Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Sunday, July 6, 2025 14:53
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PAGE 172 of 172

Friday, June 27, 2025 6:54 AM

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia will effectively ban Ukrainian-language education in schools in occupied Ukraine starting on September 1. The Russian Ministry of Education published a draft order on June 23 detailing plans to exclude Ukrainian-language education from the Russian federal basic general education program blocks at all educational levels starting on September 1, 2025.[1] The Ministry of Education claimed that they will be excluding Ukrainian-language education “in connection with the changed geopolitical situation in the world,” but that students will retain the possibility to study Ukrainian in some extracurricular programs.[2] The Russian Ministry of Education previously reported in the 2023-2024 school year that Ukrainian was taught on a “mandatory” basis in occupied Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts and “at the request of parents” in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, occupied Crimea, and Russia’s Bashkortostan Republic.[3] The draft order will also terminate a course on Ukrainian literature.[4] The Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) condemned the draft order on June 24 as a “manifestation of Moscow’s genocidal policy” towards occupied Ukraine.[5]

Russian authorities have severely limited access to Ukrainian language education as part of their occupation policy since 2014.[6] In occupied Crimea, for example, only 214 students received Ukrainian language education in the 2020/2021 academic year, suggesting that constraints against the Ukrainian language were already in place prior to the full-scale invasion.[7] The Donetsk and Luhansk people’s republics occupation administrations similarly cracked down on Ukrainian language and Ukrainian history curricula in schools in occupied Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts starting in 2014.[8] The Russian Ministry of Education’s claim that Ukrainian language instruction was “mandatory” in occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia oblasts over the past few years directly contradicts statements made by Zaporizhia Oblast occupation officials, which reveal existing constraints on the availability of Ukrainian language instruction. Zaporizhia Oblast occupation Minister of Education and Science Elena Shapurova announced in March 2023 that schools in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast would abolish mandatory Ukrainian language education by the start of the 2023-2024 school year.[9] Zaporizhia Oblast occupation head Yevgeny Balitsky stated in March 2023 that students in occupied Zaporizhia Oblast had the “option” to study Ukrainian for a maximum of three hours a week, but that Russian language instruction was the default.[10] ISW assessed at the time that Russian occupation authorities would likely use the semblance of choice in selecting Ukrainian language education to identify individuals who partook in the ostensibly pro-Ukrainian activity of learning Ukrainian, which Russian authorities could later use as a repressive tool against identified pro-Ukrainian individuals.[11] Further legal limits on Ukrainian language education will further Russify occupied areas, setting multigenerational conditions that will allow the Kremlin to claim that occupied Ukraine is part of Russia on a linguistic basis.[12]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-occupation-updat
e-june-26-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, June 27, 2025 12:53 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK

Fuck Ukraine.

--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, June 27, 2025 1:41 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Good for Russia! That's what Kiev did, in reverse.
Fuck Ukraine.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Friday, June 27, 2025 1:41 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Dbl.

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Saturday, June 28, 2025 6:57 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dbl.

Did you get overly excited to post your falsehoods and foolish opinions? Where True and False mean the opposite of the dictionary definition?

Putin claims that the war is not a heavy economic burden for Russia. Russia is not spending much in 2025 and will spend even less next year. Hint, he is lying:

The Kremlin continues to downplay the social and economic costs of Russia's war in Ukraine and inflated military spending. Russian President Vladimir Putin told journalists on June 27, following the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) summit in Minsk, that sanctions cannot hurt Russia’s economy and that Russia's economic indicators are “satisfactory.”[1] Putin acknowledged that Russia’s economy is still contending with high inflation and that Russia’s economic growth in 2025 will be “much more modest to combat inflation.” Putin also claimed that Russia’s military budget is currently 6.3 percent of its GDP, or 13.5 trillion rubles (roughly $172 billion), and that Russia plans to steadily decrease defense spending beginning in 2026. Russia notably increased its defense budget by 25 percent between the 2024 and 2025 federal budgets and has been increasing its investments in Russia's defense industry throughout 2025.[2]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-27-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 28, 2025 1:54 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Zelenskyy responds to Pope's message about Ukraine's suffering

By Mariya Yemets, Roman Petrenko — Saturday, 28 June 2025, 18:40

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/06/28/7519246/

Quote from Pope Leo XIV: "I express my closeness to martyred Ukraine – to the children, the young people, the elderly, and especially to families who mourn their loved ones. I share your sorrow for the prisoners and victims of this senseless war."

Background:

• The Vatican previously reported that Pope Leo XIV asked Russian leader Vladimir Putin to make "a gesture that would favour peace" during their first conversation in early June.

• The Pope proposed the Vatican as a venue for negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, an idea supported by Kyiv, European countries and the United States, but Moscow refused.

The Pope expressed no sympathy for Russians since suffering is what they deserve for their actions.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, June 28, 2025 2:26 PM

JAYNEZTOWN

Vladimir Solovyov urges strikes against Europe

Russian Media Monitor

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 1:37 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dbl.

SECOND: Did you get overly excited to post your falsehoods and foolish opinions?

Wow, now THAT'S a lackluster insult!

Where's the verve?

Don't tell me that you've gotten bored already!

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 6:48 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Dbl.

SECOND: Did you get overly excited to post your falsehoods and foolish opinions?

Wow, now THAT'S a lackluster insult!

Where's the verve?

Don't tell me that you've gotten bored already!

Signym, did it ever cross your mind to ask why Russia is struggling? Not just in Ukraine, but in everything? You'd have to compare what is possible from military history to what Russia did. You have to compare what Western European economies accomplished to what Russia did. You'd have to do that comparison honestly, which I think is not one of your characteristics, nor one of the Russians.

Russia is just not very good at fighting wars

Putin, so devoted to the legacy of the Great Patriotic War, has learned nothing

By Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, James Holland | 29 June 2025 7:58am BST
James Holland is a historian. Colonel Hamish de Bretton Gordon served in the Royal Tank Regiment

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/06/29/russia-army-corrupt-ineffi
cient-failure-ukraine-history/

Recently, Russian casualties climbed through the one million mark after three and a half years of Putin’s “special military operation”, originally expected to last three days. For an army of such size in manpower and equipment this seems a remarkable price to pay for less than a fifth of Ukrainian territory, fighting against an army which was minuscule in comparison on the day of the illegal invasion – 24th Feb 22.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2024/09/17/russian-army-overtak
e-us-as-worlds-second-largest/

What are the reasons for this ineptitude, and is this purely a problem of the modern Russian army – or a reflection of systemic failures across the centuries? A soldier and a historian will try to answer these questions today.

