Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 4:53 AM

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

Europe kicks the €210 billion question down the road

EU leaders told the Commission to keep trying. The deadline: end of 2027.

By Peeter Helme | Dec 19, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/19/eu-delays-210bn-frozen-assets-e
nd-2027/

The European Union’s €90 billion ($105 billion) loan for Ukraine isn’t an ending. It’s a countdown. EU leaders approved the emergency funding early Friday after disagreeing on tapping €210 billion ($246 billion) in frozen Russian assets, according to European Council conclusions.

But they also gave the Commission a mandate to keep working on the reparations loan mechanism—and Commission President Ursula von der Leyen made clear where this is heading.

“Financing Ukraine beyond 2027 will be part of the next long-term EU budget discussion,” she wrote on X.

“We reserve our right to use the cash balances from Russian assets immobilised in the EU to finance the loan.”

Translation: the €90 billion buys time. The fight for the frozen assets continues.

The 2027 problem

The €90 billion covers roughly two-thirds of Ukraine’s estimated needs through 2027. After that, Europe faces the same question it just ducked: borrow more, or finally touch Russia’s money?

One EU diplomat told Reuters the compromise amounted to “saving face” rather than solving the problem.

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

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 4:56 AM

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Ukraine cannot continue to survive on Europe’s starvation rations

Editorial: Despite agreeing to a €90bn interest-free loan that could keep Kyiv afloat for two years, European leaders seem unduly nervous about forcing Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table. If Europe is ever to defeat Russia, it must now go further – or risk humiliation

Friday 19 December 2025 14:43 EST

https://www.the-independent.com/voices/editorials/ukraine-russia-eu-lo
an-putin-war-b2887890.html

Unlike some of his more aloof predecessors, the latest autocrat running Russia doesn’t mind subjecting himself to lengthy media questioning, if only once a year, as a kind of pre-Christmas treat for himself.

Vladimir Putin enjoys delivering rambling lectures as much as his American counterpart, though the Russian president’s aren’t quite so angry and possess more of a scholarly veneer, fake as it is. His latest marathon press conference does, however, serve to confirm that this is a leader who is determined to achieve his maximalist strategy in Ukraine by whatever means suit him best at any given point.

These include multi-spoked diplomacy to divide the EU (Hungary being the weapon of choice), peeling America out of Nato, military activity on the battleground, espionage and disinformation abroad, and, of course, bombing and freezing Ukrainian civilians to death. He can also tap up powerful allies in China, India and Iran for financial support, dual-purpose technology, weaponry and even manpower to support his crude “meatgrinder” method of war.

At this moment, President Putin is content to maintain an involved but uncompromising stance in the peace talks, while simultaneously pressing on with his slow advances on the ground, and the indiscriminate bombing of Ukrainian infrastructure, be it power plants or kindergartens. If his friends in the US administration – including Donald Trump himself – manage to pressure Volodymyr Zelensky into surrendering territory that Russia hasn’t been able to capture in the fighting, and to disarm Ukraine, then so much the better. Russia can then regroup while America relaxes its economic sanctions, and prepare for the next invasion.

If not, and the war drags on, then Putin won’t mind either the human cost – more than one million Russian casualties so far – or the stress to the Russian economy. His goal of occupying Ukraine, extinguishing its national identity, and integrating it into his empire makes any sacrifice made by his people worthwhile. It would cement his regime in permanent power – and, in his review, consolidate Russia’s superpower status – and would command the respect of his enemies at home and abroad. He likes to be feared – another thing he shares with Mr Trump.

Unlike Mr Trump, though, Russia’s leader is normally calm in demeanour, and, as it suits him to at the moment, gives the impression that he is relaxed about the glacially slow progress of his “special military operation”. He also seems rather pleased about the disarray in Europe in recent days. He derides European leaders as “piglets”, and as “burglars” attempting to steal the $200bn (£150bn) of Russian financial assets that have been frozen in the European clearing system since his unprovoked and illegal invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Sadly for Europe, the EU leaders are far from a ruthless, well-organised gang of jewel thieves. Instead, they resemble a squabbling band of amateurs, with some members under suspicion of wanting to help the Kremlin rather than frustrate it, and openly obstructing the attempt to make Russia pay for its aggression.

In the end, the Europeans stumped up an interest-free loan of €90bn (£79bn) for Ukraine. This, it is claimed, will keep the Kyiv government running for a year or two. The unspoken assumption is that, by 2027, when the war will be in its sixth year, the Russians will be so exhausted, and their economy and war machine struggling to such an extent, that Moscow will be forced to sue for peace. At that point, a fairer settlement can be achieved – and with it, the return of most of Ukraine’s territorial integrity and independence.

Perhaps. But there are pressures on Ukraine, too, such as running out of soldiers. It is also beyond doubt that Russia’s friends will continue to support the Kremlin, and even possible that the US will rapidly relax its sanctions and allow Russia to rejoin the world economy, so that Mr Trump can pursue lucrative real estate and other deals.

Europe, in other words, has once again given Ukraine “just enough”. Just enough, that is, to keep Ukraine going and avoid it being overrun by the Russians – but not enough for its military to achieve decisive victories and push the enemy back, as it has managed to do before.

European allies are twitchy about the Ukrainians’ use of long-range weaponry to hit deep inside Russia and elsewhere, such as the successful strikes on Russia’s sanctions-busting “shadow fleet” of oil tankers. Some fear a nuclear conflagration, though Russia has done no more than make idle threats about that.

In other words, Europe seems unduly and perversely nervous about giving Ukraine what it needs to actually force the Russians to the negotiating table. Meanwhile, some European nations are still buying Russian gas.

Contrary to President Trump’s wishful thinking, this war is unlikely to be over by Christmas. The cruelties and the attrition will continue into the spring and the summer, and in a year, the battle lines will be more or less where they are now. Europe, divided and unwilling to spend more money on its defence, seems set to be not much more resolute than it was in the early days, when Berlin wanted to limit its military assistance to some new helmets for the Ukrainian troops.

Such a dismal situation may be inevitable, given the differences between European governments and their complacent electorates – but it is not sustainable. Ukraine cannot continue to survive on starvation rations from Brussels.

Europe, including Britain, therefore needs to decide whether it actually wants to defeat Russia. The opportunity to do so is still there, and, with Ukraine as an ally, victory would turn Europe into a fortress against a revanchist Russia.

If not, then everything that has been done thus far, all the lives lost and the money spent, will have been in vain. Ukraine will cease to exist. Europe, humiliated, will be left at President Putin’s mercy, fretting about where he will act next: Estonia? Moldova? Finland? Poland?

An enlarged, emboldened and stronger Russia will menace Europe for decades to come, Europeans will have only themselves to blame, and this time the Americans won’t rescue them. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

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

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 5:46 AM

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

“You do nothing and you can still be shot”: Ukrainian woman describes torture in Russian detention

By Kathrine Frich | Dec 20, 2025

https://www.dagens.com/war/you-do-nothing-and-you-can-still-be-shot-uk
rainian-woman-describes-torture-in-russian-detention

Life under occupation reshapes daily routines in ways that are hard to imagine from afar.

