Compilation of news and analysis, by the editors of The Multiplural World, Dec 8, 2025
The following are seven reports (in headline and weblink format, with related commentary [in square brackets] by the editors of The Multiplural World. Six of these headline reports appeared originally in recent days on the ‘World news’ feature page of the website, which is updated daily.
1. The war in Ukraine has been won and Russia faces a dilemma, informative interview with Scott Ritter, broadcast on the YouTube channel of Glenn Diesen, Dec 1, 2025
[Scott Ritter is a U.S. military analyst. Earlier in 2025, he renounced and criticized his past support to Donald Trump in the U.S. elections of 2016 and 2020 (and guardedly in the 2024 election). Back then, Ritter falsely described the Trump regime in Washington as a rogue actor seeking to curb U.S. government military aggression. Ritter failed to acknowledge the obvious fact that the USA political system is a rigged duopoly of two imperialist parties, each with their own proposals for how to violently maintain U.S. imperialist dominance of the world. Few of the many alt-media figures and publishing outlets who also advocated such views have followed Scott Ritter’s lead in renouncing their past views. More’s the pity. Some alt media writers such as Aaron Maté are unrepentant, while other alt media outlets have maintained a guarded silence over the matter.
[Much to his credit, Scott Ritter is one of the few alt media analysts to acknowledge the military/political defeat of the U.S./NATO nexus taking place in Ukraine and proceed from there with analysis of what this means for the fate of the planet and the humans who call it home. Visible evidence of this alt media failure is on display in its naive or malevolent presentations of a ‘Trump peace plan’ for Ukraine. Writer Larry Johnson, for example, a former CIA spook, writes in RT News on December 4: “The fact that, so far, there have been no leaks to the press about the recent meeting of a U.S. delegation with Putin tells me that Trump is serious about trying to get negotiations with Russia on track.” One day later in RT News, he tells a very tall tale that the Trump regime ‘maybe’ will withdraw the U.S. from NATO after all, marking a “profound shift” in U.S. foreign policy. (Oh yes, and by the same token, ‘maybe’ the moon is made of green cheese after all!)
[Meanwhile, Ray McGovern, another ex-CIA spook (1963 to 1990!), affirmed in Consortium News on Dec 4 that Trump really, really wants peace in Ukraine. His commentary is headlined ‘Trump Ukraine plan is alive on arrival’. Oh please; the ‘Trump peace plan’ is a distraction through which the Western imperialists hope to deflect attention from their defeat in Ukraine and hope to live to fight Russia (and China) another day. Thank goodness for the world that such naivete is nowhere to be found in the Russian government of President Vladimir Putin.
[Consortium News doubles down with its Trump nonsense in a published commentary on December 8 by Alastair Crooke, a former British diplomat. Speaking of the latest U.S. National Security Strategy document issued in early December (yawn), he writes, “Essentially, Ukraine is pushed onto the Europeans as their responsibility from now on. Allies are expected to foot the bills — as the U.S. builds at home.” Oh my, try telling that to the people of Venezuela and Cuba. He continues, “Perhaps the most meaningful [sic] aspect is the document’s references to ‘ending NATO as an ever-expanding alliance’ and to Europe, which is critiqued in the most astringent terms.” The man perhaps assumes he is addressing a group of high school students or first-year university students who wouldn’t know any better.
[How is it that the editors of RT News, whose salaries are paid through the Russian government funding of RT, continue to hail a supposed ‘Trump peace plan’ when the Russian government has unequivocally indicated to anyone listening closely that the ‘plan’ is a dead starter? RT has been conducting editorial deception over Trump ever since the U.S. presidential election of 2016, when it began promoting as ‘news’ a meaningless, off-the-cuff remark by Trump that ‘maybe’ the U.S. would withdraw from NATO. Readers of RT should follow the age-old proverb regarding Trump (which dates back to the 1600s): ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’.]
Update on Dec 10, 2025: Analyst Scott Ritter is back to his old tricks, giving credence to the latest rhetoric being issued by the Trump regime, pretending a political rift with its proxy-warmaking allies in the European Union. Comment by the editors of The Multiplural World, Dec 10, 2025:
[Sadly, military analyst Scott Ritter is back to his old tricks, giving credence to rhetoric being newly issued by the Trump regime, specifically its rhetoric surrounding its issuance of a ‘new’ (well-worn) National Security Strategy in late November, only now coming to media attention. He tells a December 9 interview with Glenn Diesen that the proxy war in Ukraine has never been a priority for the Trump regime, that is has much less interest in events in Europe compared to its supposed, ‘priority’ of weakening China. Oh really? So what has the past three and a half years of U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine been all about?(Let us note, by the way, that the U.S. trade war and technology war against China is, like the proxy war in Ukraine, a losing war, but we digress.
[Ritter swallows wholly the Trump regime’s new, rhetorical sideshow performance, this time directed against the leading countries of the European Union. The regime is claiming a political rift with its proxy-warmaking allies in the EU. The sideshow performance is simply a continuation of the Trump regime’s ongoing efforts to deflect attention from the evolving military defeat of U.S. imperialism and European imperialism in Ukraine. The ever-naive interviewer Glenn Diesen nods along with much interest and agreement.]
