By Ekatarina Blinova, SPUTNIK   20.05.2023)

© AP Photo / Ukrainian Presidential Press OfficeEkaterina Blinova

Exactly four years ago, Ukrainian actor and entertainer Volodymyr Zelensky was sworn in as the nation’s sixth president. People who personally knew Zelensky have told Sputnik about his transformation from a popular comedian into a politician.

Zelensky’s ascent to power was really impressive: having zero experience in politics, the 41-year-old outperformed his rival, then-President Petro Poroshenko, by a staggering 49% margin. On May 20, 2019, Zelensky was inaugurated as the sixth president of Ukraine.

But how did Zelensky enter politics and end up in the presidential palace?

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Yevgeny Prigozhin has been ramping up pressure on Russia’s military leadership and extending his criticism to the country’s moneyed elites.

By Valerie Hopkins, NYT 24.5.23

Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, in Moscow last month.Credit…AP

As Russia vowed to respond “extremely harshly” to a rare, two-day border incursion by pro-Ukrainian fighters, the leader of Russia’s largest mercenary force warned that it faced further setbacks unless its ruling elite took drastic, and likely unpopular, measures to win the war.

“The most likely scenario for us in a special operation would not be a good one,” Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the founder of the Wagner mercenary group, said in a profanity-laced interview with a pro-Kremlin political observer published late Tuesday on the Telegram messaging platform. “We are in such a condition that we could lose Russia,” he continued, his speech laced with profanity. “We have to prepare for a very hard war that will result in hundreds of thousands of casualties.”

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The way to transform these sub rosa ties into an above-the-table alliance is for Israel to undermine Iran’s power.

By Caroline Glick

The Torch 750 system, made by Elbit, feeds devices held by field commanders with updated battlefield pictures of blue (friendly) forces and red (hostile) forces, as well as links ground forces to the Israeli Air Force and Israeli Navy. Credit: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.

(JNS) Over the past week, the media have been aflutter with reports and rumors that the Biden administration has decided to mediate a peace accord between Israel and Saudi Arabia.

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This is the Biden administration’s betrayal of Jews in a nutshell.

by Daniel Greenfield, FPM

There were many expectations for Biden’s U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism among the usual organizational types, but anyone with common sense could have seen this coming a mile away.

The U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism fails to address Muslim and leftist antisemitism, it briefly delves into, but does not address where campus antisemitism is coming from, has a single throwaway line about the attacks on Orthodox Jews in New York City, and gives the IHRA pro-Israel definition of antisemitism nearly equal billing with the Nexus anti-Israel one.

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T. Belman. Outsiders should have no say in the matter. Israel’s elected government can decide for itself what to ban and what to encourage.  The German Ambassador said ““Lively and unhindered relations between civil societies are of essential value in our liberal democracies,” Israel has the right to decide if it wants to be a “liberal democracy”.

US, Germany, other EU states denounce proposed legislation to limit donations to human rights groups, prompting Netanyahu, Foreign Ministry to consider postponement, report says

By TOI STAFF    26.5.23

The government is weighing its approach to a proposed law that would significantly limit Israeli civil society groups’ ability to accept donations from foreign governments, after numerous allies including the US, Germany and France voiced opposition to the bill, a Thursday report said.

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Mark Sleboda, REAL POLITICK

Radio Interview on the Critical Hour 24/05/23

Listen · 15M:

• Shredding Kiev’s post-Bakhmut spin & copium
• Fuzzy US excuses for why Kiev’s NeoNazi Raid into Bilgorod used brand new US miltiary gear shipped to Ukraine for the spring offensive
• Why giving F16s to Kiev is an escalation by the West but no gamechanger

T. Belman.  I am totally in favour of banning this flag.  The Palestinians and their supporters are an existential threat to Israel.  We should not be tolerant of the intolerant. The Palestinians are our enemy. And we should suppress the calls for commemorating the “Naqba”.

Joint statement says measure would infringe on free speech, make schools ‘branches of police and Shin Bet’; Tel Aviv University chief vows not to enforce ‘fascist’ law if passed

By TOI STAFF 25.5.23

Illustrative: Israeli and pro-Palestinian students stage protests at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheba on May 23, 2022. (Emanuel Fabian/Times of Israel)

Israeli university chiefs on Thursday blasted a coalition law bill set to be discussed in the upcoming cabinet meeting that would outlaw waving the Palestinian national flag anywhere in Israel, alleging that if it passes, it would trigger a “wave of academic boycotts of Israeli institutions all around the world.”

The president of Tel Aviv University, Ariel Porat, went further in a separate statement, saying that if the passes, he will not enforce the law’s clause mandating the permanent expulsion of students who wave the Palestinian flag.

