REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Saturday, June 6, 2026 21:10
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Monday, June 1, 2026 3:23 PM

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Ending Russia's war before winter is realistic, Budanov says

By Kateryna Denisova | June 1, 2026 7:13 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/ending-russias-war-before-winter-is-realis
tic-budanov-says/

It is a realistic goal to end Russia's war against Ukraine before winter 2026, President's Office Head Kyrylo Budanov said on June 1, responding to a question from the Kyiv Independent.

Budanov's position aligns with recent remarks by President Volodymyr Zelensky, who said in a May 31 interview that as Moscow loses the initiative on the battlefield and Kyiv steps up long-range strikes inside Russian territory, the window for effective peace talks with Moscow will remain open until the winter.

When asked, Budanov agreed with that assessment.

"The president has tasked us with trying to end this war as quickly as possible. I can confirm that this is indeed his goal — to bring hostilities to an end as soon as possible, preferably before winter," Budanov said, speaking at the Architecture of Security Forum in Kyiv.

"As head of the President's Office, I certainly do everything I can to achieve the objective set by Ukraine's president."

Budanov described the aim as "absolutely right, timely, and well considered." According to him, a range of factors suggests there is hope that Russia could agree to a "certain proposal" to halt hostilities.

As a former spy chief, Budanov has often made bold forecasts about the war's outcome, not all of which have come true.

Speaking about the battlefield situation, Zelensky said earlier that Russia's territorial gains over the past month hadn't exceeded its losses, adding that "we need to find a diplomatic way to sit and to speak" before winter.

"But it depends (on) the pressure on (Russian President Vladimir) Putin, the pressure in his society, and I think that is increasing, the pressure by sanctions — not to lift them, to put more," the Ukrainian president said in an interview with CBS News.

The latest trilateral talks involving Ukraine, Russia, and the U.S. took place in mid-February. A follow-up meeting, first planned for late February and later pushed to early March, was canceled shortly before U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran shifted Washington's focus to the Middle East.

Russia's territorial demands remain the main obstacle to progress.

Ukraine maintains that freezing the current front line is the most realistic basis for a ceasefire. Russia, meanwhile, continues to insist that Ukrainian forces withdraw from parts of Donbas region as a precondition for any settlement — a demand Kyiv has rejected.

In a rare acknowledgment from Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in late May that the U.S.-mediated peace talks have effectively stalled.

Still, Budanov does not think the negotiations are at a deadlock.

"Certain processes are ongoing, though they are not fully public," he added.

According to the President's Office chief, U.S. President Donald Trump's envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, confirmed plans to visit Kyiv and Moscow "in the near future."

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

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Monday, June 1, 2026 3:31 PM

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Formula developed by long-dead British polymath shows one side nearing defeat in Ukraine

The iron law of warfighting mathematics shows the Ukraine war is only a few months away from a tipping point beyond which the losses of one side will snowball, leading inexorably to defeat.

Multipolarity | May 26, 2026

https://multipolaritypod.substack.com/p/the-formula-developed-by-a-lon
g-dead

Conclusion

Dr Powell’s model suggests that the war is rapidly nearing a tipping point. Ukraine is approaching the fulcrum beyond which the weight of the war tips its forces into rapid depletion, allowing the Russian military to start achieving much more significant territorial gains. In turn, this would lead to accelerated Ukrainian losses through the ruthless reality of the square law. This road heads toward an eventual Ukrainian collapse.

Ukraine’s effective combat power (a composite of manpower, machinery and munitions) is depleting, the model shows, at a net rate that outpaces its replenishment, while Russia’s holds steady or grows marginally. This imbalance, compounded by recent reductions in Western support, suggests a tipping point where Ukrainian force density thins below viability, triggering rapid territorial losses and operational collapse.

Based on his integrated projections from an updated model (as of 15 May), Dr Powell estimates window for this tipping point is 3-6 months from now (July-September 2026), followed by a 3-4 month cascade to functional exhaustion. Overall, this yields a 6-9 month horizon to “floodgates opening,” where advances accelerate from the current 0.3-1 km/day to 5-10 km/day, as seen in historical breakthroughs like the 2022 Kherson retreat. This non-linear result is the manifestation of the pitiless square law which Frederick Lanchester first codified into a usable model for military operations in 1916. But it boils down to this: Dr Powell’s model estimates Ukrainian collapse by early Spring next year (nine months from mid-May 2026) at the outside.

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

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Monday, June 1, 2026 4:01 PM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN





Signym, comrade, what's with this?

T

Russia's Last Defensive Line Just BROKE — 200km of Open Terrain Ahead | Ben Hodges



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Monday, June 1, 2026 8:53 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Yeah. Really, Sigs...


What's with dude using AI to make his fake battle scenes instead of paying a real artist to make his fake battle scenes?




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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 1:24 PM

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Russia’s monthly ballistic-missile production now exceeds Lockheed Martin’s PAC-3 production. And it takes 2 interceptors to stop one Iskander, says expert

Russia builds 70 ballistic missiles a month. Lockheed Martin builds 56 PAC-3 interceptors.

By Olena Mukhina | June 2, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/02/russias-monthly-ballistic-missi
le-production-now-exceeds-lockheed-martins-pac-3-production-and-it-takes-2-3-interceptors-to-stop-one-iskander/

Lockheed Martin delivered 620 PAC-3 MSE interceptors across all of 2025, which is about 56 per month. And in practice, the gap is wider than the production ratio suggests, because a single Iskander interception typically requires two to three PAC-3 missiles fired in salvo.

Ukraine consumes approximately 60 Patriot interceptors per month, and its Air Force describes the supply position as a "starvation ration."

The Iran war has drawn further from US Patriot stocks, with Trump administration officials reportedly warning allies that US weapons supplies to Ukraine could be interrupted in the coming months.

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

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Tuesday, June 2, 2026 9:02 PM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN





T

Russia's Military Collapse Is Now Irreversible



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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 6:13 AM

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NATO chief arrives in Kyiv the day after a mass Russian strike

By Martin Fornusek | June 3, 2026 10:59 am

https://kyivindependent.com/nato-chief-arrives-in-kyiv-day-after-mass-
russian-strike/

"What I want to achieve is that the burden is more evenly spread, that there is more burden sharing here. Because at the moment, it is only six or seven allies who are doing the heavy lifting," Rutte said at a meeting of NATO foreign ministers.

After U.S. President Donald Trump rolled back military aid for Ukraine, Kyiv's European allies have largely footed the bill to support Ukraine.

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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 6:45 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


THGR, I'm sure you'll never respond to this.
I listened to the first few minutes of your latest video, and it's just chock-full of unsupported statements.

Here's an example: Ukraine has the technological edge.

Really? Like?
Ok, Ukraine has drones.
So does Russia.
Ukraine supposedly has drones that talk to each other.
Russia appears to have that too.
Ukraine has a "flamingo" missile, which is a subsonic cruise missile or a big drone.
Russia has that, and supersonic and hypersonic versions as well.
Ukraine doesn't have artillery, or planes, or air dedenses.
Russia does.

IDK what this guy is talking about. But he doesn't explain.

Listen critically and ask yourself if you're hearing specifics or just blah blah blah.


-----------

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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 8:24 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ukraine doesn't have artillery, or planes, or air dedenses.
Russia does.
Really, Signym? Do you want to revise that first sentence? Or is it the whole truth in your opinion?

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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 8:24 AM

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Ukraine races to build a decentralized energy grid to withstand Russia’s winter attacks

“Our task is to build a system that is harder to destroy and easier to restore.”

By Alex Stezhensky | June 3, 2026, 06:56 AM

https://english.nv.ua/business/ukraine-builds-harder-to-destroy-energy
-system-after-russian-strikes-shmyhal-says-50613076.html

Shmyhal said the key metric is now recovery speed. That is why Ukraine is preparing a reserve stock of critical energy-system components ahead of next winter.

On Feb. 3, Russian troops launched their most powerful attack on Ukraine’s energy system since the start of the year. Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said Russian forces attacked eight Ukrainian oblasts, using several types of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles and drones to strike apartment buildings, combined heat and power plants, as well as CHP and thermal power plants that were operating solely to heat districts in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Dnipro.

Ukraine needs at least EUR 5.4 billion ($6.3 billion) to prepare for the 2026–2027 heating season, Shmyhal said during a meeting of the Ukraine Energy Coordinating Group, known as Energy Ramstein, on April 26.

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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 8:39 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Their winter attacks?

I thought Ukraine had this all buttoned up and the war was going to be over next week?


