Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Wednesday, December 10, 2025 08:08
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PAGE 191 of 191

Saturday, December 6, 2025 3:45 PM

THG

Keep it real please

Russia Russia Russia...

T

Citizens flee homeland in massive exodus avoiding political persecution

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/citizens-flee-homeland-in-massive
-exodus-avoiding-political-persecution/vi-AA1RQnwA?ocid=msedgntp&pc=EDBBAN&cvid=418201d3c9554300af289be7b7a14d78&ei=61

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Saturday, December 6, 2025 8:43 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Everybody knows that Ukraine’s been crookeder thsn a dog's hind leg since 1991. How else did drug addict Hunter Biden get a cushy job on Burisma’s board? (“And 10% for the big guy.“)

Since everyone knows that Ukraine is MASSIVELY corrupt, why is it being made an issue just now?

Some say ... altho I've yet to see a proper investigation... that if you follow flow of money that occurred under Biden*, a fair bit gets cycled back to Eurocrats and USA Senators.

Quote:
Zelensky 'Systematically Sabotaged' Ukraine Anti-Corruption Efforts, NYT Concludes

Saturday, Dec 06, 2025 - 04:50 PM

Via The Cradle

Over the past four years, the Ukrainian government "systematically sabotaged" oversight of the country's state-owned companies and weapons procurement processes, "allowing graft to flourish," a freshly published New York Times investigation has revealed.

The investigation details how the government of Volodymyr Zelensky sidelined outside experts from the US and EU serving on advisory boards responsible for monitoring spending, appointing executives, and preventing corruption.
EPA/Shutterstock

"President Volodymyr Zelensky's administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kiev even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around," the NYT report says.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/world/europe/ukraine-corruption-zel
ensky.html

-----------

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

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Sunday, December 7, 2025 6:02 AM

SECOND

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

Putin Lives by a Code Trump Doesn’t Understand

Where Trump sees a deal, Putin sees submission.

By Andrew Ryvkin | December 6, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2025/12/putin-trump-misunder
standing/685167/

Donald Trump still doesn’t seem to have learned a thing about the Russian dictator he calls a friend. He’s tried all kinds of contradictory gambits in pursuit of peace in Ukraine: welcoming Vladimir Putin in Alaska, helping Kyiv blow up Russian oil refineries, offering Russia land it hasn’t been able to acquire militarily. None seems to have had much effect. The Kremlin is holding the line, and Trump can’t get through. On Thursday, Putin said that parts of the U.S. peace plan were unacceptable and that Russia would take Ukrainian land by force.

One reason may be that Trump and Putin are fundamentally incompatible personalities. Trump sees everything as a deal, and for Putin, any deal is a revelation of weakness. Trump is a creature of the Manhattan-real-estate world; Putin grew up amid the rubble of postwar Leningrad. Those Soviet courtyards formed him. In them, he internalized the rules of ponyatiya—an unwritten code, roughly translated as “the concepts,” or “the understandings,” that originated in Stalin’s Gulags and still governs much of life in Russia, regardless of who’s in power.

The ponyatiya of Putin’s youth generally meant never betraying your gang and always standing up for your friends. Putin still lives by these rules. He’s kept the same circle of friends since the 1980s—a good number of them are now billionaires—and no matter how badly they handle a situation, they are hardly ever punished. They’re in their 70s now, but they still play hockey together in what they call the “Night Hockey League,” or the NHL (they had custom jerseys made). Ponyatiya also meant never letting an insult go unanswered. Consider the defectors—not to mention the oligarchs, journalists, and dissidents who have displeased Putin—who have ended up dead.

Putin approaches foreign policy according to the same code. Hierarchy is absolute. The strong must be respected, and the weak must obey. The fact that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky—a man whose comedy performances Putin once enjoyed—is now leading a country that’s stopping Russia from reclaiming its imperial glory creates cognitive dissonance. A comedian is supposed to be feeble; a smaller nation without a nuclear arsenal is supposed to submit, and its people are supposed to stay silent.

By the same logic, Putin should regard an American president as equally powerful. Yet Trump has consistently presented himself as the weaker party.

For years, Trump was eager to prove that he had a great relationship with Putin. He courted the Russian leader with summits, diplomatic overtures, and long phone calls, even as the rest of the free world shunned him. Trump made no secret of his admiration, either. He called Putin a “genius” for moving troops to eastern Ukraine, praised him as tough, and at one point said that the Russian dictator was “outsmarting our country at every single step.” The media filled in the rest of the picture, suggesting that Trump was ready to concede America’s interests, principles, and allies for the sake of being accepted by an adversary. Putin may well have come to the same conclusion and, following the code of the streets, understood himself as dominant and the U.S. president as having relinquished his claim to Putin’s respect.

Sometimes, Putin lets his attitude toward Trump slip. At the 2018 U.S.-Russia summit, Trump publicly sided with Putin over his own intelligence agencies. The Kremlin propagandist Pavel Zarubin—known for his unfettered access to the Russian president—got hold of the summit’s guestbook. Trump wrote, “Great Honor,” while Putin simply added his signature and the date. “Please don’t be angry; I understand that we could have talked more. It’s just awkward to keep others waiting—they’ll get upset,” Putin said of his upcoming call with Trump to the audience at Russia’s Strategic Initiative Forum this summer. To a Western ear, that doesn’t sound like much, but for someone like Putin—or any Russian street kid, for that matter—“getting upset” is a feminine trait. To apply it to a man is not courtesy; it’s an insult.

Trump has mostly approached the war in Ukraine as though it were a business transaction—a straightforward quid pro quo. The White House has repeatedly floated a list of proposals for Putin to end the war: recognition of Crimea as Russian, de jure control over parts of eastern Ukraine, and a package of economic incentives. The content of these offers matters less than the act of offering; in Putin’s world, initiating a deal is a sign of weakness. The moment Trump extends his hand, he marks himself as submissive and invites Putin to demand more. The better strategy would be to instead apply pressure and wait for Putin to make the first move. In dealing with Putin, in other words, Trump keeps thinking he’s entering a Manhattan boardroom, when in fact he’s walking into a Leningrad courtyard—and blinking first.

Putin has made mistakes in this relationship too, such as assuming that Trump is incapable of being tough on Russia. Before the latest peace proposal, the American president imposed sanctions on Russia’s top two oil companies, put a 50 percent tariff on India for purchasing Russian oil and weapons, and entered into talks with China about pressuring Moscow to end the war in Ukraine. In response, the Russian leader resorted to a show of force: He began appearing in military uniform, something he normally does only rarely, and issuing one nuclear threat after another.

Putin unveiled the Burevestnik, a nuclear-powered cruise missile, at the end of October, and started talking about testing the weapon. He then sent Kirill Dmitriev, his economic envoy, to Washington on a bizarre charm offensive. Predictably, Dmitriev told U.S. reporters that sanctions weren’t hurting Russia’s economy. He also presented a box of chocolates stamped with quotes from Putin to Representative Anna Paulina Luna, one of the few people on Capitol Hill advocating for ending the war essentially on Russia’s terms.

