The European Commission on July 15 announced that it will sue Hungary in the EU's Court of Justice over an anti-LGBT law and Hungary's refusal to allow a dissident radio station to broadcast. Hungary adopted a law in June 2021 that prevents companies from featuring LGBTQ couples in educational or advertising content intended for children. The legislation was swiftly condemned by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who later initiated infringement proceedings against Hungary. The Commission's case also concerns Hungary's refusal to renew broadcaster Klubradio's license, taking them off the air. Infringement proceedings were also launched against Hungary in that matter. The Commission charges that "the decisions of the Hungarian Media Council to refuse renewal of Klubradio's rights were disproportionate and non-transparent and thus in breach of EU law." Klubradio is highly critical of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government. Hungary is being sued on the basis of violating the EU's Audiovisual Media Services Directive, e-Commerce Directive and the Charter of Fundamental Rights. 

Russia's Basmanny District Court of Moscow on July 13 ordered the arrest of opposition politician Ilya Yashin over allegations that he willfully spread "false information" about the Russian military—a charge Yashin denies and human rights organizations call politically motivated. Yashin faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted and will be kept in detention for two months while he awaits trial. A lawyer for Yashin told state news agency TASS that the charge stems from an April 7 Youtube stream in which Yashin discussed Russian forces killing civilians in the Ukrainian city of Bucha, a claim that Russia denies.

In Episode 132 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg notes that deputy Duma speaker Pyotr Tolstoy, one of the most bellicose supporters of Putin's Ukraine war, is a direct descendent of Leo Tolstoy—and recently invoked his great-great-grandfather's "slaughter" of British and French troops during the Crimean War as a warning to the West. This is, of course, an utterly perverse irony given that the literary giant's anarcho-pacifist beliefs were antithetical to everything that his descendant Pyotr stands for. Indeed, it was Leo Tolstoy's experiences in the Crimean War that turned him into a committed pacifist. His final novel, Hadji Murat, vivdly depicts the brutality of Russia's counterinsurgency campaign in Chechnya in the 1850s—a history that repeated itself in Chechnya in the 1990s. This is bitterly recalled by the Chechen volunteers fighting for Ukraine, where this history is now repeating itself yet again. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

North Korea's government on July 13 recognized two breakaway states claiming independence from internationally-recognized Ukrainian territory. North Korea is the third country to recognize the "Donetsk People's Republic" and "Luhansk People's Republic," after Russia and Syria. On Feb. 22, two days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Moscow recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk "republics," and moved troops to the regions. In controversial 2014 referenda held by rebel authorities, close to 90% of Donetsk voters and 96% of Luhansk voters opted for independence.

In Episode 131 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls out the ironically named Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) for openly spreading Russian disinformation. FAIR serially portrays the 2014 Maidan Revolution as a US-instrumented, Nazi-tainted, unconstitutional "coup." FAIR commentators Luca Goldmansour, Gregory Shupak and Bryce Greene are all guilty of this. They do not bother to consult voices of Ukrainian civil society—academics, media watchdogs and human rights groups—that refute this notion. Glomming onto the notorious Nuland phone call to dismiss a grassroots pro-democracy uprising as a Washington "regime change" intrigue reveals chauvinistic contempt for the Ukrainians. And hyping the supposed "Nazi" threat in Ukraine (while ignoring the Nazi-nostalgist and neo-fascist elements on the Russian side) abets Putin's ultra-cynical propaganda stratagem of fascist pseudo-anti-fascism. Rather than calling out Fox News for its propaganda service to Putin, FAIR instead joins them. How did a supposed progressive media watchdog become a de facto arm of Kremlin war propaganda? Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

In Episode 130 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg continues his comparison of the two legendary and diametrically opposed exponents of Ukrainian armed resistance to Russian rule: the World War II-era right-wing nationalist Stepan Bandera and the World War I-era revolutionary anarchist Nestor Makhno. Much contemporary left commentary in the West echoes Russian propaganda in portraying Bandera simply as a Nazi collaborator, while many contemporary anarchists (at least) glorify Makhno as a visionary of agrarian utopia. Much is left out of both these narratives. Bandera was quickly betrayed by the Nazis and slapped in a concentration camp after he refused to renounce his declaration of Ukrainian independence. And while historians have had much to say about anti-Semitic pogroms by all factions in the multi-sided 1917-21 civil war in Ukraine, it is only recent scholarship that has brought to light reprisals and atrocities by Makhno's forces against Mennonite agricultural colonies. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

In a series of brief interviews with vlogger and activist songster Geof Bard, CounterVortex producer Bill Weinberg dissects the sinister "tankie" phenomenon on the contemporary Western "left," which paradoxically supports Russian imperialism in the name of a misguided "anti-imperialism." This absurd double standard is enabled by the so-called "Chomsky Rule," which holds that we are only permitted to protest the crimes of US imperialism—and thereby renders the crimes of rival imperialisms invisible to the activist-left milieu. The pseudo-left betrayal of Ukraine to imperialist aggression actually undermines our moral authority to oppose the crimes of the US and its client states in places like Gaza and Yemen.

In Episode 129 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg discusses the book Ukraine & the Empire of Capital: From Marketisation to Armed Conflict by Yuliya Yurchenko of the Ukrainian left-opposition group Sotsialniy Rukh (Social Movement). In the book, written in 2018, Yurchenko takes a rigorous neither/nor position between Russia and the West, tracing the roots of the current crisis to the rise of regional oligarchs and a "criminal-political nexus" in the post-communist transition a generation ago. The West, in its rush to effect a crash capitalist conversion in the East, was deeply complicit in this. But these regional fiefdoms were later exploited by Vladimir Putin to effect a division of Ukraine as East-West rivalry re-emerged. This January, as Putin amassed forces on Ukraine's borders, Sotsialniy Rukh issued a statement appealing for "anti-war solidarity." In interviews since the invasion was launched the next month, Yurchenko has been unequivocal in supporting the Ukrainian "popular resistance." Similar statements from socialists and anarchists in Ukraine, Belarus and elsewhere in Eastern Europe have called, first and foremost, for the defeat of Putin's neo-imperial project. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.