Potemkin Party's signature trademark remains boringly the same: a stale chorus of historic revisionism; and, incessant threats of war and invasion in pursuit of "sovereign sea access and maritime power". These provocative pronouncements are at times sprinkled with double-speak to hoodwink the international community. Indeed, the language and tone of aggression seemed to have been toned down at the last BRICS Summit while at home, Potemkin Party's senior Ministers and top Military Generals were simultaneously doubling down on the urgency of "correcting a historical mistake without further delay". The fact is: for the Potemkin Party, the constant variables in the last three years have been, and remain: - blatant revision of Eritrea's ancient and contemporary history; - brazen denial and denigration of Eritrea's Statehood coupled with incessant saber-rattling for acquiring "access to the sea". The Potemkin Party's aggressive policy intent/mindset is again plainly illustrated in yesterday's X post by its official news agency - Fana Media Corporation, Arabic version. xitter.cf/fana_arabic/status/210…

PRESS STATEMENT Hoax News Story on the Phantom “Eritrean Oil Tanker” This bizarre story is astounding on many counts: - All the information in the public domain about this ship shows that it is not owned by, and has no links whatsoever with, Eritrea. - IMO records show that "the ship is flying a false Eritrean flag; i.e, as not owned by or officially registered in Eritrea". This was duly confirmed to Eritrea's Permanent Mission to the IMO. - Yet, the usual culprits chose to abandon all semblance of journalistic standards to indulge in, and unleash, another despicable campaign of disinformation on Eritrea. shabait.com/2026/08/25/hoax-…

The Weaponization of Victimhood: How Ethiopia’s Prosperity Party Trapped itself in Its Own Regional Expansionist Ploys Ministry of Foreign Affairs Research and Documentation Division 18 August 2026 *"...For the past three years, the PP has been openly threatening the sovereignty and territorial integrity of its neighbors; questioned the very existence of sovereign states; and, through its collusion with disruptive external actors, systematically contributed to the destabilization of the Horn of Africa. Yet today, it cries foul, manufacturing a narrative of 'encirclement and external conspiracy' to conceal its own crippling domestic shortcomings and regional failures". *"...the Prosperity Party’s campaign against Eritrea is a naked attempt to externalize a deep-seated domestic crisis and can neither hoodwink its domestic constituency nor the international community". *"...Eritrea’s sovereignty is not a bargaining chip, nor is it a historical inconvenience to be corrected according to the miscalculations of a reckless neighbor. It is an immutable fact of international law and African political history. Duplicitous attempts of manufacturing a narrative of encirclement by hostile alliances, and portrayal of the primary initiator of regional tensions as the 'the innocent victim' cannot alter that reality". "ጭጉራፍ'ሲ ባዕላ ሃሪማ ተእዊ!" እዩ እቲ ነገሩ። shabait.com/2026/08/18/the-w…