When it comes down to it, the Russian military has always relied on mass and brutality. It has aspired historically to ambitious intellectual underpinnings for its military power but this has tended to falter on first contact with reality. In the case of the Red Army of the 1920s and 30s, much radical military thinking was lost in Stalin’s purges. The only army which gained any valuable insights into the future of war from the experimental exercises conducted in the USSR during that time was the Wehrmacht. Today in the 2020s, the much vaunted “Gerasimov Doctrine” (aka “hybrid warfare”) failed when confronted with a citizen army determined to resist a war of unprovoked aggression waged against its independent sovereign state.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/07/13/putin-is-escalating-his-hy
brid-warfare/

Over the last week or two we’ve been reconsidering the nature of the Soviet victory in World War II, but also the nature of the fighting during that conflict and, more broadly, Russia’s history of warfare since the turn of the twentieth century. It’s fair to say, the Second World War aside, Russia’s wars make for pretty sorry reading – if you’re Russian. Russia suffered an ignominious defeat at the hands of Japan in 1905, one which in large part led to the 1905 Russian revolution. Imperial Russia’s part in the subsequent First World War was a catastrophe which led to the loss of 5.5 million casualties, battlefield defeat and the overthrow of the Tsarist regime; the 1917 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk also saw Russia ceding large amounts of territory to Germany and its allies.

There is a common theme here: the leadership seemingly unconcerned by huge casualties among the rank and file, and when you are not concerned with casualties the principles of war seem to go out of the window.

Which leads to Ukraine. Despite having one of the largest militaries in the world, and despite the assumption that Ukraine could be overrun in a matter of days, over three years on Russian forces have taken barely 20 per cent of the country, Russia has been invaded in turn and losses have included not only the one million casualties – including over 500,000 dead – but more than 10,000 tanks, 21,500 armoured fighting vehicles, 41,000 other vehicles, 24,500 artillery pieces and 370 aircraft including a fair wedge of the strategic nuclear bomber fleet.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/06/01/bridge-collapses-ont
o-train-russia/

To put this in some perspective, 10,000 tank losses is a figure greater than the most heavily produced German tank of the entire Second World War.

Clearly, the key feature of almost all these wars is barely comprehensible levels of casualties. Anyone reading this catalogue of death and destruction – with the accompanying high proportion of defeats – could be forgiven for thinking that Russia is simply not very good at fighting wars. And bluntly, they’d be right.

While the Western Allies have very sensibly harnessed technology, global reach, mechanization and logistical deftness to limit the number of men risking their lives at the coal face of war, the Red Army continued its policy of barely imaginable profligacy. The Allies adopted a policy of “steel not flesh” as far as they possibly could; the Soviet Union and now the Russian Federation, on the other hand, pursued steel in tandem with immense amounts of flesh and suffered terrible consequences.

And this leads to the question of blood being spilled. It is absolutely the case that historically the Red Army lost considerably more lives than the Western Allies or even the Germans they were defeating, but this doesn’t mean that the Red Army was taking on the greatest proportion of fighting. On the contrary, the Western Allies were fighting a truly global war on land, in the air and at sea, and overall taking on a far greater proportion of the Axis forces. Until the final months of the war against Japan, the Soviet Union was only fighting on the Eastern Front – and spectacularly inefficiently too.

To be an effective fighting force able to manoeuvre and outpace the enemy you need to train and train hard. It takes over a year of individual and collective training to take a British tank regiment and weld it together with infantry, artillery and now drones and other things into a combined arms battle group which is able to deliver shock action against the enemy.
(Kyiv’s troops are combining Western-donated weapons with Soviet-style tactics, in a misstep which has led to a significant amount of squandered Nato weaponry)
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2025/02/16/nato-ukraine-soviet-
battlefield-tactics-squandered-weapons/

New Russian conscripts are given just a few days training before being thrown into the meat grinder, and some cannot even clean their rifles. Even new tank crews are only afforded a few weeks training and no collective training with other tanks – let alone other arms. Hence the massive levels of attrition and the reason why watchers see so many tanks out of control with “disco head” – where the commander becomes totally disorientated by all that is going on around him, typically a precursor to the tank’s destruction.

Russian military command structure tends to be rigid and heavily reliant on blind obedience. This has to be enforced by draconian discipline and tends to see senior officers getting involved in low-level battle drills which would in the British army be managed by junior leaders. Initiative is not just discouraged, it is punished.

Routine use is made of brutal methods reminiscent of the 19th century and WWI - “shtrafbatty” and “zagranotryady”. This means junior officers and non-commissioned officers (equivalent to sergeants and warrant officers in our army) following up behind assault units to shoot would-be stragglers and deserters. The training culture is equally brutal, with “dedovshchina” (the western equivalent term “hazing” or just plain bullying doesn’t even begin to capture the savagery of this) an intrinsic element of the system. The hatred this engenders between senior and junior Russian soldiers is intense. It should come as no great surprise that war crimes are so prevalent wherever the Russian army sets foot.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/23/we-have-only-scratched-the
-surface-of-putins-war-crimes/

Corruption is endemic and rampant even in peacetime. Petrol, ammunition, rations, weapons, uniforms and even armoured vehicles are sold off. Soldiers are used by officers (and the state) as slave labour – to build officers’ private dachas or to bring in the harvest, just as they did in Tsarist and Soviet times.

We have, in recent decades, been too respectful of the Red Army and its modern successor. The Russian victory in the Second World War was complete but it should not have been so expensive in lives. The Red Army was very much the product of the nation it was created to defend: one that was cruel and corrupt, and which cared not a jot for the lives of the men – and women – being flung into the fire. It was, for the most part, sickeningly incompetent, just as it still is to this day.

Putin, so devoted to the legacy of the Great Patriotic War, has learned nothing.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 6:47 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND, did you ever wonder why India is struggling?

Libya?

Rwanda?

Of course not! Your brain, with its laser- like focus on Russia!Trump!, can't possibly expand to... well, anything, really.

PS: Russia isn't struggling.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 7:46 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, did you ever wonder why India is struggling?

Libya?

Rwanda?

Of course not! Your brain, with its laser- like focus on Russia!Trump!, can't possibly expand to... well, anything, really.

PS: Russia isn't struggling.

I focus on Trumptards because half the population of Texas are Trumptards, who are not performing as well as their non-Trumptard neighbors. Since the Trumptards and the non-Trumptards live side-by-side in Harris County, it is easy to see who is screwing up their own lives, but Trumptards absolutely refuse to acknowledge that they are screw-ups. Instead, it's the government's fault, despite it being obvious it is the Trumptard's fault.