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Fourth generation of Khorramshahr ballistic missile, dubbed Kheibar, can carry a 1,500 kilogram warhead, Tehran’s defense minister claims

By TOI STAFF and AFP   25.5.23

A handout picture from Iran’s Defense Ministry shows a 4th generation Khorramshahr ballistic missile being launched at an undisclosed location in Iran, May 25, 2023 (handout via AFP)

Iran unveiled a new version of a ballistic missile with a range of 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles), enough to hit areas of Israel.

The Kheibar missile — the latest version of the Khorramshahr, which is Iran’s longest-range missile to date — was unveiled Thursday alongside a replica of the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem’s Old City, in a live broadcast on state television.

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T. Belman.  I fail to see how they are better off with a “war of attrition”. The government passed the budget in less than 4 weeks. It can pass the judicial reform in the same time period, particularly if they include it all in one bill.

The protestors  don’t want a Jewish state, They want  “liberal democracy” i.e., a state of all its citizens. With the changing demographics, the only way they can get what they want is to prevent Judicial reform. But the battle is over what kind of state do we end up with.

The protest movement against the Netanyahu government’s judicial overhaul is switching from ‘days of disruption’ and blocking intersections to a state of vigilance that some are calling the ‘war between wars’

By Bar Peleg, HAARETZ

It’s 10 P.M. Saturday and traffic on the Ayalon Highway is flowing. A few weeks ago, that was unimaginable. Saturday nights were given over to gridlock – human, not vehicular. The mass demonstrations forced drivers to reconsider their planes or find a different route. It has been different for a month, and not only due to the break in protests caused by the latest military operation in Gaza. Read more…

He gets 600 death threats a year for criticizing Islam in Europe. 

By Giulio Meotti, INN      May 24, 2023, 11:27 AM (GMT+3)

Geert WildersReuters

In the country where Spinoza became a prophet of atheism, Karl Marx investigated the roots of capitalism, the Founding Fathers started their journey, Descartes, Rousseau and Sade published their writings and Locke put his hand to the “Letter on Tolerance”, there is a man transformed into a ghost for criticizing Islam: he is the most protected in Europe.

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T. Belman. This article “raises the question of how much a society is willing to do in order to protect its most vulnerable members.” No it doesn’t.. The hypocritic oath says the standard is “do no harm”.  There was never a scientific basis for the over-reaction. The question remains “was the government’s handling of the crises illegal?”

And remember the government’s unscientific banning of Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin.

Health Ministry says 0 reports of people 18-50 dying of COVID-19 without preexisting conditions – but bases its information only on epidemiological investigations.

Moshe Feiglin, however, wrote that the government “locked you up in your homes, and stole a year of normal education from your children…all for a ‘plague’ which hurt zero citizens below the age of 50 without preexisting conditions.”

Israel National News   May 25, 2023, 9:53 AM (GMT+3)

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Coronavirus ward at Ziv Medical CenterDavid Cohen/Flash90

Former MK Moshe Feiglin published on Twitter a Health Ministry response to queries regarding various coronavirus statistics.

In the document, the Health Ministry clarified that no adults without preexisting conditions who were between the ages of 18-49 at the time of their death, died of coronavirus.

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https://rumble.com/v2pdi00-the-kari-lake-trial-is-proving-something-suspicious-happened-in-maricopa-co.html

by Jonathan Spyer, The Jerusalem Post  May 19, 2023

The issue of Yemen constituted a key litmus test in the recently concluded rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Since the launch of the Houthis’ bid for power in 2014 and the Saudi intervention to prevent the strategic disaster of a pro-Iran force reaching the choke point of the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Yemen has formed the main battlefront between Riyadh and Tehran.

More than 150,000 people have been killed in the subsequent war, including 14,500 civilians. In light of this, the question of future arrangements in that blighted country looms large when considering the feasibility of the current Arab efforts to defang, via diplomacy, the Iranian project for regional domination.

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by Burak Bekdil, GATESTONE  •  May 24, 2023 at 5:00 am

• Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an tirelessly struggles to harm Western interests. He should be punished and sanctioned for doing that. Instead, the UN, under U.S. direction, rewarded Turkey by appointing a close Erdo?an confidant to a critical Afghan post, and the Biden administration rewarded Erdo?an by requesting Congressional authorization to sell critical fighter jet parts to Turkey.
• In an effort to help Putin evade sanctions, Turkey agreed to pay 25% of its natural gas bill to Russia in rubles. In return, to help Erdo?an find a way out of a punishing economic crisis, Putin deferred repayment Turkey’s $20 billion gas debts to Russia until 2024.

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BREAKING: @KariLake Announces Largest Ballot Chasing Operation in American History! pic.twitter.com/9JZOYUmPQ0

— Kari Lake (@KariLake) May 23, 2023