Trump reacted to Putin’s saber-rattling by saying that Russia should end the war in Ukraine instead of testing a nuclear-powered missile—and added that the United States has a nuclear submarine positioned off Russia’s coast. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent dismissed Dmitriev on CBS News, calling him a “Russian propagandist.” After yet another of Putin’s threats, Trump announced that he would resume nuclear testing. That’s when Putin backed down: In an effort to ease tensions, his press secretary clarified that Russia would be testing nuclear engines, not warheads. It was the clearest example of the kind of approach that actually works on Putin.

Nevertheless, the 28-point peace plan Washington first presented late last month was a sweet deal for Putin and appeared to have been drafted with significant input from Moscow. It called for Ukraine to give up the Donbas, abandon its NATO ambitions, cap the size of its military, and hold elections within 100 days. It also offered amnesty to Russians accused of war crimes and invited Moscow back into the G8. But the U.S. was forced to seek European and Ukrainian input, and on December 2, the Kremlin predictably rejected the proposal, though negotiations haven’t yet come to a complete close.

If the talks end in failure, as seems probable, Trump may react with frustration and impose additional sanctions on Russia. Or, just as likely, he may show how little he’s learned by coming back with another deal. Nothing in the underlying dynamic—or the bloodshed—will change if Trump keeps assuming that Putin wants American investment, a G8 seat, and the Donbas more than he wants to destroy Ukraine.

One of the chocolates Dmitriev brought to the U.S. featured a quote from Putin that perfectly captured the Russian president’s worldview. It read, “If a fight is unavoidable, you have to hit first.” When Washington greets Putin with praise, it gets smiles, handshakes, and a reiteration of Moscow’s maximalist demands in return. Trump doesn’t have to become a friend to Ukraine, and he almost certainly never will. But he does need to learn how to deal with Putin. Only then will the Leningrad courtyard, with its unwritten rules, cease to be big enough for the both of them.

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

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Sunday, December 7, 2025 6:20 AM

SECOND

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

Weekend Update #162: The Best Week Since November 5, 2024

Phillips P. OBrien | Dec 07, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-162-the-best-wee
k

The Trump administration did a great favor to Ukraine and all of Europe this week. It stopped lying publicly about its position on both and made it all but impossible for European leaders to keep fantasizing about the USA riding to the rescue. In fact, if you look at the new US National Security Strategy, it is clear that Europe is now viewed as more threatening to the USA in Trump’s mind than either Russia or even China.

. . .

Also, the ranged war continues on in a familiar but pretty horrible pattern this week. The Russians launched another mass attack on Friday night against Ukrainian power supplies, causing blackouts. The Russians fired 653 drones and 51 missiles of which the Ukrainians were able to shoot down 585 drones and 30 missiles.

This is not a great rate of interception by the Ukrainians, meaning 68 drones and 21 missiles hit their targets. And the US, btw, is slow walking anti-air supplies to Ukraine, to help Russia as much as possible.

The Ukrainians, in return, launched a number of large UAV and possibly missile attacks on Russia (we are not sure how many missiles were used). The Ukrainians specifically mentioned targeting Russia’s large Ryazan refinery and also a steel factory which makes metal casings for shells, etc.

It is the mass differentiation between what Russia can do and what Ukraine can do that is most striking—and highlights why Europe knowing the truth is crucial. European states can and should do more now. Taurus for Ukraine would of course be important, but all anti-air help is also vital. Now that they know that Trump is not only with Putin but is also out to destroy the European system, hopefully European leaders will act.

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

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Sunday, December 7, 2025 7:05 AM

SECOND

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

2000 Meters to Andriivka (full documentary) | FRONTLINE

Download from https://yts.lt/movies/2000-meters-to-andriivka-2025

2000 Meters to Andriivka
2025 [UKRAINIAN]
Documentary / War

Available in:
720p.WEB | 1080p.WEB | 1080p.x265
WEB: same quality as BluRay

Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh
93% TOMATOMETER · 46 reviews
IMDb Rating 8.7/10

Plot summary

Amid the failing counteroffensive, a journalist follows a Ukrainian platoon on their mission to traverse one mile of heavily fortified forest and liberate a strategic village from Russian occupation. But the farther they advance through their destroyed homeland, the more they realize that this war may never end.

TRAILER

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

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Sunday, December 7, 2025 8:43 AM

SECOND

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

As Ukraine Fights Corruption, Trump Does the Opposite

Ukrainians want honest government, even as American and Russian kleptocrats circle their country.

By Anne Applebaum | December 7, 2025, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2025/12/ukraine-fighting-cor
ruption-trump/685162/

A few days ago I called Oleksandr Abakumov, a senior detective at the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine. I wanted to ask him about his investigation into a kickback scheme in his country’s energy industry. While we were talking, I got interested in Abakumov himself. As he was explaining his motivations, I was struck by the surprising contrast between people like him—the Ukrainian civil servants and civil-society activists who have been demanding transparency from their leaders for two decades—and the American and Russian negotiators who met this week in Moscow, perhaps to decide Ukraine’s fate.

Ukraine is fighting for its survival. Drones and missiles hit Ukrainian cities most nights. Many Ukrainians nevertheless want, even now, to have a government that’s accountable to the public. Meanwhile, American and Russian kleptocrats are circling the country, looking for ways to do deals that benefit themselves.

Abakumov’s career was directly shaped by his country’s history. Until 2014, he was a police detective in the city of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine. At the beginning of that year, a series of mass protests in Kyiv persuaded Ukraine’s corrupt, authoritarian, pro-Russia president, Viktor Yanukovych, to flee the country. Furious at the loss of their puppet, the Russians immediately invaded Crimea and eastern Ukraine, including Luhansk. Ukrainian elections brought a new president to power. Popular demand for reform led to the creation of new institutions, including the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, or NABU, which has from the beginning intended to eliminate high-level state corruption.

Abakumov’s life changed too. He left occupied Luhansk and moved to Kyiv. In 2016, he went to work for NABU, taking a job that he considers to be a great honor. Certainly, NABU is popular: Last summer, after President Volodymyr Zelensky sought to shut the agency down, Ukrainians organized the largest mass protests the country has seen since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in 2022. The president changed his mind, and the agency remained open. The job also appeals to Abakumov’s patriotism. He believes that if he can help eliminate high-level corruption, then he can help Ukraine preserve its sovereignty and its democracy. “Corruption equals Russia, and we are not Russia,” he told me.

In their investigation, dubbed “Operation Midas,” Abakumov and his colleagues have accused several people in the government of taking money from contracts involving the state nuclear-power company—a particularly sensitive charge at a moment when many Ukrainians live without electricity, thanks to Russian bombing campaigns.

Foreign coverage of “Operation Midas” often relies on the passive voice, as if the scandal has a will of its own (“Scandal Consumes Top Aide”). But people such as Abakumov, who is a part of the Ukrainian state, worked to make the scandal public. They have interrogated cabinet ministers, published surveillance recordings, searched apartments. The Ukrainian Parliament has dismissed two ministers. Tymur Mindich, a former business partner of Zelensky, has fled the country. Late last month, the president’s closest adviser, Andriy Yermak, resigned following a search of his apartment. All of this means that the political system is healthy, operating according to the law.

I should note that quite a few Ukrainians, and indeed many Europeans, believe that the investigation has somehow been assisted by the Trump administration, as a way of weakening Zelensky to force him to capitulate. Given that the Trump administration has stopped advocating for anti-corruption policies around the world and, following the closure of USAID, has dramatically decreased cooperation with Ukrainian law enforcement, this seems implausible.