For civilians trapped behind shifting front lines, survival often depends on silence, luck and endurance.

One Ukrainian woman’s testimony offers a rare account of what that reality looked like from the inside.

Early disappearances

According to The Insider, Olena Yagupova lived in Kamianka-Dniprovska, in Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, when Russian forces took control of the area in the first days of the full-scale invasion.

She said order was imposed quickly through patrols, checkpoints and house-to-house searches.

“People started disappearing from the very beginning,” Yagupova told The Insider, describing how residents were detained without explanation.

She said workers from the nearby Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant were among those targeted.

“They had lists of the plant’s employees,” she said, adding that some people were pressured into cooperation while others were tortured or sent to dig fortifications. Communication with the outside world, she said, was almost impossible.

Arrest without charges

Yagupova said she was detained on October 6, 2022.

Her husband served in the Ukrainian army, and she had worked in regional public administration, factors she believes made her a target.

“They had no warrant and no charges,” she said.

An FSB officer and members of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic searched her home, she said, taking property before moving her to a local police station.

“They suffocated me with bags, tortured me with electricity, simulated execution, raped me,” Yagupova said.

She described two days of abuse aimed at forcing false confessions, followed by months in detention without formal accusations.

Life in detention

She told The Insider she spent four months in pre-trial detention, often sleeping on the floor in overcrowded cells during winter. “In pretrial detention, your goal is to live one day,” she said.

Food was scarce, water limited and medical care nonexistent, she said.

Guards forced detainees to sing the Russian anthem for hours while beatings took place.

Many inmates, she added, were civilians detained for minor or unclear reasons.

A guard once gave her a book, she recalled. “Read it, it will be useful to you,” he said. The book was about the Nuremberg Trials.

Forced labor

In January 2023, Yagupova said she was transferred from detention to a labor camp. Before the transfer, she said, officials filmed a video claiming she had been released.

“They forced us to dig trenches and demine the fields,” she said. Such videos, she added, were meant to mislead families and avoid responsibility.

In October 2025, the International Criminal Court in The Hague accepted Yagupova’s testimony, according to The Insider, adding her account to a growing body of evidence about alleged abuses in occupied Ukrainian territories.

Sources: The Insider, International Criminal Court, Digi24.

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

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 5:47 AM

#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

Seriously dude. Fuck yet another Democratic money laundering scheme that was your Ukraine bullshit.

We're done with that too.

The fleecing of Americans by Democrats comes to an end here.

You lose. Forever.

Checkmate.

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 5:58 AM

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

A Russian cargo plane broke in half—because Russian industry is broken, too

A Russian air force An-22 that disintegrated near Moscow is indicative of deeper Russian dysfunction.

By David Axe | 19/12/2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/19/an-22-crash/

• The crash of a Russian air force airlifter speaks to a wider problem
• Russian warplanes are wearing out faster than Russia can replace them
• The Russian air force is doomed to shrink as more planes get grounded ... or crash

The Russian air force Antonov An-22 heavylift transport plane that broke in half and crashed near Ivanovo air base 250 km west of Moscow on 14 December may have been the last An-22 in Russian service.

The horrific crash, captured on video from the ground, underscores a growing problem for the Russian air force as Russia's wider war on Ukraine grinds toward its fifth year: Russian warplanes are wearing out faster than Russian factories can replace them.

The Russian air arm is still much bigger than the Ukrainian air force and boasts capabilities the Ukrainian air arm lacks, such as heavy bombers and stealth fighters. But the Russian air force, or VKS, will almost certainly shrink, a lot—and not just because its aircraft are getting shot down by Ukrainian missiles and blown up on the ground by Ukrainian drones.

No, the Russian air force will shrink because many of its roughly 1,700 fixed-wing aircraft—fighters, attack jets, bombers, and transports—will simply wear out from overuse in the wider war.

"It wouldn't shock me if by the time the war in Ukraine ends, between combat losses, wear/tear and aging of its already old aircraft fleet, [the] VKS might end up being down ~40% from its pre-war fleet of combat aircraft," Czech analyst Jakub Janovsky predicted.

The four-engine, turboprop An-22 that crashed near Moscow, killing seven people, was around 50 years old, but continued in service a year past its anticipated retirement, likely owing to the demands of the Russian war effort. Russian transport aircraft shuttle troops and supplies around Russia and also deliver cruise missiles to Russian bomber bases shortly before those bombers strike Ukrainian cities.

The Fighterbomber Telegram channel claimed it was the last An-22 in air force use. The giant turboprop could haul 80,000 kg of cargo and land on rough airstrips.

An airlifter can safely fly for 50 years or even longer if it's properly maintained, overhauled, and upgraded. But it's evident from the An-22's mid-air disintegration that it wasn't properly maintained, overhauled, and upgraded.

The problem may be endemic across the Russian air force fleet. Maintenance isn't keeping up with use as Russian planes relentlessly bombard Ukraine.

It's a problem Defense News identified as early as March 2024. "The Russian Aerospace Forces, or VKS, continues to burn through the life span of its fighter aircraft in the war against Ukraine," the trade publication reported.

https://twitter.com/Osinttechnical/status/2000268262672896151/

Combat losses aren't the real problem

The Russians have lost around 170 aircraft in combat in Ukraine since February 2022. That's 10% of the pre-war fleet.

Russian factories have produced enough new aircraft to replace virtually all of the combat losses.

But they haven't produced enough new aircraft to make up for older planes that become unflyable owing to metal fatigue.

Consider the Sukhoi Su-34 and Sukhoi Su-35, respectively—the Russian air force's best attack plane and best fighter. The VKS went to war in February 2022 with around 130 Su-34s and 100 Su-35s. In 45 months of hard fighting, the air arm has lost 35 Su-34s and eight Su-35s.

Over the same span of time, Sukhoi has delivered around 39 Su-34s and 26 Su-35s, more than making good combat losses. But that doesn't mean the air force's inventory isn't shrinking.

"A subset of its fleets has built up significant fatigue hours," the Royal United Services Institute in London explained in a recent report.

RUSI noted that Russian industry is scaling up production of other key weapons—tanks, drones, and missiles—tenfold in order to replace lost and expended hardware ... and also hardware that simply wears out. But the Russian aviation industry probably can't increase its output tenfold.

Why Russian factories can't keep up

"At the higher level, Russia's aviation industry appears to be a strong sovereign sector with advanced indigenous capabilities," the think tank noted. "However, once one begins to examine the second- and third-tier suppliers, the robustness of Russia's aviation industry appears less assured."

The sector depends on a skilled workforce and a steady supply of foreign components. The workforce is under stress. And sanctions have disrupted the flow of foreign parts—Ukrainian intelligence has identified over 2,000 imported electronic components in Russian Su-series fighter jets.

"The difficulties Russia has encountered to achieve even small increases in [aircraft] production, in a sector with comparatively fewer sanctions than other parts of its defense industry, speaks to a range of vulnerabilities across the Sukhoi supply chain," RUSI observed.
A shrinking fleet

Those vulnerabilities are why there aren't enough new planes reaching VKS regiments. And why older planes continue to fly even when they're unsafe.

