Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov faced Western critics while attending international security talks Thursday in Northern Macedonia, where he blamed “NATO’s reckless expansion to the East” for war returning to Europe.

When people reach the ripe old age of 75, there is usually a tendency to slow down and take things easier; often there’s a lack of cohesion, sentences often aren’t completed, delusion and incompetence become more noticeable if not plain idiocy on a scale not previously seen. In some cases, relatives might even talk of assisted suicide to put the old bugger out of his misery, with some even as going as far to talk about being “brain dead”.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken came a away from a NATO meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday with the conclusion that the alliance is holding strong on supporting Ukraine, despite the avalanche of negative reports on how Ukrainian forces are fairing on the battlefield.

Kiev authorities are preparing a military provocation against Poland in the event of a critical decline in Western support, Acting Kherson Region Governor Vladimir Saldo has told Sputnik.

"According to the data received from our sources in Ukraine, we are talking about a provocation involving an attack with Western or [Ukraine's] own converted missiles, on the parts of which they want to put Russian markings to further blame Russia.

Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said Tuesday that a consensus among NATO countries persists that it is impossible for Ukraine to join the alliance now, but it may be possible in the future if conditions are met and the allies agree.

"There is agreement at least that Ukraine's accession to NATO is impossible for now," Szijjarto told journalists after the end of the first day of NATO foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels.

Ukraine’s failure to breach Russian lines for the last year demonstrates that NATO should “never underestimate Russia,” the bloc’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg told reporters on Monday. 

Speaking to the press ahead of a meeting of NATO foreign ministers, he was asked whether the US-led bloc would be able and willing to arm Ukraine for another counteroffensive against Russian forces in the spring.

David Arakhamia, a high-ranking member of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Servant of the People political party, said that Kyiv could have ended the war with Russia after a month if it agreed not to join NATO. The official said that Moscow was not concerned about other issues, such as “denazification,” but only wanted Kyiv to agree to neutrality.

Israeli occupation is not limited to Palestine. The response from western elites to Israel’s ongoing massacre in Gaza shows how Tel Aviv is also occupying the mindsets of American and European leaders. 

Beyond setting up colonies on Palestinian lands, Israel has gone further, establishing political settlements in western capitals. 

The US loses the role of a great global power, and consequences of the Ukrainian crisis for US President Joe Biden will be serious, says Italian political researcher, former Italian Ambassador to NATO and Moscow Sergio Romano.

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit the first meeting of foreign ministers of the Ukraine-NATO Council in Brussels, the Department of State announced.