Ted said the guy with the AI thumbnails said so.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 8:41 AM

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Zelenskyy sets hard deadline on Patriot deliveries and warns of shake-up

The president is expecting responses from officials this week

By Liliana Oleniak | Wed, June 03, 2026 - 14:12

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/zelenskyy-sets-hard-deadline-on-patrio
t-deliveries-1780485120.html

Ukraine is facing a critical shortage of missiles for Patriot, NASAMS, and IRIS-T air defense systems. In many units, launchers are nearly out of ammunition, and Air Force representatives are forced to urgently request even 5–10 missiles.

Russian forces have increased the use of Zircon missiles during strikes against Ukraine. Last night alone, Russia launched eight such missiles; however, Ukrainian air defense was unable to intercept them because there wasn't any ammo in the right locations to shoot down the missiles.


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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 4:47 PM

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Unmanned Systems Forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine present: "How to say hello to St. Petersburg Economic Forum (i.e., Russian propaganda event) with nice fireworks."

Two videos are here: https://imgur.com/gallery/unmanned-systems-forces-of-armed-forces-of-u
kraine-present-how-to-say-hello-to-st-petersburg-economic-forum-i-e-russian-propaganda-event-with-nice-fireworks-WT9DXvz

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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 5:17 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Ukraine doesn't have artillery, or planes, or air dedenses.
Russia does.
Really, Signym? Do you want to revise that first sentence? Or is it the whole truth in your opinion?



You're right. I should correct the fat- finger.

-----------

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

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Wednesday, June 3, 2026 6:36 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


To summarize the current situation:

Ukraine is busy attacking civilians. They targeted a school dormitory at night with at least 7 drones, killing 21 students and wounding 41.

In retaliation, Russia struck Kiev with about a dozen missiles.

Meanwhile, Ukraine is targeting a road between Mariupol and Crimea. The road mostly carries civilian traffic, and as a result of remote mining managed to kill more civilians. Ukraine is causing a shortage of gasoline in Crimea, but not apparently affecting the southern front at all.

Yesterday Ukraine targeted Saint Petersburg, where the economic forum is being held, a civilian train, and a civilian bus.

In the Donbas, Russia occupies about half of the city of Konstantinovka and has Ukrainian troops in a deep pocket in the southern end of the city. Konstantinovka is the southernmost city of the Slaviansk- Kramatorsk- Konstantinovka agglomeration. This agglomeration is also being approached from the east. Russia is within 9 kilometers of Kramatorsk.

In Zaparozhye region, Russia, is within a kilometer of Orekhov, which is a strongly fortfied village protecting the city of Zaparozhye.

In the north, Kupiansk is occupied, and Russia is advancing all along the northern border.







-----------

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


-----------

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 6:54 AM

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


The Russian ultranationalist community presented scenarios for Russia’s military and geopolitical future at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) that likely somewhat differ from the Kremlin’s positions.

Russian business newspaper Kommersant reported on June 3 that Kremlin-affiliated Russian oligarch and Orthodox nationalist Konstantin Malofeev and Russian ultranationalist ideologue Alexander Dugin presented several “future scenarios” for Russia at SPIEF.[1] The presentation slides outlined “good,” “inertial” (continuing), and “bad” scenarios for 2036 and 2050 . . .

The “good” scenario includes the Russian occupation of Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv, and other Ukrainian cities and the collapse of the European Union (EU) by 2036 and other Russian narratives about alleged imminent victory in Ukraine.

The presentation’s “bad” scenario included a Russian military defeat in Ukraine, Ukraine joining NATO, the loss of Russian influence over post-Soviet countries by 2036, and the “colonization of Russia” by 2050.

The presentation’s “continuing” 2036 scenario speculated that Russia would use nuclear weapons if the military situation in Ukraine remained the same, effectively threatening that Russia would use nuclear weapons against Ukraine if the war continued on its current path.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-june-3-2026/

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 8:36 AM

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


From the Wall Street Journal

Russia’s elite is souring on the war. Putin doesn’t seem to care.

By Yaroslav Trofimov

Jun 03, 2026

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-elite-is-souring-on-the-
war-putin-doesn-t-seem-to-care/ar-AA24Mz5r

. . . Another hard-liner, historian and former Kremlin official Aleksey Chadaev, who runs the Ushkuynik drone-warfare research center, noted that pursuing the current course of war “is not just a path to ‘non-victory’, but to a full-scale defeat.” He has called for a pause so that Russia can reorganize itself for the next round.

Vasily Kashin, director of the Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies at Moscow’s Higher School of Economics, last month published a widely discussed piece in Russia’s foremost foreign-policy journal. He argued that Ukraine will inevitably remain an anti-Russian, pro-Western country, especially after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed or maimed in the war. He said the goal of installing a friendly regime in Kyiv—one of Putin’s original war objectives—is no longer realistic.

Pointing to the example of the U.S. and Israel’s war against Iran, Kashin said that even a major escalation, such as assassinating President Volodymyr Zelensky and Ukraine’s military and civilian leadership, would likely bring to power a “more active, ambitious and radical” generation of Ukrainian leaders. . . .

. . . “It seems that in the fifth year of the war, some people are starting to realize that continuing the war for another year or two doesn’t seriously improve Russia’s negotiating position. It is becoming clearer and clearer to them that it’s time to wrap it up,” said Alexander Gabuev, director of the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “Elite discussion on the matter is starting to be normalized, with all the loyalty caveats. But does Putin realize that he is in a dead end, and that the war now has diminishing returns? This we don’t know. Nothing shows that he has changed his mind.”

The nature of the heavily militarized Russian state makes it unlikely that Putin will listen to voices of reason, said Pavlo Klimkin, a former Ukrainian foreign minister. “War is the modus vivendi of this regime; it’s like riding a bicycle—if they stop, they fall,” he said. . . .

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 1:05 PM

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Vladimir Putin’s Second-Biggest Headache

With his war in Ukraine going badly, he may soon face another quagmire in Chechnya.

By Christian Caryl, a columnist at Foreign Policy and a former Moscow bureau chief for Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report.

June 4, 2026, 5:36 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/04/russia-putin-chechnya-kadyrov-suc
cession-war-ukraine-unrest/?tpcc=recirc_latest062921

Russian President Vladimir Putin has a lot to worry about these days. What he originally planned as a quick regime-change operation in Ukraine has now gone on longer than the Soviet Union’s fight against Nazi Germany, and Kyiv is increasingly bringing the war to the Russian heartland. (On June 3, guests at Putin’s showcase international forum in St. Petersburg awoke to the sight of blazing fires from Ukrainian drones.) The Russian economy is showing serious signs of strain. And even China, Putin’s most important friend and patron, has shown that it’s not willing to give Moscow unlimited support.

But there’s another problem brewing in the background—one that could produce serious instability at a time when Putin can least afford it. The Kremlin is confronting a potentially explosive succession crisis in Chechnya, the North Caucasus republic that has a long history of generating turmoil entirely out of proportion to its tiny size. The problem: Chechnya’s all-powerful leader, President Ramzan Kadyrov, 49, is suffering from a serious illness, probably terminal, that could remove him from the scene at any moment.

Kadyrov’s favored successor, his 18-year-old son Adam, is too young to assume the throne. Putin could try to keep the Kadyrov family in power by allowing Adam to exercise nominal control under the guidance of a trusted ally or even a regent from Moscow. But such a solution could turn out to be harder than it looks. Ramzan’s harsh rule over the past 22 years—prompting some to dub him the Kim Jong Il of the Caucasus—has left behind countless grievances in a clan-based culture with deeply ingrained blood feud traditions. He has also driven many of his rivals into exile, where they have been patiently waiting to even the score.

And over the past four years, another complicating factor has joined the mix: the war in Ukraine, where Chechens are fighting on both sides. The Ukrainians, who officially recognized Chechen independence from Russia in 2022, have been doing everything in their power to embolden the opposition to Kadyrov—knowing full well that sparking a new war in the republic would cause a massive drain on Russian resources at a time when Putin is already facing a dangerous new phase in his war on Kyiv.

The Ukrainians remember something that many Westerners have forgotten. Putin rose to the presidency on the back of his reputation as a ruthless suppressor of Chechen rebels in the late 1990s. The ex-KGB man boosted his popularity with Russian voters by promising to pursue Chechen separatists without mercy—“if we catch them in the toilet, excuse me, we will wipe them out in the shithouse,” as he once famously put it. In reality, he combined that tough-guy approach with pragmatic outreach to one of the leaders of the resistance movement: Akhmad Kadyrov, who served for six years as the republic’s top Muslim religious official.

Kadyrov had fought on the rebel side during the first Chechen revolt from 1991 to 1994, when Chechen nationalists took advantage of the weakness of the central government under then-President Boris Yeltsin. Chechen insurgents fought the Russian army to a standstill in a brutal conflict and declared de facto independence that lasted until 1999, when the Second Chechen War broke out.

