How the US government is thwarting peace efforts in Ukraine and Israel

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh warns of political repercussions for the Biden administration’s handling of the international crises in Europe and the Middle East.

To get to the news these days, you have to look beyond the facade of mainstream media. No major outlet in the West has reported the findings of Seymour Hersh, made in a post on Substack on March 21, which claim that the United States government is determined to prevent peace in Ukraine.

Citing an anonymous “American official,” Hersh wrote “officials of the Biden administration, working with [Ukrainian President Volodymyr] Zelensky, continue to rebuff any chances of significant progress in peace talks.” Referring to his earlier report, which documented ongoing talks between the U.S. and Russia, Hersh says his source is “kept abreast” of this dialogue concerning a negotiated settlement to the war in Ukraine. According to the unnamed mole, peace was within reach, and the U.S. moved to prevent it with a threat to turn off the money supply to Ukraine.

We were on the verge of a reasonable negotiation several months ago before Putin’s re-election and Zelensky’s military degradation.

The U.S. leaders got wind of the possibility and gave Zelensky the ultimatum – ‘No negotiations or settlement or we won’t support your government with the $45 billion in non-military funds.’

This is the amount that Ukraine receives now, aside from military aid, to support its government. Without it, Zelensky’s regime would collapse. This was an ultimatum – but why did the U.S. issue it? The source explained:

Biden has staked his presidency on meeting the Russian threat to NATO and outsmarting the monster, and he will not change course now, under any circumstances, and the end is inevitable.

Does this end justify the means? The source gave a sobering assessment of the Biden administration’s willingness to risk a war with Russia, to save face at home: “There is no road to victory for Ukraine, and it will end with Putin as an historical icon in Russia, having recovered a national jewel [Kharkov] from the West.”

What Russia has gained, it is going to keep, said the source. “The reality,” he said, is “that the lands in dispute” – four oblasts formerly in Ukraine’s control and Crimea – “from north to south and east to west all are Russia’s. So stop talking about it and make a deal.”

This may be news to many “news-believers” in the subject nations of the U.S. Empire, but it is well known in government circles. Aside from Hersh’s report, a grim assessment that “Ukraine could fall very quickly” is reported to have fueled French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent outbursts, which saw him threaten to send French troops to fight Russia.

Panic in the EU

Macron is reported by Politico to have made that remark at a dinner in Paris on Tuesday, March 19. It followed leaks from French intelligence which said Ukraine could not win the war, was running out of men to conscript, and that the French army were “majorettes” compared to that of the Russians.

Germany and other EU nations were quick to distance themselves from Macron’s rhetoric, fearing the direct entry of NATO troops into Ukraine could lead to a nuclear war.

Added to this picture, again largely excluded from the news, is the obvious fact that the sanctions intended to weaken Russia have backfired. In reality, the one beyond the official narrative, the actions of the Biden administration have been a catastrophic failure.

“This is the world the Biden administration fostered,” says Hersh, quoting an Economist report that shows how Russia has not only weathered the storm of sanctions, but has in the process emerged a champion of a strengthening system, parallel to that controlled by the U.S.

According to The Economist on March 14:

Russia’s economy has been re-engineered. Oil exports bypass sanctions and are shipped to the global south. Western brands from BMW to H&M have been replaced with Chinese and local substitutes… Dissent at home has been strangled.

This last line could apply equally to the situation in the West, whose propaganda apparatus overmatches anything seen in the Soviet Union. Our “hypernormalization” – the state of unreality created by state propaganda – differs in one other important regard. Toward the end, most of the people in the Soviet Union knew their government was lying to them.

Biden, Trump, and the end times

Hersh claims that the predicament created by the Biden administration will likely see its undoing in the next election.

“Its refusal to seek a middle ground in the Ukraine war, along with its inability to check Israel’s continued assault in Gaza, will become a political liability in Biden’s campaign against Donald Trump, who warns of unending violence if he loses the presidential election in November.”

Trump’s own remarks on Israel have caused much concern amongst those convinced of his pledge to “end the forever wars” – a vow he repeated on the campaign trail in January.

Yet his ambiguity on Israel has seen him criticized by Jewish groups, as PBS reported on March 22.

Trump’s stance on both Israel and Ukraine – that neither war would have happened had he been president – is shaded by moves to appease the over 30 million Christian Zionists who PBS says lie at the core of his support. PBS said of Trump’s previous tenure:

Trump pursued policies that were popular among American Christian Zionists and Israeli religious-nationalists, including moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and supporting Jewish settlements in occupied territories.

PBS also noted his family connections to the Jewish community:

His daughter Ivanka is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, and her husband and their children are Jewish. The couple worked as high-profile surrogates to the Jewish community during Trump’s administration.