The Potemkin Party’s propaganda machinery is increasingly edgy and seems to spin out of control to miss the whole plot these days. The telltale signs of this desperate mindset and quagmire are better accentuated by: - the marathon interviews of its leader in the past ten days with Amhara Media Corporation (AMECO) and Oromo Broadcasting Network (OBN) principally on domestic issues but with frequent provocative digressions on Eritrea; - the flurry of articles/Tv programmes on Eritrea by the Potemkin Party’s official/affiliated media outlets – Ethiopian News Agency (ENA), Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC), Fana Broadcasting Corporate (FBC), FDRE Institute of Foreign Affairs, Horn Review, etc. PP’s new narrative on domestic issues peddled in the Interviews is naturally an internal matter that has no pertinence to Eritrea. As such, we shall not delve into their substance though we may allude, in passing, to the overwhelming consensus/verdict by most Ethiopian analysts on its dangerously myopic tactical approaches – and double-speak. That the Interviews are maliciously aimed at stigmatizing as well as inciting cleavages and polarization between certain, and especially the Amhara and Tigrayan, ethnic nationalities and intended as desperate appeals for sectarian support from the Oromo ethnic constituency. In reference to Eritrea, the PP’s manufactured narratives venture into “creative” fantasies and fictious constructs that are grossly at variance with historical facts and events. In a nutshell, the new “PP linen”, touted for the market, consists of: 1. Preposterous claims of Oromo “expedition” into Eritrea in the distant past to include full occupation of Midri Bahri (Medieval and independent Kingdom in the Highlands and eastern lowlands of present-day Eritrea). For “incontrovertible proof”, the pretentious PP leader invokes a phony conjecture of semantics to speculate “same origins” between Barentu (Eritrea’s capital city of the Gash Barka Region) and Borona in present-day Oromia Region; as well as Soira (the highest mountain in Eritrea), Debra and other numerous names (not explicitly listed in the Interview) in Eritrea with similar sounding places in Oromia etc. 2. These fantasies could have been routinely dismissed as hollow and risible if they were not fraught with tragic consequences. 3. Indeed, what the newly minted narrative signifies is that the malaise/quest for “sovereign port ownership” by invading Eritrean sovereign territory that the PP leader enunciated in October 2023; his previous and outrageous claims that “he could not find legal documents on Eritrean independence in Ethiopian official archives (Cabinet, Parliament etc.)”; subsequent claims on Eritrea’s Dahlak Islands and the southern coastline for reasons of “strategic depth” to “project Ethiopia’s maritime power” etc. have degenerated further towards terminal metastasis. 4. In effect, the Potemkin Party’s revisionist history and toxic agenda have now morphed into full-scale denial of Eritrea’s inalienable status as a sovereign nation. This recent chorus of aggression and war is of course antithetical to the 2018 Eritrea-Ethiopia Friendship Agreement which was anchored on Ethiopia’s full adherence to international law (and EEBC Award) and for which he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize! 5. Duplicitous and ironic as it is, the Potemkin Party’s agenda of aggression and war are increasingly couched in self-defense terms these days. To this end, Eritrea is constantly portrayed, by the PP’s media outlets, as “innately insecure whose survival depends on perpetual destabilization of Ethiopia”. Eritrea’s independence struggle is denigrated as an “external conspiratorial agenda that was concocted to weaken Ethiopia”. 6. All these transparent ruses are willfully peddled to prepare “historical and legal rationale” for a destructive war. The truth is Eritrea has never had the interest or political design and will to destabilize Ethiopia. The costly and long war of liberation was imposed on Eritrea due to Ethiopia’s expansionist ambitions and annexation in flagrant breach of international law. The border war from 1998-2000 essentially erupted due to the willful desire of the incumbent regime to change the sacrosanct colonial borders in violation of international law, the UN Charter and the AU’s Constitutive Act. The climate of tension and conflict that looms in the Horn of Africa region today is, again, largely a product of the Potemkin Party’s misguided policies of irredentism and hegemony. The illicit MOU that the Potemkin Party signed with Somaliland in 2024; its hosting of military base in southwestern Ethiopia to provide support to the RSF under the bidding of the UAE; and its constant threats and saber-rattling against Eritrea complete the picture of the reckless policies of destabilization to which the Potemkin Party seems wedded to for reasons known to itself. 7. Finally, Eritrea had indeed cultivated networks of support with various Ethiopian liberation movements, including the Oromo Liberation Front, during the armed struggle in 1980s. These were based on common denominators and platforms of opposition to oppression by the incumbent regimes in Ethiopia and recognition of Eritrea’s legitimate rights of decolonization. Even in those times, Eritrea’s principled position on Ethiopia’s unity and territorial integrity were crystal clear and explicitly pronounced; including in its 1984 seminal paper on EPLF ties with Ethiopian Opposition Movements.

In characteristic fashion, the Potemkin Party's erratic political pendulum is yet again swinging between two extreme positions: i) A provocative and aggressive posturing that has been accompanied, for over two years now, by incessant saber-rattling to "acquire sovereign access to the sea", on the one hand; ii) Simultaneous portrayal of itself as the "aggrieved party" and a "hapless victim of internal and external conspiracies", on the other. This was indeed the gist of the PM's rambling at the House of Peoples Representatives earlier today. Hyperbole and associated drama aside, the stubborn facts remain the same. The sad truth is: the unnecessary and avoidable tensions in the region have and continue to be stoked by the very reckless policies of the Potemkin Party. For brief illustrations: 1. The palpable friction with the Sudan squarely emanates from the Potemkin Party's dangerous involvement in the conflict in the Sudan by hosting, under the bidding of certain extraneous forces, a secret military camp and base for the RSF in the Benishangul-Gumuz region of Ethiopia. The evidence, which is overwhelming, is already in the public domain. 2. The Potemkin Party's stealthily signed MOU with Somaliland a couple of years ago was another illicit and reckless misstep that aroused consternation in the region as a whole. This act remains in flagrant violation of the AU and IGAD Constitutive Acts as well as fundamental tenets of international law on sovereignty and territorial integrity of States. 3. The Potemkin Party has pursued, for over two and half years now, a toxic and revisionist policy against Eritrea by openly threatening to invade/acquire by any means, its Assab port and coastal areas for what it terms as "sovereign access to the sea". 4. In the event, its frequent reference to "conspiratorial forces disappointed by, and bent on, scuttling the Pretoria Agreement" is as disingenuous as it is untenable. In as far as Eritrea is concerned, the Pretoria Agreement is a purely Ethiopian affair. Let us also recall - the beans have been spilled now by Getachew Redda's multiple confessions - that the Potemkin Party was scheming against Eritrea (Djibouti and Seychelles events) months before the negotiations and signature of the Pretoria Agreement. In a nutshell, the quest for enduring regional peace and stability that the peoples of the Horn of Africa deeply cherish and deserve has been, and continues to be, jeopardized by the Potemkin Party's delusional policies. xitter.cf/hawelti/status/2025947…