Oh, and as far as Russia, a comparison of nations shows that Russians are huge screw-ups.
https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/

If you don't like comparing nations because the larger countries appear to be better run and more prosperous than smaller countries, then compare citizens. GDP per Capita shows that Russians are screwed up. Unfortunately, the tabulations don't separate per Capita who are Trumptards from those who are Anti-Trumptard. The Trumptards drag the United States downward:

https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-per-capita/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, June 29, 2025 9:17 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

SECOND is a screw up:

Quote:
IMF ranks Russia as world’s fourth-largest economy by purchasing power

https://www.mitrade.com/insights/news/live-news/article-3-431447-20241
025

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Monday, June 30, 2025 7:29 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND is a screw up:

Quote:
IMF ranks Russia as world’s fourth-largest economy by purchasing power

https://www.mitrade.com/insights/news/live-news/article-3-431447-20241
025

When the Russian data is graphed by the IMF, the conclusion you have come to looks like nonsense. Russia is a big, fat bag of hot air with an army:

GDP, current prices
Purchasing power parity; billions of international dollars

https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PPPGDP@WEO/OEMDC/WEOWORLD/RUS

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, June 30, 2025 7:30 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia conducted its largest combined strike series of the war on the night of June 28 to 29 by launching over 500 missiles and drones against Ukraine. The Ukrainian Air Force reported that Russian launched a total of 537 strike vehicles, including 447 Shahed and decoy drones . . .

Russia is continuing to use increasingly large numbers of drones in its overnight strike packages in order to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses and enable subsequent cruise and ballistic missile strikes.[4]

Ukrainian forces were notably only able to shoot down one of the seven Iskander-M/KN-23 ballistic missiles and did not shoot down any of the four Kinzhal aeroballistic missiles during the June 28 to 29 strike series. Zelensky called on Ukraine to strengthen its air defenses and reiterated that Ukraine is ready to buy US air defense systems.[6]

US President Donald Trump recently spoke with Zelensky about possible US sales of Patriot air defense systems on June 25.[7] Patriot systems are vital to Ukraine's ability to defend against Russian ballistic missile strikes, especially as Russia is reportedly increasing its production and stockpile of ballistic missile production capacity to enable larger and more frequent ballistic missile strikes against Ukraine.[8]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-june-29-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Monday, June 30, 2025 2:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Well, I'm not sure we have any Patriot missile systems to spare.

Even if we dud, they're incapable, for the most part, of shooting down Kinzhal and Iskander missiles.

It's far, far easier to attack from the air than it is to defend.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025 9:00 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

A Primer on Russian Cognitive Warfare

Jun 30, 2025 - ISW Press

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/primer-russian-cognitive
-warfare

Cognitive warfare is Russia’s way of war, governance, and occupation. The goals, means, and effects of Russian cognitive warfare are far greater than disinformation at the tactical level. Russian cognitive warfare is:

• The way of war: The Russian way of war is centered on the notion that wars can be won and lost in the opponent's mind. The Kremlin’s main effort is shaping its opponents' decisions to achieve aims unattainable through Russia’s physical capabilities alone. The Russian strategy that matters most is not its warfighting strategy, but rather the Kremlin’s strategy to cause us to see the world as Moscow wishes us to see it and make decisions in that Kremlin-generated perception of reality.[2]

• The way of governance: The Kremlin has been waging an information war inside Russia and on territories that Russia illegally occupies in order to maintain the regime’s control and stability. Russia’s internal and external information operations, while distinct from one another, interact and cannot be understood in siloes. The Kremlin's domestic information control helps it generate resources for Russia’s military efforts abroad.

• Born out of need: Russia is not weak, but it is weak relative to its goals. The Kremlin uses cognitive warfare to close gaps between its goals and its means. The main purpose of Russia’s cognitive warfare is to generate a perception of reality that allows Russia to win more in the real world than it could through the force it can actually generate and at a lower cost.

• Targets reasoning: The primary objective of Russian cognitive warfare is to shape its adversaries’ decision-making and erode our will to act. The Kremlin aims to decrease US and allied will and capability to resist Russia to lower the barrier to achieving its aims. Russia needs its opponents to do less so that Moscow can achieve more of its goals. The Kremlin uses cognitive warfare to create a world that would simply accept, and not fight, Russian premises and actions.

• A vulnerability: The Kremlin is overly dependent on cognitive warfare. The Kremlin’s ability to achieve its objectives abroad critically depends on the West’s acceptance of Russia’s assertions about reality. Putin’s presidency also depends in part on his ability to maintain a perception that an alternative to his rule is either worse or too costly to fight for.

• Predictable, hence tarqetable: Russian cognitive warfare supports the Kremlin’s strategic aims, which have not changed in years. This fact presents opportunities for defense and offense. The Kremlin also relies on a set of predetermined messages, making it hard for the Kremlin to rapidly pivot to new information operations.

The United States should not counter Russian cognitive warfare symmetrically. The key to defending against Russian cognitive warfare is doing so at the level of strategic reasoning while resisting the urge to chase Russia's tactical disinformation efforts. Debunking individual false narratives only grapples with the tactical level of Russian cognitive warfare and is insufficient for countering Russian cognitive warfare. The United States and its allies should understand what premises the Kremlin wants us to believe at any given time and over generations, which decisions of ours it is trying to shape, and in support of which aims. The United States and its allies can then defend against Russian cognitive warfare by rejecting the very premises the Kremlin is trying to establish in its effort to have us reason from those premises to conclusions that benefit Russia.

Much more at https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/primer-russian-cognitive
-warfare

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Tuesday, July 1, 2025 2:19 PM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia's Officials Keep Contradicting Putin on War Economy

By Brendan Cole | July 1, 2025

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-economy-gref-2092918

Russia's economy faces a tough 2026, the head of the country's biggest bank has said in the latest official warning about the country's finances, which is at odds with Vladimir Putin's rosier public pronouncements.

German Gref, CEO and chairman of the executive board of Sberbank, said a spike in inflation and the high key interest rate were problems that could not be solved quickly. His comments come only days after Russian Central Bank Governor Elvira Nabiullina and economy minister Maxim Reshetnikov issued their own warnings about wartime growth.

This is despite Putin dismissing concerns about Russia's economy which he insisted remained strong despite sanctions and war.

Even in an authoritarian country like Russia, there is freedom in economic policy debates, Vasily Astrov, an expert on Russia's economy told Newsweek on Tuesday, but each official will make statements that reflect the interests of their groups.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian finance ministry for comment.

Why It Matters

Russia has faced economic turbulence caused by sanctions imposed after Putin's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that are aimed at choking Moscow's military machine.

Strong GDP has been driven by high military spending amid predictions for harder times as inflation and high interest rates take their toll.

But despite Putin's rhetoric, his officials are becoming more vocal about the impact of sanctions, falling oil prices, wartime spending, and labor shortages.

Gref's warning is the latest signal of a wider economic slowdown in Russia that could raise questions on Moscow's ability to sustain the war.

What To Know

At Sberbank's meeting on Monday, Gref said the quality of his bank's loan portfolio is deteriorating, with a growing number of requests for debt restructuring by retail and corporate borrowers.

In comments reported by business newspaper RBC, Gref also said 2026 will not be an easy year either, although much will depend on geopolitics and on how the dynamics of GDP growth will develop.

He said another factor will be the key rate set by the Central Bank, which was lowered from 21 percent to 20 percent in June. The high rate is aimed to curb official inflation of 9.9 percent although analysts say it stifles investment.

