Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Sunday, June 21, 2026 07:53
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VIEWED: 501557
PAGE 210 of 210

Thursday, June 18, 2026 2:15 PM

Now Zelensky is really a dead man.

Tick Tock

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

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

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Thursday, June 18, 2026 2:19 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

THGR:

Nope!

And... nope!

Jeez! You and your clickbait.

-----------

"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 19, 2026 7:13 AM

SECOND

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

Russian opposition media source Meduza reported on June 18 that major Russian state media TV channels Perviy Kanal and NTV did not cover the Ukrainian strikes on Moscow City in their daytime broadcasts, that the Rossiya-1 channel only quoted official statements, and that none of the channels ran a separate strike report.[19] Meduza noted that Russian news channels instead primarily focused on the need to punish residents who film the strikes and their aftermath.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-june-18-2026/

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

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Friday, June 19, 2026 8:23 AM

SECOND

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

Macron: Trump thought Ukraine was losing but changed his mind after G7 summit

By Iryna Kutielieva, STANISLAV POHORILOV — 19 June, 14:10

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/19/8040144/

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 19, 2026 10:51 AM

SECOND

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

Why do Russians shrug at the minor misfortune of Putin killing Russians?

History is why:

The Great Terror

On 1 December 1934, Stalin found a pretext for launching his second revolution from above. On this day, a slightly deranged gunman shot the Leningrad Party boss dead. Stalin immediately took charge of the investigation into his comrade’s murder and used it to ‘uncover’ all kinds of ‘enemies’ within the party ranks. Some of the victims of the emerging Great Purge were truly in opposition to Stalin. Many more were loyal Stalinists who had confessions beaten out of them. Each arrest triggered several others, as the accused were forced to point fingers at alleged co-conspirators. The purge began in the Party and the state apparatus but soon broadened to include the military, decapitating the Red Army. Three out of five Marshals did not survive the decade. More army-level commanders were shot between 1936 and 1941 than had been in these positions at the start of the period: the terror chewed up replacements, too. Many more experienced cadres saw their careers destroyed even if their lives were spared. Lower down the hierarchy the impact was less spectacular and reinstatements lowered the overall share of victims to about 8 per cent of the officer corps in 1937 and 4 per cent in 1938. But the purge truly only became the Great Terror after it spread to the population at large in a series of ‘mass operations’ in 1937 and 1938. Overall, in these two years, nearly 1.6 million people were arrested, and a staggering 681,692 of them shot. More died in detention, as a result of torture, malnutrition, overwork, disease or accidents, increasing the death toll of these two bloody years to maybe 1.5 million.10

To Stalin, this bloodletting was an essential part of war preparation. Wreckers were everywhere, he told the Central Committee in 1937. They were ready to ‘do their spoiling work . . . in the period immediately preceding war or during war itself’.11 The closer his police looked at personal networks within the party, the more conspiracies they thought they saw. The more he learned about the views of the population, relentlessly eavesdropped upon by party members and police agents, the more isolated he felt. A public debate about a new constitution, the promise for more open elections and a census of the population all revealed widespread hostility to his form of socialism. In the context of the looming threat of Japan from the east and a militarizing Nazi Germany from the west, it was clearly not enough to just purge state, party and army from hidden enemies. Formerly well-off peasants (‘kulaks’), whose property had been confiscated and who had been sent into exile as part of collectivization at the start of the decade, people who had fought with anti-Bolshevik armies in the Civil War, officers and civil servants of the old regime, members of competing socialist or non-socialist parties, clergymen, common criminals, ‘anti-Soviet elements’, Poles, Germans, Finns, Latvians, Chinese, Koreans and other diaspora nationalities all fell victim.12

from Stalinism at War The Soviet Union in World War II by Mark Edele, 2021

Free download from

https://annas-archive.gl/search?q=Stalinism+at+War+Mark+Edele

https://z-lib.sk/s/Stalinism%20at%20War%20Mark%20Edele

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Vladimir Putin has actively overseen the rehabilitation of Joseph Stalin's reputation, promoting him primarily as a victorious wartime leader and a strong, effective statesman rather than a mass-murdering dictator.

