REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Friday, December 19, 2025 10:12
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Sunday, December 14, 2025 6:40 AM

SECOND

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


Traitors labeled as victims - Kremlin claims 500 'repressed political prisoners' in Ukraine

Author: Oleh Velhan | Sun, December 14, 2025 - 06:46

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/--1765687571.html

Russia has claimed that there are allegedly "nearly 500 political prisoners" in Ukraine, attempting to justify pro-Russian collaborators under the guise of human rights protection, according to an interview by Russia’s Human Rights Commissioner Tatyana Moskalkova with the state news agency TASS. . . .

Ukrainian authorities have repeatedly stressed that all such cases are handled strictly within the legal framework. These are not prosecutions for political views, but criminal cases related to collaboration, cooperation with occupying forces, assistance to the aggressor, or other crimes against national security during Russia’s full-scale war. Moscow consistently substitutes these concepts, portraying those convicted of collaboration as "victims of repression".

Such statements by Moskalkova are part of a Kremlin information campaign aimed at discrediting Ukraine’s law enforcement and judicial system internationally. Against the backdrop of Russia’s ongoing aggression, these narratives are used to justify Russia’s own crimes and to promote a distorted version of events.

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 14, 2025 12:35 PM

THG

Keep it real please


Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Weekend Update #163: Ukraine Goes From Collapsing to Liberating Kupyansk

The Two Negotiations; Stirrings in Europe

Phillips P. OBrien

Dec 14, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-163-ukraine-goes
-from

It has been a week of some awakenings on the European continent. The impact of the US National Security has been real, at least emotionally. Some Europeans, even previously staunch Atlanticists, are openly acknowledging that the USA is now not even to be seen as neutral but instead to be understood as an enemy of liberal democracy in Europe. Not everyone has changed and we do not know how this will be translated into policy, but the discussion is shifting and this shift is a vital prerequisite to shifting policy.

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



Which is why comrade signym is gone.

T

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Sunday, December 14, 2025 2:43 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by second:

Weekend Update #163: Ukraine Goes From Collapsing to Liberating Kupyansk

The Two Negotiations; Stirrings in Europe

Phillips P. OBrien

Dec 14, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-163-ukraine-goes
-from

It has been a week of some awakenings on the European continent. The impact of the US National Security has been real, at least emotionally. Some Europeans, even previously staunch Atlanticists, are openly acknowledging that the USA is now not even to be seen as neutral but instead to be understood as an enemy of liberal democracy in Europe. Not everyone has changed and we do not know how this will be translated into policy, but the discussion is shifting and this shift is a vital prerequisite to shifting policy.

THGR:
Which is why comrade signym is gone.



HUH?
No, I'm not "gone“, you moron. I just posted in this thread yesterday. To you, even.


South to north this past week:

The fortified town to the south, Huliaipola is in the process of being stormed. Russian soldiers are on the Ukrainian side of the river, and there is fighting in the center of the town.

Pokrovsk is fully under Russian control.

Its twin city just to the east, in the same pocket, Myrnograd, has been fully surrounded and the last areas of Ukrainian resistance are disappearing as soldiers either surrender or are killed.

A pocket around Konstantinovka is being formed as Russian soldiers broke thru to the north of the city and are approaching physical control of the one remaining major roadway into the city.

The forified town, Sieversk has been liberated. Bc it's on high ground it will serve as a jumping off point for the major city of Slaviansk to the west.

Russians are taking more territory to the Oskol river

In Kupiansk, while Ukrainians are attacking Russians on the western side of the Oskol river, Russians are taking control over the Ukrainian soldiers that they surrounded on the eastern side, and advancing westward both north and south of the attacking Ukrainian contingent. It looks like another pocket is being formed around the Ukrainians.

And since Zelensky pulled soldiers from the Sumy region to attack Kupiansk, Russians are advancing in Sumy.

Altogether, a bad week for Ukraine. Of course, you won't hear about it bc it's not in western media.



-----------

"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 14, 2025 3:42 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


#Rootin4Putin

#Fuck Ukraine

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

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Sunday, December 14, 2025 6:27 PM

THG

Keep it real please


Pokrovsk is fully under Ukrainian control dummy.

T

Ukraine’s Counterattack Just Changed the Situation on the Front



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Sunday, December 14, 2025 6:36 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Pokrovsk is fully under Ukrainian control dummy.


BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
*gasp!*
Hahahahaha!





-----------

"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 14, 2025 6:58 PM

SECOND

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


Ukrainians Are Secretly Taking Control Of Russia's Shahed Drones
Electronic warfare spoofing is tricking some Shaheds into landing

Dec 14, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/ukrainians-are-secretly-taking-control

On Friday night and Saturday morning, Russian forces launched a massive attack on Ukraine involving 270 explosive Shahed drones, 196 decoy Shaheds, 16 cruise missiles and 14 ballistic missiles.

The main target was Odesa, Ukraine’s strategic port on the Black Sea—the destination for many of Ukraine’s imports and the departure point for many of its exports, including billions of dollars worth of grain every year.

No one died in the attacks, but a million people lost power. The Ukrainian air force reported shooting down or suppressing 417 Shaheds, nine cruise missiles and four ballistic missiles. It’s evident, from videos shot in around Odesa during the attack, that Ukrainian electronic warfare worked overtime to blunt the bombardment.

In particular, it’s evident that strategic E.W. systems (basically, powerful ground-mounted radio emitters) are spoofing some of the 440-pound Shaheds: convincing them they’re flying higher than they actually are—and tricking them into gently landing on the ground … or water.

Ukrainian E.W. operators recently proved they can spoof multi-million-dollar Kinzhal hypersonic missiles. It should be much easier to spoof a $50,000 Shahed that flies no faster than 220 miles per hour and no higher than 15,000 feet. One Ukrainian source who’s active in the E.W. field confirmed that his team recently updated the software on one of the strategic E.W. systems that protects Odessa.

Two recent videos, possibly from the Friday-Saturday barrage, depict what are clearly spoofed Shaheds. One descends to the Black Sea just off Odesa, skips like a stone and settles onto the water. Another skids to a rough landing on a road.

There are other ways to down a Shahed, of course. Jamming their navigation systems, rather than spoofing them, can cause them to fly wildly off course. Ukrainian forces also shoot down the drones from the air or ground. Increasingly, Ukrainian units intercept the Shaheds with tiny, speedy interceptor drones.

But spoofing is often better, as it can ground a Shahed fairly intact. Ukrainian intelligence pores over the drone’s wreckage, looking for new additions. Recent intel indicates the Russians are adding cameras and A.I.-assisted targeting software for terminal guidance—and also installing more controlled reception pattern antennas to make Shaheds more resistant to jamming.

Bare bones

The Shahed’s bare-bones design—the key to its lost cost—lends itself to spoofing. Shaheds do not have radar altimeters or other downward-pointing sensors (cameras or lasers) for measuring height above the ground. They almost certainly get their main altitude readings from the same navigation satellites that also feed them their position readings.

An internal barometer does back up the satellite data for altitude readings, but barometers are sensitive to changes in the weather and may work best measuring relative changes in a drone’s altitude. In other words, a barometer might tell a drone it climbed or dove 1,000 feet, but it might not tell the drone exactly how high above the ground it is.

All that is to say, an E.W. system that can match the signals from a navigation satellite constellation and slightly overpower those signals can trick a drone into taking location and altitude readings from the fake signals.

An E.W. system can, in that way, gently nudge a Shahed to a water or road landing. Just tell the drone it’s 500 feet in the air when it’s really 50 feet in the air … and then tell the drone to descend another 50 feet.

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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Sunday, December 14, 2025 9:17 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukrainians Are Secretly Taking Control Of Russia's Shahed Drones


I guess it's not much of a secret now, huh?



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

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Sunday, December 14, 2025 9:55 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukrainians Are Secretly Taking Control Of Russia's Shahed Drones


I guess it's not much of a secret now, huh?
Russians are in contact with drones, so the crash is NOT a "secret". And the cause of the crash is also NOT a "secret". When the Ukrainians trick the Russian drone satellite-based altimeter and cause the drone to crash, the Russians know it happened, but what can they do about it until they devise an unjammable altimeter?

A story about Russians remotely controlling their drones: Russia is adding cameras to its Shahed drones so it can catch Ukrainian interceptors approaching from behind

By Jake Epstein | Nov 26, 2025, 6:16 AM CT

https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-added-cameras-to-shahed-drones-
to-see-ukrainian-interceptors-2025-11

"Technological warfare is a cat-and-mouse game," Myronenko shared of the situation in Ukraine today. "Each new technology grants one side an advantage for a certain period — typically three to four months — until the other side develops a countermeasure."

For instance, he said, the Shahed drones that Russia used earlier in the war were equipped with a four-channel antenna. Ukraine quickly learned to jam them with electronic warfare, so Moscow adapted. Now, Shaheds fly with a 16-channel antenna.

"This game continues nonstop," Myronenko said.

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 14, 2025 11:05 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukrainians Are Secretly Taking Control Of Russia's Shahed Drones


I guess it's not much of a secret now, huh?



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

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Monday, December 15, 2025 5:05 AM

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


However bold Russian diplomats are, they're bluffing, projecting strength to the end.

I’ve monitored Russian soldiers for 3.5 years. The system is finally cracking

What looks like stability is just the residue of fear and habit.

By Alya Shandra | Dec 14, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/14/ive-monitored-russian-soldiers-
for-3-5-years-the-system-is-finally-cracking/

Russian soldiers expect peace from Trump more than from Putin.

The Russian army is no longer fighting from conviction. It's fighting from the absence of alternatives.

For decades, Russia's political stability rested on an unwritten social contract: the Kremlin guaranteed relative order, economic comfort, and physical security; citizens stayed out of politics and demonstrated complete loyalty. This formula shaped modern Russia more deeply than any ideology.