Gref's comments follow a somber warning he gave at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum last month, when he referred to a "perfect storm" of problems for the economy. These included real interest rates between the key rate of 20 percent and annual inflation of 10 percent hurting business profits and forcing companies to postpone investment.

At the same event, Central Bank head, Nabiullina, credited for steering the wartime economy, said growth had been predicated on free labor resources but that many of these "have really been exhausted" and that a new model was needed.

Meanwhile, economy minister Reshetnikov said current business sentiment pointed to Russia being on "the brink of transitioning into recession."

However, Putin quoted Mark Twain when asked at the forum whether his war in Ukraine was "killing" the Russian economy, by replying "rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated" as he said growth in the country outpaced global rates.

Astrov, from the Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, told Newsweek there is still a lot of freedom in Russia on economic policy debates unlike in countries, such as Turkey for example, so it was not surprising there were different opinions by officials.

Often these differences can be traced to officials' respective affiliation and because high interest rates suppress economic activity, economy minister Reshetnikov is arguing for lowering them and portrays the situation negatively, he said.

But Central Bank head Nabiullina is downplaying the risks because acknowledging them openly would be tantamount to self-criticism, given that her tight monetary policy has been the most important factor behind the recent slowdown. This is why she is talking about a planned cooling of an overheated economy, Astrov said.

He said that he was almost sure that Nabiullina will ease monetary policy further, very likely at the next meeting in July, justifying it with the recent decline in inflation, rather than risk economic stagnation and recession.

What People Are Saying

German Gref, head of Sberbank, Russia's largest bank on Monday: "2026 promises to be not the easiest [year] either. That is why we need to get in good shape in 2025.

"Much will depend on geopolitics, on how the dynamics of GDP growth will develop…but it is already clear that it will not be simple, because, in fact, the first half of 2026 is already visible."

Maxim Reshetnikov, Russian economy minister, June 19 at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum: "Based on current business sentiment, it seems to me we are on the brink of transitioning into recession."

Elvira Nabiullina, head of Russia's Central Bank, June 19: "We have been growing for two years at a fairly high rate due to the fact that free labor resources were used... "But many of these resources have really been exhausted."

Russian President Vladimir Putin told the same forum: "Rumors of [the Russian economy's] death are greatly exaggerated."

Vasily Astrov, Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies: "There is still quite a lot of freedom in Russia when it comes to economic policy debates, the state of economy, unlike in Erdogan's Turkey, for example. So, it is not surprising that there are different opinions expressed by various officials."

What Happens Next

In Q1 2025, Russia's economy expanded 1.4 percent year-on-year, its slowest pace in two years and the World Bank forecasts further sluggish growth amid assessments of underlying productivity stagnation.

Meanwhile, a banking crisis in Russia looms because of growing defaults not yet reflected in official statistics, with problem loans possibly reaching 3.7 trillion rubles ($47.3 billion) or one-fifth of the banking system's capital, according to Bloomberg.

Current and former banking officials told the outlet there is a growing risk of a debt crisis in the next year if circumstances don't improve.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 6:51 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Europe and America cannot agree on NATO goals because of Trump

By Hans Petter Midttun | July 2, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/02/natos-shortest-summit-reveals-i
ts-deepest-crisis/

NATO just held its shortest summit in history. One page. 450 words.

Compare that to last year’s Washington Summit: 5,400 words covering everything from China’s rise to Africa’s instability, from cyber threats to Ukraine’s path toward membership. The Washington Declaration addressed strategic competition, Iran’s destabilizing actions, the deepening partnership between China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and their mutual attempts to undercut the rules-based international order. https://www.nato.int/cps/cn/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm

What happened to the other 5,000 words?

They disappeared because America and Europe no longer agree on what threatens them, who their enemies are, or what NATO should do about it. They no longer share values and principles. The Hague Declaration reads like a divorce settlement—the bare minimum both sides could stomach. https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_236705.htm

Member states agreed to spend 3.5% of GDP on defense by 2035 and count Ukraine aid as NATO spending. That’s it. No mention of Russia’s horrific, unjustified and unprovoked war against Ukraine. No plan for deterring future aggression. No roadmap for Ukrainian NATO membership.

Even more telling: the declaration omitted Russia’s ongoing hybrid war against NATO territory itself—the sabotage, assassinations, cyberattacks, forced displacement, human trafficking, and irregular migration that continue across Alliance borders without meaningful consequence.

The war Russia wages on NATO soil

Russian operatives sabotage critical infrastructure across Europe. They attempt assassinations on European soil. They launch cyberattacks on government networks. They disrupt navigation signals. They violate the airspace and territorial waters of NATO member states. They run disinformation campaigns targeting elections. They orchestrate forced displacement operations designed to destabilize European societies. Russia is waging a hybrid war on the territory of the Alliance.

Russian intelligence services target defense contractors, government officials, and civilian infrastructure. They do so with impunity because NATO cannot agree on a response.

None of this made it into NATO’s 450-word summary. Acknowledging Russia’s hybrid war would require a unified response. America and Europe cannot agree on what that response should be.

The silence reveals America’s strategic shift. President Trump wants Europe to handle Russia alone while helping America fight China. Project 2025 spells it out: “Beijing presents a challenge to American interests across the domains of national power, but the military threat that it poses is especially acute and significant.” https://static.heritage.org/project2025/2025_MandateForLeadership_FULL
.pdf

The US does not want to commit to fighting wars in Europe but seeks to commit Europe to fighting wars in the Indo-Pacific area.

But here’s the fundamental disconnect—Europe sees Russia as the primary threat launching an actual war on European soil. Trump sees Russia as a business opportunity. While Europe wants to destroy Russia’s war economy, Trump pursues economic cooperation with Moscow.

When Europe seeks justice and accountability for Russian war crimes, Trump blocks efforts to hold Putin responsible. His peace plan rewards Russian aggression while pressuring Ukraine to surrender territory. In the UN, America now sides with Russia, China and Belarus against European resolutions on Ukraine.

Trump’s positions and rhetoric have become increasingly aligned with Putin’s, especially on Ukraine, NATO, and international law. He rewards the aggressor while pressuring the victim.

Much more at https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/02/natos-shortest-summit-reveals-i
ts-deepest-crisis/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 6:53 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Ukraine’s new M-1 Abrams tanks are ready—but their brigade might not be

Ukraine is getting 49 M-1 tanks from Australia. It risks wasting them.

By David Axe | July 2, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/02/ukraine-abrams-tanks-brigade-re
adiness/

The 47th Mechanized Brigade was recently in the throes of a leadership crisis. Citing “clueless leaders” ordering troops to execute “stupid tasks,” one of the brigade’s battalion commanders, Oleksandr Shyrshyn practically begged for his chain of command to relieve him of duty.