• De-emphasizing Terror: While the Kremlin has acknowledged that Stalin committed crimes, it emphasizes that these were necessary for industrialization and that his legacy should not overshadow the victory in World War II (known in Russia as the Great Patriotic War).

• Monuments and Museums: State-sanctioned monuments to Stalin have been erected across the country, and restored Stalinist-era aesthetics and symbols have appeared in public spaces like the Moscow metro.

• Political Framing: Putin utilizes Stalin to justify his own "strongman" leadership style and stoke patriotic fervor, often drawing parallels between himself and the Soviet leader. State media and educational curricula frequently portray current conflicts as a continuation of Stalin's fight against global fascism.

• Societal Shift: This decades-long government-led effort to reframe history has contributed to a dramatic increase in Stalin's popularity, with public opinion polls showing that a majority of Russians now hold a favorable view of the Soviet dictator.

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 19, 2026 11:10 AM

THG

Is also JJ. Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
THGR:

Nope!

And... nope!

Jeez! You and your clickbait.

-----------

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

Who do you and Jack think you're Bullshiting. What you call clickbait is what's being reported globally. Here's a statistic for ya. 50% of Russians don't have toilets. The first thing they did when they found themselves in Ukraine was to start stealing them.

tick tock comrade, tick tock Putin.

T

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Friday, June 19, 2026 1:38 PM

SECOND

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

Dozens Of FPVs Chip Away Support Columns To Bring Down Road Bridge In Ukraine

By David Hambling | Jun 18, 2026, 10:08 am EDT

A recent video shows 43 FPV drones collapsing a Ukrainian road bridge by repeatedly striking its five support columns. This marks a significant military first, demonstrating that small, inexpensive drones can destroy robust infrastructure from a distance, a task previously requiring costly missiles or airstrikes. The drones, equipped with RPG warheads, cumulatively chipped away concrete from the reinforced columns, compromising their structural integrity until the bridge failed. This method is efficient and cost-effective, using minimal munitions compared to traditional bombing campaigns. This development suggests FPVs could increasingly target larger structures, revolutionizing bridge destruction tactics and posing new challenges for defense.

View the video https://twitter.com/i/status/2065470545802477724

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2026/06/17/dozens-of-fpvs-c
hip-away-support-columns-to-bring-down-road-bridge/

Bridge Dropping 101

Bridges are natural chokepoints, making them obvious targets for military action. But they are robustly built and most weapons have little effect. Blast and shrapnel effects that are lethal to personnel and soft-skinned vehicles barely scratch stone and concrete, and direct hits with large amounts of explosive are needed. Even heavy artillery generally fails to do the job, which usually requires 250 pounds or more of explosive in one hit.

During World War II, the U.S. military carried out extensive research on bombing road and rail bridges. They found it took an average of 190 sorties by medium bombers dropping a phenomenal 350 tons of bombs to take out a bridge. These were a mix of 500-pound and 1,000-pound weapons.

The number of bombs needed decreased sharply with bombing accuracy, the report stating, “It is worth noting that if bombing accuracy could be improved to something approaching training school accuracy….The number of sorties required would be reduced from 190 to 33.”

These days, the USAF uses precision-guided 2,000-pound bombs to destroy bridges, as these have sufficient explosive weight and are accurate enough that only one or two weapons are needed.

FPV drones typically carry repurposed RPG anti-tank warheads

FPV drones provide even better accuracy with a much smaller payload, typically a repurposed warhead from an RPG anti-tank rocket launcher weighing around five pounds. This warhead is a shaped charge which produces a narrow jet of high-speed metal capable of punching through a foot of steel armor or more than three feet of concrete.

This is not an obvious choice of munition for attacking bridge supports. The columns are reinforced concrete, and the warhead is unlikely to damage the steel rebar. But the Russian drone operators knew what they were doing.