Ukraine's Foreign Intelligence Service has reported that Russian airlines could lose nearly 30% of their aircraft by 2030 as sanctions strangle the aviation sector—and the military side faces similar pressures. The Russian air force is doomed to shrink as more worn-out planes get permanently parked ... or crash.

Explore further
Frontline report: Russia’s military air fleet is unraveling aircraft by aircraft, crew by crew

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 7:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
A Russian cargo plane broke in half—because Russian industry is broken, too

Oh. I'm sure it is.

Get fucked, loser.

You're a fucking idiot.

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Saturday, December 20, 2025 3:29 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine cannot continue to survive on Europe’s starvation rations

Then maybe they should stop wasting money on gold toilets.

------

"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 21, 2025 6:44 AM

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to seize all of Ukraine and ultimately restore control over parts of Europe that once belonged to the Soviet empire, according to six sources familiar with US intelligence assessments.

These conclusions contradict the Kremlin’s public claims that Russia poses no threat to Europe and directly refute Putin’s own denials.

Despite these assessments, the Donald Trump administration continues to claim that Russia is interested in peace, even as US intelligence agencies maintain the opposite view.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/20/us-intelligence-say-putin-wants
-ukraine-baltics-poland-and-more-trumps-team-says-russia-wants-peace/

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 21, 2025 10:58 AM

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

Who Wins Wars — and Why (Introduction)

As Samuel Charap, one of the leading analysts of the Russian military for the Rand Corporation – arguably the US government’s most important strategic studies think tank – described the situation, Russia was so strong that the west should not even bother to arm Ukraine:

Russia has the ability to carry out a large-scale joint offensive operation involving tens of thousands of personnel, thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of combat aircraft. It would likely begin with devastating air and missile strikes from land, air, and naval forces, striking deep into Ukraine to attack headquarters, airfields, and logistics points. Ukrainian forces would begin the conflict nearly surrounded from the very start, with Russian forces arrayed along the eastern border, naval and amphibious forces threatening from the Black Sea in the south, and the potential (increasingly real) for additional Russian forces to deploy into Belarus and threaten from the north, where the border is less than 65 miles from Kyiv itself.

‘U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine: A Silver Bullet?’, Rand Corporation, 21 January 2022,
https://www.rand.org/blog/2022/01/us-military-aid-to-ukraine-a-silver-
bullet.html

As Charap and his co-author argued, US weapons could ‘do nothing’ to change the basic flaws in the Ukrainian military, nor did they represent a threat large enough to deter Russia. As such, it would be best to leave Ukraine to accept its doomed fate and throw itself on the mercy of Putin’s Russia. This was no one-off. It was a vision of Russian power and Ukrainian weakness that had been used for years to argue against providing Ukraine with modern weaponry – on the assumption that Ukrainian conventional resistance against the great power of Russia and its military was doomed.

In speaking this way, Charap and others were parroting (without properly interrogating) the great power paradigm that has been in wide-scale operation since the nineteenth century. Even more unfortunately, Charap and other analysts who believed Russia would conquer Ukraine easily argued publicly for strict limitations on weapons to be sent to Ukraine. It was part and parcel of why Ukraine was so short of advanced weapons when the Russians invaded, and has arguably resulted in the limitation of what Ukraine has been sent since. This has led to the unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians (and Russians), and shaped a war that could have been over far more quickly. It should have been the nail in the coffin of a concept that never made much sense to begin with. Sadly, the idea of great powers, probably because of its deceptive ease, has lived on. But we need to drop the whole phrase entirely – before it gets even more people needlessly killed in wars that cannot be won by non-existent ‘great’ powers.

From the introduction to War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why
By Phillips Payson O'Brien [2025]
https://z-lib.fm/s/?q=Phillips+Payson+O%27Brien+War+Power
https://z-lib.fm/book/120019548/4ff78e/war-and-power-who-wins-warsand-
why.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 22, 2025 6:03 AM

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

From Chapter 10, States vs Alliances, in War and Power: Who Wins Wars—and Why
By Phillips Payson O'Brien [2025]

The experience of the war in the Middle East also revealed that the US had forgotten its failure in South Vietnam and the extreme difficulty of trying to create an ally who would fight for it. The United States’ intervention in Afghanistan started in 2001, just days after 9/11. Over the next two decades, the US is estimated to have spent an eyewatering $2.3 trillion on the intervention.25 This is larger than the GDP of all but a handful of nations. At the same time, the human cost was large. The US lost 2,324 military personnel and 3,917 contractors, and 1,144 allied troops died as well. Afghani deaths were exponentially higher; considering those who died on all sides and civilians killed, the number would probably reach into the hundreds of thousands.26 All this expense was in vain. Different US governments from both parties, including the Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, tried many different strategies to try to establish a workable Afghanistan government that could outlast the US occupation. In other words, the United States tried to create an ally where none existed. The results made the American intervention in Vietnam and the earlier Soviet intervention in Afghanistan look like relative successes. The US-installed regime, with its large army well-equipped with US weapons, outlasted the occupation by a few hours. Without US military force, America’s putative Afghan ally was doomed. It was one of the most disastrous attempts to create an ally in human history.

And it had a further disaster in that it led to the US failing to understand that Ukraine offered the exact opposite case – a possible ally who wanted US friendship and support and would be willing to do the fighting. In Ukraine, the US was presented with a chance to help a people who wanted to build a democratic system and were more than willing to risk their own lives and futures to do so. At the same time, the Ukrainians were fighting the greatest threat to US security in Europe – Vladimir Putin’s Russia. However, the US seemed to have totally lost any ability to properly judge its own interest and the strength of its possible allies, and instead prepared to sacrifice Ukraine to Russia before the Russian Army had even crossed the border.

The assumption that the Biden administration had made (and those around Donald Trump had as well) was that Ukraine would be quickly conquered. Indeed, the administration thought so little of the Ukrainians’ willingness to fight for themselves that they engaged in a bout of self-pity. On the eve of the Russian invasion, the president bemoaned his own fate, saying: ‘Jesus Christ! Now I’ve got to deal with Russia swallowing Ukraine?’27

Sadly for the US and the democratic world, the Biden administration was never able to adjust its understanding of the value of Ukraine as an ally. It continued to view Russia as some great power that should not be defeated and Ukraine as a small power that needed modest support, but who could never be a true ally. Biden kept Ukraine from being given a clear path to NATO membership and also strictly limited the military aid given to the Ukrainian military. Crucially, Ukraine was given US aid to fight only a limited-range war, and was forbidden to attack Russian military targets in Russia (even those which were being used almost daily to attack civilian targets in Ukraine). The result was that the Biden administration transformed what could have been a Ukrainian victory into a long-term, bloody and grotesque attritional struggle that resembled World War I (with drones) more than anything else.