Finally, the report touched on the evangelical Zionists:

Trump’s core supporters include white evangelicals, many of whom believe the modern state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy. Prominent evangelicals who support Zionism have also been criticized for inflammatory statements about Jewish people.

This huge constituency includes many Christian Zionists who support the Armageddonist notion of ushering in the “Jewish Messiah” – through the sacrifice of red heifers and the rebuilding of the Jewish Third Temple on the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque.

This process is underway, with five red heifers arriving in Israel in September 2022, expedited by U.S. Zionist Christian group Boneh Israel, and a large altar was constructed in Jerusalem to perform the diabolical ritual to usher in “the End Times.”

CBS News reported from the site on March 5, 2024.

Beyond the end?

With the sitting president mired in a disaster of his own making, and his successor with ties to a group dedicated to sparking Armageddon, the story beyond the mainstream media is all about the end times. The end of the Biden administration, the end of the war in Ukraine, and perhaps the end of the world if the factions of insanity succeed in provoking an escalating war with Russia or in the Middle East.

Hersh’s article ends with what could read as the epitaph for the one-term wonder Joe Biden.

The best that Biden has come up with is continued, if so far empty, talk about a ceasefire in Gaza, and a commitment that no American soldiers will be sent to the front in Ukraine.

The president also promises that the United States will keep on paying for Ukrainians to fight and die in a proxy war that could be ended.

Added to this is the fact that the Biden administration continues to supply Israel with military hardware, without which it could not continue its war. As retired Israeli Major General Yitzhak Brik said of the U.S. in November, “The minute they turn off the tap you can’t keep fighting. You have no capability… Everyone understands we can’t fight this war without the United States.”

Brik has returned with an assessment of Israel’s war which dovetails with that provided by Hersh on Ukraine. It has been a defeat, both in military and in diplomatic terms.

“We have already lost the war with Hamas, and we are also losing our allies in the world at a dizzying pace Brik said to Israeli news outlet Ma’ariv, on March 24.

The realization is growing that the current model of U.S. power is determined to prevent the outbreak of peace. With little promise in the White House but more of the same, the hope is that in November, this will change. Yet, here are forces at work which would prefer that the end times come for us all.

What is needed is a clear statement on the future of Ukraine, of relations with Russia and the state of Israel from a man who once promised he could stop it all. We have a leaderless U.S. in the thrall of an election cycle. Instead of resignation to the end times, we need to hear some serious talk about what comes next. Our future depends upon an alternative to business as usual.

Related Topics:#FrankWright #LifeSiteNews #SeymourHersh #USIsrael #USUkraine

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International

Identities of wounded Guardsmen, each newly sworn in

Published on November 27, 2025

Todayville

MxM News

The two West Virginia National Guard members critically wounded in Wednesday’s ambush near the Farragut West Metro Station have now been identified as Andrew Wolfe and Sarah Beckstrom — young soldiers who had taken their oaths less than a day before gunfire erupted on a downtown Washington sidewalk.

Wolfe, 22, was identified first after Musselman High School in Inwood released a statement confirming the alumnus was one of the soldiers struck. The school said the community was “deeply saddened” and urged residents to pray for him. Wolfe was rushed into surgery and remains in critical condition.

Support poured in across the Eastern Panhandle throughout the day. Friends shared old photos and messages urging him to “keep fighting.” Wolfe, who lives in Martinsburg, is active in the region’s cornhole community, and the Beltway Baggers — organizers of ACL tournaments in Virginia — posted a photo of him flashing a peace sign while asking members to pray for his recovery. “He was shot today while serving our country,” the group wrote.

Federal officials identified the second Guardsman on Thursday as 20-year-old Sarah Beckstrom. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro said Beckstrom had just taken her oath of enlistment and was barely a day into her service when she was gunned down. She underwent emergency surgery and remains in critical condition.

According to investigators, 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal — an Afghan national admitted to the U.S. following the Kabul evacuation — allegedly stepped from behind a corner and opened fire at close range as the two patrolled under a heightened security directive in the capital. Beckstrom was hit first. Wolfe was shot moments later.

Pirro said both families are at the hospital as doctors fight to keep the soldiers alive. She warned that if either succumbs to their injuries, prosecutors will pursue a first-degree murder charge. “If one of them is to pass — and God forbid that happens — this becomes murder one. That’s it.”

Pirro urged Americans to pray for the wounded Guardsmen. “On a day when families gather together, I ask you to pray for these two young people — that they survive.”

International

Afghan Ex–CIA Partner Accused in D.C. National Guard Ambush

Published on November 27, 2025

Todayville

Sam Cooper

In what FBI Director Kash Patel called a “heinous act of terrorism,” senior U.S. officials say they have opened a “coast-to-coast” investigation into the gunman who opened fire on two National Guard members just blocks from the White House — an Afghan man who had worked with a Central Intelligence Agency–backed paramilitary unit during the war in Afghanistan and later resettled in the United States under a Biden-era evacuation program. The case is likely to further energize the Trump administration’s already robust deportation drive and its expanded checks on immigration.

