Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

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

Behind the ads Ukrainian units make to compete with one another

Amid a nationwide shortage of soldiers and growing competition among brigades, Ukraine’s military units are turning to advertising agencies to help them stand out and boost recruitment.

By Artem Moskalenko | Aug 06, 2025

https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/behind-the-ads-ukrainian-units-mak
e

Imagine looking at a billboard in the street and instead of seeing a sign for Coca-Cola or Adidas, you lock eyes with a Ukrainian soldier. He is urging you to join his brigade.

This isn’t some sci-fi vision taken out of a movie: it’s everyday life in Ukraine, where the challenge of military recruitment has moved far beyond the front lines.

Military ads are now found in the metro stations, in big billboards in the streets, and even show up on coffee mugs and shirts.

Alina Tkachenko, the brand leader at one of Ukraine’s most popular advertising agencies, is one of those helping ensure that these ads spread to even more cities.

“The full-scale war has added a lot of creativity to the Ukrainian military, including its advertising. Billboards and videos [television advertising] have appeared everywhere. This [military service] has become a part of the advertising market,” she said.

Ukraine is unique in the world in that its units compete with each other for talent. The government approved a decentralized recruitment process in the fall of 2024.

If young soldiers voluntarily sign up for a brigade, they won’t be conscripted into a needs-of-the-army role. This creates an incentive for would-be soldiers to shop around, and for brigades to compete for stronger reputations.

At a time when manpower shortages on the frontline have become a serious problem, each brigade has been finding ways to attract more soldiers.

It’s a deeply human problem that hints at what motivates people – what message would get people off the couch to risk their lives for their country?

See Billboards and Videos at https://www.counteroffensive.news/p/behind-the-ads-ukrainian-units-mak
e

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

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Thursday, August 7, 2025 8:25 AM

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

Ukraine Won’t Surrender

Tim Mak and Adrian Karatnycky on battlefield reality, stalled U.S. support, and why Ukraine won’t give up

By David Frum | August 6, 2025, 10:30 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/archive/2025/08/david-frum-show-u
kraine-tim-mak-adrian-karatnycky/683772/

I think that the fact that Europe is stepping up with cash and with collaboration on potentially on weapons production—Ukraine has, as I say, been developing its long-range missiles.

I’ve always believed that the only way to get Russia to negotiate is to hit the Russian power grid in places like Moscow and St. Petersburg, which together represent 35 to 40 percent of the Russian GDP. If you can knock these things out for 5 percent of the time, it’s a huge impact or, you know, bigger impact than sanctions on Russian growth, and it brings the war in a more dramatic way, and it is a legitimate war target because there are many missile- and military-production facilities in the Moscow and St. Petersburg areas. And I think that the reciprocity, the ability for Ukraine to respond, would probably reduce the Russian attacks on the civilian targets in Ukraine, which have really been scaled up in the last two months.

Frum: Tim, what’s your view of what happens if the United States is even somewhat successful in forcing some kind of unfavorable peace?

Mak: I want to challenge the underlying assumption. I don’t think that they’re going to be able to force a peace on Russia’s terms. I remember in the very first weeks of the war, I heard someone say that as long as there’s a 12-year-old kid in Ukraine with a plastic fork, there’s going to be resistance to Russia and Russian occupation. There is no appetite whatsoever in Ukraine for accepting a peace that would permit the takeover of additional territories simply through diplomacy. And that’s what, I think, in the near term, a diplomatic outcome would look like.

Ever since the Oval Office dustup between Zelensky and Trump, I think Ukrainians have increasingly, to Adrian’s point, adopted the view that they need to have a backup plan and that they need to be able to be more self-sufficient and less reliant, even psychically, on American support for morale or equipment or whatever.

And so I think over the last few months, those plans have been put in place. I don’t think you’ll see that Ukraine will accept just a dictated peace in which they have to give up huge amounts of sovereignty and territory and freedom of action in order to achieve a short-term peace—which, by the way, no Ukrainian believes, or very few Ukrainians believe, would be sustainable in the long term. They believe that this would just be the prelude to the next war, which is coming in a matter of a few years.

Frum: Is there any voice—Adrian, you’ve chronicled the transformation of Ukraine from a culture and a people into a state. Is there any voice in the Ukrainian state system that would be willing to play ball with the Trump-Witkoff vision of the Ukrainian future?

Karatnycky: No. I mean, I think there may be a residual 5 percent of people with a kind of Soviet mentality and maybe a few percent who feel comfortable being in Russia’s embrace. But I would say, the society is as consolidated as ever in Ukrainian history. The culture is as dynamic as ever. This is like the high point of Ukrainian unity, and I think that that’s actually a counterweight to the earlier part of our discussion.

The Ukrainian people are united in the purpose of defending their way of life, their culture, their—to an extent—language, their civilization, which they see as a more open one than what Russia offers. And this unity is not going to be broken by disputes about anti-corruption policy or even some inordinate concentration of power by the president. That they will stick together. They will fight. And I think eventually, they will resolve this in a way that defends the existence of a persistence of a sovereign state.

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

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Thursday, August 7, 2025 9:14 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

they monitor tv propaganda from Russians

Igor Korotchenko says Russia's strikes bring peace

Trump to meet Putin soon, the Kremlin says as a White House deadline looms on Ukraine?

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-poll-trump-sanctions-dea
dline-7cefb2df66f494f58a16b684a2c76687

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Friday, August 8, 2025 7:23 AM

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

Russia has yet to seize roughly 6,500 square kilometers of Donetsk Oblast, or about 25 percent of the region. Russian advances aimed at enveloping Pokrovsk have accelerated in recent weeks, but Russian forces have spent the last 18 months trying to seize an area of about 30 square kilometers.[19] Russian forces have been fighting to seize Chasiv Yar (pre-war population of 12,000) since April 2024, and it took Russian forces 26 months to advance 11 kilometers from western Bakhmut to western Chasiv Yar.[20] Russian forces in the Chasiv Yar and Toretsk directions are increasingly threatening the southern tip of Ukraine's fortress belt in Donetsk Oblast at Kostyantynivka.[21] Kostyantynivka is roughly 30 kilometers from Slovyansk, the northern tip of the fortress belt, and the cities in the fortress belt (Kostyantynivka, Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk, and Slovyansk) collectively had a pre-war population of roughly 373,000. Russian forces have not demonstrated the capacity to seize cities of this size since mid-2022, and ISW continues to assess that the seizure of the fortress belt will be a difficult, multiyear effort.[22]

Future Russian operations to seize the entirety of Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts will require significant river crossing operations that Russian forces have historically struggled to complete since 2022. Russian forces still have to seize roughly 7,200 square kilometers of Zaporizhia Oblast (about 26 percent of the region) and roughly 7,000 square kilometers in Kherson Oblast (about 26 percent of the region). Russian gains in the Zaporizhia direction in the past two years have mostly consisted of advances in areas that Ukrainian forces liberated during their Summer 2023 counteroffensive, and Russian forces have yet to seize Orikhiv (roughly 35 kilometers southeast of Zaporizhzhia City).

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-7-2025

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

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Friday, August 8, 2025 8:11 AM

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

In the military, the war in Ukraine is over

With both armies exhausted and increasingly powerful drones stifling any offensive attempts, Putin's insistence on prolonging the invasion makes no military sense

By Alberto Rojas | Aug 8, 2025 - 06:16 ET

https://www.mundoamerica.com/news/2025/08/08/6895ce25e85ece9f0d8b4599.
html

If any term can define the current military situation in Ukraine, it is "kill zone" or death zone. It refers to the place where weapons of all calibers, drones, aerial bombs, or mines can kill you. Since the beginning of this invasion, the bloodiest conflict of the century so far, the death zones have only increased.

In the early months of the invasion, what determined the dimensions of these lethal zones was the artillery range of both armies, about 10 kilometers on either side of the front line. But drones have changed the war to a level that can only be compared to what the invention of gunpowder did in the 9th century in China.

Today, there are already drones capable of attacking enemy infantry, armored vehicles, and logistical lines from 40 kilometers away, multiplying the death zones in just over three years. What impact does this robotic presence in the sky have on the war? A significant one. Currently, thousands of quadcopters are flying over all positions, trenches, fortifications, gray areas, and supply lines on both sides of the front line. Moreover, above them fly even more powerful spy drones that, with their powerful eye, can see from a kilometer high if a soldier has shaved that morning. When their batteries run out, another drone takes off and replaces it, even at night, as they have night vision.

In other words, never have armies been so hyper-vigilant, never has the life of the infantry been so miserable, hidden underground even to relieve themselves for weeks without rotation, as leaving exposes them to mortal danger. Even wounded evacuations are done at night and at full speed.

In this context, breakthrough operations, even those carried out with armored vehicles, are detected before they even start and crushed by artillery and drones from a distance before they can fire a single shot. Current technology prevents armies from making significant advances in depth and defenders from collapsing. In other words, offensives in Ukraine have lost their military sense for any force other than the extension of a brutal and dehumanized dictatorship that no longer cares about its own casualties.

War never makes sense, but even less so in these conditions where Russia's operations focus more on terrorizing and punishing civilians in rear cities than on victories on the front. That is why today the key weapon in this effort is the Iranian-origin Shahed drone with a Chinese microchip: it is a slow and predictable device, but so cheap (around 22,000 euros) that it can be launched in swarms to overwhelm Ukrainian defenses. Furthermore, Russian production of this winged terror has increased from about 100 to 500 per day. Its sound, like that of a moped, is reminiscent of the terrible V-1 rockets that the Nazis launched over London in 1944.

Russia has been trying for over a year to surround four cities that only exist on paper: Pokrovsk, Konstantinivka, Siversk, and Kupiansk. In all cases, the operations follow the same pattern: assaults on motorcycles, golf carts, or on foot to try to take and occupy Ukrainian positions. Sometimes Russia needs weeks of waves to conquer a trench occupied by four guys in the middle of nowhere. Until they run out of ammunition and then have to abandon the position in a hurry until the next time. Like a spreading stain, Russia was in Avdivka at the beginning of 2024 and is now at the gates of Pokrovsk, 35 kilometers away. Its propaganda presents it as great victories, when in reality all it shows is its inability to win the war once and for all after almost four years of carnage.

Both armies are exhausted, although for different reasons. Zelenski has not wanted to mobilize those under 25, resulting in his army having an average age between 45 and 50 and enormous difficulties in recruiting. Russia has fewer problems in obtaining manpower but has to offer increasingly higher salaries, and the number of new contracts decreases every month. In 2024, there were about 50,000 monthly. Today, there are about 30,000.

Ukraine receives a continuous trickle of Western military equipment. For many analysts, Europe and the US could do much more in this effort, but the fact is that huge shipments of weapons and ammunition land every week at the border with Poland to then be distributed along the Ukrainian front. As long as this flow continues and the European Union continues to support the Ukrainian state, it will be difficult for the Ukrainian army to collapse. Furthermore, with drone supremacy on the battlefield, the war has become more affordable for Kiev. Most of these devices (60% quadcopters and 100% long-range) are already locally produced.

Russia, on the other hand, is depleting its Soviet reserves from the Cold War, which were huge but not eternal. However, it has the arsenals of North Korea and Iran, loyal allies that, combined with Chinese technology, can meet Russian needs to some extent. Another issue is the true state of the Russian economy, boosted by the war effort but at the same time burdened by the enormous expenditure that is depleting Russian national funds. Any other leader would have long considered stopping the war as a useless instrument. But we are talking about Putin, a resentful and obsessed Putin with the imperial past.

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

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 6:47 AM

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

Another typical day on the battlefield. The Ukrainians slaughter Russians, and the Russians say it didn't happen. Also: Join the Russian Army and receive a signing bonus equal to 5 years' pay because the Army is so safe that Putin doesn't have to bribe patriotic Russians with debts to become soldiers.

Ukrainian intelligence attacks Russian air defence brigade on Russian soil, source says at least dozen soldiers killed

By Valentyna Romanenko | Friday, 8 August 2025, 17:35

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/08/8/7525324/

Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU) carried out a special operation in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai on Friday 8 August, resulting in at least a dozen Russian service members being wiped out.

Source: an Ukrainska Pravda source in intelligence

Details: The source said that DIU attacked a military unit belonging to the 90th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade in the settlement of Afipsky in the Krasnodar Krai on the morning of 8 August.

Two explosions were heard near the checkpoint of the military unit, resulting in the death of at least 12 service members and leaving dozens of soldiers injured and equipment destroyed, the source said.

Local media and channels reported two explosions in Afipsky, while local secret services blocked the area and imposed an "anti-terrorist operation" regime. Ambulances and emergency and special service vehicles gathered at the scene.

Meanwhile, to cover up the sabotage at the military unit, Russian media circulated claims that the explosions were caused by faulty gas-cylinder equipment in a vehicle. Furthermore, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) is reportedly trying to erase mentions of the incident from mainstream and social media, the Ukrainska Pravda source added.

For reference: The 90th Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, which was attacked in the special operation, is involved in Russia’s armed aggression against Ukraine in Kherson and Zaporizhzhia oblasts.

Background: On 7 August, the Ukrainian defence forces confirmed a successful strike on the Afipsky oil refinery in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai.

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

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 7:54 AM

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

Despicable: Very Effectively Done

Trump Hands Putin A Win-Win Scenario, Which Was Always The Plan

By Phillips P. OBrien | Aug 09, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/despicable-very-effectively-don
e

Can you respect evil when its exceptionally well done? Is it possible to recognize the skill and planning that goes into an extremely well-laid out, devious and, regrettably, effective trap? Is that possible even if those who are trapped are the good guys and those laying the trap are not?