Abakumov told me that he believes corruption, not transparency, weakens Ukraine. If Ukraine tolerates corruption, he said, “this is the way we lose, during the war, during negotiations, during rebuilding Ukraine.” Daria Kaleniuk, one of Ukraine’s most prominent anti-corruption activists, told me that with this investigation, “we have the chance to save the country and make it stronger.”

These beliefs are radically different from those held by Ukraine’s opponents. From the beginning of his career, Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, has sought to enrich himself and his entourage at the expense of ordinary Russians. Putin himself was a pioneer in the use of secret offshore accounts and shell companies to transfer state assets into his own pockets. He has also spent years seeking to prevent those ordinary Russians from finding out about his finances.

In January 2021, the anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny released a meticulously documented film, Putin’s Palace, which revealed a network of kickbacks and payments to the Russian president far larger, more far-reaching, and more baroque than the scandal under investigation in Ukraine. The result: Navalny, who had just been arrested at the Russian border, was sent to a Siberian prison, where he later died. Putin kept his palace, complete with its private hockey rink and hookah bar, and his money. He blocked all further investigations into his wealth, jailed protesters, drove real journalists out of the country, and launched an invasion of Ukraine.

The Americans taking part in the recent Moscow negotiations are not brutal dictators, but neither are they civil servants acting purely in the interests of transparency, accountability, and patriotism. Steve Witkoff, a real-estate developer, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and the owner of an investment company that received $2 billion from Saudi Arabia, are now conducting the main negotiations. Their Russian counterpart is Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund, which has strong ties with its Saudi counterpart. He is believed to have met Kushner while doing business in the Gulf.

Last month, The Wall Street Journal revealed that these three businessmen met in Miami Beach in October to discuss not just Ukraine but also future Russian-American business deals. Russian businessmen who are known to be close to Putin have been “dangling multibillion-dollar rare-earth and energy deals” in front of American companies, the Journal explained, to “reshape the economic map of Europe—while driving a wedge between America and its traditional allies.” Some of the companies have connections with Donald Trump’s family.

Witkoff and Kushner are not taking kickbacks on government contracts, as some Ukrainian officials are now accused of doing. The corruption they represent is more profound: They are using the tools of the American state in a manner that happens to benefit their friends and business partners, even while they do terrible damage to American allies, American alliances, and America’s reputation. This is a conflict of interest on a grand scale, with no real precedent in modern American foreign policy.

In Ukraine, the state itself is investigating the government, the cabinet, even the president’s closest advisers. By contrast, it is impossible to imagine Kash Patel’s FBI investigating anyone in Trump’s White House. Any Russian who investigates Putin goes to jail. The word corruption has many nuances, and we aren’t using enough of them when we talk about Ukraine.

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

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Sunday, December 7, 2025 2:19 PM

SECOND

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

December 7, 2025 02:57 pm GMT

The Kremlin has welcomed Donald Trump’s new National Security Strategy document and claimed it is “largely consistent with our vision”.

The US president unveiled a new framework for his administration’s foreign policy and defence priorities on Friday, at a time when many in Europe hold wider concerns that Washington has a pro-Russia bias.

The NSS largely ignores the threat Russia poses to the West and instead concentrates a lot of its content on targeting America’s allies in Europe.

It claims economic decline in the continent is “eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilisational erasure” – while also claiming the EU’s activities “undermine political liberty and sovereignty”.

Much more at https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/russias-reaction-to-trumps-new-
national-security-strategy-is-deeply-worrying_uk_69358773e4b0e3887427ce33

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

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Monday, December 8, 2025 7:36 AM

SECOND

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

The Russian authorities are attempting to hide the real scale of disability among their military personnel resulting from combat operations.

This was reported by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine, according to Ukrinform.

According to intelligence data, during hostilities from 2022 to 2024, at least 370,000 Russians sustained injuries that led to disability.

“This is one of the most significant social consequences of the war against Ukraine, which Russia’s authorities are trying to conceal by restricting official statistics and closing access to primary data,” the agency noted.

An indirect indicator of the scale of the problem, intelligence points out, is the sharp increase in budget expenditures for prosthetics. Russia’s federal budget demonstrates an unprecedented rate of growth in these allocations: 37.2 billion rubles in 2022, 42.2 billion in 2023, and 55.8 billion in 2024. For this year, 75.4 billion rubles have been allocated, and for the next, 98.16 billion. Such acceleration is typical of situations in which the state responds to a massive influx of new patients with severe injuries, including amputations and combat-related wounds.

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4066631-russia-conceals-true-scal
e-of-disability-among-military-personnel-intelligence.html

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

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Monday, December 8, 2025 9:27 AM

SECOND

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

Donald Trump is cashing in on selling out his allies while he still has time

The most transactional president in US history, now nearly 80, knows he is running out of road in his second term and has realised there is more to gain by hiking the price of Pax Americana than by indulging the country’s traditional friends

By Sean O’Grady | Monday 08 December 2025 08:45 EST

https://www.the-independent.com/voices/trump-ukraine-peace-deal-europe
-america-b2880101.html

We’ve heard a lot over the past few weeks, and indeed for about a decade, on and off, about how so much of the coverage of Donald Trump in the mainstream media (that’s me) is biased, unbalanced, and suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome”.

Well, the man can be maddening in all manner of ways, but, as ever, I’d love to offer a balanced assessment of his peace plan for Ukraine, so far as we understand it, and his motivations.

Despite the angry rants he sometimes indulges in, and a taste for extra-judicial execution of America’s “enemies”, I think that Trump is sincere in wanting an end to all sorts of wars, and not just to get his hands on the Nobel Peace Prize to outdo some of his predecessors (the risible Fifa peace prize he’s recently been awarded being a pitiful, Poundland version of the real noble thing). When he talks with some force about the thousands of lives lost every week in the vicious conflict, he probably means it, though he invariably fails to mention who started it and occasionally, grotesquely, blames Volodymyr Zelensky.

It also seems fairly obvious that Trump really does want that Nobel prize, if only because it feeds his vanity. The medal would look grand on the mantelpiece in the Oval Office, albeit competing with many other golden goblets and baubles. It seems that gongs matter disproportionately to Trump, and if they incentivise him to stop the killing, then there’s no harm in that. Quite the opposite.

This is also a president who knows he is running out of time. Whatever the truth behind reports that his health is failing, he’s nearly 80, his second term is coming to an end, and he knows his domestic power is crumbling. He is an old man in a hurry.

All that said, though, there is no mistaking Trump’s materialism, both on behalf of his country and for himself and his family. He’s a real estate guy who enjoys wealth, almost for its own sake. I imagine that’s why he pulled down the East Wing of the White House and why he wants to build that questionable “ballroom” to dwarf the original residence – and get other people to pay for it.

Everywhere he goes, he sees commercial opportunities. He wants to annex the whole of Greenland, because of the rich mineral reserves beneath, and just because it’s there, a big “vacant plot”. Who can forget the quizzical look on Benjamin Netanyahu’s face when Trump revealed, at a joint press conference, his bizarre scheme to depopulate Gaza and turn it into a luxury beach resort – dubbed Mar-a-Gaza.

