussels would have complex consequences for the region. “Greece and Ukraine are under the nose of Turkey, the US is stuffing both countries with weapons, aircraft to carry out provocations. We understand that Ukraine, like Greece, serves the interests of Washington. Inviting the US to the Black Sea will have very complicated consequences. It is necessary to prevent outside forces from entering the Black Sea,” Dogu Perincek said.

The Americans do not need a strong Turkey having good relations with Russia, Yeni Şafak points out. This leading Turkish publication recalls that when the war in Syria began, the United States had already tried to push Ankara and Moscow, but they did not succeed, despite a number of provocations.

Vladimir Odintsov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.