Category: Michael Novakhov – SharedNewsLinks℠

Western thinking of Turkish and Azerbaijani Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Ilham Aliyev has been very wrong. Both countries are Ukraine’s strongest allies in the Greater Middle East, where Arab countries and Israel are sitting on the fence and trying to play both sides or hiding their heads in the sand. This is not the case with Turkiye and Azerbaijan.

Turkiye and Azerbaijan have a close military and political alliance drawn up after the 2020 Second Karabakh War. Both countries are critically disposed toward Russia and align with the pro-Western camp: Turkiye as a NATO member and Azerbaijan as a non-aligned country that has stayed away from Russian-led Eurasian integration projects.

Turkiye is home to millions of Crimean Tatars who moved to the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century. Their Crimean homeland was occupied by the Russian Empire in 1783 which changed its ethnic balance. Crimean Tatars, who closely follow developments in Russian-occupied Crimea, where racism, Islamophobia, and political repression is endemic, are a powerful anti-Russian lobby in Turkiye.

Iran meanwhile has become Russia’s staunchest ally in the Kremlin’s fight against the US-dominated unipolar world and its replacement by an allegedly more ‘democratic’ multipolar world. Iran is constructing a facility to build Shaheed drones in Russia, while Turkiye is building a plant to build Bayraktar drones in Ukraine.

Western governments have wrongly portrayed President Erdogan as being in bed with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president, and were therefore wrong-footed by his recent steps. In the space of a week, Erdogan released Ukrainian POWs from the Spring 2022 battle for the port of Mariupol, infuriating the Kremlin because they had been released from Russian captivity on the basis that they would spend the entirety of the war in Turkiye.

But Erdogan went even further. On the eve of the recent NATO summit, Erdogan extended strong support to Ukraine becoming a member of NATO. Turkiye’s support infuriated the Kremlin who has expressed strong opposition to Ukraine joining NATO and the EU because this would definitively end any possibility of bringing the country into the Russian World.

In addition to 35 Bayraktar TB2 and 24 Mini-Bayraktar reconnaissance drones, Turkiye is sending other types of military equipment to Ukraine. Before the US announcement, Turkiye said it would supply Ukraine with cluster munitions. Turkiye sent up to 200 TRLG-230 Rokestan missiles to Ukraine that can be fired from multiple rocket launchers and have a range of 20 to 70 kilometers. Turkiye also sent 200 Kirpi mine-resistant armoured personnel carriers and 20 COBRA II 4×4 Tactical Wheeled Armoured Vehicles.

During the same week of NATO’s summit in Vilnius, Turkiye said it’s navy would escort Ukrainian grain ships through the Black Sea. Turkiye’s offer will be tested later this month after Russia refused to extend the UN-Turkish brokered grain deal beyond July 17. Turkiye’s battle of wills with Russia will impact the Kremlin’s arrogant view of the Black Sea constituting a ‘Russian lake.’

Azerbaijan’s strategic importance to Ukraine is six-fold. Firstly, Azerbaijan is the only south Caucasian state that has successfully resisted Russian control over its affairs. With three Russian military bases, Armenia is a long-time ally of Russia since the early 1990s and is a member of all Russian-led integration projects in Eurasia. Georgia has been captured by Georgian-Russian oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili who has put former President Mikhail Saakashvili, a long-time opponent of Putin, in jail on trumped up charges.

Secondly, Azerbaijan is alone in the south Caucasus in not breaking Western sanctions against Russia. Armenia and Georgia are actively involved in sanctions busting both due to high-level corruption and because the Kremlin has influence over the ruling elites of both countries.