The Potemkin Party is apparently seething under extreme desperation. It must indeed be at its lowest point; at the end of its tether so to speak! How else can one explain the monotonous, 35-minute long diatribe of lies and hollow allegations against Eritrea peddled by mercurial Getachew Reda (nominally, Adivsor to the Prime Minister) that was broadcast yesterday by the Ethiopian Broadcast Corporation (EBC) and other domestic media outlets. If the unhinged Getachew Reda is taken as a credible political analyst and a reference point, then the numerous insolent and outrageous remarks that he had made on various Tigrayan TV outlets, as well as his X Account, about the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed during the war in the Tigray Region must be accorded due credibility too. Indeed, some of his grotesquely disparaging statements on Abiy Ahmed and the Ethiopian army include: - "Abiy Ahmed is a political pigmy. Had Ethiopia been a normal country, he would have long been confined to a mental institution or spiritual cites of healing for the deranged"; - "Abiy Ahmed is delusional enough to believe and openly brag that his mother had told him, when he was seven years old, that she saw him, in her dream, being crowned as a King"; -" Abiy Ahmed is the epitome and example of little men who come to power by some accident of history and who subsequently create huge catastrophes"; -"Abiy Ahmed cannot lead a nation without reverting to endless deceptions"; - "He (Abiy Ahmed) has literally no education...but you cannot ask him how he claims that he has a PhD as he does not give you time for reasonable discourse"; - "Abiy Ahmed is the textbook example of national treason. As such, he has no moral high ground to speak about sovereignty"; - "Abiy Ahmed is a toxic weed that has grown in this nation"; - " (General) Birhanu Jula and others are not leading a capable army. They have lost the little military knowledge they had and are sheepishly taking orders from this mad leader. This anti-people army, which is blindly implementing Abiy Ahmed's war agenda, is entailing massive deaths among the civilian population and the youth"...etc... The rudderless Getachew Reda is indeed prone to making whimsical and contradictory statements on almost any issue depending on his unstable moods and ever-shifting political affiliations. Recently, as he struck an opportunistic alliance with the Federal Government and its PM on whom he was heaping endless insults, he has began to shamelessly disavow the political beliefs he had held for decades. In a recent interview, he quipped (referring to his old comrades): "There are many people who maintain that Tigray should be an independent nation. I also mull about that concept whenever I am tipsy!" His close associates confide that Getachew is tipsy or drunk from the late afternoon to the wee morning hours almost on a daily basis... This has in fact earned him the moniker :"Vodakchew". On a more sober note, how can one give serious weight to the excesses and irresponsible utterances of this political vagabond. In the event, there is no point in responding to all the vitriol that he has floated against Eritrea in his interview yesterday. We will thus focus on one fallacy: his preposterous assertion that "Eritrea was created, by conspiratorial forces, as an independent State in order to weaken and destroy Ethiopia". This spurious and revisionist claim is, of course, utterly false and deliberately peddled to rationalize and advance the Potemkin Party's wicked domestic agenda of agitation and mobilization for war. History otherwise attests to these indelible facts: 1. Eritrea was denied its inalienable right of decolonization in the late 1940s and "federated" with Ethiopia only because the US and other powers gave precedence to their perceived geopolitical interests. 2. The international community kept mum, again for similar political calculus, when the Ethiopian government unilaterally abrogated the "Federal Act" and annexed Eritrea in November 1962. 3. The Eritrean people and nation had to shoulder the heavy burden of national liberation for thirty long years and pay huge and unparalleled sacrifices. Throughout this period, virtually the whole world showed unconscionable apathy by failing to recognize and extend moral and material support to Eritrea's legitimate war of national liberation. In the meantime, Ethiopia which was ruled by the Emperor and the military junta that toppled him continued to receive massive military, economic and political support from diverse countries - the US, USSR, European Countries, Israel, several Arab and Asian countries, Cuba etc.. 4. The same pattern continued at various critical junctures in Eritrea's post independence period. The failure to take meaningful action against the Ethiopian regime when it reneged on its treaty obligations - essentially worked out under the facilitation of the the US, the EU, the UN and the OAU - and rejected the EEBC Arbitral Award to occupy sovereign Eritrean territories for almost two decades is a glaring illustration of the tendency of major powers, and the international community at large, to sacrifice legality and justice on the altar of narrow interests. 5. In all these decades, including in these critical times when the current regime is stoking the flames of war through its reckless agenda of "sovereign access to the sea", the "intensive care" accorded to Ethiopia has not diminished in any way. The IMF's 3 billion financial bailout that is underway; the EU's massive assistance, including recent budgetary assistance; individual bilateral support to Ethiopia from European, Asian, Middle Eastern countries...etc. corroborate this fact. 6. Indeed, by some accounts, Ethiopia has been the beneficiary of an aggregate 114 billion US dollars in the past three decades from multilateral and bilateral assistance. This pattern of huge and burgeoning assistance does not reek of, and cannot be misconstrued, by any stretch of imagination, as "some entrenched conspiracy to weaken and destroy Ethiopia". In brief, and as noted earlier, Getachew Reda's "analysis" can hardly be taken seriously on any subject. For the Potemkin Party to stoop too low to use his deranged analysis for "popular mobilization" only accentuates its utter desperation.

