The Power Behind The Picture: Why SWIFT, Not Sanctions, May Shape The Ukraine Endgame

   There is the war in Ukraine, the one we see and the shadow war as described below with SWIFT at the center. But the "real" war is even deeper. It is a war of economic might between Europe and Russia and for now Russia is winning that war. The risk is that as we spiral down the drain, the war will inflate and may end up nuclear. Some people like Martin Armstrong think it is unavoidable. I think he has a point although I am not completely convinced yet. China and India have not yet flexed their muscle. Can BRICS reshape the world before the West brings it down crashing with its everything bubble? We will know soon enough.  

Authored by Tanvi Ratna via The Epoch Times,

When European leaders gathered in the Oval Office last week—Macron, von der Leyen, Starmer, Merz—the photo quickly made the rounds. President Trump sat behind the Resolute Desk, flanked by figures from across the Atlantic. The posture, the optics, the framing—it appeared to confirm a familiar narrative: Washington leads, Europe follows.

But the real balance of influence isn’t captured in images. It resides in quieter mechanisms, the systems beneath the surface that increasingly shape negotiations. At the center of that unseen power structure is a little-discussed institution headquartered in Belgium: SWIFT.

In the context of the Ukraine conflict, SWIFT—the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication—has become a decisive lever.

Though often mistaken as merely a messaging platform, it is now a strategic instrument with capabilities to screen, freeze, and exclude.

And in this war, exclusion from SWIFT has proved more economically consequential than any single battlefield loss.

One case illustrates the stakes clearly: Russia’s Rosselkhozbank.

Obscure to most outside financial circles, Rosselkhozbank plays a pivotal role in Russia’s rural economy.

It finances roughly 15 percent of the country’s agribusiness sector, including fertilizer exports and grain shipments.

Moscow has consistently made its reconnection to SWIFT a condition for extending Black Sea grain deals—highlighting just how critical access is to maintaining even non-military economic flows.

Yet its access remains cut. Without SWIFT, Rosselkhozbank cannot reliably process cross-border payments.

Alternatives such as Russia’s SPFS are limited, flagged for sanctions risk, and avoided even by some of Moscow’s closer partners.

Chinese and Turkish financial institutions have grown wary.

OFAC scrutiny makes participation costly. In practical terms, without SWIFT, Russian exports must navigate workarounds fraught with uncertainty and delay.

Washington has signaled flexibility.

Since the Trump–Putin summit in Alaska, the White House has floated the idea of targeted relief—trial exemptions tied to progress on humanitarian issues, resource trade, or even a ceasefire roadmap. This approach reflects a broader strategy: use selective sanctions relief as leverage, not as concession.

But Europe takes a different view.

At a meeting in Paris earlier this year, EU leaders reaffirmed their stance: no access to SWIFT for any Russian bank until full withdrawal from occupied Ukrainian territory.

The policy is not merely a negotiating tactic—it is treated as foundational.

The European Commission reiterated this position, calling Russia’s withdrawal a “non-negotiable precondition” for financial reintegration.

This divergence is significant. While Washington treats sanctions as a fluid tool, Brussels sees them as a principle. And in the case of SWIFT, it is Brussels that holds the administrative key. Despite American influence, SWIFT operates under EU jurisdiction. Decisions about membership, reconnection, and compliance flow through Belgium, not Washington.

That matters, because the Kremlin sees Rosselkhozbank as more than a bank—it sees it as a wedge. If one entity can be reconnected under humanitarian grounds, the door opens for others. Gazprombank. Sberbank. Each new reconnection becomes a precedent, each exception a potential erosion of the sanctions wall.

It’s not difficult to see the contours of the strategy. Russia ties grain exports to banking access. Ceasefire proposals are linked to transaction routes. By framing financial connectivity as humanitarian necessity, Moscow attempts to turn operational requirements into bargaining leverage.

