▶️ Press TV Correspondent in Donetsk, @johnnyjamesmiller, says Ukraine using cluster munitions in civilian areas is very alarming.

@PressTV - #UkraineWar

Great to hang out with my dear friend Alina Lipp in Donestk. She’s facing three years jail in Germany for her reporting in Donbass. Here’s why her story is important for the future of Europe. Germany has effectively criminalised even talking about peace.

I’ve seen her court order. She’s facing imprisonment because she broadcast that Ukraine has been killing people in Donbass for 8 years. And that the majority of people in the region support Russia. These are both incontrovertible facts.

Germany is trying to jail a young woman for telling the truth. Why does this matter on a broader scale? If you’re a German citizen, journalist or politician and you say something pretty mild like…

“It’s clear that most people in Donestk no longer want to be part of Ukraine, largely due to Ukrainian shelling of civilians. Maybe there is a peace to be had in Europe with Ukraine giving up territory. And maybe it would be in Germany’s national interests.” You risk going to jail.

Essentially, with Alina’s court order, Germany has criminalised even talking about peace. In doing so, Europe is in dark dark waters. The establishment lives in a bubble. A bubble, in Germany, it’s illegal to burst.

On the plus side. In other countries, people like Alina are smeared, bank accounts closed and will lose their jobs. At least Germany doesn’t mess about. Straight to jail. Increasingly, the incompetence of the European establishment knows no bounds.

Challenging public debate is essential for foreign policy that is in the national interests…

A major Ukrainian Twitter influencer encourages the killing of two western journalists. This is why Ukrainian nationalist ideology is so toxic. #europeanvalues

I’m back in Crimea for a few days. A scenic paradise and the current epicentre of the growing war between east and west. As Ukraine, or should we read NATO… up their attacks on the peninsula, what do people living in Crimea want?

I’ve spent many weeks here over the last 18 months. If you ask people in Donbass where they’re from they will generally say, “Donbass.” If you ask people in Crimea, they will generally shrug and simply say, “I’m Russian.”

The fact that the vast majority want to be part of russia is not up for debate. Mainstream journalists, politicians and policy makers know it full well. It’s an inconvenient truth that is swept under the carpet. Except by the NBC reporter who came last year and broadcast a report admitting as much.

Whilst a minority, there are many pro Ukrainians here as well. Just as there are in the “four regions” that Russia now claims. But there are also many pro Russians in Ukrainian territory. Particularly in Kharkiv and Odessa. It’s too dangerous for them to speak out. It has been increasingly so since 2014. The silent predicament of those unfortunates on both sides is little reported on.

The leader of the USSR Nikita Khrushchev handed Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. It is widely seen as a historic mistake. On the elegant streets of Sevastopol an old lady jokingly snapped at me, “I would like to kill that bastard Khrushchev.

“He gave it up because he was Ukrainian.” A young couple shrugged.

And strategically, it is folly to pretend otherwise.

Ukraine is militarily incapable of taking back Crimea. Even with the countless billions in NATO support. This was clear before the disastrous Ukrainian counter offensive. It is doubly so now. NATO policy makers know it. How many more Ukrainians will be slaughtered for a fantasy of foreign policy?

NATO politicians and internet trolls alike blithely tweeting “Crimea is Ukraine,” isn’t going to make it so. Nor will it arise the hundreds of thousands of dead from their graves. The scale of human loss in this war deeply depresses the soul for the relatively few who take a moment to really think about it.

And if by chance NATO did find a way of threatening Crimea’s future within Russia, then we can start talking about an escalation that could be apocalyptic. Crimea is of such strategic importance to Russia, they would see it as an existential threat. If the world goes to war, none of us will be free.

Anglo American attempts to destabilise Russia by ‘edging’ nuclear war are part of the same self defeating policies that led us into Iraq and Afghanistan. Only now, the stakes are much greater. It is being led by the same brand of crazies in the US state department too. NATO’s disastrous policies and overreach are only bringing destruction to those around them and ruin to themselves.

