Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Friday, May 1, 2026 07:19
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Friday, April 24, 2026 8:05 AM

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

Ukrainian forces continue to strike Russian air defense assets in Russia. Ukrainian Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) Commander Major Robert “Magyar” Brovdi reported that Ukrainian forces struck a Russian Tor-M2 air defense system in Bryansk Oblast overnight on April 22 to 23.[20]

Brovdi stated that Ukrainian USF drone operators have struck a total of 22 Russian air defense systems in Russia and occupied Ukraine thus far in April 2026.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-april-23-2026/

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

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Friday, April 24, 2026 8:28 AM

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

Russia spent 20 years hardening Ukraine by accident. Europe won’t get that gift.

Two decades of hybrid pressure built the Ukraine that stopped Russian tanks in 2022. Moscow has drawn the lesson. NATO’s eastern flank should assume it has months, not decades.

By Olga Chiriac, Nicholas Krohley | 24/04/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/24/russia-spent-20-years-hardening
-ukraine-by-accident-europe-wont-get-that-gift/

For more than twenty years, Russia ran an unrelenting hybrid warfare campaign against Ukraine—patient, sustained, multi-dimensional. It was, in the end, self-defeating.

European governments have spent the same twenty years preparing to be on the receiving end of something like it. They may not get twenty years. Moscow has now watched where that playbook led—a hardened Ukrainian military, a society that cohered under pressure, a war Russia is losing—and has every reason to reach for something faster against NATO's eastern flank.

Russian methods in Ukraine were varied and overlapping: political subversion, economic pressure, cyberattacks, information operations, and the slow corruption of a political class.

Narrowly judged, it worked. Ukraine's economy was repeatedly disrupted. Its politics were penetrated. Donbas tied down the military, produced refugees, and absorbed national attention. Western investors kept their distance. Moscow pursued clear objectives and "red lines"—sometimes strategically, sometimes opportunistically, almost always patiently. Ukraine stayed poor, divided, and, as the Kremlin read it, manageable.

Manageable is not subdued. That is where the doctrine broke.

(NATO’s generals warn of war by 2029. Europe won’t be ready until 2035.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/07/natos-generals-warn-of-war-by-2
029-europe-wont-be-ready-until-2035/ )

By 2022, Moscow had concluded that hybrid pressure would not deliver what it most wanted: keeping Ukraine inside the Russian orbit and out of Western institutions. The Euromaidan revolution, the EU Association Agreement, deepening military cooperation with NATO and the United States—all of it pointed in one direction, and the direction was away.

So Russia abandoned the "sub-threshold" game and reached for what it thought would settle the question: a full invasion.

What it hit was not the hollowed-out state twenty years of pressure were supposed to have produced. It was a country that had been forged by that pressure. Ukraine had rebuilt its military—much of it on Western assistance unlocked, ironically, by Western alarm over Russia's hybrid aggression. It had hardened its networks. It had walked its energy sector out of Russian dependency. Civil society had the institutional reflexes and grassroots muscle that come from two decades of adversarial pressure.

The citizens, by the time the tanks moved, had already decided what kind of country they wanted. Putin—this is the line everyone repeats now—turned out to be the greatest catalyst of modern Ukrainian nationalism. A nationalism fully cut loose from its Soviet past. With, at this point, no meaningful tie to Russia or Russianness.

Kyiv was supposed to fall in three days. Four years on, Ukraine is still fighting. The hybrid attacks have not stopped—the power grid gets hit again every winter—but Ukrainians have absorbed that into daily life and not shifted on the fundamentals. At the political level, Zelenskyy has shown a maturity few expected, most recently by closing a deal with Saudi Arabia in the middle of a war in Iran. Kyiv is behaving like a serious Western player. The EU, by contrast, is being mocked for its statements of concern.

It would be naive to think Moscow has not absorbed what happened here. Prolonged hybrid warfare, however tactically satisfying, risks making your eventual enemy stronger. It gives them time. It gives them reasons. It hardens institutions. It builds international sympathy, and sympathy, eventually, becomes materiel. If the goal is conquest or capitulation, patience may be the worst option on the menu.

(Ukraine fired its NATO trainers. The alliance is running out of time to learn why.
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/03/31/ukraine-fired-its-nato-trainers
-the-alliance-is-running-out-of-time-to-learn-why/ )

And the ground has shifted in ways that make faster action easier to imagine, not harder. The rules-based order that imposed at least some friction on overt territorial aggression is unraveling in real time. The current American administration has shown, across several files, that unilateral action in pursuit of national interest is an acceptable instrument again and sometimes a productive one. How Moscow reads all this is still unclear. The signal it is receiving is not. Decisive action is back on the table. "You can just do things," as the phrase goes now.