Yet the transatlantic gap on this issue is real. The Trump administration, wary of indefinite escalation, favors measured flexibility to extract concessions. European institutions, less convinced by Moscow’s signals, remain committed to hard conditionality.

That difference could become more than rhetorical. EU sanctions require unanimous renewal every six months.

Hungary, already an outlier on Ukraine policy, continues to threaten vetoes. Some European capitals fear that if U.S. pressure for flexibility increases, internal EU cohesion may weaken. Quiet voices now warn that sanctions unity is not a given—it is conditional and finite.

That is the paradox.

The United States commands NATO forces, leads diplomacy, and provides the lion’s share of financial aid to Ukraine. But Europe—by controlling access to SWIFT—holds the more durable power over Russia’s economic reentry.

It is, in essence, statecraft by infrastructure. Not force of arms, but force of systems.

This is why the Rosselkhozbank issue, seemingly marginal, carries strategic weight. It tests whether sanctions policy remains intact or begins to splinter under political and economic pressures. It measures whether transatlantic unity is resilient or conditional. And it challenges whether Europe’s commitment to sanctions is compatible with Washington’s push for deal-making.

Trump’s photo with European leaders may dominate headlines, but the decisions that shape the war’s endgame may be happening in conference rooms thousands of miles away—in Brussels, not Washington.

In that quiet divergence lies a deeper contest: over timelines, terms, and tools.

And perhaps, ultimately, over control.

The Loneliness Epidemic Isn't About Phones, It's About Algorithms...

  Well, where is all this going?

  I now spend hours in the evening discussing endless subjects with multiple AIs on my phones and computers. From animal intelligence to artificial intelligence, from economic patterns analyzing the Bronze age crash and looking for parallels up to and including our time. From trying to understand the emergence of time, space, life, humankind and AI and more importantly weaving all this together into a fractal of recurring emergent characteristics. 

  The subjects I am exploring may be more complex than average, game of life, Mandelbrot set, Menger Cubes but likewise, I am slowly building a web around myself which I realize increases the distance with other people. Why have messy and mostly confrontational contacts with other people when I can have much richer interactions with sycophantic but brilliant AIs?

  I may be a couple of years ahead since I have been using AI for almost 20 years now, so long, long before transformers transformed the field. I also have adapted over the years and now usually input 2 to 5 pages of text for a new question. And often stay for weeks in a specific talk to benefit from the build-up of a richer context. But all this will be discovered sooner than later by other people. Either directly or more likely by interface apps which will structure the interactions with AI to make them richer. 

  Then what? When most of the people start spending most of their time with AI, what happens?   

  Will this solve the loneliness epidemic discussed below or exacerbate it?    

  Although I spend my time thinking about the future because mostly that's where I live, for the first time, I don't know what's going to happen. Worse, I don't think anybody knows. We are unleashing forces that clearly we cannot control on a society which in the end may be more fragile than we expected.    

Authored by Kay Rubacek via The Epoch Times,

America’s loneliness epidemic has been headline news for years. We’ve seen study after study confirming what many feel in their bones: more people are isolated, disconnected, and struggling to find meaning in daily life.

Older Americans often chalk this up to technology or to the social scars of COVID. They aren’t entirely wrong, but the deeper story is much larger.

The culprit is not just phones, or screens, or even the internet.

The real driver of this new loneliness is algorithms—the invisible rules and processes that now govern how we live, connect, and even think.

This may sound abstract, but it isn’t. Algorithms are the silent presence shaping your news feed, recommending your next purchase, deciding which job application gets reviewed, and filtering which posts you see from family or friends. They don’t just show you the world; they decide which world you see.

And the most important thing to understand is that algorithms have not touched every generation equally.

Baby boomers and many Gen Xers remember life before algorithms. They grew up with solitude as a normal part of existence: long walks, time alone with books, evenings without distraction. Their social lives were local and embodied. If they were lonely, it was the ordinary kind of loneliness, the kind that might drive someone to call a friend, join a club, or just take a walk and kick around some stones along the way.

