Putin to Conscript More Troops, Peace a Threat for Russia, Erdoğan’s Hate for Israel
Free speech is being suffocated in Britain. Parents were arrested for criticizing a school in a group chat. A woman was arrested for holding a sign with the inflammatory message “Here to talk if you want” near an abortion clinic. A Labour council threatened Christian street preachers with jail time for causing “offense.” A new employment rights bill could force businesses to censor speech to avoid harassment lawsuits. In our feature story this morning, Richard Palmer uses these alarming examples to highlight the authoritarianism that is stifling free speech in the United Kingdom, such that the U.S. State Department is threatening to impose tariffs if the situation doesn’t improve.
[BRIEF]
Britain has fallen a long way from the beacon of free speech it once was. It may now require this external pressure from the U.S. to reverse this trend. Read Mr. Palmer’s story to see how this reflects a deeper spiritual and moral decline rooted in human nature’s diabolical desire to dominate.
Does this look like a man who wants a ceasefire? Russian President Vladimir Putin will conscript 160,000 more troops from April to July to send into its war with Ukraine, Peter van Halteren reports. His forces have suffered heavy losses, so to continue the war he needs the additional troops. The evidence mounts that peace talks with President Donald Trump are just a ruse.
“For Russia’s economy, peace poses a threat,” the Wall Street Journal says. Trump has repeatedly said he thinks Putin wants peace. But in addition to Putin’s territorial ambitions, this article suggests Putin literally cannot afford to halt the war. It summarizes how Russia’s economy has changed because of its invasion of Ukraine: “Weapons factories geared up, while outfits from clothing brands to bakeries retooled to make balaclavas and drones. The transformation has made Russia’s economy reliant on the war for jobs, wages and growth. Weaning it off that military sustenance, in a peace deal being pushed by President Trump, is an economic risk.” One economist estimated at least 40 percent of Russia’s growth last year alone was directly related to the war.
Reports like this show just how much Putin is committed to his war regardless of Trump’s impression of him. As Gerald Flurry wrote in our latest print edition, “Trump believes he can negotiate with Putin, giving him sections of Ukraine and expecting this to pacify him. That reveals a total lack of comprehension of the man he is dealing with.”
Hard to believe this man leads a NATO member nation: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan really hates the Jewish state. At Istanbul’s Grand Çamlica Mosque this past Sunday, he asked Allah to ensure that Zionism and Israel are destroyed and wished “mercy upon the [Hamas] martyrs.”
These comments fit a broader pattern of hostility toward Israel. Erdoğan has consistently undermined the nation: He has provided safe haven and Turkish citizenship to Hamas operatives, whom he praises as “freedom fighters”; his government has fueled anti-Israel sentiment domestically with state-controlled media campaigns; diplomatically, he has worked to rally the Muslim world against Israel, hosting summits and pushing for boycotts, while accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
It is remarkable that Turkey isn’t held to account by other NATO members for such sustained aggression—rhetorical, political and material—against a key Western partner. But it’s consistent with the prophecy of Psalm 83, which describes an alliance between Turkey, Germany and several Muslim states for decidedly anti-Israel purposes.
Iran needs the bomb, Ahmad Naderi, a member of the Iranian parliament’s executive committee, said publicly. “Observing the behavior and words of Trump during his first presidential term with North Korea shows that having an atomic bomb has brought security for Korea,” he posted on X. This observation surely reflects the thinking of Iran’s leaders more accurately than Iran’s official stance, which claims to reject nuclear arms in favor of a peaceful program—despite the regime’s recent enrichment to 60 percent and stockpile of 200 kilograms of near-weapons-grade uranium. Naderi’s statement underscores a growing push within Iran to abandon restraint and make a dash for nuclear weapons.
China continues to bully Taiwan: Nineteen Chinese Navy vessels surrounded the island nation Monday and Tuesday in a large-scale exercise meant to send a “severe warning” against independence, the Trumpet reports. Will America intervene? Gerald Flurry warned in 1998 that Taiwan is certain to fall to China because of a weak-willed United States.
China, Japan and South Korea agreed to jointly respond to U.S. tariffs, a social media account affiliated with Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said yesterday. The joint statement emerged from a meeting of the nations’ trade ministers this week, Ezekiel Malone reports. This is Chinese state media, so you shouldn’t take it at face value; a South Korean spokesperson implied that “joint response to U.S. tariffs” is a broad interpretation of the agreement. Still, to have these three nations talking about how to respond to America marks a dramatic change. The alliance forming between traditional U.S. allies (Japan and South Korea) with a U.S. enemy (China) is not good news for America—but it is prophesied in the Bible.