From LifeSiteNews

By Frank Wright

The international crises caused by Western interference in Ukraine and Israel ‘foreshadows the end of NATO and of the EU,’ retired Colonel Douglas MacGregor said.

With defeat looming in Ukraine, and the reckless provocations of Israel threatening a war which could involve Russia and the U.S., the question of the role played by terror in the policies of the “rules-based order” of the West has never been more urgent.

The Russians, with a presence on Israel’s borders, have been drawn into a de facto alliance with both China and Iran, following the failed attempt to destroy its economy by sanctioning it into isolation from the Western system.

Israel’s bombing of the Iranian embassy complex in Syria on April 1, considered to be a grave violation of international law, has been the latest attempt by Israel to provoke Iran into sparking a regional war. Reliable Western commentators such as retired U.S. Colonel Douglas MacGregor, British diplomat Alistair Crooke, former U.S. diplomat Chas Freeman, and many others, have indicated that this is designed to trigger direct U.S. military intervention in a war that Israel cannot possibly win on its own. They warn this would likely lead the United States into a war not only with Iran, but also with Russia. The danger of a nuclear war is clear and present.

What is worse, the nuclear doctrine of Israel, known as the Samson Option, states that in the event of an “existential threat” to Israel, it will launch nuclear weapons at regional – and even European – population centers, taking the world down with it in a deliberate attempt to start nuclear Armageddon. This is the closest ally of the United States, a regime of nuclear blackmail engaged in genocide.

READ: Blinken again vows to have Ukraine join NATO as globalist narrative unravels

A further desperate escalation was seen in the terrorist attack on the Crocus theatre in Moscow on March 22. Four gunmen, captured alive, shot and killed over 140 people before setting fire to the venue. Within one hour, Western sources disclaimed any Ukrainian involvement, saying that “ISIS-K,” an Islamic militant group, had said it was responsible.

U.S. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby confidently proclaimed that “[t]here is no indication at this time that Ukraine, or Ukrainians, were involved in the shooting,” despite hearing of the attack in Moscow only minutes before he gave his briefing at the White House on March 22. “I would disabuse you at this early hour of any connection to Ukraine,” he said. 

Now the Russians are building a case which traces the planning of the attack through Ukraine to Western-backed proxies. This case has been derided in Western media, yet it is one whose central claim has a long pedigree. According to a 2019 report by the U.K.’s Independent newspaper, ISIS commanders and fighters have for years enjoyed a safe haven in Ukraine, with the collusion of its government and security forces.

On November 21, 2019, Oliver Carroll wrote from Kiev. His piece for the Independent was titled “How Ukraine became the unlikely home for ISIS leaders escaping the Caliphate.” In it, he details how “hundreds” of ISIS fighters had made a new home in Ukraine, with the Ukrainian authorities seemingly unconcerned about their presence.

In one case, he notes, the Ukrainians declined to prosecute a known ISIS terrorist, allowing him instead to return to his home country of Georgia.

In 2013, Akhmad Chatayev was detained in Ukraine whilst in transit to Georgia. Chatayev, an ISIS commander, had “bomb instructions” and “photographs of dead bodies” on his phone. An alleged bribe saw him released against the advice of the Moscow office of Interpol, says Carroll, in a process overseen by then-Ukrainian Minister of the Interior, Yuriy Lutsenko.

Three years later, Chatayev would be suspected of coordinating the 2016 suicide bombing of Istanbul airport in Turkey.

Carroll’s article also treats the case of Cesar Tokhosashvili, known also as Al Bara Shishani. “Shishani” is the Arabic rendition of “Chechen” – the ethnic and Muslim group native to regions of Georgia and the Russian Federation.

This man was presumed killed in a 2016 air strike in Syria which killed his namesake and erstwhile leader, fellow Georgian Omar al-Shishani. In fact, he escaped to Ukraine and lived there for two years, despite being responsible for “public beheadings” and “directing terror operations abroad.”

“According to the SBU [Ukrainian intelligence], Ukraine’s admittedly unreliable security agency, Al Bara Shishani even continued to coordinate ISIS terror operations from Kiev,” Carroll wrote.

In a recent interview with Judge Antony Napolitano, retired U.S. Army Colonel Douglas MacGregor was asked whether “MI6, the CIA, Mossad” could be behind the terrorist attack in Moscow.

“Yes, we had a hand in it,” said MacGregor, adding that while there was no “concrete evidence” to support that claim, it was “unlikely the SBU did this without U.S./U.K. knowledge.”

MacGregor’s charge about the toleration and even use of ISIS operatives in Ukraine is far from groundless, and extends beyond a couple of documented cases.

In his Independent piece, Carrol cites Vera Mironova, a visiting Fellow at Harvard and a specialist in studying jihadi movements:

Mironova estimates ‘hundreds’ of former ISIS fighters have decamped to Ukraine.

This is not a mere question of quantity – but also of quality. The quality here being danger. ‘But it is not the numbers that should be of primary concern,’ she said. The cluster of terrorists in Ukraine were by their nature a ‘self-selecting’ elite.

Mironova continued,

This isn’t a random selection. The slower guys stop as soon as they get to Turkey. After all, it is a multiple-step operation to get to Ukraine. The ones who get there are the dangerous ones.

