Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why bother quoting me before posting that shit?

If I haven't made it clear enough by now, I don't give a fuck.

Nobody else does either, faggot.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.

“Hello!” Ilyukhina lunged forward and hugged Stratt. “I’m here to die for Earth! Pretty awesome, yes?!”

I leaned to Dimitri. “Are all Russians crazy?”

“Yes,” he said with a smile. “It is the only way to be Russian and happy at the same time.”

“That’s…dark.”

“That’s Russian!”

https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/10857981-hello-ilyukhina-lunged-forwa
rd-and-hugged-stratt-i-m-here-to

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

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Sunday, February 22, 2026 2:07 PM

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Monday, February 23, 2026 7:54 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Why bother quoting me before posting that shit?

If I haven't made it clear enough by now, I don't give a fuck.

Nobody else does either, faggot.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.

Day 1461 of Putin’s Three-Day War
Courage, betrayal — and reasons for hope

Paul Krugman
Feb 23, 2026
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/day-1461-of-putins-three-day-war

Source: Institute for the Study of War

Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2002. Putin expected a quick Russian triumph — reports are that he expected the Ukrainians to fold in days. He never said “three days,” but this meme has become shorthand for his belief that it would be a walkover. Western military analysts who had bought into propaganda about Russia’s military strength shared his assessment.

U.S. right-wingers were especially enthralled with what they perceived as the toughness, masculinity, and anti-wokeness of Russian soldiers.

But Putin’s dream of a short, victorious war has turned — as such dreams usually do — into a long nightmare of blood, destruction and humiliation. Ukrainian courage and Russian incompetence — combined with the effectiveness of British and American man-portable weapons — ensured that the attempt to seize Kyiv became an epic debacle. The three-day war is about to enter its fifth year.

I am not a military expert. But I pay attention to those who are — especially Phillips O’Brien, who has been far more right about this war than anyone else I know. Furthermore, the future of the war will depend greatly on an issue I do know something about, Europe’s ability to provide Ukraine with the support it needs. So I thought I would use the fourth anniversary of the beginning of the war to talk about where we are right now.

First, about the military situation. The maps at the top of this post show how the area of Ukraine under Russian control — shaded pink — has changed over the past year. You may ask, what change? Exactly. The Ukraine war isn’t like World War II, in which breakthroughs could be exploited by armored columns sweeping into the enemy’s rear. It’s a war in which the battlefield is swarming with drones, where there isn’t even a well-defined front line, and the “kill zone” within which even armored vehicles are basically death traps is many kilometers wide.

Some observers still don’t understand how the reality of war has changed. Thus there have been breathless reports about the danger Ukraine would face after Russia seized the “strategic city” of Pokrovsk since July 2024. Russian forces finally entered Pokrovsk late last year and may now occupy most of the rubble. But it made no difference.

This reality shows how idiotic it is for the U.S. Department of Defense — sorry, Department of War — to decide that its mission is to embrace a “warrior ethos.” Bulging biceps and macho posturing won’t help you prevail in modern war, while bombastic stupidity is a good way to get many soldiers killed.

So if modern technology has turned war on the ground into a bloody stalemate — much bloodier for Russia than for Ukraine, but still indecisive — what will determine victory and defeat? The answer, which has been true in most wars, is that it will come down to resources and logistics.

If this were purely a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, the Ukrainians, for all their heroism, would be doomed. Russia, after all, has four times Ukraine’s population and ten times its GDP.

But Ukraine has powerful friends.

For the first three years of the war, the United States was the most important of these friends. Indeed, Ukraine wouldn’t have been able to resist Russia without U.S. aid.

Unfortunately, top Biden officials were too cautious. They didn’t want Putin to win, but they clearly lost their nerve at the prospect of outright Russian defeat. So they slow-walked aid and kept putting restrictions on the use of U.S. weapons. Without those restrictions, Ukraine would have been able to hammer Russian rear areas, and this war might well have ended in its first year.

As it was, Ukraine was able to hang on but not triumph. And now we have a U.S. president who clearly wants to see a Russian victory. He’s unwilling or unable to openly throw America’s weight behind Putin, but he has effectively cut off all U.S. aid to Ukraine. That’s not hyperbole. Here are the numbers:

Source: Kiel Institute https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Publications
/fis-import/dd24a73f-4270-46c5-9c40-bcc9df4f1672-KPB2023_EN.pdf

This is a betrayal of everything America used to stand for. We’re witnessing a war between freedom and tyranny, between an imperfect but decent government and a monstrous mass murderer — and the U.S. government is de facto backing the tyrannical monster.

Yet despite Trump’s pro-Putin policy, Ukraine is still standing, while Russia’s year-long offensive has been a bloody failure. While Trump may have thought that he could discreetly hand Ukraine over to Putin, it turns out that he didn’t have the cards.

Crucially, as you can see from the chart above, Europe has for the most part stepped up to the plate, replacing most of the lost aid from the United States. True, some of the military aid takes the form of U.S. weapons purchased by European nations and transferred to Ukraine. In particular, there is still no good alternative to Patriot air defense systems. And the Trump administration has been stalling some military deliveries even though Europe is paying.

But European — and, increasingly, Ukrainian — arms production has been ramping up. One indicator of European potential for arms manufacturing is that U.S. officials have gone ballistic over proposed buy-European provisions in Europe’s ongoing military buildup and threatened retaliation. This is quite rich: America in effect reserves the right to use its control over weapon systems to hobble other countries’ military efforts — on behalf of dictators the president likes — but is furious at any attempt to reduce dependence on those systems.

But does Europe have the resources to ensure Ukrainian victory without the United States? Mark Rutte, a Dutch politician who is currently secretary-general of NATO, made waves last month when he told people who believe that Europe can defend itself against Russia without the United States to “keep on dreaming.” One sees similar declarations of helplessness from some other Europeans. But it’s really difficult to see where this defeatism is coming from. Combined, the economies of the European nations that have strongly supported Ukraine are vastly larger than Russia’s:

Source: International Monetary Fund

It’s true that Europe has in the past had great difficulty acting like the superpower it is. But that may be changing.

So, how will this war end? Russia’s strategy now appears to be to terror-bomb Ukraine into submission, but as far as I know that has never worked. The more likely outcome is that European aid and Ukraine’s own growing prowess in arms production will gradually shift the military balance in Ukraine’s favor, and that Russia’s war effort will eventually collapse.

I hope that’s how it turns out. But even if it does, shame on America, for betraying a valiant ally.

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

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Monday, February 23, 2026 8:01 AM

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Monday, February 23, 2026 8:24 AM

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
An ultimatum is a demand with consequences if the demand isn't acted on: "Do X, or Y".

Deterrence is a stated response to the OTHER party's initiating action: "If YOU do X, we'll do Y".

You're dropping ultimatums bc you don't have a leg to stand on.

Logic. Not your strong point, is it?

Meanwhile, Russia keeps advancing along the entire front.

Too funny...

T

Animated map: Changes in Russian military positions in Ukraine

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/animated-map-changes-in-russian-m
ilitary-positions-in-ukraine/vi-AA1WSSCt?

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Monday, February 23, 2026 8:59 AM

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

Russia threatens to aim nukes at Estonia — then claims it’s “not a threat”

By Olena Mukhina | 23/02/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/02/23/russia-threatens-to-aim-nukes-a
t-estonia-then-claims-its-not-a-threat/

No better way to start the Russian work week than by making death threats against countries just across the western border of Russia. The Russians are hungover from a weekend of heavy drinking. Making threats makes them feel more alive.

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

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Monday, February 23, 2026 11:22 AM

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T

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Monday, February 23, 2026 4:19 PM

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Love it...

T

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Monday, February 23, 2026 4:33 PM

_______ Insert nobody gives a fuck emoji here.

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Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, February 23, 2026 5:52 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T

This thread works fine, and it is important to remember precisely what was happening 4 years ago. Signym has been predicting Russia's victory for all the years this thread has existed. Victory might actually arrive in two, maybe four, months:

Hungary blocks EU sanctions AND $106 billion loan for Ukraine, risking a domino collapse

By Peeter Helme | 23/02/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/02/23/hungary-blocks-eu-loan-sanction
s-ukraine-imf-domino/

“Without that support from the EU and the IMF, Ukraine’s economy would most likely collapse,” Maksym Samoiliuk, an economist at Kyiv’s Centre for Economic Strategy, told the Financial Times.

The Centre for Economic Strategy and DiXi Group warned in December that Ukraine needed to start receiving EU tranches by the end of March 2026. That deadline is five weeks away.

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

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Monday, February 23, 2026 6:18 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T
This thread works fine

Agreed. No reason to split this up into 10 other threads when we can keep all of your embarrassing post history on this topic right here.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:36 AM

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:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T
This thread works fine

Agreed. No reason to split this up into 10 other threads when we can keep all of your embarrassing post history on this topic right here.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.

Looking back in this thread and discovered 6ixStringJoker has been writing "Nobody cares" for four years. Obviously, he does care that the Russians win.