Then-Prime Minister Putin took a hard-line course against the rebels on the battlefield. The Russians’ indiscriminate tactics, which killed countless civilians, previewed their brutality in their war on Ukraine. At the same time, Putin made overtures to Kadyrov, who had come to oppose the radical jihadis who were coming to dominate the independence movement. He and Putin gradually worked out a deal. If Kadyrov and allied clans could suppress the insurgency and recognize the Kremlin’s sovereignty, then Putin would allow the new ruler to run the place as he saw fit—an autonomy no other Russian province enjoys. When Akhmat Kadyrov was blown up by a bomb in 2004, power passed to his son Ramzan—who has kept a tight grip on it ever since.

Ramzan Kadyrov has managed to pacify his notoriously fractious kingdom through unremitting brutality. Human rights groups have accused him of torturing, killing, and abducting his critics (including journalists) and of deploying collective punishment against the families of his opponents. The United States, the European Union, and Britain have sanctioned him for overseeing the abuse and murder of LGBTQ+ people.

Most strikingly, Kadyrov has imposed an ultraconservative regime of sharia law, including the promotion of polygamy, which is outlawed in the rest of the Russian Federation. Putin might well have taken offense at this crass violation of his carefully cultivated image of a Christian traditionalist; instead, he has showered the Chechen dictator with accolades and cash. The Kremlin transfers $3.8 billion to the republic each year, making up around 92 percent of its total budget.

This amounts to a giant slush fund for Kadyrov that he wields according to his personal whim. Aside from financing his lavish personal lifestyle, he’s used it to build up his own security forces—totaling 33,000 in all and loyal solely to him. They could become a major factor in any post-Kadyrov transition. He’s dispatched many of them to bolster the Russian war effort in Ukraine—though by most accounts they have turned out to be more effective at posting videos of themselves than taking part in combat.

Indeed, recent statistics show that Chechnya has suffered the lowest war casualty rate of any province in the Russian Federation—which, said University of Texas professor Michael P. Dennis, shows just how much slack Putin is willing to give his minion. Dennis noted that Putin has demurred from criticizing even the most outrageous of Kadyrov’s moves, such as the appointment last year of his teenage son Adam as the head of the Chechen Security Council. Putin has also refrained from auditioning potential candidates for Kadyrov’s job.

These are striking omissions. Putin is perfectly happy to publicly berate or summarily fire other regional leaders when he sees fit—but he clearly regards the Kadyrov problem as one to be handled with delicacy. Ramzan Kadyrov himself is clearly worried about what comes after. His moves to appoint his children to high positions despite their obvious unpreparedness suggests that he’s in a hurry to shore up power for his heirs while he still can. In recent years, he’s also made a concerted effort to marry his own children to representatives of other leading clans, another move designed to safeguard his legacy for his progeny. (Not to mention their personal safety—Chechen disagreements can have a tendency to get nasty in a hurry).

Nor has Ramzan Kadyrov stopped there. Over the years, he has cultivated close ties to a number of potentates in the Islamic world— his most notable friend being Mohamed Bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the president of the United Arab Emirates. It turns out that this charm offensive goes beyond merely burnishing Kadyrov’s Islamic credentials. He’s also parked vast sums of money in the UAE and encouraged members of his clan to invest heavily in the Emirati real estate market. One of his nephews has already applied to obtain Emirati citizenship—and others appear likely to follow. Were the Kremlin to topple Kadyrov from power, he’s already got a safe haven well-prepared. If he dies before the succession is secured, his family will know where to go.

It is hard to imagine that anyone in the Kremlin harbors the illusion that a post-Kadyrov transition can be smoothly managed. Recall that Ramzan Kadyrov, after so many years of his father’s unchallenged rule, needed at least five years to subdue his enemies after he came to power—even though his father had thoroughly prepared the way. In 2008, four years after Ramzan Kadyrov took the throne, his troops fought a gun battle with guerrillas loyal to warlord Sulim Yamadayev, one of the Kadyrovs’ sworn enemies, that left 18 people dead. A year later, Yamadayev was shot dead in a Dubai parking garage.

The Kremlin knows this history well. Its Caucasus experts are undoubtedly working overtime on post-Kadyrov contingency plans. For now, though, one thing is for sure: The potential for serious volatility in Putin’s Russia is growing by the day.

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 3:37 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Nobody cares. Nobody has ever cared.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 5:52 PM

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


Has the Tide Turned Against Russia in the Ukraine War?

By Moscow Times Reporter and Bashir Kitachayev

June 4, 2026

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/04/has-the-tide-turned-against-
russia-in-the-ukraine-war-a92933

Ukraine last released official casualty figures in February, acknowledging that 55,000 of its servicemen had been killed.
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/ukraine/ukraine-55000-troops-killed-russ
ia-talks-zelenskyy-rcna257529

The website Ukraine Losses, which tracks military deaths using open-source information, estimates the number at more than 97,850. https://ualosses.org/en/soldiers/

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 6:56 PM

SECOND

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


Yes, Russia Is Losing the War in Ukraine
And Putin seems to be the last person not to know it.

By Cathy Young
Jun 03, 2026

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/yes-russia-is-losing-the-war-in-ukraine-p
utin-drones-trump

Virtually everyone now acknowledges that the Russian ground offensive in Ukraine is stalled.

A notable exception, of course, is Putin, who asserted only last week that “this situation” (a delicate euphemism for the war) is “nearing its conclusion” and then explained that his claim was based on “an analysis of what is happening on the battlefield”: “Our troops are advancing in every direction. Everyone can see it, every blessed day.”

Even many of Russia’s hawkish “milbloggers” reacted with extreme skepticism. Expatriate Russian journalist and YouTuber Michael Nacke says that there is now “a whole constellation of fairly popular [pro-war bloggers] who explain at some length why Russia isn’t winning, no matter what Putin may say.” Putin, in fact, may be genuinely deluded. The Institute for the Study of War suggests, on the basis of leaked documents from the Russian Ministry of Defense, that his optimism likely stems from “a false perception of the Russian military’s successes in Ukraine based on heavily exaggerated maps from the Russian high military command.” It’s Potemkin villages all over again.

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 7:46 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Heard that before.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 8:27 PM

SECOND

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


Source: Zelenskyy's open letter to Putin, published on the Office of the President's website on 4 June

Quote: "We have seen intelligence reports showing that you are now considering plans to continue the war into 2027 and 2028. We also know that you hope ballistic missiles will achieve for you what everything else has failed to achieve. You want to draw Belarus even deeper into this war, and we are now forced to prepare for that as well.

We see that you are trying to orchestrate something around Transnistria. Your propagandists threaten, in one way or another, every country neighboring Russia. Do you really want to go through all of this?"

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/04/8037819/

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

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 8:58 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Who's funding that big mouth? He ain't.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Thursday, June 4, 2026 10:53 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Source: Zelenskyy's open letter to Putin, published on the Office of the President's website on 4 June

Quote: "We have seen intelligence reports
From your very own spinmeisters?
Quote:
showing that you are now considering plans to continue the war into 2027 and 2028. We also know that you hope ballistic missiles will achieve for you what everything else has failed to achieve. You want to draw Belarus even deeper into this war, and we are now forced to prepare for that as well.

We see that you are trying to orchestrate something around Transnistria. Your propagandists threaten, in one way or another, every country neighboring Russia. Do you really want to go through all of this?"

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/04/8037819/


This is classic SECOND: Misrepresenting, and trying to give it credibility by referencing anonymous "them".

-----------

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:10 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

This is classic SECOND: Misrepresenting, and trying to give it credibility by referencing anonymous "them".
June 2, 2026

Changing fortunes

To understand how dramatically Ukraine’s prospects have changed, consider that in March, then-ODNI director Tulsi Gabbard, testified that the U.S. intelligence community believed that Russia had the “upper hand” in the conflict.

Now Ukrainian officials and other observers have begun to worry about a premature sense of victory among Ukraine’s foreign backers.

More at https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2026/06/ukraine-robots-winning/4
13902/?oref=d1-featured-river-secondary

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:19 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Now Ukrainian officials and other observers have begun to worry about a premature sense of victory among Ukraine’s foreign backers.



OOPS!

Sold the bullshit too hard, didja?

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:19 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


We're winning, but we're not really winning all that much.

Please give us more money.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:27 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Who's funding that big mouth? He ain't.
Fundamentally, Trumptards don't understand how a group of people can function effectively toward a common goal, unless there is a constant exchange of money and threats. The words "common goal" and "effective" and a whole bunch of higher concepts are meaningless to a Trumptard. It is why Trumptard families, even if there are only two people in the group, tend to self-destruct when placed under slight stress, unless there is cash flowing from one member to the next to grease the relationships.