A core driver of Soviet grand strategy during the Cold War was the fear of surprise. The Nazi invasion of June 1941 and the Great Patriotic War remain foundational experiences—for the state, and for the people. Hardliners in Moscow are gaining ground, and they may yet shift the calculus of a president who has so far leaned on the language of deterrence and strategic restraint.

European planners should be treating this convergence with more urgency than they currently are. If Russia turns next to the Baltic states, or Finland's long border, or another soft edge, there is no reason to assume it will slow-play the way it slow-played Ukraine.

Twenty years of probing before committing? Why would the Kremlin hand a second adversary the same gift?

The decades of pressure that accidentally built Ukrainian resolve and Ukrainian capability will not be extended to NATO's eastern flank. European governments, militaries, and critical infrastructure operators need to achieve in years—perhaps in months—what Ukraine built over decades. Tallinn and Helsinki do not have twenty years. They may not have two.

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

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Friday, April 24, 2026 1:27 PM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ukraine will never get on its feet until it tackles corruption. Same with India. Same with the USA. When the monied get control of government nothing good happens.

-----------

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

You mean like Russia, right comrade?

T

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Saturday, April 25, 2026 7:58 AM

SECOND

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

EU just held its first summit without Orbán, and discovered his obstruction was covering deeper divisions

Without him in the room, diplomats acknowledged behind closed doors that Orbán had long absorbed the blame for conflicts that were never really his alone.

By Olena Mukhina | 24/04/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/24/eu-just-held-its-first-summit-w
ithout-orban-and-discovered-his-obstruction-was-covering-deeper-divisions/

This week’s EU summit in Cyprus took place in a noticeably calmer atmosphere without Viktor Orbán, who is set to leave office after losing the election. For 16 years, he had been one of the main sources of tension within the European Union, Politico reports.

However, his absence did not resolve underlying issues — if anything, it exposed them.

Europe without “convenient scapegoat”

Diplomats at the summit acknowledged behind the scenes that Orbán had long served as a kind of scapegoat for internal conflicts.

Now, without him, the EU is forced to confront its differences more openly and honestly.

1. Ukraine: fast-track membership or cautious realism

One of the first major divisions emerged over Ukraine’s EU membership. Some leaders support accelerating Kyiv’s integration, while others urge caution.

Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic, speaking in the presence of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, emphasized the need to consider “realities”, a signal that consensus remains out of reach.

2. Energy under pressure: sanctions or economic survival

Another sharp debate focused on energy policy. Europe faces a dual challenge:

• fuel shortages amid escalating tensions around Iran

• the need to maintain and strengthen sanctions against Russia

This creates a direct dilemma between economic stability and political commitments.

3. Endless debates: budget, strategy, and future of EU

Even without Orbán, EU leaders continued lengthy discussions over budget priorities, development strategy, and the Union’s long-term direction.

In effect, the summit demonstrated that the EU’s core problem is not individual politicians, but deeper structural divisions among member states.

4. Russia plays its violin at the Cyprus meeting

Earlier, the Center for Countering Disinformation reported that Russia is attempting to organize staged protests in Cyprus aimed against EU policy, the decision to allocate a €90 billion loan to Ukraine, and to discredit President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

The “protests” are reportedly planned to run through 25 April under the guise of anti-war slogans. However, this reflects a typical Russian tactic of shifting responsibility for the war onto Ukraine, the EU, and NATO. The central message is expected to demand an “immediate halt to EU funding of the war in Ukraine.”

Through such provocative actions, the Kremlin seeks to undermine support for Ukraine and trigger divisions within the European Union.

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

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Sunday, April 26, 2026 6:30 AM

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

“We lack a theory of victory for Ukraine,” said Claudia Major, a defense expert with the German Marshall Fund. The idea was to put enough pressure on Russia to change its calculus, “but we never gave the Ukrainians enough to do that. Now we just try to keep the Ukrainians in the game until something in Moscow changes — someone dies or is thrown out the window or the economy collapses. But it’s not a strategy.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/25/world/europe/ukraine-russia-europe-
european-union.html

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

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Sunday, April 26, 2026 7:01 AM

SECOND

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

The New Revolution in Military Affairs

How Ukraine is driving doctrinal change in modern warfare.

By Andriy Zagorodnyuk
Published on Apr 20, 2026

https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2026/04/ukraine-russia-war-chan
ging-warfare-practice-military-strategy

____________

I would read the whole piece as it's detailed and extremely well reasoned.

It is fascinating to see Ukrainian thinking expand on this subject. They are now, arguably, the intellectual leaders in devising machine-based modern war strategies. You can learn far more from them than from reading what is being written by American think tanks and defense leaders on the subject.

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

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Monday, April 27, 2026 6:12 AM

SECOND

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

Ukrainian action thriller billed as Saving Private Ryan for the drone age

Killhouse is based on real-life story of civilian couple saved from battlefield by Ukrainian drone operators

By Luke Harding | Sun 26 Apr 2026 00.00 EDT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/26/ukrainian-action-thrille
r-billed-as-saving-private-ryan-for-the-drone-age

It is being billed as Ukraine’s answer to Saving Private Ryan, updated for an age of drones.