(Answer Below)

I am asking these questions because we have and are still witnessing an extraordinarily effective example of a despicable action being plotted, activated and now unfolding in front of our very eyes. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have, with some skill, maneuvered Ukraine and the rest of Europe into a terrible position—one from which we will soon see Putin handed a win-win outcome from Trump.

The whole idea that Trump would ever sanction or be tough on Russia was a sham from the start. Trump never had any intention of doing anything to harm or even slightly weaken Putin—far from it. The American president has been entirely consistent and loyal to Putin, and has been working assiduously to get the Russian dictator the best possible deal. He has always wanted to see Ukrainian land transferred to Putin, to make sure Ukraine was kept out of NATO and had no US security guarantees, to have Putin exonerated from the war crime charge and, crucially to have economic sanctions on Russia almost entirely (or even entirely) relaxed.

All his seeming inconsistencies (which were not inconsistencies) were aimed at achieving such a deal for Putin. First, Trump tried to bully the Ukrainians generally and President Zelensky in particular into taking this “deal”. The humiliating meeting at the White House was the key moment in that strategy—though the Ukrainians resisted and Europeans were showing what must have been worrying signs of independence from the USA in reaction.

So Trump pivoted, skilfully it must be admitted, and acted like he never meant any of that, that he was eager now to get tough on Putin, that he really wanted to help Ukraine, and that the USA could be a reliable defense partner for Europe. This was all built on the supposed notion that he was appalled at the Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians—which should have been a tell. Sociopaths do not care about other people.

However, Trump’s “pivot” was taken seriously by far too many. We were told that crippling sanctions were coming on Russia, that Trump was going to apply brutal pressure on Putin, than weapons were going to start flowing in large quantities to Ukraine to help the Ukrainians turn the tide on the battlefield. Such narratives were spread far and wide, egged on by Trump himself who could drop a tweet on Truth social or make a side remark from the Oval Office and people would lose their minds.

In fact last week this sham reached its high points. We were assured that Trump had a new deadline (yesterday, Friday 8 August) which would trigger the most awesome sanctions on Russia. And guess what. On the evening of 7 August the Russians attacked Ukrainian civilians in Bucha and Odesa—the kind of attack that they have been doing for years—and Trump rewarded Putin with a summit meeting in Alaska.

Quote:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
The highly anticipated meeting between myself, as President of the United States of America, and President Vladimir Putin, of Russia, will take place next Friday, August 15, 2025, in the Great State of Alaska. Further details to follow. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
6.53k ReTruths 28.5k Likes Aug 08, 2025, 11:03 PM

And stories started circulating that Trump was working with Putin to cement in the Russian’s territorial conquests, etc etc. https://archive.ph/YrFmr

It was a laugh in the face/spit in the eye to all of those who repeated the lie that he was now going to be tough on Putin.

What we will see emerge from Alaska will almost certainly be a catastrophe for Ukraine and Europe. Trump and Putin will cook up a brilliant deal for Russia. It will involve the ceding of a great deal of Ukraine’s legally recognized territory to Russia, no security guarantees of any value—certainly no NATO membership—for Ukraine, and the relaxation if not immediate end of all existing sanctions on Russia.

And Trump will apply massive pressure on European states and Ukraine to support this. He might even threaten to walk away from NATO if European states do not bow to “daddy’s” wishes. Remember, these are states led by some leaders who have prostrated themselves in front of Trump out of their terror that he might leave NATO.

And Ukraine will face the most terrible dilemma. Do they accept this humiliating and destructive deal? Or do they go it alone, unsure of the backing of European states?

And Putin will sit there with a win-win. Either he gets lots of Ukrainian territory, a permanently insecure Ukraine on his border that he can attack again after rebuilding his military, and the relaxation of sanctions, or, he can continue the war with the US moving on from Ukraine and Europe as is.

Trump and Putin have played pro-Ukraine supporters for fools, and sadly they have gotten what they always wanted.

Answer: No—you cannot respect evil well done. You must fear it and fight it—just never treat it as a joke or a subject of derision. Trump has been able to do so much damage because people sometimes treat him like a buffoon or a big joke. Even the TACO line is part of that (sadly). Trump has been relentless and clever in this regard, just in the service of Putin. No respect can ever be given—but also please stop making fun of it.

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

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 10:07 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

O'Brien, another looney tune.

The fact is, the USA has no more weapons to spare, especially given our commitment to Israel and Taiwan, and the EU was never a powerful military force. Trump recognizes reality. O'Brien and dildos with pens just like him keep flogging their fantasies online.

If Ukrainians want to do better than hold a grudge forever, they need to stop being our proxy (which never ends well for our proxies) and turn their attention to reconstructing their country and -especially- controlling the corruption that's sapping their economy abd degrading their living standards. It's a different kind of war, a lot more beneficial than the one that they're currently losing.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 1:45 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 3:57 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
O'Brien, another looney tune.

The fact is, the USA has no more weapons to spare, especially given our commitment to Israel and Taiwan, and the EU was never a powerful military force. Trump recognizes reality. O'Brien and dildos with pens just like him keep flogging their fantasies online.

If Ukrainians want to do better than hold a grudge forever, they need to stop being our proxy (which never ends well for our proxies) and turn their attention to reconstructing their country and -especially- controlling the corruption that's sapping their economy abd degrading their living standards. It's a different kind of war, a lot more beneficial than the one that they're currently losing.

May Signym and 6ix suffer agony for years after being in a fire. Fire will purify their evil souls.

(I expect Trump will blatantly help Russia because Ukraine won’t surrender land to Putin. May there be a purifying fire in Trump's and Putin's future, too.)

Zelenskyy on "territory swap": We will not give our land to Russian occupier

By Olga Katsimon | Saturday, 9 August 2025, 09:08

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/08/9/7525378/

Ukraine will not make territorial concessions during discussions of a peace agreement.

Source: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's statement regarding the upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin

Quote from Zelenskyy: "The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the Constitution of Ukraine. No one will deviate from this - and no one will be able to. Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier."

Details: Meanwhile, Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine is ready for real solutions that can bring peace.

Quote from Zelenskyy: "But all partners must understand what a dignified peace is. This war must be brought to an end - and Russia must end it, Russia started it and is dragging it out, ignoring all deadlines, and that is the problem, not something else."

Details: Zelenskyy emphasised that any agreements made without Ukraine’s involvement are "dead decisions" and will not bring peace. He underlined his readiness to work together with Trump and other international partners to achieve a peace that "will not collapse because of Moscow's desires".
Background:

• On 8 August, Trump said during a White House briefing that a peace deal on the Russia-Ukraine war should be expected to include "some swapping of territories".

• The meeting between Trump and Putin is scheduled to take place on 15 August in Alaska, with both sides confirming the date and location.

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

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 6:08 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Ukraine.

Trump has betrayed Ukraine, making the world immeasurably more dangerous

No US president has done more to make the West weak again than the current incumbent. It will take decades to repair the damage

By Daniel Hannan | 09 August 2025 3:13pm BST
Daniel Hannan is a former member of the European Parliament and advisor to The Board Of Trade

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/09/trump-betrayed-ukraine-wor
ld-immeasurably-more-dangerous/

This is a straightforward defeat. A defeat, not just for Ukraine, but for the values which the Anglosphere and its allies have upheld since 1941, to the immense benefit of the human race. Aggression is being rewarded. Borders are being changed by force. A brittle dictatorship has defeated a Western alliance with a combined economy forty times larger than its own. The prestige of the democracies is suffering a Suez-level hit.

As Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Alaska – a venue surely proposed by the Kremlin, both to demonstrate that Putin is again welcome in the United States and to suggest that there is nothing terribly new about ceding territory – all the momentum is with the Russian leader.

From the moment he took office, Trump has been wheedling and conciliatory with Putin, aggressive and bullying with Volodymyr Zelensky. Who can say what animates him? Perhaps he can’t forgive Zelensky for his cameo role in l’affaire Hunter Biden; perhaps, as conspiracy theorists claim, Putin has kompromat on him; or perhaps it is simply Trump’s customary deference towards dictators.

Frankly, it doesn’t much matter. Whatever his motives, Trump has behaved exactly as a Russian asset would, not only vis-à-vis Ukraine, but also by making aggressive territorial claims against Denmark and threatening Canada with annexation. His tariff policies have caused as much disruption to Western economies as his sanctions have to Russia. Putin could not have wished for more.

We do not know how much has already been settled, and there are still details to be hammered out. But the broad outlines of the proposed ceasefire deal can be glimpsed in leaks to both American and Russian media.

Putin will hang on to most of what he has seized – not just the territories he occupied in 2014, but many of the lands he has conquered since 2022 and even, according to some briefings, those parts of Donetsk that are currently under Ukrainian control. Sanctions will be eased, and we might even see more economic collaboration between the US and Russia than before 2014. In any event, the US will stop supplying weapons to Ukraine.

These concessions constitute a colossal Russian victory, regardless of what is decided on Ukraine’s Nato aspirations, formal recognition of Russian sovereignty in Crimea or precisely where the lines are frozen.

To understand the scale of the West’s defeat, we need to remember why we were backing Ukraine in the first place. Not because we thought that Zelensky was brave or handsome or even particularly democratic. Not because we believed that Ukrainians were kinder or more amusing than their Russian cousins. Not even because, long before 2022, Russia had been buzzing our airspace and overseeing cyberattacks against our infrastructure and had, on two occasions, committed acts of war against us when it ordered its operatives to carry out lethal attacks on British soil (against Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 and, unsuccessfully, against Sergei Skripal in 2018).

No, we are backing Ukraine because it is the wronged party. We are sending it weapons because it was attacked without provocation by a neighbour to whom it presented no threat. We are training its soldiers because, when Ukraine agreed to hand over its nuclear arsenal in 1994, it did so in exchange for an explicit promise that its independence would be respected within its existing borders – a promise guaranteed by Britain, the United States and (never forget) Russia.

The idea that countries should not help themselves to slices of territory is not some ancient and immutable principle. On the contrary, it dates in its current form from exactly 84 years ago, August 1941, when Churchill and Roosevelt met in Newfoundland and agreed to the Atlantic Charter, a set of rules that they wanted to shape the post-war world. Land should not be annexed by force, nor borders altered without the consent of local people. Aggression should not be rewarded. Raw materials should be accessible on world markets and sea-lanes kept open, so that there would be less incentive to invade a neighbour. Democracy and self-determination should be encouraged over autocracy.

When these ideals were proclaimed, the United States was still neutral. Four months later, after Pearl Harbor, the Atlantic Charter informed the war aims of the Allies. Its principles went on to shape the UN Charter and the Nato alliance. It is true that they were sometimes violated, for we live in an imperfect world. But they at least remained the aspiration. Until now.

It cannot be sufficiently stressed that our interest in Ukraine was to uphold the international order under which mankind had flourished since 1945. It was never about Zelensky, however gallant his initial response to the invasion.

Trumpians like to point to corruption and illiberalism in Ukraine as though they invalidate the premise of our assistance. But our 1994 guarantee was never conditional on who was in government, or what kind of government it was.

There is nothing new here. Poland was hardly a model democracy when Britain guaranteed its sovereignty in March 1939. Józef Pilsudski’s 1926 coup had created an autocratic regime which, while it stopped well short of the totalitarianism of Nazi Germany or the USSR, none the less harassed dissidents and censored media.

In much the same way, Ukraine today, while nowhere near Russian levels of despotism, is far from being a free country. This should not surprise us. As Roger Scruton used to say, the worst sin of communism was to destroy civil associations, making it hard to build the trust on which an open society must rest.

Over the past three weeks, Zelensky’s international credit has fallen almost as low as his domestic ratings. Crowds have been protesting against his decision to move against an anti-corruption body after it pointed to irregularities in some state contracts.

Few things are worse for a country’s morale than the sense that its leaders are enriching themselves, for corruption in wartime means funds that were supposed to go into artillery are disappearing into bank accounts in Cyprus.

I was unsurprised by the protests. I have watched over three years as Zelensky has weakened local government and purged critical mayors. A case might be made in wartime for cracking down on pro-Russian parties; but he cracked down almost as hard on the pro-Western parties.

Eighteen months ago, I was supposed to be sharing a platform in the US with the former Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, but he was banned from attending. I wanted to make more of a fuss, but MPs from his party begged me not to, as they did not want to hurt Ukraine’s international image.

None of this should make the slightest difference to our policy. But I fear that it will, because support for Ukraine has been presented as a goodies-and-baddies issue rather than a question of defending territorial integrity and national sovereignty. We somehow seem to find those aims sterile, dull and inadequate.

Just as Tony Blair once claimed in a party conference speech that we had joined the Second World War to end Nazism (when in fact we joined to defend Poland), so we now imagine that we came to the aid of Ukraine because Zelensky is nicer than Putin.

It may in fact now be Zelensky who has the greater incentive to keep fighting, since his presidency will not survive peace on anything like the terms proposed. But, to repeat, that does not alter the fundamentals. We were backing and supplying Ukraine because the world order that was born after 1945 lifted our species to unprecedented heights of peace and prosperity.

When Putin gets to keep the better part of his spoils, and furious Ukrainians eject their regime, every tinpot dictator in the world will get the message. Nato, the most powerful alliance on the planet, would not protect one of its friends. The old order is over. The world of the Atlantic Charter has gone. Something altogether colder and darker is on its way.

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

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Saturday, August 9, 2025 7:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Ukraine.
Trump

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Sunday, August 10, 2025 12:05 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
O'Brien, another looney tune.

The fact is, the USA has no more weapons to spare, especially given our commitment to Israel and Taiwan, and the EU was never a powerful military force. Trump recognizes reality. O'Brien and dildos with pens just like him keep flogging their fantasies online.