Potemkin Party's signature trademark has been aptly described by the formula: PP Propaganda = Lies + Deception + Delusion + Disinformation + "Dazzling" Optics. Indeed, the article (Al Jazeera, 11 June 2026) by mercurial Getachew Reda (PP's Advisor for East African Affairs); and Redwan Hussein, (PP's Director General for National Intelligence and Security Services) accentuates, in more graphic terms, this poignant reality. Let us revert to the facts: 1. The tragic war that ravaged Ethiopia for two years from 4 November 2020 until 2 November 2022 with devastating consequences stemmed from, and has its roots in, Ethiopia's internal and perennial ethnic cleavages. Eritrea was dragged into the imposed conflict at the behest of the Federal Government, and more importantly, due to the broad objectives of the war agenda that explicitly included and targeted Eritrea itself. This is on the public record. As one of the principal architects and fervent advocates of the war, Getachew Redda is intimately aware of all these facts; a matter that is easily validated by his numerous posts under his X handle in those tragic times. 2. At the end of the war, PP political and military leaders from the Prime Minister downwards, profusely expressed their profound gratitude to Eritrea. Again, this is on the public record. 2. Getachew Reda and Redwan Hussein weave a theatrical and fictitious story about the consternation of their South African Hosts in Pretoria as the "negotiating team from the two warring parties would get into a fist fight in the middle of the Conference Hall if not shepherded to steer clear of one another". 3. Problem with this fictitious and romanticized story is the Parties had, in fact, held secret meetings in Djibouti and Seychelles months back under the sponsorship of US and EU "Peace Facilitators". And as it was later divulged by Getachew Redda himself, the two Teams had contemplated prompt reconciliation, reportedly under the prodding of the PP Party, to join forces and wage a war of aggression against Eritrea that they both agreed was, in their contorted views, "the ultimate threat to them". These meetings took place in August 2022; when the war was still raging ferociously. A Confidential EU Report issued in September 2022 further corroborated this "imminent trend". 4. The Pretoria Agreement is essentially a peace-pact between warring sides in Ethiopia. It is, and remains, an Ethiopian affair; purely and exclusively. Eritrea's stance and support to the Pretoria Agreement stems from its principled desire and commitment to promote regional peace and stability. In this sense, Eritrea has neither the political appetite nor the interest to scuttle an agreement between Ethiopian political forces if all the parties indeed implement the provisions of the agreement in good faith. 5. In this perspective, PP's current propaganda and transparent disinformation campaigns, as epitomized by the article in question, are designed to re-package the unprovoked agenda of conflict and hostility that it has unleashed against Eritrea since December 2023 in the quest of what it calls "sovereign access to the sea", in "self-defense" terms. 6. The unfortunate fact is: it is PP's delusional agendas (illicit MOU with Somali-land; logistical and other military support to RSF under the bidding of other external forces; and provocative pronouncement, accompanied by unremitting saber-rattling, for acquiring Assab and other Eritrean coastal lands "through negotiations if possible and force if necessary" ) that are stoking unnecessary and avoidable tensions in the Horn. "ጭጉራፍ'ሲ ሃሪማ ተእዊ" ፥ ከም ዝበሃል። xitter.cf/hawelti/status/2025947…