Thirdly, Armenia and Georgia, but not Azerbaijan, are disseminating the Kremlin’s talking points justifying Russia’s so-called ‘special military operation’ against Ukraine. Georgian leaders have parroted the Kremlin’s disinformation by blaming the West for the war in Ukraine. Speaking at the GLOBSEC Bratislava security forum in May, Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili said ‘one of the main reasons’ behind the war in Ukraine ‘was NATO expansion … the desire of Ukraine to become a member of NATO.’ The Georgian Orthodox Church has taken the side of the Russian Orthodox Church over Ukraine receiving Orthodox autocephaly (independence). The Georgian Orthodox Church joined the Kremlin in protesting against Ukraine’s clamp down on subversion and Russian Orthodox clergy collaboration with Russian occupying forces.

Fourthly, Azerbaijan and Ukraine uphold the territorial integrity of states, which is not true of irridentist powers such as Russia and Armenia. Ukraine has given unqualified support to Karabakh constituting Azerbaijani sovereign territory. Meanwhile, Azerbaijan has not supported Russia’s invasion and occupation of Ukrainian territory during votes on critical resolutions at the United Nations.

Fifthly, Azerbaijan’s supply of energy to the European Union, together with other countries such as the US and Norway, removes Russia’s stranglehold over energy supplies. Azerbaijan is one of the strategically important countries assisting Europe to become energy independent of revanchist Russia.

Finally, Azerbaijan provides free energy to Ukraine for humanitarian work. Since Russia’s invasion, the Azerbaijani state energy company SOCAR has been providing free gas and petrol to vehicles used for humanitarian missions, such as delivering aid to internally displaced people, ambulances and fire trucks. In June Azerbaijan supplied twenty tons of fuel to Ukraine free of charge as humanitarian aid, as well as water pipes, water pumps, and life jackets, in response to Russia’s terrorist destruction of the Kakhovka dam.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has highlighted how Turkiye and Azerbaijan are close allies of Ukraine over a wide range of areas. As the second biggest military power in NATO, Russia is forced to take Turkiye seriously when it supplies military equipment to Ukraine and protects grain convoys sailing through the Black Sea.

Turkiye, Azerbaijan, and Ukraine oppose Russian irridentism in Eurasia and Russian-led Eurasian integration projects; uphold the territorial integrity of states and Karabakh as Azerbaijani sovereign territory; and recognize the importance of European energy independence from Russia. Turkiye and Azerbaijan stand with Ukraine during votes at the UN condemning Russia’s invasion and occupation. Unlike Georgia and Armenia, Turkiye and Azerbaijan do not fan Russian disinformation about the causes of the Russian invasion.

Taras Kuzio is a professor of political science at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. His latest book is Fascism and Genocide. Russia’s War Against Ukrainians

The views expressed in this article belong to the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect those of <a href=”http://Geopoliticalmonitor.com” rel=”nofollow”>Geopoliticalmonitor.com</a>.

BAKU, Azerbaijan, February 16. Azerbaijan’s
Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov met with Türkiye’s Foreign
Minister Hakan Fidan on February 15, on the sidelines of the Munich
Security Conference, Trend reports.

The ministers discussed political, security, economic, and
transport-communication aspects of Azerbaijan-Türkiye allied
relations, as well as key regional and international developments.
They emphasized the importance of continued cooperation and mutual
support within regional and international organizations, including
the Organization of Turkic States (OTS), the UN, and the
Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

The discussions also covered developments in the Middle East,
particularly in Gaza and Syria. Minister Bayramov provided a
detailed update on the regional situation and the ongoing
Azerbaijan-Armenia peace process.

The two sides also exchanged views on other issues of mutual
interest.

By: Qamar Bashir

Macomb, Detroit, Michigan

President Donald Trump accused the U.S. bureaucracy of massive fraud, waste, and abuse, citing an investigation led by Elon Musk that uncovered billions of dollars in misused funds. He condemned judges for obstructing his reform agenda, calling their block on his $3 billion federal grant freeze “intolerable judicial interference.” Trump also charged the Pentagon with corruption and financial mismanagement, referencing a 2023 audit that found $2.1 trillion unaccounted for. He accused USAID of funneling billions into mainstream media as payoffs for pro-Democrat coverage, calling it “too big, too dirty” to ignore. Further, he alleged USAID provided over $697 million to terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda, Boko Haram, and ISIS under the guise of aid and meddled in foreign elections by sending $15 million to Pakistan’s Election Commission to manipulate the 2024 vote, as exposed by journalist Ryan Grim and others.