The 47th Mechanized Brigade got all 31 of the surplus M-1A1s the United States pledged to Ukraine in 2023. In 18 months of hard fighting, the brigade has lost at least 12 of the original M-1s: 10 destroyed, one captured and one so badly damaged it wound up as a museum piece in Ukraine.

Other M-1s have been damaged—and at least a few are probably write-offs. The 47th Mechanized Brigade may be down to half its original tank strength.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 7:45 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Trump Just Accelerated The Killing Of Ukrainians

By Phillips P. OBrien | Jul 02, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/daddy-just-accelerated-the-kill
ing

It never works out — never. The latest iteration of “Trump will be good for Ukraine” lasted three days, but sadly this might have been the most tragic. We have had a number of such moments over the last months. My favorite (in a horrifying way) was the famous Trump-Zelensky sit down in St Peters during the funeral of Pope Francis. For some reason, this picture led people to believe that Trump was honestly going to help Ukraine. (Photo of Trump, Zelensky meeting one-on-one in Vatican basilica to seek peace in Ukraine)

Trump did what he always does after such meetings. Make a bland pro-Ukrainian/anti-Russian statement and then goes back to Washington and continues to help Putin as much as possible. In case you do not remember, the statement Trump made after the St Peter’s meeting was a question that ‘Maybe he (Putin) doesn’t want to stop the war’.

It was meaningless, self-evidently true, committed Trump to nothing—and quickly forgotten.

Btw, this happened on April 26.

We had another re-run this last weekend during the Nato summit. After European leaders massaged Trump with vigor, the US president threw them a little crumb (which people weirdly thought was some great victory). In response to a question, Trump said he was thinking of sending Ukraine more air defense. The actual quote was: “We’re going to see if we can make some available”.

Well, it did not take two weeks for this nonsense to be exposed—just two days. It turns out that the US Department of Defense, at that very moment, was working to turn off as much of the remaining aid taps for Ukraine as they could—including the exact air-defense equipment that Trump mentioned. Last night the White House confirmed that the US was stopping some/all of the remaining (Biden-era) shipments of aid to Ukraine including crucial Patriot air defense systems (and other vital material).

NickSchifrin @nickschifrin
BREAKING: White House confirms it has halted weapons that Ukraine was scheduled to receive, including PAC3 Patriots, 155mm artillery rounds, GMLRS, Stinger, AIM-7, and Hellfire missiles.
@AnnaKelly47 tells me: “This decision was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries across the globe. The strength of the United States Armed Forces remains unquestioned —just ask Iran.”
10:20 PM • Jul 1, 2025 • 1.8M Views

This is a shopping list of much of the most important aid that Ukraine desperately needs to fight and without which many more Ukrainians will die. The nightly bombardment of Ukrainian cities will now be more effective for Russia, and the Ukrainian ability to strike back on the Russians will be lessened.

Just as a clarification—not only are the Patriots a crucial part of the Ukrainian air defense network, AIM-7 (Sparrow) missiles and Stingers are further key parts of the Ukrainian air defense network.

If Putin could write a wish list of the weapons he would want Trump to keep from Ukraine—this would be it.

The idea that the US needs these now is also a sham. Many of these weapons would be of dubious value in a war to protect Taiwan (and btw, the US is hardly planning for one I was recently told).

Now this decision may be revisited once the sham “assessments” are over. However even if that happens, Ukraine will have had weeks without vital supplies.

Its one more example of how the Trump administration is taking active steps to help Russia kill Ukrainians.

Maybe Europe will stop the stupid, self-destructive flattery of Trump and actually start acting in its own interest. European states, as I said in the weekend update, actually have some powerful tools to use to coerce Trump into helping Ukraine—if they had the self-respect and strategic understanding to use them.

First among these tools is the declaration that they will only buy US weapons going forward if the US also sells them weapons that they can then send on to Ukraine. The Trump administration is desperate that Europeans keep buying US weapons—and almost certainly would have to respond positively to such a position.

The sad thing is that instead of playing the weak child—Europe has some very strong cards to play with Trump. In particular, the US is keen for Europeans to continue buying US weapons (they seem to have panicked a little when they realized that in pressing for more European defense spending they might encourage the Europeans to develop their own defense industries more). Europeans could easily make offers to buy US weapons on the pledge that the US will also sell Patriots to Ukraine. It could be a very effective strategy—but it means that they would have to use some pressure on the USA. Little children do not do that.

Btw, this is not the only thing that Europeans can do—but it would arguably be the most effective; However, it requires self-respect and self-confidence.

So there we have it—another sham moment has passed, though in this case the US was actively planning on sabotaging what little support was left for Ukraine while Trump was telling his little lies.

When a Russian missile slams into a Ukrainian apartment building tomorrow night or the next, and a young couple, maybe with a newborn child, is killed, just remember:

This is “Daddy” Trump in action—this is the USA in action.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Wednesday, July 2, 2025 8:07 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Nice to ses a robust discussion on economics v financialism. Wish we had them here.

Russia's current bete noir is inflation. Bc of the 90's and afterwards, the Russian people fear inflation more than anything.

So what is causing Russia's inflation, and how to fix it?

At its heart, inflation is "too much money chasing too few goods". For nations in the throes of MMT (Modern Monetary Theory) - USA for example- there's no such thing as "too much money". They believe that spending will (somehow) stimulate a "growth" robust enough to outpace inflation.

I could spend a page on that, but I won't.

In Russia, the argument is between econonists and bankers who believe that high interest rates stifle the growth required to tame inflation, and the central banker Nabulina, who is using high interest rates - the only tool at her disposal- to combat inflation.

The proximate cause of Russia's inflation, IMHO, is lack of manpower. With so many men at the front, and twice as many in reserve, it's hard to find enough people to produce the necessary goods ("too few goods").

And since the Russian ruble is banned from international exchanges, Russia can't just buy abroad. It's a conundrum, bc China's economy is wilting bc of loss of American market, and right next door is a nation that needs extra labor power for at least the next few years. But thanks to chickenshit Chinese bankers afraid to handle the ruble due to potential secondary sanctions, trade between the nations is increasing very, very slowly,

Still, Russia can have its cake and eat it too. I believe the solution is preferential rates for productive businesses, including small and medium-sized, especially for automation.

Demand for labor in Russia will remain very high, even when the war ends, because of all of the rebuilding that'll be needed. IF the ruble is allowed back on intl exchanges, I'm sure Turkiye would love a big slice of that action.

But if not- and there's no indication that sanctions snd sec6ondary sanctions will ease up soon- automation is tge only way out of the Russian labor shortage. Loans for autonation should be priority.

