Demands Urgent Clarification

Lisa Haseldine writes:

As Mykhailo Fedorov — Ukraine’s former defence minister — posted a nine-minute YouTube video on Tuesday night calling for Ukraine to hold war-time elections, he was riding high.

“We must find a legal, safe and realistic mechanism that will allow Ukraine to renew its full democratic process even in the conditions of a long war,” he said. “We must not let Putin decide when Ukrainians can choose their government. Ukrainian democracy must not depend on the goodwill of the Kremlin.”

Fedorov had controversially been sacked by President Volodymyr Zelensky in July. Despite having been in the post for just six months, he was widely considered to be the most effective defence minister the country had had so far. He was responsible for driving forward Ukraine’s innovative use of drones on the battlefield and had unblinkingly set about tackling corruption in military procurement.

His dismissal triggered the most significant protests the country had seen since Russia invaded in February 2022. For more than a month thousands of people had been taking to the streets of Ukraine’s major cities to demand Zelensky reinstate him, chanting and brandishing placards that read: “Restore Fedorov!” “Fedorov’s sacking is a gift to Russia!” A poll published by the SOCIS Centre at the start of the month suggested that Fedorov would comfortably beat Zelensky in a head-to-head presidential vote with almost double the support.

It’s no surprise that Fedorov, clearly smarting about the circumstances of his dismissal, thought that now was his moment to strike and land a blow on Zelensky’s authority. But could his call to political arms in fact backfire?

Many Ukrainians were shocked to hear Fedorov demand war-time elections — even those who have spent the past month protesting in support of him. The subject is considered somewhat taboo: in an existential fight for the country’s survival, many Ukrainians simply believe their country has — for now — got bigger problems than changing government or president. That’s not to mention the many practical, let alone associated security, hurdles the authorities would have to overcome to hold a vote that was free and fair. Ukraine’s constitution makes it illegal for elections to be held while martial law is in effect — as it has been since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. Martial law also prevents the constitution from being altered in any form. As things stand, therefore, Zelensky could not trigger an election even if he wanted to.

Even if there were a way to circumvent the restrictions imposed by martial law, there would still be the challenge of ensuring any election actually represented the democratic will of the Ukrainian population. More than a million men and women are currently serving away from home in Ukraine’s armed forces; as many as five million more are believed to be living under Russian occupation on territory Ukraine views as its own. Millions more have fled the country in the past four and a half years of war.

How would the authorities ensure that each of these people had the chance to cast their ballots? How would they guarantee that voters could do this without the interference and manipulation that Russia is certain to attempt?

Last December, many Ukrainians bristled to hear Donald Trump accuse Zelensky of “using the war” to retain his grip on the presidency. Parroting a key Kremlin talking point that seeks to portray Zelensky as an illegitimate leader unfit to negotiate with, Trump blathered: “[The Ukrainians] talk about a democracy, but it gets to a point where it’s not a democracy anymore.” To hear Fedorov talk of Ukraine “renewing its full democratic process” may well have stirred up uncomfortable associations for some. Rebuking Trump last winter, Zelensky confirmed that he would be “ready to conduct elections” within “60 to 90 days” if America and Europe could help ensure their security. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that help from the White House has not been forthcoming.

It is widely predicted that elections in Ukraine, whenever they come, will herald the end of Zelensky’s political career. Much like with the British people voting out Winston Churchill and the Conservatives less than two months after the end of the Second World War [yes, I know], the expectation is that the Ukrainian people will want a leader who represents a new start and a fresh direction for the country. Bar any significant damage to his popularity, when that moment comes, Fedorov will no doubt throw his hat into the ring.

But whether it is Fedorov who comes after Zelensky, or someone else, the challenges they face will be great. Peace, whatever form it comes in for Ukraine, is certain to divide the country — especially if Russia is allowed to retain any of the territory it has annexed. There will also be the question of how to rebuild the country and entice back those who have left since 2022.

In the meantime, Ukraine is staring down the barrel of potentially its toughest winter yet. With a dwindling supply of Patriot air defence missiles to protect its critical infrastructure from Russian bombs, the country faces the likelihood of having a significant proportion of its heating and energy grids destroyed beyond repair. It’s a safe bet that against this backdrop, Zelensky won’t be working on finding a way to trigger elections in Ukraine. To do so would be a gift to Russia.

Yet Nate Bear writes:

Finland, often known as the happiest country in the world, now has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, demand for food aid has exploded by more than 70%, and homelessness, which had been declining for more than ten years, has increased 34% in just two years. Conditions in the country are so bad that almost 20% of Finland’s population is now considered at risk of poverty.