If Ukrainians want to do better than hold a grudge forever, they need to stop being our proxy (which never ends well for our proxies) and turn their attention to reconstructing their country and -especially- controlling the corruption that's sapping their economy abd degrading their living standards. It's a different kind of war, a lot more beneficial than the one that they're currently losing.
May Signym and 6ix suffer agony for years after being in a fire. Fire will purify their evil souls.

Wow, I lay down facts in a neutral voice and your knickers really get in a twist, don't they?

Steady there, old man. We don't know what's going to be agreed to, if anything.

And you can be sure American neocons, Eurocrats, and the Zelensky regime are going to do everything possible to sabotage whatdver steps towards peace might be taken.

I suspect that thru a combination of attacks, false flags, and a media hurricane, they'll ensure that you get the war that you so desperately want to continue.

Oh, BTW, if Daniel Hannan believes as he writes, he's another idiot you can skip reposting.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Sunday, August 10, 2025 6:00 AM

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:
The fact is, the USA has no more weapons to spare, especially given our commitment to Israel and Taiwan, and the EU was never a powerful military force. Trump recognizes reality. O'Brien and dildos with pens just like him keep flogging their fantasies online.

Wow, I lay down facts in a neutral voice and your knickers really get in a twist, don't they?

Steady there, old man. We don't know what's going to be agreed to, if anything.

And you can be sure American neocons, Eurocrats, and the Zelensky regime are going to do everything possible to sabotage whatdver steps towards peace might be taken.

I suspect that thru a combination of attacks, false flags, and a media hurricane, they'll ensure that you get the war that you so desperately want to continue.

Oh, BTW, if Daniel Hannan believes as he writes, he's another idiot you can skip reposting.

Signym, not one goddamn word you wrote is true. You don't have any citations for your fake facts and you don't have any past successes to justify optimism about your judgment.

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

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Sunday, August 10, 2025 6:00 AM

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

(I expect Trump will switch to blatantly helping Russia because Ukraine won’t surrender land to Putin.)

Zelenskyy on "territory swap": We will not give our land to Russian occupier

By Olga Katsimon | Saturday, 9 August 2025, 09:08

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/08/9/7525378/

Ukraine will not make territorial concessions during discussions of a peace agreement.

Source: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's statement regarding the upcoming meeting between US President Donald Trump and Kremlin leader Vladimir Putin

Quote from Zelenskyy: "The answer to the Ukrainian territorial question is already in the Constitution of Ukraine. No one will deviate from this - and no one will be able to. Ukrainians will not gift their land to the occupier."

Details: Meanwhile, Zelenskyy noted that Ukraine is ready for real solutions that can bring peace.

Quote from Zelenskyy: "But all partners must understand what a dignified peace is. This war must be brought to an end - and Russia must end it, Russia started it and is dragging it out, ignoring all deadlines, and that is the problem, not something else."

Details: Zelenskyy emphasised that any agreements made without Ukraine’s involvement are "dead decisions" and will not bring peace. He underlined his readiness to work together with Trump and other international partners to achieve a peace that "will not collapse because of Moscow's desires".
Background:

• On 8 August, Trump said during a White House briefing that a peace deal on the Russia-Ukraine war should be expected to include "some swapping of territories".

• The meeting between Trump and Putin is scheduled to take place on 15 August in Alaska, with both sides confirming the date and location.

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

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Sunday, August 10, 2025 6:04 AM

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

Ukraine Drone Boss's Bloody New Goal: Kill or Maim 35,000 Russians a Month

Robert Brovdi has a plan

Aug 09, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/ukraine-drone-bosss-bloody-new-goal

Ukraine’s drone chief has set a new goal for his crews—to kill more Russian troops every month than the Kremlin can recruit.

Robert Brovdi, the new head of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces, told Ukrainian-American war correspondent David Kirichenko his drone teams “must aim to kill or wound as many Russian troops as are deployed in Ukraine each month—a number estimated at 35,000,” in Kirichenko’s words.

That’s … a lot of Russians. But Brovdi has a plan.

According to Ukrainian commander-in-chief Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, 33,200 Russians were killed or wounded in July—up 800 over June.

But the Kremlin still manages to grow the roughly Russian army in Ukraine by 9,000 troops a month. There may now be 700,000 Russians in Ukraine, lending Russia a huge manpower advantage in many sectors. While Ukraine has a million people under arms, it must guard its entire border. That spreads those million troops very thinly.

Brovdi has gamified Ukrainian drone ops, rewarding units for confirmed hits by giving them better equipment. The unit Brovdi founded, the elite Birds of Magyar, logged 1,309 Russians killed or wounded in February, 1,848 in March, 1,804 in April and 2,221 in May.

There are dozens of drone companies, battalions, regiments and brigades in the USF and other Ukrainian military branches, together manned by thousands of operators. The USF’s drone units alone killed 2,548 Russians in June and wounded nearly 2,000 more, according to Syrskyi.

It might take a sixfold increase in drone kills to reach Brovdi’s goal. But the USF boss insisted it’s possible. “This can be achieved by creating a deep ‘kill zone’ between the front line and traditionally safer rear areas,” Kirichenko reported Brovdi saying.

Deep kill zone

At present, Ukraine’s first-person-view drones dominate the battlefield as far as nine miles from the line of contact. Efforts are underway to extend the drone kill zone to 25 miles. “The goal: deny Russian forces the ability to move undetected across the front,” Kirichenko wrote.

Drones that capture and repeat radio signals, thus increasing the range of the farthest FPVs, are critical to this extension. As the control system falls into place, analyst Andrew Perpetua anticipates the Ukrainian drone kill zone will stretch even farther.

“You have layers of drone superiority,” Perpetua projected. One layer at 62 miles, one layer at 31 miles, one at 25 miles, another at 12 miles and the closest at six miles.

Russia can counter with its own drones, of course. “The enemy is also not standing still—improving, enhancing the characteristics of its attack UAVs, changing tactics, increasingly using fiber-optics, artificial intelligence and machine vision for FPV and designing Geran drones with a turbojet engine,” Syrskyi said.

But Russian industry—cumbersome and often corrupt—struggles to scale and innovate at the same pace as Ukrainian industry. At the same time, Ukraine’s electronic warfare—that is, radio-jamming—is much more effective than Russia’s and often ground Russia’s wireless drones while Ukraine’s own drones fly more freely.

If Ukrainian forces can preserve their drone edge and deploy it aggressively, it might rob Russian forces of any freedom of action. “You push a critical number of drone pilots into each layer [of the drone wall], overwhelming Russian pilots and completely cutting off all logistics access,” Perpetua explained. “I mean, all artillery is cut off, all infantry cut off, out to 100 kilometers,” or 62 miles.

“As Ukraine refines its use of autonomous systems, Russia should prepare to suffer even greater losses,” Kirichenko warned. Whether those losses will ever exceed Russia’s recruitment remains to be seen.

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

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Sunday, August 10, 2025 1:26 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Sunday, August 10, 2025 2:28 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The fact is, the USA has no more weapons to spare, especially given our commitment to Israel and Taiwan, and the EU was never a powerful military force. Trump recognizes reality. O'Brien and dildos with pens just like him keep flogging their fantasies online.

Wow, I lay down facts in a neutral voice and your knickers really get in a twist, don't they?

Steady there, old man. We don't know what's going to be agreed to, if anything.

And you can be sure American neocons, Eurocrats, and the Zelensky regime are going to do everything possible to sabotage whatdver steps towards peace might be taken.

I suspect that thru a combination of attacks, false flags, and a media hurricane, they'll ensure that you get the war that you so desperately want to continue.

Oh, BTW, if Daniel Hannan believes as he writes, he's another idiot you can skip reposting.
Signym, not one goddamn word you wrote is true. You don't have any citations for your fake facts and you don't have any past successes to justify optimism about your judgment.

Uh huh. I've been posting since 2022 that Russia is going to win this war.* And now that it looks like it might happen -either now in negotiations or later on the battlefield - all you can do is plug your ears and say "Nyah nyah, I can't hear you"?

Childish.

******

* The idea of Russia winning is based on LOGISTICS. You ... and our neocons .... and Nazis and Ukie proxies ... and Eurocrats ... all make the same Nietzschian mistake: You think if you WILL something hard enough, you can make it happen. Because you're ubermensch ... superior beings capable of more than mere mortal man.

Just look at your previous post:

Quote:
Robert Brovdi, the new head of the Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces, told Ukrainian-American war correspondent David Kirichenko his drone teams “must aim to kill or wound as many Russian troops as are deployed in Ukraine each month—a number estimated at 35,000,” in Kirichenko’s words.

Well, I can aim for a lot of things, too.

I must aim to be able to flap my arms fast enough to fly.

Realistic?
Hardly.
My aim has to be possible, and even if there's nothing inherently impossible in it, I have to plan on HOW I can achieve my goal.
Does Brovdi has enough drones and, more importantly, drone operators?
If not, where and when is he going to get them?

Most importantly, does he have sufficient control of the skies so that his drones and drone operators don't get taken down by Russian drones? Apparently, Russian drones already track back electronically to drone operators and take them out. Repeater drones would seem to compound the problem.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Monday, August 11, 2025 6:01 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Well, I can aim for a lot of things, too.

I must aim to be able to flap my arms fast enough to fly.

Realistic?
Hardly.
My aim has to be possible, and even if there's nothing inherently impossible in it, I have to plan on HOW I can achieve my goal.
Does Brovdi has enough drones and, more importantly, drone operators?
If not, where and when is he going to get them?

Most importantly, does he have sufficient control of the skies so that his drones and drone operators don't get taken down by Russian drones? Apparently, Russian drones already track back electronically to drone operators and take them out. Repeater drones would seem to compound the problem.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

Signym, if the Russians were going to win, they would have already won:

Russian tank losses appear to be declining as Russian forces continue to deprioritize mechanized assaults across the frontline, indicating that the Russian command recognizes that it cannot protect vehicles from Ukrainian drone strike capabilities on the frontline and near rear. An intelligence focused open source that tracks Russian vehicle losses in Ukraine reported on August 10 that the rate of Russian tank losses continues to decline and reached its lowest levels of the war in June and July 2025.[15] The source stated that it has visually confirmed 22 Russian tank losses in June 2025 and 19 Russian tank losses in July 2025, down from 116 confirmed tank losses in June 2024 and 97 confirmed tank losses in July 2024.[16] The source indicated that Russian tank loss rates began to decrease in December 2024, which is consistent with the Russian military command's theater-wide shift from costly mechanized assaults toward gradual, creeping infantry assaults.[17] The source stated that Russian T-62 and T-90 loss rates remain consistent, T-72 loss rates have declined in proportion to the overall decline of Russian tank losses, and T-80 tank loss rates have significantly declined.[18] Russia has likely exhausted much or all of its stockpiles of T-80 tanks and is likely conserving existing stores and stockpiling newer tank models while depleting stores of other tanks and armored vehicles, including the older T-62.

Russian forces have conducted relatively few but costly mechanized assaults in Ukraine thus far in 2025 due to the effectiveness of Ukrainian drone strikes against armored vehicles, instead prioritizing infantry-led assaults and assaults on expendable motorcycles and other light vehicles.[19] Russian forces have been using armored vehicles to transport infantry to forward positions for infantry assaults, constraining Russian advances to foot pace and preventing Russia from using mechanized maneuver warfare to exploit breakthroughs and achieve operationally significant advances.[20]

It remains unclear why Russia continues to invest significantly in tank and armored vehicle development and production while Russian forces are largely unable to field these vehicles for their intended purposes, as Ukrainian forces maintain the ability to inflict high frontline and near rear armored vehicle losses with drone reconnaissance and strikes.[21] Russia may be preparing for the eventuality that Russian forces will become able to counter Ukrainian drone operations well enough to be able to field armored vehicles and restore at least some maneuver to the battlefield, but ISW has observed no indications of Russian technological advances in this direction.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-10-2025

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

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Monday, August 11, 2025 8:22 AM

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

Nordic Countries Send Message to Trump Over Ukraine Peace Deal

Published Aug 11, 2025 at 2:32 AM EDT

"Peace will only come through a combination of determined diplomacy, unwavering support for Ukraine, and consistent pressure on the Russian Federation," said the statement by Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Iceland, Latvia, Lithuania, Norway, and Sweden.

https://www.newsweek.com/russia-ukraine-trumpnordic-2111542

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

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Monday, August 11, 2025 9:33 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Well, I can aim for a lot of things, too.

I must aim to be able to flap my arms fast enough to fly.

Realistic?
Hardly.
My aim has to be possible, and even if there's nothing inherently impossible in it, I have to plan on HOW I can achieve my goal.
Does Brovdi has enough drones and, more importantly, drone operators?
If not, where and when is he going to get them?

Most importantly, does he have sufficient control of the skies so that his drones and drone operators don't get taken down by Russian drones? Apparently, Russian drones already track back electronically to drone operators and take them out. Repeater drones would seem to compound the problem.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.
Signym, if the Russians were going to win, they would have already won

And you know this ... how???

Quote:
Russian tank losses appear to be declining as Russian forces continue to deprioritize mechanized assaults across the frontline,

Ukraine also stopped using armored vehicles, bc they have none left. By that metric, Ukraine lost in 2023- 2024.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Monday, August 11, 2025 3:27 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Tuesday, August 12, 2025 7:56 AM

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

Russian officials and media are also setting informational conditions for Russia to renege on any future peace agreement to end the war. Russian State Duma Deputy Alexei Zhuravlev claimed on August 9 that US President Donald Trump is a "temporary person" due to US presidential term limits and that US presidents often renege on agreements that their predecessors reached.[16] Russian ultranationalist outlet Tsargrad, which often works to condition the Russian nationalist community to support Russia's war effort, published an opinion piece on August 11 claiming that any peace deal that Russia agrees to with Trump is a deal only with his administration, not the United States or the broader West.[17] The article further claimed that the next US administration will not adhere to any agreement that Trump concludes with Putin and that peace in Ukraine is "just a truce" and the war will resume. Russian State Duma Deputy Leonid Ivlev stated on August 10 that Ukraine's Constitution is meaningless and is simply a result of Ukrainian politicians and oligarchs bargaining.[18] The Kremlin has repeatedly claimed that the Ukrainian government is illegitimate, likely to allow Russia to renege on a peace settlement that Russia signs with Ukraine in the future at a time of Russia's choosing.[19]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-11-2025

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

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Tuesday, August 12, 2025 3:53 PM

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

8 Ukrainians man 1 km of trenches—no wonder the Russians advance

Russian troops are advancing past empty Ukrainian trenches. Do Ukraine’s leaders understand what’s happening?