We’re living in the middle of history. Not the end. To secure peace and prosperity, borders will once again have to be redrawn in Europe. It won’t be the end of the world. And will likely lead to a more prosperous European future.

Few in western civil society have the courage to speak out in fear of being labelled a Kremlin asset. But one way or another, reality has a way of catching up with us.

Sarah Aston Carillo has been suspended from her role as a Ukrainian spokesperson. Sadly though, her mistake wasn’t that she threatened journalists, it’s that she so crudely boasted about it in public.

Some time ago the Ukrainian government labelled me a Russian propagandist, spreading memes about me on their networks and analysis of my work. At the same time I received an official email from them cancelling my Ukrainian press accreditation.

A few days ago Sarah commented on a recent article of mine about Crimea. She then wrote to me “no hate to you Johnny. No hate for any journalists, even those who report with a slant.”

I don’t think she realised that when she said they would hunt down “Russian propagandists,” that means me. And other western journalists. Or does it? Who knows.

The Economist recently ran an article, “Inside Ukraine’s assassination Department” in which officials openly discussed killing “mid level” propagandists. Who are these “mid level” propagandists? The problem with assassination is that you don’t know for sure until it’s too late.

Dugina, Tatarsky… attempts on others. When I interviewed Frenchman Adrien Bocquet in a Donbass hotel lobby about the apparent attempt on his life in Turkey… it was chilling. Ukraine may well kill more journalists before this war is done.

Sarah’s mistake was not that she advocated the “hunting down” of journalists. It’s that she made the threat too brazenly for the Western sponsors of the war. You kill. You just don’t brag about it so crudely in public. People might get upset. And they might understand the true nature of Ukrainian extremism.

Is this war is about defending European values, or isn’t it? Europe must not support extremism. It’s a dark path to tread.

For the record, I do this work because I believed from the start, that it was not in European interests to arm Ukraine. Instead they should have pushed Ukraine to negotiate. I believe history will prove people like me correct. If that makes me a Russian propagandist, so be it.

▶️ Press TV’s @johnnyjamesmiller says Ukraine’s use of NATO-supplied missiles to attack Crimea is viewed as crossing one of Russia’s theoretical red lines.

@PressTV - #Ukraine #Russia

Apologies I haven't posted for a while. During my recent reporting in Crimea I received highly sophisticated death threats targeting myself and my loved ones.

Russian media broadcast my material and did numerous interviews with me. I can only presume it was someone else with an extremely high technical capability who wanted to silence my reporting.

How much they know, who they target, the sophistication of the hacking.

I am now back in Moscow taking time off. Love!

“If Ukraine had a chance of winning, at least I would see the strategic purpose. But they don’t. And everyone knows it.”

The case for peace in Europe.

Sorry I havent been posting on Telegram for some time. Mainly been posting on X. I will try to do more here in future. Peace

"You can be any gender you want but you can't be Russian."

The case for reinstating the Russian flag at the Olympics. Oh, and for peace in Europe.

I'm wandering around Siberia. May 9 prep going on everywhere. I kinda like this photo. Think I'd be great at Soviet propaganda. But just a random park bench in Irkutsk.

One evening in the biting winter cold of 2014, I went down to Maidan with my Ukrainian translator and her mother. It was packed, lively like a festival. "What do you think of all this?" My translator asked me as her mother waved a large Ukrianian flag above her head.

"It won't end well." I replied.

After covering Libya, Syria, you get to know the political movements that will only lead a country to ruin. An alliance of foreign money, oligarchs and ultra nationalist extremists was clearly in that bracket.

I asked my translators lovely mother why she supported it. She said something along the lines of "Europe is richer than Russia. And I like going on holiday there." She had little magnets of the places she'd been to on her fridge. London, Paris, Spain. They were sold a dream of a bright European future.

I was there when a statue of Lenin was pulled down in the late evening. With a truck and some chains. Down it fell and people cheered as it shattered on the ground. I picked up a piece. I think I've still got it at home. But most Ukrainians didn't want their statues pulled down. It wasn't what it was supposed to be about. Or rather it was. But they didn't know it.