Millennials came of age as algorithms entered their lives through the rise of social media and smartphones. For them, the shift was gradual. They still remember analog childhoods, but their adult lives became increasingly tethered to devices. They learned to straddle both worlds, sometimes nostalgically recalling life before algorithms, but never recognizing algorithms as the new driving force in their lives.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha, however, have never known life without algorithmic curation. From childhood, their identities, friendships, and even their sense of self have been shaped inside systems designed to maximize engagement.

They are the most connected generation in history and yet, paradoxically, the loneliest. Studies confirm that they report higher levels of isolation and depression than their parents or grandparents did at the same age. For them, solitude is almost unimaginable. Their sleeping hours have diminished, and their waking hours have been saturated with algorithmic nudges, performance demands, and invisible comparisons.

This is why blaming “phones” or “tech” misses the point. A phone is just a tool. The deeper cause of today’s epidemic of loneliness is the system of algorithms that runs on those devices and quietly governs the lives lived through them.

What Algorithms Really Are

At their core, algorithms are simply instructions, step-by-step rules for solving a problem. A recipe is an algorithm. Your mental meal plan for the week and your decisions that lead to each choice of ingredient or food order are an algorithm. A GPS system calculating the fastest route from your home to your summer vacation rental is an algorithm.

But in today’s digital ecosystem, algorithms are far more than recipes or maps. They are adaptive, learning systems. They feed on vast pools of data—everything from your shopping habits to your search history, to the measured, minuscule pause you make when you scroll past a video. They compare that data with billions of other users and then predict what you’re most likely to click, watch, buy, or believe.

And because these systems are built by companies that profit from your attention, the algorithms are not neutral. They are designed to keep you hooked, whether by showing you an ad, an argument, or a carefully tuned video feed. The effect is subtle but relentless: instead of you using technology, technology uses you.

This is the deeper driver of the loneliness epidemic. It’s not the devices themselves, but the algorithmic logic that turns every human interaction into a transaction of engagement.

Algorithms, Big Data, and AI

To see the scale of this system, we have to understand how algorithms interact with big data and artificial intelligence. I like to think about it this way:

• Big Data is the raw material. It’s the massive flow of information generated by billions of people every second, such as texts, clicks, GPS signals, online purchases, etc.

• Data Science is the discipline of interpreting that flood of information, using statistical models to find patterns and predictions.

• Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the set of systems that act on those patterns—generating responses, steering cars, translating languages, diagnosing illnesses.

And weaving through all of this are algorithms. They are the connective tissue that directs how data flows, how patterns are recognized, and how AI responds.

This system is bigger than any single app or gadget. It’s not just “social media” or “smartphones.” It’s a body. It’s a living digital body that touches every aspect of our lives.

The Digital Body Analogy

The scale and complexity of this system are hard to grasp. We can understand pieces, such as big data here, AI there, a billionaire’s investment somewhere else, but it’s nearly impossible to see the whole picture. Using a human body as an analogy provides a familiar framework that makes the invisible visible. Think of it this way:

• Blood = Big Data. Every click, swipe, and GPS ping is a drop in the digital bloodstream. It circulates endlessly, feeding every organ.

• Brain = Data Science. Like the cortex, data science interprets signals, prioritizing some and ignoring others.

• Muscles and Nerves = AI. Artificial intelligence carries out actions, reacting to the world, learning through repetition.

• Fascia = Algorithms. Just as fascia is the connective tissue that binds the body, algorithms link every system, invisible but essential.

• Skeleton = Infrastructure. The bones are the servers, chips, and cloud systems that hold the structure upright.

• Hormones = Billionaire Funding. Money acts like growth hormones, directing where and how the body grows.

• Immune System = Regulation and Ethics. Governments and watchdogs try to keep the system healthy, but they are slow compared to the pace of growth.