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

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:37 AM

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

KYIV, Ukraine, Feb. 23, 2026 — Four years into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, an updated joint Rapid Damage and Needs Assessment (RDNA5) released today by the Government of Ukraine, the World Bank Group, the European Commission, and the United Nations currently estimates that as of 31 December 2025, the total cost of reconstruction and recovery in Ukraine is almost $588 billion (over €500 billion) over the next decade, which is nearly 3 times the estimated nominal GDP of Ukraine for 2025. https://tinyurl.com/4zj4v46y

Of the total long-term needs, reconstruction and recovery needs are the highest in the transport sector (over $96 billion (€82 billion)). This is followed by the energy sector (nearly $91 billion (€77 billion)), the housing sector (almost $90 billion (€77 billion)), commerce and industry sector (over $63 billion (€54 billion)), and agriculture sector (over $55 billion (€47 billion)). The cost of explosives hazard management and debris clearance is almost $28 billion (€24 billion), despite some progress in surveying and demining that helped to contain losses in this sector.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/02/23/world-bank-maps-ukraines-deepes
t-scars-195b-in-direct-damage-and-a-588b-bill-for-survival/

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

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 6:42 AM

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

Editorial: Trump’s theater and Europe’s fear could bring 4 more years of war

By The Kyiv Independent

February 24, 2026 10:46 AM

https://kyivindependent.com/editorial-this-war-can-last-another-4-year
s-but-it-doesnt-have-to/

The year is 2030.

With spring around the corner, Ukraine has just endured the toughest winter of the war yet. It was Russia’s eighth winter campaign against the country’s energy infrastructure. Ukraine’s air defenses have improved. Its grid has grown more resilient. But Russia’s weapons are deadlier, its drone swarms larger, its tactics more adaptive — inflicting severe damage and forcing millions to live in darkness.

Another U.S. administration has come and gone after promising to end the war swiftly. European leaders are once again renewing sanctions and announcing aid packages on the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

The United Nations has just released a report calling 2029 the deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since 2022, when the full-scale invasion started.

Sounds impossible?

It shouldn’t.

Because here we are in 2026, marking four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion — and the pattern is already set. Russia escalates. Ukraine adapts. The West deliberates. Talks resume. Talks stop. The war grinds on — and Ukraine buries its dead.

In 2022, it was hard to imagine this level of destruction lasting more than a year. In 2023, it was hard to imagine it lasting three. Today, the idea that it could continue until 2030 feels unbearable — but not unrealistic.

Both Ukraine and Russia have demonstrated unwavering determination — one to attack, the other to defend — resulting in a war of attrition that has now lasted for years.

Backed by China and buoyed by continued global demand for its oil, Moscow has sustained its war effort, paying lucrative bonuses to volunteer recruits, upgrading its weapons, and scaling up their production.

With Western — or at this point, European — support, Ukraine has received enough financial and military assistance to keep its guns firing, expand its drone industry and largely hold Russian forces at bay, suffering only incremental territorial losses that come at enormous cost to Russian soldiers.

But what about the peace deal that U.S. officials insist is just around the corner?

When U.S. officials boast about the progress they are making in peace negotiations, they omit an inconvenient but crucial detail.

On the surface, the main barrier to ending the war is a piece of land – specifically, the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast that Russia wants, and that Ukraine refuses to surrender.

But the impasse is not the land itself.

Russia continues to openly seek nothing less than military-political capitulation from Kyiv, and demanding the bloodless handover of Ukraine’s most fortified strongholds is just the first step. Ukraine, meanwhile, sees Russia’s real intentions for exactly what they are, and has no intention of capitulating.

For Russia, this war is about imperial restoration — whatever name the empire takes this time. Without Ukraine, that project will never materialize.

For Ukraine, the stakes are existential — its sovereignty, its statehood, its identity are on the line.

When both sides view the war in existential terms and both retain external backing, a multi-decade-long conflict is not far-fetched. History offers plenty of such precedents.

So yes, this war could last until 2030 — if the West’s current strategy remains unchanged.

In 2022, the West helped Ukraine survive but not win. Too many decisions that could have shifted the balance early — from advanced weapons systems to sweeping sanctions — were delayed, diluted, or delivered incrementally.

The logic behind this caution was clear: escalate gradually and leave space for Russia to reconsider its course before facing harsher consequences.

Thanks to this, visions of a truly just end to the war, with the return of all occupied territories, have faded.

Four years of full-scale war later, Ukraine is fighting again for survival, and the most important lesson still remains to be learned. Russia does not respond to incentives. It responds to pressure.

The only way to end this war is to make it militarily and economically impossible for Moscow to continue it.

That would require decisions Western leaders have hesitated to take — from cutting off the remaining lifelines of Russian oil exports, to seizing frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine’s defense, to assuming a far greater share of the burden rather than outsourcing the risk almost entirely to Ukrainians – yes, boots on the ground.

Such steps demand true leadership and political courage — the courage to explain difficult choices to voters, to accept short-term costs, and to act with strategic clarity rather than perpetual caution.

It is the kind of courage Ukrainians showed in the first days of the full-scale invasion, when they chose resistance over surrender and altered the course of history.

After four years of Ukraine doing the impossible, the question is still whether its allies can finally match that resolve.

The next chapter of this war is not predetermined.

It can be another four years of hesitation, incrementalism, and tens of thousands more Ukrainian graves.

Or it can be the chapter in which the West finally decides that managing the war is no longer enough — and chooses instead to help Ukraine end Russia’s aggression once and for all.

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

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 9:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T
This thread works fine

Agreed. No reason to split this up into 10 other threads when we can keep all of your embarrassing post history on this topic right here.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 10:05 AM

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:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T
This thread works fine

Agreed. No reason to split this up into 10 other threads when we can keep all of your embarrassing post history on this topic right here.

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

Be Evil. Be a dick.

I presume you are unaware that every comment you have made reveals personal failure and the certainty of a shortened life. Kind of like everything the Russians do reveals that they cause their own suffering, their own relative poverty compared to Europeans, and their shortened lives on the actuarial tables of life expectancy.

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

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 10:05 AM

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

What is Putin hiding? 115 Russian statistics suddenly go dark

By Kathrine Frich | Feb 24, 2026

https://www.dagens.com/war/what-is-putin-hiding-115-russian-statistics
-suddenly-go-dark

Economic transparency in Russia is shrinking, according to Ukrainian intelligence officials.

Dozens of key statistical indicators have stopped being updated, while others have disappeared from public databases altogether.

Kyiv now claims the move is an attempt by the Kremlin to conceal the real state of Russia’s economy.

Data disappears

Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) says Russian authorities have stopped updating 115 statistical indicators since the end of 2025.

According to the agency, 168 statistical tables have either been removed or reduced in official data collections.

The Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistics System reportedly no longer provides current figures for dozens of categories.

New entries are instead marked as “temporarily closed.”

The Kremlin has not publicly explained the changes.

Income and spending classified

The SVR claims that household income and expenditure data are now classified. This includes figures on public sector wages for teachers, doctors, nurses, researchers and cultural workers.

Information on social benefit payments has also reportedly been restricted.

As a result, it is no longer possible to see how much Russian households spend on essentials such as food, utilities, housing and medicine.

War and prison figures hidden

The Ukrainian intelligence service further alleges that data related to what Moscow calls its “SVO” campaign in Ukraine is no longer publicly available.

According to the SVR, figures on troop numbers and funeral costs have been removed. Media reports also indicate that data on prison populations is again being withheld.

Officials in Kyiv argue the data blackout is aimed at limiting public reaction to economic hardship.

In 2025, 31% of Russians reportedly said they did not have enough money for groceries, while 39% described the economic situation in their region as worsening.

Sources: Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine (SVR), Dialog.ua, LA.lv.
https://www.la.lv/115-statistikas-raditaji-vairs-netiek-atjauninati-pa
t-dati-par-partiku-klaisifceti-ko-kremlis-slepj#google_vignette

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

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 4:06 PM

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

Most of Ukraine lacks defense against ballistic threats, Zelenskyy says

By Liliana Oleniak | Tue, February 24, 2026 – 13:10

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/most-of-ukraine-lacks-defense-against-
ballistic-1771931443.html

Most of Ukraine's territory remains without air defense systems capable of intercepting ballistic missiles, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says in an interview with Tagesschau.

80% of Ukraine's territory remains unprotected against Russian ballistic missiles

According to Zelenskyy, his previous statements on air defense were not a criticism of partners, but an attempt to draw attention to the real situation.

"I will not say where our Patriot systems are located. But 80% of our country's territory does not have such anti-ballistic missile systems," the President says.

He stresses that Ukraine continues to seek opportunities to strengthen its defenses.
Ukraine finds funds for air defense systems

The President emphasizes that even in the absence of a sufficient number of systems, Kyiv, together with its partners, is working to finance their purchase.

"Even if we are not given the systems, we have found the money for them together with our partners," Zelenskyy says.

According to him, he personally held negotiations with representatives of Germany, Norway, Northern European countries, and Canada. The President notes that air defense systems are extremely expensive.

"They cost between 1.5 and 2 billion per system. And a missile costs between two and three million," he explains.

Zelenskyy says that he agreed on the allocation of additional funds for these needs.

Ukraine calls on European countries to combine their technological efforts to create new means of countering ballistic missiles.

Colonel Yurii Ihnat, head of communications for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, also said that Russian mass attacks on Ukraine often combine several types of air threats at once. These include ballistic and cruise missiles, as well as strike drones. Under such conditions, even modern air defense systems are operating at the limits of their capabilities.