The East rose. Crimea lost. More statues pulled down. And eight years later, the real slaughter began.

The ukrainians I know have already fled abroad. Those who claim to support Ukraine want them to stay and die.

The dream turned to ashes by the inevitable hammer blow of political reality and great nation politics. People manipulated and left for dead for a misplaced chess move on the geopolitical map.

And those who speak sense are silenced. Sometimes fatally. They'll silence the wise in order to manipulate the politically illiterate. Then give them flags to wave. And nations fall.

Blame whoever you want. But it's a hell of tragedy. Other nations beware.

As Western hegemony rages against the dying of the light. Burnt out, broken on the bruised and battered fields of Donbass. I flew off to Siberia for a couple of weeks.

At the small airport in Chita. A line of young women holding gifts for the returning soldiers on the plane. Patriotic music blaring. The families welcoming their young men home. The mothers clasping their sons hard, gazing proudly up into their eyes. A sense of relief I will never understand. You don't really feel it in central Moscow. But in many parts of Russia there's a real sadness at all the lost men.

God only knows what it's like in Ukraine. I read glimpses in the mainstream press. But it's mostly covered up to carry on the slaughter. Let them all die. They don't care.

We drove out for hours into the Siberian wilds to a Buryat village. While leaning on a fence looking out at the hills and a herd of cows. A Buryat man came out from the house opposite, interested in this strange visitor to the village. "People are tough here." He said, pointing at the earth. Thirty men had been mobilized or volunteered out of a village of three hundred. Then he railed againat Biden, NATO and Ukraine. He did that farmers spit as he leant on the gate. It was strange hearing Bidens name cursed out in the wilderness amongst a herd of cows. Although maybe not that strange.

I was told people here had a real sympathy with Donbass. And wanted to help. This is a harsh landscape. The only way people survive is to help each other. That help seemingly extends three thousand miles. Closer to China and Mongolia here. Tough people. Like Glasgow in Scotland. Like the miners in Donbass. Some people are just tougher than others. Not like London or Moscow and the hipster cafes.

I met a doctor who had gone to Mariupol to help out when the fighting was still going on. "You can't ignore the Russian archetype." He said. "Russians are used to winning wars. When Stolenburg says the Russians think they have already won. That's how we feel it on a mental level." But wars don't end when they're won. Only when the killings done.

In a little village on Lake Baikal. Dusty dirt streets, and wooden shop fronts, like an American Wild West movie set, nestled next to a giant ice sea from another world. I met a tour guide. A bandana and low hanging earrings. A Russian version of the young hippie country folk I'd meet in England. "Russia is the best country in the world isn't it?" she said cheerfully.

We talked and I told her that covering the war was stressful. "You need to stop worrying about death." she said. "It comes to us all. If you live worrying about death. You won't be able to live. So many of our ancestors are already in the ground."

Losing just isn't an option. Or they'll bring the whole damn world down with them. Europe has made the same mistake again. As they've done centuries past. It's embarrassing. Our leaders unable to lead. They don't care about history. And history won't care about them. Unable to comprehend the very basics of the world we live in.

Despite all the war and toughness and all that. You know those places in the world where people are just really nice. Siberia is one of those places.

The war in Ukraine is another disastrous US led war. The only difference is that they messed with a country that had the power to strike first for strategic advantage. Many ‘Left’ and anti-war groups in the West never understood this. Which is why you don’t see much of an anti war movement.

The war in Ukraine was inevitable due to NATOs actions. Whether Russia invaded in 22’ or waited until Ukraine and NATO tried to take back Donbass and Crimea. Russia could never allow that. Either by design or incompetence, the US carried on regardless.

Now the Americans are spending another 60 billion for Europeans to kill each other. And we’re thanking them for it. Madness.

▶️Russia says its major offensive in Kharkov aimed at creating a buffer zone

@johnnyjamesmiller reports from Belgorod.

@PressTV