By David Axe | August 12, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/08/12/empty-trenches/

Slipping past empty Ukrainian trenches northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk in recent weeks, Russian infantry quickly marched 15 km to the north. Now the Russians are threatening the village of Dobropillya, which sits astride one of two main supply lines into Pokrovsk.

“The development of the operational situation in the Dobropillya direction causes particular concern,” the Ukrainian Center for Defense Strategies warned. But you might not know it reading the latest public social media post by Gen. Oleksandr Syrsky, the Ukrainian commander-in-chief.

“Reported on the details of the operational situation at the front,” Syrsky wrote as the first reports of Russian troops in Dobropillya appeared online. “It’s a tough one,” Syrsky wrote. “But the opponent is held back.”

The opponent is not held back. The Russian 51st Combined Arms Army’s foot- and motorcycle-borne breach of the Ukrainian line northeast of Pokrovsk has deepened fast. And for good reason: Ukraine is desperately short of trained infantry, largely owing to an inefficient and sometimes corrupt mobilization system.

In many sectors of the 1,000-km front line, as few as eight Ukrainian soldiers defend a 900-m length of trenches, according to the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team. Normally, at least 200 troops would defend that much of the front. It’s no wonder the Russians were able to simply walk past empty trenches in Donetsk Oblast.

At least one former officer is worried Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky doesn’t appreciate the scale of the problem—perhaps because he’s getting bad information. “I sincerely don’t know what exactly is being reported to you,” Bohdan Krotevych, who recently quit as the chief of staff of the Azov Brigade, wrote on social media, “but I’m informing you: on the Pokrovsk-Kostiantynivka line, without exaggeration, it’s complete chaos.”
https://twitter.com/BohdanKrotevych/status/1954987845698965587

Growing chaos

“And this chaos has been growing for a long time, worsening with each passing day,” Krotevych added. “The command structures currently being appointed (or already appointed) to ‘fix the unfixable’ will most likely be blamed for the chaos that’s already unfolding.”

“The systemic problem began with the depletion of reserves,” Krotevych claimed. Ukrainian brigades may have suffered thousands of casualties capturing a small swathe of Russia’s Kursk Oblast starting a year ago—and may have suffered hundreds more while retreating form Kursk after their supply lines were severed by Russian drones seven months later in February.

Meanwhile, Ukraine’s antiquated mobilization system has consistently failed to generate enough new troops. Today, the Ukrainian military’s roughly 130 combat brigades may be short around 100,000 infantry, according to analyst Andrew Perpetua.

Brigades that should have thousands of troops instead have hundreds. “The widespread fragmentation of units across the entire front line, reports of ‘captured villages’ being touted as victories amidst failures of entire sectors, the allocation of mobilization resources to ‘cronies’ and the complete lack of strategic or even operational vision” have combined to undermine Ukraine’s defenses, Krotevych wrote.

But not according to Syrsky. “Our combat units will become stronger by receiving additional funding from the state budget,” the commander-in-chief wrote.

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

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Tuesday, August 12, 2025 4:07 PM

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

'True Fear.' A Day on Ukraine's Drone Wall, Holding Off Hordes of Russian War Bikers.

War correspondent David Kirichenko and filmmaker Ryan Van Ert survive a bloody clash in eastern Ukraine.

By David Kirichenko | Aug 12, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/true-fear-a-day-on-ukraines-drone

Past midnight in near-total darkness, Andrii prepares for a resupply run to a drone unit on the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine.

Andrii, call sign “Drunya,” is a driver for the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade. He loads a pickup truck with first-person-view drones and explosives. His truck is fitted with a radio-jammer to guard against incoming enemy FPVs.

Once the truck is ready, the dash to the front begins. Along the roads leading to the front line, trucks, civilian vehicles and heavy armor crawl forward under makeshift cages and welded plating—protection against the ever-present drone threat.

It’s a scene from Mad Max, but it’s also a stark reflection of how small, cheap drones have reshaped modern warfare.

With me is Ryan Van Ert, a filmmaker from Los Angeles. We met on a previous trip to Ukraine—and he decided to join this mission. Last year, I spent nearly a week embedded with a drone unit in Chasiv Yar, getting as close as two miles to Russian lines.

But in the past year, the kill zone has expanded greatly; now, anything within nine miles of the front is fair game for enemy drones. Before setting out, Andrii warns us: if the truck stops for any reason, don’t bother grabbing anything—just run for cover under the nearest treeline.

Wearing body armor and helmets, we speed down pitted country roads. In the passenger seat, a soldier keeps his rifle ready, prepared to shoot down any enemy FPVs that dive toward us. Fiber-optic FPVs lying in wait along the roadside have become a deadly hazard for both sides.

Andrii cues up music on the bluetooth speaker, each song somehow amplifying the tension in the air. I stare out the window, imagining Russian drones circling above, watching us from the darkness.

As we near the front, Andrii switches off the headlights, slips on his night-vision goggles—and drives the rest of the way in pitch black.

I can’t shake the worry that his speed on these cratered roads might damage the truck, forcing us to abandon it in a place where standing still is dangerous. Then another thought cuts in: here I am, alongside Ryan, two freelancers on the front, far from any newsroom safety net.

If something happens, we’re on our own. We aren’t soldiers, but we came here by choice—and that means accepting the brutal truth: here, death is not an abstract, but a very real possibility for us. Real skin in the game, as they say, in my attempt to tell Ukraine’s story from the front.

Shortly before the mission, I overheard Ryan on the phone, telling someone where he was going, just in case something happened to him. I followed suit, texting a friend that if they didn’t hear from me in a few days, this was where I was and with which unit. So they would know where to start looking.

When we reach the front-line dugout, we’re met by Bohdan—call sign “Bandera”—a drone pilot. The soldiers quickly unload the supplies before starting the return trip. Not long after, Bohdan hears over the radio that Andrii was ambushed by a Russian drone that narrowly missed his truck.

It was a close call, but he escaped unharmed.

By early morning, Bohdan warns us to brace for the daily assaults, which usually open with a barrage of glide-bomb strikes. In this part of Donetsk Oblast, near the border with Dnipropetrovsk, the fighting has been relentless in recent days.

For hours with almost no pause, Bohdan flies FPV bomber drones, trying to blunt the constant Russian advances. First, enemy infantry creep across open fields and through tree lines toward a nearby village. Then Bohdan’s drones hunt them, working in tandem with artillery to flush them out.

“Artillery can hit sectors, but it can’t chase someone into a basement,” says Andrii “Price,” who oversees the flight mission and assists Bohdan with targeting.

As the Russian assault intensifies, they begin sending in motorcycle units. Serhii—call sign “Gray”—handles the explosives, sprinting back and forth to arm a drone’s trigger before Bohdan launches.

On the video screens, motorbikes tear across the fields, kicking up plumes of dust. I translate the rapid Ukrainian chatter for Ryan; he later tells me it’s the first time he’s felt “true fear.”

Part of me wonders whether I should translate all the dangerous updates the soldiers are sharing. Only days earlier, a Russian assault had broken through, forcing Ukrainian drone pilots to drop their controllers, grab rifles and fight off enemy soldiers.

I tell Ryan this, warning him there’s a chance we might have to do the same if another breakthrough happens—that we could be fighting for our lives with rifles instead of cameras.

On one feed, a Russian motorcyclist darts through a village, weaving between farm fields and tree lines. Andrii fires off sharp commands—“Left, left … climb … higher!”—trying to keep the target locked in.

The terrain, the bike’s speed and a glitchy video stream make the pursuit difficult, but eventually they find their shot. A sudden blast flares across the screen. “Yes, big explosion!” another operator confirms from the command center.

“If a tank is spotted with cages and a jammer, it takes at least double or triple the usual number—six to eight drones—to disable it,” Bohdan says, commenting on the Mad Max–style armor now common on the front. “We used to laugh at their cages, but now we use them, too.”

The soldiers explain that, after the battle for Avdiivka in 2024—when U.S. aid was halted and Ukraine was forced to rely on its own resources—the military rapidly scaled up its use of drones across the battlefield. “If Ukraine had more artillery back then, it wouldn’t have needed to rely as much on drones,” Bohdan says.

For now, the Ukrainian infantry huddled on the front are few in number and rarely engage the Russian troops they track. Instead, they primarily act as spotters for other Ukrainian units, only fighting house to house when Russian forces push into their positions.

Andrii notes that the Russians hold a clear advantage in manpower. They send in daily waves of soldiers on suicidal missions. Most are killed, but over time, the relentless assaults can overwhelm Ukrainian positions.

Life is cheap on the Russian side, but for Ukrainians, preserving every life must be a priority.

For now, Ukraine’s “drone wall” holds. Units behind this wall, such as the Unmanned Systems Battalion of Ukraine’s 110th Separate Mechanized Brigade, make up just 2% of Kyiv’s military personnel—yet account for 1/3 of enemy casualties.

But with the Axis of Evil arming the Kremlin, and what feels like an endless conveyor belt of Russians willing to die for a paycheck, the war grinds on. If Russia is not stopped here, the meat-grinder tactics and Mad Max–style armored hulks now crawling across Ukraine’s front could one day choke roads and fields across Europe.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 4:50 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Looks like somebody "forgot" to post about Kiev's frontline collapse north of Pokrovsk.

People use that word far too often. I didn't think it was appropriate until today.

The Russians had created a broad wedge between the small city of Pokrovsk and the bigger city of Konstantinovka to the east, creating a 2/3 circle from the southwest to the northeast around Pokrovsk. Today, they tightened the gap, physically cutting all but one supply line into Pokrovsk. And even that line is under Russian drone control.

Russians also advanced about 10 km northward in one day, apparently meeting little resistance.

Military Summary believes there are thousands of Kiev's soldiers trapped in Pokrovsk. Dima also reports that the Azov (neo-Nazi) brigade is being repositioned to the Pokrovsk area from their own near- annihilation south of Konstantinovka, not to stabilize the frontline or create an evacuation route out of Pokrovsk but as "anti retreat" forces to stiffen the spines of the soldiers who've been melting away.

By Friday, Pokrovsk may be completely surrounded and partially captured, and Konstantinovka may be in an operational encirclement.

Lyman is also at risk of being captured.

Whatever "land swap" Trump thinks he may be able to offer Putin may be taken out of his hands.

Eurocrats and Zelensky are still talking like they have no idea what's going on militarily.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 7:58 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like somebody "forgot" to post about Kiev's frontline collapse north of Pokrovsk.

Look again: http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=12251
57#1225157

The opponent is not held back. The Russian 51st Combined Arms Army’s foot- and motorcycle-borne breach of the Ukrainian line northeast of Pokrovsk has deepened fast. And for good reason: Ukraine is desperately short of trained infantry, largely owing to an inefficient and sometimes corrupt mobilization system.

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 7:59 AM

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

The Battle Inside Russia’s Elite

As wealthy Russians maneuver to shift blame for the costs of Moscow’s war, Washington can subtly shift their incentives.

By Kirill Shamiev, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

August 12, 2025, 4:17 PM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2025/08/12/washington-russia-elite-ukraine-p
utin-trump/

As Russia’s economic situation worsens and Ukrainian defenses continue to hold, elite factions in Moscow are maneuvering for position in an uncertain future. https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-economy-imf-downgrade-gdp-growt
h-outlook-wartime-boom-fast-2025-7

Their goal is twofold: to protect the profits and privileges gained during the war, and to deflect blame for its mounting human and financial costs.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned that the elite’s disunity and anxiety about the country’s future could undermine the cohesion of the Russian regime. To counteract this trend, the Kremlin has introduced unprecedented legal mechanisms for redistributing wealth under the banner of national security: from those suspected of even minimal disloyalty or Western ties, to individuals who may be less competent but demonstrably supportive of Putin. This puts the elites in a Russian-style prisoner’s dilemma, in which the safest strategy is to perform exaggerated loyalty while quietly undermining rivals to survive the conflict.

From the United States’ perspective, the challenge is to make sure these dynamics don’t become an obstacle to ending the Russia-Ukraine war. To do so, U.S. policy should continue making Russia’s government and industrial leadership feel anxious about the war’s costs and eventual settlement. Policymakers should signal that accountability for the invasion will be targeted rather than collective or indiscriminate. The war’s architects should continue to face sanctions, while elites who increasingly abstain from publicly backing the war effort should be led to expect more forgiving treatment.

Putin sought to make Ukraine the crown jewel of his decades-long rule by launching a full-scale invasion in 2022. But now, the system must protect him from the consequences of his actions. Within Russia’s ruling class, it is an open secret that the war has come at a staggering cost. Although the Russian government no longer discloses casualty figures, independent estimates by the BBC and Mediazona suggest that 165,000 Russian soldiers at minimum had been killed by the end of July. The open-source intelligence platform Oryx has documented the loss of more than 22,000 Russian military vehicles and equipment, alongside billions in damage from Ukrainian drone strikes and Western sanctions.