Termite Tactics

The video reportedly shows an attack by the Kontora group of the Zapad unit, posted on the Telegram channel "Military correspondents of the Russian spring." The bridge is described as crossing the Nitrus River near the village of Andriivka in the Kherson region. Several successive FPVs strike each of the bridge’s five supporting columns. They claim that 43 FPVs were used, but the video shows about 37 of them.

The first couple of strikes on each bridge support only remove small amounts of concrete

The first couple of hits on each column just chip the concrete, but after that the column cracks up and larger fragments break off. After multiple hits a section of concrete is stripped away, exposing the bare skeleton of steel reinforcing bars.

The key to the attack is how reinforced concrete works. Adding steel bars to concrete makes it less brittle and greatly improves the tensile strength. Unlike plain concrete, a reinforced concrete beam can withstand lateral forces as well as compression without breaking. This makes a bridge resilient to lateral movement from earthquakes or other forces. But the compressive strength is still provided by the concrete. Blast that brittle material away, and the beam loses perhaps 80% of its load-bearing capacity. The actual proportion depends very much on the exact design.

After several strikes, all the concrete has been blasted away, leaving just the steel rebar beams to support the weight of the bridge

Bridges are designed with a huge safety margin, and a reinforced concrete bridge can generally take at least twice what it is ever expected to carry. However, without the concrete in those support beams, the bridge cannot carry its own weight and will slump. As we see in the final few frames of the video, the rebar starts to crumple and the bridge slumps.

It turns out you do not need to cut through the rebar if you chip away enough concrete. The entire two-lane road bridge, carrying the highway for something like 100 feet over a 15-foot drop, has been brought down by small quadcopters.

Future Bridge Busters

This tactic may already have been used widely by both sides, but not shared for reasons of operational security. The way the drones head unerringly for aim points suggests well-drilled operators who may have done this before. It is unlikely to come as any surprise to the Ukrainians. But it does suggest that, at the very least, protective netting may be needed on vulnerable bridges.

Precision makes this an extremely efficient type of attack: under 250 pounds of munitions, compared to the 350 tons of bombs dropped on each bridge in WWII.

It is also a remarkably low-cost operation. 43 FPVs probably cost less than $25,000, or perhaps half as much as a single U.S. precision-guided bomb, and without needing a jet aircraft to deliver it. You could carry out forty such attacks for the cost of one ATACMS missile.

The attack seems to have used standard FPVs. We know Ukraine has FPV warheads with linear shaped charges, which can cut through rebar and other structural materials, because these were used against Russian aircraft in Operation Spiderweb. Such weapons would destroy bridge supports with far fewer hits.

The changing daylight in the video suggests that the FPVs attacked over a period of hours. Systems like Ukraine’s Pasika, which allows a single operator to control a large number of FPVs, keeping a number orbiting nearby and calling them down in succession, would allow such an attack to be completed in minutes.

The bridge supports are static targets and easy to pick out visually. This would make programming a machine vision system to attack them relatively straightforward, removing the need for an operator to control the drones.

FPVs are sometimes seen as short-range weapons. But with add-on wings, they can hit targets some 60 miles away. And FPVs transported by carrier drones can hit targets hundreds of miles away, a tactic which is used increasingly by both sides.

Previously, FPVs have destroyed bridges already mined for demolition by setting off the explosive charges; there have been several examples of this. But we now know that it only takes a few dozen drones to take down even a seemingly sturdy structure.

The next question is just how large a structure FPVs could bring down. There is no obvious theoretical limit; it is more a question of how long it takes to marshal and direct the required number of drones. Certainly, larger road and rail bridges start to look like targets. FPVs can also attack traffic on the bridge, lay mines on it, and disrupt repair operations. Skyscrapers and other large buildings may also be at risk.

Small weapons can have big effects. We just do not know how big yet.

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 19, 2026 3:10 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
THGR...
Nope!
And... nope!
Jeez! You and your clickbait.