For the first time in U.S. history, President Donald Trump is spearheading an unprecedented effort to uproot not only the entrenched bureaucracy but also the military, federal institutions like USAID, IRS, Pentagon, health agencies, law enforcement, CIA, and FBI, as well as the judiciary and the media. Trump has positioned himself as the only leader who has truly recognized the deep-seated corruption, overregulation, and misuse of tax dollars by these institutions.

He asserts that federal agencies have participated in unauthorized commissions and omissions, directed taxpayer funds towards inefficient projects, and established a bureaucratic grip that hinders economic and financial liberty.

He argues that instead of fulfilling their duty to serve the public, these institutions—including judges, bureaucrats, politicians, and the media—have formed a corrupt nexus to amass wealth, secure lavish perks, and misuse their power. This unchecked authority, rather than facilitating public welfare, has crippled economic activities through excessive regulations, leading to inflation, soaring unemployment, and an unprecedented cost-of-living crisis.

These institutional failures have not only burdened American citizens but also weakened the United States’ global leadership in military power, economic dominance, trade, and investment.

Once regarded as the world’s strongest economy, the U.S. now faces the reality of losing its competitive edge to rising powers like China, the Middle Eastern economic hubs, and industrial giants in South Korea, Japan, and Europe.

While these nations are constructing advanced infrastructure such as highways, airports, and ports, the infrastructure in the U.S. is rapidly deteriorating.

A firsthand experience of this decline can be seen in Michigan, where our family arrived in September 2024, only to find crumbling roads, broken highways, and entire neighborhoods—like Hamtramck in Detroit—worse than many underdeveloped countries.

Even major airports and subways in cities like New York, which should symbolize American progress, are far inferior to those in rising global economic centers. This visible decay has become a symbol of how mismanagement and corruption have weakened the country from within.

President Donald Trump has laid out a powerful argument against the unchecked power of the judiciary, questioning how an unelected, taxpayer-funded judge can override the orders of a democratically elected president. He argues that this authority is often motivated by self-interest—protecting judicial power, safeguarding the bureaucracy, and maintaining strong ties with economic and political elites.

Trump has rightly argued that if an unelected judge holds the power to veto presidential orders, it raises serious doubts about the integrity of the democratic system. A president, chosen by the people to enact policies in the public interest, should not have their authority unilaterally obstructed by an appointed judge. Such interference, he contends, undermines the very foundation of democracy, shifting power away from the electorate and into the hands of unaccountable judicial figures.

His assertion is rooted in logic: either power must rest with the elected representatives of the people, or the current system is nothing more than an illusion of democracy, controlled by an entrenched elite that serves itself rather than the nation.

The very foundation of American democracy is now facing an unprecedented challenge. Instead of functioning as a government of, by, and for the people, the U.S. system has become a battleground where institutions operate with separate mandates and self-serving agendas, often at odds with the will of the public.

The bureaucracy—both civil and military—along with the judiciary, has consolidated power to such an extent that elected representatives have been reduced to mere figureheads, unable to implement meaningful change. As a result, the wealth and power of the country have been diverted away from the general public and into the hands of bureaucratic elites, further deepening economic inequality and weakening the nation.

This imbalance has led to a situation where the system exists to sustain itself, rather than to serve the citizens it was designed to protect. The more the bureaucracy tightens its grip, the more the country drifts away from its founding democratic principles.

In contrast, nations where government institutions function in harmony—where every pillar of the state aligns itself with the leadership’s vision—are proving far more effective in delivering stability, prosperity, and national progress. When leadership sets a course, and institutions work collectively to implement it, these governments are able to build state-of-the-art infrastructure, boost economic growth, and enhance the well-being of their people.