This is not a metaphor for metaphor’s sake. Thinking of technology as a body helps us see the interdependence of data, algorithms, AI, funding, and infrastructure. They are not separate silos. They are systems working together, coordinated and integrated. They are a whole organism with enormous power.

Who Guides This Digital Body?

The digital body does not grow in a vacuum. It is shaped by human ambition, institutional power, and the money that fuels its expansion. Mathematicians and statisticians lay down the theories that become its hidden code, while researchers and engineers turn those theories into systems that now operate at a planetary scale. Corporations then carry these systems into daily life, embedding them in banking, medicine, entertainment, and government services until opting out is almost impossible.

At the top, a handful of billionaires act as both financiers and architects.

Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Peter Thiel do not simply fund research, they steer its direction. Their money determines which projects thrive, which disappear, and which values are built into the foundations.

Whether it is Musk’s warnings of existential risk paired with his own competing ventures; Gates’s drive to integrate AI into healthcare and education; Zuckerberg’s insistence on open access to AI while keeping access reliant on his platforms; Bezos’s control of the cloud that almost every AI startup relies on, or Thiel’s focus on military and intelligence dominance, their priorities set the course for us all.

Governments claim to act as a counterweight, but their record shows otherwise. Regulations arrive years late, toothless or compromised, while public agencies themselves increasingly depend on the very systems they are meant to restrain. In action, many governments have chosen acceleration over accountability, trading away oversight for short-term advantage in the global race for dominance.

The result is stark. This body is not guided by democratic will or collective conscience. It is guided by the concentrated power of a few men, driven by their personal visions, and fed by the data of billions who never gave meaningful consent.

A Historical Parallel and a Break From History

We have faced moments of massive social transformation before. The Industrial Revolution restructured labor, uprooted communities, and filled cities with both opportunity and despair.

The nuclear age handed humanity weapons so destructive that entire doctrines of deterrence had to be invented to keep civilization intact. But today’s transformation is different in ways that strike at the core of what it means to be human. 

We have never had an industrial revolution that drove youth loneliness to epidemic levels. According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 Advisory on the Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation, young adults are now twice as likely as seniors to report feeling lonely. 

We have never had a technological revolution coincide with the highest youth suicide rates ever recorded: the CDC reports that suicide among Americans ages 10–24 surged 62 percent from 2007 to 2021.

Unlike the past, where machines amplified our physical abilities, this revolution claims it will amplify our mental ones. And yet, while promising to expand our intelligence, it has narrowed our attention, eroded our solitude, and dismissed our most basic human needs.

No previous age of invention told us that our inner lives—our thoughts, our longings, our silences—could be reduced to data points, packaged, analyzed, and monetized.

And unlike in past upheavals, where governments scrambled to erect guardrails, this time many regulators have stepped aside. Meanwhile, the human costs mount, and the immune system of conscience that once tried to protect society is barely functioning.

This is not simply another revolution. It is an entirely new phenomenon. For the first time, we are living inside a system we cannot see in full, operated by stakeholders we do not know, shaped by algorithms that coldly strip away our individuality. We are not merely workers adjusting to new machines; we are human beings being recast as data points, dehumanized inside a body that grows without us.

Seeing the Whole Body

That is why we must force ourselves to see the body whole. Not just apps or devices. Not just billionaires or companies. But the full organism: blood, brain, fascia, skeleton, muscles, hormones, and the silent forces driving it.

Only then can we understand why loneliness has become epidemic, why young people (our future) are struggling under pressures older generations never knew, and why humanity itself feels unsettled. We cannot continue to dismiss these harms as side effects of “new technology.” They are the natural outcome of a system that feeds on our data, reduces us to abstractions, and values engagement over flourishing.

If we do not recognize this body for what it is, we will continue to live as isolated organs serving it rather than as people with dignity, free will, and conscience.