Whatever happens to Ukraine, including any subsequent further Russian occupation, the new lucrative American mineral rights in the southeast of the country will be preserved. Many years ago, too, we may remind ourselves, after the fall of the USSR, he tried to get a Trump Tower built in Moscow. It feels likely that he still hankers after such a personal monument amongst the onion domes.

In other words, this is a transactional president who has his eye on commercial opportunities, national and personal. It may not be a coincidence that his personal envoys in this peace process are another property developer, Steve Witkoff, and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, both at least as influential in this as Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, who increasingly resembles a hostage. They will know that Trump would like to know what’s in all this for America and for Trump himself.

Too crude an analysis? Unfair? Well, we need look no further than the official record. After the Putin-Trump love-in in Alaska, the president of Russia said there was “tremendous potential” in “trade, digital, high tech and in space exploration” – music to the ears of Musk and Bezos. At the same meeting, Trump noted the presence of Russian business representatives and “look forward to dealing” with them. The latest US National Security policy states that a “core interest” is to “reestablish strategic stability with Russia” – “strategic stability” meaning a resumption of normal economic relations with Europe and the US, and thus a more propitious environment for business.

In a way, Trump is right. Russia obviously has potential, though such is the nature of the Putin regime that any enterprise will have to bend to whatever the Kremlin wants from it, and is at permanent risk of sequestration. If China and India can rejoin the world economy and prosper, as they have in recent decades, then there is no reason, in principle, why a post-Putin Russia might not do the same eventually. The price for such lush business opportunities for American companies and the tech oligarchs is that Ukraine will be treated more like a US-Russia condominium than a sovereign European state in its own right.

Never mind, Ukraine, it is beginning to feel just a little like Trump and Putin would like to carve out spheres of interest just as their predecessors did at the end of the Second World War. It is not only Ukraine that is about to be sold out by Trump. That may sound like an extreme verdict, but as it’s based on current trends and public remarks, it is a balanced, and frankly terrifying, one.

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

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Monday, December 8, 2025 9:48 AM

SECOND

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

This is what Ukrainians should have started doing 4 years ago, but didn't because Ukrainians think too much as Russians do. In 1943, American troop training expanded to 14 weeks (adding tactical field training) and then to 17 weeks, 119 days (adding small unit training) to improve combat readiness, especially after issues in North Africa.

Ukraine will focus on strengthening its army through better mobilization, recruitment, and high-quality training as it continues to resist Russia’s full-scale invasion, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on Dec. 8, following a recent meeting with military personnel.

The new efforts aim to overhaul the preparation of servicemen by improving both the structure and conditions of military training.

Among the key changes, the military is extending the duration of Basic General Military Training (BGMT) to 51 days, and introducing specialized instruction and an adaptation period within combat units.

Additional measures include improving the selection and training of instructors, modernizing training center infrastructure, and providing psychological and tactical adaptation support to newly mobilized personnel.

An audit of training centers across Ukraine identified top-performing facilities that will serve as benchmarks for other units. To increase safety and ensure consistent training, the military is relocating programs away from front-line areas, assigning army corps to training grounds in central and western Ukraine.

Syrskyi also called for urgent improvements to protective infrastructure, citing unsatisfactory conditions in some training centers.

"We have no right to be careless with the safety of our servicemen. I have issued the necessary orders to address the identified problems," Syrskyi said.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-update-2025-12-8/

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

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Monday, December 8, 2025 9:50 AM

THG

Keep it real please

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Everybody knows that Ukraine’s been crookeder thsn a dog's hind leg since 1991. How else did drug addict Hunter Biden get a cushy job on Burisma’s board? (“And 10% for the big guy.“)

Since everyone knows that Ukraine is MASSIVELY corrupt, why is it being made an issue just now?

Some say ... altho I've yet to see a proper investigation... that if you follow flow of money that occurred under Biden*, a fair bit gets cycled back to Eurocrats and USA Senators.

Quote:
Zelensky 'Systematically Sabotaged' Ukraine Anti-Corruption Efforts, NYT Concludes

Saturday, Dec 06, 2025 - 04:50 PM

Via The Cradle

Over the past four years, the Ukrainian government "systematically sabotaged" oversight of the country's state-owned companies and weapons procurement processes, "allowing graft to flourish," a freshly published New York Times investigation has revealed.

The investigation details how the government of Volodymyr Zelensky sidelined outside experts from the US and EU serving on advisory boards responsible for monitoring spending, appointing executives, and preventing corruption.
EPA/Shutterstock

"President Volodymyr Zelensky's administration has stacked boards with loyalists, left seats empty, or stalled them from being set up at all. Leaders in Kiev even rewrote company charters to limit oversight, keeping the government in control and allowing hundreds of millions of dollars to be spent without outsiders poking around," the NYT report says.

Trump signym, Trump. Billions worth of payoffs to Trump and his family, as he runs a pay to play government for all to see. You're ignoring that means what you post is pure bullshit.

How could you possibly care about corruption in Ukraine when you don't care about it in America and Russia where it is happening on a monumental scale?

T

MASSIVE WAR BREAKS OUT IN THAILAND, TURKEY INVADES SYRIA! Breaking War News With The Enforcer 1383

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Monday, December 8, 2025 12:47 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
How could you possibly care about corruption in Ukraine when you don't care about it in America and Russia where it is happening on a monumental scale?

Why do you care what's happening in Russia, dood? I mean, you spend so much time posting about Russia I think you live there!

I posted that I think Trump is using our military to shake down, or try to shake down, akl kinds of nations around the world, including Greenland, Canada, Ukraine, and now Venezuela.

IDK where those proceeds will eventually go. BlackRock? JPMChase? Chevron? Trump and family? Others? All of the above?

Reading the national security strategy, so far it looks like Trump is trying to disengage from Russia and Iran and block China from access to Central and S American commodities (including Venezuelan oil) and secure supply chains in the western hemisphere (rare earth metals!) before once again threatening China.

Not on board with threatening China or re-colonizing the Americas, but I'm happy with the STATED goals of disengaging militarily from the EU (and Israel?) bc they've been money-pits for decades.

----------

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

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Monday, December 8, 2025 1:35 PM

THG

Keep it real please

Putin’s People Are Being Arrested – Is a Coup Coming?

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Monday, December 8, 2025 2:56 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Putin’s People Are Being Arrested – Is a Coup Coming?

T

First of all... posting about Russia. AGAIN!
Why do you care so much?

Secondly... no linkies.
So, who are "Putin's people"? Lavrov? Nabulina? Mishustin? Gerasimov? Ushakov?

Thirdly, you really need to learn which sources you can trust.
Why would a "coup" be in the works when Russia is on the brink of victory?
Yanno, establishment media said the same thing about Xi.
"Five generals arrested! They are Xi allies! Look for a Xi ousting during China's CCP Plenary session!"
Well, China's plenary session came and went, and Xi is still firmly in place.
If this "news" evaporates, will you start keeping track of all of the "misses" that your sources rack up, and maybe be more skeptical in future?

And fourth ... your signature formatting is still fucked up. I have to delete an unquote every time.

-----------

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

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Monday, December 8, 2025 5:46 PM

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

“Unprepared for War”: Ex–Ground Forces Chief Torches Russian Intel on Ukraine

By Reuben Johnson | Dec 8, 2025

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/unprepared-for-war-ex-ground-force
s-chief-torches-russian-intel-on-ukraine/

Key Points and Summary – Retired Col. Gen. Vladimir Chirkin, former commander of Russia’s ground forces, has publicly blasted his country’s intelligence community for fatally misreading Ukraine before the 2022 invasion.