Ukraine strips 8 military units of right to conduct basic training after inspections, Syrskyi says

By Jared Goyette | June 4, 2026 8:14 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/8-ukrainian-military-units-lose-right-to-c
onduct-basic-training-after-inspections-syrskyi-says/

Eight Ukrainian military units have lost the right to independently conduct basic training for new recruits following inspections in May, Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on June 4.

The inspections were conducted at 72 military units authorized to provide basic combined arms training at their own bases, Syrskyi said. Separate brigades and regiments were also instructed to review their capabilities and improve conditions and the curriculum for training.

"There are no untouchables," Syrskyi said. "The quality of military training must meet uniform high standards."

Syrskyi said Ukraine's military is continuing to update its basic training program to reflect the realities of the modern battlefield. The program now includes practical group exercises in detecting and destroying small drones, including copters and first-person-view (FPV) drones.

The changes follow previous efforts to overhaul military training as Ukraine faces a persistent manpower shortage and a battlefield increasingly dominated by drones.

Ukraine previously extended its basic combat course to 51 days and added modules on drone warfare, trench survival, and engineering. The military has also sought to move training underground as much as possible following a series of deadly Russian strikes on training grounds.

An April 2025 Kyiv Independent report detailed long-standing shortcomings in Ukraine's training system, with front-line commanders reporting that some new recruits arrived without basic survival skills needed for combat in a drone-heavy environment.

Syrskyi said professionalism and quality training were key to allowing Ukrainian forces to maintain an advantage over Russia despite Moscow's greater manpower resources.

He also linked training quality to commanders' treatment of troops.

"Where commanders care for their subordinates, improve living conditions, develop training facilities, and where instructors guide recruits and maintain constant feedback, the quality of training is higher and there are fewer cases of unauthorized absence from units," Syrskyi said.

Cases of soldiers going absent without leave (AWOL) have become a major challenge for Ukraine's military as it struggles to replenish infantry units after more than four years of full-scale war.

Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on Jan. 14 that around 200,000 Ukrainian soldiers were AWOL. Conflicts with commanders, exhaustion, psychological strain, resource shortages, and bureaucratic obstacles to transferring between units have contributed to Ukraine's growing AWOL and desertion crisis, according to soldiers, commanders, and other sources interviewed by the Kyiv Independent.

Syrskyi said Ukraine's military would continue to improve its basic training system, strengthen psychological training, as well as introduce additional measures aimed at preventing AWOL cases.

"Today, the lives of our soldiers and the effectiveness of combat missions depend on the quality of training," Syrskyi said.

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:38 AM

SECOND

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


America, the Inessential Nation

It turns out that Trump doesn’t have the cards

By Paul Krugman | Jun 05, 2026

https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/america-the-inessential-nation

On Feb. 28, 2025 Donald Trump berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy, president of Ukraine, for what he claimed was failure to show sufficient respect. “You’re not in a good position,” Trump declared. “You don’t have the cards right now.”

It was a spectacle that shamed America — Trump engaging in petty bullying of the leader of a nation fighting for its life against tyranny. If you have time, read the transcript or watch the video to see just how sickening it was. But worse was to come. Trump and his minions proceeded to cut off all financial aid to Ukraine:


They also began blocking shipments of U.S. weapons, even when other nations were willing to pay for them. And in August Trump held a meeting with Vladimir Putin in which, as the Russians see it, he offered to broker a deal that would give Russia control of a crucial fortress belt on Ukrainian soil.

It was a shocking betrayal of a democracy fighting for its freedom — and, in so doing, fighting for the freedom of Europe as a whole. Even some Republicans are ashamed. Yesterday 18 Republican members of the House broke ranks with their leadership and voted for a bill that would restore aid to Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia. But the bill has no chance of becoming law, because Trump is siding ever closely more with Putin in a war that is now well into its fifth year.

But a funny thing happened to Trump’s attempt to hand Ukraine over to his comrade in thuggery: the war has turned in Ukraine’s favor. The fighting remains a gruesome slugfest, but Ukraine’s superior flexibility and capacity for innovation have gradually given it the upper hand in the drone warfare that increasingly shapes combat. In fact, Ukraine is so proficient at drone warfare that the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — which are facing drone attacks as a consequence of Trump’s disastrous Iran war — have signed agreements to draw on Ukrainian technology and expertise.

Zelenskyy, it turns out, does have quite a few cards, while Trump has far fewer cards than he imagined.

Before Trump, we were also a nation almost universally regarded as essential: Nations believed that they needed access to U.S. banks to do business, access to U.S. markets to prosper, access to U.S. weapons to defend themselves. But by breaking decades’ worth of international agreements — not to mention threatening allies and betraying Ukraine — Trump quickly forfeited the world’s trust. By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.

And now the fact that the world is managing economically despite Trump’s tariffs, while Ukraine is surviving despite Trump’s attempt to cut it off at the knees, has revealed that we are much less essential than everyone assumed.

________________

June 5, 1944 — back when we were a reliable and essential ally of nations fighting for freedom.



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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 8:26 AM

SECOND

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


Putin Still Believes He’ll Win in Ukraine. The People Closest to Him Have Quietly Concluded He Can’t

By Steve Balestrieri | June 4, 2026

https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/putin-still-believes-hell-win-in-u
kraine-the-people-closest-to-him-have-quietly-concluded-he-cant/

Summary and Key Points: Vladimir Putin still tells his country that victory in Ukraine is coming. But the war has now lasted longer than World War II did for Russia, and the people best positioned to know — including one of Russia’s own top academics — have quietly reached the opposite conclusion: this war cannot be won, not without an occupation that is simply impossible.

The Ukraine War and a Look to History

The current war in Ukraine has lasted longer than World War II did for Russia, but they have not yet achieved one of their primary goals of the war. The Ukrainians have been turning the tide of the war, but may not have the military forces to drive Russia out of its territory.

Like the Korean War before it, this nearly four-and-a-half-year war may end up in a negotiated settlement, with a country divided by a heavily militarized line of control between the two warring factions.

In a bizarre twist of fate, thousands of North Korean “volunteers” are fighting for Russia in the same brutal, bloody, meatgrinder that their forefathers fought in the 1950s.

Many of the Same Factors Face Each Side in Ukraine

Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is facing increasing pressure both at the front and within the country. The Russian army’s offensive is slowing down, resources are being depleted, and Ukrainian drone strikes are hitting the logistics and economy of the Russian Federation increasingly hard.

Military analysts are increasingly coming to the conclusion that Putin’s war aims, despite his insistence, are becoming increasingly unattainable.

Putin’s growing frustration has led many analysts to believe that Putin will once again resort to nuclear blackmail in an attempt to win strategic concessions from the West.

There were the same threats that both sides used in Korea.

Other Similarities To The Korean War

Neither side is able to gain much territory. Just as the Korean War transitioned from rapid territorial swings to a grueling war of attrition along a static front, the conflict in Ukraine has frequently settled into a defensive deadlock.

A reluctant armistice could freeze the front lines with a heavily fortified Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) stretching across ruined territories.

CIRSD wrote that “just as the Korean War came as a consequence of the division of Korea, the war in Ukraine came as a consequence of the breakup of the Soviet Union. Modern world history shows that, when a unitary state splits or disintegrates, violent conflicts can ensue.”

Also, like the Korean War, the war of attrition has been dragging on, with an appalling number of casualties on both sides, but mainly suffered by Russia.

According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as of late May 2026, Russia has suffered more than 1.3 million casualties (killed and wounded) in Ukraine since the February 2022 invasion. More than 352,000 of these are believed to be fatalities.

Despite very positive combat assessments by his generals, Putin’s forces are making very minimal gains (15 to 70 meters per day) but at casualty rates of up to 1,000 troops per day.

Ukraine Was Offered The “Korean Option” In 2023

In January 2023, Oleksii Danilov, the Secretary of Ukraine’s National Security Council, warned that the stalemate may result in the same armistice. “We are being offered the Korean option. ‘Here there will be some Ukrainians, here there will be other Ukrainians, and here there shall be no Ukrainians.’ I’m convinced that one of the options they will offer us is this 38th parallel.”

Oleksii Arestovich, a well-known Ukrainian political commentator and former advisor to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, stated that the situation was similar to Korea as well, saying the country could end up “in a two-Koreas scenario.” “The worst thing of all,” Arestovich added, “is that the West thinks that this is possible… and we’re totally dependent on them.”

Other Ukrainians believe that if the country joins the European Union (EU), it could establish a new security framework within NATO’s self-defense framework, similar to South Korea’s with Washington.

Ukraine’s Situation Is Different Than South Korea’s

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has dragged on for more than four years, and Putin continues to believe that he will eventually prevail, even though many of his own advisors believe that his goals are unattainable.

Russian academic Vasily Kashin, the Director of the prestigious Higher School of Economics’ Center for Comprehensive European and International Studies, wrote a scathing article on the site “Russia in Global Affairs,” in which he stated that Russia cannot win the war.