Since the full-scale invasion, this deal has eroded. The state provides less security, less stability, less prosperity—while demanding greater loyalty and greater sacrifice. Yet the contract hasn't collapsed.

It persists because Russians, conditioned by fear and uncertainty, continue to adapt.

Two narratives dominate Western discourse about Russia's wartime condition: that Russia is strong enough to sustain the war for another decade, or that collapse is imminent. The first breeds resignation. The second breeds false hope.

The reality is that Russia is steadily being depleted—economically and in manpower. But this deterioration, cushioned by incomplete sanctions and partnerships with India and China, can continue for some time before the final reckoning.

However bold Russian diplomatic posturing appears, they're bluffing. This is classic Russian statecraft—projecting strength to the end, never acknowledging weakness, intimidating through force. Yet as The Economist noted, Russia has traded 1% of its population for 1.45% of Ukrainian territory captured over three years. At this rate, several more years would pass before reaching even the territorial boundaries they demand at negotiations.

The Russian system holds together through momentum, not confidence. And nowhere is this fragility clearer than inside the military.

Exhaustion you can measure

Russian forces are exhausted—not metaphorically, but measurably, systemically. Our monitoring of military communities over recent years reveals deep, accumulated fatigue.

In 2022, Russia mobilized roughly 300,000 people—a shock that temporarily stabilized the front but triggered mass exodus. Since then, the Kremlin has avoided another public mobilization, relying instead on covert recruitment, contract schemes, and regional volunteer battalions—over 50 created nationwide.

To maintain even current territorial gains, Russia needs substantially more manpower. That requires general mobilization—precisely what Putin wants to avoid. The political cost is too high. Reserves are depleted. Those willing to fight for money have mostly signed up. Regional recruitment data reveals the constraints: wealthy regions attract few volunteers; the burden falls disproportionately on poorer ethnic regions like Buryatia and Bashkortostan.

Desperate for solutions, they resort to half-measures. Putin recently signed a decree calling up reservists for military exercises in 2026—two clauses remain classified. Starting 1 January, conscription will operate year-round rather than during designated periods. This is a step toward full compulsory mobilization.

Over four years, only two events genuinely rattled Russian society and exposed the system's fragility: the 2022 mobilization and Prigozhin's mutiny.

Inside the army, soldiers openly wish for the war to end but insist they'll "fight to the end"—not from conviction but because they fear their commanders more than combat. Many believe political changes abroad, not in Moscow, will determine when they go home.

This is the psychology of a force fighting from the absence of alternatives.

The money is running out

Money became the Kremlin's primary recruitment tool. Contract soldiers' salaries reached roughly 210,000 rubles monthly ($2,100)—a fortune in poor regions. Beyond salaries, signing bonuses ballooned through early 2025, varying by region as the Kremlin set recruitment quotas. But now they're plummeting:

• Samara: 3.6 million rubles down to 2.1 million, then to 400,000

• Tatarstan: 1.5 million up to 2.7 million, then down to 400,000

• Bashkortostan: 1.6 million to 1 million (varying by locality)

• Nizhny Novgorod: 2.6 million to 1.1 million, with summer reports of non-payment

• St. Petersburg: 1.6 million municipal bonus entirely cancelled

Many regions slashed payments because budgets cannot sustain the war. Some regional deficits tripled year-over-year: Tatarstan's reached 31 billion rubles, Bashkortostan's 28 billion, Yamal's 42.3 billion.

Where money once served as the primary motivator, the state now struggles to maintain even the illusion of financial reward.

Inside the army, the picture is grimmer. Soldiers report that 50-80% of their salary goes toward purchasing basic equipment—drones, uniforms, fuel, even food. Refuse to contribute to the "obshchak" (communal fund) and you find yourself either in a pit or sent on assault missions.

Punishment for unauthorized absence is savage: brutal beatings, pit confinement, assault duty. Corruption is systemic. Many soldiers now admit they would pay simply to leave the front.

The old formula is failing

The Kremlin still relies on an old formula: keep life tolerable, and people will remain politically passive. But every component of that formula is gradually being undermined.

Putin entered the 2000s as the savior who rescued Russians from the hungry 1990s. This narrative pervades Russian regions—"at least we live better than in the '90s!" The war became somewhat existential for Russians because propaganda instrumentalized the trauma of bad times: if Russia loses, it will be brought to its knees and you'll live worse than in the '90s.

• The security situation has deteriorated. Ukrainian drone strikes deep inside Russia have shaken the sense of security in regions previously untouched by conflict.

• Economic predictability has vanished. In 2026, approximately 40% of Russia's entire federal budget is allocated to military, police, and security services—an extraordinary signal that priorities have completely shifted away from the civilian population.

• Regional stability is cracking. Families from Kursk who couldn't obtain compensation for destroyed homes for nearly a year eventually turned to public protest—in one of Russia's most loyal regions. In Buryatia, wives of mobilized men publicly confronted local authorities despite the risk of repression.

These aren't political uprisings yet. They're breaches of the deal—moments when people say: "This isn't what we agreed to."

The army as mirror

The clearest signals come from the military. Russia's armed forces are now the starkest indicator of regime fragility.

When an army holds together through fear, is financially exhausted, and forced to fight without clear purpose, it ceases to be a stabilizing institution and becomes a mirror reflecting the weaknesses of the entire machine.

Our research shows:

• Soldiers expect punishment, not support

• Many see no future beyond the front

• Corruption is so entrenched that even survival depends on unofficial payments

• Desertion attempts are widespread; captured deserters face savage beatings and "one-way missions"

• A significant proportion of soldiers hope the war will end through Western political shifts, not Moscow's decisions

What looks like stability in Russia is increasingly just the residue of fear and habit.

Russia's social contract isn't breaking in a dramatic, revolutionary manner. It's disintegrating gradually from all sides: in exhausted brigades, in bankrupt regions, in families waiting for compensation that never arrives, in soldiers who would rather pay for discharge than stay.

Every contract has a breaking point. Russia's becomes possible the moment daily life becomes worse than the fear of punishment.

The mood inside the military—exhaustion, financial collapse, despair—shows movement in that direction is underway.

Russia still projects stability. But beneath the surface, the state is stretched thin, the army is running on fumes, and society is quietly realizing that the deal once struck no longer exists.

Multidimensional chess

Russia can still sustain this war—but it can no longer scale. The manpower pool is drying up. The signing bonuses are collapsing. The regions are going broke. If Ukraine doesn't exhaust itself first and builds its resistance strategically, the breaking point will come.

For this breaking point to arrive before Ukraine's own forces are exhausted, enormous effort is still required.

This is multidimensional chess. Moving on only one front, or taking turns, means risking defeat. Progress must be simultaneous, leaving no direction unattended: the battlefield; weakening energy and refining capabilities deep inside Russia; strengthening sanctions; pressuring the shadow fleet; and mounting an information offensive against the Russian population.

We need to reach Russians — both in the regions and in the army — amplifying their sense of injustice and the regime's broken promises. Only simultaneous progress on all these fronts will eventually bring down Russia's totalitarian edifice.

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 15, 2025 5:13 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukrainians Are Secretly Taking Control Of Russia's Shahed Drones


I guess it's not much of a secret now, huh?
Another "secret" about drones that is not a secret anymore:

Ukraine's intel reveals new Russian drone with missile: How it works

Mon, December 15, 2025 - 11:14

Defense Intelligence of Ukraine (HUR) has revealed details about a new Russian Shahed-type drone, or Geran-2 of the E series, which is equipped with an R-60 air-to-air missile.

Russia has adapted the R-60 air-to-air missile for installation on drones to target Ukrainian helicopters and aircraft hunting Russian drones.
New drone design

The missile with the APU-60-1MD aviation launcher is mounted on a special bracket located in the upper front part of the drone's fuselage.

The drone is equipped with two network cameras – in the nose and behind the missile launcher. Video and control commands are transmitted via a Chinese Xingkay Tech XK-F358 mesh modem.

The electronic filling also includes a single-board microcomputer, Raspberry Pi 4, a tracker, and two GSM modems for telemetry transmission. The countries of origin of the electronic component base remain standard for Russian UAVs of this type: the US, China, Switzerland, Taiwan, Japan, Germany, and the UK.

How new drone works

The likely principle of missile application is to transmit images from cameras installed on the drone via a mesh modem to the operator, who, in the event of a Ukrainian aircraft or helicopter appearing in the strike zone, sends a command to the missile's automation unit to launch it.

After launch, the R-60's heat-seeking head independently locks onto the target. Another possible scenario is for the homing head to lock onto the target in advance and transmit the relevant information to the operator, who then gives the command to launch.

The main purpose of the new development is to create a threat to Ukrainian military and tactical aviation and reduce its effectiveness in intercepting Russian drones.

Earlier, HUR reported on 68 new components found in Russian missiles and drones that Russia uses to attack Ukraine's energy facilities.

The Russian turbojet Shahed contains components from the US, China, Switzerland, and other countries.

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-s-intel-reveals-new-russian-dr
one-1765790070.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 15, 2025 5:24 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
However bold Russian diplomats are, they're bluffing, projecting strength to the end.


You've been saying this line for years now.

Shut the fuck up.

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Monday, December 15, 2025 10:18 AM

THG

Keep it real please


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:

Pokrovsk is fully under Ukrainian control dummy.


BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
*gasp!*
Hahahahaha!




Explosions rock Moscow outskirts as drones reach Russia's capital region

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/explosions-rock-moscow-outskirts-
as-drones-reach-russia-s-capital-region/ar-AA1SkJvo?ocid=msedgntp&pc=EDBBAN&cvid=694023cdbc024a24a2e779f54b926457&ei=45



I don't see a denial. You were touting how Russia had taken Pokrovsk just last week. I said, not so fast. You insisted...