UNHCR Guidance Note on #Eritrea: Fact, Context, and the Politics of Omission Ministry of Foreign Affairs 22 April 2026 A comprehensive and nuanced response that elucidates the gross factual, legal, and methodological flaws and distortions that characterize the latest UNHCR Guidance Note on Eritrea. The poignant fact is that this has become almost a ritual pattern with this Agency. Indeed, this was the case with its 2009/11 Eligibility Guidelines which were circulated to various governments in a rather stealthy manner without prior interaction with, or notification to, the GoE. For reasons best known to itself, the UNHCR has, and continues to act, as the principal proponent - the Trojan Horse so to speak - of the agenda of "strategic depopulation" against Eritrea. Its periodic reports remain sheer compilations of notorious, NED-funded and affiliated, outfits that harbour hostile agendas against Eritrea. shabait.com/2026/04/23/unhcr…

#Eritrea's 35th Independence Anniversary will be celebrated under the fitting theme: "Our Resilience: Our Guarantee". The mantra is indeed a perfect epitome for the odyssey/historical trajectory of two Eritrean generations - the Yikaalo and Warsai generations - who had to summon and display unparalleled heroism and resilience and who were compelled to pay, in the process, precious sacrifices to ascertain and later protect their inviolable rights of decolonization and nationhood. Indeed, the small nation had to endure and suffer under stifling and over-arching geopolitical calculus of major powers in the 1940s to be entangled in a bogus "Federal Arrangement" that soon degenerated into blatant annexation; conduct Africa's longest armed struggle for liberation after all its legal and peaceful pleas for redress were utterly ignored; face, in the aftermath of independence, imposed wars of destabilization against its sovereignty and territorial integrity; and, grapple with associated hostilities including unwarranted sanctions as well as subtle subterfuges of "strategic depopulation", unremitting defamation, etc. ርዝነት ናጽነትና እምበኣር ብዝሓለፎ ከቢድን መዘና-ኣልቦን ጉዕዞ'ዩ ዝትመን!

Potemkin Party's antics and theatrics seem to increasingly transcend the bounds of rationality. This is the only explanation for the bizarre conference that the Institute of Foreign Affairs convened this week under the theme: "Inclusive Maritime Governance". Speakers included some obscure and hired "pundits" as well as the senior officials of a Ghost Navy. The Horn of Africa countries have roundly and firmly rejected, without equivocation or ambivalence, the Potemkin Party's quest for "sovereign access to the Sea" as toxic and avoidable threat to regional peace and security. The response from the international community has, likewise, been the same. And yet, Potemkin Party officials and minions seem to double down and indulge on this perilous path. The multi-layered ramifications of this delusional policy are otherwise very evident as the attached link elucidates: "ካብ ጉይይ ምውዓል፥ ክሳድ ምሓዝ"! === The “Sovereign Sea Gate” Delusion: Ethiopia’s Expansionist Narrative Disguised as Strategy shabait.com/2026/04/08/the-s…

The Potemkin Party's disinformation pendulum appears to swing between two poles these days. On the one-hand, the PP continues to ramp up its monotonous, albeit toxic, tone on the imperative for "sovereign access to the sea" and associated saber rattling that it has flaunted for more than two years now. At the same time, there is a distinct twist/tone to its mendacious campaign in these times to portray itself as a "victim" of destabilization and thereby re-package its overarching irredentist agenda as a "legitimate act of self-defence". The latest version in its playbook of ever-shifting fallacious arguments and pretexts consists of ludicrous misinterpretation of the long-settled EEBC Award; to ascertain with a straight face that the Award's implementation remains "unilateral and illegal action before physical demarcation is carried out through an agreed process". These gimmicks are willfully floated to camouflage and divert attention from its reckless irredentist agenda which has been and remains the central kernel and driver of the tension in the region. That the EEBC had closed shop in 2007 having delivered its demarcation decision - duly deposited at the UN Cartographic Office with copies to both parties - is indeed a matter of historical record. The bedrock of the Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship between Eritrea and Ethiopia, that was signed in Asmara in 2018, was in fact Ethiopia's full and unequivocal, if belated, commitment to the implementation of the EEBC Award, (Art.4). In the event, the Potemkin Party's U-turn is not surprising in many respects; as backstabbing, duplicity and deception are, indeed, part and parcel of its daily political staple. xitter.cf/hawelti/status/2025947…