“The elimination of the anti-Russian regime is fundamentally unattainable without a full military occupation of the entire country for a long period. For Russia, this is technically impossible.”

The 1953 Korean Armistice established a clear Military Demarcation Line. In Ukraine, Russia continues to claim the annexation of territories (such as the Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts) that it does not fully control, complicating where a theoretical ceasefire line would be drawn.

Ukraine’s Terrain Will Make A DMZ Type Of Line Difficult

The mountainous, narrow terrain of the Korean Peninsula lent itself to being highly defensible.

Ukraine, however, features vast, open terrain spanning hundreds of kilometers, making it significantly harder to permanently secure and patrol against future incursions without massive ongoing military commitments.

Lack of a Buffer Zone consensus will be a major sticking point. Some proposed models for ending the Ukraine war mimic the Korean model by implementing demilitarized buffer zones within Ukrainian sovereign territory.

However, there is no international consensus on how these zones would be enforced or whether international peacekeepers would be utilized. And Russia has been strongly opposed to any NATO or Western peacekeepers in the region.

However, it is too soon to expect any kind of armistice in the Russian war in Ukraine. Neither side is yet willing to stop fighting.

About the Author: Steve Balestrieri

Steve Balestrieri is a National Security Columnist. He served as a US Army Special Forces NCO and Warrant Officer. In addition to writing on defense, he covers the NFL for PatsFans.com and is a member of the Pro Football Writers of America (PFWA). His work was regularly featured in many military publications.

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 10:07 AM

SECOND

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


The campaign of AI drone strikes is intensifying. And now the Russians are losing potentially hundreds of trucks every day. Far more than they can immediately replace with new production. While Russian ground forces possess tens of thousands of cargo vehicles and buy thousands of new ones every year, they're currently on track to lose thousands per month.

If truck losses continue at the current rate, or get worse, the Russians may have no choice but to begin doing for trucks what they've long done for tanks: pull very old vehicles out of long-term storage and do their best to refurbish them for continued use.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/02/old-russian-trucks/

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 11:07 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.


Krugman said the quiet part out loud: We've been running the world on fear. He probably didn't even realize what he just admitted.

What will "the world" do when it no longer fears us?
I don't know, but payback's a bitch.

-----------

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 11:32 AM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

THGR, I'm sure you'll never respond to this.
I listened to the first few minutes of your latest video, and it's just chock-full of unsupported statements.

Here's an example: Ukraine has the technological edge.

Really? Like?
Ok, Ukraine has drones.
So does Russia.
Ukraine supposedly has drones that talk to each other.
Russia appears to have that too.
Ukraine has a "flamingo" missile, which is a subsonic cruise missile or a big drone.
Russia has that, and supersonic and hypersonic versions as well.
Ukraine doesn't have artillery, or planes, or air dedenses.
Russia does.

IDK what this guy is talking about. But he doesn't explain.

Listen critically and ask yourself if you're hearing specifics or just blah blah blah.


-----------

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



No comrade, it is not full of unsupported comments. He is reporting in real time based on all available information. And I can show in video after video, and have been, that all the worlds’ experts are saying Ukraine has a technological edge. That they are in fact, winning.

That Ukraine now has the technological advantage in fighting this kind of warfare over the rest of the world. They are leading the world in having the capability of fighting a war that must include drones. Where’ as the Russians are nowhere near as capable.

Your list of comparisons is in no way accurate comrade because Russia does not know how to fight. And because Russia is out of gas in more ways than one. Your post that I am quoting shows you are ignorant to anything that doesn't support Putin lies.


T

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Friday, June 5, 2026 12:00 PM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.


Krugman said the quiet part out loud: We've been running the world on fear. He probably didn't even realize what he just admitted.

What will "the world" do when it no longer fears us?
I don't know, but payback's a bitch.

-----------

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



No, it’s just that trump is too stupid to realize Iran is a stones throw away from much of the world’s energy resources. And that Iran has a lot of stones. Trump essentially chose to override the experts. The world still knows what we can do. War is not just bombs; it is also strategic. And Trump, like Putin, is a moron.

And as I’ve said to you before comrade, as far as payback goes, Trump breaks everything he touches. Not just Iran but also trade, NATO, and all our relationships with our friends; i.e. tariffs and on and on and on. If you are a democracy Trump doesn’t treat you with respect. Trump only befriends autocracies.

I warned you of this before his first and current term. But all you did was attack everyone but Trump during the elections. Which makes you an idiot.


T

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Friday, June 5, 2026 1:47 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.


Krugman said the quiet part out loud: We've been running the world on fear. He probably didn't even realize what he just admitted.

What will "the world" do when it no longer fears us?
I don't know, but payback's a bitch.
Krugman worked in the Reagan White House. Krugman also travels extensively outside the US. Krugman wrote a series of college economics textbooks that are the best sellers in the world. He knows exactly how the US got where it is. Military/Cultural/Financial/Scientific Superiority did it. He has said that the Republican Party has been a catastrophe for the prosperity of its citizens because it has damaged everything that made America Great.

Learning from a Mentally Ill President
We need to deal with the powers and system that put him in power and keep him there
Paul Krugman
May 31, 2026
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/learning-from-a-mentally-ill-presid
ent

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 1:53 PM

THG

Keep it real please, and use a VPN



Sigmym, with your every post, you come across as a Russian propagandist. A propagandist that is not very bright.

T

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Friday, June 5, 2026 2:12 PM

SECOND

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


It is NOT just Trump who is an evil nitwit among Republican Presidents.

Bush was as bad:

Paul Krugman was a prominent and vocal opponent of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. As a Nobel Prize-winning economist and opinion columnist, he criticized the conflict along two primary lines: the political deception used to justify the invasion and the long-term economic damage it caused.

A "Crime" of Deception
Krugman strongly rejected the idea that the invasion was an innocent mistake or a venture undertaken merely on flawed intelligence. He argued that the Bush administration wanted a war from the beginning and that the public justifications—particularly the threat of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs)—were falsified pretexts. In his view, pushing America into a war of choice based on fabricated evidence made the invasion not just a mistake, but a grotesque violation of public trust and a political crime.

Economic and Social Costs
On the economic front, Krugman highlighted the immense financial burden of the conflict. He frequently pointed out that the war was funded almost entirely through deficit spending rather than being paid for by the taxpayer base at the time. He emphasized how the trillions of dollars spent in Iraq directly crowded out domestic priorities, noting that those same funds could have been used to avoid cuts in social programs like food stamps and Medicaid, or to expand healthcare subsidies.

Paul Krugman on the 'Cartoon Physics' of the 2008 Crash



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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 2:40 PM

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


Belgium has a Russian steel addiction — and doesn't want to fix it

By Chris Powers | June 5, 2026 4:37 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/belgium-blocks-eu-action-against-russian-s
teel-addiction/

More than four years after the EU began sanctioning Russian steel, Belgium remains a loyal importer — thanks to a sanctions exemption that allows a Russia-based steel giant to continue supplying its Belgian factories with low-cost slabs.

Despite sweeping EU sanctions against the Kremlin for its war in Ukraine, Belgium has opposed attempts to sanction the company, NLMK, and its Kremlin-connected billionaire owner, Vladimir Lisin. Belgian officials fear that taking action could hurt employment in an already economically deprived region. Critics say the arrangement is more money for one of Russia's richest oligarchs.

NLMK in Russia is supplying its European mills with slabs, according to the European steel association Eurometal. An industry slide deck seen by the Kyiv Independent says those slabs are sold at "ultra low prices," giving EU-based re-rollers "an artificial cost advantage."

While most forms of steel from Russia were sanctioned in the first weeks of the country's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, there was one exception: semi-finished steel slabs.

When steel is made, it can be cast into a basic "semi-finished" shape, which can then be "re-rolled" elsewhere into a final product, or finished steel. Slabs are one of these semi-finished shapes.

The EU agreed to a gradual phase-out of Russian slabs as part of its 12th sanctions package in December 2023, with an end date of Sept. 30, 2028.

Moscow currently supplies 58% of the EU's slab imports from third countries. A third of those slabs go to Belgium alone, with Italy, Czechia, France, and Denmark rounding out the top five importers.

While there are several steel manufacturers in Belgium, most are not using slabs at all, and ArcelorMittal Belgium, the largest entity in the country, "is not importing any Russian slabs or other semi-finished steel products to Belgium since at least 5 years," its CEO, Frederik Van De Velde, told the Kyiv Independent in a written comment.

But the same cannot be said of two plants owned by the Russian Novolipetskiy metallurgicheskiy kombinat, or NLMK, the nearest of which lies a mere 22 kilometers from the EU's capital, Brussels.