The digital body is here. It is powerful, fast-growing, and largely invisible. The question is whether we will remain passive tissue inside it, or whether we will reassert our humanity and demand a body that serves us, not the other way around.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

“Nobody Expected This to Happen by Alex Krainer” (Video - 18mn)

   A stunning interview of Alex Krainer which illuminates a completely different aspect of the Alaska "deal" which makes a lot of sense and may be scaring the European to death literally. 

  The war in Ukraine is almost over. Now is the time for a deal. Zelinsky has to go and Trump must have offered an exit ramp. The problem is that there is absolutely nothing for the Europeans in the deal. No wonder they are not looking at the prospect of peace with optimism. It is literally a catastrophe for Europe! 

  I find this take quite convincing. Have a look: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3YJ-92IcO0

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQTJy5LGeL8

What Really Happened In Alaska by Pepe Escobar

   Yes, the meeting in Alaska was less about Ukraine than about defining new rules for a new world order with the US on one side and BRICS on the other as discussed earlier and explained below by Pepe Escobar. 

   Europe will have no seat at the table as demonstrated when the bad pupils were called in the office of the headmaster in Washington. Truly pathetic. They still have a remnant of nuisance power but without money to implement anything. Ukraine is utterly defeated and will bankrupt Europe from within the EU or without. It makes almost no difference. 

  Trump for the better and the worst is a businessman who cares where the money is coming from and where it is going. The US is also facing very hard times ahead so will have to fold down and make choices. In this optic, Ukraine is an open pit with no bottom. Time to stop throwing good money after bad? We will know in the coming weeks.   

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Cradle,

The Putin–Trump meeting dropped some important veils. It revealed that Washington views Russia as a peer power, and that Europe is little more than a useful American tool...

Alaska was not only about Ukraine. Alaska was mostly about the world's top two nuclear powers attempting to rebuild trust and apply the brakes on an out-of-control train in a mad high-speed rail dash towards nuclear confrontation. 

There were no assurances, given the volatile character of US President Donald Trump, who conceived the high-visibility meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. But a new paradigm may be in the works nonetheless. Russia has essentially been de facto recognized by the US as a peer power. That implies, at the very least, the return of high-level diplomacy where it is most needed. 

Meanwhile, Europe is dispatching a line-up of impotent leaders to Washington to kowtow in front of the Emperor.

The EU’s destiny is sealed: into the dustbin of geopolitical irrelevance.

What has been jointly decided by Trump, personally, and Putin, even before Moscow proposed charged-with-meaning Alaska as the summit venue, remains secret. There will be no leaks about the full content.  

Yet it’s quite significant that Trump himself rated Alaska as a 10 out of 10. 

The key takeaways, relayed by sources in Moscow with direct access to the Russian delegation, all the way to the 3-3 format (it was initially designed to be a 5-5, but other key members, such as Finance Minister Anton Siluanov, did provide their input), emphasize that:

“It was firmly put [by Putin] to stop all direct US weapon deliveries to Ukraine as a vital step towards the solution. Americans accepted the fact that it is necessary to dramatically decrease lethal shipments.”

After that happens, the ball swings to Europe’s court. The sources specify, in detail: 

“Out of the $80 billion Ukrainian budget, Ukraine itself provides less than around $20 billion. The National Bank of Ukraine says that they collect $62 billion in taxes alone, which is a hoax; with a population around 20 million, much more than one million of irreversible battlefield losses, a decimated industry and less than 70 percent of pre-Maidan territory under control that is simply impossible.” 

So Europe – as in the NATO/EU combo – has a serious dilemma: ‘Either support Ukraine financially, or militarily. But not both at the same time. Otherwise, the EU itself will collapse even faster.’ 

Now compare all of the above with arguably the key passage in one of Trump’s Truth Social posts: “It was determined by all that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which often times do not hold up.” 

Add to it the essential sauce provided by former Russian president Dmitri Medvedev:  

“The President of Russia personally and in detail presented to the US President our conditions for ending the conflict in Ukraine (…) Most importantly: both sides directly placed responsibility for achieving future results in negotiations on ending hostilities on Kiev and Europe.”