Once considered the standard bearer for the good life, for competent governance and a strong social state, Finland is unravelling at warp speed. What has gone wrong so quickly?

In three words, NATO, austerity and Russophobia.

All are linked. Finland is slashing its social state to the bone to meet NATO’s 5% GDP military spending target, a target which became necessary after the country abandoned neutrality and swapped the welfare state for the warfare state after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The speed of the collapse has been stunning.

In 2019, the at-risk of poverty rate was 11% and by 2022 the country was on course to hit record low unemployment.

Everything changed after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the country’s hysterical overreaction to an imagined threat. This is not just my judgement. A number of Finnish academics, including Heikki Patomäki, professor of world politics at the University of Helsinki, have said that the conditions simply did not warrant Finland joining NATO, cutting off its economically valuable links to Russia and militarising its border.

The facts support this.

At the time of its invasion of Ukraine, Russia had just a couple of thousand troops spread out across various bases on its 1,340 km border with Finland. The bases were home to handful of missile defence batteries and a few dozen tanks. Many of the troops and much of the equipment was subsequently deployed to Ukraine, leaving the bases empty. There was obviously no invasion threat, and Putin in May 2022 emphasised this in a phone call to Finland’s then-president Sauli Niinistö.

But by this point, the Russophobia and hysteria for NATO membership had begun to take on a life of its own. Sanna Marin, Finland’s young female prime minister at the time, and a liberal media darling, was a particularly effective saleswoman. Despite claiming in the days following Russia’s invasion that there was no threat, her tone became decidedly more hawkish in the months that followed. She said Russia “poses a threat to all of us” and began talking like a wartime leader, saying in September 2022 that “Russia may challenge Finland, blackmail us and threaten us, but we will not give in.” Bear in mind, Russia at this point had practically zero troops and equipment on its western border with Finland. The Russian threat she was invoking was entirely imagined, an hallucination.

Nevertheless, in April 2023, Finland joined NATO, just days after Marin was defeated by the right and far-right in an election where the policy choice on Russia was one of uniformity, with the conservatives, the ethno-nationalists and Marin’s social democrats all singing the same tune.

After her defeat, Marin scuttled off to work for Tony Blair, while the new conservative-nationalist government set about decimating Finland’s welfare state to pay for the privilege of NATO membership.

The Finnish government is now a substantial way through its programme to cut €9 billion of public spending by 2027, including large reductions to social security (including housing, child, and unemployment benefits) healthcare, education, and municipal funding budgets, while it also increasing taxes on average earners. Cuts to healthcare provision have been particularly brutal, including a large reduction in hospital staff numbers, elderly care and disability services while redefining “minimum service obligations” to justify providing patients with lower quality care. The government has also slashed funding for organisations working on peace and initiatives which would address the new cold war-style relations with Russia.

In addition, the new government fully closed all the border crossings with Russia that Marin’s Social Democrats had partially closed, and began building large sections of a border fence, securitised with troops, night vision cameras and motion detectors.

And while the entire country is now suffering as a result of the pro-war paranoia that has gripped Finland’s leaders, its border towns have taken a particular beating.

Before the war, Russians routinely crossed to shop, eat, stay in hotels and visit holiday properties they owned in the towns and villages along the border. That has all gone away. One estimate cited in a recent Finnish study puts the loss of Russian tourism in the border region of South Karelia at as much as €1 million per day. Unemployment in some border regions is now approaching 20%.

The border also used to be an important commercial gateway between the EU and Russia, but its closure eliminated much of the road freight and transit business. The OECD says eastern Finland has gone from being an “economic gateway” to a “security barrier,” a transformation which of course it praises rather than mourns, claiming that confronting Russia is important not only for Finland but for Europe as a whole.

Then there are the commodities like gas and timber.

In 2021 Russia accounted for about 92% of Finland’s gas imports. Finland has replaced all of that with a mix of sources, including far more expensive LNG from the US, meaning that Finland, after having some of the lowest gas prices in Europe, now has the highest gas prices in Europe.

As for timber, in 2021, 70% of Finland’s wood imports came from Russia, and this wood supplied approximately 10% of all the raw wood used by Finnish industry. Pulp mills in Finland subsequently went bust and the industry faced shortages which persist to this day after the EU, with Finland’s support, banned countries from buying wood from Russia.