NLMK is one of Russia's four largest steel companies. It owns 49% of NLMK Belgium, and an additional 2% via a connected entity called Tube De Haren et Nimy. The remaining 49% is owned by Belgium's French-speaking region via its investment vehicle Wallonie Entreprendre.

As of June 2026, NLMK's owner, oligarch Vladimir Lisin, was listed in Bloomberg's Billionaires Index as the world's 110th richest man, with a net worth of $23.5 billion.

Lisin has been sanctioned by Ukraine, Australia, and Canada. The Canadians describe Lisin as a "Kremlin-linked billionaire" among those who support Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and who have benefited from the war.

He has not been sanctioned by the EU, something the EU's Defense Commissioner Andrius Kubilius questioned when he was a member of the European Parliament.

When asked if Kubilius still holds his former view, a European Commission spokesperson told the Kyiv Independent that EU sanctions policy is decided by unanimity, and that "sanctions discussions are confidential."

However, the Kyiv Independent was told by EU and national diplomats on the condition of anonymity that Lisin's name had been floated in earlier discussions, only to be removed from consideration.

A spokesperson for Belgium's foreign ministry said that "on the proposal to list Mr Lisin individually, Belgium has indeed expressed reservations, and that position has not changed."

But "sanctions must hurt the Russian war machine more than they hurt our own economies," the spokesperson added, before explaining that sanctioning Lisin "would have direct and disproportionate consequences for industrial sites and jobs in Belgium — workers and supply chains that have nothing to do with the Russian state."

EU officials in Brussels appear to see the purpose of sanctions differently.

"I can’t speak, of course, to what Belgium sees as the guiding principle … our language is more along the lines of putting pressure on Russia to engage in negotiations and do so on terms acceptable for Ukraine," one EU official told the Kyiv Independent on condition of anonymity.

And Belgium might not be Lisin's only protector. NLMK Europe also has facilities in Denmark, Italy, and France, all of which feature among the top five Russian steel importers in the EU.

Ukrainian lawmaker Oleksiy Honcharenko, who pushed earlier transatlantic efforts to sanction key Russian individuals and wrote to the EU's top diplomat Kaja Kallas about NLMK, told the Kyiv Independent that "by acquiring industrial assets within the EU, Lisin appears to have secured a form of 'insurance' against being added to EU sanctions lists."

The situation prompted social democrat EU lawmaker Thijs Reuten to ask "are we crazy?" on social media in response to new data showing just how much steel the bloc was still importing from Russia.

How does this end?

Belgium's foreign ministry spokesperson told the Kyiv Independent that the country will follow the 2028 planned phase-out date as planned. (The slabs themselves are easily replaceable this year. The GMK Center, a Ukraine-based consultancy, notes China, India, and Brazil as alternative suppliers.)

"Russian steel must leave the European market, and it will …Belgium will fully implement this calendar, just as it has fully implemented every previous sanctions package," they said.

But that hasn't stopped NLMK's Belgian operations from trying to turn crisis into opportunity. Belgian newspaper L'Echo reported in October 2025 that NLMK intends to invest 1.2 billion euros ($1.4 billion) in a plant to sustainably produce steel slabs, but that it would require significant financial backing from the Belgian government and the EU.

One grassroots petition, which is gaining backers in the European Parliament, is now going further and calling for an immediate ban on the Russian steel trade.

"I strongly support the objective of this initiative," German conservative MEP Michael Gahler, a leading voice on Ukraine in the European Parliament, told the Kyiv Independent in a written comment.

"Challenges should not become an excuse for inaction — industry and policymakers should instead work together to find practical and creative ways to overcome them," he added.

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 5:15 PM

SECOND

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


Ukraine’s Bullet interceptor gets speed upgrade. It now has chemical accelerator to chase down Russian 500 km/h Geran-4

The accelerator burns chemical fuel rather than using jet propulsion.

By Olena Mukhina | June 5, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/05/ukraines-bullet-interceptor-get
s-speed-upgrade-it-now-has-chemical-accelerator-to-chase-down-russian-500-km-h-geran-4/

The booster gives a rapid launch profile and conserves the Bullet's main battery for the pursuit and terminal phases of the intercept.

The Geran-4, first deployed in May 2026, runs on a Chinese-supplied Telefly turbojet engine rated at 160 kgf of thrust, reaching speeds of around 500 km/h.

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 6:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
By failing so spectacularly against Iran, a far weaker military power, Trump has dispelled much of the world’s fear.


Krugman said the quiet part out loud: We've been running the world on fear. He probably didn't even realize what he just admitted.

What will "the world" do when it no longer fears us?
I don't know, but payback's a bitch.

SECOND:

Krugman worked in the Reagan White House. Krugman also travels extensively outside the US. Krugman wrote a series of college economics textbooks that are the best sellers in the world.


Appeal to authority. Not a valid argument.

Quote:
He knows exactly how the US got where it is.

And, "where" are we, exactly? Still trying to make the world safe for financialists??

Quote:
Military/Cultural/Financial/Scientific Superiority did it. He has said that the Republican Party has been a catastrophe for the prosperity of its citizens because it has damaged everything that made America Great.

Well, finally something I agree with.

But here's the thing: What is “great“? Does it mean secure and prosperous? Or does it mean being a world- dominating power and stomping the globe?

We became a world power for two reasons: production and geography.

Our military, cultural, and financial power are based on economic power.
Economic power is based on production.
Production was based on abundant resources, protectionist policies, and investment in production and infrastructure (canals, oil, steel, railroads, telegraphs, electrcity, etc).

The second major factor was geographic accident. Bc altho we were involved in two world wars, they didn't take place on our soil.

Our economic power was diminished with our turn towards financialism, and for THAT we can thank BILL CLINTON, a DEMOCRAT, who willingly bought into the globalist plan to divide the world into interlocked specializations:

commodities
cheap labor
finance/ debt issuance

locked down by "free trade" agreements, to benefit transnational corporations. NOWHERE does it benefit the people of each nation.

******

Quote:
THUGR:

Sigmym, with your every post, you come across as a Russian propagandist. A propagandist that is not very bright.


You STILL don't get it, do you???
Wow.


-----------

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

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Friday, June 5, 2026 9:46 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Who's funding that big mouth? He ain't.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.



Fuck. We are. Again...

House passes Ukraine aid over objections of GOP leaders

https://www.ms.now/news/house-passes-ukraine-aid

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 6:09 AM

SECOND

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


“Ukraine might have won” if NATO had acted in 2022, ex-top chief says

Admiral Rob Bauer says the West armed Ukraine too slowly to win—and never had a strategy for victory at all

By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/ukraine-could-have-won-in-2022-
natos-former-military-chief-admits/

Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.

"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that the alliance's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.

It carries weight because it comes from the officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's opening phase. His account confirms what Kyiv has argued since 2022: that Western caution, not Ukrainian capacity, set the ceiling on what Ukraine could achieve.

No strategy to win

Bauer was blunt that victory was never the stated goal. "It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war,'" he said. Nor was it framed around Russia losing. What emerged instead was a promise to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes"—endurance, not victory.

He traced the gap to how the alliance decides. "You need one nation that says 'no' and it's 'no,'" he said, explaining why NATO never deployed troops, never admitted Ukraine, and never did more than it did.

The cost of waiting

The delay had a price Ukrainians paid on the battlefield. Had the tanks, HIMARS, ATACMS, and F-16s arrived in the spring or summer of 2022, when Ukraine was retaking ground, Russia "would be in a much more difficult spot," Bauer said. Instead, the long Western debate gave Moscow time to build the defensive works that stalled Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.

He did not spare his own side: "I think we should have done more."

Bauer now argues Ukraine must be admitted to NATO, warning that excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original error. He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that also covered Russia's 2022 nuclear threats.

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

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 6:16 AM

SECOND

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


NATO had no plan for Ukraine to win—and isn’t likely to make one, former chief says

Admiral Rob Bauer says Ukraine “might have won” in 2022—if the weapons had come in time

By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/natos-former-military-chief-adm
its-there-was-never-a-plan-for-ukraine-to-win/

In an interview with Euromaidan Press during the GLOBSEC 2026 Forum in Prague, Admiral Rob Bauer—who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025—told us that if Ukraine had received in early summer 2022 the weapons it eventually received much later, "you might have won" the war. The admission, from the senior officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's first phase, is among the most direct concessions from a NATO authority that the West's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Bauer described an alliance that operated without a strategy for Ukrainian victory—"It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war'"—confirmed on the record that Russia's nuclear threats to Paris, London, and Washington in 2022 were met with a US promise of conventional destruction of Russian forces in Ukraine, and argued that Ukraine must now be admitted to NATO because excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original mistake.

The conversation that follows has been edited for length and clarity. Bauer's framings and corrections — including where he pushed back on our questions — are preserved.