The war movie Killhouse is an action thriller which shows off the latest in battlefield technology. Released this week, it features cameos by figures well known in Ukraine, including the nation’s former military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov. One missing person is Donald Trump. The film is conveniently set in 2024, when Washington and Kyiv were allies.

Its director, Liubomyr Levytskyi, said he was inspired by a real life story, when a couple trying to rescue relatives came under Russian attack. The man was badly wounded. A Ukrainian military unit nearby sent in a drone with a piece of paper. It said: “Follow me.” The woman followed the drone, dodging mines and bullets. Russian soldiers threw her unconscious husband into a trench. Incredibly, he survived.

“A friend of mine, a journalist, rang me and said: ‘Liubomyr, I’ve got this story – it’ll give you goosebumps.’” Levytskyi said. He added: “I was like: ‘Well, of course it will. I’ve seen so many of these stories already.’ It’s very hard to impress me with a story. Then I saw footage from the rescue operation. I couldn’t believe my eyes that this is real.”

The director made a 30-minute documentary, Follow Me, which he said got wide attention. “I realised that this story really strikes a chord, and people get it. Drones in general, well, they’re something new. And I thought, right, this story needs to be made into a film.”

The ensuing two-and-half hour film was shot last year in the Kyiv region. Levytskyi said he took artistic licence with the plot, adding a 12-year-old girl kidnapped by Russians. Scenes take place in the White House situation room, in occupied eastern Ukraine and a farmhouse in a deadly grey zone. There is a shootout and car chase in downtown Kyiv.

The US journalist Audrey MacAlpine – who plays a version of herself – said filming had to stop on several occasions. “There were air raid alerts. We had to hide. It was a war within a war,” she said. The actor Denis Kapustin said some cast members would nap in a bomb shelter, waiting for the threat to pass. Of the blurring of fiction and reality, he said: “The movie is totally meta and postmodern.”

Kapustin said Killhouse captures the complicated multi-level nature of war today. “It’s a race for technological superiority,” he added. Soldiers took part alongside professional actors, with pyrotechnics used to simulate explosions. After filming ended, Kapustin joined the real-life unit in which his character serves, the 3rd Assault Brigade, a part of the 3rd Army Corps.

He is now a drone operator. In one scene, a group of Ukrainian special forces soldiers clear a building, shooting dead many Russians. Kapustin acknowledged that the war is fought at a distance across much of the frontline, but said street-to-street fighting takes place in shattered eastern towns such as Vovchansk. “It’s realistic. The plan is not to lose people,” he said.

The reaction from Ukrainian audiences has been positive. “It’s interesting to see people from the news such as Budanov on screen,” Mariia Hlazunova, who worked for the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine’s film archive, said at this week’s Kyiv premiere. She added: “It’s like fiction mixed with fact. The film is super-patriotic, which is as it should be. There are a few cheesy moments. Overall it does a really good job.”

Ukraine’s two main intelligence agencies, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine (DIU), were involved in the production. They provided US Humvee and MaxxPro vehicles as well as a Black Hawk helicopter. The drama showcases Ukraine’s latest homemade drones, such as a catapult-launched reconnaissance model known as Shark.

The film’s makers say it is the first feature in cinema history to be use footage taken by real combat drones. They are preparing an English-language version for distributors in the US and are considering creating a four-episode version for streaming platforms such as Netflix. Killhouse was made without state support and had a $1.1m budget.

Like Saving Private Ryan, the story has a moral question at its heart: is it worth sacrificing many lives to save one person, in this case a stolen child? According to Ukraine’s army media unit, Killhouse depicts “something the world often misses in the daily flood of frontline updates”. “Ukrainian soldiers are not just fighting to hold territory. They are crossing into grey zones to bring civilians home,” it said.

Levytskyi suggested that the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, badly underestimated Ukraine’s resilience and will to survive when he launched his 2022 full-scale invasion, thinking his armed forces could overwhelm Kyiv in a few days. More than four years later, the war continues. “The enemy is very afraid when Ukrainians are united. That is a fact,” the director said.

Additional reporting by Jake Jacobs

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

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Monday, April 27, 2026 4:57 PM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Kremlin anticipates operation to end soon, maybe within "days".
https://www.rt.com/russia/553495-operation-ukraine-end-days-kremlin/

The only military onjective that is within "days" is the destruction of a large part of Ukraine's army in SE Ukraine.

Meanwhile, I've been looking for General Gerasimov in the news, and he is nowhere to be found, indicationg a possible planning/military intelligence failure. (Based on human intel disinfo about the morale of the Ukie army and/or the "dug in" nature of Ukie positions).