T

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Monday, December 15, 2025 11:08 AM

SECOND

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


Report: Ukraine’s Flamingo missile could wreak havoc on Putin’s air defence production

By Jens Asbjørn Bøgen | Dec 15, 2025

https://www.dagens.com/news/report-ukraines-flamingo-missile-could-wre
ck-havoc-on-putins-air-defence-production

The domestically produced missile is said to have a range of 3000 kilometres.

Ukraine’s expanding arsenal of domestically built cruise missiles could reshape the balance of long-range strikes inside Russia, according to a new analyses from The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI)

The assessment suggests weaknesses far from the battlefield may become decisive.

Rather than focusing only on frontline engagements, the report argues that industrial choke points behind Russia’s air defences could determine how effectively Moscow protects key sites in the years ahead.

Vulnerable production lines

The study published on Dec. 12, titled Disrupting Russian Air Defence Production: Reclaiming the Sky, says Russia’s air defence manufacturing network contains “significant vulnerabilities.”
https://www.rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/research-papers
/disrupting-russian-air-defence-production-reclaiming-sky

According to the report, tighter export controls on Western machinery and sanctions on radar-related materials could be paired with strikes on “critical nodes within air defence production that are vulnerable to deliberate attack.”

One focal point is the city of Tula, about 350 kilometres from Ukraine, where production and assembly of the Pantsir air defence system are concentrated.

RUSI notes the region is heavily protected and has so far withstood Ukrainian drone attacks.

Cruise missiles factor

The authors say this calculation could change as Ukraine fields more long-range cruise missiles.

“As Ukraine’s stockpile of indigenous cruise missiles expands, the ability to reach and damage the relevant targets improves,” the report says.

Ukraine is developing several such weapons, including the Flamingo missile, which President Volodymyr Zelensky previously described as “the most successful” missile Ukraine currently has.

The missile is claimed to have a range of 3,000 kilometres and a warhead weighing more than a tonne.

Pantsir systems are primarily used to defend critical infrastructure against long-range drones. RUSI argues that disrupting production could leave these sites exposed to sustained Ukrainian strikes.

Wider strategic impact

“Ukraine could, therefore, mount an operation to saturate the defenses on an approach to Tula before delivering a significant blow to Pantsir production with cruise missiles – ironically resulting in limiting Russia’s ability to defend other targets over the course of 2026,” the report says.

The study adds that these vulnerabilities extend beyond Pantsir, pointing to production risks affecting Russia’s S-400 and S-500 air defence systems, both crucial to its weapons exports.

RUSI also links the issue to NATO security. Russian drone incursions into NATO airspace earlier this year highlighted gaps in Europe’s ability to counter cheap, mass-produced drones.

“A systematic effort to exploit these vulnerabilities could have a disproportionate impact on assisting Ukraine to strike the economic backbone of the Russian war effort and reduce the barriers to NATO airpower,” the report says.

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 15, 2025 12:47 PM

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


Opinion by Thom Hartmann | Dec 14, 2025

It’s the most under-reported story of the year: under Trump, the United States is abandoning advocacy of democracy (shutting down Voice of America, etc), abandoning our democratic allies in Europe, and for the past year has abandoned Ukraine.

At the same time, Trump is building ties to Middle Eastern dictatorships, adopting Russia’s explicit worldview, and now handing to China our most valuable military-potential technology.

A few weeks ago, Trump presented Ukraine with a so-called “peace deal” that was apparently written, in first draft, by Moscow. This week, he told that nation they have “until Christmas” to hand over more than 20 percent of their country to Putin and surrender their own military abilities forever, leaving them vulnerable to Russia’s next attack.

Trump’s brain trust just produced a new National Security Strategy (NSS) for the United States that largely abandons Canada and Europe while embracing a worldview straight out of Putin’s rhetoric.

As the National Security Desk writes: “It abandons allies, misidentifies threats, emboldens aggressors, erodes deterrence, and even drives allies to consider nuclear proliferation.”

Alexander Vindman, the former Director of European Affairs for the United States National Security Council (NSC), wrote: “The prevailing sentiment among European observers was that this document represented not only the closing chapter of decades’ worth of cooperation between the United States and Europe, but also that Washington may soon actively sabotage the political and economic systems of the European Union through the promotion of ‘patriotic parties’ and far-right figures. Amidst an ongoing impasse over a potential peace agreement in Ukraine, representatives of the Russian government claim that the document is ‘consistent with our vision.’”

David Rothkopf, a former senior national security/trade official in the Clinton administration, was equally blunt in an article published by the New Republic: “Indeed, the document, released by the White House on Thursday, reads as if it were dictated by the Kremlin, much as our recent ‘peace proposal’ for Ukraine turned out to have been. Or, perhaps more accurately, it reads like the product of a collaboration between Vladimir Putin and Stephen Miller, the deputy White House chief of staff for nativist hate.”

Russia expert Olga Lautman called it “Russia’s return on investment for interfering in the 2016 election,” and it sure looks like she’s right. An earlier article by her titled “America’s Foreign Policy Now Aligns With Russia” noted: “The NSS does not merely ‘shift priorities.’ It flips seventy-five years of American policy on its head and declares political war on Europe’s democratic institutions while elevating the far-right parties in Europe that Russia has been cultivating for more than a decade. Trump’s team packaged this as a vision for a ‘new’ transatlantic relationship, but the core message is unmistakable, and that is to weaken NATO, fracture Europe, isolate Ukraine, and empower nationalist movements that are openly friendly to Moscow, with every paragraph carrying the same cold, transactional, subservient logic that has defined Trump’s relationship with Russia for decades.”

More at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/trump-is-about-to-sell-us-out-t
o-our-most-sinister-enemy-opinion/ar-AA1SjLYS

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 15, 2025 2:16 PM

SECOND

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


A Ukrainian Submarine Just Blew Up A Russian Submarine

The Ukrainian boat was unmanned; the Russian boat ... wasn't

Dec 15, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/a-ukrainian-submarine-just-blew-up

Two years ago, Ukrainian firm Ammo Ukraine launched Marichka, a prototype unmanned undersea vehicle, or UUV. The 18-foot-long, torpedo-like drone—which presumably navigates by way of a GPS-aided inertial system—can haul hundreds of pounds of explosives over a distance of up to 600 miles and strike Russian warships where they’re most vulnerable. Below the waterline.

Around the same time, another Ukrainian firm—Brave1—announced it was developing the Toloka class of UUV. The biggest, around 30 feet long, ranges an impressive 1,200 miles, Brave1 claimed.

Today, the Ukrainian state security service, the vaunted SBU, maneuvered an explosive UUV past anti-submarine defenses in the port of Novorossiysk on the Black Sea in southern Russia. It’s unclear whether the drone sub was based on Marichka or one of the Tolokas or some other design.

Trench Art is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

The “Sub Sea Baby” UUV motored past other moored warships and struck the Kilo-class submarine Varshavyanka. The 242-foot submarine—one of three Kilos left in Black Sea Fleet after a Ukrainian missile blew up one the sub Rostov-on-Don in occupied Crimea in September 2023—exploded.

Stern attack

Video of the attack points to possible extensive damage around the boat’s stern. “If this is the case, even taking into account the enormous luck and the absence of a direct hit on the boat itself, these very important and vulnerable mechanisms could have suffered serious damage,” Russian blogger Military Informant observed.

The Kilos are among the handful of Black Sea Fleet warships that routinely launch Kalibr cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities. Indeed, the SBU claimed four Kalibrs were loaded on Varshavyanka at the time of the attack.

The damage to Varshavyanka “could potentially put the submarine carrying Kalibrs out of action for a long time,” Military Informant noted.

After losing no fewer than 15 of its vessels to Ukrainian missiles and explosive drone boats, the Black Sea Fleet has nine ships left that can fire Kalibrs at Ukraine: the frigates Admiral Essen and Admiral Makarov along with maybe three corvettes and the two surviving Kilos.

Many of those ships were visible in the SBU’s video of the Sub Sea Baby attack in Novorossiysk. All that is to say, the Black Sea Fleet’s best ships are extremely vulnerable to attacks from the air and the surface … and now below the surface.

The Black Sea Fleet once also operated from Sevastopol in Crimea but Ukrainian drone boats and missiles “ousted” the Russians from the Crimean port, according to the SBU. The Russian fleet is running out of places to hide.

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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Monday, December 15, 2025 2:37 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Pokrovsk is fully under Ukrainian control dummy.

SIGNY:
BWAHAHAHAHA!!!!
*gasp!*
Hahahahaha!


THGR:
I don't see a denial. You were touting how Russia had taken Pokrovsk just last week. I said, not so fast. You insisted...


And I don't see a relevant link. I skipped thru your video. It features a guy blabbing in front of a map that was drawn by ... him, probably... but unlike Military Summary it doesn't link to DRONE VIDEOS from BOTH sides showing drone, bomb, and missile attacks, of Russian soldiers waving flags in various places in Pokrovsk and elsewhere.

Kiev has a history of lying its ass off, painting evidence-free maps however it feels, and you don't think to question a guy whose sweatshirt has AZOV [NAZI] on it??

Ok, dummy. I literally burst out laughing reading your post. But if that's not enough of a denial ... if my continuing posts about Russian progress in the Pokrovsk/ Myrnograd pocket aren't enough ... here's the denial you seem to need:

Russia is in control of Pokrovsk, and the area around Myrnograd has shrunk to about 20% of the city's footprint.

You're so wrong, it's astonishing.


-----------

"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 15, 2025 2:58 PM

THG

Keep it real please


T

Is China Preparing a Russia Far East Takeover Scenario? Here’s the Evidence



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Monday, December 15, 2025 3:37 PM

THG

Keep it real please



Oh no comrade...

T

BREAKING: Ukraine DESTROYS Massive $500M Russian Submarine; Putin Escalation IMMINENT



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Monday, December 15, 2025 5:32 PM

SECOND

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


Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler in a speech Saturday evening, warning that the Kremlin leader’s ambitions won’t stop with Ukraine.