Someone will ultimately have to bear political responsibility for the scale of Russia’s losses. In a democratic system, Putin—Russia’s supreme commander and the chief architect of its Ukraine policy—would be the obvious candidate. But in Russia, the system is designed to shield him. His drive for political and perhaps physical survival aligns with the elite’s historic interest in preserving him as the central mediator among competing factions in the absence of functional democratic institutions that could have been doing his job. Yet the war has turned that mediator into a threat for many of those who once believed in his leadership.

The first signs of blame-framing are already visible. In 2024, around 122 criminal cases were opened against high-ranking Russian officials. Around 100 were arrested on suspicion of corruption between January and July. Dozens of Defense Ministry officials and military officers have also been arrested or dismissed. Yet the arrested officials are lucky as some failed to survive the war.

Since 2022, at least 27 senior business executives linked to strategic sectors have died under unclear circumstances. Most recently, Transport Minister Roman Starovoit reportedly died by suicide in July; while the circumstances around his death are unclear, some suspect that it could be related to an embezzlement investigation in the Kursk region, where Starovoit was governor before joining the Transport Ministry. Just shortly after that, Andrei Korneichuk, another transport official, suddenly died of a heart attack. The question that haunts officials at night—though never uttered aloud—is simple: Will I be next?

While the war has exposed Russian elites to existential risk, it has also proved highly profitable for others. Military-industrial tycoons, civilian business leaders tied to the defense sector, regional governors hosting key production sites, and elites who have seized control of Western assets have all benefited from wartime redistribution. Many have secured access to subsidized state-backed war loans, while the broader economy continues to face interest rates of 18 to 21 percent. Meanwhile, infrastructure projects have been delayed, preferential tax regimes rolled back, and housing construction has declined. Buying elite loyalty outside the war economy is becoming increasingly difficult for the Kremlin.

The government is also redistributing wealth to punish disloyalty—even the suspicion of it. Since 2022, the Kremlin has nationalized assets equivalent to roughly 2 percent of Russia’s GDP—around $49 billion. Lawyers now urge business leaders to renounce second citizenships, sever economic ties to so-called “unfriendly” countries, and invite “state-oriented partners” into their ownership structures. The case of Konstantin Strukov, deputy speaker for the Chelyabinsk region’s parliament and a member of Putin’s United Russia party, sent another obvious signal. Prosecutors accused him of transferring assets to his daughter Alexandra Strukov, a Russian Swiss dual citizen, and moving capital abroad. Within just nine days, a Russian court ordered the full nationalization of his businesses.

However, this is not a return to Soviet-style expropriation. Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has clarified that Strukov’s former assets will be transferred to new owners through formal resale. While Russia’s economy struggles to find the new drivers of growth, strategic assets are being reallocated to those deemed more loyal and politically reliable. As Russian soldiers struggle on the front lines, select tycoons are positioned to benefit from this redistribution, aligning themselves with the Kremlin and emerging as early winners of the war.

Despite the deadline that U.S. President Donald Trump gave Putin for ending the war in Ukraine, the conclusion may still be far away. Yet any sense of an emerging cease-fire is likely to intensify all these trends. The blame game will certainly heat up, along with efforts to consolidate and protect war-related profits. Once Putin decides that the war must end, the assets acquired through wartime favoritism may quickly become liabilities that other elite members would want to reacquire under the shrinking economy.

With this in mind, Washington can allow anxieties among the Russian elite to deepen by sustaining the economic pressure and avoiding a rushed peace deal that favors Russia. The ideal approach to negotiations would reinforce the belief among Russian elites that the war is unwinnable and highly damaging to their personal wealth but that a settlement is still plausible. The United States should keep signaling diplomatic readiness for a deal without conceding to unrealistic terms, making Russian elites think twice about the potential benefits of unquestionable alignment with the Kremlin and the war’s rising costs.

The United States should also signal that, however the war ends, it will continue to sanction its architects while offering amnesty to elites who quietly distanced themselves from the war effort. Putin, insulated from the political and personal costs of the war, is unlikely to ever leave office on account of international pressure. But Russian elites are more pragmatic about the future of Russia’s relationship with the West. Conditional sanctions relief and the promise of reintegration should be available to those who avoid publicly voicing their support for the war or engaging in activities that directly fund and profit off it.

This approach would not cause mass defection by elites. But it would strengthen the incentives for lower-level government officials and business managers to hedge their positions and quietly disengage from a war that they increasingly see as unwinnable.

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 2:13 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Looks like somebody "forgot" to post about Kiev's frontline collapse north of Pokrovsk.
Look again: http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=12251
57#1225157

The opponent is not held back. The Russian 51st Combined Arms Army’s foot- and motorcycle-borne breach of the Ukrainian line northeast of Pokrovsk has deepened fast. And for good reason: Ukraine is desperately short of trained infantry, largely owing to an inefficient and sometimes corrupt mobilization system.

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

Unlike me, you post so much crap, unmoored opinion, and psyop I don't bother digging thru it, SECOND. If you want people to read your posts, stop splattering.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 4:04 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Unlike me, you post so much crap, unmoored opinion, and psyop I don't bother digging thru it, SECOND. If you want people to read your posts, stop splattering.

Signym, Texas is overrun with weaklings like you, who are prideful, ignorant, not doing well in life, and yet convinced they are prime examples of civilization and the peak of human achievement. Much like Russians, those weak Texans die early, never knowing that strong people don't have to struggle, suffer, and die like the weak do because, unlike you, strong people read fast, adapt quickly, understand their environment rather than complain that reality does not match their picky preferences.

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 4:04 PM

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

The Front Line in Ukraine Is a Lie. And That Russian 'Breakthrough' Near Pokrovsk Isn't Really a Breakthrough.

Russian attackers and Ukrainian defenders are few and far between—and harried by drones.

Aug 13, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/the-front-line-in-ukraine-is-a-lie

Last week, a few Russian troops appeared some nine miles behind the ostensible front line northeast of the fortress city of Pokrovsk in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

It was, on its face, the most dramatic Russian infiltration of Ukrainian territory in months, and an apparent bold move by Russian forces aiming to surround and cut off Pokrovsk.

Yesterday, the Ukrainian national guard’s 1st Azov Corps—several elite brigades under a new command structure—deployed around the incursion. Move met counter-move.

“The coming days will show whether this penetration can be contained,” explained Tatarigami, the founder of the Ukrainian Frontelligence Insight analysis group. Indeed, there’s some evidence the Azov guardsmen are beginning to roll back the Russian advance.

They may even have taken a prisoner.

But don’t expect dramatic videos of Ukrainian troops assaulting Russian positions the their new—and highly exposed—salient northeast of Pokrovsk. Don’t expect that any more than anyone expected dramatic videos of Russian infiltrators racing across the landscape in some decisive maneuver.

The nature of the fighting along the 700-mile, drone-patrolled front line of Russia’s 42-month wider war on Ukraine precludes such satisfying images and clear narratives.

Indeed, “there isn’t a coherent front line,” independent U.S. analyst Andrew Perpetua explained. Instead, there’s a wide no-man’s land between areas of clear Russian and Ukrainian control. That no-man’s-land is largely depopulated except for scattered—and carefully concealed—underground fighting positions for a few harried infantry.

Drones are everywhere all the time. Indeed, the drones—their relentless surveillance and attacks—are why the infantry are so spread out and scared. And why the front line is so indistinct.

This new reality defies the traditional language of wartime reporting. Terms like “front line,” “encirclement” and “breakthrough” have largely lost their meaning.

“The front line is so thinned out that full-scale encirclements in the traditional sense are unlikely to occur again,” the pro-Ukraine Conflict Intelligence Team wrote. “Instead, the opposing forces are more likely to ‘slip’ through each other’s positions.”

“The front line is actually relatively porous, and there are often fewer than 10 soldiers defending every kilometer of the front, depending on the terrain,” noted analyst Rob Lee from the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. “Many Ukrainian brigades have adopted a different approach to defense where their infantry deliberately try to avoid engaging.”

Instead of actively fighting, the infantry watch for approaching Russians—and relay the coordinates to nearby drone teams. Where in previous conflicts, drones spotted targets for the infantry, in this conflict the roles are reversed.

The porous front line makes infiltration easier and exploitation harder. To “advance,” Russian regiments can “take two men dressed in cloaks to hide their thermal signature,” Perpetua explained. “They are led by a drone through a specified path, the drone ensuring their security and camouflage.”

“These infantry move up into positions and lie in wait, being resupplied by Molniya [drones],” Perpetua added. “They ambush opportunistically, and kill anyone—namely civilians—who threaten to give away their position.”

“Russia then moves up another pair and another pair and another pair to accumulate forces in exacting, specified positions,” Perpetua wrote. “The entire operation is directed from above, the people involved have no initiative. In some cases, once a route has enough of these small rifle teams, they push forward a larger group of light infantry.”

It doesn’t take much effort or luck to slip a few Russian infantry potentially miles past the most forward Ukrainian positions. By the same token, it doesn’t take much to eliminate these first few infiltrators.

Consider what happened in Pokrovsk last month. Soldiers from Russia’s 30th Motorized Rifle Brigade slipped through the front line and, resupplied by drone, walked a couple of miles or so into the city’s southern neighborhoods.

“Their movement was slow and deliberate, and they carefully picked routes that provided the best concealment and between the area of responsibility of two Ukrainian brigades,” Lee noted.

150 Russians set out. Just 30 made it into Pokrovsk “and began conducting ambushes,” Lee recalled. But “ultimately, the infiltration of Pokrovsk did not achieve Russia's goals primarily because the brigades holding the front line did not abandon their positions—despite the infiltration.”

“Other Ukrainian units were sent to clear out the groups in Pokrovsk,” Lee wrote.

Similarly, the Ukrainian brigades along the no-man’s-land northeast of Pokrovsk—where the Russians slipped through last week—have not panicked and fled. And now the 1st Azov Corps has deployed to clear out the infiltrators.

“The people claiming Russia has advanced are basically bullshitting you,” Perpetua insisted. “There isn't an advance. The reality is that there isn’t a coherent front line.”

But that doesn’t mean the Russians and Ukrainians can’t ultimately control terrain, including entire cities. Fighting across a porous front is still fighting. Firepower, manpower, surveillance and logistical advantages still matter.

What’s changed is clarity. The “line of contact” isn’t a line, anymore. It’s a zone. And the contact is sporadic.

Pokrovsk is still largely surrounded—and likely to fall in the coming weeks. But the final battle for Pokrovsk probably won’t take the form of a large-scale Russian assault or a series of speedy infiltrations resulting in a clear encirclement.

No, the city may fall imperceptibly, and with a shrug as the last increasingly isolated Ukrainian defenders slip away … and more Russians slip in.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 4:45 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Unlike me, you post so much crap, unmoored opinion, and psyop I don't bother digging thru it, SECOND. If you want people to read your posts, stop splattering.
Signym, Texas is overrun with weaklings like you, who are prideful, ignorant, not doing well in life, and yet convinced they are prime examples of civilization and the peak of human achievement. Much like Russians, those weak Texans die early, never knowing that strong people don't have to struggle, suffer, and die like the weak do because, unlike you, strong people read fast, adapt quickly, understand their environment rather than complain that reality does not match their picky preferences.

What makes you think I'm not doing well?

Yanno, SECOND, yours is the kind of post that makes me think you're just a nutty, human version of a rabid dog. Not two days ago, you posted a long article how the formation of oligarchies is a mathematical certainty under "free market" capitalism, and that the person who winds up on top has to do more with luck (initial conditions) than the "survival of the fittest". I supplemented that post with additional studies that show that the wealthy or famous, who become wealthier or more famous than their equally hardworking or talented peers, think of themselves as "better" and underestimate luck.

And here you are, demonstrating that you apparently haven't a fucking clue about what you posted, and are clearly demonstrating my point.

Can you say “stupid"?
Sure you can!

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Wednesday, August 13, 2025 4:56 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 5:15 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Front Line in Ukraine Is a Lie. And That Russian 'Breakthrough' Near Pokrovsk Isn't Really a Breakthrough.

Russian attackers and Ukrainian defenders are few and far between—and harried by drones.

Aug 13, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/the-front-line-in-ukraine-is-a-lie

This is the only thing you've posted that explains the way the map changes. What I've seen is Russia establishing positions far beyond the "front line", and well into Ukie territory. The only way that can be explained is by infiltration thru porous lines. I suppose that's how attritional warfare in the age of drones works: You won't see scores of armored vehicles charging thunderously for miles. There are so many effective anti-tank weapons now ... mines being the most effective ... that an army that wants to use them better have a near-infinite capacity to build and repair.

The other thing you won't see, or shouldn't see, is heavy concentration of troops, weapons, weapon fabrication... anywhere in range of surveillance drones. This is especially true of Ukraine, since Russia can hit with drones, artillery, bombs, and missiles all the way to Ukraine's western border. And while Ukraine can OCCASIONALLY hit deep into Russia they don't have the capacity to do lasting, significant damage.

Still. It all comes down to killing the enemy and destroying its army. Ukraine has been far too willing to expend its irreplaceable troops, I think, because at this point that's all Ukraine has: a thinned infantry, and drones.

Russia still "prepares" areas using bombs, artillery, and drones, striking at troop concentrations, high rise buildings, drone repeater antennae, vehicles carrying troops, etc before advancing, and harrying troops with drones either rotating in or evacuating out. Given Russia's significant advantages in manpower, drones, and other weapons, I think no matter how tactics change the outcome is going to be the same.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 7:35 AM

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

Russia struggles to produce Kh-59 air-launched cruise missiles

By Andrii Haladei | Wednesday, 13 August 2025, 12:37

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/08/13/7525956/

Defence Intelligence of Ukraine has reported that Russia is failing to fulfil its state defence order for Kh-59 air-launched cruise missiles.