Carroll also quotes a Ukrainian investigative journalist, Katerina Sergatskova, who covered the story of Al Bara Shishani’s unexplained release by Ukrainian authorities.

“Sergatskova, who has almost single-handedly covered the subject in Ukrainian press over the past year, says authorities remain strangely relaxed about the issue.”

She said she was accused making the story up by the Ukrainian authorities: “Whenever I wrote on the subject, government officials have accused me of inventing the problem.”

Yet she appeared to be vindicated with the Chechen ISIS commander’s capture – in the “safehouse” of Ukraine’s capital.

But the arrest of one of Islamic State’s top commanders here in Kiev, right under our noses, would surely suggest many of the world’s most dangerous men do think of Ukraine as a safehouse. Corruption in all state bodies – the police, courts, prosecutors – opens doors to abuse.

Carroll notes that the Ukrainian intelligence service met his report with similar denials.

“When contacted by The Independent, the SBU rejected claims that Ukraine was in any way hospitable to international terrorism.”

Russia’s claim that there is a Ukrainian connection to the terror attacks at its Crocus theatre in Moscow is not without “proof,” as many Western media sources assert.

Most of them now rely on the SBU for their “intelligence” reports about the situation in Ukraine, which accounts for the disconnection from reality seen in Western reportage. In this picture, Putin has been dying for two years, and Russia is losing the war. A Ukrainian “victory” is inevitable. Why is this the case?

Because for our “globalist elites,” as Colonel MacGregor styles them, a Russian victory is as unthinkable as it is obvious. Defeat in Ukraine for the political class that has staked everything on winning means they are finished.

“These are the actions of a dying regime” said MacGregor to Napolitano in his April 3 interview.

MacGregor says the recent tactics of the U.S.-, U.K.-, and EU-backed Ukrainian regime, including the strike on a Russian oil refinery, betray a mounting desperation over a lost cause.

“I think the globalist elites running Europe are unwilling to admit the truth” he says.

“They’ve had it.”

He says the rulers of Britain and the EU have “committed suicide by rejecting cheap Russian energy” and face political wipeout in forthcoming elections.

“They’re going to persist in this fantasy [of a Russian defeat] because they have nowhere else to go.”

MacGregor’s assessment of the dire situation of U.S. and Western elites is compounded by the atrocities in Israel – as well as mounting troubles at home. It is a crisis so severe, he says, that it “foreshadows the end of NATO and of the EU.”

Speaking of the so-called “war” in Gaza, he notes that in a war, “Normally we don’t annihilate the entire population on the ground” as Israel has been doing.

Even if you are indifferent to this fact, MacGregor says Netanyahu’s strategy of “eliminating Hamas” does not make sense.

“You can’t kill an idea,” he returns, before saying this strategy has been counterproductive. “What this campaign has done is elevate Hamas.”

Just as the project to destroy Russia on the battlefield and collapse it with sanctions has seen its military strength vastly magnified, and its economic prosperity secured by exclusion from the Western system, the strategy of the Israelis has empowered their enemies and perhaps fatally undermined their own security.

Now, says MacGregor, “The only solution is the final solution.” Speaking of the Israeli move to destroy Gaza and starve its population of over 2 million, he said, “Hatred has taken over.”

There are no limits to Israeli offensive operations, be they conducted against civilians, or the Iranians. Since Israel bombed Iran’s embassy complex in Syria on April 1, frantic measures have been reportedly underway to prevent a large-scale military retaliation against Israel.

As former British diplomat Alastair Crooke pointed out, “Even Nazi Germany respected embassies.” In another interview with Napolitano, he stressed the need to “deradicalize” the Israelis, saying that it was “Western [intelligence] services” which had “created ISIS” in the first place.

To bomb an embassy is to attack the sovereign territory of another nation. This is an act of terror for which Israel has, as yet, faced no consequences. With the U.S. continuing to arm Israel, it is noteworthy that the Israeli army has now almost completely withdrawn from Gaza.

This may be due to rumors of an Iranian demand made to the U.S. for an immediate ceasefire and to cancel the planned ground assault on Rafah by Israel. Talks are underway in the Egyptian capital of Cairo to agree a halt to Israel’s assaults.

Yet the Israelis maintain they are simply withdrawing to mount another attack on the Palestinians. Zionist extremist and Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has vowed that, “If Netanyahu ends the war without the Rafah operation, he will lose his mandate.” The implication is that either the killing stops, or the leadership goes.

The regime, MacGregor points out, has become “a pariah” like Israel. He warns that “no one wants to serve in our military anymore,” and gravely mentions the likelihood of the U.S. resorting to the recruitment of illegal migrants to swell the ranks of an army whose wars are destroying the U.S. and the West.

The big picture is alarming. When you zoom in to the shady pixels, the devil emerges from the detail. As MacGregor says, we are ruled by an elite insulated from reality, and whose only interest lies in serving their own insane agenda, whatever the cost in human life.

“The globalists denounce isolationism – but they are the cause of our isolation,” he says.

The world has united in horror at the lengths to which this elite will go to preserve itself. MacGregor’s warning of the dangers at home are the domestic dimension of a campaign of death, degradation, and plunder which makes our current leadership the enemy of humanity and of life, wherever it is found.

To MacGregor, it is a case of us or them.