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Thursday, July 3, 2025 6:03 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The suspension of US aid to Ukraine will reinforce Russian President Vladimir Putin's theory of victory that posits that Russia can win the war of attrition by making slow, creeping advances and outlasting Western support for Ukraine. Putin articulated a theory of victory in June 2024 — and has emphasized this same theory of victory since — that assumes that Russian forces will be able to continue gradual, creeping advances indefinitely and win a war of attrition against Ukrainian forces.[16] Putin's theory assumes that Russia will be able to outlast pledged Western security assistance and that Ukraine will not acquire and sustain the manpower and materiel needed to prevent these gradual Russian gains or to contest the initiative and conduct counteroffensive operations to liberate Ukrainian territory. The latest US suspension of aid will strengthen Putin's belief that time is on Russia's side and his commitment to delaying negotiations toward a peace settlement and protracting the war.

Russia remains unlikely to make operational-level breakthroughs in the near future. Future Russian gains — even relatively accelerated advances following the suspension of US aid — will likely remain gradual and creeping and result in disproportionally high losses as Russian forces still have not restored operational maneuver to the increasingly transparent battlefield. ISW has observed geolocated evidence to assess that Russian forces gained roughly 498 square kilometers in May 2025 and roughly 466 square kilometers in June 2025, and Russian gains in January to April 2025 ranged from roughly 175 to 590 square kilometers per month. These Russian gains are remarkably smaller than the 1,265 square kilometers per day that ISW assesses Russian forces were gaining at the start of Russia's full-scale invasion in March 2022.

Russia appears, however, to be preparing to undertake likely months- and years-long offensive campaigns — demonstrating the Russian military command's acceptance of continued slow, gradual advances and Putin's belief in his theory of victory. The Russian military command has recently prioritized efforts to attack Ukraine's fortress belt in Donetsk Oblast, a campaign that is likely to take Russia years to achieve at Russian forces’ current tempo.[17]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-2-2025

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Friday, July 4, 2025 6:55 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Swift Beat's American-designed Flying Robots Will Kill Russians
(It's a dream, not yet a reality)

1) Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on July 3 that Ukraine signed a memorandum on a long-term strategic partnership with US autonomous system engineering company Swift Beat, agreeing to produce hundreds of thousands of interceptor drones in 2025 that are capable of shooting down Russian Shahed drones and to expand production further in 2026.[17]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-july-3-2025

2) The company will produce interceptor drones for the Armed Forces of Ukraine to destroy Russian UAVs and missiles. Development of new innovative solutions is also planned — including interceptors for cruise and ballistic missiles, automated turrets, and reconnaissance platforms, as well as medium-class strike drones for engaging enemy targets.

https://odessa-journal.com/ukraine-and-swift-beat-sign-memorandum-to-e
xpand-production-of-unmanned-systems

3) Swift Beat, LLC
“We are led by renowned technologists who believe that highly intelligent software can preserve and protect the safety and freedom of people around the world.”

https://www.swiftbeat.com/

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Saturday, July 5, 2025 8:07 AM

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The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia ramps up use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, including WWI-era poison gas, 3 European intel services say

July 4, 2025 / 4:15 PM EDT

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/russia-ramps-up-use-banned-chemical-weapo
ns-ukraine-europe-dutch-german-intel-services-say/

Dutch Defense Minister Ruben Brekelmans said with the use of large-scale chemical weapons, Russia was again showing "its evil face."

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 7:22 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Russia Is Winning the Recruiting War. That's Also How It Could Lose.

Russia isn’t going to run out of men. But it may run out of volunteers.

By David Axe | Jul 05, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/07/05/a-million-casualties-isnt-too-m
any/

“The total number of permanently lost personnel is estimated at approximately 560,000 for Russia and 300,000 for Ukraine,” the Ukrainian Frontelligence Insight analysis group concluded in March. “This results in an approximate loss ratio of 1:1.87 for irreversible manpower losses.”

“While these numbers may seem favorable for Ukraine, it suffers from a smaller mobilization base and weaker mobilization,” Frontelligence Insight added. “Russia, with a population at least three times larger and a more effective recruitment system, should ideally suffer from a loss ratio closer to 1:3.”

“From a strictly manpower and force generation perspective,” Frontelligence Insight concluded, “our team has a negative outlook for Ukraine.”

Realistically, Ukraine could run out of troops. Russia probably won’t. That, more than any other reason, is why Russian leaders aren’t deterred by the loss of a million men. . . .

“You can only get discharged now if you’re missing both arms, both legs, or simply don’t have a head,” one former Russian soldier told Bereg, a collective of independent Russian journalists.

“Trying to get discharged legally is simply pointless,” another former Russian solider, a deserter, told Bereg. “This is a real war, and no one’s allowed to leave. And I don’t want to fight.”

“It may seem like Russia has an endless supply of manpower,” Rehi wrote, “but that’s not the case.”

The supply of people is as much about sentiment as it is the sheer availability of bodies. Rehi, for one, already senses the sentiment in Russia turning against the war. “The incentives are losing effectiveness, and fear of the front is growing,” Rehi claimed.

The Kremlin wants volunteers. It’s willing — and, for now, able — to pay for them. (with enlistment bonuses equal to several years’ pay.)

How long that lasts could determine how long the war lasts.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 9:57 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russia ramps up use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, including WWI-era poison gas, 3 European intel services say

"Saddam WMD! Chemical weapons! Biowarfare! Mushroom cloud!"

"Assad gassed his own people!"

Your reputation precedes you.

/snicker

-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 10:49 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russia ramps up use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, including WWI-era poison gas, 3 European intel services say

"Saddam WMD! Chemical weapons! Biowarfare! Mushroom cloud!"

"Assad gassed his own people!"

Your reputation precedes you.

What has always impressed me about highly articulate people, including Signym, 6ix, and Trump, is how stupid they are in practical matters. It is as if their ability to express themselves prevents their brain from usefully comprehending anything other than words. The physical world, war, business, organizations, and even their own bodies, are confusing to them, but their words comfort and protect them, barricading them from the reality all around. Predictably, Signym, 6ix, and Trump have lifetimes full of problems while the less articulate do not.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 10:50 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

What Trump—And the U.S.—Can’t Understand About Air Strikes

American leaders refuse to learn from allies and overestimate the benefits of showy tactical attacks.

By Phillips Payson O’Brien | July 5, 2025, 6 AM ET
Phillips Payson O’Brien is a professor of strategic studies at the University of St Andrews, in Scotland. He is the author of The Strategists: Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt, Mussolini, and Hitler—How War Made Them, and How They Made War.

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-iran-air-strik
es/683428/

When Donald Trump ordered air strikes on key Iranian nuclear-enrichment sites last month and immediately declared that the targets had been “completely and totally obliterated,” he was counting on a single display of overwhelming air power to accomplish a major strategic goal. Though initially hesitant to join Israel’s 10-day-old bombing campaign against Iran, the president came to believe that the United States could finish off Tehran’s nuclear ambitions all at once. After what he called a “very successful attack,” Trump demanded that Israel and Iran stop fighting, declaring, “NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!”