It was a catastrophic view that stretched the gamut of failure from all aspects of war and power. Biden had, like US presidents before him, such as Trump and Obama, failed to understand that Ukraine was not some insignificant state whose people would give up in the face of Russian power. The Ukrainians had a strong sense of identity and the economic/technological ability to create their own effective military force. Moreover, their growing, open system allowed for a more flexible military culture that had enabled them to plan effectively for the Russian invasion. In other words, Ukraine had a number of areas of strength, and many of the qualities needed to be an effective ally.

In the end, though, this underrating of allies has been one of the great failures of the post-World War II world. While it was widely understood that both world wars were won by alliance groupings, after 1945 too much attention was paid to the supposed ‘great’ or even ‘super’ or ‘hegemonic’ powers. It has been a tragic mistake that has led continually to wars that should never have been fought. As a rule of thumb, it is normally the case that you cannot make an ally fight for you if they do not wish to, but an ally that does want to fight is worth its weight in gold.

https://z-lib.fm/s/?q=Phillips+Payson+O%27Brien+War+Power
https://z-lib.fm/book/120019548/4ff78e/war-and-power-who-wins-warsand-
why.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 22, 2025 7:29 AM

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

High-ranking Russian general killed in Moscow car bombing

By Kateryna Hodunova | December 22, 2025 10:54 am

https://kyivindependent.com/high-ranking-russian-general-killed-after-
car-bombing-in-moscow-russia-cites-possible-ukrainian-involvement/

Fanil Sarvarov, head of the Russian Armed Forces General Staff's operational training department, was killed in a car bombing in Moscow on Dec. 22, Russia's Investigative Committee said.

An explosive device attached to the underside of the lieutenant general's car detonated in the morning on Yaseneva Street in Moscow. Sarvarov was taken to the hospital but later died from his injuries.

Russia's Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case into the killing and that investigators and forensic experts were working at the scene. Security forces were also examining the site, interviewing witnesses, and reviewing CCTV footage.

Investigators are considering multiple lines of inquiry, including a possible link to Ukrainian special services, the committee said.

The Kyiv Independent cannot independently verify the Russian Investigative Committee's claims.

Sarvarov was appointed head of the Russian Armed Forces' operational training department in 2016. Sarvarov previously served in Syria from 2015 to 2016.

Ukraine has not been officially linked to the car bombing and is yet to comment, though Kyiv has previously targeted Russian officials involved in Moscow's full-scale invasion.

Igor Kirillov, the head of the Russian Armed Forces' radiation, chemical, and biological defense troops, was killed in an explosion at a residence in Moscow in December 2024, a source in the Security Service of Ukraine told the Kyiv Independent.

Mikhail Shatsky, a Russian expert involved in modernizing missiles launched against Ukraine, was shot dead near Moscow on Dec. 12, 2024, a Defense Forces source told the Kyiv Independent.

Aleksey Kolomeitsev, a Russian colonel who trained specialists in the use of attack drones, was killed in the city of Kolomna in Moscow Oblast, Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) reported on Sept. 28, 2024.

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Monday, December 22, 2025 7:42 AM

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Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

‘We are f–king fascists’ — Pussy Riot memoir looks at everything wrong with Russia

By Kate Tsurkan | December 21, 2025 7:27 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/we-are-f-king-fascists-pussy-riot-memoir-l
ooks-at-everything-wrong-with-russia/

Upon being released from prison in December 2013 after serving time for “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred,” Russian political activist Maria Alyokhina observes that she and her fellow Pussy Riot punk group members “arrived in a different country.”

Outwardly, Russia sought to convey to the world during this period that it was a serious global power through events such as the Sochi Winter Olympics. The reality, as Alyokhina writes, was completely different: just a few months later, Russia would launch its war against Ukraine, annexing the Crimean Peninsula and sparking a fight in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

As Russian soldiers began to commit violence abroad, Russian society itself descended into something darker: “The authorities give the green light to create violence within our own country. The number of Nazi groups increases. Gopniks with St. George’s Ribbons, calling themselves patriots, attack and beat up anyone who disagrees with the new ‘patriotism’.”

Alyokhina’s new book, “Political Girl: Life and Fate in Russia,” covers the period from her first release from prison to her escape from Russia in the spring of 2022, a span that coincides with some of the darkest moments in the country’s recent history. These years are punctuated by events such as the assassination of opposition leader Boris Nemtsov, the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine, and the poisoning of Alexei Navalny — episodes that function less as narrative climaxes than as recurring markers of a system sliding deeper into repression.

The book lingers unevenly on these moments, but the inconsistency appears deliberate rather than careless. The effect, when the episodes are read in close succession, is cumulative rather than dramatic. What emerges is not only a record of political violence in contemporary Russia, but an account of how quickly the extraordinary becomes habitual — how catastrophe, repeated often enough, loses its capacity to shock.

Against the often fractured and polemical discourse that characterizes much writing by Russian exiles, Alyokhina’s book stands out for its clarity of judgment. She does not avoid the question of Russian society’s collective guilt for the war, unlike those who claim “if everyone is guilty then nobody is guilty.”

Instead, Alyokhina insists on holding together two uncomfortable truths: that she did what she could to change the country, repeatedly and at increasing personal cost, and that Russian society at large remains complicit in the horrors that followed. The book’s moral weight lies precisely in this refusal to convert individual resistance into collective exoneration.

“I’m afraid to say the most important thing out loud — a verdict," she writes about the Bucha Massacre. "(It’s a verdict) on all of us. I’m not sure Russia has the right to exist after this."

The horror of Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine is intensified by how quickly much of Russian society appears to embrace the conflict, Alyokhina writes, with many insisting that Russian President Vladimir Putin is “doing the right thing.” The Kremlin’s survival is bound up with the machinery of war: it is not only a tool of foreign aggression but a domestic imperative, used to consolidate loyalty and suppress dissent as Alyokhina observes with unflinching bluntness: “Numbness. We are f–king fascists.”

A substantial portion of “Political Girl” is devoted to documenting Russia’s crimes against Ukraine, while also noting related injustices like the persecution of the Crimean Tatars or the Kremlin-backed repression in Belarus. Alyokhina details the meticulous planning behind Pussy Riot’s high-profile actions, both in Russia and abroad, aimed at securing the release of political prisoners such as Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Sentsov.

Taken together, these episodes underscore a central argument of the book: that criticism of one’s country can constitute the deepest form of love for it. While Russian authorities brand dissenters like Alyokhina as “traitors,” her actions show that any hope of a more just society depends on confronting the enduring authoritarian structures that block such reform.

Throughout the book, Alyokhina also makes clear the heavy moral toll on those who dare to speak out, even as the dangers mount. In the shadow of the full-scale war, when dissent in Russia has become dangerous to an unprecedented degree, she captures the grim logic that makes prison feel, in her words, “the only honest thing” to do. Yet such sacrifices yield little. As one young activist tells her after serving a sentence: “Nothing has changed. I did (my time), I got out, and nothing has changed at all.”

Through her repeated encounters with Center E, the government agency tasked with combating “extremism,” Alyokhina confronts the chilling workings of an authoritarian state. In Putin’s Russia, “extremism” simply means freedom of speech, assembly, and independent thought.