Russia's red lines go up in smoke one by one. Putin said every time there is a red line: with the HIMARS, then tanks, and then F-16s and ATACMS and missiles. And every time we found out later that it wasn't a red line—after we took too long to say "yes" to the additional capability for Ukraine.

Now, again, you say they [Russia] had a veto. I agree with you that it's not smart that we, as an Alliance, started to say from the start what we were not going to do. That doesn't help with deterrence. If you say, "Oh, by the way, we're not going to get militarily involved," that helps the enemy greatly. But this was new territory: Afghanistan and Iraq were different because they weren't a near-peer fight like in Ukraine. And a lot of politicians tread cautiously because it was new territory and not part of the "normal" plans for NATO. Maybe too cautiously.

EP: Ukraine has a 20-billion-euro state budget gap for 2026, and is now fully dependent on European support since US financial assistance ended. Meanwhile, the EU rearm plan is 800 billion euros for European rearmament, and Europe is still buying over 1 billion euros of Russian fossil fuels every month. From the Military Committee seat, is the funding architecture telling the strategy? European future readiness prioritized over Ukrainian present survival?

Admiral Bauer: A lot of questions in one. Of course there's a connection between funding Ukraine and our own ability to defend ourselves in the long run. If Ukraine goes sour, if Ukraine is no longer a sovereign state, we're in much more shit than we are now. So yes, there's a connection. . . .

But for me it's clear: we have to make sure you remain a sovereign state. And I'm more and more convinced you need to be part not only of the EU architecture but of NATO. Because if we don't allow Ukraine into the Alliance, we make a big mistake—leaving out the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians.

Much more at https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/natos-former-military-chief-adm
its-there-was-never-a-plan-for-ukraine-to-win/

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

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 6:30 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Ukraine might have won” if NATO had acted in 2022, ex-top chief says

Admiral Rob Bauer says the West armed Ukraine too slowly to win—and never had a strategy for victory at all

By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/ukraine-could-have-won-in-2022-
natos-former-military-chief-admits/

Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.

"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that the alliance's incremental approach to arming Ukraine was a strategic mistake.

It carries weight because it comes from the officer who oversaw NATO's military response during the war's opening phase. His account confirms what Kyiv has argued since 2022: that Western caution, not Ukrainian capacity, set the ceiling on what Ukraine could achieve.

No strategy to win

Bauer was blunt that victory was never the stated goal. "It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war,'" he said. Nor was it framed around Russia losing. What emerged instead was a promise to support Ukraine "for as long as it takes"—endurance, not victory.

He traced the gap to how the alliance decides. "You need one nation that says 'no' and it's 'no,'" he said, explaining why NATO never deployed troops, never admitted Ukraine, and never did more than it did.

The cost of waiting

The delay had a price Ukrainians paid on the battlefield. Had the tanks, HIMARS, ATACMS, and F-16s arrived in the spring or summer of 2022, when Ukraine was retaking ground, Russia "would be in a much more difficult spot," Bauer said. Instead, the long Western debate gave Moscow time to build the defensive works that stalled Ukraine's 2023 counteroffensive.

He did not spare his own side: "I think we should have done more."

Bauer now argues Ukraine must be admitted to NATO, warning that excluding "the biggest nation with the latest experience in war with the Russians" would compound the original error. He made the remarks in a wide-ranging interview that also covered Russia's 2022 nuclear threats.

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



He doesn't fucking know.

He's a liberal dipshit douchebag who never faced any real adversity in his life. Even now. No matter how bad he fucks up anything, he will always be protected and continue to live out his charmed life.

Coulda, woulda, shoulda.

Fuck you dude. Get the fuck out of here with that bitch ass shit.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 10:49 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

He doesn't fucking know.

He's a liberal dipshit douchebag who never faced any real adversity in his life. Even now. No matter how bad he fucks up anything, he will always be protected and continue to live out his charmed life.
6ix, you know this how? 6ix is a lying sack of shit who knows nothing about this guy, other than 6ix vehemently disagreeing with the military expert who was there when the civilian politicians from NATO countries were making decisions that would kill a million Russians and Ukrainians.

From Wikipedia: Robert Peter Bauer (born 11 November 1962) is a Dutch retired military officer of the Royal Netherlands Navy who served as Chair of the NATO Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, after succeeding Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach. Bauer formerly served as the Chief of Defence (Dutch: Commandant der Strijdkrachten) from October 2017 to April 2021, and as the Vice Chief of Defence of the Netherlands of the from 1 September 2015 to 13 July 2017. Bauer was also involved in counter-terrorist and anti-piracy operations in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Horn of Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bauer

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

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 2:17 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


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

He doesn't fucking know.

He's a liberal dipshit douchebag who never faced any real adversity in his life. Even now. No matter how bad he fucks up anything, he will always be protected and continue to live out his charmed life.
6ix, you know this how? 6ix is a lying sack of shit who knows nothing about this guy, other than 6ix vehemently disagreeing with the military expert who was there when the civilian politicians from NATO countries were making decisions that would kill a million Russians and Ukrainians.

From Wikipedia: Robert Peter Bauer (born 11 November 1962) is a Dutch retired military officer of the Royal Netherlands Navy who served as Chair of the NATO Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, after succeeding Air Chief Marshal Stuart Peach. Bauer formerly served as the Chief of Defence (Dutch: Commandant der Strijdkrachten) from October 2017 to April 2021, and as the Vice Chief of Defence of the Netherlands of the from 1 September 2015 to 13 July 2017. Bauer was also involved in counter-terrorist and anti-piracy operations in the Mediterranean Sea, and in the Horn of Africa.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rob_Bauer

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




He served NOTHING.

As long as Big Daddy America was throwing all their money around everywhere and coming to the aid of any dipshit nobody, he's never had to do a single fucking day of work in his life.

Go fuck yourself, Second.

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

Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 3:28 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“Ukraine might have won” if NATO had acted in 2022, ex-top chief says

Admiral Rob Bauer says the West armed Ukraine too slowly to win—and never had a strategy for victory at all

By Alya Shandra | June 6, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/ukraine-could-have-won-in-2022-
natos-former-military-chief-admits/

Ukraine could have won the war in 2022 had the West delivered the weapons it eventually sent much later, Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee from 2021 to 2025, told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC 2026 forum in Prague.

"If we had done something else in 2022 with regard to the weapons that we gave, you might have won," Bauer said—the most direct concession yet from a senior NATO figure that ....


... NATO lost.
Bc “not winning“ is another way of saying “losing“.

Interesting idea tho.
I don't know who would have won a full-on war of NATO v Russia in Ukraine. I know that Russia felt threatened enough to bring up nukes if it was attacked directly. But the West was so certain that booting Russia off SWIFT and sanctioning its major exports and blowing up Nordstream would collapse the Russian economy that they never came up with a military Plan B. Bc picking a fight with Russia over Ukraine was never about Ukraine anyway, it was about taking over Russia.



-----------

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

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 5:29 PM

SECOND

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


What’s Eating Aleksandr Dugin, ‘Putin’s Brain’?

Even Russia’s leading warmonger has run out of ways to justify the Ukraine invasion.

By Simon Shuster | June 6, 2026, 7 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/06/putin-russia-eli
te-ukraine-war/687446/

No Russian thinker has worked harder than Aleksandr Dugin to rationalize the invasion of Ukraine. Long before it started, Dugin came up with a whole philosophical system, known as “neo-Eurasianism,” to explain why Russia, the country with the largest landmass in the world, would need to steal land from its neighbors and kill many thousands of people in the process. His books and lectures on the subject earned him the nickname “Putin’s brain.” That overstates his closeness to the Russian president. But his views reflect the mood among the war’s cheerleaders in Moscow, how firmly they support the conflict, and how they try to justify it to themselves (and everyone else).

Judging by Dugin’s most recent pronouncements, they have run out of cogent stories to tell. When Dugin attempted to explain the war’s rationale last week to Ksenia Sobchak, a Russian social-media influencer with millions of followers, he could not make any sense of it. Even a softball question—“What is worth fighting for today?”—led the philosopher down a spiral of inanity so bizarre that Sobchak, long rumored to be the goddaughter of Vladimir Putin, could not listen with a straight face.

Dugin’s description of Russia after the war sounded postapocalyptic. “First of all, it’s an image of life on the land,” he said. “It is an enormous exodus from the cities, an almost religious exodus, like the Jews from Egypt.” The cities of Russia, he continued, would turn into “neo-ancient ruins,” and the people would return to living in the countryside, communicating with one another through “an internet of Russian villages, closed off and guarded from the toxic incursions of the enemy.”