THGR:

Who do you and Jack think you're Bullshiting. What you call click bait is what's being reported globally.

tick tock comrade, tick tock Putin.

"Globally" by mainstream/ anti-Putin sources. Please adjust your view of the globe!

Here's an example of how your videos are clickbait meant for the gullible:

"Moscow under siege"

Really????

Ukraine targeted "a" refinery. That's it.

Moscow and environs is over 21 million, similar to LA county's 18 million. Like Moscow, we have refineries that supply the area. Since I moved here, we've had a few refineries close down due to regulations. We had one major one - Exxon- blow up its gasoline-producing unit, a fluidized catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) and ultimately shut down the whole refinery. Recently, we had the remaining refinery blow up. It had such a major upset that all the emergency flaring units went off all at once, we could see for MILES the flames shooting skyward a hundred feet.

And yanno what happened to LA??

NOTHING
NADA
ZIP

Gas prices went up a bit, and then went down in a few months. That's it.

Look at a map, THGR. There are so many roadways and railways into Moscow, which is hugely expansive on a flat plain, with no specific tunnel or bridge chokepoints, it would take literally tens, or more likely hundreds, of thousands of drones and TROOPS ringing Moscow to besiege it.

Kiev's attack was a publicity stunt to get more EU aid.
Please stop posting clickbait.
More importantly, please stop believing it.

-----------

"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 19, 2026 6:46 PM

THG

Is also JJ. Keep it real please, and use a VPN

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
THGR...
Nope!
And... nope!
Jeez! You and your clickbait.

THGR:

Who do you and Jack think you're Bullshiting. What you call click bait is what's being reported globally.

tick tock comrade, tick tock Putin.

"Globally" by mainstream/ anti-Putin sources. Please adjust your view of the globe!

Here's an example of how your videos are clickbait meant for the gullible:

"Moscow under siege"

Really????

Ukraine targeted "a" refinery. That's it.

Moscow and environs is over 21 million, similar to LA county's 18 million. Like Moscow, we have refineries that supply the area. Since I moved here, we've had a few refineries close down due to regulations. We had one major one - Exxon- blow up its gasoline-producing unit, a fluidized catalytic cracking unit (FCCU) and ultimately shut down the whole refinery. Recently, we had the remaining refinery blow up. It had such a major upset that all the emergency flaring units went off all at once, we could see for MILES the flames shooting skyward a hundred feet.

And yanno what happened to LA??

NOTHING
NADA
ZIP

Gas prices went up a bit, and then went down in a few months. That's it.

Look at a map, THGR. There are so many roadways and railways into Moscow, which is hugely expansive on a flat plain, with no specific tunnel or bridge chokepoints, it would take literally tens, or more likely hundreds, of thousands of drones and TROOPS ringing Moscow to besiege it.

Kiev's attack was a publicity stunt to get more EU aid.
Please stop posting clickbait.
More importantly, please stop believing it.

-----------

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

Yup, you have lots of trains and roadways in Russia. And in the past week Ukraine has sent hundreds of Drones into Moscow. Three nights in a row. And what you claim to be clickbait is video showing it happen.

Ukraine ISSUES ORDER To Attack Belarus Forces; Moscow HIT By Missile Drone Strikes

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Friday, June 19, 2026 8:21 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

THGR, you can't damage a road, railway, or bridge with drones. You can't even destroy a significant industrial facility with drones. It's that "payload v distance" trade-off. You'd need missiles.

That's why Ukraine targets storage tanks. They're lightly built, full of flammable material, and make big clouds of black smoke. A great show.

Try to put things in perspective. While you're busy cheering Ukraine managing to hit some storage tanks here or there, or vehicles here or there, or a truck stop or substation or two, this is something Russia has been doing multiple times a day for years.

*****

And attacking Belarus.
Again... seriously??

Are Zelenskys handlers following the Trump model of warmaking? When getting your ass handed to you in one conflict, start another one (and overextend yourself)?