Source: Ukraine’s Defence Intelligence in an interactive diagram released on the War & Sanctions portal. https://war-sanctions.gur.gov.ua/en/page-kh-59

Details: The data shows that of the 116 companies involved in producing the Kh-59M2/M2A missile, around 50 remain unsanctioned by any country. Yet, even under these conditions, Russia is struggling to meet its defence order.

Defence Intelligence says Russia lacks both domestic and imported electronic components and manufacturing capacity, leading to missed production deadlines. The situation is not remedied even by using old engines and components for the guidance systems.

In some cases, manufacturers have used mock-ups with the same dimensions and weight instead of installing active radar homing heads (ARH), the most expensive part of the missile.

Meanwhile, dozens of companies continue to produce electronic components, guidance systems and other crucial parts for the Kh-59 while remaining unsanctioned. Though at reduced quality, this enables ongoing modernisation and production of the missiles.

Ukrainian intelligence emphasised that sanctions are an effective tool and urged the international community to extend them to all facilities supplying missile components.

It is noted that Kh-59 missiles are air-to-surface systems designed to strike buildings and fortified targets. Several modifications are available for different missions and ARH types.

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 8:04 AM

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

Post 1945/1989 Europe Ends Tomorrow (Courtesy Of The USA)
Do Not Buy The Narrative That Russia Definitely Wants To Keep Fighting

By Phillips P. OBrien | Aug 14, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/post-19451989-europe-ends-tomor
row

Hi All,

Well, tomorrow the love fest starts. In Alaska/Russia Trump and Putin will meet and more likely than not come up with some form of poison-pill ceasefire offer for Ukraine (and the rest of Europe). As of now Ukraine and Europe have been wrongfooted and are left fighting for a world (post 1945/1989 Europe) that will soon no longer exist. Also Russia might very well agree to ceasefire terms (it could use a break) but they have so perverted the narrative that even this will be seen as some Russian concession when it is not.

Hey Vladimir, are we in Russia or Alaska? Or at this point is it basically the same thing?

I thought I would prepare a little briefing note for subscribers on these two points, as they will be the crucial ones that emerge from tomorrow in some form or the other.

The End Of The Post 1945/1989 European World

Btw, you might remember the post 1955/1989 European world.

It started after World War II and even endured throughout the Cold War—where borders were internationally recognized and no European country expanded into the territory of another through military force and had that conquest validated. The USA was a protector of democratic states in that world, a securer of agreements and a break against expansionist operations by Communist and dictatorial forces.

Now, however, by the admission of leading European states, that Europe is over and the USA is doing the killing. We have the Ukrainian starting position for any ceasefire with Russia and it spells the end to the Europe that we know. And this is just the starting Ukrainian position Trump will soon come back to pressure them to concede more, maybe much more.

Moreover, in a perverse twist of logic, Russia agreeing to a ceasefire (which arguably it needs) is being reframed by Trump (and other rubes it must be said) as some great Russian concession. They have created a fantasy world of how war operates and how powerful Russia is as a power—and amazingly many people (maybe most) have bought it. This means if Putin does agree a framework of a ceasefire deal, that alone will get him extra goodies.

Let me outline these two points.

The Ukrainian/European Starting Position Is Now That Putin Will Control Everything He Has Illegally Conquered

President Zelensky met with German Chancellor Merz yesterday and spoke on the phone with President Trump. The news he received (and has received over the last few days) was obviously not comforting and he outlined what the Ukrainian position is before the Trump-Putin summit. Here it is from Zelensky’s official website.

Namely: the format of negotiations – everything concerning Ukraine must be discussed exclusively with Ukraine. We need to prepare a trilateral format of talks. There must be a ceasefire – number one. There must be security guarantees – truly reliable ones. And today, by the way, President Trump voiced his support for this and the United States’ readiness to take part. Among the agreed principles is also that Russia cannot have veto power over Ukraine’s European and NATO prospects. And peace talks should be combined with proper pressure on Russia. Sanctions must be strengthened if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire in Alaska. These are effective principles. It is important that they work.

The four work together to show Ukraine’s (and Europe’s) isolation from the decision making processes of the USA (and Russia) and how they have been left on sidelines. Lets lay them out.

Preamble: Everything concerning Ukraine must be discussed exclusively with Ukraine.

Well we know that this simply a plea for yesterday’s world. Trump and Putin will be discussing, maybe even determining, much of the fate of occupied Ukraine tomorrow—and Ukraine is being kept at arms length. The USA is not treating Ukraine as a full player in its own future.

First Point: There must be a ceasefire – number one. This means far more than it seems, It means that Ukraine (and Europe) is prepared for a ceasefire on the present line of contact with Russia in control of everything it has illegally conquered and exploited—without conditions. Ukraine understands it will get no land back as part of this ceasefire and is desperately trying to pre-empt Trump from pressuring them to cede more land to Putin that the Russian dictator has not yet conquered.

Second Point: There must be security guarantees – truly reliable ones. And today, by the way, President Trump voiced his support for this and the United States’ readiness to take part. This is the chimera point so far. This is something that can and should have been given to Ukraine earlier. Trump is not going to agree to any real security guarantees to Ukraine (see point three if you have any doubt) so really this is up to Europe. And Zelensky knows he has no real guarantees from there at present.

Third Point: Russia cannot have veto power over Ukraine’s European and NATO prospects. That this needs to be even said is terribly depressing. Ukraine has no prospects for NATO membership not because of a Russian veto, but because the USA will never let them in at present. As for the EU, the idea that Russia might even ask for a veto, shows the old European world is ending. Neither the EU nor NATO have ever acknowledged the idea of a Russian veto before, even discussing it now is a sign of how the goalposts have moved.

Fourth Point: Peace talks should be combined with proper pressure on Russia. Sanctions must be strengthened if Russia does not agree to a ceasefire in Alaska. And if Russia does agree to a ceasefire—what then? This is actually another acknowledgement of impending failure. All Putin needs to do is say he agrees to ceasefire terms (all five illegally annexed Oblasts transferred to Russia for instance) and at this point sanctions can be lessened. Yes, if Putin blows up the summit and offends Trump in Alaska, sanctions can be strengthened. But We have seen such threats before, and they have never been fulfilled. They will not be now.

So Zelensky’s starting hand is a really weak one (as he probably understands). This weakness comes from the fact that Trump wants a deal which will make Putin happy, and the Ukrainians have to operate in that very confined and dangerous space. In the end the one salient point is that Ukraine (and Europe) are being forced to accept Russian control over conquered lands—courtesy of the USA.

The post 1945/1989 European world is over—the post 2025 European world will not be as nice.

Do Not Buy The Narrative That Russia Definitely Wants To Keep Fighting

Russia is super strong! Russia can fight forever! Russia will never want a ceasefire!

None of this is true, and yet such ideas are regularly thrown out as maxims (very dangerously). Yes, Putin still wants to control and conquer all of Ukraine—but at present he cannot. His army is still making tiny, bloody advances (will discuss the events north of Pokrovsk in the weekend update—do not lose your head about them, please), his economy is in terrible shape and he is running out of vehicles.

Now he still might calculate that with Trump changing sides and Europe divided, it makes sense for him to carry on with the war for a little while longer. However, he might also calculate that a ceasefire is very much in Russia’s interests, particularly if he can get Trump to agree to great terms for him as part of that ceasefire. Putin could then declare victory (even when he has not won) and rebuild his military while Ukraine will be left with no real security guarantees. This will give him time to continue to try and subvert Ukrainian politics—at a time when Ukraine might feel abandoned. And even if this fails, it will allow Putin to return to the military option when his army is in better shape.

What we must not do is buy the idea that Putin would never agree to a ceasefire—because if/when he does we are making that into a major non-existent concession by Russia which Putin can use to get more.

Its a huge favor Trump has done for Putin. He has always made Putin’s Russia look like the strong state—willing to defy Trump’s threats of extra sanctions (which were never serious) to keep the war going.

Trump did exactly the same thing yesterday. He once again threatened Russia with super duper sanctions if Putin did not agree to a ceasefire (btw, for all we know, Trump and Putin might have agreed the terms of a ceasefire already).

Of course, being Trump, the threats were staged theater—as the ABC news report on them made obvious.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday threatened "severe consequences" against Russia if Vladimir Putin did not agree to stop his war on Ukraine.

"There will be consequences," Trump said at the Kennedy Center in Washington as he took questions on his meeting on Friday with Russia's president in Alaska.

Trump did not elaborate on what those consequences would be. When asked if they would include sanctions or tariffs, Trump only said he didn't have to say.

Maybe they will be mega super duper califragilistic sanctions. Or maybe they will be nothing. Or maybe Putin will agree to a ceasefire because its in his interest.

If the latter happens, all these ridiculous threats and statements will make it seem like Russia has made a great concession, when nothing could be further from the truth. That non existent concession could even be uses to significantly lessen the present sanctions.

Russia is a relatively weak and defeatable power. However we (and I mean the USA and Europe) do not wish to defeat it. That is our choice.

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 8:13 AM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 1:16 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

Russia has a surprise just before Putin meets the President, tomorrow:

Putin appears ready to test new nuclear missile as he prepares for Trump talks

August 13, 2025

https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2025/08/13/putin-appears-ready-to-tes
t-new-nuclear-missile-as-he-prepares-for-trump-talks-researchers-say/

Reuters reports:

Russia appears to be preparing to test its new nuclear-armed, nuclear-powered cruise missile, according to two U.S. researchers and a Western security source, even as Russian President Vladimir Putin readies for talks on Ukraine with U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday.

Jeffrey Lewis of the California-based Middlebury Institute of International Studies, and Decker Eveleth of the CNA research and analysis organization, based in Virginia, reached their assessments separately by studying imagery taken in recent weeks until Tuesday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm.

They agreed the photos showed extensive activity at the Pankovo test site on the Barents Sea archipelago of Novaya Zemlya, including increases in personnel and equipment and ships and aircraft associated with earlier tests of the 9M730 Burevestnik (Storm Petrel).

“We can see all of the activity at the test site, which is both huge amounts of supplies coming in to support operations and movement at the place where they actually launch the missile,” Lewis said.

A Western security source, who asked not to be further identified, confirmed that Russia is preparing a Burevestnik test.

Lewis said a test could occur this week, raising the possibility it could overshadow the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska. [Continue reading…]

Kyiv Post reports:

First unveiled by Russian leader Vladimir Putin in March 2018, the Burevestnik can reportedly carry either a conventional or nuclear warhead. Its novel reactor-powered propulsion allows sustained atmospheric flight, but the technology is experimental and carries serious risks.

Experts warn that rocket motor failures or off-course flights could scatter radioactive material over vast areas if the missile’s nuclear reactor is compromised. Even without an explosion, questions remain about radioactive contamination at the missile’s eventual impact site.

Norway’s Intelligence Service has previously warned that such tests carry a risk of accidents and local radioactive contamination. Norway’s Finnmark region lies about 900 kilometers (559 miles) from the Pankovo site.

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 3:43 PM

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

Russian Infiltrators Near Pokrovsk Are About to Get the Tank Treatment

Ukraine is rushing heavy armor toward a Russian salient

Aug 14, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/08/14/leopard-1a5-pokrovsk/

Ukrainian reinforcements are rushing to the Pokrovsk area in an urgent effort to defeat a Russian infiltration that threatens one of two main supply roads into the besieged city in Donetsk Oblast.

The reinforcements include one of Ukraine’s new multi-brigade corps—and at least one Leopard 1A5 tank.

The Ukrainian army’s 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion—which retrieves, repairs and returns armored vehicles—loaded one of the 40-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5 tanks onto a heavy transport truck and hauled the tank into the Pokrovsk sector under the cover of darkness on Wednesday.

“We’ve been a little quiet the last few days,” the battalion stated on social media, “but another Leopard 1A5 with full ammunition … is successfully delivered to one of the hottest places [in the] Pokrovsk direction.”

It’s obvious where the German-made tank wound up: somewhere along the roughly 10-km front stretching from Rodynske in the south to Nove Shakhove in the north. That front, just northeast of Pokrovsk, is the current locus of the fighting after Russian troops slipped past under-manned—or entirely empty—Ukrainian trenches last week and hooked left to threaten Dobropillya, which sits astride the T0515 road threading into Pokrovsk.

Two of the seven Ukrainian brigades that operate the 1980s-vintage—but heavily upgraded and up-armored—Leopard 1A5s are holding the line around Dobropillya: the national guard’s 4th Rubizh Brigade and the army’s 142nd Mechanized Brigade.

Each brigade probably owns a dozen Leopard 1A5s out of 170 that a German-Dutch-Danish consortium has pledged to Ukraine. Around 100 of the tanks have shipped; the Russians have knocked out at least 14 of them. Others have been damaged.

It’s likely the Leopard 1A5 the 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion sneaked into the Pokrovsk area was a damaged tank that the battalion fetched from the front line and fixed up at its workshop before hauling it back to its operator.

After losing around 4,000 tanks in action in the first 42 months of its wider war on Ukraine, Russia has all but ceased deploying heavy armor along the 1,100-km front line. Production of new T-90M tanks, and the restoration of old Cold War T-72s moldering in long-term storage, simply can’t make good all those losses.

Today, the Russians mostly attack on foot or on motorcycles, counting on these hard-to-spot and fast-moving forces to slip through thinly manned Ukrainian trenches and past Ukraine’s ever-present drones. The Ukrainians still use tanks, however, fearlessly rolling the hulking vehicles from their drone-proof dugouts for close fights with infiltrating Russians.

It’s not for no reason that, last month, Ukraine lost more tanks in action than Russia did—a first in this wider war.

Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky insisted the Russian infiltrators threatening Dobropillya marched north and then turned west “only with weapons in their hands.” They’re lightly armed and poorly supplied, potentially making them easy targets for tanks. Assuming, of course, the tanks can shrug off any Russian drones patrolling the Russian salient northeast of Pokrovsk.

There’s a good reason for the Ukrainian tankers to be optimistic. The Leopard 1A5 and Leopard 2A4 tanks that are helping to defend the Pokrovsk sector have proved that, with enough add-on armor, they can survive repeated drone strikes—and keep fighting.

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

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 5:14 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Zelensky attempts to derail tomorrow's talk in Alaska between Putin and Trump by striking civilian centers with drones in Belgorod.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/ukrainian-drone-strikes-hit-russia
s-072929160.html

Russian MOD expects more serious provocations over the next several days.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Thursday, August 14, 2025 9:49 PM

THG

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russia Massive Losses in the Ukraine War are Unsustainable

Key Point – President Donald Trump recently made a sensational claim on Truth Social, posting specific casualty figures that suggest a lopsided 14-to-1 casualty ratio against Russia in the Ukraine war for 2025.

Don't you get tired posting nonsense?

I know I get bored seeing it. (And, yes, I'm bored of Trump's nonsense too.)

T

11M Workers Vanishing in Russia?

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Friday, August 15, 2025 9:45 AM

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

151 Russian Killed, 70 Wounded. Ukraine's Elite 1st Azov Corps Claims It's Rolling Up the Pokrovsk Infiltration.

Infiltrators require immediate reinforcement. Without it, they're vulnerable.

Aug 14, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/151-russian-killed-70-wounded-ukraines

The Ukrainian national guard’s 1st Azov Corps—a new multi-brigade force—claimed it’s clearing out the Russian infantry who marched right past empty Ukrainian trenches northeast of Pokrovsk last week, ultimately penetrating nine miles into Ukrainian territory and threatening a key supply line into Pokrovsk.

It’s possible the incursion is backfiring on the Russians—an outcome some Russian observers feared as the salient was initially developing. “Infiltration operations … have serious risks,” Russian war-blogger Military Informant warned.

The 1st Azov Corps, which oversees several elite brigade each with thousands of troops, led the Ukrainian counterattack a few days after Russian infantry were detected near Dobropillya, 10 miles north of Pokrovsk. There are just two main roads into besieged Pokrovsk, and one of them—the T0515—threads through Dobropillya.

“The coming days will show whether this penetration can be contained,” Tatarigami, the founder of the Ukrainian Frontelligence Insight analysis group, wrote on Tuesday. A day later, Tatarigami relayed rumors that the penetration near Dobropillya “is being contained” and possibly even “cut off as a result of Ukrainian counteractions.”

The 1st Azov Corps confirmed the rumors the same day.

“The enemy has suffered significant losses,” the corps claimed. “Over the past 48 hours of combat, 151 invaders have been eliminated within the corps’ area of responsibility, and more than 70 have been wounded. In addition, eight Russian service members have been taken prisoner.”

The 1st Azov Corps’ reporting, if accurate, may point to a small Russian force in the Dobropillya salient—perhaps just a handful of battalions with a few hundred troops apiece. At full strength, the 1st Azov Corps should have 10,000 or more troops—although Ukrainian corps and brigades almost never deploy all of their forces at one time.

Military Informant anticipated defeat in the salient—mostly owing to the salient’s fragile resupply. “All supplies to the infantry groups remote from the front line are carried out exclusively by aerial drones, and if something goes wrong and the main forces are unable to support the attack aircraft operating in isolation, the enemy can crush their positions with a counterattack,” the blogger noted.

The risk is baked into the Russians’ tactics. “From what the enemy reports, the Russian armed forces, taking advantage of the holes in the Ukrainian defense, methodically bring in groups of several people at night,” Military Informant explained.

“Infantry groups are led by radio communication from drones, and heat-protective capes are often used to hide from Ukrainian reconnaissance ’copters. As a result, as soon as a sufficient number of people accumulate in a certain place, they carry out raids on rear areas, set up ambushes on equipment along the roads and consolidate their positions in previously safe settlements, creating the appearance of large forces.”

But the force isn’t actually very big or concentrated. If it were, it would be easier for the Ukrainians to detect from the air before it can get lodged underground somewhere behind Ukrainian lines. Thinly spread with long exposed flanks and delicate supply lines, the infiltrators are vulnerable until reinforced.

“We should expect an attack by the main forces of the Russian armed forces following the infiltrated forward detachments, so as not to give the Ukrainian armed forces time to come to their senses and seize the initiative,” Military Informant wrote.

But if the 1st Azov Corps really is rolling up hundreds of Russian infiltrators around Dobropillya, it’s likely the main Russian attack never came. The few hundred infantry who managed to slip past empty Ukrainian positions may be in big trouble now that the positions are no longer empty.

“I would not like to get ahead of myself,” Military Informant warned on Tuesday. A reinforced infiltration all the way to Dobropillya could’ve led to the “collapse of the Ukrainian armed forces’ defense in the Pokrovsk and Dobropillya directions.”

An unreinforced infiltration, on the other hand, is a trap for the infiltrators.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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

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Friday, August 15, 2025 2:26 PM

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

Fact check: Trump’s latest fake history about the war in Ukraine

By Daniel Dale | August 15, 2025

https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/15/politics/fact-check-trump-ukraine-war

President Donald Trump claimed Monday that he knew why Russian troops weren’t able to enter Kyiv in the days after they invaded Ukraine in 2022. Russia’s tanks, Trump said, got destroyed by missiles “because the tanks got stuck in the mud.”

“You know, they would’ve been in Kyiv in four hours going down the highway. But a Russian general made a brilliant decision to go through the farmland instead,” he said, sarcastically criticizing the supposed general.

This is fake history, as military analysts and various Ukrainians have pointed out since the president began making similar claims months ago. In reality, Russia tried and failed to make it to Kyiv using roads and highways. Its tanks were thwarted by fierce Ukrainian resistance and logistical problems in addition to muddy conditions.

“Russian forces used roads and highways as much as possible during the initial invasion, and took heavy losses on many of them. Russian tanks did get stuck in the mud during the initial invasion, but this was often after they struggled to advance along roads,” said Rob Lee, a senior fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Eurasia Program who has closely followed military tactics during the war. “One of the factors that hindered Russia’s invasion is that there were not many good highways and roads leading from Belarus to Kyiv, which canalized their forces.”

When CNN asked the White House for comment, an official responding on condition of anonymity noted Thursday that Russian tanks did get stuck in mud during and even before the invasion. The official provided links to some articles that mentioned this happening.

But even one of those articles clearly contradicted Trump’s claim that Russia didn’t make it to Kyiv because it chose not to use highways. The article said, “The Russians invaded using Ukraine’s major highways expecting a blitzkrieg-like attack that would leverage speed and overwhelming firepower to capture the capital city of Kyiv.”

Lee, emphasizing that sentence, added Friday: “Russian tanks did get stuck in the mud and there may have been cases when Russian commanders chose to drive through fields, but the Russian invasion plan emphasized driving along highways to reach the key cities, including Kyiv, as fast as possible. They generally drove through fields after trying to use roads and highways.”

Trump’s phony narrative about the Russian invasion is only the latest in a long line of false claims from the president about the war. Among other things, Trump has this year:

• Repeatedly used imaginary figures to incorrectly make it seem as if the US has provided far more aid to Ukraine than Europe has; the opposite is hue.

• Falsely said he was speaking “in jest” and being “sarcastic” when he solemnly promised dozens of times during his 2024 campaign to immediately end the war if he was elected.

• Used inaccurate number's to understate Ukrainians’ support for President Volodymyr Zelensky early in the year and overstate their support for a negotiated end to the war today.

• Falsely claimed Ukraine started the war that was actually started by Russia.

• Falsely claimed Zelensky admitted half of US aid money went missing, though Zelensky made no such comment.

As Trump prepares to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Alaska on Friday, here’s a quick fact check of these Trump claims.

Trump has made the claim over and over again. The US, he keeps asserting, has given Ukraine triple or more the amount of wartime aid that Europe has – $350 billion from the US compared to just $100 billion from Europe.

“Biden gave them $350 billion. Europe gave $100 billion. It should be much more than that,” Trump said Monday, adding, “They should have had equalization, but they didn’t.” He repeated these figures Thursday: “We spent $350 billion …They spent $100 billion.”

Trump’s claim is not only wrong but a reversal of reality. In fact, as numerous fact checks have pointed out, Europe has done more than equalize – it has given more wartime aid to Ukraine than the US has. https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/16/politics/g7-trump-lies-canada-ukraine

According to figures from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that tracks the aid data, Europe – the European Union plus individual European countries – collectively allocated about $195 billion in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine from late January 2022 through June 2025; the US allocated about $134 billion for Ukraine over the same period (all figures are at Thursday exchange rates). The gap was even bigger in aid committed to Ukraine as opposed to aid actually allocated: about $300 billion committed by Europe compared to about $139 billion committed by the US. https://www.ifw-kiel.de/publications/ukraine-support-tracker-data-2075
8/

It’s possible to arrive at different numbers using different methods of counting aid, but no reasonable method has corroborated Trump’s “$350 billion” US figure. The US government inspector general overseeing the Ukraine response says on its website that the US had appropriated about $185 billion for the Ukraine response through March 2025, including about $90 billion actually disbursed. That included funding spent in the US for weapons and defense services or sent to countries other than Ukraine.

When CNN asked the White House for comment on the president’s $350 billion claim, the official, responding on condition of anonymity, cited the inspector general’s figure – in the vicinity of $185 billion. The official also noted that the inspector general’s website has pointed out the US provided about $20 billion in loans as part of a G7 initiative.

That’s all fair, but it doesn’t get close to Trump’s $350 billion figure. So how did the White House official try to get closer?

With some nonsensical math – that added in a whole bunch of things that are not assistance to Ukraine.

Specifically, the official counted more than $90 billion in inflation felt by US households after the Russian invasion of Ukraine; a $16 billion decline in US exports to Russia amid US sanctions; and more than $7 billion in increased fertilizer costs after the Russian invasion drove up prices.

It’s obvious that none of this actually supports Trump’s claim that the US has provided Ukraine with $350 billion in aid. It’s particularly absurd to count the inflation experienced by Americans as US assistance to Ukraine.

When Trump was reminded in a Time interview in April that he had pledged to end the war on “day one,” he responded, “I said that figuratively, and I said that as an exaggeration,” and that “obviously, people know that when I said that, it was said in jest.” In June, he claimed his promise to end the war within 24 hours of returning to office “was sarcastic.”

It’s often hard to determine Trump’s intent behind a given statement. In this case, it isn’t. An extensive body of evidence makes clear Trump’s promise wasn’t sarcastic, jesting or figurative. It was a solemn, direct, specific pledge.

CNN found 53 instances of Trump declaring on the campaign trail, in an entirely serious tone, manner and context, that he would end the war either within 24 hours of his return to the White House or even sooner than that, as president-elect.

Here’s a typical quote, from his 2024 debate against then-President Joe Biden: “I will have that war settled between Putin and Zelensky as president-elect before I take office on January 20. I’ll have that war settled. People being killed so needlessly, so stupidly. And I will get it settled, and I’ll get it settled fast before I take office.”

You can read the 52 additional examples here. https://www.cnn.com/2025/04/25/politics/fact-check-trump-ukraine-war

Trump claimed in February that Ukraine started the war, saying, “You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal.” In reality, Russia started the war by launching its full-scale invasion in 2022 (after annexing the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014). Trump’s February assertion that Ukraine started the war was publicly corrected by his former vice president Mike Pence, plus several Republican lawmakers.

Trump used different rhetoric later in the year, saying in April, “Biden could’ve stopped it, Zelensky could’ve stopped it, and Putin should’ve never started it.” The White House official correctly noted Thursday that “the President has expressed his frustration with Putin numerous times.”

In February, during a period in which Trump was aggressively criticizing Zelensky, he claimed Zelensky was “down at 4% approval rating.”

That wasn’t close to accurate.
https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/politics/fact-check-trump-falsely-claim
s-zelensky-has-a-4-approval-rating-its-above-50/index.html

Sixty-three percent of respondents said they approved of Zelensky in a poll conducted in Ukraine from late November to early January, by a group of academics in partnership with a prominent Ukrainian pollster. And 57% of respondents said they trusted Zelensky in a February poll conducted by that pollster, the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology.

Recent polling suggests Zelensky remains at a similar level of public support. A Gallup poll conducted in early July found 67% of respondents said they approved of Zelensky, and a Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll conducted in late July and early August found 58% of respondents said they trusted Zelensky – down from his 2025 peak of 74% in May but in the vicinity of his figures earlier in the year and most of last year.

Trump claimed Monday: “I’ve seen a poll coming out of Ukraine: 88% of the people would like to see a deal made. And if you go back three years, everybody was gung-ho for war.”

Trump was right that Ukrainian support for a negotiated quick end to the war has soared since 2022. However, it’s not “88%” in any public poll CNN could find. The Gallup poll in early July found 69% of respondents supported Ukraine seeking to negotiate an end to the war as soon as possible – a new high in Gallup polling, and way up from 22% in 2022, but still far from Trump’s figure.

When CNN asked the White House what “88%” poll Trump was referring to, the official said that the president’s claim is corroborated by the Gallup poll – whose figure, again, is 69%. The official said, “The President is right. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians want to see a negotiated end to the war as soon as possible, as evidenced in this Gallup poll.”

If Trump had said “overwhelming majority,” his claim would have been accurate. But he said “88%,” which was inaccurate.