When Alyokhina and her fellow activists try to exercise these basic rights, overly friendly strangers strike up conversations, probe for opinions, or try to provoke conflicts. The tactics are crude but relentless, and over time, the activists learn to recognize them. What emerges is less a cat-and-mouse game than a new social grammar, where suspicion becomes ordinary.

Alyokhina’s repeated attempts to cross the border in the spring of 2022 after fleeing house arrest are Kafkaesque in the most literal sense. With each effort, a creeping sense of anxiety builds, leaving the reader constantly on edge, unsure how she will finally manage to escape and avoid being thrust back into the relentless machinery of the Russian prison system.

While “Political Girl” is worthy of praise, one is left to ask, in the end, what can be taken from these accounts. Alyokhina writes that she and her fellow activists showed the world the “true face” of Putin. Yet he just recently taunted European leaders as “piglets” and promised to continue pursuing his war aims in Ukraine, whether through threats masked as diplomacy or by force.

The threat of another front opening elsewhere in Europe looms, with the same disbelief being voiced by those who thought a war in Ukraine was impossible. If the testimonies of persecuted Russian activists, Ukrainian soldiers, survivors of Russian atrocities, and all those who have seen Russia for what it is fail to spur meaningful action, the question looms: what can be done, and by whom, in the face of such relentless brutality? An attempt to answer this question, or at least to unpack it, is largely missing from the book.

The quality of the translation is also one of the book’s biggest setbacks. Several Russian transliterations of Ukrainian cities mar it: “Kiev” appears instead of the now-standard “Kyiv,” and “Slavyansk” instead of “Sloviansk.” (Ironically, “borshch” is correctly spelled.) The Russian transliteration lapses are unfortunate, as they diminish the moral clarity of Alyokhina’s work.

However, it is not an isolated case. A number of other recent Russian books in translation show similar inconsistencies, including former Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny’s posthumous memoir and journalist Dmitry Bykov’s biography of President Volodymyr Zelensky, with the latter even switching between Ukrainian and Russian spellings depending on the speaker — a subtle trick that still reinforces imperial conventions.

Ultimately, “Political Girl” is more than a memoir. It is a searing indictment of the moral and political rot that permeates contemporary Russia, implicating not only those who wield power but also those who willingly look away.

Alyokhina’s account leaves no doubt about the depth of the country’s authoritarian entrenchment and the personal cost of resisting it. The book is both a record of personal courage and of collective failure: it testifies to what some dared to do, while exposing how much more could — and should — have been done to avoid the horrors of the reality we live in now.

Note from the author:

Hi, this is Kate Tsurkan, thanks for reading this article. There is an ever-increasing amount of books about or related to Ukraine, Russia, and Russia's ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine available to English-language readers, and I hope my recommendations prove useful when it comes to your next trip to the bookstore.

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 22, 2025 7:46 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russian President Vladimir Putin intends to seize all of Ukraine and ultimately restore control over parts of Europe that once belonged to the Soviet empire, according to six sources familiar with US intelligence assessments.

First of all ... anonymous "sources familiar with"? Not one of our intelligence agencies directly?
Who?
Since originally "reported" in Reuters (a British publication) was it British sppoks making up shit again, like the Steele "dossier"?

Secondly, Tulsi Gabbard herself publicly said no such report exists, and she laid it at the feet of those working against a negotiated settlement.

We can always count on you, SECOND, to bring us the latest propaganda so we know what the deep state wants us to think.

Thank you for your service.

-----------

"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 22, 2025 8:01 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

EU sanctions Jacques Baud, a SWISS Retired Colonel who was a Swiss Intelligence officer and analyst.

Quote:
Jacques Baud, a retired Swiss colonel with a background in intelligence services and peacekeeping work, has been sanctioned by the EU for being a "mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda".

Baud, who resides in Belgium, has now had all his assets frozen and faces a travel ban within the union. He himself rejects the accusations and maintains that he never uses Russian material in his books.

Jacques Baud is a former member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence Service and a specialist on Eastern European countries. He has served as head of the UN Doctrine for Peacekeeping Operations and participated in negotiations with senior Russian military and intelligence officers directly after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Within NATO, he participated in various programs in Ukraine, particularly during the Maidan Revolution in 2014.

https://nordictimes.com/europe/swiss-ex-colonel-sanctioned-by-eu-for-p
ro-russian-propaganda/

I have listened to Col Baud, and he is one of the clearest, most level-headed analysts of the war.

Eurocrats can no longer tolerate objective, reasoned analysis. The EU is an unelected bureaucracy that slipped into authoritarianism and now requires total allegiance to its warmaking objective.

-----------

"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 22, 2025 9:07 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

I have listened to Col Baud, and he is one of the clearest, most level-headed analysts of the war.

Eurocrats can no longer tolerate objective, reasoned analysis. The EU is an unelected bureaucracy that slipped into authoritarianism and now requires total allegiance to its warmaking objective.

There is no confirmed information in the provided sources that Jacques Baud is directly paid by the Russian government. He does, however, regularly appear on pro-Russian media programs and has been sanctioned by the European Union for spreading Russian propaganda.

Key Details

• Sanctions: The EU has added Baud to its sanctions list for "information manipulation and influence operations" that undermine stability in Ukraine, which the EU attributes to actions supporting the Russian government. These sanctions include an asset freeze and a travel ban within the EU, and prohibit EU citizens and companies from providing him with funds. This makes it difficult for him to receive royalties from his French publisher within the EU, for example.

• Allegations of Propaganda: Baud, a retired Swiss army colonel and former NATO and UN analyst, is described by sources as a mouthpiece for pro-Russian propaganda. His claims include that Ukraine orchestrated its own invasion to join NATO and questioning Russian responsibility in the Bucha massacre.

• Baud’s Denials: Jacques Baud rejects accusations that he spreads conspiracy theories and, in turn, has accused his own detractors of being "paid by foreigners".

• Known Income Sources: His current main publisher is the French company Max Milo. He is also an author of several books on intelligence and war.

While the EU has sanctioned him for actions supporting the Russian government's narrative, there is no direct evidence in the provided search results confirming a salary or direct payment from the Russian state to Jacques Baud. His financial support seems to come from his publications and media appearances, although the source of funding for the pro-Russian platforms he appears on is not specified.

https://www.google.com/search?q=Is+Jacques+Baud+paid+by+Russia

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 22, 2025 2:02 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

What are these "pro Russia" media?

Dialogue Works, hosted by Brazilian engineer Nima Alkhorshid?

Glenn Diesen, "a Norwegian political scientist, political commentator and politician currently serving as a professor at the Department of Business, History and Social Sciences, University of South-Eastern Norway."?

Colonel Daniel Davis (ret) on Deep Dive?

Die Weltwoche?

Vague accusations like that are just censorship.

-----------

"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 22, 2025 2:10 PM

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

#FuckUkraine
‘We are f–king fascists’ — Pussy Riot memoir looks at everything wrong with Russia

#Rootin4Putin

#FuckUkraine

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, December 22, 2025 7:32 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Jacques Baud on Col Daniel Davis' Deep Dive channel explains why he never uses Russian sources or appears on Russian media, how there is no legal process or appeal to this extralegal political decision (sonce no laws were broken), and why even supporting him can get you in trouble.