“Just as the Sudetenland was not enough in 1938, Putin will not stop,” Merz said, referring to a part of Czechoslovakia that the Allies ceded to the Nazi leader with an agreement. Hitler continued his expansion into Europe after that.

“If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop there,” Merz said, referring to Putin. “This is a Russian aggressive war against Ukraine — and against Europe.”

Putin’s aim is “a fundamental change to the borders in Europe, the restoration of the old Soviet Union within its borders,” the German chancellor warned.

https://www.politico.eu/article/merz-compares-putin-to-hitler/

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 15, 2025 5:40 PM

SECOND

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


For the first time, Ukrainian company to co-produce drones in Germany on industrial scale

December 15, 2025 8:45 pm

by Martin Fornusek

https://kyivindependent.com/joint-venture-launching-first-industrial-s
cale-production-of-drones-for-ukraine-in-europe/

Quantum Systems and Frontline Robotics announced on Dec. 15 a joint Ukrainian-German venture to launch the first "industrial-scale" foreign-based production of drones for Ukraine's military.

Quantum Systems, a Germany-based tech company, and Ukrainian firm Frontline Robotics unveiled the new Quantum Frontline Industries (QFI) venture during the German-Ukrainian Economic Forum in Berlin.

Under this new project, QFI will produce Frontline Industries-designed and battlefield-proven drones in Germany and deliver them to Ukraine in volumes defined by the Ukrainian Defense Ministry.

The venture comes as part of Ukraine's push to deepen defense industry cooperation with Western partners amid Russia's full-scale invasion.

Ukraine is widely seen as a pioneer in drone technology, with unmanned systems emerging as one of the most critical and rapidly evolving aspects of its war with Russia.

"Ukrainians have revolutionized the drone war, now we will revolutionize the industrial war together," said Sven Kruck, Co-CEO of Quantum Systems, in a press release.

"This cooperation will supply the Defense Forces of Ukraine with thousands of drones to drive back the Russian aggressor," commented Yevhen Tretiak, CEO of Frontline Robotics, saying it can "pave the way for future collaborations of this kind."

The venture builds on a strategic partnership signed by the two companies earlier this year.

The announcement comes as Germany unveiled a 10-point plan for strengthening Ukraine's defense during a visit by President Volodymyr Zelensky to Berlin for peace talks with U.S. envoys.
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/germany-deepens-com
mitment-ukraines-defence-10-point-plan-2025-12-15/

Under the new framework, Ukraine and Germany aim to cooperate more closely on defense-related research and procurement and pursue joint defense ventures.

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 15, 2025 7:04 PM

THG

Keep it real please


T

Trump is ‘effectively colluding’ with Putin | Sir Richard Shirreff



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Tuesday, December 16, 2025 8:10 AM

SECOND

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


The Wall Street Journal

After a generation of peace, Europe tells its people to prepare for war

By Max Colchester, Bertrand Benoit | Dec. 15, 2025 11:16 pm ET

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/after-a-generation-of-peace-europ
e-tells-its-people-to-prepare-for-war/ar-AA1Sqlxb

European security officials now regularly broadcast a message nearly unimaginable a decade ago: get ready for conflict with Russia.

Rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia. It is a profound psychological shift for a continent that has rebuilt itself after two world wars by trumpeting a message of harmony and joint economic prosperity.

Over the weekend, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s strategy in Ukraine to that of Hitler in 1938, when he seized the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia before pressing on to conquer a large chunk of the continent. “If Ukraine falls, he won’t stop. Just like the Sudetenland wasn’t enough in 1938,” Merz told a party conference on Saturday.

That came days after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte made a speech warning that “conflict is at our door” and that “we must be prepared for the scale of war our grandparents or great-grandparents endured.” Rutte said that Russia could be ready to use military force against the North Atlantic Treaty Organization within five years. The head of the French military recently said that France was at risk “because it is not prepared to accept the loss of its children.”

This sense of urgency has been amped-up as the Trump administration looks to broker an end to the war in Ukraine. There is concern in European capitals that Ukraine will be pushed by Trump into accepting a lopsided peace-deal that leaves Putin emboldened and Ukraine vulnerable to future Russian attack. Crucially, a cease-fire would free Russian military resources to focus on Europe, too, potentially paving the way for a future attack on its eastern flank.

The warnings are accompanied by fear that a more isolationist Trump administration won’t come to Europe’s aid if an attack does materialize. The U.S. National Security Strategy, which was published this month, says that the U.S. government will aim to stop war spreading in Europe and “re-establish strategic stability with Russia.” For the first time in recent years, it makes no mention of Russia as an enemy.

The U.K.’s annual threat assessment by the head of its Secret Intelligence Service, delivered on Monday, sounded a very different note. MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli warned that Russia will continue to try to destabilize Europe “until Putin is forced to change his calculus.”

The head of the U.K.’s armed forces, Richard Knighton, meanwhile on Monday said that the situation “is more dangerous than I have known in my career” and that the British public had to be prepared. “More families will know what sacrifice for our nation means,” he said.

For Europe, the sobering messaging marks a deep shift. The European Union was expressly designed, with the encouragement of the U.S., to prevent the kind of total war that ravaged the continent during the 20th Century. Its population has reaped the benefits of the so-called peace dividend—when military spending was cut back after the Cold War and the extra funds plowed into social spending.

Politicians across the region have warned that re-instilling a martial mindset into the public, accompanied by an explanation of the difficult spending trade-offs ahead, is a challenge. A Gallup poll last year found that only a third of Europeans would be willing to fight to defend their country, compared with 41% in the U.S.

Retired Dutch admiral Rob Bauer, who recently completed a term as NATO’s most senior military official, says that if Europe is to maintain peace, it must prepare for war to deter Putin.

In recent months that message “has gotten stronger,” he says, adding that officials are alarmed by data showing the Russian military industrial complex is producing more than it needs for the war in Ukraine, raising fears that it could regenerate to attack Europe faster than previously envisaged.

In private, European officials say voters will only support the sacrifices necessary—from higher military spending to the reintroduction of conscription—if they think an attack will happen.

Already, European security chiefs say that Russia has begun a covert “gray zone” assault on Europe, to try to damage its economy and sow confusion. Russia is suspected of being behind a string of sabotage on critical European infrastructure and military facilities, cyberattacks on businesses, as well as arson attacks on warehouses and shopping centers. Russian drones have disrupted Polish airspace and jet fighters zipped over Estonia.

“We are now operating in a space between peace and war,” said Metreweli.

The Kremlin has denied involvement in acts of sabotage or drone incursions in Europe, and Putin last month said the idea that Russia would invade another country was a “lie.”

Last week, Germany accused Russia of being behind a cyberattack on its air-traffic control in 2024 and trying to interfere with a federal election by spreading disinformation online. Suspected Russian drones have also interrupted flights in several European airports in recent months.

German officials suspect Moscow’s campaign of sabotage and espionage is partly aimed at preparing an attack on NATO’s logistical routes that would delay the deployment of troops in Eastern Europe in case of an armed conflict targeting Poland or the Baltic States.

Governments are taking steps to prepare. France has said that it would reinstate a voluntary military service for young people, following similar moves by Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Germany is actively war-gaming how it would rush troops to the front in the event of a Russian attack. The U.K. is scaling back military training outside Europe, to focus on Russia.

Military spending across the continent is rising. This year, NATO’s European members agreed to increase traditional defense spending to 3.5% of their economies by 2035, compared with 2% currently. They have also agreed to spend another 1.5% on security-adjacent measures, such as hardening their infrastructure, which could help counter Russia’s hybrid attack. Germany has pledged to spend more than a trillion dollars on its military and its infrastructure over the next decade, with the goal of creating Europe’s largest conventional force.

However, in many of the big western European economies, the trade-offs haven’t yet been felt by the public. Britain, for instance, is funding a rise in military spending by cutting foreign aid to developing nations. Several military chiefs have publicly stated that spending will have to be increased much more if Russia is to be deterred from further aggression.

Write to Max Colchester at Max.Colchester@wsj.com and Bertrand Benoit at bertrand.benoit@wsj.com

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 16, 2025 8:28 AM

SECOND

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


What The US Is Doing To Ukraine Is Far Worse Than Yalta

Phillips P. OBrien

Dec 16, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/what-the-us-is-doing-to-ukraine
-is

If history does not exactly repeat itself (and it does not) then it does often rhyme. What we are seeing from the Trump administration is unprecedented in its betrayal of Ukraine. The US is now acting like an agent of Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship in bullying democratic Ukraine to surrender parts of it territory, a wealth of natural resources and millions of its people to Putin’s brutal rule. The USA is not negotiating between Ukraine and Russia, it is putting enormous pressure on Ukraine to agree to a deal that might appeal to Putin. This is what I mean when I say that the US is now the enemy of freedom. It wants to strengthen dictatorships at the expense of democracies.

However there are some interesting historical comparisons that people are making—the rhymes as it were. The one most commonly thrown around in US history is Franklin Roosevelt at Yalta. In this case the US supposedly accepted the expansion of brutal totalitarian rule over countries that wished to be their allies. Aha, we are told, Trump is nothing new. The USA has in the past sold out possible allies into dictatorial rule.

Btw, before Donald Trump took over the Republican Party, you could reliably expect to hear any Democratic attempt to reach a compromise deal described by Republicans as a potential sell-out of the type Franklin Roosevelt supposedly did at the Yalta Conference (February 4-11, 1945). Ronald Reagan, for example, was a constant critic of Roosevelt’s actions at Yalta, with examples ranging from the 1950s through his two terms in office.

The widely shared Republican critique was that the Roosevelt too easily trusted Stalin, deferred to the USSR and as a result consigned half of Europe to totalitarian rule for generations.

So it is rather bitterly ironic today that it is the GOP, after decades of attacking FDR for “betraying” Poland, that is using all of America’s might to betray and weaken a democratic Ukraine. That being said, what Trump is doing is far far worse than anything FDR was accused of. To understand just how large the differences are, I will start with a short primer on Yalta and FDR.