I have no doubt that Russia could "win" the entire Ukraine, but what would "winning" look like? If Mariupol is any indication it would require Russian army losses, the destruction of alot of civilian infrastructure (which Russia would be responsible for fixing) and overseeing a resentful people. Cost v reward doesn't pencil out.

I think Russia will aim for achieving most of its goals by splitting off SE and coastal Ukraine and negotiating neutrality from "rump" Ukraine. Being practical.

Meanwhile, if Russia's other goals in this hybrid war were to

expose the west's hatred of Russia and Russians and solidify the Russian populatin
expose the risky nature of dollar-denominated assets
split the world and commit China to the Russian side
fully divorce Russia's economy and finances from the west

I'd say ... job well done.

-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake

That's funny, guess again.

T

RUSSIA OPEN REVOLT BEGINS: BLOGGERS AGAINST PUTINISM Vlog 1392: War in Ukraine

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Tuesday, April 28, 2026 7:25 AM

SECOND

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

The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) issued a response to concerns about its ongoing issues with Russia’s Unmanned Systems Forces (USF) recruitment drive, which has reportedly attempted to fill recruitment quotas using Russian university students. The Russian MoD held a joint meeting with the Russian Ministry of Science, Ministry of Science and Higher Education, and heads of Russian universities and educational associations on April 27 on the “principles and conditions” for recruiting Russian students to the USF and rejected reports that Russian universities have been expelling students en masse to then coerce the students into signing USF contracts with the MoD.[1] . . .

The MoD is likely attempting to mitigate concern around its recruitment campaign of Russian university students that it launched in December 2025-January 2026 to ensure it is still able to recruit military personnel from students.[5] Russia’s overall recruitment rates are stressed by rising casualty rates, and Russian students likely fear signing a contract only for the Russian military command to transfer them from a USF unit to high-casualty assault units. Russian Minister of Science and Higher Education Valery Falkov reportedly directed large universities in early 2026 to ensure that at least two percent of students sign contracts with the MoD.[6] Russian milbloggers criticized the ineffectiveness of the MoD’s recruitment campaign for the USF as of late March 2026 due to the worry that students will be transferred from their USF units to assault units.[7]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-april-27-2026/

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

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Tuesday, April 28, 2026 9:28 AM

SECOND

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

Update on Tuapse, Russia: The refinery is burning at 3 different points.

Video here: https://imgur.com/gallery/update-on-tuapse-russia-refinery-is-burning-
least-3-different-points-mQuNqGz

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

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Tuesday, April 28, 2026 3:43 PM

SECOND

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

Kim lauds North Korean troops who died by suicide during fighting in Kursk Oblast

Kim Jong Un said suicide was common among North Korean soldiers who fought in Kursk Oblast.

By Alex Stezhensky | April 28, 2026, 07:31 AM

https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/kim-praises-north-korean-troops-who-
died-by-suicide-in-kursk-oblast-fighting-50603762.html

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un praised troops who took their own lives rather than surrendering while fighting Ukraine’s Defense Forces in Kursk Oblast, Bloomberg reported on April 28.

Kim made the remarks at the unveiling of a memorial to North Koreans killed in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Speaking to the families of fallen soldiers, Kim twice mentioned troops who “without hesitation” chose to detonate explosives “to defend the great honor.”

“They did not expect any reward, although they performed outstanding feats. They died heroic deaths,” he added.

On April 27, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un said his country would continue to “fully support” Russia’s policy of “defending its sovereignty, territorial integrity and security interests.”

Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency said on Feb. 4 that North Korean troops were stationed in Russia’s Kursk Oblast as of January 2026. They have been carrying out strikes with tube artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems, conducting aerial reconnaissance and practicing modern combat tactics, including the use of drone technology.

Yonhap reported on Feb. 13, citing South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, that about 6,000 North Korean soldiers fighting alongside Russian occupation forces had been killed or wounded in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

It also reported that about 10,000 North Korean troops and 1,000 engineering units are currently deployed in Russia’s border region of Kursk.

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

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Wednesday, April 29, 2026 6:45 AM

SECOND

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

Russia’s War Boom Masks an Economic Implosion

Record-low unemployment is the result of millions of missing workers.

By Alexey Kovalev | April 28, 2026, 8:11 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/04/28/russia-putin-war-ukraine-economy-
industry-labor-shortage-demographic-implosion/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921

Earlier this year, the Alabuga industrial complex in Russia’s Tatarstan region released a series of job recruitment ads aimed at Russian teenagers. The company promised the children full-time wages significantly above the national average to assemble Geran attack drones—Russian clones of Iranian Shaheds that have been terrorizing Ukrainian civilians almost nightly for the past four years. The recruitment campaign was a simultaneous admission of two things: that Alabuga is not the vocational training institution it claimed to be in earlier ads and how severe Russia’s worker shortage has become. Competition with the military for labor has become severe enough that recruiting children into weapons manufacturing is now done openly rather than hidden and denied.