Finland’s decisions, both independently and collectively through the EU, have immiserated many millions of Finnish citizens. Yet at the same time as the country is slashing the social state, it is spending more money than ever, around $8.1 billion in 2025, on weapons of war to fight a threat that previously didn’t exist. A threat that Finland has made real by its new-found anti-Russia NATO militancy, with Putin promising to respond to Finland’s border build-up.

And among the beneficiaries of a new tooled-up and aggressive Finland are the arms dealers of the Israeli apartheid-genocide complex, which in 2024 sold Finland its questionably functional “David’s Sling” air defence system for €316 million. Finland has also bought tank and ship missiles from the Israeli company Rafael which supplied most of the weapons and equipment used to commit the genocide of Gaza. The Finnish government said Israel’s genocide of Gaza would not stop it buying weapons from the country, a position which is par for the course among the morally bankrupt leaders of Europe.

Finland is also spending €10 billion on US fighter jets, and a few billion euros on missiles and glide bombs to fire from those jets, as well as giving Ukraine €2.3 billion in direct military aid over three years.

It’s all utterly deranged, but completely unsurprising given the Russophobia which pervades all European halls of power and has become embedded on the continent.

Finland has effectively taken a scythe to all the things that made it, in the eyes of many, the envy of the world. The country has trashed the model which delivered such a high standard of living, a model which included neutrality and good relations with Russia.

Instead the country has enacted a self-imposed structural adjustment programme to pay for membership of a military alliance it didn’t need, with that membership creating an enemy that didn’t exist, an enemy which happens to be a nuclear superpower with which it shares a huge border.

The price has been, and will continue to be a steep one, and it is a price ordinary Finns will be paying for a long time.

But it is not just in Finland.

We are watching, across Europe, the shameful replacement of the welfare state with the warfare state while the merchants of genocide and death laugh all the way to the bank.

And Kit Klarenberg writes:

Leaked emails reveal Britain’s domestic spying service attempted to recruit a high-ranking BBC board member as a key agent of influence, at a time when the British state broadcaster was embroiled in a bitter legal and journalistic battle with MI5.

This June, British oligarch Damon Buffini stepped down as deputy chair of the BBC’s board, and chair of the broadcaster’s commercial board. His four year tenure was warmly praised by the BBC board’s chair for the “record profits” generated by the broadcaster’s commercial wings. While mainstream reports on Buffini’s time at the BBC reference his background at the upper echelons of private equity giant Permira, the multi-millionaire’s relationship with a much more consequential institution has gone unmentioned until now.

Leaked emails reviewed by The Grayzone reveal that while overseeing the BBC’s board of directors, Buffini enjoyed a close relationship with the British MI5 intelligence service, and may have been recruited into the agency’s leadership. The emails raise grave questions about the extent to which senior MI5 officials exploited their relationship with him to suppress incriminating BBC productions, and to influence the broadcaster’s programming about the agency.

Buffini’s tenure overlaps precisely with the broadcast of an investigative documentary the British state and MI5 fought tooth and nail to suppress. Their campaign to stifle the production’s release involved costly court battles, and led MI5 Director General Ken McCallum to personally telephone BBC chief Tim Davie to urge him to drop the “inaccurate and reckless” story.

As McCallum battled the BBC’s editorial staff, July 2020 email exchanges show him and his predecessor as MI5 director general, Eliza Manningham-Buller, seeking to recruit the BBC’s Buffini to his spying agency as a “non-executive director.” The MI5 leader said he’d heard that Buffini was “potentially interested.”

In private communications, McCallum invited Manningham-Buller to personally vet Buffini for the role, believing the tycoon “would be a different voice for us.”

Manningham-Buller replied to McCallum with a ringing endorsement of Buffini, based on their time together on the board of the billionaire-backed biomedical charity the Wellcome Trust, which she chaired from 2015 to 2021. Manningham-Buller described Buffini as “sharp, fun and challenging,” proudly recalling that he “tried to shake it up” after joining the charity’s board.

“Recommend…[very good] ally for me and I should have liked him to succeed me,” she added. “Not always comfortable which is good. Values good despite being filthy rich.”

Less than an hour later, Manningham-Buller emailed McCallum again, declaring, “[the] more I reflect, grab him.” Grateful for the reference, MI5’s director general pledged he would “pursue” and “see what happens.”

The identities and functions of MI5’s non-executive directors are strictly confidential. What is known is that they contribute business experience to MI5, inform the agency’s “corporate culture,” and offer advice to the agency’s senior leadership.