Roosevelt and Yalta

What happened factually at Yalta is actually not an area of disagreement. Roosevelt went to the conference, in the Crimea, with Stalin and Churchill to try and work out some growing problems between the Big Three over the shape of post-war Europe. When it came to Eastern Europe, and in particular Poland, FDR wanted to convince Stalin to allow some democratic influence into a new Polish government. He was faced with a great dilemma on Poland. He very much would have wanted a free Poland with a pro-western alignment, but Poland was entirely occupied by Stalin’s Red Army, and it was Stalin who was establishing the facts on the ground.

In particular Stalin refused to have anything to do with the pre-war Polish government (which had been recognized by the USA) and had installed a new pro-Communist “Lublin” government which was preparing to do his bidding.

Roosevelt understood that overall, Stalin was in a dominant position vis-a-vis Poland. The US had no forces in the region and the widespread assumption was that US forces would all be withdrawn from Europe when the war was over (NATO was not even a glean in the eye at this point). As such, Roosevelt’s area of maneuver was greatly confined, which both he and Stalin understood.

The result of this power imbalance was that Roosevelt, despite asking, almost begging Stalin to allow for some broadening of the Lublin government to allow democratic influence, had to accept in the end a pretty weak pledge that Stalin would allow some undefined “democratic elements” into the new Polish state. And in doing so, Roosevelt admitted that the pre-war Polish government had no chance of being re-established. Roosevelt was not happy with the deal, and admitted at the end of the conference that he was exhausted and did not think he could get anything more.

Much more at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/what-the-us-is-doing-to-ukraine
-is

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 16, 2025 12:03 PM

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


16 Dec 2025

Top European officials have agreed to launch an international commission to compensate Kyiv for hundreds of billions of dollars in damage from Russia’s continuing war on Ukraine.

The International Claims Commission for Ukraine, established in a treaty signed by 35 countries at Tuesday’s conference in The Hague, is to assess and decide claims for reparations, including any amounts to be paid out.

Attending the summit with leaders including Dutch Prime Minister Dick Schoof and European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said making Russia pay for its crimes was “exactly where the real path to peace begins”.

“This war and Russia’s responsibility for it must become a clear example so that others learn not to choose aggression,” he said.

“We must make Russia accept that there are rules in the world.”

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/16/europe-establishes-ukraine-r
eparations-commission-amid-push-to-end-war

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 16, 2025 12:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
The Wall Street Journal

After a generation of peace, Europe tells its people to prepare for war

By Max Colchester, Bertrand Benoit | Dec. 15, 2025 11:16 pm ET

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/after-a-generation-of-peace-europ
e-tells-its-people-to-prepare-for-war/ar-AA1Sqlxb

European security officials now regularly broadcast a message nearly unimaginable a decade ago: get ready for conflict with Russia.

Rarely a week goes by now without a European government, military or security chief making a grim speech warning the public that they are headed toward a potential war with Russia.


WHY THE FLOOD OF PROPAGANDA?

The scare- mongering is unrelenting, isn't it?
Have they forgotten that this war was provoked by Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland and other American neocons?

Well, for whatever reason they were happy to climb onboard, and now that Trump wants to get off the train they're fully invested in keeping it going.

Speaking of investments...

ABOUT THOSE FROZEN RUSSIAN ASSETS.

Ursula von der Crazy, Little Napoleon Macron, BlackRock Mertz, and Never Here Kier have been obsessed with either directly stealing those funds or using them, illegally, as collateral for an appx $200 Billion loan to Ukraine. And ever since they saw Trump's 28 point peace plan, where he puts himself in charge of those funds, the push to grab that money has gone into overdrive.

Belgian PM Bart de Wever is strongly opposed.

Not because he's been personally threatened by Putin,
(as SECOND insinuated) but bc that move is vastly ILLEGAL. It would be the same as if I took out a loan using SECOND'S house as collateral. Using Russian assets that way would put both Euroclear (the Belgian international clearinghouse bank where most assets are located) and the Belgian government itself on the hook for a ruinous amount of money. Euroclear, the European Central Bank, and the City of London banking center have all warned that stealing national assets would destabilize the entire international banking system.

Nonetheless, Ursula von der Crazy cooked up a scheme where the various EU nations would each be liable for some proportion of loan, should Ukraine default. Which it will.

Typical of EU "democracy", she intends to ram it thru despite many EU nations' strong objections.

It's really just a money- and power-grab by the UNELECTED EU bureaucracy.


AND, ABOUT THISE ATTACKS ON COMMERCIAL VESSELS

Two can play THAT game. The port of Odessa is within easy reach of Russian drones and missiles. Odessa itself could be totally blockaded. Russia's "warning shot“ to both Ukraine SBU and Turkey was the destruction of a Turkish vessel docked at Odessa port.

-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 16, 2025 12:49 PM

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


Kyiv needs $60 billion from partners to fund defense against Russia in 2026, minister says

Ukraine requires its partners to cover half of its projected $120 billion of defense spending to stay in the fight against Russia in 2026, Defense Minister Denys Shmyhal said on Dec. 16.

The comments came after Shmyhal addressed ministers and other top officials of partner nations at the 32nd meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, better known as the Ramstein format.

According to the minister, $45 billion of the necessary funds had already been pledged, more than in any other year of Russia's full-scale war.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-war-latest-update-2025-12-16/

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 16, 2025 12:57 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Belgian PM Bart de Wever is strongly opposed.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen failed to convince Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever to greenlight the loan using frozen Russian assets held in Belgium.

Germany has offered to guarantee 25% of the loan to win over Belgium, but De Wever has insisted on broader guarantees from all EU members to fully insure Belgium against any risks.

Brussels supports an alternative: providing aid to Ukraine through a joint EU loan, which De Wever called the “simplest and cheapest option.” But that approach requires unanimous approval by all 27 member states, while the commission’s plan to tap Russian assets needs only a qualified majority.

Hungary has already blocked a proposed plan to issue eurobonds to fund Ukraine.

https://english.nv.ua/business/eu-parliament-moves-to-fast-track-repar
ations-loan-for-ukraine-amid-clash-over-frozen-russian-assets-50568979.html

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 16, 2025 1:23 PM

SECOND

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


Lithuania says lack of reparations for Baltic occupation fueled new aggression

By Serhiy Sydorenko, Tetyana Oliynyk | 16 December, 18:40

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/16/8012124/

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has said that the Soviet Union's impunity, and that of its successor state Russia, for the occupation of the Baltic states in the 1940s is one of the reasons behind Putin's actions.

Source: Kestutis Budrys at a diplomatic conference in The Hague

Details: Budrys signed a convention establishing a compensation commission on Lithuania's behalf and stressed the importance of holding Russia to account, describing it as a necessary condition for a stable peace. He also emphasised the need to broaden the circle of signatories and "get all eligible states on board".

He said that the establishment of a commission to determine the size of reparations payments for Ukrainians carries particular significance for Lithuania.

Quote: "Our history teaches us how vital accountability and reparations are for international wrongful acts. There were no reparations for the occupation and annexation of Lithuania and other Baltic states by the Soviet Union under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. Putin and his regime since the onset acted as if those crimes never happened!"

More details: Budrys has said that he is confident that the absence of reparations for the Baltic occupation became one of the reasons why Putin began new acts of aggression.

Quote: "This denial and impunity has only encouraged Russia's repeated aggression against Georgia in 2008, against Ukraine in 2014 and again – in 2022."

More details: Budrys has added that creating such a mechanism for Ukraine will send Russia a signal that aggression will never be legitimised by the international community and that accountability and justice will inevitably follow.

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 16, 2025 3:18 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Lithuania says lack of reparations for Baltic occupation fueled new aggression

By Serhiy Sydorenko, Tetyana Oliynyk | 16 December, 18:40

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/16/8012124/

Lithuanian Foreign Minister Kestutis Budrys has said that the Soviet Union's impunity, and that of its successor state Russia, for the occupation of the Baltic states in the 1940s is one of the reasons behind Putin's actions.


And how about those German reparations to Russia for the millions dead and massive damage that the Nazis caused?

Honestly, those Baltic states just sound like a bunch of neo-Naxis wanting to refight WWII. They better be careful what they wish for.

-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 16, 2025 6:09 PM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

And how about those German reparations to Russia for the millions dead and massive damage that the Nazis caused?
Germany did pay reparations to the Soviet Union (Russia) after WWII, primarily through dismantling industries, taking raw materials, and forced labor, especially from East Germany (GDR) under the Yalta and Potsdam Agreements, with payments stopping in 1953 as the Cold War intensified, although Russia later received some payments in the post-reunification era as well.

How Reparations Were Paid:

• Dismantled Industry: The Soviets took entire factories and industrial equipment from their occupation zone (East Germany) and shipped them to the USSR.

• Raw Materials & Goods: This included resources and manufactured products.

• Forced Labor: Hundreds of thousands of German civilians and millions of POWs were used for forced labor.

• Land & Assets: Some territorial concessions and assets were also part of the payments.

Key Agreements:

• Potsdam Conference (1945): Agreed Germany would pay reparations, with the USSR receiving payments from its zone and a share from West Germany.

Context & Cessation:

• East Germany (GDR): Most reparations to the Soviets came from East Germany, as the Western Allies shifted focus to rebuilding West Germany (Marshall Plan).

• End of Payments: Reparations from East Germany to the USSR largely ceased in 1953.

• Post-Reunification: While the main reparations ended earlier, symbolic payments and discussions about further compensation continued into the 21st century, such as German payments to Soviet POW survivors in 2015.

https://www.google.com/search?q=did+germany+pay+russia+after+ww2

Signym, this does not count as reparations, but the Soviet Union took revenge on Germany, too.