-----------

"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 20, 2026 6:07 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:
THGR, you can't damage a road, railway, or bridge with drones.

Actually, you can. The Russians showed that they could in this video:

Dozens Of FPVs Chip Away Support Columns To Bring Down Road Bridge In Ukraine

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidhambling/2026/06/17/dozens-of-fpvs-c
hip-away-support-columns-to-bring-down-road-bridge/

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 20, 2026 6:09 AM

SECOND

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

Phillips P. OBrien

Jun 20, 2026

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/early-lessons-from-the-us-iran-
war

One idea that I have tried to get through in my writings is that battles rarely, if ever, “determine” anything. By battles, I mean time-limited engagements over space that do not see the complete ending of a war. Think Stalingrad, the Tet Offensive, or Bakhmut. What battles usually do, on the other hand, is “reveal”. This is, I believe, one of the key insights needed to understand what is important and what is not when analyzing the course of a conflict. This argument was central to my recent book War and Power: Who Wins Wars and Why, and was included as a major point in the Introduction. Here is a paragraph from page 15.

Wars go off the rails because they are extremely complex and difficult interactions that end up taxing militaries, economies, governments and societies, from the beginning of the productive process all the way to the battlefields. They are not decided on the battlefield; rather, the battlefield reveals the state of the national powers involved. The cause-and-effect relationship that people normally assume between battle and wars needs to be reversed. Battles don’t cause the war to end a certain way; they reveal how a war is developing.

Not understanding this is one of the reasons the reporting about the fighting in Ukraine was so weak for so long. For example, looking at the Battle of Pokrovsk, which raged from 2024 throughout most of 2025, it is easy to see that the result was not decisive in any way. Russia’s ability to gain control of the wrecked shell of that city was not important strategically. It made no difference to the continuing creation of military power on either side, and deprived neither side of, nor gained for either side, access to the key resources or political power needed to keep waging war.

However, what the Battle of Pokrovsk did, if you were paying attention to the right things at the right time, was reveal how the Russo-Ukrainian war was developing. That was not necessarily in Russia’s favor.

Download the book from https://z-lib.sk/s/War%20and%20Power%20Who%20Wins%20Wars%20and%20Why

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 20, 2026 6:40 AM

SECOND

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

Trump: Ukraine war would have ended in one day if not for a 'terrible mistake'

The US President explained the decision made by a Russian general

By Daryna Vialko | Sat, June 20, 2026 – 00:02

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/trump-ukraine-war-would-have-ended-in-
one-1781902697.html

Russia could have ended the war in Ukraine on the very first day if a Russian general had not made a single mistake, US President Donald Trump said in an interview with Axios.

Trump said the war should have ended very quickly because Russian President Vladimir Putin had hundreds of tanks moving toward Kyiv along a highway.

"There's a highway, concrete, very good highway, solid as a rock, right into Kyiv. And about halfway there, he would've been there in three hours going at 51 miles an hour, which is about the max speed for a tank," the President said.

However, according to Trump, that did not happen because a Russian general decided to send the tanks "through the farmland" instead. The vehicles became stuck in the mud after record rainfall had hit the area several days earlier.

The American leader said Ukrainian forces then destroyed the Russian tanks using Javelin anti-tank missiles, which he emphasized had been supplied to Kyiv during his presidency.

"They were locked in quicksand, practically. It was mud like quicksand. They couldn't move," Trump said.

According to the US President, if the Russian tanks had stayed on the highway to Kyiv, they would have reached the Ukrainian capital within four hours.

"That war would've been over in one day. That was four and a half years ago. So that was a terrible mistake. And here's a general, decides rather than going up the middle of a highway right into the town," Trump said.

As previously reported, following a Ukrainian strike on the Moscow oil refinery, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Russian citizens to influence the Kremlin leader if they want to end the consequences of the war started by Moscow.

Zelenskyy also noted that, according to available information, more than half of Russians support ending the war. At the same time, he stressed that the Russian public is aware of the lack of significant battlefield achievements by Russian forces.