The U.S., on the other hand, is witnessing institutional fragmentation, where different branches of government operate in conflict rather than in unison, obstructing national progress instead of facilitating it.

 This is why Trump’s call for systemic reform is not merely about politics—it is about ensuring that power is exercised with accountability, that democracy is truly representative, and that government institutions work for the people, rather than against them.

Recognizing these deep-rooted structural failures, President Trump has declared war on nearly all pillars of the state and their subordinate institutions. His agenda aims to dismantle the bureaucratic stranglehold, expose the judiciary’s complicity, and challenge the media’s biased role in shaping public perception.

This is not just a political battle but a fundamental restructuring of how power is distributed and exercised in the country. Trump’s reforms are not merely cosmetic changes—they are surgical interventions aimed at breaking the alliance between corrupt bureaucrats, activist judges, and self-serving media elites.

Whether he succeeds in his mission or faces unprecedented resistance from these institutions, his presidency has already sparked the most radical political and institutional shake-up in modern U.S. history.

By: Qamar Bashir

Press Secretary to the President (Rtd)

Former Press Minister at Embassy of Pakistan to France

Former MD, SRBC

The Kremlin said Monday that U.S.-Russia relations were on the brink of collapse and refused to confirm whether Russian President Vladimir Putin had spoken with President Donald Trump, despite Trump saying so Sunday.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told a media conference Monday that relations with Washington “are balancing on the brink of a breakup” and reiterated that the war in Ukraine would last until Kyiv drops its ambitions to join NATO and withdraws from the four regions occupied by Russian forces.

In remarks suggesting Moscow is maintaining its tough negotiating stance, Ryabkov said that “we simply imperatively need to get … the new U.S. administration to understand and acknowledge that without resolving the problems that are the root causes of the crisis in Ukraine, it will not be possible to reach an agreement.”

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said the same day that he would “neither confirm nor deny” Trump’s comments to reporters on Air Force One on Sunday that he and Putin had spoken in his first officially acknowledged contact with the Russian leader since 2022.

Referring to his contact with the Russian leader, Trump told reporters, “let’s just say I’ve had it … and I expect to have many more conversations. We have to get that war ended.”

“I hate to see all these young people being killed. The soldiers are being killed by the hundreds of thousands,” he said, but declined to provide any more details about how many times the two had spoken, responding, “I’d better not say.”

The remarks from Trump and spokespeople for the Kremlin come at a crucial juncture for the war in Ukraine, with Kyiv and its European neighbors nervously awaiting details of Trump’s peace plan to end the conflict that Russia launched with its full-scale invasion three years ago.

Between winning election in November and being inaugurated last month, Trump said he planned to end the war in a single day upon taking office.

Referring to Trump’s remarks Sunday, Keir Giles, a senior fellow of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the London think-tank Chatham House, said “it would be tempting to think that this was all part of a careful plan for not releasing information too early in order not to bridge this process.”

“Or it could simply be that, as seems to be the case with Trump’s earlier promises of immediate action to bring the conflict to an end, that there isn’t, in fact, a plan yet,” he told NBC News.

Giles added that more clarity on the situation may come later this week, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy due to attend the high-profile Munich Security Conference, which senior U.S. officials are also attending.

Trump’s national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told NBC News’ “Meet the Press” on Sunday that the U.S. officials would be “talking through the details of how to end this war and that will mean getting both sides to the table.”

He added that Trump would be “prepared to tax, to tariff, to sanction” Moscow to get Putin to the negotiating table, while also stripping back assistance to Ukraine to force European allies to ramp up support to Ukraine.

Ryabkov’s comments today came after Zelenskyy told the British broadcaster ITV last week that he was ready to hold talks with Russia as long as “I had an understanding that America and Europe will not abandon us and they will support us and provide security guarantees.”