After WWII, millions of Germans died from expulsions, starvation, disease, and violence (estimates range from 500,000 to over 2 million), plus deaths in Soviet POW camps (hundreds of thousands to over 1 million), while civilian deaths from bombing were 350,000-500,000, totaling a significant post-war demographic loss beyond direct combat casualties. The largest numbers stem from the forced displacement of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe (1944-1950) and harsh conditions in Soviet labor camps.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+germans+died+after+ww2+ended

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 16, 2025 6:10 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, December 17, 2025 6:23 AM

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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Sorry for your loss. "Brave" Russians reduced to rotting dog meat on the battlefield.

Russia loses almost 30,000 troops killed every month – Zelenskyy

By Iryna Balachuk | 16 December, 12:37

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/16/8012048/

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said that Russia is losing around 30,000 troops killed each month in its war against Ukraine.

Source: Zelenskyy's address to the House of Representatives and the Senate of the Parliament of the Netherlands on 16 December

Quote: "[Russian leader Vladimir – ed.] Putin does not believe in people. He believes only in power and money. He spends around 30,000 soldiers' lives on the front every month. Not wounded – 30,000 each month killed. There was a month when 25,000 Russians were killed and another month – 31,000. We have drone footage confirming these deaths."

Details: Zelenskyy stressed that Russian assaults are always insanely bloody, but that Putin does not care about this.

"Russians do not count their dead. But they do count every dollar and every euro they lose. That is why a strong decision on Russian money is needed. These funds must work to defend against Russia. And I urge you to support this," the Ukrainian president said.

Background: Ukraine's General Staff publishes daily data on Russia's losses in the war. According to these figures, Russia has recently been losing between 710 and 1,400 personnel per day. Previously, the General Staff explained that these numbers include both killed and wounded troops.

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 17, 2025 6:24 AM

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German Chancellor Friedrich Merz believes that the probability of reaching an agreement in Europe on providing Ukraine with a reparations loan from frozen Russian assets currently stands at "50/50".

. . . the EU has a contingency plan in case an agreement on a reparations loan for Ukraine cannot be reached. In particular, the bloc is considering a transitional loan financed through EU borrowing to support Ukraine in early 2026.

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/reparations-loan-for-ukraine-merz-asse
sses-1765928853.html

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 17, 2025 6:28 AM

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OPINION: Western Fatigue, Not Ukrainian Fatigue

What is exhausted is not Ukrainian society. What is exhausted is Western political will – the will to name aggression clearly and to endure the consequences of its own principles.

By Dr. Orhan Dragas | Dec. 16, 2025, 9:22 am

https://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/66267

In Western political and media discourse over the past several months, the phrase “Ukraine fatigue” has appeared with increasing frequency.

It is uttered cautiously, almost apologetically, yet often enough to no longer be accidental. This phrase does not describe conditions on the ground. It describes a state of mind in Western capitals. It says nothing about Ukraine and everything about a West seeking psychological distance from its own responsibility.

Ukraine shows no signs of fatigue in its defense. Its cities remain under attack, its citizens continue to live under constant threat, and its armed forces still hold lines that, in a broader sense, are the front lines of the European order itself.

What is exhausted is not Ukrainian society. What is exhausted is Western political will – the will to name aggression clearly and to endure the consequences of its own principles.

Fatigue is not visible in Ukrainian trenches, but in the offices of Western capitals.

The most important question now being avoided is simple: Why is Ukraine being asked to accept what would never be demanded of any Western state? Why is Kyiv urged to show “realism,” “flexibility,” and “compromise,” when similar proposals in Paris, Berlin, or Warsaw would be politically unthinkable?

Imagine proposing to France that, for the sake of “stability,” it temporarily relinquish part of its territory. Or suggesting to Germany that it “freeze the conflict” by accepting a loss of sovereignty. Such ideas would be met with outrage. They would not be seen as pragmatic, but as unacceptable – and rightly so.

Yet this principle does not apply when it comes to Ukraine.

There, territorial integrity is treated as a variable, something negotiable if it suits the comfort of others. This is not realism. It is the cynicism of power – the assumption that some rights are absolute while others are conditional. If sovereignty is a universal value, it must apply to all. If it does not apply to Ukraine, it applies to no one.

The term “Ukraine fatigue” functions as a political smokescreen. It creates the impression that the problem is no longer Russian aggression, but prolonged Ukrainian resistance. This is a dangerous inversion. Instead of asking why aggression continues, Western discourse increasingly asks why Ukraine does not adapt.

A nation defending its own land is not fatigued by defense. Fatigue belongs to those who view the war as an external crisis – a topic for summits and communiqués – rather than as a question of the survival of the international order. Ukraine is not asking for sympathy. It is asking for the means to complete what the West claims, rhetorically, to support.

When “fatigue” is invoked, it is really about reluctance to make hard decisions. About the unwillingness to acknowledge that wars cannot be stopped with half-measures. About a desire to bring the crisis to an end, even at the expense of those who were attacked.

One of the most troubling features of contemporary Western discourse is the subtle shifting of responsibility from aggressor to victim. Increasingly, it is “Ukrainian expectations,” “Ukrainian objectives,” and “Ukrainian stubbornness” that are scrutinized, while Russian intentions are treated as a fixed reality with which one must simply “work.”

This creates a false balance, as if there were moral symmetry between the state that launched an invasion and the state defending itself. As if the problem were Ukraine’s failure to adapt to violence, rather than the persistence of violence itself.

Neutrality in such a war does not mean the absence of a position. It means acceptance of a reality imposed by force. When aggression is relativized, it is normalized. When it is normalized, it is repeated.

The idea that concessions can bring stability rests on a fundamental misunderstanding of Russian behavior. Concessions do not lead to restraint; they invite further testing of limits.

A frozen conflict is not peace. It is deferred escalation. Every precedent in which aggression pays off becomes a template for future conflicts. If borders can be changed by force today, the same logic will be applied elsewhere tomorrow – not as an exception, but as a rule. Ukraine understands this. That is why it does not retreat. Not because it rejects peace, but because it understands the price of false peace.

The West today does not face a choice between war and peace, as is often claimed. It faces a choice between consistency and short-term comfort. Between turning the principles it publicly defends into practice, or replacing them with the language of “fatigue” and “realism.”

The question is no longer whether the West understands what is happening in Ukraine. It does. The question is whether it is prepared to accept the consequences of that understanding.

For years, that same West built an order based on rules, insisting that borders must not be changed by force and that aggression must not be rewarded. Ukraine is the first European country to put that order to a real test – not a declarative or theoretical one, but a practical one, measured in destroyed cities, millions displaced, and constant military pressure.

Ukraine is not fighting today to prove its resilience to the West. It is fighting because it has no alternative. The West, meanwhile, continues to choose between clear policy and postponed decisions. That postponement does not shape the course of the war in the way it hopes. It merely extends the space in which aggression operates without a full response.

The West formally supports Ukraine, but in practice repeatedly delays decisions that would enable Ukraine to prevail, because it fears the consequences of a Russian reaction more than it fears the prolongation of the war.

In that sense, talk of “Ukraine fatigue” is not a description of reality. It is an admission of weakness. Ukraine is not tired of defending itself. The West is tired of the consequences of its own words.

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 17, 2025 6:46 AM

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Ukraine boasts homegrown 400 km/h motor for interceptor drones

Ukraine is betting on interceptor drones to counter Russia’s Shahed terror.

By Igor Kossov | Dec 16, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/16/ukraine-boasts-homegrown-400-km
-h-motor-for-interceptor-drones/

Ukraine can now mass-produce a motor that makes interceptor drones go 400 kilometers per hour, the Brave1 Defense Cluster announced on 16 December.

The manufacturer, Motor G, makes more than 100,000 motors per month, according to the announcement, which called it one of the largest producers of motors outside China.

This isn’t the first time a Ukrainian manufacturer claimed such speeds. A company called Bullet purports to make interceptors that can go 450 km/h. An American company has signed a letter of intent to help manufacture and sell these drones in the US.

However, Brave1, which sponsors Ukrainian defense contractors, billed this as the latest sign that Ukraine is becoming less reliant on foreign parts. Many of these parts come from China.

“Today, more and more drones are flying on motors made in Ukraine,” First Deputy Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov tweeted. “We are building the components market and strengthening Ukraine’s technological independence.”

Still, Ukraine has a long way to go in being self-sufficient when it comes to drone propulsion. According to the Zmiinyi (Snake) Island Institute, Ukrainian manufacturers produce just 14% of their own electric motors, as of October.

The need for speed

According to Euromaidan Press’s interviews with interceptor drone manufacturers, top speeds typically range from 200 to 350 km/h, depending on the model and what it’s designed to hunt. Many hover just above 300 km/h.

This is borne out by other reporting on the subject. General Cherry recently came out with the Air Pro, which can go 200 km/h.

MaXon Systems’s semi-autonomous interceptor reportedly goes 300 km/h. And the Wild Hornets’ Sting drone was reported to hit speeds of 315 km/h in tests, though its claimed top speed is close to 350 km/h.

The Furia air defense drone hit a top speed of 350 km/h, according to Sergej Sumlenny, founder of the European Resilience Initiative Center.

As such, 400 km/h is nothing to sneeze at in the current ecosystem. Ukraine’s interceptors will need all the speed and maneuverability they can get as Russia upgrades its Shahed attack drones to be faster, more destructive and evasive.

Jet-powered versions of the Shahed already have a reported cruising speed of 300-350 kilometers per hour.

Weaning Ukraine off Chinese parts

Ukraine's government has a stated goal to reduce its dependence on Chinese parts, which, while cheaper, also pose a security risk. If China stops the flow of parts for whatever reason, Ukraine's entire weapons industry can be in trouble.

Chinese firms also supply a huge volume of parts to Russia, to be used in the same weapons being used to attack Ukraine. Chinese parts reportedly account for over 60% of components used in Shahed attack drones.