-In a remarkably blunt interview with RBC Radio, Chirkin said Moscow went to war “once again unprepared,” relying on assessments that claimed 70 percent of Ukrainians would welcome a pro-Russian regime—when the opposite proved true.

-He gave Russia’s entire intelligence apparatus a “failing grade” and linked early battlefield paralysis to a “Tbilisi syndrome” culture of fear and over-centralized command.

-His comments suggest that fear of criticizing Vladimir Putin’s war may finally be eroding inside Russia.

The Message From Gen. Chirkin: Russia’s War in Ukraine Was Built on Lies

In a sign that the taboo over speaking out against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is cracking wide open, one of Russia’s former senior military commanders has stated that the intelligence assessments given to the Kremlin prior to the February 2022 invasion were next to worthless. Therefore, when the former KGB Lt. Col., who is now Russia’s commander-in-chief, launched his “Special Military Operation”, or SVO in its Russian acronym, Moscow was “once again unprepared” for war.

The comments came from Col. Gen. Vladimir Chirkin, a former chief commander of Russian ground forces, and are highly critical of the intelligence advisors to the Kremlin leadership. His observations are some of the most outspoken to date. Both the RBC Radio host, Yuri Tamanstev, and the broader military analyst community are shocked by the tone of his narrative.

“Russia has become, after all, a place where anyone who denounces the war, or challenged the ‘all-knowing’ Putin regime that launched it, can easily receive some visitors the next day. These people will be wearing white and will take you off to some place you would not want to visit,” said a Russian military analyst in Moscow.

Strangely, there are no reports that anyone has come to drag Chirkin out of his flat and into a “special services” van. This indicates that the fear imposed on Russians who dare criticize the military operation in Ukraine is evaporating.

Chirkin’s outspokenness also appeared to surprise his interviewer, radio host Yuri Tamantsev from RBC, one of Russia’s few remaining semi-independent news sites. “To be honest, I didn’t expect such frankness at the very beginning of our conversation,” Tamantsev said afterwards.

Misleading From The Start

The Russian intelligence community had completely misled the Kremlin about the political sentiment in Ukraine, he told Tamantsev. Chirkin blasted the Kremlin’s intelligence services in this November 27 interview, which is often regarded as infallible in the West, giving them failing marks for their performance in the early days before the Ukraine war.

In his opinion, their assessments were so flawed that they prompted an unprepared Moscow to launch its full-scale invasion under completely erroneous and false assumptions.

“Everyone, if you recall, started saying in February 2022 that the war would be over in three days,” and were boasting “we’ll beat them all now,” recalled Chirkin in the RBC interview.

Reality, as he recalled, turned out to be, as they say, “not as advertised.”

Chirkin was last in command of the ground forces from 2012 to 2013, when he was forced to step down. Even though he had been in retirement for almost a decade before the invasion, his comments are unusually critical for a top Russian military official, even among those no longer on active duty.

“But unfortunately, it didn’t work out that way. I would give our entire Russian intelligence community a failing grade,” he added. The general’s criticism of his own country’s military and intelligence services has crossed the border. This week, Ukrainian news circles highlighted Denis Kazanskyi, a Ukrainian political journalist who repeated many of Chirkin’s talking points.

Not As Advertised

These flawed predictions of how an enemy might react are more the rule than the exception, said Chirkin. Moscow, he said, has “traditionally” miscalculated the balance of power. This has historically meant that Russia underestimates the enemy’s forces, predicts a victory with great bravado, and simultaneously overestimates the performance of its own troops.

“To be fair, I don’t intend to criticize anyone, but in my opinion, Russia was once again unprepared for war, as it had been in previous years and centuries,” he said.

One of the most unforgivable failures, in his opinion, was the reports given to the Russian leadership stating that 70 per cent of Ukraine’s population would support a pro-Russian government installed by Moscow.

“It turned out to be exactly the opposite,” he explained. The Ukrainians were 30 per cent for us and 70 per cent against,” he said. “During the first few weeks [of the invasion], we were taught a ruthless lesson.”

Chirkin also described Russian forces as being paralyzed in the early stages of the invasion and falling victim to what is known as the “Tbilisi syndrome.” This term dates back to the lacklustre performance of Russia’s military in the 2008 invasion of Georgia.

It is now commonly used as shorthand for a dysfunctional command system in which troops are afraid to make tactical decisions without their superiors’ orders. In a conflict run this way, by the time a decision has received approval from above, it is usually too late.

This diagnosis has been echoed by both Western and Ukrainian assessments of the invasion’s initial failures. Russia’s military not only completely misunderstood what was required to take the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, but also dispatched an under-equipped force of poorly maintained equipment that was almost guaranteed to fail.

The result was weeks of confusion among Moscow’s troops, hobbled by a nonexistent logistics system and a lack of air superiority, compounded by the Russian military’s complete inability to suppress Ukraine’s air defenses.

Weeks of a stalled offensive and columns of vehicles stuck on the road being hit with constant attacks from Ukraine’s territorial defense forces resulted in the Russian military being forced to withdraw from the assault. The failure of the invasion was now complete, and Moscow has not threatened the Ukrainian capital since.

So much for “victory will be ours in three days,” said the Russian military analyst.

About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson

Reuben F. Johnson has thirty-six years of experience analyzing and reporting on foreign weapons systems, defense technologies, and international arms export policy. Johnson is the Director of Research at the Casimir Pulaski Foundation. He is also a survivor of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. He worked for years in the American defense industry as a foreign technology analyst and later as a consultant for the U.S. Department of Defense, the Departments of the Navy and Air Force, and the governments of the United Kingdom and Australia. In 2022-2023, he won two awards in a row for his defense reporting. He holds a bachelor’s degree from DePauw University and a master’s degree from Miami University in Ohio, specializing in Soviet and Russian studies. He lives in Warsaw.

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

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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 5:45 AM

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

Trump’s new national security strategy treats longtime allies as threats

By Ned Temko | Dec. 08, 2025, 4:41 p.m. ET | London

https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2025/1208/Trump-national-securi
ty-strategy-Europe

Why We Wrote This -- Donald Trump’s new national security strategy turns history on its head, dismissing a Europe it says faces “civilizational erasure” and praising far-right parties that Moscow supports. How will the United States’ transatlantic allies react?

The signs had been growing stronger since Inauguration Day. Yet in the early hours of last Friday, the White House website made it official: For President Donald Trump, the main transatlantic threat is not Vladimir Putin’s Russia.

The extraordinary broadside against mostly centrist European governments came in Mr. Trumps’ National Security Strategy of the United States, or NSS – a policy document published by all U.S. administrations that rarely breaks new ground or generates much lasting news interest.

But for European leaders, the shock of being portrayed as an ideological threat, in language that past reports had reserved for countries like Russia, will linger.

Focusing above all on immigration, the NSS warns that non-Europeans might eventually become a majority in some countries. And it accuses Europe’s leadership of allowing this “stark prospect of civilizational erasure.”

Even more unsettling, perhaps, the document singles out far-right populists as the sole cause for U.S. optimism: “patriotic European parties” whose “resistance” Washington would seek to “cultivate.”