By September 2020, the secret discussions between Buffini and MI5 about “his possible interest” in joining the agency seemed to be progressing. McCallum told Manningham-Buller that Buffini “would appreciate a private conversation with you” about working at MI5, having recently “had what sounds like a good chat” with the agency’s then-deputy director general Anne Keast-Butler, who now serves as GCHQ chief.

McCallum said he hoped “to talk to him soon,” adding, “you won’t be surprised to hear that Anne was impressed and positive.”

In order to convince Buffini to take the job, McCallum asked Keast-Butler to contact him and act as a “sounding board,” then covertly provide feedback on their conversation to the MI5 Director. As luck would have it, Buffini had already been in touch with Manningham-Buller.

“Will obviously let you know how I get on,” she told McCallum.

These exchanges were followed by a “long talk” with Buffini a week later, the contents of which Manningham-Buller hoped to relay directly to McCallum over telephone.

On October 21st 2020, Manningham-Buller emailed McCallum with an unexplained “quid pro quo” for Buffini, proposing Brooke Rogers, a behavioral science and security professor at London’s prestigious, spook-infested King’s College university.

BBC refers The Grayzone to MI5 for comment

The context in which the “quid pro quo” was being discussed remains unclear, as does whether Buffini or Manningham-Buller proposed the transaction, or why. Nonetheless, it appears Buffini’s hiring by MI5 was somehow contingent on Rogers also receiving a post. In 2025, she was appointed chief scientific adviser at the Home Office, of which MI5 is an arm’s-length body.

Whatever the details of the arrangement might have been, the discussions of Buffini’s MI5 recruitment between McCallum and an ostensibly retired senior spy and intimate mutual acquaintance – all conducted outside formal agency channels – raise serious questions about conflicts of interest. At minimum, such conduct runs contrary to official guidelines on email usage by British government officials, who are strongly discouraged from using private accounts to conduct state affairs.

Whether Buffini ultimately accepted McCallum’s eager advances to become an MI5 non-executive director remains unknown. When The Grayzone emailed the BBC for clarification, a press officer cryptically informed this outlet, “you would need to speak to MI5 for more information on its leadership and structure.” However, Britain’s domestic spying agency does not operate a formal press office, and offers no public mechanism for the submission of such queries.

MI5 seeks to suppress BBC production exposing agency scandal

Buffini’s role as deputy chair of the BBC board overlapped with a long-running scandal which threw the British state broadcaster and MI5 into an intense conflict. The clash erupted when BBC reporters discovered the spy agency had been employing a violent neo-Nazi – known as “Agent X” – and protecting him from police investigation after he savagely attacked his girlfriend with a machete. MI5 was well-aware of the Nazi’s history of criminal activity and vicious misogyny, but turned a blind eye.

In December 2021, as the BBC prepared to broadcast a documentary on the scandal, UK Attorney General Suella Braverman applied for a sweeping High Court injunction on MI5’s behalf, attempting to block the broadcaster from reporting the story. The Court ruled the following year that reporting the scandal was in the public interest, but that the real name of Agent X and other identifying details should remain concealed, as demanded by the government.

Days later, the undercover agent’s girlfriend, known as “Beth,” launched a human rights claim against MI5 before the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, charging the agency knowingly failed to protect her from a violent operative.

The airing of the documentary represented a serious black eye for MI5, igniting a massive public backlash and forcing the spy agency to issue a formal apology for the distress its neo-Nazi agent caused to “Beth.” 

As a BBC board member tasked with content promotion, Buffini held substantial influence over the state broadcaster’s output and would have been well positioned to alter its reporting. However, no concrete evidence has surfaced to demonstrate that Buffini interfered in any way on MI5’s behalf.

Requests for comment sent by The Grayzone to Buffini’s family foundation were not answered.

MI5 chief and predecessor discuss BBC collaboration, media PR efforts

While the MI5 officers implicated in the scandal could now face prosecution for lying to the High Court about their knowledge of the violent Nazi they had recruited as a confidential asset, the current MI5 director’s position appears safe. But it is clear from McCallum’s private correspondence with Manningham-Buller that the case was a source of considerable stress.

On March 11, 2026, Manningham-Buller emailed McCallum to tell him she was “thinking of you,” and hoped “the pressure [was] not too hellish.” McCallum thanked his friend and predecessor, and lamented that a “combination of world events, live operations and continuing cocktail of litigation/inquiry grief is keeping me fully occupied.”