For context, it’s also worth noting that the Gallup poll did not ask Ukrainians what kind of deal to end the war they would support; Olga Onuch, a University of Manchester professor who conducts polling in Ukraine, noted that Gallup’s finding wasn’t that 69% of respondents are “willing to accept territorial concessions.” The Kyiv International Institute of Sociology poll in late July and early August found widely varying levels of support for different potential proposals, with strong opposition to ideas previously floated by Russia.

Zelensky and aid money

During his February barrage of criticism against Zelensky, Trump falsely claimed on social media that Zelensky “admits that half of the money we sent him is ‘MISSING.’”

Zelensky never said that. Rather, in comments mischaracterized by some viral social media posts, Zelensky took issue with inflated claims about how much US cash Ukraine had received.

Zelensky told the Associated Press in February that although people talked about Ukraine getting as much as $200 billion in US aid, Ukraine had actually received about $76 billion, largely in the form of weapons. Zelensky said he didn’t know where all the supposed additional money had gone and that perhaps these higher figures were correct “on paper,” according to a translation by the news outlet Ukrainska Pravda.

That was not a confession that half of US cash had vanished. In reality, Zelensky was saying what experts in the US and elsewhere had repeatedly pointed out – that a large chunk of US support for Ukraine is not in the form of money handed to the Ukrainian government.

The White House official claimed Thursday that “Zelensky did say” what Trump claimed he said. But Zelensky simply didn’t. As supposed evidence, the official linked to a Washington Post article that noted Trump’s claim did not describe “exactly what Zelensky said.”

The Post article explained how Zelensky’s comments were in line with the fact that tens of billions of the US funds counted as Ukraine assistance were “not earmarked for Ukraine” but instead were spent on “sending equipment through drawdowns from U.S. stockpiles, enhancing U.S. military capabilities, humanitarian aid funneled through organizations in Europe, including for refugees, global food security, sanctions enforcement, economic aid through the World Bank and more.”

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

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Friday, August 15, 2025 3:02 PM

Fuck Ukraine.

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

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

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Friday, August 15, 2025 8:13 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
151 Russian Killed, 70 Wounded. Ukraine's Elite 1st Azov Corps Claims It's Rolling Up the Pokrovsk Infiltration.

Infiltrators require immediate reinforcement. Without it, they're vulnerable.

Aug 14, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/151-russian-killed-70-wounded-ukraines

The Ukrainian national guard’s 1st Azov Corps—a new multi-brigade force—claimed it’s clearing out the Russian infantry who marched right past empty Ukrainian trenches northeast of Pokrovsk last week, ultimately penetrating nine miles into Ukrainian territory and threatening a key supply line into Pokrovsk.

It’s possible the incursion is backfiring on the Russians—an outcome some Russian observers feared as the salient was initially developing. “Infiltration operations … have serious risks,” Russian war-blogger Military Informant warned.

The 1st Azov Corps, which oversees several elite brigade each with thousands of troops, led the Ukrainian counterattack a few days after Russian infantry were detected near Dobropillya, 10 miles north of Pokrovsk. There are just two main roads into besieged Pokrovsk, and one of them—the T0515—threads through Dobropillya.

“The coming days will show whether this penetration can be contained,” Tatarigami, the founder of the Ukrainian Frontelligence Insight analysis group, wrote on Tuesday. A day later, Tatarigami relayed rumors that the penetration near Dobropillya “is being contained” and possibly even “cut off as a result of Ukrainian counteractions.”

The 1st Azov Corps confirmed the rumors the same day.

“The enemy has suffered significant losses,” the corps claimed. “Over the past 48 hours of combat, 151 invaders have been eliminated within the corps’ area of responsibility, and more than 70 have been wounded. In addition, eight Russian service members have been taken prisoner.”

The 1st Azov Corps’ reporting, if accurate, may point to a small Russian force in the Dobropillya salient—perhaps just a handful of battalions with a few hundred troops apiece. At full strength, the 1st Azov Corps should have 10,000 or more troops—although Ukrainian corps and brigades almost never deploy all of their forces at one time.

Military Informant anticipated defeat in the salient—mostly owing to the salient’s fragile resupply. “All supplies to the infantry groups remote from the front line are carried out exclusively by aerial drones, and if something goes wrong and the main forces are unable to support the attack aircraft operating in isolation, the enemy can crush their positions with a counterattack,” the blogger noted.

The risk is baked into the Russians’ tactics. “From what the enemy reports, the Russian armed forces, taking advantage of the holes in the Ukrainian defense, methodically bring in groups of several people at night,” Military Informant explained.

“Infantry groups are led by radio communication from drones, and heat-protective capes are often used to hide from Ukrainian reconnaissance ’copters. As a result, as soon as a sufficient number of people accumulate in a certain place, they carry out raids on rear areas, set up ambushes on equipment along the roads and consolidate their positions in previously safe settlements, creating the appearance of large forces.”

But the force isn’t actually very big or concentrated. If it were, it would be easier for the Ukrainians to detect from the air before it can get lodged underground somewhere behind Ukrainian lines. Thinly spread with long exposed flanks and delicate supply lines, the infiltrators are vulnerable until reinforced.

“We should expect an attack by the main forces of the Russian armed forces following the infiltrated forward detachments, so as not to give the Ukrainian armed forces time to come to their senses and seize the initiative,” Military Informant wrote.

But if the 1st Azov Corps really is rolling up hundreds of Russian infiltrators around Dobropillya, it’s likely the main Russian attack never came. The few hundred infantry who managed to slip past empty Ukrainian positions may be in big trouble now that the positions are no longer empty.

“I would not like to get ahead of myself,” Military Informant warned on Tuesday. A reinforced infiltration all the way to Dobropillya could’ve led to the “collapse of the Ukrainian armed forces’ defense in the Pokrovsk and Dobropillya directions.”

An unreinforced infiltration, on the other hand, is a trap for the infiltrators.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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

And then Russia drops thermobaric bombs on the Azov (Nazi) Corps? Is the author is pretending that defending Dobropillya only depends on 100 Russian soldiers supplied by drones?

That would be the Ukrainian army.

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

THGR claims I have no morels, and he's absolutely right.

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Saturday, August 16, 2025 7:50 AM

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

Can anybody tell how many new T-90M tanks Russia is building—300 a year or just 10? NATO’s asking for a friend

The analysis community’s best guesses range from “almost none” to “a lot,” which isn’t much help for military planning.

By David Axe | August 15, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/08/15/how-many-t-90ms/

The 51-ton, three-person T-90M is heavily armored and boasts modern optics and a powerful 125-millimeter main gun. It’s one of the best tanks in the world.

Has there been a “dramatic fall-off” in tank production at Russia’s Uralvagonzavod tank factory, in Sverdlovsk Oblast 1,600 km from Ukraine, to borrow Hambling’s phrasing? Or is Uralvagonzavod churning out fresh tanks at a rate faster than any tank factory in a Western country?

“According to our estimates, Uralvagonzavod produced 60 to 70 T-90M tanks in 2022,” CIT reported. “In 2023, amid efforts to mobilize the defense industry, output may have increased to 140 to 180 tanks, and by 2024, it may have surpassed 200 units annually, possibly approaching a production rate of 250 to 300 tanks per year.”

The word “may” is doing a lot of work here, but it’s worth noting that CIT isn’t alone in perceiving an increasing rate of tank production. A few months ago, Czech analyst Jakub Janovksy concluded Uralvagonzavod has been building between 150 and 200 T-90Ms annually.

For comparison, the US Army’s own tank plant in Ohio, operated by General Dynamics Land Systems, has been producing just a few dozen M-1 Abrams tanks annually—down from 90 a year in the early 2020s.

We may not know who’s right about T-90M production unless and until Russia either re-deploys tanks to Ukraine in large numbers—or launches an armored assault on NATO’s eastern flank. Maybe it’s best not to know for now.

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

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Saturday, August 16, 2025 7:51 AM

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

US President Donald Trump met with Russian President Vladimir Putin at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on August 15.

Putin said nothing in the joint press conference to indicate that he has moderated either his war aims or his willingness to compromise on them and reiterated language he has used since 2021 to justify Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Trump stated that the United States and Russia did not come to a firm agreement about the war in Ukraine. Trump reported that he and Putin "made great progress" and agreed on "many points," but did not agree on other points.[11] Trump did not elaborate on the specifics of what the US and Russian delegations discussed, upon what points the delegations agreed, and which points remain in contention. Trump stated that "there's no deal until there's a deal" and stated that he will inform Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and NATO states about the conversation and that an agreement on Ukraine is "ultimately up to them."[12] Trump reiterated his timeline that any bilateral economic agreements with Russia will come after the war is "over with."

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-august-15-2025

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

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Saturday, August 16, 2025 7:59 AM

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

Putin Makes No Concessions But Trump Normalizes Relations

People Seem To Be Missing The Big Story

By Phillips P. OBrien | Aug 16, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/putin-makes-no-concessions-but-
trump

Hello All,

Cast your mind back to between one and two weeks ago, which was the trigger moment for yesterday’s Trump-Putin Summit in Anchorage Alaska. If that seems like a long-time ago in an entirely different world—it is because it was. The discussion at that point was about the very harsh sanctions that Trump was imminently going to put on Russia. The reasons for the impending sanctions were clear. The Russians were attacking and slaughtering Ukrainian civilians practically every night, and this for Trump was supposedly intolerable, immoral behavior. As Trump said on 1 August:

“Russia? I think it’s disgusting what they’re doing. I think it’s disgusting…It should be stopped. It’s a disgrace…We’re going to put sanctions.”

Putin at that point was still a great impediment to progress to “peace” and someone who was “playing with fire” according to Trump in defying US wishes and continuing the war in Ukraine. Indeed, Trump was so angry and threatened by Russian actions that he said he dispatched two US nuclear submarines into waters that would be threatening to Russia, when he was upset with threats that he was hearing.

Remember, this was the moment when Trump was supposedly pivoting to help Ukraine—to be a good NATO ally and all that.

All of this happened after August 1.

And yesterday what happened? Well, yesterday the Russians did what they have been doing ever since Trump became president—and attacked Ukraine with long range air power. The Russians used 85 Shahed type drones and 1 Iskander missile against Ukraine last night, and the Ukrainian air force stated that "Hits by 24 (Russian) UAVs were recorded in 12 locations."

At the same time the war raged on the front line, the Russian military did what it always does (get severely overrated by the analytic community while suffering heavy losses) and the Russians continued to avoid US sanctions while building war machinery.

And yet while everything remained the same—everything was really different. Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in a very friendly summit, pledged to work together closely now and in the future, talked about getting back to business—and put all the onus on Ukraine to agree to territorial concessions. The idea that Trump might sanction Russia, might militarily threaten Russia, might provide strong support for Ukrainians, was gone in a blink of an eye.

And people were weirdly claiming nothing had changed.

The US and Russia were normalizing relations in front of our eyes, Ukraine was being told in no uncertain terms it is up to them to cede territory, and the idea of US sanctions on Russia (which were supposed to be imposed by now) have disappeared like a fart in the wind.

I will write much more about this in my weekend update tomorrow. But will briefly outline each point.

First, Trump has begun the process of normalizing relations with war criminal Putin. The whole summit was one big exercise of that, but maybe the piece de la resistance was Trump’s welcoming of Putin on a red carpet—him giving the Russian dictator a salute, a hug and a smile, and then escorting Putin into the presidential limousine for an intimate one-on-one chat like friends. The whole welcome ceremony spoke of Trump’s respect for Putin, his desire to make Putin feel welcome, and his need for time alone with Putin.
President Donald Trump greets Russia's President Vladimir Putin Friday, Aug. 15, 2025, at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska
Two old friends meet on the red carpet

Indeed the talks seem to please both men so much, that at the end Putin mentioned that he wanted to see Trump at a summit next in Moscow.

Trump btw, would love to go, but is worried about US public opinion—more on that tomorrow

So the whole summit was about normalizing US-Russian relations, of showing Putin respect, of setting the conditions to get back to business.

Second, sanctions on Russia were nowhere to be found. Remember this whole summit seemed to come about because Trump was so angry with Russia and humiliated by Putin that he was going to hammer Russia with sanctions….which now seem basically permanently off the table. Here is the press conference (really love fest) that Putin and Trump had at the end of the summit. You want to know one word that was never mentioned once in the transcript? Sanctions.

If sanctions were nowhere to be found—getting back to business between the US and Russia was the theme of the final press conference. In his usually incoherent, but often very revealing way, Trump spoke about the importance of this.

We also have some tremendous Russian business representatives here. And I think, you know, everybody wants to deal with us. We've become the hottest country anywhere in the world in a very short period of time, and we look forward to that. We look forward to dealing- we're going to try and get this over with.

Third, Ukraine must give up land and the Ukrainians are the one that need to agree to this for there to be a ceasefire. This was maybe the most amazing pivot in the last two weeks. The best place to see that was in how Trump described his agreement with Putin and his growing separation from Ukraine, in an interview right after the summit with Sean Hannity.

Hannity: "Most people think this ends with some land swaps....and what Ukraine wants and needs desperately is a security measure that won't be NATO-related...Is that how this ends?"

Trump: "Those are points that we negotiated and points that we largely have agreed upon. I think we have agreed on a lot...Ukraine has to agree to it, maybe they'll say no."

So Trump has largely agreed on land swaps with Putin and now Zelensky needs to act. Go ahead Ukraine—time for you to commit suicide!

Btw, Trump reinforced with Hannity than sanctions with Russia were now off the table.

The weird thing is that some people are saying that this summit did not change anything. Nothing could be further from the truth. Many things changed dramatically yesterday from the way they were only days ago. And all the changes are good for Russia and bad for Ukraine.

Amazing that.

Thanks for reading Phillips’s Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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

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Saturday, August 16, 2025 8:20 AM