That is language that recalls American references to Soviet dissidents during the Cold War.

Its immediate effect has been to lend greater urgency to Europe’s efforts to dissuade Mr. Trump from seeking a Ukraine peace deal that would require Kyiv to cede further territory, or deny Ukraine adequate security guarantees against further Russian aggression.

The NSS accuses Europe of harboring “unrealistic expectations” on Ukraine.

In its shadow, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer launched a new effort Monday to consolidate support for Ukraine, hosting talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, France’s President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz.

But even if Mr. Trump decides to back a more balanced Ukraine accord, the NSS raises the prospect of a yet more difficult, and maybe impossible, task for Europe: to quickly find a way to safeguard its own security without American support.

The NSS says Washington aims to “enable” Europe to take “primary responsibility for its own defense.” And just hours after its publication, a news report suggested the Pentagon wanted Europe to manage without its eight-decade-long U.S. security umbrella within the next two years.

Yet it is the underlying thrust of the NSS that has left the deepest wound: the strong suggestion that for the United States, the shared interests, values, and common worldview binding the transatlantic alliance since the end of World War II may no longer hold.

Some of its specific targets are familiar. It attacks the 27-nation European Union as a behemoth stifling its nations’ sovereignty and overregulating businesses. That is an especially sore spot for Washington because Europe regulates online and social media platforms for transparency, accountability, and issues of personal and public safety.

Equally unsurprising is the call for European NATO members to do more for their own security. While they are still far from self-sufficient, they have been pouring billions more into that effort, and adding more troops and weapons, in response to Mr. Putin’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

But this NSS, especially regarding Europe, is unrecognizably different.

Not just from decades past, but from Mr. Trump’s own first-term Security Survey in 2017.

His first NSS proudly proclaimed an “America First” approach.

Yet it heaped praise on a European alliance rooted in a joint triumph over “fascism, imperialism and Soviet communism.”

It accused Moscow of challenging “American power, influence and interests,” eroding “American security and prosperity” and seeking to “divide us from our allies and partners.”

Now, all that is gone.

In its place is a root-and-branch revision of America’s alliance with Europe – through the lens of Mr. Trump’s MAGA agenda of assertive nationalism, “traditional” social values, and a clampdown on immigration.

That narrative resonates not only with Europe’s far right, but also with Moscow, where a government official praised the NSS.

The report portrays these new policy priorities as essential – not only to restore American greatness, but to protect the very future of Western civilization.

And it says something more – telegraphed since the start of the administration by Vice President JD Vance and other senior figures, but now boasting the president’s signature: In that battle, America’s true European allies are the far-right parties rising in the polls in a number of countries.

The NSS echoes one of their rallying cries: what’s often known as the “great replacement theory.” That posits an elite conspiracy to supplant native populations with non-Christian, non-white interlopers. “It is more than plausible,” the NSS suggests, that “certain NATO members will become majority non-European.”

It also accuses European governments of subverting democracy: by trying to “suppress” their far-right challengers and, on Ukraine, by ignoring “a large European majority” that wants a peace agreement.

European leaders will take some encouragement from polling, which has consistently shown the opposite: solid support for helping Ukraine, even nearly four years after Russia’s invasion.

They can also hope that the NSS may ultimately have less of an effect on U.S. policy than the day-to-day decisions of President Trump, with whom they will almost certainly be redoubling efforts to reach common ground.

But they may well feel most reassured by another finding of European polls over the past year.

By even larger margins than they support Ukraine, people in most European countries hold strongly negative views of Mr. Trump

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

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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 5:59 AM

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

Czechia unveils Narwhal missile: Ukraine will be the first to test it in combat

Tue, December 09, 2025 - 11:45

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/czechia-unveils-narwhal-missile-ukrain
e-will-1765272924.html

The Czech company LPP has developed a new long-range cruise missile called Narwhal, which is already undergoing testing. In the future, it is planned to be transferred to Ukraine, according to Aktualne.

According to the outlet, the final stage of testing will take place in Ukraine — the weapon will be delivered for trials in real combat conditions against the Russian army. Its first combat use is preliminarily scheduled for January–February 2026, and serial production in Czechia could begin as early as March.

Meanwhile, analysts from Defense Express estimate that Narwhal can strike targets at distances of up to 680 km — enough to reach Moscow or the Engels strategic bomber airbase. The missile has a speed of up to 750 km/h and is equipped with a 120-kilogram warhead, significantly more powerful than Shahed drones (50–90 kg).

In addition to GPS and an inertial system, Narwhal features visual navigation, allowing it to operate even under heavy Russian EW interference. The missile is 4 meters long, has a 2.6 m wingspan, and weighs 260 kg. It can be launched from a catapult, a runway, a road, or with a solid-fuel booster.

Analysts note that in several parameters, Narwhal surpasses the American long-range Barracuda 500M missiles — particularly in navigation, partially in range, and in warhead power (45–85 kg for Barracuda). However, the American missile has an advantage in cost — about $216,500, while the price of Narwhal has not yet been disclosed and is likely to be higher.

Military aid to Ukraine from the Czechia

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Czechia has transferred significant quantities of weapons and equipment to Ukraine, including tanks, armored vehicles, artillery, and aviation equipment.

Recently, a new fundraising campaign for interceptor drones for Ukraine was launched in the country. The initiative was organized by activists from the Skupina D group, which has already delivered thousands of drones to Ukrainian defenders since 2022.

In October, Czechs raised about $595,000 in just two days to purchase a Flamingo missile for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

Czechia has also become a key coordinator of a large-scale program for supplying artillery shells in cooperation with European partners.

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

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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 6:27 AM

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

One dam stands between a million Ukrainians and catastrophe. Russia is destroying it

by Olena Mukhina | Dec 9, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/09/russia-is-destroying-dam-of-res
ervoir-supplying-70-water-to-million-person-city-of-kharkiv-to-choke-ukraines-vovchansk-logistics/

Russia's latest objective is to destroy the Pechenihy Reservoir dam, which supplies 70% drinking and technical water to Kharkiv, a city of a million people, Focus reports.

The reservoir is one of only two sources providing Kharkiv with drinking and technical water. The destruction of this facility would also be catastrophic for civilians, as it risks leaving the region without heating in winter.

This is not the first time Russia has blown up Ukrainian dams for its military objectives. On the morning of June 6, 2023, Russia blew up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, which was crucial for water supply, energy stability, and cooling for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe.

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

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Tuesday, December 9, 2025 10:17 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:

This is not the first time Russia has blown up Ukrainian dams for its military objectives. On the morning of June 6, 2023, Russia blew up the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Station, which was crucial for water supply, energy stability, and cooling for the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the largest in Europe.

Damn Russkies! They blew up their Nordstream pipelines too! Next thing you know, they're going to shell Donetsk city and the Zaparozhiy NPP, and drone-strike Chernobyl!

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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 7:23 AM

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

Russian forces have gained 0.77 percent of Ukrainian territory since the start of 2025 while suffering disproportionately high personnel costs. Russian forces have seized roughly 4,669 square kilometers since January 1, 2025. Russian forces have suffered a total of 391,270 casualties in that time, or about 83 casualties per square kilometer.