So much for freedom of speech in the EU!
:HANG:

-----------

"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 23, 2025 7:17 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Jacques Baud on Col Daniel Davis' Deep Dive channel

A Russian agent interviewing a Russian agent: Since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Davis has been characterized by some critics as a "Putin apologist" for repeatedly blaming NATO and Ukraine for the conflict and arguing that Ukraine must surrender territory to Russia to achieve peace. He maintains that these views are based on a "realistic" military assessment of Russia's advantages in manpower and industrial capacity.

In March 2025, the Trump administration reportedly tapped Davis for the position of Deputy Director of National Intelligence for Mission Integration. However, the offer was rescinded shortly after following public controversy over his "anti-Israel" and "anti-West" statements.

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 23, 2025 7:18 AM

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

‘Minimum Victory’

Weary of war and staring down the likelihood of an unjust peace, Ukrainian intellectuals are plotting out a road map for the future.

By Linda Kinstler | December 20, 2025

https://www.nybooks.com/online/2025/12/20/minimum-victory-ukraine-peac
e-talks/

On December 1, a group of prominent Ukrainian intellectuals and politicians published a manifesto in Ukrainska Pravda about how the war might end. “It is difficult to speak of victory,” it begins, “when the enemy is mounting unprecedented and at times successful ground attacks.”
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2025/12/01/8009732/

Already in August, when the group started drafting the text, Ukraine’s military was understaffed; new recruits were increasingly hard to come by, pushing the government to resort to violent tactics in its search of draft dodgers and deserters; and the Trump administration’s shifting policies were imperiling the army’s access to funding and weaponry. These trends have persisted in the months since.
https://www.equator.org/articles/the-demand-for-silence

The head of the armed forces of Ukraine reported last week that the army is currently seeing its highest daily volume of clashes with Russian soldiers since the full-scale invasion began in 2022.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/13/8011693/

Though the frontline has remained mostly static, the Russians continue their attempts to press forward on the battlefield and the Ukrainian public is growing weary of war. Whatever the terms of an eventual peace deal—if such a deal materializes at all—they will bring profound losses for Kyiv, its aspirations for NATO membership and the restoration of its occupied territories almost certainly among them. The manifesto aimed to give Ukrainians a vocabulary they could use to imagine this situation as anything other than a kind of defeat—a necessity, the authors believe, if the public is to accept what one MP recently called a “bad, or very bad” peace settlement. “There is despair in Ukraine, and people must be given hope,” the historian Yaroslav Hrytsak, one of the lead drafters, told me. “So we need to redefine victory.”

The document—which was written primarily for a domestic audience and signed by public intellectuals including the head of the Center for Civil Liberties Oleksandra Matviichuk, the writer Serhiy Zhadan, and the philosopher Volodymyr Yermolenko, as well as several current and former members of parliament and soldiers—offers two visions for Ukraine’s future. The first, which they call “maximum” victory, would entail the complete restoration of Ukrainian territory, international war crimes trials for Russian aggressors, the return of every single kidnapped child, prisoner of war, and civilian, and the payment of reparations. It would not only ensure the “final defeat of our enemy and the disappearance of the aggressor from the world stage,” the authors explain, but also secure Ukrainian membership in NATO and the European Union. This form of total victory is, at present, a distant dream.

The manifesto does not abandon the possibility that “maximum” victory may still one day be achieved and argues that Ukraine must continue working toward it. But for the time being the authors suggest that the country must be prepared to accept what they call “minimum victory.” This would include a cease-fire along the current frontlines, the maintenance of Ukraine’s capacity to defend itself, and the preservation of Ukrainian sovereignty, among other measures. It would also, in the document’s telling, enable Ukraine to pivot from the current war of attrition to a policy of what former Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk, a coauthor of the manifesto, has called “strategic neutralization.” Under this approach—which assumes that hostilities will continue even after any peace deal is signed—Ukraine would still be able to pursue targeted attacks on Russian military assets but would abandon the attempt to capture “every soldier or vehicle.”

Accepting this kind of “victory” would mean acknowledging both that Russia will not return the roughly 20 percent of prewar Ukraine that it currently occupies and that, long after any peace deal goes into effect, Ukraine will have to live with the possibility of renewed war. “Russia’s complete defeat on the battlefield is a form of victory that is currently unattainable,” the manifesto’s authors warn. “Ukraine’s strategic goal is to build a stable, secure, democratic and successful state even under constant threat.” The implication is that if Ukraine continues to exist as an independent nation once the peace deal is signed, for now that may be victory enough.

*

The timing of the manifesto was not accidental: it was published on the thirty-fourth anniversary of Ukraine’s referendum vote for independence from the Soviet Union, and it appeared just as the Trump Administration renewed its aggressive push for a peace deal, engaging in diplomatic negotiations that have largely sidelined Ukrainian and European leadership. Trump’s initial twenty-eight-point peace plan, leaked in late November, included several clear concessions to Russian demands, including a cap on the strength of Ukraine’s standing army, the withdrawal of Ukrainian forces from the sizable part of Donetsk province they currently control, and a Ukrainian constitutional amendment stipulating that the country will not join NATO—all measures that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has publicly opposed. The document also stipulated that the US would both receive unspecified compensation for guaranteeing Ukraine’s security from renewed hostilities and take 50 percent of the profits derived from a financial scheme to reconstruct the country. For Trump, peace seems to amount to little more than a business deal, preferably delivered before Christmas, or at the very least before nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize are due on January 31.

All this has left Ukraine’s leaders in an impossible bind. They cannot say no to the Americans, for fear of losing funding and weaponry, but they also cannot say yes, for fear of losing their country. In a September poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 75 percent of respondents said that Russia’s proposed terms—which include a requirement that Ukraine completely renounce claims to its occupied territories, cap the size of its military, and abandon NATO membership and other forms of Western security support—were “categorically unacceptable.”
https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2025/06/ukraines-new-theory-of-
victory-should-be-strategic-neutralization?lang=en

Last week Zelensky presented a counteroffer to the US negotiating team stipulating that Ukraine would neither give up territory nor abandon its demand for security arrangements with Europe and the US; nearly three quarters of respondents to the poll had said they were prepared to accept a peace deal along similar lines.

But no matter what form the eventual peace plan takes, most Ukrainians believe that Russia is sure to reinvade regardless. (Only 10 percent of those surveyed said they thought a peace deal would prevent another invasion.) The failures of the Minsk I and II agreements, signed in 2014 and 2015 with the goal of ending the war in the east, have not been forgotten. “We of course want peace, but we are not sure, here in Ukraine, that Russia wants peace, that Russia will be satisfied with any concessions,” Yermolenko told me. “Our impression is that Russia is using these negotiations to buy some time…. They think they are winning the war.”