Read also: Russia sets record for ballistic missile launches at Ukraine in January
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-sets-record-for-ballistic-missi
le-1771262538.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, February 24, 2026 4:09 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T
This thread works fine

Agreed. No reason to split this up into 10 other threads when we can keep all of your embarrassing post history on this topic right here.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 5:34 PM

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

Moscow accused France and the U.K. of seeking to provide Ukraine with nuclear arms.

Offering no evidence, Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) claimed on Feb. 24 that the "British and French elite" are helping Kyiv acquire nuclear weapons technology and delivery systems to secure "more favorable terms" in peace talks.

Fact-check: Russia pushes nuclear claims to derail peace talks, distract from war anniversary

By Martin Fornusek | February 24, 2026 7:48 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/fact-check-russia-pushes-nuclear-claims-to
-derail-peace-talks-distract-from-war-anniversary/

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

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Tuesday, February 24, 2026 8:23 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
You may need to start a new thread here SOCOND?

T
This thread works fine

Agreed. No reason to split this up into 10 other threads when we can keep all of your embarrassing post history on this topic right here.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 1:24 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
What is Putin hiding? 115 Russian statistics suddenly go dark

By Kathrine Frich | Feb 24, 2026

https://www.dagens.com/war/what-is-putin-hiding-115-russian-statistics
-suddenly-go-dark

... according to Ukrainian intelligence officials.. Kyiv now claims ... Ukraine’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) says ... According to the agency ... The Unified Interdepartmental Information and Statistics System reportedly ... The SVR claims ... Information on social benefit payments has also reportedly ... The Ukrainian intelligence service further alleges ...
According to the SVR ...
Officials in Kyiv argue ...

-----------

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

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 8:02 AM

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

Ukraine learned four things in four years of war. You won’t like any of them.

We know because we lived it.

By Euromaidan Press Staff

24/02/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/02/24/four-years-of-war-taught-ukrain
e-four-things-you-wont-like-any-of-them/

1. Russia won't stop—and negotiations are how it buys time.

Russia has signed 26 ceasefires with Ukraine. It has violated all 26. It is a strategy. Putin applies the playbook of Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko: stall, demand the impossible, blame the other side, rearm while the world talks.

The only thing that has ever made Russia retreat has been military force. History has no example of an unconfronted aggressor stopping on its own. Rhineland led to Austria led to Sudetenland led to Poland. Chechnya led to Georgia led to Crimea led to Donbas led to the full-scale invasion.

A bully only stops when somebody stops him.

2. Russia can be stopped—but not for free

Russia came with the world's supposedly second-strongest army. We forced it to retreat from Kyiv. We drove it out of Kharkiv Oblast. We made it abandon Kherson—the only regional capital it ever captured. Ukraine had no navy—Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is gone, anyway. It has suffered 1.2 million casualties for 11% of our territory. We destroyed one-third of its nuclear-capable bomber fleet in a single operation. No retaliation came.

Russia is beatable. But stopping evil costs money, weapons, political courage. It costs blood—people willing to put their lives on the line for freedom. Ukrainians are already paying that price. The question is whether the rest of the world will share it, or keep hoping the problem goes away while Ukrainians do the dying.

Experts in Norway did the math: equipping Ukraine to win costs Europe roughly half of what a Russian victory would.

The uncomfortable truth is that for four years, the West has chosen not to.

3. The red lines are in your head.

Leopards were "escalatory." They weren't.
ATACMS were "escalatory." They weren't.
F-16s were "escalatory." They weren't.
Striking inside Russia was "escalatory." It wasn't.

Every Western red line was imaginary—fed by Russian threats designed to trigger exactly that paralysis.

A senior European official admitted it at GLOBSEC: "We are good at deterrence, but even better at self-deterrence."

Estonia's Defense Ministry put it bluntly in 2023: the fear of escalation is "unnecessarily high," and drip-feeding Ukraine aid doesn't create a strategy—it merely drags the war out "at an immense cost, primarily for Ukraine." Lithuania's foreign minister asked why NATO is protecting Russian bombers better than it is protecting Ukrainian civilians.

The logic is perverse. The West chose four years of half-measures to avoid a nuclear threat that Russia has never acted on, despite Moscow’s repeated threats.

And what did caution buy? A destroyed energy grid. Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. The deadliest year for Ukrainian civilians since the full-scale invasion began. And a precedent every dictator is studying: threaten nuclear war, and democracies will let you grind your neighbor to dust at a pace they can tolerate.

4. Russia wants you to think this is only about Ukraine.

Firebombs at DHL hubs in Leipzig and Birmingham. A German navy ship sabotaged in Hamburg. Five Dutch rail lines hit during the NATO summit. Sabotage attacks in Europe tripled in a single year. These weren't random. Russia is rehearsing.

Four years of fighting us taught Russia priceless lessons: exactly where NATO breaks. Which leaders fold. How many months the debate takes. That 32 nations will argue themselves into paralysis while drones fly every night.

Now imagine we fall. Russia absorbs our defense industry, our resources, and the most combat-hardened army in Europe. Thirty-seven million Ukrainians learn that the West watched them be erased rather than act. Who fights for you then?

Our power grid is at 20%. Our children grow up in bomb shelters. We face 200 drones every night. And we are still fighting—because we learned four years ago that wishing this away doesn't work.

You're still learning.

The choice is the same one it was on 24 February 2022, when Russia invaded. Help stop Russia, or deal with what grows in its place. Alone.

There is no third option. There never was.

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

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 9:53 AM

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

Hungary’s Orbán stakes his reelection on anti-Ukraine message

By Justin Spike | February 25, 2026

https://apnews.com/article/hungary-orban-anti-ukraine-campaign-electio
n-2f729cf3694dc06fb8bc564c123c80e2

BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Facing tough odds in an upcoming election, Hungary’s pro-Russian prime minister is trying to convince voters that the greatest threat to the country is not economic stagnation — the focus of his top opponent — but neighboring Ukraine.

Viktor Orbán is running an aggressive media campaign replete with disinformation whose central message is that Hungarians should refuse to align with the rest of Europe in supporting Ukraine against Russia’s invasion. That path, he argues, risks bankrupting the country and getting its youth killed on the front lines.

Billboards erected across the country show AI-generated images of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy flanked by European officials, holding out his hand as if demanding money. It’s a not-so-subtle reference to the European Union’s efforts to help Ukraine financially and bolster its defenses as the war enters its fifth year.

“Our message to Brussels: We won’t pay!” the publicly funded billboards read.

Orbán, who retook office in 2010, faces the strongest challenge to his power in an election set for April 12. The EU’s longest-serving leader and his right-wing Fidesz party are trailing in most independent polls to an upstart center-right challenger, Péter Magyar. His rise was aided by political scandals that have damaged the credibility of Orbán’s party; a presidential pardon given to an accomplice in a child sexual abuse case led to a public outcry, prompting the president and justice minister to resign.

Orbán and Fidesz have sought to change the conversation. They have blanketed the country with taxpayer-funded billboards, as well as advertisements on radio, television and social media. A petition mailed to every Hungarian of voting age claimed the EU’s plans to help Ukraine financially would bring economic ruin.

In a video Fidesz released on social media last week, a little girl asks her forlorn mother: “Mommy, when is daddy coming home?” In the next frame, the fictional father — bound, blindfolded and kneeling on a muddy battlefield — is approached by a [Ukrainian] soldier and shot in the head.

Much more at https://apnews.com/article/hungary-orban-anti-ukraine-campaign-electio
n-2f729cf3694dc06fb8bc564c123c80e2

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

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 12:14 PM

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Declining birth rates could spell economic disaster

Feb 24 2026

https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/24/russia-ukraine-birth-rate-fertility-ra
te-war-women-children-demographics-economy.html

In 2021, Ukraine’s total fertility rate stood at 1.22 but this has since dropped to 1.00 in 2025, according to United Nations population data. Some have cited a more dire metric, with the First Lady of Ukraine, Olena Zelenska, warning in December that the fertility rate in the country had plunged to 0.8–0.9 children per woman, with the war and insecurity across Ukraine causing this “critical decline.”

For a society to replace itself from one generation to the next, without relying on migration, a total fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman is necessary.

Russia, too, has also seen a longer-term trend downwards in its fertility rate exacerbated by the war. In 2021, Russia’s fertility rate was 1.51 but by 2025, it had dropped to 1.37 children per woman, down from 1.4 recorded the year before.

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

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 12:33 PM

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

Ukraine Battlefield Dead Could Reach 500,000 in Fifth Year, Estimates Suggest

Russia has lost as many as 325,000 troops, according to some estimates, with more than 200,000 deaths verified by researchers.

By Paul Sonne and Constant Méheut | Feb. 24, 2026

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/24/world/europe/ukraine-war-deaths.htm
l

Paul Sonne reported from Berlin, and Constant Méheut from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Even as President Vladimir V. Putin hails Russia’s advances on the battlefield, four years into his invasion of Ukraine, his force has suffered perhaps the worst losses any major power has seen in a conflict since World War II.

There is little sign that the conflict is getting any less deadly, as Ukraine looks to harness new battlefield technology to raise the cost of Russia’s gains. Estimates suggest that the death toll for the entire war among both Russian and Ukrainian fighters could rise beyond half a million this year, with deaths adding up particularly on the advancing Russian side. By some counts, the toll could even have already topped that figure.