2. Comment by Aide to the President of Russia Yury Ushakov on Vladimir Putin’s Dec. 2 meeting in Moscow with U.S Special Envoy Steve Witkoff , published on the English-language website of the President of Russia, Dec 3, 2025 The discussion between the two sides began in the evening of December 2 (Moscow time) and lasted into the early hours of December 3
And read: Comment by Vladimir Putin on the military situation in Ukraine, published on the English-language website of the President of Russia, Dec 2, 2025
3. The Zelensky-led government of Ukraine sabotaged anti-corruption oversight, allowing corruption to fester and spread, paywalled report in New York Times, Dec 5, 2025 …Ukrainian leaders blame independent advisers for failing to prevent graft, but a Times investigation finds that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s own administration removed guardrails… [Expect more such damaging revelations across Western media–corporate and state-run alike–during the days and weeks ahead about the neo-Nazi infested governing regime in Kiev, which this same media has unhesitatingly backed since 2014. This media is scrambling to salvage its damaged reputations after 12-plus years of lying about Ukraine and lying about why the Russian government was obliged to undertake military action beginning in February 2022. Similar scrambling is taking place by this same media over its past and present support to Apartheid Israel and its Western-backed genocide in Palestine. Today, it is filling its pages and broadcasts with crocodile tears and feigned concern over the appalling, unspeakable war crimes and genocide being waged by Apartheid Israel. To say that his media has entirely backed Israel’s actions would be an understatement. Don’t be confused by the Western media and government salvaging operation underway. They are as thin as paper.]
4. More deception over Ukraine proxy war by anti-Russia, ‘Counterfire’ Trotskyists in Britain. [A new report about the war in Ukraine published by ‘Counterfire’ Trotskyists in Britain on December 3 has all the appearance of a factual report, explaining the steady retreats being suffered by the Western-funded and -armed Ukrainian (Kiev) army. The report is innocently titled ‘How long can the Ukraine war go on?’. But buried deep in the report is one word that exposes the deception being perpetrated against readers. That is the word “annexation” used to describe the military gains being made by Russia against the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine that escalated beginning in 2021. This deception harkens back to the group’s foul and lying interpretation of Crimea’s vote in March 2014 to secede from coup Ukraine and join (rejoin) the Russian Federation. They called the rerendum process an “annexation” by Russia. No wonder that the ‘Stop The War’ coalition in Britain which the Counterfire group controls barely lifted a finger to oppose the far-right coup in Ukraine in 2014 and has never lifted a finger to oppose the escalation of proxy war aggression by the West against Russia. The British government has been a key actor in that escalation, yet this new ‘Counterfire’ report says not a word of this! ‘Counterfire’ has always claimed that the Russian Federation is an “imperialist” power rivaling the (real) imperialist countries of the West. What ‘antiwar’ imposters! This is the new social patriotism of the 21st century, dressed in camouflage.]
5. More deception about Ukraine war by Counterfire leader Lindsey German. Reference: ‘Weekly Counterfire briefing by Lindsey German’, Dec 7, 2025. Excerpts:
- ‘This war does not benefit the people of Europe nor the wider world.’ [Then why are the large majority of the people of the world voicing their support to Russia’s heroic battle against NATO expansion, against far-right and neo-Nazi rule in coup Ukraine and the Kiev regime’s desire to obtain nuclear weapons; Russia’s political, economic and military support to countries under attack by imperialism–China, Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, African peoples? Are the people of these countries dupes, unlike the brilliant minds of Counterfire Trotskyists?
- ‘Casualties on the battlefields of Ukraine are appallingly high.’ Yes they are, but why are you including Russia in the blame you cast?
- ‘The U.S. is seeking to reach a peace deal in the conflict, which is nearly four years old.’ Such naivete, without a mention of the blindingly obvious fact that the U.S. and NATO are losing their proxy war.
6. ‘Counterfire’ Trotskyist group in Britain publishes anti-Russia tirade in Nov 24 commentary on Ukraine, loaded with undocumented accusations and claims. [The tirade comes as a U.S./NATO defeat in Ukraine looms ever larger. The tirade’s author, Lindsey German, doubles as the convener of ‘Stop The War’ coalition in UK. That coalition should be more accurately renamed: ‘Stop Some Wars, But Not The NATO War In Ukraine Until Russia Is Defeated’. No wonder this coalition has failed miserably to even slow the UK government’s drive to imperialist war against the people of Russia and of Ukraine.]
7. As an aside, here the latest analysis of the Ukraine war by two of the more notorious ‘antiwar’ and anti-Russia writers in the USA, Medea Benjamin and Nicholas Davies. It is published in LA Progressive on December 8. In it, naivete runs wild, beginning with the headline: ‘If Trump is serious about peace, Marco Rubio has to go’. They write: “On November 21, Trump unveiled a 28-point peace plan for Ukraine that was built around the policy Trump and Hegseth had announced in February: no NATO membership, and no return to pre-2014 borders. But once Rubio arrived to lead the U.S. negotiating team in talks in Geneva, he let Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, and the Europeans put NATO membership and Ukraine’s pre-2014 borders back on the table.” They continue, “If he really wants to be remembered as a peacemaker, not a warmonger, Trump had better make the necessary personnel changes to his inner circle before it is too late.” Pathetic.