Zelensky’s negotiating position, meanwhile, has been severely weakened due to a corruption scandal: Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies recently exposed that high-ranking government officials were engaging in embezzlement schemes and taking kickbacks from the country’s state-run nuclear power company. As a result of the investigation, the ministers of energy and justice both resigned last month, as did Zelensky’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. (Yermak is also suspected of having orchestrated an attack on the agencies that exposed the scheme.) The scandal dimmed hopes that Ukraine might soon accede to the EU, which requires that candidate states demonstrate a “coherent policy of prevention and deterrence of corruption.” In early December, Zelensky conceded to demands for presidential elections—including from Trump, who alleged that he was prolonging the war in order to hold onto power—and announced that he would instruct parliament to start preparing legislation that would make it possible to hold a vote under martial law.

These consecutive and overlapping crises have threatened Ukrainian stability and power at a most perilous moment. The Russian army continues to kill Ukrainian civilians every day and has unleashed its missiles upon maternity wards, children’s hospitals, and retreating villagers waving white flags.
https://khpg.org/en/1608815236

Valerii Pekar, a professor at Kyiv-Mohyla Business School and one of the lead drafters of the manifesto, told me that the group hoped to prevent a breakdown in Ukrainian society if and when the war comes to a close. They fear that the concessions facing the country could worsen existing public divisions about the purpose and outcome of the conflict—and they know all too well how readily Russia could exploit such fractures. “Ukrainian political leaders are paying very little attention to the issue of what victory is,” Pekar told me. “If society has no clear vision of what the war is being waged for, what victory is, what our red lines are, and so on, it will be really hard to keep social cohesion.”

*

Ever since the full-scale invasion began, lawyers, activists, and politicians in Ukraine and abroad have worked to ensure that Russia will one day be forced to pay for its war, and that Ukrainians who have lost their loved ones, limbs, and properties will receive some kind of compensation. So far the only trials of Russian perpetrators have taken place in national courts, both in Ukraine and in other countries where Russian army defectors have been captured. In March a Helsinki court sentenced the paramilitary leader Yan Petrovsky to life imprisonment for war crimes and ordered him to pay 7,000 euros, plus interest, to the family of a Ukrainian soldier he had killed. (He is appealing the verdict.)
https://www.ejiltalk.org/prosecuting-members-of-russian-mercenary-grou
ps-for-war-crimes-a-remedy-for-victims/

Over six hundred Ukrainian survivors of conflict-related sexual violence to date have received reparations from a nonprofit-led pilot project that Ukraine’s parliament is seeking to make into a permanent source of redress.

But serious compensation and legal recognition for Ukraine’s suffering would need to come at a much wider scale. To that end the Council of Europe has supported the creation of the Register of Damage for Ukraine, which has already received 86,000 claims for lost life, lost property, involuntary displacement, personal injury, and other forms of harm. It has also signed an agreement with Kyiv to create a Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression against Ukraine, an ad hoc court that would theoretically hold Russian leadership to account.

The form of justice that these measures would deliver is only possible under conditions of “maximum victory.” Whatever peace results from the ongoing negotiations, if it is any peace at all, will not fulfill the demand for formal retribution. “Russia is the aggressor, and they are not going to pay a terrible price for their aggression,” said Thomas Graham, former senior director for Russia at the National Security Council. “It’s going to be a settlement that is not just, where Kyiv is going to make significant concessions and Russia will retain some of its gains…. But that’s the way most wars have ended throughout history.” The manifesto’s authors sought to prepare the Ukrainian public to face down this kind of unjust peace without losing all hope. “Ukrainians believe in justice even when there is no international tribunal, no reparations, no use of frozen assets for Ukrainian recovery,” Pekar told me.

There had been some hope that Russian assets could provide Ukraine with an infusion of resources. Last week the EU passed an emergency measure to ensure that the $247 billion of Russian funds in its territory would remain frozen indefinitely. (Previously, sanctions on the funds had to be unanimously extended by all twenty-seven EU member states every six months, leaving them vulnerable to vetoes from Hungary and Slovakia.) The European Commission had proposed channeling this money into a reparations loan to Ukraine, which would be repaid whenever the country “receives the reparations due from Russia, which it is legally entitled to.” The idea was that the frozen assets could also be used to fund the International Claims Commission for Ukraine, whose founding convention was finally adopted in the Hague this past week, and which would dole out payments for claims approved by the Register of Damage. (The EU has committed one million euros to the commission.)

Instead, at a contentious meeting in Brussels on Thursday, members of the European Council voted not to redirect the frozen assets to Ukraine after all. Belgium, where the vast majority of Russian funds are located, opposed the measure, fearing the legal and financial consequences that would result from effectively taking the Kremlin’s money and sending it to Kyiv. The EU agreed to provide Ukraine with a loan of 90 billion euros, backed by its own tax revenue. That amount should be enough to keep Ukraine out of bankruptcy; it, too, is subject to repayment only if and when Russia provides reparations for its long war.

Today it may seem like magical thinking to imagine a Russia that would be willing to pay damages to Ukraine, but there is some historical precedent for such a scenario. According to the Yale economist Timothy Guinnane, two days after the reunification of Germany—an event that some thought would never come to pass—the bill came due for the country’s outstanding reparations debts from World War I, prompting the German Debt Administration to issue a new set of bonds to repay the vast sums incurred nearly a century prior. The injustices of Russia’s war on Ukraine can never be fully repaired. They will circulate indefinitely in the form of what the philosopher Stephen Ross once called an “unassuageable debt.” But some form of material redress can still be secured. Like the devastation of war itself, loans have a long life.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1887&a
mp;context=egcenter-discussion-paper-series

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 23, 2025 1:02 PM

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

The Fewer Soldiers On The Front Line The Better

Comments on the interview with General Havrylov
Phillips P. OBrien
Dec 23

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-fewer-soldiers-on-the-front
-line

Hi All,

I thought I would follow up the interview that was held with General Havrylov yesterday with a short commentary piece focussing on the issue of Ukraine’s supposed manpower crisis. This idea has been a key part of the analysis for more than two years now, analysis saying Ukraine was on the verge of military failure. I will also include a special section for paying subscribers explaining, as best as I can, how Ukraine was able to successfully counterattack in the last few months north of Pokrovsk and around Kupyansk. Its a fascinating story and I have been publishing overwhelmingly free material, so thought I would provide you something special; a little Christmas present as it were.

By the way, if you have not watched the interview, here it is. I would strongly urge you to do so, as General Havrylov explains clearly and effectively how the fighting has evolved over the last few years and why the battlefield looks as it does now.
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/phillips-obrien-and-volodomyr-h
avrylov

How Did We Get Here?

Right off the bat what was interesting was the realization process that the Ukrainian military has had to undergo. As General Havrylov outlines at the start, the Ukrainians began the war with mostly Soviet-designed equipment and expecting to fight a combined arms war. What happened, however, was that technology, particularly the growth of UAVs (drones), started making such a plan impossible.

And it took a while for the Ukrainians to get here. He states that it was really not until 2025 that the Ukrainian military understood many aspects of the new, UAV-defined battlefield. A key moment in this process was the creation of a distinct Ukrainian UAV focussed military command, the Unmanned Systems Force, in 2024. This process was crucial, because until the realization of exactly how the battlefield had changed, Ukrainian casualties remained high. General Havrylov did not say this last statement exactly, but it was implied.