Alabuga has attracted international attention before. Its recruitment practices have been described by investigators and Ukrainian intelligence services as bordering on human trafficking: Young women from across Africa, Asia, and Latin America were lured with promises of study programs or civilian factory work, only to be assigned to drone assembly lines under strict curfews and oppressive conditions. Alabuga is not an anomaly but just the visible edge of a systemic crisis. Russian President Vladimir Putin presents record-low unemployment—the official rate is currently 2.1 percent—as proof of a dynamic war economy. The reality concealed by the ultra-low jobless rate is that Russia’s manufacturing sector was short nearly 2 million workers in 2025, according to the Russian labor and trade ministry, with the overall deficit of workers officially projected to reach more than 10 million by the end of the decade.

Russia’s military industry—also acutely short of skilled workers despite being prioritized by the Kremlin—does not just consume the available workforce but has pushed wages beyond what civilian employers can match. Some factories producing weapons receive lavish state subsidies and the right to offer draft deferments to recruits as a non-monetary incentive; a welder who takes a job at Kalashnikov is not going to be building a clinic, but he also cannot be mobilized. Farms, civilian manufacturing, infrastructure companies, and other non-military but critical parts of the economy have no equivalent offer. On top of that, state-owned employers are actively encouraged to cannibalize their own workforce in order to satisfy the military’s hunger for more bodies to send into useless assaults at the front. Russia’s agriculture sector alone is losing an estimated 150,000 employees each year due to old age, according to Russia’s minister of agriculture, but the widening wage gap between military and civilian industries is also adding to the crisis, In the Volga and Ural regions, where arms manufacturing is concentrated, wage inflation has run at 30 percent to 60 percent since 2022, said Russia’s minister of labor and industry. The result is a bifurcated economy: a defense sector running three shifts and still understaffed; and a civilian economy quietly contracting in the sectors that feed, move, and maintain the country while sustaining the war.

While much exacerbated by the invasion, the labor crisis predates it. The Kremlin’s botched COVID response alone cost Russia an estimated 1 million excess deaths. The continuing demographic collapse is so severe that in 2025, the national statistics office, Rosstat, stopped releasing monthly birth statistics. It’s hard to see this as anything but an attempt to prevent the kind of straightforward arithmetic that would allow anyone to calculate, in real time, how many more Russians are dying than being born—and how many surplus deaths are attributable to the war. The suppression of demographic data goes hand in hand with the suppression of casualty figures. Both are attempts to manage a reality that the numbers, if allowed to become public, would make undeniable.

The war itself has compounded the damage in ways that no recruitment drive can easily reverse: hundreds of thousands of working-age men killed or permanently disabled at the front; somewhere between 500,000 and a million more—disproportionately educated and economically active—who left Russia after the start of the war and have not come back. The civilian economy now competes for whoever is left against a defense sector offering wages three to four times the regional average, not to mention a military that offers signing bonuses worth several years’ income in the poorer oblasts.

While promoting a rabidly Russian-supremacist ideology to justify the invasion and running a domestic anti-migration campaign, Russia is now forced to import even more foreign workers. But the once reliable pool of migrants has been running dry, not least due to Russia’s own actions. State-controlled media spent years blaming all crime and other social ills on migrants, a campaign that culminated in the crackdowns of 2024, when thousands of Uzbek and Tajik workers were detained, harassed, and deported in a wave of xenophobic enforcement. Migration from Central Asia, which had provided Russia with a large, cheap, often precarious workforce for decades, has collapsed: Workers who were once willing to absorb poor conditions and irregular pay now have alternatives in the Gulf states and Southeast Asia. Central Asian governments have watched too many of their citizens get forcibly recruited into the Russian military and die in Ukraine to be enthusiastic about encouraging the flow. Russia’s nativist turn didn’t just alienate its neighbors, it destroyed its own local labor supply chain.

With the twin pressures of dwindling domestic recruitment into the army and factories, Russia is forced to look for both soldiers and workers abroad. According to Ukrainian prisoner-of-war data, more than 27,000 foreign nationals were fighting for Russia in March, up from 18,000 in November. On the civilian side, the number of work permits issued to Indian nationals alone rose from some 5,000 in 2021 to more than 10 times that number in 2025, according to Russian interior ministry data cited by Bloomberg. Putin’s December visit to New Delhi was partly a labor recruitment summit: Officials signed an agreement to streamline temporary migration procedures, and Russian agencies have since opened training centers in Chennai to prepare candidates before deployment. Russia is also running bilateral labor agreements with Sri Lanka and opening recruitment offices in Myanmar.