The number of soldiers killed in the war remains a heavily guarded secret on both sides, as Moscow and Kyiv aim to avoid projecting weakness.

Some estimates indicate that Ukraine has lost more soldiers as a proportion of its wartime population than Russia has, even if Russian losses have been far larger overall. Estimates put the number of Russian troops killed at more than five times the losses that the U.S. military suffered during the Vietnam War.

Journalists from the independent Russian news outlet Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service published new results on Tuesday of their effort, dating to the early months of the invasion, to compile the number of Russian soldiers who have died. Their count is based on verified names in obituaries, cemetery burials, social media reports from relatives, probate records and other Russian state data.
https://en.zona.media/article/2026/02/24/casualties_eng-trl

The outlets updated their tally of verified Russian deaths to 200,186 but emphasized that the figure “remains a conservative floor, not a ceiling.” They identified nearly 27,000 Russian cities, towns and villages that sent soldiers to Ukraine who were ultimately killed.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington, recently said that Russia had suffered up to 325,000 deaths on the battlefield. The number appears to be a reasonable projection, given the confirmed numbers from Mediazona and the BBC Russian Service, which do not fully capture battlefield deaths from 2025 and 2026.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine

“No major power has suffered anywhere near these number of casualties since the Second World War,” said Seth Jones, a co-author of the C.S.I.S. study, noting that one exception could be Chinese losses during the Korean War, though estimates from that conflict vary widely. “It is just short of shocking.”

The center’s study estimated the number of wounded and killed on the Russian side, often referred to together as casualties, to be as many as 1.2 million.

On Tuesday, Mr. Putin marked the fourth anniversary of the war with a speech to the Federal Security Service, or F.S.B. He said that the Russian intelligence service needed to do more to protect the Russian homeland from Ukrainian attacks. A day earlier, Mr. Putin met with widows of fallen soldiers at the Kremlin.

In Ukraine, President Volodymyr Zelensky delivered an address highlighting Ukrainians’ perseverance, hosted senior European leaders in Kyiv, and visited a makeshift memorial in the capital’s central square, where he said he hoped that President Trump would visit the country to see its suffering.

The authorities in Ukraine, like Russian officials, have been secretive about army losses. Ukraine has restricted access to demographic data that could help estimate the number of Ukrainians killed in action, and it has released casualty figures in the tens of thousands that most observers consider understated.

The C.S.I.S. report estimated that between 500,000 and 600,000 Ukrainian troops have been wounded, have been killed or have gone missing since the start of the war. The report said that between 100,000 and 140,000 of those were fatalities, roughly two to three times higher than figures released by Mr. Zelensky earlier this month.

Kyiv has struggled to make up for losses as its army conscription system falls behind and desertions further strain manpower. Ukrainian officers say they cannot properly man their defensive lines as a consequence.

By contrast, Russia has largely managed to replace its losses with a recruitment system that relies on big enlistment bonuses and signing up convicts.

“The big issue the Ukrainians face is numbers right now,” said Mr. Jones, the co-author of the C.S.I.S. study. “There is no question about it.”

To offset this disadvantage, Ukraine has sought to inflict losses on enemy forces at a rate equal to or greater than what Russia can replace. While that goal proved elusive for much of the war, Ukrainian and European officials say the balance may now be shifting.

In January, 225 Russian soldiers were wounded or killed for each square mile of territory seized, according to the Institute for the Study of War. https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-february-14-2026/

Mykhailo Fedorov, the Ukrainian defense minister, said that Ukraine had killed or seriously wounded 35,000 Russian soldiers in December. That is about as much as Russia’s average monthly recruitment last year, based on data released by Russian officials.

Mr. Fedorov said Ukraine aimed to raise the number of Russian losses to 50,000 per month. “The objective is to impose costs on Russia that it cannot bear,” he told reporters in January.

Paul Sonne is an international correspondent, focusing on Russia and the varied impacts of President Vladimir V. Putin’s domestic and foreign policies, with a focus on the war against Ukraine.

Constant Méheut reports on the war in Ukraine, including battlefield developments, attacks on civilian centers and how the war is affecting its people.

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

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Wednesday, February 25, 2026 5:24 PM

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

Prosecutor details scandal rocking Ukraine's defense

February 25, 2026

https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-detains-air-force-logistics-chief
-in-aircraft-shelter-corruption-probe-50586999.html

As Ukrainska Pravda reported on Feb. 25, authorities detained the commander of logistics for the Ukrainian Air Force, Col. Andrii Ukrainets, and the head of the SBU directorate in Zhytomyr Oblast, Col. Volodymyr Kompanichenko.

In May 2025, 1.4 billion hryvnias were allocated to build prefabricated arched shelters. Inspections later found that the projects did not meet safety standards, the shelters failed to protect aircraft adequately, and the cost of the work was significantly inflated.

Despite those findings, advance payments under the contracts were transferred.

The Air Force logistics commander approached the head of the SBU directorate to conceal the embezzlement of budget funds and halt inspections.

He asked to “facilitate” the bribery of the leadership of military counterintelligence.

According to investigators, the officials proposed transferring about 13 million hryvnias — 1% of the project financing — in exchange for concealing the misappropriation of budget funds. They also planned to involve “loyal” auditors to prepare fictitious reports on the quality of construction.

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

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Thursday, February 26, 2026 6:28 AM

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Pokrovsk has likely fallen, yet Russian momentum stalls — ISW

February 26, 2026, 02:38 AM

https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/pokrovsk-falls-to-russia-but-kremlin
-fails-to-exploit-its-capture-50587178.html

The slow, agonizingly expensive capture of Pokrovsk — a city far smaller than the "fortress belt" strongholds of Kramatorsk and Slovyansk — serves as a grim omen for the Russian army. Their inability to exploit this "victory" exposes the fragility of the Kremlin's claim that the rest of the Donbas will fall quickly or easily.

Major Hryhoriy Shapoval, spokesperson for the Eastern troops grouping, said on Feb. 25 that eight key settlements in the Pokrovsk direction remain under full Ukrainian control.

These include Sukhetske, Suvorove, Nykanorivka, Dorozhne, Ivanivka, Nove Shakhover, Novyi Donbas, and Vilne.

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

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Thursday, February 26, 2026 6:53 AM

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Ukraine Is Losing the War
With Moscow Pressing Its Advantage, Kyiv Should Trade Land for Peace
Michael C. Desch
February 26, 2026

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russia/ukraine-losing-war

MICHAEL C. DESCH is Packey J. Dee Professor of International Relations at the University of Notre Dame and founding Brian and Jeannelle Brady Family Director of the O’Brien Notre Dame International Security Center.

Four years into Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the Trump administration is pressing Kyiv to agree to painful territorial concessions as the price for peace. In a draft peace agreement first reported by Axios in November, the administration proposed that the entire regions of Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk be recognized as de facto Russian territory and that Russia retain control of the parts of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia its forces now occupy. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is pushing back, refusing to do anything that would violate his country’s territorial integrity. Yet the realities of the battlefield are not on his side.

Ukraine has been putting up valiant resistance, but its determination cannot disguise the fact that it is losing the war. Russia controls a large swath of Ukrainian territory, and Kyiv has little chance of dislodging it, as Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive in 2023 demonstrated. To be sure, recent Russian gains have come very slowly and at significant cost; over the last three years, Russia has taken a mere one percent of additional Ukrainian territory. But that does not change the reality that Russia now holds almost a fifth of the land within Ukraine’s 1991 borders—or that Russia’s greater resources and population mean that Moscow can fight on for years to come. Overcoming those Russian advantages and clawing back lost land on the battlefield would require time and investment that Ukraine doesn’t have. Current circumstances are therefore pushing Kyiv toward a compromise peace—one that will necessarily include the surrender of Ukrainian territory.

FALLING BEHIND

Judging by sheer numbers, the trajectory of the war does not favor Ukraine. The rates of battlefield losses on each side are one example. The Russian media outlet Mediazona tracks Russian military deaths using social media, obituaries, and official government notices and provides the most reliable estimates. (Estimates by Western intelligence agencies vary dramatically and often correlate with government policy preferences.) As of the end of 2025, Mediazona’s analysts identified 156,151 Russians who have been killed in the war and, because not every death is publicly reported, used population data to estimate a total of 219,000 dead. The Ukrainian nongovernmental organization UA Losses, employing a similar methodology, has reported 87,045 Ukrainians killed in action and 85,906 missing in action, a figure that likely includes unacknowledged deaths and desertions.

Although Ukraine is suffering fewer losses in absolute terms, the war is depleting a greater proportion of its manpower. Ukraine’s population today is just under 36 million, which is about 26 percent of Russia’s population of 140 million. Ukraine has just under 9.5 million men between the ages of 25 and 54, and it has lost between one and two percent of that cohort. For Russia, which has a little over 30.2 million men in the same age group, somewhat higher losses account for just 0.5 to 0.7 percent of the total. Ultimately, Russia, with its much larger population, can sustain larger total losses than Ukraine can.

Moreover, Russia is fighting mostly with contract soldiers—people who have volunteered—and keeping conscripts away from the front. The result is more motivated Russian soldiers. So far, Moscow is not having much trouble meeting recruitment needs. Ukraine, in contrast, relies heavily on conscription. Recent recruitment shortfalls and desertions have prompted increasingly draconian efforts to meet conscription a goal of 30,000 men per month. These include “busification,” the practice of grabbing men off the street and taking them in minivans to the local recruitment office. In addition to being unpopular, harsh methods are netting mostly older, less healthy, and clearly unwilling soldiers, many of whom desert at the first opportunity. Those who remain contribute little to the war effort.