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 20, 2026 1:47 PM

SECOND

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

Sat, June 20, 2026 - 18:47

President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy has returned the Order of the White Eagle to Poland after President Karol Nawrocki revoked the award from him.

"Yesterday, the President of Poland noted that the Order of the White Eagle is not an ordinary award. It is a symbol of the highest trust of the Republic of Poland. It signifies a special bond with the Polish state and the special gratitude of the Polish People. Such a symbol requires not only merit, but also respect for the values that form the foundation of our community," Zelenskyy wrote on X.

He noted that if it is considered acceptable for this special symbol to remain associated with Catherine II, Benito Mussolini, and Gerhard Schröder, then Ukraine will not dispute it. Therefore, Zelenskyy returned the award to Poland.

"We believed that the Order of the White Eagle, awarded in 2023, was meant for the Ukrainian People and our army. That is what was said at the time. Today, I sent the Order back to the President of Poland," the Ukrainian leader said.

At the same time, Zelenskyy emphasized that Ukraine is grateful to the Polish people for their support and cooperation, which plays an important role in the struggle "for our and your independence."

"Ukraine never forgets solidarity and understands that cooperation between states and peoples in our region is one of the tangible security guarantees for Ukrainians and for each neighboring state," the statement reads.

The president also said that Ukraine will remain open to all meaningful formats of cooperation with Poland in order to avoid "conflicting interpretations of the difficult and painful chapters of our shared past and to ensure proper respect for all innocent victims of the 20th century."

Zelenskyy stressed that Ukrainians are doing everything in their power to prevent Europe from losing in this century. He also said Ukraine will continue to defend itself in the war waged by Russia.

"We will undoubtedly achieve a dignified peace. Ukraine is grateful to all peoples, states, and leaders who will continue to stand with us in the defense of freedom and who, together with Ukraine, will serve as guarantors of postwar peace in Europe and a new, real security," the head of state added.

In conclusion, he added that he is proud of Ukrainians and every Ukrainian soldier, and expressed the view that the future will confirm respect for Ukrainians.

Background

Earlier, on June 19, Polish President Karol Nawrocki stripped Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Poland's highest state award—the Order of the White Eagle.

The decision was linked to a series of diplomatic disputes between Ukraine and Poland over historical issues. However, the main factor was Zelenskyy's decree awarding an honorary designation "named after Ukrainian Insurgent Army heroes" to one of the Ukrainian military units.

Today, June 20, Presidential Office head Kyrylo Budanov said he was refusing the Gold Officer's Cross of the Order "For Merit to Poland," which he was awarded by the Polish president last year.

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/zelenskyy-sends-poland-s-highest-honor
-back-1781970087.html

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

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Sunday, June 21, 2026 6:44 AM

SECOND

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

As a Ukrainian journalist, I’ve covered the US for 20 years. I find it increasingly shocking

My country has been under occupation, dogged by corruption and war. Yet even I’ve been bewildered by the way the US seems to be fracturing

By Nataliya Gumenyuk | Thu 30 Apr 2026

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/30/as-a-ukrainian-journalis
t-ive-covered-the-us-for-20-years-i-find-it-increasingly-shocking

In 2008, when I was a reporter for a leading Ukrainian TV station, I insisted on following Barack Obama’s campaign for US president. Few Ukrainian media outlets could afford to send a journalist to travel around the US to report on the election; even the newsrooms of those that could took some convincing.

As a media student in 2004, I had spent two months on the streets of Kyiv during the Orange Revolution, where people protested a stolen election and succeeded in defending their vote. The excitement of the fight for freedom and justice, combined with the energy of mass gatherings, was seductive. I recognised a similar momentum in the US during Obama’s campaign and wanted to see how things felt on the ground. As a Ukrainian, I could relate to Obama’s promises to restore respect for human rights and the rule of law, and his desire to mobilise people around the idea of “hope”. It also stood in contrast with what I knew of the US: I had studied foreign news reporting at the time of the US invasion of Iraq and the military’s crimes in Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo.