The military and civilian pipelines, however, are fishing in the same waters using the same methods and networks from Nairobi to Hyderabad. A young man in Kathmandu watching a YouTube channel that promises construction or security guard work has no reliable way to know whether the job at the end of the process is at a building site in Qatar, at a missile assembly line in Russia, or on a battlefield in Ukraine. And the Russian military’s practice of sending foreigners straight to the front line after signing a contract in a language they don’t understand, with little or no training, is poisoning labor recruitment despite the significantly larger demand for workers than soldiers. Of the thousands of Indian nationals who traveled to Russia for work, only a few hundred ended up in active military service, according to India’s Ministry of External Affairs. But those cases have generated enough diplomatic friction to threaten the entire labor relationship, with Prime Minister Narendra Modi personally complaining to Putin about the fate of Indians still trapped against their will in the Russian army. Nepal has gone further, banning its citizens from traveling to Russia for work entirely after dozens of Nepalis were killed in Ukraine. In January, Russia quietly issued a stop list to military recruiters that is supposed to halt enlistment of nationals from India, Kenya, Nepal, and dozens of other countries that Russia looks to as labor donors.

What makes the current shortage structurally irreversible, rather than merely severe, is the demographic layer beneath the war’s (and the pandemic’s) immediate damage. The workers now missing from Russia’s factory floors are not only the mobilized and emigrated. They are also the children never born during the 1990s collapse, when Russia’s birthrate fell by nearly half. That cohort is now in its late 20s and early 30s—precisely the age group that should be filling industrial and skilled-trade positions. Industry surveys published in the Russian trade press put the average age of a lathe operator at a Russian industrial enterprise above 45. Defense plants are running training programs that take a minimum of two years to produce a skilled specialist, but the war’s demand for bodies does not pause for vocational education. The demographic hole and the damage done to Russia itself by its war of choice are not sequential crises to be addressed one after the other. They are the same crisis, arriving simultaneously. The invasion that Putin insists on waging despite its obvious self-destructive nature is the reason Russia cannot address either.

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

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Wednesday, April 29, 2026 6:52 AM

SECOND

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

Russia has a new missile — here's what we know about the S-71K

by Polina Moroziuk

April 28, 2026 9:44 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-reveals-design-foreign-components-
of-russias-new-s-71k-missile/

Ukraine's military intelligence (HUR) has revealed details of a new Russian air-launched cruise missile, the S-71K "Kovyor," offering a closer look at its design and production.

On its War&Sanctions portal, the agency published a 3D model of the missile, along with a breakdown of its components. Two major takeaways are the missile's reliance on foreign-made electronics and its relatively simple construction.

According to HUR, the missile was developed by Russia's United Aircraft Corporation and was first used against Ukraine towards the end of 2025.

The S-71K was designed for integration with the Sukhoi Su-57, one of Russia's most advanced combat aircraft.

A simplified cruise missile design

The S-71K missile uses an OFAB-250-270 high-explosive fragmentation bomb weighing 250 kilograms as its warhead, mounted in the missile's forward section.

Ukrainian military historian and defense expert Andrii Kharuk told the Kyiv Independent that this approach reflects a broader shift toward simpler, lower-cost cruise missiles.

"Traditional cruise missiles are expensive," the expert said, referring to systems such as the Kh-101 and Kalibr.

"What we are now seeing is a concept of simpler, cheaper missiles that can be launched in greater numbers."

The missile's body is constructed from multilayer composite materials based on fiberglass, with internal elements made from aluminum alloys. Its onboard systems include a flight controller and an inertial navigation system based on relatively simple sensors.

Kharuk described such systems as a bridge between Shahed-type drones and conventional cruise missiles, combining lower costs with a strike capability greater than drones.

"They are designed to saturate air defenses," the expert said, adding that intercepting such targets may require more expensive air defense missiles rather than mobile fire groups.

The missile is powered by an R500 turbojet engine and is estimated to have a range of up to 300 kilometers, supported by a main fuel tank and two auxiliary tanks.

At the same time, the expert cautioned that production constraints remain uncertain.

"The main critical component is the jet engine," he said, noting that Russia has historically faced challenges in producing small turbojet engines at scale.

HUR added that Russia is considering adapting the missile for launch from the Sukhoi S-70 Okhotnik unmanned combat aerial vehicle.

Despite being designed for the Su-57, the expert said the missile is unlikely to be used only from that platform due to the small number of Su-57 aircraft in service, and could instead be deployed from more widely used aircraft such as the Su-34.

Reliance on foreign components

HUR said that "the overwhelming majority" of the missile's electronic components are of foreign origin, including parts produced in the United States, China, Switzerland, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, and Ireland.

"Continued access to foreign technologies and components allows the aggressor state to develop new weapons and scale their use in the war against Ukraine," the agency said.

Despite export restrictions and sanctions imposed on Russia after the full-scale invasion, investigations have repeatedly found Western-made microchips and electronics in Russian weapons used in Ukraine.

These components often enter Russia through intermediary countries, civilian supply chains, or front companies, all of which complicate enforcement efforts.