The Russian campaign to militarily seize the rest of Donetsk Oblast, including Ukraine’s heavily fortified Fortress Belt, would likely take at least two-to-three years, pose a significant challenge, and result in difficult and costly battles that the Russian Federation may not be able to sustain.[6]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-december-9-2025/

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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 7:25 AM

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

The First Step

Europe Needs To Stop Listening to the "Hopewashing" from Official Washington

By Phillips P. OBrien | Dec 09, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-first-step

One of the most difficult tasks that European states and the EU institutionally have is learning to think on their own. They have over decades of inactivity, mostly lost the ability to think strategically on their own behalf; to judge what they need to do with their own resources to defend their own interests. You might think of it as European strategic muscles having atrophied from lack of use.

As Europe’s strategic muscles have atrophied, what replaced it was reliance on the USA to do much of Europe’s strategic thinking. Europeans could sit back, enjoy their welfare states, early retirement ages and social benefits, snug in the knowledge that if anything truly dangerous happened, big daddy USA would be there to keep the bad guys at bay. Yes, Europeans might chafe at this inferiority, might even comfort themselves by saying that they were very clever and had outsourced their security for little cost, but ultimately they were happy to accept this strategic infantilization.

Until now that is, when the enormous danger of that infantilization is staring Europe squarely in the face. As such institutions and governments across the continent are asking themselves questions that they have avoided for decades—for almost 80 years in some cases.

I’m delighted to say that I am actually playing a small role in discussing these questions, having recently joined the High Level Group (HLG) Trade and Economic Resilience. The HLG is a body set up with the support of the EU specifically to think “outside the box” to help Europe prepare for the future—and the very near future in this case. As I’ve been thinking about such strategic questions for Europe for a while now, long before joining the HLG. This piece which was published in The Atlantic just after Trump’s election, summarized where things stood more then.

To be sure, the continent suffers from a collective-action problem. French President Emmanuel Macron asked this week, “The question we, as Europeans, must ask ourselves, is: Are we ready to defend the interests of Europeans?” Detractors might ask why he was raising the issue only now. In Germany, Scholz’s government appears on the verge of collapse. Even if it survives, it likely lacks the boldness to move decisively to help Ukraine.

And yet the greatest obstacle is a mental one. After decades of expecting the United States to act wisely and forcefully in defense of the broader democratic world, Europe needs to start thinking and acting on its own and in its own interests. Trump’s return means that things previously inconceivable must be faced. And in Ukraine, a new Europe can be born.

Reading that last sentence you can see where optimism as always is the great killer.

Of course here we are more than a year later and Europe is still a long way from thinking, let alone acting, on its own. To do that, some important structural and emotional changes must be made, some profound and some simple.

One of the most important is that Europeans need to stop listening to “official” Washington which has over the last year, consistently and disastrously, misled Europeans about the reality they are facing. By official Washington I mean not just the diplomatic/military/intelligence agencies of the US government, which still exercise enormous influence on European thinking. I also mean the think-tanks and research institutes that cluster in Washington, and which present themselves as impartial sources of analysis and policy advice—but which are decidedly not.

This official Washington voice, which is extremely powerful in Europe, has engaged sometimes wittingly, sometimes not, in what can only be called “hopewashing” Trump’s actions. This hopewashing generally takes two forms. The first is to hold out the hope that Trump, for all his open danger, really will not bring fundamental changes and that the USA will revert to some status quo ante in the future. The other aspect of hopewashing is to look at any possible sign, some completely fantastical, that Trump would do anything to stand up to Putin and help Ukraine/Europe in the process.

The government officials doing this often have the best intentions. They do not want to believe that the US, for which they work, could become an enemy of European democracy or that the US could be Putin’s backer. They thus desperately act like nothing fundamental has changed and that NATO and the transatlantic relationship remains solid. I have seen this with my own eyes at conferences over the last year year—US government officials basically bluffing Europeans into believing that all will be well. And many Europeans have sadly lapped this up.

The think tanks can be just as destructive. There is almost a reverence for US think tanks in Europe, where there is nothing comparable in terms of size and research output. Washington is full of foreign policy groups with very learned people, producing policy documents that seem to be rational, factual and almost neutral. They then get quotes extensively in the media and are often portrayed as the voice of wisdom.

However the reality is that much of the think-tank world is anything but this. Many US think-tanks have one overriding concern, which is to be taken seriously by the US administration of the moment, whatever kind of administration that might be. Access to the administration gives think-tankers everything they say they want, impact, prestige and even government contracts at times.

Btw, it is also the same for some newspaper columnists and media personalities, etc.

What this means is that the incentive systems of the think tanks works in many cases to favor the production of research slanted to the needs of the administration. These think tanks, as we have seen over the last year, have elements that quickly become mouthpieces for the administration is their quest for meaning. Its a sign of how their incentive systems actually shape their research. If you want to read more about this, Professor Cohen and I discussed the incentive system and its problem for research analysts in the run up to the Russian full-scale invasion in our report. See pp 49-51 at the end of our report (free to download here).

It is one of the reason that the last few weeks seem to have confused so many people in Europe. They honestly listened to voices from Washington that were telling them Trump had pivoted to Ukraine, was about to hammer Putin and would even work with Europeans to make that happen.

None of this was ever true—but so many voices from Washington were saying it, that it was taken seriously.

It’s an example of Europe’s fundamental strategic problem—an inability to really think through European problems from their own perspective. Europeans pay far too much attention to what comes out of US think tanks and the other elements of what can be called official Washington, without critically assessing the incentives that underline what they are being told. In this way the USA exercises a form of “reflexive control” over European thinking—in a way not dissimilar to how Russia exercises reflexive control over US thinking. Indeed, it could be said that Russia directly influences European thinking by effectively using US sources to make Russian arguments for them.

I will hopefully next week produce a piece with examples of this hopewashing over the last year. There are many examples of major think tanks such as ones with the names of famous philanthropists, becoming Trumpist cheerleaders no matter what the President says. For instance, when Trump announces sanctions on Russia, they cheer and say what great sanctions they are. Then when Trump endorses a 28-point plan that was written by the Russians, they turn around and say that this is a serious plan and a basis for peace.

So, not listening so much to what Washington says is probably the first and unavoidable step for Europe to begin looking after itself.

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

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Wednesday, December 10, 2025 7:44 AM

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

Ukraine war latest live: Ukrainian troops in Myrnohrad are using a narrow “gray zone” corridor for rotations and supplies as frontline accounts of near-encirclement clash with official assurances.

by Jared Goyette | December 10, 2025

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-live-2025-12-10/

At the War Desk, our focus continues to be on Myrnohrad — with conflicting information about whether Ukrainian troops there are "encircled" and how safely they can rotate personnel and bring in supplies.

Top story so far:

Ukrainian troops defending the front-line city of Myrnohrad in Donetsk Oblast are relying on a narrow and increasingly dangerous "gray zone" corridor to move in and out of the city as Russian forces try to cut the last remaining roads, Ukrainska Pravda reported.

Two servicemen fighting in the area told Ukrainska Pravda journalist Olga Kyrylenko that all usable routes into and out of Myrnohrad are under constant Russian fire.

The last remaining exit from Myrnohrad is described as a "strip of gray zone" only a couple of kilometers (about 1 mile) wide between the partially occupied village of Rivne and the occupied village of Krasnyi Lyman. Soldiers say Ukrainian brigades are taking losses as they try to rotate personnel and maintain supplies, Kyrylenko reported.