When it comes to major weapons systems, Ukraine is outgunned across the board. As of 2025, Russia’s tanks outnumbered Ukraine’s at a ratio of nearly five to one, including the equipment Moscow has in storage. Russia had more than three times as many infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers as Ukraine. It had 670 pieces of towed artillery to Ukraine’s 543. It had five times as much mobile artillery, nearly ten times as many multiple launch rocket systems, and nearly five times as many mortars. Russia had 163 combat aircraft; Ukraine had 66. Although Russia’s huge advantage rests, in part, on older, stored equipment, much of the Western equipment sent to Ukraine is also old, coming from partner countries’ stockpiles. But even excluding stored equipment, in most categories, Russia’s stocks are at least double Ukraine’s.
chart

Economic power is foundational to military power, and Russia has an advantage there, too. Russia’s 2024 GDP (measured by purchasing power parity) was almost $7 trillion. Ukraine’s, in contrast, was almost $657 billion, less than ten percent of Russia’s. Nominal measures show the same substantial gap. Spending around seven percent of GDP, Russia can allocate $484 billion to defense. Even if Ukraine spends 30 percent of its GDP, it will be able to muster a defense budget of only $197 billion, less than half of Russia’s.

Admittedly, this figure underestimates Ukraine’s long-term military capacity because it excludes the substantial financial and in-kind assistance the country has received from western Europe and until recently the United States. But Ukraine is more dependent on foreign partners than Russia is. Russia has a large indigenous defense industry and massive military stockpiles, although it, too, has come to rely to some extent on allies, including China and North Korea. Russia may not have all the cards, but it has big battalions and deep pockets.

Finally, consider each side’s strategic objectives. Although there is debate about what Russia’s goals may be, statements by members of the government emphasize two: control of some or all of the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia and keeping Ukraine out of NATO.

The Russian government has long sought to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO on the grounds that Ukrainian membership in the alliance would constitute a military threat to Russia. At times, it has even seemed as if that objective outweighed larger territorial ambitions. When Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it clearly wanted control of that territory. Russian-aligned militants, with varying levels of Russian support, took up arms in Donetsk and Luhansk, which together form the Donbas, to break away from Ukraine at about the same time. But Russia then supported the Minsk agreements, which ended the fighting but included no further territorial demands on Ukraine. One possible explanation is that by conceding that Donetsk and Luhansk would remain in a federalized Ukraine, Moscow hoped the pro-Russian regions would keep Kyiv from joining NATO or otherwise tilting toward the West. Indeed, Russia formally recognized the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics as independent only on the eve of its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. In a September 2022 presidential speech and subsequent parliamentary action, Russia formally annexed those two regions, plus Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Russia now holds almost a fifth of the land within Ukraine’s 1991 borders.

Today, Russia controls 99 percent of Luhansk, 76 percent of Kherson, 74 percent of Zaporizhzhia, and 72 percent of Donetsk. Russian forces are advancing in Zaporizhzhia, low-level fighting continues in Kherson, and Moscow is conducting limited operations in the north to secure a buffer zone in the Kharkiv and Sumy regions. But Russia’s positive response to the Trump administration’s 28-point peace plan—which would deliver Moscow all of Donetsk and Luhansk but only parts of Ukraine’s other eastern regions—suggests that complete control of the Donbas is Moscow’s most consistent territorial objective. Its most consistent political objective remains keeping Ukraine out of NATO. In their ideal world, Russian leaders might entertain more ambitious territorial and political goals. After four years of grueling war, however, these more limited achievements appear to be all Russian President Vladimir Putin thinks he can get.

In contrast, Ukrainian leaders have been adamant that their goals remain the restoration of control over territory defined by the country’s 1991 borders, which includes Crimea, and the defense of Ukraine’s sovereignty, especially the freedom to join any alliance Kyiv wishes. But Ukraine has neither the military resources for a successful offensive nor the political will for a robust defense.

Given the length of the current frontline and Ukraine’s manpower problems, most Ukrainian units have to remain on the defensive. In June 2023, the Russian military broke the Ukrainian counteroffensive with its so-called Surovikin Line, a system of well-built fortifications supported by massive artillery and other indirect fire weapons. The Ukrainians, by contrast, have only belatedly begun digging similar defenses. Ukraine’s ambitious objective of territorial liberation has left its army few incentives to fortify the frontline or areas behind it. The provision of advanced Western weaponry may also have convinced the Ukrainians they could substitute technology or more Western support for operational innovation. And rampant corruption has undermined all aspects of Ukraine’s war effort, including the construction of fortifications. Russia is by no means free from corruption itself, but its size and economic advantages make the effects less damaging.

UKRAINE OUTMANEUVERED

Russia’s objectives seem reasonably compatible with its capabilities and trends on the battlefield. Ukraine’s objectives, in contrast, seem beyond its reach. The Ukrainian armed forces are stretched so thin along the 620-mile-long line of control that they cannot effectively defend it. Ukraine has only about 300,000 troops on the frontline, or 483 troops per mile. During the Cold War, Western planners thought that a successful defense of the border between NATO and the Warsaw Pact would require approximately one division (25,000 soldiers) per 16 miles, or some 1,500 soldiers per mile. By that rule of thumb, Ukraine has less than half the number of soldiers it needs to successfully defend the frontline.

Conversely, the Russian force in the occupied territory of Ukraine now numbers more than 700,000, which could provide a density of at least 1,129 troops per mile. By taking the offensive, Russia can further concentrate forces where it chooses and defend the rest of the line with lower numbers. Being on the defensive, Ukraine has to spread its forces relatively evenly along the entire frontline or risk having inadequate forces at a point Russia might attack. Ukraine must also keep an eye on the 674 miles of its border with the Russian ally Belarus, stretching its forces even thinner.

Military technology has not given Ukraine a clear edge, either. Working to modernize its military to NATO standards since 2015, Ukraine has relied on various sophisticated weapons, especially since the war began in 2022. The West has sent Ukraine everything from antitank guided missiles to multiple launch rocket systems to long-range cruise missiles, Patriot air defense missiles, and fighter aircraft. None have proved decisive, with the partial exception of first-person-view attack and reconnaissance drones.

When it comes to major weapons systems, Ukraine is outgunned across the board.

To be sure, the deployment of drones on both sides of the frontline has changed the nature of the fight dramatically. Roughly six miles on either side of the front has become a “kill zone” in which vehicles and large formations of troops can be spotted quickly and attacked relentlessly, reducing mobility under fire. But lately, there has been a dramatic shift in the balance of innovation. Western analysts have consistently questioned Russian military adaptability, but it is the Ukrainians who are now falling behind. Russia has greater capacity to scale up drone technology, resulting in an estimated ten-to-one advantage in the number of drones produced and deployed to the battlefield.

Superior Russian tactical innovation has had even more serious consequences for Ukrainian forces. The watershed came during the Ukrainian invasion of Russia’s Kursk region in 2024. In response to that incursion, Russian forces started operating differently. They substituted fiber-optic guidance systems once Ukraine developed the capacity to jam radio-controlled drones, negating a potential Ukrainian advantage in antidrone electronic warfare. They began attacking Ukrainian logistics and drone operators rather than individual soldiers on the frontlines, making far more efficient use of their drones than before. And reconnaissance drones enhance Russia’s traditional advantage in artillery (and in other indirect fire systems such as guided bombs) by providing much more effective fire correction—direction for how to aim at a target—than observers on the ground can provide. This capability enables Russian forces to substantially weaken Ukrainian defensive positions and interdict Ukrainian forces far behind the frontline.

A related Russian innovation involves infantry tactics that resemble the infiltration tactics developed by the Germans late in World War I to break the stalemate on the western front. Small numbers of Russian troops—typically assault groups consisting of three or four storm troopers or slightly larger sabotage and reconnaissance groups—increasingly penetrate Ukrainian lines through the drone-infested kill zone. Penny packets of soldiers, unlike tanks or infantry fighting vehicles, are not attractive targets, and the Russians have learned to use bad weather and darkness to evade Ukrainian reconnaissance during their infiltrations. The Ukrainians have tried to adopt similar tactics, but given their smaller numbers, they remain heavily reliant on highly visible and vulnerable armored vehicles to deliver troops, limiting their effectiveness.

LEAST BAD OPTION

Ukraine’s European backers have urged Kyiv to reject Russia’s demand to cede all of the Donbas. Kaja Kallas, the EU high representative for foreign affairs, has called trading Ukrainian territory for peace a “trap.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have repeatedly declared that “international borders must not be changed by force.” Some worry that giving in to Putin now will, as happened after a previous generation of European leaders made a deal with Hitler in Munich in 1938, only whet the Russian leader’s appetite for more Ukrainian and even NATO territory down the road.