Ukrainian authorities have imposed sanctions on foreign firms and networks accused of supplying components for Russian missiles and drones, including companies operating through third countries such as China, the United Arab Emirates, and former Soviet states.

However, intermediaries frequently re-export restricted goods through global trading hubs, allowing dual-use technologies such as semiconductors to reach Russian defense manufacturers.

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

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Wednesday, April 29, 2026 9:11 AM

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

Germany Overtakes the US in Ammunition Production Capacity

Apr 28, 2026 at 11:12 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/germany-overtakes-us-in-ammunition-production
-capacity-11886409

Concerns over whether the U.S. under Trump would come to Europe's aid in the event of Russian aggression have fueled political momentum to make the continent's armed forces more formidable, particularly as European countries have been transferring ammunition and military equipment to Ukraine for the past four years.

Against this backdrop, NATO countries pledged in June 2025 to spend 5 percent of their gross domestic product (GDP) on their militaries and related infrastructure costs each year within the next decade. Several nations were not meeting the alliance's previous defense spending target of 2 percent of GDP ahead of last summer, the surge marking the most significant hike in military investment across Europe in decades.

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

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Thursday, April 30, 2026 6:17 AM

SECOND

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

“Russia has never seen this”: Russia’s central bank chief admits a 2.5 million worker deficit

Reserve down 2.5 million as the state squeezes small business and retrains war widows.

By Peeter Helme
29/04/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/04/29/russia-labor-floor-nabiullina-a
dmits-unprecedented-shortage/

Russia’s war economy has hit its labor floor, and the country’s central bank chief has now publicly admitted it.

“We have never, until now, in the history of modern Russia, lived with such a deficit of labor force.”

The labor reserve has fallen by 2.5 million workers since the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, audit firm FinExpertiza found in figures published this week. Bank of Russia chair Elvira Nabiullina confirmed the scale at the Alfa Summit on 28 April. “We have never, until now, in the history of modern Russia, lived with such a deficit of labor force,” she told the audience. “Never had this. And it affects the entire economic situation.”

Nabiullina has been the Kremlin’s most disciplined economic voice. She warned analysts in 2024 that labor was “almost exhausted.” Now she has named the ceiling. Vladimir Putin has avoided a second general mobilization since autumn 2022.

Wage-driven inflation persists and new tax hikes promise to slow the economy further.

Russia’s main tank manufacturer, Uralvagonzavod, began mass layoffs in November 2025, citing both sanctions and worker exhaustion. AvtoVAZ, the country’s largest carmaker, shifted to four-day weeks already in September 2025; Russian Railways announced 6,000 job cuts for 2026; Russian factories themselves cut their workforces for three consecutive months going into 2026, with production falling for a twelfth straight month, even as the same firms reported they could not find enough hands.

The Bank of Russia, which set its key rate at a record 21% in late 2024, cut it by five points through 2025—even as wage-driven inflation persists and new tax hikes promise to slow the economy further.

The Russian labor pool is collapsing. Where 2.5 million workers went

Russia’s labor reserve—the people without formal employment but ready, in principle, to take a job—has fallen from 7 million at the end of 2021 to about 4 million at the end of 2025, Russian outlet Izvestia reported, drawing on FinExpertiza analysis of Rosstat and federal employment service data.

The workforce will shrink by another 1.4 million in 2026.

That is a drop of nearly half. The reserve as a share of those employed has slid from 10% to 6%. In 2025 alone, 415,000 more workers vanished from the available pool. Rosstat now forecasts the workforce will shrink by another 1.4 million in 2026.

“Available labor resources are becoming fewer and fewer,” FinExpertiza president Elena Trubnikova said. Anastasia Gorelkina, who chairs the Sibirsky Delovoy Soyuz holding’s board, told Izvestia that some 2 million workers will need to be replaced annually through 2030 to keep pace with people leaving the workforce. The economy, she said, “literally took the available resources” through “defense orders, industrial restructuring, and logistics.”

Hundreds of thousands of Russians emigrated in the first years of the invasion.

The World Bank estimates Russia would need productivity growth of 3-4% a year to make up the gap—a rate the country has not hit since the Soviet collapse.

The army accounts for the largest share of the loss, The Moscow Times also reported, drawing on the same FinExpertiza data. Hundreds of thousands of Russians emigrated in the first years of the invasion. 1.5 million more were absorbed by the front: 300,000 in the autumn 2022 mobilization, then 500,000 contracts with the Defense Ministry in 2023, 450,000 in 2024, 420,000 in 2025.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates 325,000 of those men have been killed. Total casualties—killed, missing, severely wounded—reach 1.2 million, a record for any army in any war since 1945.

Russia’s birth rates have been below replacement since the 1990s.

The civilian economy is bleeding from the same wound. The Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs estimates the industry alone is now short two million workers. Moscow mayor Sergey Sobyanin has admitted to a 400,000-to-500,000-worker gap in the capital.