The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Rahmanullah Lakanwal, allegedly ambushed two members of the West Virginia National Guard outside the Farragut West Metro station around 2:15 p.m. Wednesday, in a busy commercial district a short walk from the presidential compound. Both soldiers remain in critical condition after emergency surgery, and the gunman was also wounded before being taken into custody, officials say.

Patel said his teams are investigating the attack as a “heinous act of terrorism,” which other officials have suggested could involve international terrorist networks, though they say the assailant appears to have acted alone.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe said Thursday that Lakanwal had previously worked alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan. “He previously worked with the U.S. government, including CIA, as a member of a partner force in Kandahar,” Ratcliffe said, describing a unit that operated with American support until the collapse of the U.S.-backed Afghan government in 2021.

According to the Department of Homeland Security and multiple law-enforcement officials cited in U.S. media reports, Lakanwal entered the United States in September 2021 under Operation Allies Welcome, the Biden administration program that airlifted tens of thousands of Afghans who had worked with U.S. forces and feared Taliban reprisals. He later applied for asylum and was granted it after President Donald Trump returned to office. Officials say he had no known criminal history and had most recently been living in Washington State, where a relative told NBC News he was working for Amazon.

NBC, citing a family member, also reported that Lakanwal served for roughly a decade in the Afghan army, including deployments in Kandahar alongside U.S. Special Forces. Those details cut to the heart of a politically explosive question in Washington — whether a man once trusted enough to fight alongside U.S. paramilitary personnel slipped through vetting as the Afghan war ended, or whether a former ally became radicalized after he arrived in America.

Officials say Wednesday’s attack unfolded in seconds. Two West Virginia Guard soldiers, part of a domestic security deployment ordered by Trump earlier this year, were on a “high-visibility patrol” near the entrance to Farragut West when a man rounded a corner, produced a handgun and opened fire without warning.

According to detailed accounts from federal officials and witnesses, the first victim — identified by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro as Sarah Beckstrom — was struck almost instantly and collapsed to the pavement. Pirro told reporters the alleged assassin was armed with a .357-caliber revolver and said that after shooting one of the victims, he “leaned over and shot him again.”

After exhausting his ammunition, the gunman allegedly grabbed the fallen soldier’s weapon and continued firing, wounding a second Guard member — Andrew Wolfe — before other troops and officers subdued him in a brief but chaotic struggle that involved both gunfire and a knife.

Reacting sharply to a reporter’s question about whether the Trump administration should have deployed National Guard units to city streets, Pirro replied that the Guard is necessary, adding that their presence “saved lives.” As officials left the news conference, Pirro brushed off a final question about whether the suspect was part of a radicalized Islamist network, saying only: “We won’t go there.”

Yesterday the Secret Service briefly locked down the White House as sirens converged on one of downtown Washington’s busiest commuter arteries. Witnesses told reporters they heard a short burst of shots followed by more sustained firing, then watched people flee into side streets and cafes as emergency vehicles arrived.

The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force is leading the investigation. Law-enforcement officials say they are examining Lakanwal’s digital footprint, communications and travel history, and working with intelligence agencies to retrace his time in Afghanistan and the United States. Patel said FBI teams had conducted searches overnight on numerous electronic devices found at properties associated with the suspect — including in San Diego and in Washington State.

“You miss all the signs (of danger) when you do zero vetting,” Patel told reporters when asked if the Biden administration had erred in admitting the suspect.

In a televised address from his Mar-a-Lago resort late Wednesday, President Trump framed the attack as proof that his immigration hard line is justified. Calling the shooting “a heinous assault” and “an act of evil, an act of hatred, an act of terror,” Trump said the United States “will not put up with these kinds of assaults on law and order by people who shouldn’t even be in our country.”

He pledged to “re-examine every single alien who has entered our country from Afghanistan under Biden” and vowed that “the animal who perpetrated this atrocity” would pay “the steepest possible price.” Shortly afterward, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced that it has halted processing of all immigration requests relating to Afghan nationals — including asylum applications, permanent-residency cases and new entries — “pending further review of security and vetting protocols.”

According to an internal USCIS memo previously obtained by CBS News, the Trump administration had already directed immigration officials to review the cases of all refugees admitted during the Biden years, a cohort of roughly 233,000 people from multiple countries. Now, Afghans are facing an explicit freeze, with no end date. Meanwhile, Vice President J.D. Vance amplified the hard-line message, writing on X that the shooting proved critics of Biden’s Afghan-refugee policy wrong and declaring: “We must redouble our efforts to deport people with no right to be in our country.”

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