The Ukrainian leader also told Reuters on Sunday that it was important he meets Trump before any negotiations with Putin, “otherwise, it will look like a dialogue about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

A Russian drone attack on Kyiv late Sunday injured a woman and damaged several houses in the northeastern city of Sumy, Ukrainian officials said Monday.

Astha Rajvanshi

Astha Rajvanshi is a reporter for NBC News Digital, based in London. Previously, she worked as a staff writer covering international news for TIME.

Kash Patel, who served in senior advisory roles in the intelligence community and State Department during the first Trump administration, is the preferred candidate of the MAGA faction of the Republican Party and has proposed drastic reforms for the nation’s premier domestic intelligence agency. Meanwhile, former Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and former FBI special agent, once served as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and is seen as a candidate with a more centrist approach.

Other possible candidates, including former U.S. Customs and Border Protection official Mark Morgan and former U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen of Missouri, were floated in a CNN report.

The head of the US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), American entrepreneur Elon Musk, mocked the “independent” Russian and Ukrainian media outlets that are currently without funding from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).

“Independent media, I’m laughing my ass off“, Musk wrote on the social network X, attaching a photo to the post that says “independent media outlets in Russia and Ukraine are losing funding due to the USAID freeze“.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, appointed by Trump on Monday as acting head of USAID, said on Wednesday that officials would review the agency “from top to bottom“ to determine whether program funding is consistent with the current administration’s foreign policy, as USAID has spent money “in ways that are harmful“ to the United States.

According to him, after the revaluation, aid will be unfrozen or increased in some cases. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) earlier announced that all of its directly employed staff worldwide, with a few exceptions, would be placed on administrative leave. CBS previously reported that all USAID missions abroad had been ordered to close.

Three days before his inauguration as US president, Donald Trump made an unusual move. He launched $Trump, a so-called meme coin that fans and speculators could buy in the hopes it would gain value. Initially, $Trump soared from a value of $7 to $75 per coin in a day, according to crypto price-tracking website CoinMarketCap. Two days later, it dropped to about $40 – just as incoming first lady Melania Trump launched her own meme coin, $Melania. Even the pastor at Trump’s inauguration ceremony, Lorenzo Sewell, got swept up in the meme coin frenzy, promoting a $Lorenzo version the same afternoon.

So what exactly are meme coins, and why is everyone and their vicar suddenly getting involved?
Meme coins are a type of digital asset based on a meme – usually something that has gone viral online. The best known is Dogecoin, inspired by the popular meme featuring a shiba inu dog that speaks in Comic Sans. But Dogecoin is a bit different from the slew of recent meme coins, says Simon Peters, crypto analyst at trading platform eToro. Launched in 2013, Dogecoin has its own blockchain – the decentralised ledger technology that underpins cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The majority of other meme coins are “tokens”, meaning they operate on top of an existing blockchain and so require little in the way of technical development.

These tokens are very easy to make; there are millions of them. The only real purpose of most meme coins is speculation: users create or buy them in the hope that their value will soar so they can make a lot of money very quickly.

Sounds lucrative, what’s the catch?
In reality, the vast majority of people lose money. Most meme coins are volatile and short-lived. They are also susceptible to what’s known as a “pump and dump” scheme or a “rug pull”, says Peters. This is when creators keep a lot of the tokens for themselves, hype up the project on social media to attract other buyers and increase the value, then dump all of their tokens – flooding the market and causing the price to crash. “Then everybody moves on to another one,” says Carol Alexander, a professor of finance at Sussex University. Given the crypto market is largely unregulated, investors have little recourse if something goes wrong.

