The Revenge Tour, 2026--Scott Ritter
Sid Shniad
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The Revenge Tour, 2026Two years ago US agents removed me from a flight to Russia, where I was scheduled to speak at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. Today I am getting on that plane and making that flight.
The Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum Revenge, they say, is a dish best served cold. Well, in my case, this dish has been sitting in the freezer of life for exactly two years. On June 3, 2024, I was prevented from boarding a flight to Russia by armed agents of the US Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). They claimed they were acting on the orders of the State Department, but could provide no such orders. They seized my passport, but provided no receipt for this action. In effect I was thrust into a Catch-22 scenario, where when I called the number to the State Department the agents provided me, and asked for clarification, I was required to provide an “incident number”, which would have been on the receipt the agents refused to issue. And without this number, there was nothing the State Department could do. Later, it got even more kafkaesque, as the State Department and CBP began claiming that there had been no such passport seizure. Then came phase two of the US government’s master plan—the FBI raid on my home on August 7, 2024, ostensibly to investigate whether I had knowingly failed to register as an agent of the Russian Federation. Forty agents, and six hours later, the US government walked out of my house carrying all of my personal electronics, as well as the archival material of my entire life—high school and college papers, and paperwork related to my Marine Corps career and time as a UN weapons inspector. The justification for this action is normally found in a statement of probable cause attached to the search warrant. Mine was classified. The search warrant also contains a statement stating what they expect to find in my house. This, too, was classified. No stated justification. They just came, seized, and left. Later I found out the the Northern District of New York had convened a Grand Jury to hear my case. Why would the government go through such effort to silence the voice of one American? At the time of the US Government “intervention”, I was mobilizing support to make preventing nuclear war an issue in the 2024 Presidential election. And I was finalizing a book, “Highway to Hell”, intended to help reinforce that point. The US Government thought they could intimidate me into backing down and being quiet. Instead, I helped organize a US-Russian Citizens Summit, and took my anti0nuclear war message straight to Washington, DC, where it was embraced by members of Congress and the Trump campaign. The FBI seized the draft copy of my book when they seized my computers. So I wrote it again, and published it (thank you, Clarity Press!). But there was more to this story that meets the eye. Today we know the rest of the story: that the US government was acting at the specific request of the Ukrainian government. At the time of the seizure of my passport and the FBI raid on my home, the Center for Countering Disinformation, part of the Office of the President of Ukraine which was funded, organized and directed by the US State Department, listed me as the number one information threat to Ukraine because of the effectiveness of my journalism, which the Ukrainian government believed put the Russian narrative in a positive light. Prior to the seizure of my passport and FBI raid on my home, I had previously travelled to Russia on two occasions. The Ukrainians took particular umbrage over my visits to Crimea and the New Russian territories of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaparozhia and Kherson. The Ukrainians also didn’t like the fact that travelled to Chechnya, where I met with Chechen veterans of the Special Military Operation (SMO), or that I assiduously gathered information about the reality of Russia, which I then brought to an American audience. This “Russian reality” helped undermine support for Ukraine and its war against Russia. So they submitted an official complaint to the US Legal Attache’s Office in Kiev, which was then used by the Department of Justice to order the seizure of my passport and the raid on my home. There was no legal justification for any of this—just Ukrainian angst and anger at someone who dared tell the truth about Russia in an unfiltered, unvarnished way. The Ukrainians also played a role in the arrest of my Russian host, Alexander Zyrianov. He was detained by the Novosibirsk FSB on the same day my passport was seized by the US government. He was charged with corruption. Two years later the Novosibirsk prosecutors have failed to make their case. But it now turns out the Novosibirsk FSB officers who arrested Zyrianov on the orders of Andrei Shimkiv, the influential Chairman of the Legislative Assembly of Novosibirsk Oblast were simultaneously running top cover for a call center scam being run by the Ukrainian government that raised some 210 million Rubles for the Ukrainian war effort. In Novosibirsk. And it was the Ukrainians who orchestrated the arrest of Alexander Zyrianov, using their FSB contacts. The same FSB that does Andrei Shimkiv’s dirty work (there will be more on this in a subsequent article.) What exactly did the Ukrainians fear? Yes, the speaking engagement at SPIEF 2024 was a high profile event, and both the US and Ukrainian government’s were more than happy to keep me from appearing (although I did end up participating on one panel through video conferencing.) But it was what was planned after SPIEF that put the fear of God into both Ukraine and the US government—a 44-day tour of Russia, from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea, and everything in between, where I would visit 16 cities and organize US-Russian citizen contact using my podcasts as the vehicle of engagement. It was this tour that sent chills up the spines of the Russophobes in Kiev and Washington, DC. So they killed it. Two years later, I am finally on my way to SPIEF. I have been invited to participate in a panel on “World Disorder: Is there any room for diplomacy in contemporary international relations.” This is a big honor. And once SPIEF 2026 winds down, I will embark on a new tour of Russia. Not 44 days—that was a very ambitious project which is almost impossible to replicate while my friend and colleague Alexander Zyrianov rots in a prison holding cell. This tour will only be two weeks. But it will be two weeks of gathering, first hand, the truth of Russia. The “Russian reality” that the Ukrainian government fears the most. The “Russian reality” that the European Union suppresses through the criminalization of free speech. And the “Russian reality” the Russophobic elites in the United States seek to suppress. Welcome to Revenge Tour, 2026. The Tour the US Government and the Ukrainian government didn’t want to happen in 2024. And the Ukrainian Government and its social media shills don’t want to happen today. It’s happening. That is my revenge. Stay tuned to this space for more information and updates on The Revenge Tour 2026. (I am an independent journalist who, despite what the propaganda of the Ukrainian government and those opposed to bettering US-Russian relations say, is not an agent of the Russian government. My enemies played that card, and failed. My work is completely self directed and self-funded, largely from donations made by my supporters and followers. The Revenge Tour 2026 is happening because of the generation donations of those who believe independent journalism is important to peace and a free and prosperous world. I am planning follow on visits to Russia, Iran, and other places around the world where events are happening that can benefit from the kind of truth telling I pursue. I am deeply grateful for your continued support.) |