Six days later, McCallum issued a historic formal public apology to “Beth,” promising substantial compensation for her abuse at the hands of an MI5-sponsored neo-Nazi. His failure to get the documentary pulled from the air was hardly the only instance of the agency attempting to influence BBC programming, or to suppress media coverage of spying scandals.

Under Buffini’s stewardship, the commercial entity BBC Studios became a £2 billion business and Britain’s “most awarded producer.” The surge in revenue took place as the BBC produced several documentaries in apparent collaboration with MI5.

Among them was a slick four-part “factual reconstruction” named 7/7: The London Bombings, which was broadcast in commemoration of the incident’s 20th anniversary.

In a March 31 2024 email, McCallum emailed Manningham-Buller expressing “heartfelt thanks for all the effort you put in to [sic] doing the 7/7 documentaries.” 

Manningham-Buller featured prominently in the documentary, which was widely praised by mainstream reviewers. The BBC program conveniently glossed over the fact that MI5 had been tracking the bombers for years before the incident. The July 7th perpetrators’ intimate, longstanding proximity to multiple known Anglo-American double agents was also left unmentioned. 

“Hope I don’t let you down in interviews,” Manningham-Buller responded to McCallum, referring to efforts to promote the BBC documentary. The MI5 director general said he was “sure you won’t… and that you are the best possible person to have shouldered them.” He looked ahead – “barring accidents” – to “[stepping] forward in a few years’ time to start shouldering my own fair share” of MI5 apologia responsibility in post-retirement interviews. 

McCallum added he’d enjoyed Manningham-Buller’s recent appearance on the podcast, The Rest Is Politics, hosted by ex-MI6 officer Rory Stewart and the Blairite spin doctor and Iraq war salesman Alastair Campbell. 

Other aspects of the publicity push were not going as planned, however. In the email to Manningham-Buller, McCallum complained that former MI6 chief John Sawers “occasionally could usefully say a bit less” when he appeared in broadcast interviews. 

Manningham-Buller confessed to having “felt queasy about his Yemen agent story” – a reference to a controversial case reported in 2012 in which MI5 recruited an agent who was inserted into Al Qaeda by the CIA and MI6. 

To the chagrin of MI5, US media broke the story in May 2012. Britain’s domestic spying agency apparently feared the agent’s public identification might jeopardize its future operations. Given that MI5 was under scrutiny for running yet another agent within a dangerous criminal group – who was subsequently “burned” in broad daylight – it’s understandable that Manningham-Buller would be uncomfortable about Sawers referencing a similar incident.

Highlighting her sensitivity to critical media coverage, Manningham-Buller wrote to an MI5 press apparatchik in mid-April 2025 to express concern that a recent Daily Telegraph article had apparently accused her and McCallum of being “both liars.” Apparently unable to employ her veteran spy skills to identify the offending piece herself, Manningham-Buller asked her agency media contact for a copy. He reassured her she had little to worry about. 

The article in question covered recent revelations in the scandal of “Stakeknife”, an MI5 spy who ran the IRA’s counterintelligence division, and murdered several informants and infiltrators within the Republican militia. MI5 had for years stuck to the line it had no direct involvement with Stakeknife. Manningham-Buller publicly claimed in March 2024 that Stakeknife only came to her attention in the late 1990s when he was seeking witness protection. But subsequent disclosures proved the agency was indeed “closely involved” with Stakeknife’s handling and tasking for decades prior. 

When the MI5 press operative replied to Manningham-Buller, he boasted that the agency had forced revisions to the Telegraph article, removing references not only to MI5’s involvement with Stakeknife, but also the spy agency’s modern day deceptions regarding Agent X. 

“We managed to get them to change the headline, remove a line saying [Stakeknife] was run by ‘intelligence service operatives’ and change the section on Agent X where they said we were ‘found to have lied’,” the MI5 press operative wrote. 

“We didn’t get approached in advance on this,” the press operative complained, adding that it was “very poor form” of journalists at The Telegraph not to run its reporting by MI5 prior to publication. 

Before publishing potentially controversial reporting on the country’s spies, British news outlets typically consult with the government’s intelligence agencies – or, at the very least, with the UK’s secretive Defence and Security Media Advisory (DSMA) Committee, as The Grayzone revealed in 2025. 

While none of the email communications by MI5 directors confirm that former BBC deputy chair Buffini was recruited into an agency leadership role, the BBC raised more questions than it answered by referring The Grayzone to the MI5 when queried about the relationship. As MI5 plotted to manage a series of media scandals, including one involving a BBC documentary, Buffini’s real role at the network demands urgent clarification.