Fedorov and Brave1 recently announced a grant program, offering weapon component makers up to 8 million hryvnias to accelerate R&D and improve their readiness (about $188,000.)

Brave1 also announced its initiative to allow the military to buy parts for electronic points, something that the defense cluster already does with drones.

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 17, 2025 7:00 AM

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Kremlin says goal of war is to make Ukrainians see themselves as Russian

By Alex Stezhensky | December 17, 2025

https://english.nv.ua/nation/kremlin-rejects-ukraine-security-guarante
es-calls-control-over-ukrainians-war-goal-isw-50569168.html

The Kremlin is effectively rejecting all core principles underpinning current efforts to craft a peace plan to end Russia’s war against Ukraine — from security guarantees to the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty. Instead, Russia’s Foreign Ministry has openly described the goal of the war as forcing Ukrainians to believe they supposedly “belong” to Russia.

In particular, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said in an English-language television interview with ABC News that Russia would “categorically never sign, agree to, or even be satisfied with” the presence of any “NATO troops” in Ukraine, even if those forces were part of security guarantees or represented countries belonging to the coalition of the willing.

Ryabkov also reiterated that Russia would not compromise “in any form” on the five Ukrainian regions it baselessly claims as its own following their illegal annexation — including Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson oblasts, as well as Crimea.

Ryabkov’s remarks about the “five regions in general” effectively repeat the Kremlin’s demand that Ukraine relinquish control over the unoccupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhya and Kherson oblasts and hand them over to Russia.

Ryabkov also framed Russia’s war aim against Ukraine in the following terms: “The whole purpose of what we are doing there is to achieve that at least some of these people, most of them [Ukrainians], would prefer — and I would say, would find it more appropriate — to be where they belong, that is, in Russia.”

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 17, 2025 7:02 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.
Sorry for your loss.


Sure. You've been saying that dumb shit for years now.

#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine



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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 8:09 AM

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


Belgian politicians and finance bosses targeted by Russian intelligence over seized assets

Exclusive: Key figures at frozen assets depository among targets of intimidation campaign, say European intelligence agencies

By Dan Sabbagh in London and Jennifer Rankin in Brussels | Wed 17 Dec 2025 12.37 EST

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/17/belgian-politicians-fina
nce-bosses-targeted-russian-intelligence-seized-assets

Belgian politicians and senior finance executives have been subject to a campaign of intimidation orchestrated by Russian intelligence aimed at persuading the country to block the use of €185bn assets for Ukraine, according to European intelligence agencies.

Security officials indicated to the Guardian that there had been deliberate targeting of key figures at Euroclear, the securities depository holding the majority of Russia’s frozen assets, and leaders of the country.

EU leaders meeting in Brussels on Thursday are debating whether to approve the lending of urgently needed funds for Ukraine secured on Russian central bank assets, critical to maintain Kyiv’s war effort through 2026 and 2027.

Officials believe the campaign is the responsibility of Russia’s GRU military intelligence, though there is a debate about the degree of threat. “They have been engaged in the tactics of intimidation for sure,” one European official said.

Belgium is in focus because €185bn (£162bn) of the €210bn of Russia central bank assets frozen by the EU since the start of Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine is held at the Brussels-based Euroclear.

On Thursday and Friday, EU leaders are meeting to decide whether to agree an initial €90bn loan secured on the immobilised Russian bank assets. Belgium has voiced concerns about the legality of the scheme and says it will only agree if it has guarantees Euroclear will be reimbursed in full if Russia successfully sues for its money.

Russia has publicly warned that utilising the assets would amount to theft and its central bank said it is seeking $230bn in damages from Euroclear in a case brought in the country’s courts. But it is understood the intimidation campaign has been focused on key individuals.

Threats have been directed at Valérie Urbain, the chief executive of Euroclear, and other senior executives at the financial services group.

Euroclear declined to comment: “Any potential threats are treated with the utmost priority and investigated deeply, often with the support of authorities as appropriate.”

An investigation earlier this month by the news site EUobserver referenced threats made to Urbain in 2024 and 2025, and that she asked for Belgian police protection. This was denied and she and other companies executives then hired first a Belgian, then a French security firm to provide bodyguards, according to the report.

A profile interview of Urbain by Le Monde in November reported that she had been accompanied by a bodyguard for more than a year, though she did not comment directly on her security.

In early December, Bart De Wever, Belgium’s prime minister, said in an onstage interview with La Libre newspaper: “And who believes that Putin will calmly accept the confiscation of Russian assets? Moscow has let us know that in the event of a seizure, Belgium and I personally will feel the effects for eternity.”

Asked to explain these comments earlier this month, the prime minister’s office referred to previous remarks made by De Wever, describing the legal and financial risks facing western companies.

At a press conference in October, De Wever had said: “Moscow has told us that if we touch the money, we would feel the consequences until eternity,” and went on to evoke Russian countermeasures, including confiscation of western money frozen in Russian banks, seizure of western companies and similar decisions from Moscow-friendly jurisdictions.

The spokesperson on Wednesday declined to comment on the reported threats against Belgian government ministers or the head of Euroclear, citing safety reasons.

A spokesperson for Belgium’s foreign minister, Maxime Prévot, who is also deputy prime minister and has been involved in talks on the reparations loan, said they had “no such information” about threats to him.

The UK, which is believed to hold €27bn of Russia’s frozen assets, supports the move to use immobilised funds for Ukraine. Belgium has also been insisting that other countries holding Russian assets, estimated to be worth €290bn worldwide, take similar actions to show solidarity and reduce the legal risk.

Keir Starmer, the UK prime minister, told the businessman Roman Abramovich to release £2.5bn of proceeds from the sale of Chelsea football club in 2022 within 90 days or face legal action. Britain wants all the money to be given to Ukrainian war victims, but the billionaire has said he also wants Russian victims to benefit.

Ukrainian officials and experts acknowledge the EU loan is central to maintaining the country’s war effort for the next couple of years. Nataliia Shapoval, the head of the KSE Institute, a Kyiv based economic thinktank, said Ukraine required $50bn in external financing in 2026, but only half of which had already been committed.

The economist described the need for fresh international financing as “absolutely critical”. In particular, Ukraine’s defence ministry needed predictable flows of cash to ensure that it could buy weapons at the rates needed and so its armaments industry could make capital investments for the future.

Though Ukraine could get through the first quarter of the year without the additional support from the EU, “big problems would arise from quarter two and even more in the second half of the year”, with Kyiv likely forced to cut defence budgets and make difficult trade-offs with social expenditure.

Ukrainian officials hope that an EU funding deal could put Russia under medium-term financial pressure. Next year, 38% of Russia’s state budget will go on funding its military, while it is expected to end this year with a budget gap of about $70bn (£52bn), according to Shapoval.

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

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 9:00 AM

THG

Keep it real please


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:






Talk about panicked. Russia's pride of the Black Sea is
walling itself off because it can't defend itself against, wait for it, a
Navy that does not exist. Another way to put it. They are hiding.

T

RUSSIA BLOCKADES IT'S OWN NAVY


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Thursday, December 18, 2025 10:11 AM

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'You don’t end wars by deals': Tom Brewer on Ukraine’s war and why the West still misunderstands Russia

Ukraine’s war is not about territory alone. It is a test of whether democratic societies still understand what aggression looks like - and whether they are prepared to confront it honestly.

December 18, 2025, 05:12 AM

https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/tom-brewer-on-ukraine-s-war-nato-and
-why-russia-must-be-stopped-50569389.html

Many Western audiences want a quick end - any end.

“They just want to flip a switch and end the war,” Brewer said. “They don’t understand that you can’t end it that way.”

Ending the war without accountability, he warned, would set a dangerous precedent.

“You don’t punish the aggressor, Russia, and you think that solves the problem?” Brewer said. “It doesn’t.”

The consequences, he argued, extend far beyond Ukraine.

“You’re looking at China. You’re looking at Taiwan,” Brewer said. “If we don’t defend democracy here and now, we’ll fight much bigger wars in the future - with far more deaths - because we didn’t do this right.”

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

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 2:16 PM

THG

Keep it real please


Vagzhanovo
The largest storage base for Soviet-era military vehicles in Russia, known as Vagzhanovo, has seen a significant reduction in its inventory since the invasion of Ukraine. Satellite imagery and analysis have shown that nearly half of the Soviet-era tanks and armored vehicles stored at Vagzhanovo have been removed, with the majority of these vehicles being sent for refurbishment or used in combat. The base, located near Ulan-Ude in Buryatia, covers an area of over 10 square kilometers and has been a key storage site for Soviet armored vehicles. However, the current situation indicates that most of the equipment has been removed, and the remaining vehicles are unlikely to be suitable for use due to their condition. This trend is also reflected in other storage bases, such as the 7004th and 7020th arsenals, which have become almost completely empty.



T

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 2:31 PM

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Russia had 10 aircraft engine failures in one week

By Viktor Volokita — 18 December, 20:39

In 2025, against the backdrop of sanctions and the lack of domestic production of spare parts, the number of incidents involving aircraft operated by Russian airlines has increased by roughly four times year-on-year. From January to the end of November, more than 800 malfunctions leading to flight cancellations or emergency returns were recorded, compared with just over 200 such incidents in the same period in 2024.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/18/8012513/

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

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 2:39 PM

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“Money today or blood tomorrow”: Tusk warns Polish independence threatened if Europe lets Ukraine fall

“Polish independence will be under threat if it turns out that, as a result of bad decisions or a lack of decisions, for example on the part of Europe, Ukraine would be forced to capitulate.”

He described the use of frozen Russian assets as the best available option for financing aid to Kyiv. Tusk said there was broad agreement within the EU that the issue must be resolved.