In reality, the U.S. attack may have only delayed the Iranian program by months. Trump ended up short-circuiting both his own efforts at diplomacy with Iran and an extraordinary Israeli campaign that required years of elaborate preparation, rendered Iran’s air-defense network inoperable, and allowed Israeli forces to methodically work through a long list of target sites across the country over the course of a week and a half. Destroying a military target from the air usually requires multiple raids on the site—not one night and a victory declaration on Truth Social. Israeli military planners had clearly hoped to enlist American help in attacking Iran but may not have anticipated that it would be for one night only.

To some extent, Trump’s approach is typical of American leaders, who have routinely underestimated the true complexities of military tasks and assumed that a burst of overwhelming force will secure U.S. objectives and allow Washington to impose its version of peace. Recent events—not just in the Middle East but also in Ukraine—suggest that smaller countries with fewer resources than the United States have a far more urgent understanding specifically of how to use air power and generally of how to defeat their enemies.

An unbounded faith in American military might, combined with a desire not to get bogged down in long foreign engagements, has led to excesses of optimism in the past: the constant escalation cycle in Vietnam, when it was said that more force would bring victory; the infamous mission accomplished banners after U.S. forces deposed Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. In conflicts since the end of World War II, the U.S. military has prevailed in individual battles, but it has won only one clear victory in a war: Operation Desert Storm in 1991. This conundrum has led to far less introspection than it deserves.

One of the reasons might be that U.S. military power has been so extensive that the military, and policy makers, have not had to think too deeply about the process of winning wars. For 80 years, the U.S. military could be deployed to occupy territory, blow up structures, or destroy an enemy force—and was able to do it. It could inflict a frightening toll on its enemies at remarkably little cost to itself.

The risk of overestimating American capabilities may be greatest in decisions about applying air power. The U.S. has the most awesome air force the world has ever seen. (Not coincidentally, the successful Desert Storm campaign involved purposeful and relentless air attacks on enemy targets.) Such power has immense costs, however, one of which is the destructive luxury of not having to think deeply about just what it means to win a war. American policy makers feel able to lecture smaller powers about what they should and should not do. Trump pushed Israel—which had, remarkably, achieved the ability to move freely in Iranian airspace—to stand down before the U.S. could reliably ascertain whether its own air strikes had been effective.

Since 2022, bad instructions from the United States have been devastating to Ukraine’s effort to fight off Russian invaders. Under the Biden administration, the United States feared escalation with Russian President Vladimir Putin and kept Ukrainians from using Western-made long-range weaponry to strike legitimate military targets inside Russia. In effect, the American veto created a large safe space in Russia, and gave the Russians the flexibility to plan and execute a hugely destructive strategic air campaign against Ukraine. Until Ukraine began developing its own systems, it was nearly powerless to stop the Russians from unleashing drones and missiles on Ukrainian military and civilian targets. Instead, the Ukrainians were forced to concentrate their resources on a bloody land war fought in trenches and by drones; despite large casualties on both sides, the fighting has produced only tiny changes in territorial control.

Ukraine has done its best to change this dynamic, by working to expand its own long-range capabilities and using those weapons against targets in Russia. The tragedy for Ukrainians is that the Biden administration stood in their way for three years — and was succeeded by a Trump administration that, perhaps because of a broad sympathy with Putin, seems intent on letting Russia win.

For all its advanced weaponry, the United States would benefit from listening to smaller, more inventive militaries that are fighting larger adversaries in a rapidly evolving technological environment. Ukraine, for example, has developed enormous expertise in designing and deploying unmanned aerial vehicles, which—as the recent attacks on Russian airfields thousands of miles away from the Ukrainian border showed—create new vulnerabilities at traditional military facilities.

Unfortunately, nothing about recent U.S. actions suggests that the country’s leaders have any intention to learn from others. Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon seems obsessed with “lethality”—the idea that the United States wins wars by bringing greater lethal force to every direct engagement with the enemy. But although that focus might sound macho and hyper-militaristic to him and Trump, it may be the precursor to more events like Trump’s Iran strikes: showy tactical attacks that fail to accomplish any strategic goals of substance.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 11:21 AM

SECOND

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

The US Cuts Ukraine Off: If Only Comrade Stalin Knew!

By Phillips P. OBrien | July 6, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-140-the-us-cuts-
ukraine

This was the week that the Trump Administration (and that includes Trump himself) did what it always has wanted to do—and not only refuse to provide more aid for Ukraine, but to take back aid that was already allocated and in the process of being delivered. The amazing thing was not that this decision was taken—its that people tried to find a way to say Trump did not know and really did not support this. Its the old, “If Only Comrade Stalin Knew” claim brought to 2025 America.

For those who do not know this phrase, it was supposedly regularly uttered in the 1930s USSR by those who had been arrested and taken to the Gulag, or whose lives were ruined, as they somehow convinced themselves that their misery was not down to the great Stalin—but instead was the work of some of his evil henchmen such as Genrich Yagoda or Nikolai Yezhov. It was nonsense of course—government policy in the USSR was Stalin’s responsibility, but he rather seemed to like these kinds of ideas, and often stayed quiet during the worst moments of Stalinist oppression so that people might think he did not know what was going on. This allowed him to execute both Yagoda and Yezhov when he wanted to pivot away from one set of policies.

That the USA in 2025 has been reduced to such misplaced Stalinist hopes is one of the more depressing aspects of where we are. It seems like some people are so desperate to separate Trump from the excesses of his administration—that they are attacking his underlings and blaming them for decisions that could only be made because Trump is president.

Other than this fascinating/depressing “If Only Comrade Donald Knew” moment, the war itself is developing in a pattern that holds the chance of becoming the story of the summer. The Russians are struggling for only tiny advances as the land war becomes increasingly difficult, while the strategic air war between both sides becomes more intense.

Sadly, Comrade Donald is doing his best to aid Russia in its air war against Ukraine.
At least 14 killed, dozens wounded in Russian strikes on Ukraine, Kyiv says | CBC News
Kyiv on Thursday Evening—Brought to You With The Sincere Assistance Of Donald Trump (And The USA)

Some of the US aid, or so I have been told by Ukrainians I trust, was only a few minutes from the Polish-Ukrainian border. It was just about to cross into Ukraine, where it was desperately needed, especially for air defense. And then the US swooped in early this week and stopped it in its tracks. Even though this aid for Ukraine had been approved by Congress and President Biden and already allocated and transported to Europe, the Trump administration decided that it was not going to be delivered, but instead would head back to the USA (where it was not needed—more on that below). “Daddy” was swooping in for the kill.

And what important aid it was. Among the weapons snatched away from Ukraine at the last moment, were key parts of the Ukrainians' layered air defense network, including Patriot missiles, the AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missile, and shorter-range Stinger missiles”.

Combined these systems have taken a heavy toll on attacking Russian air assets, including the most advanced cruise and ballistic missiles. If you wanted to take away aid and hurt Ukraine the most at this difficult time, this is precisely what you would do. Moreover, this was a decision that has no real strategic rationale for the USA. Internal sources in the Pentagon immediately leaked the fact to NBC news that there was no need for the halt and that “providing continued assistance to Ukraine would not drain U.S. supplies below a required threshold needed to ensure military readiness.”