How Have UAVs Changed the Battlefield?

The first change started by the constant surveillance that UAVs could provide. As long as you had enough of them, and cheap First Person View (FPV) UAVs were fine, you could have a very good idea of what was happening on the battlefield. When UAVs were then also built to be offensive weapons (called Kamikaze drones at times) that was extremely important. It meant that not only vehicles, but also individual soldiers were in great peril almost as soon as they were identified.

This compounded so many things. Large logistic dumps had already been pushed back a great deal because of HIMARS, but now even small dumps were incredibly hard to protect, meaning that more and more supplies had to struggle even to reach the area of engagement.

This was when the creation of what Havrylov called the “Grey” Zone (its also been called the Kill Zone) really took off. It was the area between the two armies that was so regularly patrolled by UAVs that staying alive was almost impossible unless you had really good cover. Havrylov discusses the Grey Zone a great deal, saying now it is 10-15 kilometres wide but that the expectation soon is that it will grow to 25 or even 50 kilometres wide.

How Have the Russians Coped With This?

I do not know if you noticed, but the awesomely adaptive Russian military we have been hearing about for the last two years, sent some soldiers into the grey zone on horses the other day (where they were promptly killed).

This is just one example of what the Russians are doing—which is sacrificing their soldiers in many different ways to basically cross the Grey Zone and try to reach cover a little further forward. It can be horses, crawling, motorcycles, taking advantage of bad weather, etc, but the process is the same. Find some way to get some soldiers across the grey zone, even if you lose many more in the process.

Is it adaptation? I suppose of the most brutal and wasteful type. However it explains what we are seeing. Lots of Russian attacks up and down the line all the time, most failing, a few finding cover which leads to the Russians taking a field here or a house there. It also explains why there can be no breakthrough/exploitation in the classic sense (and why the analytical community always screws this up). Even if the Russians have a success and take a field, there is no supplied concentration of forces behind it waiting to follow it up.

How Have the Ukrainians Coped With This?

This was some of the most interesting things in the discussion. The Ukrainians have basically stripped the front line of soldiers in many places, and relied on the unmanned forces and very small units (a soldier or just a handful of soldiers) to try and undertake the fighting. In conceptual terms what they are trying to do is limit the number of soldiers that they expose to danger while exacting the highest possible toll from the Russians. Havrylov said plans have developed to use 10% of the Ukrainian army to create 50% of the casualties for the Russians. He added that they believe that they are almost there.

This means that in 2025 Ukrainian casualties vis a vis the Russians have dropped, which has helped the manpower situation for Ukraine. It has obviously taken a while and been a difficult learning curve, but now at least they seem to be able to inflict heavy casualties on the Russians while reducing their own.

What Does Ukraine Need Going Forward

Here Gen Harvrylov was explicit. Ukraine needs highly motivated and trained soldiers, not a mass army of unwilling conscripts. Indeed, identifying and training new UAV pilots is one of the greatest needs. He was clear that in Ukraine, a democratic system which has a vibrant civil society, there was not a desire for a mass conscript force at the front. The Russians can do that and basically take prisoners, etc, as they do not care about their people. However, it would be catastrophic for Ukraine to copy the Russians in this regard.

Indeed, relying on a smaller number of more motivated soldiers is a key part of the Ukrainian victory strategy. Havrylov was clear that he views the Russians as on a losing trajectory if they keep on taking such high casualties while Ukraine can reduce theirs. Ukraine needs to deny Russia the prospect of victory.

And that is a key to the kind of support that Ukraine needs from its partners. Its to fight the war that they find themselves in. They need air defense for protection against Russian ranged attacks, then as much assistance in UAV production and the like, as possible.

How Did Ukraine Manage Its Counterattacks?

This is the special section for paying subscribers. Its based on a range of information that I have. Also, at times I will speculate on what Ukraine did, without describing how. Either I do not know the how or I do not want to release any improper information.

We have seen in the last four months the Ukrainians retake territory in a very different way than the Russians have taken it. Both north of Pokrovsk and recently around Kupiansk, the Ukrainians pushed the Russians back by 5-10 kilometres and not suffered terrible casualties. As a reminder here was the situation around Pokrovsk on 11 August. I will use the Deep State maps for below

and here it was just over two months later.

Likewise, here was the situation around Kupiansk a month ago.

And here it is now.

Note-the blue color is the area that Ukrainians have retaken.

So, how did the Ukrainians do that when the Russians could not manage it? Moreover, how did they do this without incurring mass casualties?

From what I can tell the answer to these questions involves intensive planning and coordination. First, if you listened closely to General Havrylov, you might have heard him put stress on using very small numbers of soldiers on the battlefield. This is even below squad level—we are talking between 1 and 5 soldiers.

You need to create these incredibly small groups who can act with great discipline and have the understanding to undertake very precise attacks. Needless to say, acting in such small groups, the soldiers need to be very well trained and motivated.

And they need to be supported by detailed intelligence. How this intelligence is collected I cannot say, but you need to know not only where every Russian unit is in a broad area around the fighting, you need to know practically where every Russian soldier is and even how each soldier might be armed. One unidentified Russian soldier who is under effective cover can ruin a whole maneuver and cause the loss of some of Ukraine’s best personnel. The only way to prevent that is to know as much as possible about your enemy—to a level of granular detail.

Explicit directions need to be given to the Ukrainian soldiers. They need to know exactly what they are expected to achieve during a phase of operations. They need to know not only where they will start operations, what they will encounter underway and just as importantly, where they need to end up to find cover. They need such precise knowledge because their window of operations will be so limited.

This is one of the most extraordinary things. The Ukrainian soldiers in their very small groups can only operate in the grey zone for very short periods of time; maybe a few minutes or up to an hour. The Ukrainians have different ways, which I cannot explain, to find/create short windows of time to operate in the Grey Zone without too much Russian UAV interference. They could have developed their own ways of having short term windows of UAV suppression (SEAD) or it could be that they track Russian UAVs so closely that they can judge when they have a short window. I really do not know. However when they do have a short window, they need to get their soldiers into action right away—which is why the soldiers need to know exactly where they are going and where they will end up (under cover) when the window for action closes.

Its incredibly precise work. Get the window wrong and it ends up being shorter than you think, and the soldiers will be in great peril. And to maintain the precision, you need to remain in constant secure communication with the soldiers so that you can constantly feed them information about what they are encountering and what they will soon come up against. You need a system to take the information you are always collecting from the battlefield, analyse that and feed it to the soldiers on the ground as quickly as possible. And the soldiers need then the ability to understand what they are being told and to act on it.

You see what I mean about not needing a mass army. These operations require a group of committed, motivated soldiers, it could never be done with a group of conscripts who do not want to be there. You need soldiers who can fly the drones providing the intelligence and attacking Russian soldiers on the ground, more soldiers to relay the intelligence being collected, and finally those small groups of soldiers actually operating on the ground in the Grey Zone.

More soldiers or less motivated one provides more targets and more chances of screwing up.

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 23, 2025 3:06 PM