The Russian state has often forced its people into strange contortions of the mind. By law, Russians are prohibited from publicly calling the war a war rather than a “special military operation,” and Putin has urged them to believe that Ukraine started it. Still, the national capacity for self-deception has its limits, and recent developments suggest that Putin has found them.

Ukrainian drones now pummel industrial targets across Russia nightly, shutting down oil refineries, snarling logistics, and forcing airports to close for days at a time. More than 1 million Russians have been killed or badly wounded in the war, a toll too great to hide—almost every family has been affected. The gap between what Russians know to be true about the war and what the Kremlin says about it has grown so wide that even warmongers like Dugin struggle to bridge it. Instead, the ideologues of Russian imperialism have turned to random musings and belligerent hate speech, which seems intended to confuse rather than convince.

At various points during his interview with Sobchak, Dugin called the sport of surfing evil and said that its practitioners should be purged. He did not provide a coherent reason. He expressed similar hatred toward Russia’s favorite cartoon character, the jug-eared Cheburashka, who has repeatedly served as the mascot for the Russian Olympic Team. No political constituency exists for such views in Russia or elsewhere. They only allow Dugin to distract from the fact that he has nothing else to say, no way to spin the war he has championed for much of his career.

“It shows that everyone is beyond exhausted,” Mikhail Zygar, the author of several books about the Russian elite, most recently The Dark Side of the Earth, told me. “There is no one left who wants the war to continue, with the possible exception of Putin and Dugin.” A year or two ago, wealthy and powerful Russians tended to support the war, even in their private conversations, because they knew the dangers of losing it. “They would say things like: Yes, maybe it’s bad we started all this, but now we have no choice but to win,” Zygar said. “Nobody says that anymore. Now they just say the war has reached a dead end, and it needs to stop.”

The cracks in the Kremlin’s consensus became apparent this spring, as Russian advances in eastern Ukraine stalled. Commanders sacrificed tens of thousands of soldiers a month, dead and wounded, without gaining any significant territory. Along the southern front, Ukrainian drones began to blow up military convoys on the main road from Russia to Crimea. Control of that highway had been one of Russia’s main achievements in the war, and now it stood littered with the wreckage of trucks full of weapons and supplies for Russian troops. Authorities in Crimea began to ration fuel as shipments from Russia ran dry.

Putin’s next humiliation came early last month, when he hosted the annual Victory Day parade. The threat of Ukrainian drone strikes forced organizers to scale back the parade’s size and cut a lot of military equipment from the program. With support from President Trump, the Kremlin called for a brief cease-fire to allow the festivities to proceed. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky then issued a decree “allowing” Russia to hold its parade on Red Square.

The truce lasted only a few days. In the second half of May, Russia intensified its attacks against Kyiv, launching dozens of ballistic missiles and hundreds of drones in a matter of hours on some nights. Ukraine retaliated with strikes against Russia’s energy infrastructure, a strategy Zelensky took to calling “long-range sanctions.” All the while, Russian state TV continued to air the Kremlin’s talking points about the valor of its troops, the evils of Ukraine and its Western allies, and the approaching victory of Russia.

But social-media platforms showed a far gloomier picture, and their reach now exceeds that of television news. Some influencers began to call the war a dead end. Others demanded a cease-fire to allow the Russian military to prepare a new strategy. One video complaint to Putin about corruption and censorship attracted tens of millions of viewers, briefly turning its creator, the lifestyle blogger Viktoria Bonya, who lives in Monaco, into an unlikely face of opposition to the Kremlin. The state’s attempts to restrict internet access only deepened public anger, driving Putin’s popularity ratings to their lowest point since he ordered the invasion of Ukraine, in 2022.

“They have no coherent message left,” Nina Khrushcheva, who studies propaganda at the New School, in New York, told me. Her grandfather Nikita Khrushchev served as the leader of the Soviet Union for more than a decade after Stalin’s death, in 1953. In those years, the Kremlin used ideology to justify its crimes. “Everyone knew the Gulag was terrible,” Khrushcheva said. “But the regime could explain it through the logic of internal enemies, traitors, and the rest of it. Now there is no explanation. No logic. No justification. The war simply does not stand up to any scrutiny at all.”

Even Dugin, who spent decades fetishizing the idea of a “civilizational war” between Russia and the West, seems to be having second thoughts. At the end of last month, he concluded a solemn post on social media with a warning that Russia could lose the war. “With the present elites,” he wrote, “our chances not only of achieving victory but simply holding the country together are critically low.”

Those elites arrived a few days later in St. Petersburg for an annual economic forum, a gathering of senior officials and business executives that Putin has hosted in his hometown for the past two decades. On its opening day, a fleet of Ukrainian drones attacked the city, damaging a warship in the nearby port of Kronstadt and setting an oil terminal on fire. Thick columns of smoke hung in the air on Wednesday morning as delegates arrived to pick up their badges.

The next evening, Zelensky published an open letter to Putin, announcing that the drones had traveled more than 600 miles to pay “a visit” to the forum. He promised more attacks on Russian cities unless Putin agrees to a cease-fire and begins negotiations to end the war. “We can all see that Russians are finally becoming less comfortable with this reality,” Zelensky wrote. “They do not like the fact that there is no end in sight to your war.” The letter ended with a subtle warning: “It is a fact of Russian history that you know well: when Russia grows tired, change comes.”

Putin and Dugin did their best to obscure that fatigue. The forum’s opening panel featured Dugin and several other hard-liners, one of whom enthusiastically predicted that Russia would remain at war for the next two generations. The “positive scenario” for Russia’s future, according to another panelist, would require the use of nuclear weapons to break the stalemate in Ukraine. Dugin, taking the microphone, had this to say: “We need an ideology, otherwise Russia is finished!” He recalled presenting his ideas for winning the war to a group of Russian generals recently, who told him, “No! We need an image! An image of victory, an image of the war, an image of the world we want to build.”

More than four years since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin’s image-makers have failed at the basic task of explaining the war’s purpose to the Russian public. Putin did not come any closer to that goal during his speech at the forum yesterday. When a moderator asked him about Zelensky’s letter, Putin said that it contained “elements of rudeness.” He turned down the offer to negotiate a deal to end the war, appealing to Russia’s soldiers to continue fighting because, as he put it, “the whole country is watching you.”

But the consequences of the war, at least in terms of Russia’s isolation, are impossible for Putin to hide. Before the 2022 invasion, the St. Petersburg forum often attracted the leaders of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful countries, including China, France, Germany, India, and Japan. This year, Putin shared the stage with the presidents of Uzbekistan and Tanzania, the only heads of state who’d deigned to come. It was not the image of power and influence Russia wanted to project. But in the fifth year of his forever war, it seems to be the best that Putin can do.

____________________________________________

Simon Shuster has reported on armed conflicts and authoritarian regimes for nearly two decades. His best-selling book, The Showman (published January 23, 2024) chronicles the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Before joining The Atlantic in 2025, he worked as a correspondent for Time based in New York, Berlin and Moscow.

Download his book for free from either https://z-lib.sk/s/Simon%20Shuster%20The%20Showman or https://annas-archive.gl/search?q=Simon+Shuster+The+Showman

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

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Saturday, June 6, 2026 6:43 PM

SECOND

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


Anniversary: Three years after Russia destroyed Kakhovka Dam, real death toll is still unknown

On 6 June 2023, Russian forces destroyed the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Plant while occupying the dam, flooding 80 settlements, forcing nearly 4,000 people to evacuate, and killing at least 34.

By Olena Mukhina | 06/06/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/06/the-worst-environmental-catastr
ophe-since-chornobyl-disaster-three-years-after-russia-destroyed-kakhovka-dam-real-death-toll-is-still-unknown/

Ukraine's Vice Prime Minister for Reconstruction Oleksii Kuleba calls the destruction "one of the largest war crimes of Russia against people and the environment."

Who blew up Kakhovka dam?

Russian forces occupied the dam complex at the moment of the explosion. According to the investigation by The New York Times, the destruction required substantial quantities of explosives placed inside the dam structure — access that only Russian forces had. Ukraine's Prosecutor General referred the case to the International Criminal Court within days, but no ICC determination has been issued specifically on the Kakhovka HPP.

The downstream effects of the destruction — flooded villages, lost Black Sea ecosystems, drinking-water crises across Kherson and Mykolaiv oblasts, and the disappearance of the Kakhovka Reservoir itself — continue to shape life across southern Ukraine.

$14 billion in damage and Black Sea consequences

The Kakhovka Reservoir was the largest on the Dnipro River, holding 18 cubic kilometers of water, which was released over 3 to 4 days through the breach. A Post-Disaster Needs Assessment jointly prepared by Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers and the United Nations originally estimated total losses at over $11 billion.

Former Ukrainian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrii Melnyk called the destruction "the worst environmental catastrophe in Europe since the Chornobyl disaster," per CBC News.

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

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