No regulators, no guardrails, sounds iffy…
All this hasn’t put people off, and there has been a boom in meme coins over the past year. Alexander compares it to the previous fad around NFTs, another type of crypto asset (you may remember people paying millions of pounds for digital images of monkeys). There are a few reasons for the recent interest. January 2024 saw the launch of pump.fun, a platform that lets anyone easily create a meme coin (although it was blocked for UK users in December following a warning from the Financial Conduct Authority). The election of crypto-friendly Trump may also have emboldened the community. But a key driver of meme coins, says Alexander, is more of a social issue: “Young men, disillusioned, wanting to try and get rich quick.”

Which would explain why they are based on internet in-jokes or puerile humour…
Indeed. At the time of writing, several top meme coins reference dogs; the shiba inu breed is a particular touchpoint. Others include a Pepe token, based on the cartoon frog meme sometimes associated with the alt-right, and a Gigachad token, referencing an “alpha male” meme. Subjects of memes have also tried to parlay viral fame into crypto gains: in December, Haliey Welch, better known as “hawk tuah girl” after a viral video of her referencing oral sex, launched the $Hawk token, which promptly lost 95% of its value).

Are bitcoin and meme coins essentially the same?
Though meme coins have their foundations in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin, early bitcoin developer Mike Hearn says they have little to do with the original crypto vision. He left the bitcoin community in January 2016 as he didn’t agree with the direction in which it was headed. He wanted to see cryptocurrency used as a real alternative to traditional finance rather than just a speculative asset. Meme coins are a continuation of this trend, he says: “They’re basically a form of gambling – kind of a more amped-up version of the stock market, but with less connection to anything concrete.”

Doesn’t sound any more crazy than an online betting site to me…
Then consider the story of New Zealand-based artist Andy Ayrey, who trained an AI language model and set up an X account, @truth_terminal, for it to share its thoughts. Ayrey describes the bot as being like a teenager that “doesn’t have any social awareness of when to be gross and when not to be”. Truth Terminal particularly enjoyed posting about Goatse, a not-safe-for-work meme that has become part of early internet lore.

The AI gained an interest in meme coins after interacting with crypto accounts on X, and Ayrey set up a crypto wallet on its behalf. Then things got weird. Inspired by the bot’s posts, a stranger – Ayrey says he doesn’t know who – created a Goatse-themed token on pump.fun and sent some to Truth Terminal. Truth Terminal promoted the token on its account, and “all hell broke loose”, says Ayrey. The market capitalisation of the token – the total value of all tokens – shot up. At its most valuable, around a month after launch, it reached more than $1.2bn, according to CoinMarketCap.

The AI later became involved in another meme coin, Fartcoin, based on the rather more relatable meme (again, Ayrey says he doesn’t know the creator). Fartcoin reached a peak market cap of more than $2.3bn.

So Ayrey was quids in?
Not so simple. The whole experience introduced Ayrey to some of the issues around meme coins. He found that their value on paper massively eclipsed what he could actually get for them, owing to low liquidity. As soon as he sold the tokens, their value would decrease and would negatively impact others who held the tokens. Eventually, he worked out a private deal with a couple of investors on the basis that they wouldn’t dump the Fartcoin on the market. He admits it’s been amusing having to talk to finance and tax authorities about “liquidating Fart”. He believes this is part of the appeal for meme coin fans. “The more people get angry about it, especially in traditional finance, the more people think Fartcoin is funny and Fartcoin goes up,” he says.

Who is making money then?
The main people making money off crypto, says Alexander, are institutional investors – trading firms that use strategies that wouldn’t be allowed in regular stock trading. “All the big professional traders are making billions out of this, and ordinary people are losing their money,” she says.

And Trump?
Alexander sees his meme coin as being slightly different from many coins in that it has a potential alternative function on top of speculation: users buy it to show their support for the president. In this way, it’s similar to a “fan token”, like those produced by sports teams and players. The Trump token has drawn criticism owing to conflicts of interest; among other concerns, Trump owns one of the entities collecting trading fees. Alexander thinks the motivation for the coin is simple: “It’s just showing that he can do this sort of thing,” she says. “He can do whatever he likes and he knows it.”