I went on to cover four more US elections. What stood out to me, and still bewilders me now, is the extent to which the conversation around access to affordable health care and education has become radicalised in the US. To a Ukrainian, or indeed most Europeans, these are simply what people expect from a functioning state. I recall a Nobel prize laureate – the American scientist Martin Chalfie, who won the 2008 chemistry prize and taught at Columbia University – telling me he was planning to use the award money to pay his daughter’s college tuition. I was shocked.

As a foreign reporter in the US, I witnessed debates around these issues become increasingly hostile and disconnected from reality. In 2020, the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, Donald Trump supporters considered anyone wearing a face mask to be suspicious; health and safety measures, they believed, were a ploy to deprive them of their civil liberties. No rational argument could convince them otherwise. Fast forward to 2025, and Trump has appointed as the US secretary of health an anti-vaccine activist who champions debunked scientific theories and insists that mRNA vaccine technology is dangerous, despite its proven efficacy.

There is no longer a shared sense of what is true. I know first-hand that when facts are questioned, rather than verified and used to build common ground, it becomes harder to agree on even the most basic issues – including what the government is for. People stop debating what can be changed and improved about the public sector and instead start to see it as something to be dismantled. The underlying problems, meanwhile, remain unsolved.

Today, as Ukraine fights a war to defend its democracy – to preserve a state where institutions serve the people rather than dictators, where the press remains independent, and where citizens can shape the politics around them – the contrast between the two countries is striking.

In Ukraine, the war claims the lives of soldiers every day. Resources are scarce, the economy has been shattered, and yet even the poor contribute what they can to support fellow citizens, often through small but meaningful donations. Those experiences make it even more unsettling to observe how in the US, democracy is being eroded and dismantled, sometimes without an effective fight. And how a prosperous society, facing no comparable threat, can hesitate to redistribute resources that are readily available.

More at https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/30/as-a-ukrainian-journalis
t-ive-covered-the-us-for-20-years-i-find-it-increasingly-shocking

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

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Sunday, June 21, 2026 7:03 AM

SECOND

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

Weekend Update #190: Long-Range Reveal

Phillips P. OBrien
Jun 21, 2026

. . . the Ukrainians were able to get a large number of drones through this blanket of defenses to seriously damage one of the most important economic/strategic targets in the capital of Russia. Now that is notable and shows change. This kind of attack would have been beyond Ukrainian abilities in 2025. There systems were not refined enough, they did not have the tactics to neutralize Russian air defense, and they lacked the mass.

Now they can do it.

That is the most important “reveal” of the week and the thing to take from these contrasting attacks. We have known for a long time that while the Russians are more than happy to launch terror attacks, the Ukrainians attack strategic targets and try to respect the laws of war (even while the US is disregarding them).

So the targets themselves are utterly consistent. The difference is that when faced with a crisis, the Russians opted to simply ramp up the horror because they have no other new ability. The Ukrainians, to counter, showed that they can do more, very effectively. If the Russians cannot change that dynamic, the long-range war is going to get even worse for them.

More at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-190-long-range-r
eveal

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

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Sunday, June 21, 2026 7:53 AM

SECOND

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

Russian-occupied Crimea completely suspends gas sales to civilians as Ukrainian drone strikes squeeze peninsula

By Luca Léry Moffat | June 21, 2026 1:11 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/crimea-completely-suspends-gas-sales-as-uk
rainian-drone-strikes-squeeze-occupied-peninsula/

Gas stations in Russian-occupied Crimea have been instructed as of June 21 to completely suspend sales of fuel to civilians, as Ukraine steps up medium-range drone strikes on energy infrastructure across the peninsula.

"Fuel will only be dispensed to state services that ensure the vital activities and security of the Republic of Crimea," Sergey Aksyonov, the Russian-appointed governor of occupied Crimea, said in a video address on the morning of June 21.

The ban is effective as of 9 a.m. on June 21, Aksyonov added. . . .

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

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