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Christmas gift exchange between Zelensky and Biden in White House meeting. The Ukrainian president brought to Biden the newly signed law abolishing the Kiev Administrative District Court, already in the crosshairs of the U.S. State Department, which had sanctioned the Tribunal’s president for “human rights violations.” The real reason the Tribunal was abolished is that it had opened proceedings against the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their crimes. For his part, Biden gave Zelensky the first Patriot missile battery and a pledge to provide him with another $45 billion in 2023, adding to the $100 billion already given in the form of weapons and military assistance. Zelensky said in his address to Congress that what the U.S. provided to Ukraine for the war is “an investment in global security and democracy.”

The U.S. Congress has approved military spending of $858 billion for 2023 (13 times that of Russia). The Pentagon’s budget alone shows a 10 percent increase over last year’s, or $70 billion more, or $36 billion more than the President’s own request. U.S. military spending, relative to the Pentagon budget alone, is equivalent to that of the next 10 countries with the highest military spending on a global scale.   Added to the Pentagon budget are other military expenditures of about $400 billion, bringing actual U.S. military spending to more than $1.2 trillion. This colossal increase, headlines the New York Times, creates “a new boom for arms manufacturers.” All this confirms Washington’s willingness to continue to fuel the war against Russia, which is causing an unprecedented crisis in Europe.

On December 15, in an institutional ceremony held in Moscow, the Daria Dughina Medal was established by the Eurasian Movement in honor of the journalist who was murdered last August. This year, it was awarded to Russian-Ukrainian musician Akim Apachev and Hungarian film director Maya Nogradi, editor of Grandangolo, for her film For the Children of Donbass, broadcast on Byoblu on Dec. 1, 2021, viewable here.

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This article was originally published on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)