Yes, the decision started in the Pentagon, and that led some to say that Trump might not have been involved and did not approve. In an extreme act of displacement, lots of anger was directed at Undersecretary State of Defense Elbridge Colby. Look, I’m no fan of Colby, he and I have even feuded on twitter, but blaming Colby is real shooting the messenger stuff. Btw, supposedly Trump does not like Colby that much, regardless of the latter’s attempts to ingratiate himself. It was said that Colby was very unimpressive in his interview for a job with Trump after the election, which is why he was lower down the Pentagon totem pole than he had hoped.

Colby and Defense Secretary Hegseth, who also had to ok the decision, would only have tried this without Trump’s explicit approval if they believed the president would support the decision regardless (and so far they seem to have been right). How do we know this? Well, the Pentagon had a few months earlier, in February, done something similar, and that time had to give way. Trump acolytes would only do it again if they were confident in the president’s response.

Note: We still do not know that Trump did not explicitly ok this decision verbally—perhaps he did.

And this time, the White House came out and instantly supported the decision as well. As was stated in an official communique: “Anna Kelly, a White House spokesperson, also has noted this decision was made to put America’s interests first following a DOD review of our nation’s military support and assistance to other countries around the globe.”

The most amazing thing about those who tried to separate Trump from this decision is that the president himself has admitted during the course of the week that these systems are vital and Ukraine desperately needs them. His exact quote was:

“They (the Ukrainians) do want to have the antimissile missiles, OK, as they call them, the Patriots…And we’re going to see if we can make some available. We need them, too. We’re supplying them to Israel, and they’re very effective, 100% effective. Hard to believe how effective. They do want that more than any other thing.”

Trump knows exactly what is happening and is doing what he always does when he makes a decision, but does not want to take full responsibility—he plays for time but lets the decision bed in. He could as president countermand the order at any time, but he has not. He is throwing out sweet words but taking no concrete steps. Indeed, he seems to actually enjoy tormenting the Ukrainians and showing his power by saying that he is aware how much they want his help—while stringing them on.

The fact that he is talking about future help for Ukraine’s anti-air efforts while refusing to resend aid that was actually at the border is typical. He is aware that Ukraine is under real pressure in the air, has supported the decision to weaken Ukraine further in this area, and is throwing chaff into the air by talking about helping Ukraine in the future.

If he really wanted to help Ukraine, he would start by doing two things. The first would be to send the aid that was destined for Ukraine in the first place and the second is to sell Ukraine what it needs now. That he is refusing to do either of these things shows his true intentions.

So yes—Comrade Donald knows. And as long as the policy remains in place, he strongly supports it. I know that many of his favored voices, such as the New York Post and Wall Street Journal, have been pleading with him to change policy—but so far he is not. This is a pretty convincing sign that he does not want to.

What made the decision so perverse is that it was enforced just a few days before Trump and Putin were set to discuss whether the Russians were interested in negotiating a ceasefire in the war. The call duly happened on Thursday, and Putin clearly more emboldened by the fact that the Trump administration was shafting Ukraine (once again) seemed to laugh in the face of the US president. Trump was forced to publicly admit right after the call that “I didn’t make any progress with him (Putin) at all,”.

It's hard to imagine anything greater than the stupidity of saying you want to negotiate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, and then turning around and weakening Ukraine enormously while emboldening Russia. It's so stupid, one almost has to assume it’s intentional.

It was soon even worse for Trump. Not only did Putin reject his request for some concrete movements for a ceasefire, the Russian dictator then had his forces launch their largest air attack of the war on Ukrainian cities including Kyiv—the exact kind of attack that the US was encouraging with its arms freeze on Ukraine. According to the Ukrainian military, the attack on Thursday night/Friday morning involved 540 drones and 11 missiles.

These kinds of mass attacks are becoming the norm—and will almost certainly grow as Russian manufacture of UAVs and Missiles continues to grow. As it is, attacks of this size are almost impossible to fully intercept, and in this case a significant number of the attacking Russian systems made it through Ukrainian air defense. The result was a series of fires and craters around the Ukrainian capital.

Trump, naturally, cried his crocodile tears about Putin humiliating him. He claimed on Friday that he was “very disappointed” with Putin’s response—which is a comment dripping with insincerity. His government provided support for the Russian attack by freezing aid to Ukraine, aid he could unfreeze at any time. Not only is Putin humiliating him, but Trump is encouraging the humiliation. Stop listening to what he says—only look at what he does.

As Ukrainian air defense weakens, it will only get worse; courtesy of the USA it should always be added.

The ground advances of Russian forces continue to be painfully small and even seem to be decreasing. A few weeks ago we heard about the great Russian Sumy offensive—well that has not moved forward in more than 3 weeks, the only change being a small Ukrainian advance.

In the larger perspective, the battle line is really not changing in a material way. The Ukrainians still control Pokrovsk (which was pronounced doomed last August) as well as parts of Chasiv Yar, Toretsk, and other towns which were said to be strategic targets of the Russians (though really are not strategic).

To put the Russian advances in context, here is the present map around Chasiv Yar (which was supposed to fall to the Russians in May 2024)

You can see how close to Bakhmut (from which the Ukrainians withdrew in March 2023), Chasiv Yar happens to be (11.8 kilometres is 7.3 miles). This has been a major Russian area of operations for more than two years—and this is where we are.

The thing to note is that advances might get even more difficult (I will write a piece on that soon) in the coming months. Logistics are getting pushed further and further back from the front line, so that attacking forces are going to have to struggle even to reach the line of contact.

It points to why the strategic air war is in many ways the dynamic area of the war (and could be decisive). The land war is what it is, and neither side has the ability to drastically change it. If this war is to be won or lost, it will probably be because one side asserts itself in the ranged war. Europe will have to make up for the fact that the US is now serving Russian interests in this area.

Have a good rest of the weekend, everyone.

The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two

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Sunday, July 6, 2025 2:53 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

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Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
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Originally posted by second:
Russia ramps up use of banned chemical weapons in Ukraine, including WWI-era poison gas, 3 European intel services say

"Saddam WMD! Chemical weapons! Biowarfare! Mushroom cloud!"

"Assad gassed his own people!"

Your reputation precedes you.
What has always impressed me about highly articulate people, including Signym, 6ix, and Trump, is how stupid they are in practical matters. It is as if their ability to express themselves prevents their brain from usefully comprehending anything other than words. The physical world, war, business, organizations, and even their own bodies, are confusing to them, but their words comfort and protect them, barricading them from the reality all around. Predictably, Signym, 6ix, and Trump have lifetimes full of problems while the less articulate do not.

Says the one who bloviates for pages and pages.

Like you just did.

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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

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