Facing a manpower shortage in its war with Ukraine, Russia is increasingly turning to recruitment networks in the Global South—especially Africa—to help fill its ranks. Fast-track visas, the promise of good salaries as well as citizenship are the lures, in contrast to growing official immigration hostility in the rest of Europe. But the problem is surviving the front line. In a report released this week, the investigative collective INPACT obtained a single list of 1,417 Africans hired by Russia (Egypt, Cameroon, and Ghana provided the most recruits) and found a death rate of over 20%. Those killed lasted an average of just six months. There are also reports of racism and brutality. While many young men volunteer, others are duped, promised work or scholarships, but then forcibly enlisted. Kenya and South Africa are two countries that have complained. Nairobi wants a ban on the conscription of Kenyans, while South Africa said Moscow had agreed to the return of 17 men tricked into serving in Ukraine.

UN human rights experts on Feb. 4 decried Russia's conviction of nine International Criminal Court (ICC) officials, calling the ruling a "flagrant violation of international law."

After a trial held in absentia, the Moscow City Court on Dec. 12 sentenced Prosecutor Karim Khan and eight ICC judges under the Russian Criminal Code for "unlawfully prosecuting Russian citizens in The Hague," and subsequently placed them on an international wanted list. Prosecutor Khan received a 15‑year prison term, with the others receiving sentences of between three and 15 years.

Trump's Greenland annexation drive is only secondarily about the strategic minerals, but fundamentally driven by a geostrategic design to divide the planet with Putin. Even if his belated and equivocal disavowal of military force at the Davos summit is to be taken as real, the threat has likely achieved its intended effect—dividing and paralyzing NATO, so as to facilitate Putin's military ambitions in Europe, even beyond Ukraine Also at Davos, Trump officially inaugurated his "Board of Peace," seen as parallel body to the United Nations that can eventually displace it—dominated by Trump and Putin, in league with the world's other authoritarians. In the Greenland gambit, the territory itself is a mere pawn in the drive to establish a Fascist World Order. In Episode 314 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg calls for centering indigenous Inuit voices on the future of Greenland, and universal repudiation of annexationist designs.

UN Secretary General António Guterres issued a statement Jan. 9 strongly condemning Russian missile and drone attacks in Ukraine following Moscow’s firing of its medium-range nuclear-capable "Oreshnik" ballistic missile.

A close reading of the facts indicates that Putin and Trump worked out a global carve-up in which Russia gets Ukraine and the US gets Venezuela. This was implicitly acknowledged in the "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine enshrined in the National Security Strategy released by the White House weeks before the illegal Venezuela attack was launched. In this light, Russian protests of the US aggression at the UN Security Council seem strictly pro forma. Both dissident left voices in Venezuela and democratic socialists in Ukraine have made the point that to betray one country is to betray the other. In Episode 312 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg demonstrates how the global divide-and-rule racket that is campism has never made less sense.

On World Humanitarian Day in August, World Health Organization director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus released a statement calling attention to intensifying attacks on healthcare workers and facilities, which constitute war crimes under international humanitarian law. "We must stop this becoming the norm," he wrote. The events of the past two weeks suggest such attacks are now already the norm.

Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy instates a "Trump Corollary" to the Monroe Doctrine. Like the Roosevelt Corollary of 1904, which was used to justify the "gunboat diplomacy" of that era, this new corollary openly calls for dividing the world into spheres of influence—with the Western Hemisphere assigned to the US. Russia is obviously pleased as punch over this, as it implicitly gives Moscow a free hand in Ukraine—and Putin will likely consider this an acceptable pay-off for his betrayal of Venezuela. However, China is less likely to surrender its massive investments and mega-projects in Latin America in exchange for a free hand to take over Taiwan. The document's text on Europe is even more sinister, revealing a white supremacist agenda that looks not to Washington's traditional allies to counter Russia, but to the continent's Russian-backed far-right movements to counter Washington's traditional allies. In Episode 308 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg exposes the NSS as a further step toward consolidation of a Fascist World Order.

President Donald Trump's new National Security Strategy, unveiled Dec. 4, puts the Western Hemisphere at the center of US foreign policy and revives the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, appending it with a "Trump Corollary." The document presents the Americas as the main line of defense for the US homeland and links that doctrine directly to ongoing military operations against suspected drug traffickers in Caribbean and Pacific waters.