A more reasonable objection is that the remaining Ukrainian-held Donbas “fortress cities” of Kramatorsk and Slavyansk constitute critical links in Ukraine’s defense. Urban warfare is costly, making cities highly defensible, and in today’s drone-dominated battlefield, they offer cover and protection as concentration points for troops. Given Ukraine’s manpower woes, defending fortified islands may seem like a good option. But preserving the Donbas fortress cities is no reason to continue the war. It is possible to protect territory farther behind the frontline without them with dedicated fortifications. Russia has also demonstrated that even fortress cities can be surrounded, isolated, and cleared through the infiltration of small units, as it has done recently in Chasiv Yar, Huliapole, Pokrovsk, and Siversk—and may yet succeed in doing in Kostiantynivka and Kupyansk.

The loss of the rest of Donetsk, although assuredly a blow to Ukrainian self-esteem, would not necessarily open the door to Kyiv for Moscow. Between October 2024 and October 2025, the Russians took control of 1,703 square miles of Ukrainian territory. The remainder of unoccupied Ukraine east of the Dnieper River consists of 57,066 square miles of territory. At last year’s rate of Russian advance, it would take more than 30 years for Moscow to complete such a conquest.

Western European panic notwithstanding, Russia essentially claiming victory in the Donbas would pose little threat to the rest of the continent. The Donbas is not the Sudetenland because the current Russian tactics are nothing like the blitzkrieg, which garnered Nazi Germany huge chunks of territory very quickly. It would take Russia decades to conquer the rest of Ukraine, so any direct threat to most other countries in Europe would manifest itself far into the future.

Rampant corruption has undermined all aspects of Ukraine’s war effort.

Yet there can be little doubt that Russia can achieve more limited aims by force of arms. Roughly 2,866 square miles of Donetsk remain under Kyiv’s control. If Russian forces continue at last year’s rate of advance, they could take it in a year and a half, a reasonable time frame. They may also grab more chunks of Kharkiv, Sumy, and Zaporizhzhia. Doing so would cost Russia additional blood and treasure, to be sure, but it would impose greater relative costs on Ukraine, which Kyiv can ill afford.

The Ukrainians and their allies must now ask themselves what another year of war will achieve and at what price. There is evidence of a growing sense among senior Ukrainian officials, including Kirill Budanov, the presidential chief of staff and former head of military intelligence, that although Ukrainian deep strikes and attacks on Moscow’s “shadow fleet” of oil tankers—the unmarked vessels Russia uses to evade sanctions—hurt Russia, they will not end the war any time soon.

With its larger objectives out of reach, Ukraine faces the prospect of ceding territory, which would be painful for Kyiv. But it does not have to mean the end of Ukraine as an independent country. A Ukraine shorn of its eastern regions could continue Kyiv’s westward-looking state-building project. Even before the Russian invasion in 2022, Ukraine was already shifting its economic center of gravity away from the rust-belt Donbas and toward the postindustrial center and west. And with comprehensive political and economic reforms; a serious anticorruption effort, especially in the military sector; and a campaign to construct defensive positions optimized for drones and low-density warfare and to invest substantial funds and organizational effort into battlefield innovations, Ukraine could be in a stronger position to protect itself were it attacked again. Accepting a bad peace deal now would at least give Kyiv this chance at a better future. Rejecting one now would only prolong a costly and losing war.

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

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Thursday, February 26, 2026 3:36 PM

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

Ukraine's Flamingo Missile Finally Did What It Was Always Supposed To Do: Blast A Russian Factory

The Flamingo's belated success comes after months of controversy

Feb 26, 2026

https://www.trenchart.us/p/ukraines-flamingo-missile-finally

• Missile-maker Fire Point promised the Flamingo would add heft and reach to Ukraine’s deep strikes, but production has been slow to ramp up

• After months of disappointment, Ukraine may finally have gotten some real results from its giant Flamingo cruise missile

• A 20 February Flamingo raid may have inflicted major damage on a Russian missile factory in Votkinsk

• The attack could cause a ripple of delays in Russian missile production

Ukraine has finally put its giant Fire Point FP-5 Flamingo cruise missiles to good use. On the night of Feb. 20, at least one of the six-ton Flamingos blasted a hole in the roof of a missile workshop in Votkinsk, in western Russia 1,400 km from the front line.

The strike, which came six months after Ukrainian firm Fire Point dramatically revealed the jet-propelled, largely fiberglass Flamingo to reporters, may have significantly damaged the Votkinsk missile plant. Votkinsk apparently produces components for many of Russia’s most powerful missiles, including the Oreshnik, Kinzhal, and Iskander-M.

The February strike is a possible win for Fire Point as critics question the company’s early claims regarding the Flamingo. More importantly, it’s a win for Ukraine as it struggles to blunt Russia’s relentless campaign of drone and missile strikes targeting Ukrainian cities and power plants. The missiles Votkinsk helps produce have inflicted widespread damage in Ukraine.

The Flamingo’s developers face deep skepticism. Last fall, Fire Point insisted it would massively scale up production of the FP-5 and quickly boost annual output to more than 2,000 missiles. But in the nine months since the first secretive combat trials of the ramp-launched FP-5, the Ukrainians have fired only about 16 missiles in seven raids, resulting in just four damaging hits.

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

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Thursday, February 26, 2026 4:03 PM

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Russia's Army Crumbling in Ukraine

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Thursday, February 26, 2026 4:08 PM

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

Don't wait for Putin to fall: Budanov outlines Ukraine's only safe scenario

Thu, February 26, 2026 - 21:20

Author: Daryna Vialko

The fundamental ideology of Russia has never changed. Therefore, Ukraine needs to create conditions under which Russia will cease to exist as an empire, stated the head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, in an interview with the Arab media outlet Al-Modon.

Read also: Putin suddenly talks about potential successor
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/putin-suddenly-talks-about-potential-s
uccessor-1746370010.html

"Regime changes in Russia have not changed its essence. Regardless of its current name, its core ideology remains unchanged," Budanov emphasized.

He noted that Russian authorities, neither in the Tsarist era, nor during the Soviet period, nor now, have ever aimed to improve the living conditions of their citizens.

"Overall, the policies of the current Russian president are not substantially different from those of the Tsarist or Soviet eras. Likewise, we should not expect Russia to change again due to internal factors. We must create conditions under which Russia disappears as an empire," Budanov said.

The head of the Presidential Office added that several regional states should emerge on Russian territory, each taking care of the welfare of its own people.

"Only then will Ukraine, Europe, and the entire world feel safer," Budanov noted.

Putin isn’t the only root of the problem

Earlier, in an interview with journalist Piers Morgan, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy expressed skepticism about the effectiveness of removing Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a quick solution.

According to the President, the root of the problem is not only Putin, but also the power system he built, which could produce a new Putin even after the current Kremlin leader is removed.

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 6:09 AM

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

The People’s Republic of China (PRC) reportedly issued a warning to Chinese citizens in Russia about a law compelling service in the Russian military. Hong Kong-based media outlet South China Morning Post reported on February 26 that the PRC Consulate in Russia called on Chinese citizens living in Russia to “take note of” a new Russian law requiring male permanent residents under the age of 65 to serve at least one year with the Russian military.[35] The South China Morning Post referenced a Russian November 2025 law that requires foreign citizens and stateless men aged 18 to 65 who are “legally capable” to serve in the Russian military for at least one year to apply for Russian citizenship or a residency permit.[36] The November 2025 Russian law grants exceptions to Belarusian citizens, men who provide proof that they have already fulfilled the service requirement in the Russian military, and men who provide documentation from Russian military enlistment and recruitment centers that they are unfit for military service. Russian state media notably did not publicize these aspects of the decree at the time.[37] The PRC consulate reportedly did not directly warn PRC citizens against serving in the Russian military but called on PRC citizens in Russia to “make prudent decisions” to “ensure lawful residency status in Russia.”[38]

The PRC consulate’s warning is an indicator that the PRC may be concerned that Russia will coerce its citizens living in Russia into military service through this law. Russia has conducted raids against migrants with expired permits or who are undocumented and coerced them into military service under threat of criminal charges or deportation.[39] Forcing foreigners to serve in the Russian military as a condition for a residency permit or citizenship is a significant escalation in its recruitment mechanisms. ISW has recently observed indicators that the Kremlin is preparing for rolling call-ups of its involuntary reserve to mitigate manpower shortages from Russia’s slowing recruitment rates.[40] The PRC consulate’s statement may be a supporting indicator that Russia is ready to conduct involuntary reserve call-ups and other coercive force generation mechanisms that could affect its citizens living in Russia.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-february-26-2026/

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 6:14 AM

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

Ukraine running low on anti-ballistic missiles, Defense Minister unveils air defense boost plan

Ukraine, Fri, February 27, 2026 - 11:44

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/ukraine-running-low-on-anti-ballistic-
missiles-1772185446.html

Only 12 years, not 4 years, late to start thinking about this.

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 8:41 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Ukraine is losing, and Britain and France are acting like it's an existential matter for them.

A lot was invested, and many loans were made, on the promise of substantial Russian resources coming under western control. Failing that, Ukrainian resources. Failing that, Russian frozen assets.

Failing that ....?

Look to banks and investment houses for the reason for butt-puckering.

-----------

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 9:30 AM

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

February 27, 2026

Former Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonyte pointed to the Russian public’s endurance of poor living conditions as a key pillar of Putin’s resilience. She cited the popular Russian sentiment, "We never lived well, so why start now?" as a primary reason why worsening economic conditions fail to spark provincial unrest.

https://english.nv.ua/nation/why-russia-s-weak-economy-doesn-t-bother-
putin-50587581.html

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 9:44 AM

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

February 24, 2026

Recruiters have flooded Russian job boards with vacancies for work "in the rear" or on so-called "SVO" (Special Military Operation) duties in occupied Donetsk, Luhansk, and Kherson. These ads promise "humanitarian aid" and "patrolling safe zones" without any involvement in active combat.