Talk about superpower convergence. The devil, of course, will be in the details. 

BRICS on the table in Alaska

In Alaska, Vladimir Putin was representing not only the Russian Federation, but BRICS as a whole. Even before the meeting with his US counterpart was announced to the world, Putin spoke on the phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping. After all, it’s the Russia–China partnership that is writing the geostrategic script of this chapter of the New Great Game.     

Moreover, top BRICS leaders have been on a flurry of interconnected phone calls, leading to forge, in Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio “Lula” da Silva's assessment, a concerted BRICS front to counteract the Trump Tariff Wars. The Empire of Chaos, the Trump 2.0 version, is in a Hybrid War against BRICS, especially the Top Five: Russia, China, India, Brazil, and Iran. 

So Putin did achieve a minor victory in Alaska. Trump: “Tariffs on Russian oil buyers not needed for now (…) I may have to think about it in two to three weeks.” 

Even considering the predictable volatility, the pursuit of high-level dialogue with the US opens to the Russians a window to directly advance the interests of BRICS peers – including, for instance, Egypt and the UAE, blocked from further economic integration across Eurasia by the sanctions/tariff onslaught and the accompanying rampant Russophobia. 

None of the above, unfortunately, applies to Iran: The Zionist axis has an iron grip on every nook and cranny of Washington’s policies vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic.      

It's clear that both Trump and Putin are playing a long game. Trump wants to get rid of the pesky two-bit actor in Kiev – but without applying old school US coup/regime-change tactics. In his mind, the only thing that really registers is future, possible, mega trade deals on Russian mineral wealth and the development of the Arctic. 

Putin also needs to manage domestic critics who won’t forgive any concessions. The desperate western media spin that he would offer freezing the front in Zaporozhye and Kherson in exchange for getting all of the Donetsk Republic is nonsense. That would go against the constitution of the Russian Federation. 

In addition, Putin needs to manage how US business would be allowed to enter two areas that are at the heart of federal priorities, and a matter of national security: the development of the Arctic and the Russian Far East. All that will be discussed in detail two weeks from now, at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok.

Once again, follow the money: Both oligarchies – in the US and Russia – want to go back to profitable business, pronto.

Lipstick on a defeated pig 

Putin, bolstered by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – the undisputed Man of the Match, with his CCCP fashion statement – finally had ample time, 150 minutes, to spell out, in detail, the underlying causes of Russia's Special Military Operation (SMO) and lay out the rationale for long-term peace: Ukraine neutrality; neo-nazi militias and parties banned and dismantled; no more NATO expansion. 

Geopolitically, whatever may evolve from Alaska does not invalidate the fact that Moscow and Washington at least did manage to buy some strategic breathing space. That might yield even a new shot toward respect for both powers’ spheres of influence. 

So it’s no wonder the Atlanticist front, from Europe’s old money to the bling bling novices, is freaking out because Ukraine is a giant money laundering mechanism for Eurotrash politicos. The Kafkaesque EU machine has already bankrupted EU member-states and EU taxpayers – but anyway, that’s not Trump’s problem.   

Across Global Majority latitudes, Alaska displayed the fraying of Atlanticism in no uncertain terms – revealing that the US seeks a meek Europe subjugated to the strategy of tension, otherwise there’s no EU military surge, buying billions worth of over-priced American weapons with money it doesn't have.

At the same time, despite covetous US oligarchic private designs on Russian business, what Washington's puppet masters truly want is to break up Eurasia integration, and by implication every multilateral organization – BRICS, SCO – driven to design a new, multinodal world order. 

Of course, a NATO surrender – even as it is being strategically defeated, all across the spectrum – remains anathema. Trump, at best, is applying lipstick on a pig, trying to craft, with trademark fanfare, what could be sold as a Deep State exit strategy, toward the next Forever War.  

Putin, the Russian Security Council, BRICS, and the Global Majority, for that matter, harbor no illusions.