Tusk dismissed alternative proposals based on new EU borrowing, saying they would require approval from national parliaments and could prove difficult to implement.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/18/tusk-warns-polish-independence-
threatened-if-europe-lets-ukraine-fall/

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

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 2:43 PM

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Russia reveals war costs hit 80% of defense budget in rare admission

18/12/2025

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov disclosed for the first time that direct spending on the war in Ukraine will consume 5.1% of GDP in 2025—over 11 trillion rubles ($110 billion) and more than 80% of Russia's entire defense budget. He made the announcement during an expanded Defense Ministry board meeting on 17 December, according to Kommersant.

The admission marks an unusually candid acknowledgment of the war's financial burden. Moscow has long obscured the true costs buried in classified budget lines.

Independent analysts at SIPRI estimated Russia's total 2025 military expenditure at 15.5 trillion rubles ($160 billion, or 7.2% of GDP)—meaning Belousov's figures align closely with external assessments.

Craig Kennedy's investigation for Euromaidan Press revealed an additional hidden track: forced bank loans totaling $210-250 billion to military contractors since 2022— doubling the actual war costs beyond official figures.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/18/russia-war-costs-80-percent-def
ense-budget-belousov/

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

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Thursday, December 18, 2025 3:11 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russia reveals war costs hit 80% of defense budget in rare admission

18/12/2025

Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov disclosed for the first time that direct spending on the war in Ukraine will consume 5.1% of GDP in 2025—over 11 trillion rubles ($110 billion) and more than 80% of Russia's entire defense budget. He made the announcement during an expanded Defense Ministry board meeting on 17 December, according to Kommersant.

The admission marks an unusually candid acknowledgment of the war's financial burden. Moscow has long obscured the true costs buried in classified budget lines.

Independent analysts at SIPRI estimated Russia's total 2025 military expenditure at 15.5 trillion rubles ($160 billion, or 7.2% of GDP)—meaning Belousov's figures align closely with external assessments.

Craig Kennedy's investigation for Euromaidan Press revealed an additional hidden track: forced bank loans totaling $210-250 billion to military contractors since 2022— doubling the actual war costs beyond official figures.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/18/russia-war-costs-80-percent-def
ense-budget-belousov/

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



Why would you believe him now? He's a no good dirty Russian, and he knows that you are listening to what he says.

Oh. Right.

He also knows that you're retarded and you will believe anything you're told as long as it's something you want to hear.



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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Friday, December 19, 2025 6:45 AM

SECOND

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


Russian air defenses are working better. That’s bad news for Ukraine’s drone strikes.

Despite regular fiery photos of strikes, Ukraine’s drones are doing too little damage.

By David Axe | Dec 15, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/15/russian-air-defenses/

"When Ukraine has attacked more protected targets, the results have been consistent. Out of a salvo of 100–150 UAVs, costing between $20,000 and $80,000 each, around 10 will get to their target, where their small payload often causes negligible damage that can quickly be repaired."

A Ukrainian drones' explosive payload is often small relative to its overall mass because, in order to range deep inside Russia, it needs to carry as much fuel as possible.

The big picture is a bleak one for Ukraine's deep-strike campaign . . .

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

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Friday, December 19, 2025 6:46 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine’s Long-Range Strikes: Photogenic But…

Ukraine has increased the number of long-range attacks on Russia, but there are questions about the campaign’s effectiveness.

By David Axe | December 17, 2025

https://cepa.org/article/ukraines-long-range-strikes-photogenic-but/

No one should dispute that Ukraine’s deep strike campaign is great public relations. Dramatic footage of drones and missiles slamming into Russian airfields, oil refineries, and factories boosts Ukrainian morale and reassures allies that the country remains capable of offensive operations after 45 months of all-out Russian aggression.

But fiery TikToks set to thumping Ukrainian resistance anthems aren’t indicative of an effective deep strike campaign. Despite appearances, Kyiv’s drones and missiles aren’t striking hard enough to propel Russia toward defeat and Ukraine to victory.

That could change, and there are some signs that the campaign is accelerating. But to meaningfully damage the Russian war effort, Ukraine needs much more powerful munitions, and lots of them.

The good news for the Ukrainians is that there are candidates: in particular, the new Flamingo cruise missile from Kyiv firm Fire Point. The bad news is that the Flamingo’s effectiveness is as yet unclear. And the most obvious replacement for the Flamingo, the American Tomahawk, remains out of reach for the Ukrainians.

The numbers tell the real story. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late last year that Ukrainian industry would produce 30,000 one-way attack drones in 2025 — and there’s no reason to believe the Ukrainians won’t meet that target.

But very few of those 30,000 drones strike their targets. And even fewer inflict serious damage. “The overall success rate of Ukrainian strikes has been that less than 10% of munitions have reached a target, and fewer still have delivered an effect,” the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) in London concluded in a December report.

It’s one thing to hit a refinery with a drone or two. It’s another to disable them for long enough to seriously cut Russian petroleum production and exports, and for that to depress Russian military spending enough to cause significant front-line effects.

“I think the amount of economic damage one has to inflict on Russia is probably more than Ukraine could create at the moment,” Sergey Vakulenko, a senior fellow at the Berlin-based Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center think tank, told CNN. “I believe that if push comes to shove, Russia could probably survive with half of its oil and gas exports.”

But a year of escalating Ukrainian oil raids — around 130 this year, compared to just 75 or so last year — has coincided with a mere 6% decrease in oil and gas Russian exports compared to 2024.


Again, pro-Ukrainian social media — with its dramatic celebration of every successful strike and its fiery aftermath — would try to suggest otherwise. “The regular images of fires in Russia have caused a perception that Russian air defenses are failing to protect the territory,” RUSI noted. “The reality is more complex.”

“Ukraine has, over time, become quite adept at attacking targets that lack air defense and has prioritized targets where flammable or sensitive materials will allow small numbers of munitions with limited payloads to cause cascading damage to a facility,” the London think tank explained.

Conversely, “this leaves large numbers of targets that the Russians have decided to defend, and that, consequently, Ukraine has struggled to hit.” According to RUSI, a typical Ukrainian raid will involve between 100 and 150 one-way attack drones in the class of the Fire Point FP-1 or FP-2 or the Ukroboronprom An-196, each drone costing as much as $80,000 for a total expenditure of around $12m.

That’s cheap, given that a single Tomahawk missile might cost $2 million. The problem, however, is payload. A Tomahawk packs a 1,000-pound warhead and delivers it at nearly 600 miles per hour (mph), adding kinetic energy to the explosive impact. An An-196 might have a 165-pound warhead and motors along at barely 250 mph.

Generously, those 15 drones that might get through in a 150-drone raid deliver the same weight of explosives as two or three Tomahawks. Bear in mind: US Navy submarines fired 30 Tomahawks at a pair of Iranian nuclear weapons sites back in June — and the Tomahawks weren’t even the most important munitions for that operation. US Air Force stealth bombers delivered the main firepower in the form of massive bunker-busting bombs.

Frontelligence Insight, an analysis group, estimated Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries during those six months cost the Russian economy $863m. But Russia’s total revenue from oil exports in 2024 was $189bn. The cost to Moscow was, in other words, negligible.

President Trump has made clear that Tomahawks will not be supplied to Ukraine. And there are real questions over the domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles, even if its 600mph 2,200-pound warhead could be just the thing to flatten Russian refineries rather than simply scratch them.

But only if the Flamingo is as cheap and producible as Fire Point has claimed. But based on the evidence, it seems Ukraine has fired just nine Flamingos in four raids over six months, resulting in two damaging hits. Maybe the Flamingo is a viable weapon like Fire Point’s one-way attack drones. But if so, there isn’t yet a lot of proof. Ominously, Fire Point is under investigation in Kyiv for corruption.

Maybe an uptick in FP-1/2 and An-196 production, and an increase in the pace of attacks, will add mass and frequency to Ukrainian strikes and result in more lasting damage that, for example, makes generous enlistment bonuses less affordable to Moscow — and, as a consequence, depresses the steady manpower mobilization that has been Russia’s biggest military advantage over manpower-starved Ukraine.

Or maybe Russia will largely shrug off Ukrainian deep strikes in 2026 the way it shrugged them off in 2025 and 2024.

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

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Friday, December 19, 2025 10:12 AM

SECOND

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


A piece today about the instability of leaders and strategies and how these factors, and not some brilliant Chinese plan for long-term thinking, have transformed the international situation.

Phillips P. OBrien
Dec 19, 2025
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/in-the-world-of-the-strategic-b
lind

The Russia-China relationship has historically been, shall we say, uneasy. The two have a long-standing border dispute (much of eastern Siberia was originally Chinese). The two states have even exchanged fire over the border and for a long time, the Russia-Chinese border was one of the most militarized frontiers in the world.

Now, however, Russia not only cannot stand up to China, its economic and arguably military existence depends to a large degree on Chinese support. What Putin has done, with his strategically disastrous decision to invade Ukraine, is to throw Russia at China’s feet and beg for support. The Russian border with China has been demilitarized on the Russian side as almost all military force is in Ukraine or serving the Ukraine war. There would be nothing that could stop a Chinese invasion of Siberia, were the Chinese so inclined.

But Russia is not just militarily vulnerable, its military-industrial economy could not function without Chinese support. The Chinese are the largest consumers of Russian oil in the world, and they now have a pipeline with which no sanctions announced by Europe can possibly interfere. Its Russia’s golden lifeline to some income no matter what, as long as they keep the Chinese happy. And the Russian war machine is increasingly running on Chinese components. Over the course of 2025, for instance, more and more parts, even finished dual-use military goods are being sent from China to Russia.

The upshot of all of this is that Russia is basically a Chinese vassal. It cannot defend itself from China and it cannot live without access to the Chinese market.

In the end, the transformation of the positions of China, the US and Russia were not preordained. This transformation was because of the choices of particularly US and Russian leadership, both of whom arguably came to China’s aid when China’s own choices left it exposed. It reveals once again that states rarely if ever act in the “national interest”. They often act in the perceived interests of the leader, and therefore are erratic and often self-defeating. They certainly have been here.

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

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