However, when confronted by an undercover reporter, one recruiter admitted that the official position of "peacekeeper" does not even exist within the Russian Armed Forces. Similar ads have appeared for "Crimean Bridge guards," "staff clerks," and "repair welders."

The true objective is simple: to lure citizens to the military recruitment office. Once a contract with the Defense Ministry is signed, there are zero guarantees that the recruit will be assigned to a non-combat role.

https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/peacekeeper-scam-used-to-recruit-ru-
citizens-to-army-50586581.html

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 1:46 PM

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Ukraine is losing, and Britain and France are acting like it's an existential matter for them.

A lot was invested, and many loans were made, on the promise of substantial Russian resources coming under western control. Falining that, Ukrainian resources. Failing that, Russian frozen assets.

Failing that ....?

Look to banks and investment houses for the reason for butt-puckering.

You post as though you live in a bubble. We both know you don't comrade.

T

‘People aren’t coming home’ | Mark Galeotti on the reality of Putin’s meat grinder campaign

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Friday, February 27, 2026 6:32 PM

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

Russia shed its skin three times — tsarist, soviet, oligarch — but the imperial beast inside never died, Budanov says

Russia’s imperial core must be ripped out and carved it into nations, or the world never sleeps safe, he stresses.

By Olena Mukhina

27/02/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/02/27/russia-shed-its-skin-three-time
s-tsarist-soviet-oligarch-but-imperial-beast-inside-never-died-budanov-says/

World security is only possible after the collapse of Russia as an empire, says Head of Ukraine's President's Office Kyrylo Budanov. The strategic goal should be to divide the aggressor country into several states, with each being focused on the welfare of its own people, reports Al-Mudun.

A change of regime in the Kremlin does not alter the Russian Federation's aggressive nature.

Regardless of its current name, its core ideology remains unchanged, Budanov states. Only the eradication of Moscow’s imperial ambitions will guarantee world security.

Overall, the policies of the current Russian president are not significantly different from those of the tsarist or Soviet eras, he adds.

Imperial ambitions remain — they must be eradicated

“Russian authorities have never prioritized improving the living conditions of their citizens, whether under the tsarist regime, the Soviet Union, or the modern oligarchic capitalist system,” he says.

According to him, Russia has changed over the past 12 years — it has become poorer across all areas: economic, political, and demographic. However, Budanov notes, one thing remains unchanged: Russia’s imperial ambitions.

“This is precisely what must be completely eradicated to make Russia a civilized country. Can we achieve this? Undoubtedly, it is our goal,” he says.

Division into national states — the key to world security

“Unfortunately, this will not happen in the near future. But I am confident that we will achieve our goals, if not now, then soon,” he states.

In his view, it is futile to expect Russia to change again due to internal factors. Instead, conditions must be created that will cause Russia to collapse as an empire. Only then will Ukraine, Europe, and the entire world feel safer.

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 7:01 PM

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

Elon Musk Moves Against the Russians in Ukraine

Russian forces falter as the world’s richest man intervenes in the war once again.

By Simon Shuster | February 27, 2026, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/02/elon-musk-ukrain
e-russia-starlink/686155/

On a frigid day late last month, a Russian attack drone slipped through Ukraine’s air-defense systems and glided into Kyiv’s government district, heading in the direction of President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office. The drone flew so low that officials inside the Cabinet of Ministers building could see it passing beneath them from their windows on the seventh floor. “A bunch of people saw it and were running around, like, ‘What the fuck was that?’” one government official recalled.

The drone, later identified as a Russian BM-35, caused minor damage when it crashed into a nearby building, injuring no one, the official said on the condition of anonymity. But the incident, which has not been previously reported, set in motion a chain of events that would allow Ukraine to seize the momentum at the front with the help of an unlikely ally: Elon Musk.

Since the start of the Russian invasion four years ago, Musk has played an outsize role in determining the course of the war. His high-speed internet service, Starlink, uses portable satellite dishes to create a Wi-Fi connection anywhere in the world, and it has allowed both the Russian and Ukrainian militaries to stay online in the war zone, coordinate troop movements, and navigate drones. No other system can match the reach and reliability of Starlink, which runs on the world’s largest constellation of satellites. Musk has occasionally used that system in ways that have helped one side of the war or the other.

In the fall of 2022, Musk intervened to limit the use of Starlink in Ukraine in a way that senior officers in Kyiv perceived as a service to Russian President Vladimir Putin. He argued that he wanted only to avoid an escalation that would provoke the Kremlin to use nuclear weapons. This time, his actions have worked in Ukraine’s favor, helping its troops break through Russia’s defensive lines in one small but significant section of the front. The reasoning behind Musk’s recent decision to limit Russian access to his technology remains unclear, and he did not respond to numerous requests for comment. The move to back Ukraine seems out of character for Musk, who has tended to follow his ally Donald Trump in advocating for a swift end to the war even if it forces Ukraine to grant painful concessions to the Russians. Whatever caused Musk’s apparent change of heart, the authorities in Kyiv are grateful for it.

Soon after the drone incursion in central Kyiv last month, Ukrainian officials appealed directly to Musk for help. The newly appointed minister of defense, Mykhailo Fedorov, presented Musk with evidence of Russian forces using Starlink to operate their long-range drones, including the one that breached Ukraine’s most sensitive airspace. Fedorov wrote on X (which Musk also owns) on January 29: “Western technologies must continue to support the democratic world and protect civilians—not be used for terror and the destruction of peaceful cities.”

In a series of talks with Musk and his team, the Ukrainians offered a plan to block the Russians from using Starlink. According to several government and military sources familiar with the plan’s implementation, its first phase took effect in the last days of January, severely curtailing the ability of both warring sides to use Starlink for their attack drones. SpaceX, the company that operates the Starlink network, then developed a whitelist of Ukrainian users—and shut off access for the Russians. (The company did not respond to requests for comment.)

“The whitelist was created, software-wise, in, like, one day,” a person familiar with the implementation of the plan told me. The SpaceX team behind it received clear instructions from its bosses: “‘No limits. Take off the gloves; use Starlink for anything to help Ukraine.’” Even inside the company, there was confusion as to what exactly motivated Musk. “But there was a political decision from Elon for sure,” the person said.

By the first days of this month, Russian forces began to suffer severe problems with their battlefield communications. “Starlink is our Achilles’ heel,” Alexander Kots, one of Moscow’s most experienced war correspondents, who spends much of his time embedded with Russian troops in Ukraine, said. “Unfortunately, we will not get a proper replacement for this system anytime soon,” he told the host of a Russian podcast. “I can’t even imagine in principle how we can catch up with Musk’s creation.”

Without the ability to operate drones or communicate through Starlink, the Russians have struggled to hold their defensive lines, and the Ukrainians have advanced. In the first three weeks of February, they seized more than 300 square kilometers of land from the Russians, Zelensky said in an interview with the French news agency AFP. “Without a doubt, our forces are exploiting the problems that the Russians are having with Starlink,” he said. A few days later, the commander of Ukraine’s armed forces, General Oleksandr Syrsky, said in a social-media post that the Ukrainians had liberated eight villages and more than 400 square kilometers during the past month, a rate of advance that Ukraine has not achieved in well over a year of grinding, attritional combat.

This turn of fortune will not be enough to defeat the Russians, who still possess a much larger army with a far superior arsenal of weapons, including nuclear missiles. But any sign of Russian weakness on the battlefield can help strengthen Ukraine’s position at the negotiating table, Zelensky told me earlier this month during an interview in his office in Kyiv. “Ukraine is not losing,” he said. “We have it rough. But to say that in these last six months they are winning somewhere? No.”

The assistance from Musk has helped Zelensky drive home this argument, both to his own people and to the Russians. It has also reminded Ukraine’s allies in Europe of the power that Musk wields over the course of this war. Through his satellite network, he can shift the balance in one direction or the other, all from the comfort of the SpaceX headquarters in Boca Chica, Texas.

“Do we want to be dependent on Elon Musk? No,” Armin Papperger, the head of Germany’s biggest defense company, Rheinmetall, which plans to build an alternative to Starlink for the German military, told me in an interview last week. “If he closes his satellites, if he closes communications, we have a problem,” Papperger said. This time around, Musk assisted Ukraine and its allies in the war. But their dependence on his good graces still worries the Europeans. “We need to be independent from Musk,” Papperger said. “That is a strategic necessity.”

Ukraine and its allies first realized the depth of their dependence on Starlink in the fall of 2022, when Musk used the system to stop a Ukrainian attack against the Russians. That September, Ukraine’s main intelligence service, the SBU, developed a plan to sink Russian warships stationed in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014. Working in concert with the U.S. military, the SBU planned to use a flotilla of naval drones to sneak into the port of Sevastopol, the home of the Russian Black Sea fleet.