The Interior Ministry is short 170,000. Agriculture is short 130,000. Russia’s birth rates have been below replacement since the 1990s; the small generations born in that decade are now of working age, and there are not enough of them to replace those leaving the workforce.

The labor pool that historically backfilled the gap—Central Asian migrant workers from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan—has thinned in turn since the March 2024 Crocus City Hall attack, after which Moscow accelerated deportations and passed laws stripping citizenship from naturalized Russians who refuse to register for military service.

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

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Thursday, April 30, 2026 6:23 AM

SECOND

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

Specifically, what is causing Russia's labor shortage?

Answer: Russia’s offensive tactics, which are on full display in the fight for Sloviansk

With all attempts to win Donbas at the negotiating table failing, Moscow is preparing for an all-out summer campaign to take it by force.

by Francis Farrell
April 29, 2026 5:49 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/with-fresh-pressure-near-sloviansk-russias
-stop-start-offensive-nears-ukraines-fortress-belt/

For a long time, despite Russia's best efforts to break through, the defense of this sector was one of the most stable in Donetsk Oblast.

But over winter, with a renewed Russian push, quickly overrunning the city of Siversk, Ukrainian brigades in the area have been forced to pull back.

Now, with Russian first-person view (FPV) drones reaching Sloviansk for the first time, an intense summer campaign ahead, the brigade's soldiers are bracing themselves for what could be one of their toughest fights so far.

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

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Friday, May 1, 2026 7:07 AM

SECOND

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

Russian Security Council Deputy Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev emphasized Russia’s commitment to its war aims in Ukraine and claimed that Russia is in an existential conflict with the West immediately after Trump’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on April 29.[1]

Medvedev gave a speech at the Znanie Pervye (Education First) federal educational marathon on April 30 in which he labeled the United States as Russia’s main geopolitical rival and stated that Russia is in a conflict with the West that is “a question of existence” and will not end “within a generation.”[2]

Medvedev claimed that Russia’s victory in the war in Ukraine will bring stability to Russia and allow Russia to address its economic, demographic, and social issues.[3] Medvedev also rejected the ability of the United States to mediate peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia.[4]

Medvedev has frequently made outlandish statements that represent a more extreme view than the Kremlin itself is willing to publicly portray, and his articulation of these statements a day after a Putin-Trump phone call is likely intended to make Putin’s false claims about the battlefield situation and the supposed inevitability of a Russian victory appear rational in comparison to Western policymakers.[5]

Medvedev’s statements are likely also intended to reinforce to Russians the Kremlin’s justifications for continuing its war in Ukraine, namely that the United States is an adversary and that Russia is engaged in an existential war against the West, and to reassure the Russian population that Russia is and will continue to achieve all of its war aims.[6]

Other, more relatively moderate Kremlin officials also continue to reiterate Russia’s commitment to its war aims. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has continually stressed the need to address the so-called “root causes” of the war in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s shorthand to reiterate its maximalist demands for any peace agreement in Ukraine, as a precondition to a long-term peace agreement several times in April 2026, including on April 30.[7]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-april-30-2026/

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

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Friday, May 1, 2026 7:19 AM

SECOND

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

Russia is losing ground for the first time in 27 months. Ukraine’s drones might be why.

It’s increasingly evident that Ukraine’s mid- and long-range drone strikes are weakening Russian combat units.

by David Axe | May 1, 2026

Russia Matters, a project of Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, quantified what Ryan described as the "sputtering" Russian offensive. Borrowing data from the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for the Study of War, Russia Matters found that Russian forces suffered a loss of 67 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory in the month ending 28 April.

The Russians have actually been falling back, overall, for two months now. Russian forces gave up 31 square kilometers in March after gaining 119 square kilometers in February.

The important caveat, according to Russia Matters, is that the Russians' losses are net losses. Moscow's regiments have retreated from some settlements in southeastern Ukraine but, according to Ukrainian mapper DeepState, have advanced in 10 other settlements: some in the southeast and others along the most important axes in the east, including the Pokrovsk-to-Kramatorsk axis and the Chasiv Yar-to-Kramatorsk axis.

But losses are losses, and reason for optimism in Kyiv if they continue. There is evidence that Ukraine's drone campaign is working. "It seems Ukraine wants to use strategic drones as a game-changer," mapper Clément Molin explained.

Molin mapped 440 drone strikes in April alone: 330 mid-range strikes inside occupied Ukraine and another 110 long-range strikes inside Russia.

Mid-range strikes in the Russian logistical zone, stretching as far as 200 km from the disputed gray zone, have an immediate military impact as supply trucks, regimental headquarters and drone bases burn. Long-range strikes inside Russia damage factories and refiners in pursuit of longer-term economic impact.

More at https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/05/01/russians-falling-back/

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

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