Russian forces are also increasing their presence inside Myrnohrad, while Ukrainian troops have fewer reconnaissance tools left to assess the buildup, according to the report.

This comes a week after a Dec. 3 report in the Ukrainian media outlet Hromadske in which soldiers on the ground said Myrnohrad was practically encircled, with one unnamed commander in the 38th Marine Brigade saying that Myrnohrad had been encircled on the ground for the last five days, while another source told the outlet that the last successful rotation was on Nov. 12.

These reports appear to contrast with comments by Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi at a Dec. 9 press briefing, where he said that Myrnohrad "is not surrounded," although he acknowledged that logistics had become more difficult.

At the same briefing, Syrskyi said Ukraine had regained about 13 square kilometers (5 square miles) of Pokrovsk’s roughly 29 square kilometers (11 square miles) since mid-November after previously having no troops left in the city. Ukrainian forces also withdrew from positions 5 to 7 kilometers (3 to 4 miles) outside Pokrovsk that could no longer be held effectively, he said.

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

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

Trump’s NSS proves Europe and Ukraine are on their own—and must save themselves

Moscow praised a strategy that warns of “civilizational erasure” but offers nothing on defeating Russia. Europe and Ukraine must act now.

By Stephen Blank | Dec 10, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/10/trumps-nss-proves-europe-and-uk
raine-are-on-their-own-and-must-save-themselves/

Much has already been written about President Trump's new National Security Strategy, so this article will focus on what it means for Ukraine and Europe. Whatever strengths this document has (and they are hard to come by), its assessments of Europe, Russia, and Ukraine are deficient or absent.

The conclusion is inescapable: Europe and Ukraine are now on their own.

Washington has made clear—in writing—that it will pursue a deal with Moscow at Ukraine's expense, blame European democracies for resisting, and begin withdrawing forces from the continent.

If Europe and Ukraine want to thwart Russia's imperial ambitions, they will have to do it themselves, and quickly.

To begin with, the document, like so much of this administration's work, is written in a sycophantic and fact-free tone. Trump has not ended eight wars, nor has international order improved since he took power.

Arguably, things have gotten worse—Hamas has made clear that it dismisses Trump's peace plan and will not surrender, making a resumption of hostilities more likely.

Moscow, however, is pleased. Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov praised the document, saying it "corresponds in many ways to our vision." He specifically welcomed language about "ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance"—a long-standing Russian demand.

When your national security strategy earns applause from the Kremlin, something has gone badly wrong.

A genuflection to Europe's illiberal forces

Regarding Europe, the sycophantic tone continues as the document embraces the worldview of the European right: that Europe faces "civilizational erasure" unless it rejects migration, dismantles its democratic protections, and repudiates European integration.

Former French ambassador to the United States Gérard Araud called it "a far-right pamphlet" that "largely confirms" perceptions of Trump as "an enemy of Europe."

Although Europe assuredly confronts a serious migration issue, this strategy offers nothing but a genuflection to the illiberal and anti-democratic forces in Europe. It reflects a reactionary, regressive worldview that rejects Europe's great accomplishments since 1945 while threatening to abandon the continent to its own devices.

The document warns that "should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less." It raises the specter that "within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European"—and treats this as a security threat, questioning whether such countries would "view their alliance with the United States in the same way." CNN noted this language borrows from the racist "great replacement" theory.

The NSS also openly advocates intervention in European domestic politics, committing to "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations." It implicitly advocates the breakup of the EU—another triumph of US policy dating back to the 1950s that this administration seems eager to discard.

Where do these ideas come from? They reflect a worldview Trump has held for decades. In 1973, the Justice Department sued Donald Trump, his father Fred, and Trump Management for systematically refusing to rent apartments to Black applicants. A building superintendent told federal investigators: "I'm only doing what my boss told me to do—I am not allowed to rent to black tenants." The case settled in 1975 with what the Justice Department called "one of the most far-reaching" consent decrees ever negotiated.

Silence on Russia—except for "strategic stability"

The strategy offers no suggestions as to how Europe might cope with its challenges or, for that matter, with the war in Ukraine. Indeed, it is virtually silent on both. All it says about Russia is that Washington wants "strategic stability"—a phrase that means nothing when one side is actively waging war against a European neighbor.

The document wholly ignores Russia's growing dependence on China and its alignments with Iran and North Korea, not to mention Moscow's role in supporting nuclear proliferation to those states. It says nothing about Russia already waging non-kinetic war against Europe and the United States while preparing for potential combat operations within the next decade.

The NSS's only substantive mention of Ukraine is a single sentence stating it is "a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia."

Note what's missing: any mention of Ukrainian sovereignty, territorial integrity, or victory.

The document even describes the war as having "the perverse effect of increasing Europe's, especially Germany's, external dependencies"—framing Russian aggression as a problem Europe brought on itself.

The real goal: a deal at Ukraine's expense

The strategy's silence on defeating Russia is not an oversight. As the Wall Street Journal reported, Trump and his "kitchen cabinet" want to make a deal with Moscow at Ukraine's expense so that they can gain access to Russian raw materials, rare earths, and other resources—make lots of money—and reinstate Moscow as a member in good standing in the G-8.

This supposedly will foster strategic stability and break up the Russia-China tandem.

Realization of this fantasy is already on the table. European leaders have warned President Zelenskyy that Washington might betray Ukraine, sign a deal with Russia, and leave Ukraine bereft of the security guarantees it needs—not to mention NATO membership, which any deal with Russia will forbid.

Zelenskyy has pivoted to Europe, opening a new diplomatic week with consultations focused on "security issues, support for our resilience, and support packages for our defense."

At the same time, Washington has notified its NATO allies that in 2027 it will begin to reduce its forces across Europe, forcing Europe to increase its defense burden. The administration has apparently not bothered to consult with its allies about the pace of these force reductions and how Europe will take up the ensuing slack.

A display of ignorance and incompetence

With regard to Ukraine, it is clear that Trump and his team neither understand the issues nor want to do so.

The administration has drafted plans in secret meetings with Russian envoys while largely excluding Ukraine from the process.

After European leaders reframed the Russian draft basis for negotiations over Ukraine (without Kyiv's participation) of 28 points into 19 points, Trump's negotiators—who clearly remain clueless about Russia—revised the document to comprise 27 points that were again unfavorable to Ukraine, offered them to Putin, and still got nowhere.

In the history of international relations, it is difficult to find cases rivaling this display of ignorance and incompetence.

Europe and Ukraine must save themselves

Thus Ukraine and Europe are already being left alone by their feckless nominal ally, the United States. It is, however, possible for them—if they seize the moment and act promptly and quickly—to unify their forces and thwart Russia's ongoing effort to regain its empire.

Hitherto, to paraphrase Nelson at Trafalgar, Ukraine has saved itself by its exertions. But now Europe must join with Kyiv to save itself not only by its exertions but by its example.

As this document shows, Washington is chasing a dream of a world that regresses and recedes ever faster from it the harder it tries to grasp this fantasy. The Kremlin's enthusiastic reception tells you whose interests it serves.

For now, the United States will remain an ignorant administration chasing the mirage of reactionary and deluded unilateralism—leaving Europe and Ukraine to chart their own course, together.

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

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