The operation involved a small group of Ukrainian-made drone boats, each one packed with more than 100 kilograms of C-4 explosives and remotely controlled with a Starlink terminal. Ivan Lukashevych, the SBU general who led the mission, told me that he went to great lengths to make sure that the Starlink units would work around the shores of Crimea. As part of the preparations, two undercover SBU agents boarded a commercial vessel traveling from Constanta, Romania, past the shores of Crimea and into the port of Poti, Georgia. “They had a Starlink with them, and they were checking if it worked along that route,” Lukashevych, who goes by the call sign “Hunter,” said. “It worked perfectly.” (Details of the SBU’s preparations for the mission have not been previously reported.)

From the agency’s command post five stories beneath a high-rise in Kyiv, the general and several of his comrades, including Fedorov, monitored the launch of the naval drones on a bank of screens. The vessels traveled for about seven hours until they came within about 40 nautical miles of their target. But as the boat at the front of the flotilla rounded the western tip of Crimea, its satellite link to the command center cut off, Lukashevych said.

“The entire operation hinged on these communications,” Lukashevych said. “At first I thought it may be a problem with the first boat. So we sent two more of them to the same spot, and as soon as they crossed a certain line, they also went dark. That’s when we understood they had been turned off.”

Fedorov, who was then serving as the minister in charge of Ukraine’s drone program, began calling his contacts at SpaceX to find the source of the breakdown. But he could not get any clear answers. After months of planning, the SBU was forced to abort the mission and bring its drones back to shore. Lukashevych was furious. “Musk decided to do a bit of work for Putin,” the general said. “He saved the Russian fleet.”

Musk later released a statement to clarify his reasoning. He confirmed that he had received an “emergency request” from the government in Kyiv to “activate Starlink all the way to Sevastopol,” and he had refused to grant it. “If I had agreed to their request, then SpaceX would be explicitly complicit in a major act of war and conflict escalation,” Musk wrote.

Before that intervention, the Ukrainians had seen Musk as a steadfast partner in the war. He had provided them with hundreds of Starlink terminals free of charge at the start of the invasion, joining an initial chorus of support for Ukraine in Silicon Valley, where tech billionaires gave generous donations to help push back the Russian assault. But the mood among Musk and his associates changed as Russia intensified its threats to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and its Western allies. Musk wanted nothing to do with that kind of escalation.

“How am I in this war?” he asked his biographer, Walter Isaacson, in 2022. “Starlink was not meant to be involved in wars. It was so people can watch Netflix and chill and get online for school and do good peaceful things, not drone strikes.”

Musk soon demanded payment from the Pentagon for the Starlink services provided to Ukraine’s armed forces, and he grew vocal in calling for an end to the war. The Ukrainians responded by trying to break their dependence on Starlink, and Lukashevych told me that they had some success. By the start of 2023, the SBU learned to make its communication systems more resistant to outside interference. “We hacked the positioning system on the Starlinks,” Lukashevych said. “So Musk will not be able to shut them off whenever he wants.”

The Ukrainians also experimented with other communications systems for their drones, including wireless mesh networks, which use radio nodes to relay frequencies across a broad segment of the war zone. But nothing came close to the effectiveness of Starlink, which remained a central pillar of Ukraine’s defenses and a source of deep concern for its leadership. Throughout the war, military and political leaders have consistently told me that they could never be sure whether Musk would intervene again to block one of their riskier operations, and what his motives might be.

These concerns grew acute in August 2024, when Ukraine launched its first offensive across the border into Russia, seizing a large chunk of territory in the region of Kursk. Military commanders found that their Starlink terminals stopped working as soon as they entered that region. “Starlink set the limit at the border of Ukraine,” Colonel Pavlo Yelizarov, the commander of one of Ukraine’s most effective drone units, Lasar’s Group, whose bombers are controlled through Starlink, told me. “So we had to find some other solutions.”

The issue came up again a year ago, when Trump returned to the White House. His initial attempts to force a swift end to the war led to tensions with Zelensky, who refused to accept a peace deal with terms that favored the Russians. Last February, Reuters reported that one of Trump’s envoys had tried to pressure the Ukrainians by threatening to cut off their access to Starlink. The tensions culminated the following week, during a televised clash between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office.

After that, the United States paused all aid to Ukraine for about a week. Without access to intelligence from U.S. spy agencies, Ukraine’s offensive in the Kursk region faltered, and its troops were soon forced to pull back. Zelensky did not blame the Americans for that reversal. In an interview last March, a couple of weeks after the U.S. resumed sharing intelligence and supplying other military aid, he declined to say whether Trump’s envoys had threatened to block Starlink access.

“There were these reports that Starlink could be turned off, but I don’t know how true that was,” Zelensky told me. Even the possibility of such a threat, he added, “has certainly pushed us to look for alternatives, and we have been doing that.” But Ukraine has not yet found a system that works nearly as well as Starlink. Any attempt to shut it off, Zelensky said, “would be very sensitive for us.” I asked him to be more specific: How sensitive exactly? The president stared at me for a long moment and drew out his words for emphasis. “I think it would be very sensitive.”

The sensitivity came into focus this month, when Musk intervened in the war once again. As part of Fedorov’s plan to create a whitelist of Starlink users, SpaceX had restricted access to the system in Ukraine. By coincidence, I was due to embed that week on a mission with a Ukrainian drone unit, whose commander contacted me at the last minute with some worrying news: The unit’s Starlink terminals had stopped working as normal. Whenever its drones flew faster than 80 kilometers per hour, their Starlink connection would cut off.

The disruption had forced his unit—and many others throughout the war zone—to ground its drones until their Starlink terminals could be registered with SpaceX. “We’ve already submitted everything, and we expect the limitation to be lifted tomorrow,” he wrote to me on February 1. Within a few days, the whitelist system was up and running, and the Starlinks approved for flight were back in operation across Ukraine.

Meanwhile, Russian drone units were scrambling to find a way around the ban. Their agents tried to bribe Ukrainians to register their Starlink terminals to comply with the whitelist. Earlier this month, a Ukrainian couple living in the region of Odesa was arrested for agreeing to register a Starlink for the Russians in exchange for $30, according to the SBU, which said in a statement that the couple face life imprisonment if convicted.

In a separate case, Ukrainian cyberoperatives created a fake Starlink registration system and invited Russian soldiers to use it for a fee. The scam reportedly tricked Russian drone operators into giving away the location of their Starlink terminals, allowing Ukrainian artillery and drones to target them. In a week of work, “we received data on 2420 enemy Starlinks and the exact positions of the enemy,” the hackers, known as the 256th Cyber Assault Division, said in a statement on social media. (Their claim could not be independently verified.)

For the moment, Ukraine seems to have the upper hand against the Russians, at least when it comes to battlefield communications. Fedorov, the defense minister, has publicly expressed his gratitude to Musk for giving Ukraine that advantage, and Musk has pledged to continue his support. “Looks like the steps we took to stop the unauthorized use of Starlink by Russia have worked,” Musk wrote on X. “Let us know if more needs to be done.”

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 8:12 PM

_______ Enter who gives a fuck emoji here.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Friday, February 27, 2026 8:54 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

THGR, SECOND... I'm not arguing with hopium and bullshit bc it's impossible to argue with stupid. Either Russia will win, or it won't. I don't expect it to be soon, but I'm certain it will happen, and if it does all your outbursts and psyops will have been for nothing.

And to reiterate what I posted a long time ago: If anyone reaches for nukes first, it'll be the west.

-----------

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

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Friday, February 27, 2026 8:56 PM

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

Russia declares large-scale alert for first time during war: What is known

Fri, February 27, 2026 - 21:30

Author: Kateryna Shkarlat

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-declares-large-scale-alert-for-
first-1772220647.html

For the first time since the start of the full-scale invasion, Russia has announced a large-scale missile threat affecting at least 13 regions of the country simultaneously, according to a statement from Andriy Kovalenko, head of the Center for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine (RNBO). https://t.me/akovalenko1989/10458

According to Kovalenko, authorities in Tatarstan, Bashkortostan, Chuvashia, Udmurtia, as well as several regions — Samara, Ulyanovsk, Penza, Saratov, Orenburg, Sverdlovsk, Rostov, and Kursk — were warned about a possible missile attack. In addition, the alert was issued in Perm Krai.

He emphasized the unprecedented nature of this event for the aggressor country.

"In 13 regions of the Russian Federation, a missile threat was announced simultaneously. In eight of them, this happened for the first time since the beginning of the war," said the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation.

Details of the incident

Kovalenko noted that most of the mentioned regions do not border Ukraine and are located deep within Russian territory.

The situation caused significant attention because it covered a vast area at once, forcing local authorities to respond to a potential threat from the Ukrainian Defense Forces.

Attacks deep inside Russia

Recently, Russian territory has increasingly become the target of drone attacks, striking sites far from the front line. In particular, SBU drones attacked facilities in Tatarstan located more than 1,200 km from the border.

Moreover, following a successful operation by Ukrainian special services in the same region, a key oil refining unit caught fire in Tatarstan, causing significant damage to the aggressor country’s energy sector.

Earlier, "unknown Shaheds" in Tatarstan also disrupted Maslenitsa (Shrovetide) celebrations, forcing local authorities to introduce emergency security measures.

In addition to remote regions, enterprises in central Russia have also come under attack.
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/drones-attack-chemical-plant-in-russia
-s-1772011862.html

Recently, drones targeted a chemical plant in the Smolensk region that is involved in Russia’s military-industrial complex.

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