Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Monday, August 24, 2026 17:54
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Thursday, August 20, 2026 1:31 PM

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

Inside Russia's Banderol missile, a hybrid drone-bomb-missile

Russia is increasingly using Banderol loitering munitions to strike Ukraine — weapons that function as de facto cruise missiles and whose attacks are destructive and dangerous.

Editor: Bohuslav Romanenko | August 20, 2026, 09:54 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/banderol-technical-specifications-range-w
arhead-and-risks-infographic-and-description-50634405.html

A supplier of several components for the Banderol cruise missile is the joint-stock company Chip and Dip, which is on the U.S. and Ukrainian sanctions lists but is not sanctioned by Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Canada, or the European Union as a whole.

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

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Thursday, August 20, 2026 1:38 PM

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'Land for peace' won't stop Russia's war on Ukrainian identity

By Vincent Artman | August 20, 2026 6:55 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/land-for-peace-wont-stop-russias-war-on-uk
rainian-identity/

As Russia's war against Ukraine grinds on with seemingly no end in sight and the Russian leadership rejecting any talk of ceasefires or meaningful negotiations, there has been a growing chorus arguing that Kyiv must face reality, admit that military victory is impossible, enter negotiations, and agree to territorial concessions.

"Land for peace" might be a "difficult choice," or so the argument goes, but it is the only way to avoid a crushing defeat.

Even setting aside the question of whether such unilateral concessions would actually produce a just and durable peace, what is strangely absent from "land for peace" proposals is any acknowledgment that what is at stake is more than "border adjustments."

Territory, after all, is not empty. Indeed, as Olga Burlyuk has argued, the "pornography of land concessions" requires us to imagine a Ukraine without people: since it's "just land" being traded away, "there is no harm in losing some."

But even if for some, "land for peace" may appear to be a tidy formula, reality is far messier: millions of Ukrainians live under an occupation regime that is designed to eradicate their identity.

Much more at https://kyivindependent.com/land-for-peace-wont-stop-russias-war-on-uk
rainian-identity/

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

An estimated 3 to 6 million Ukrainians live under Russian occupation, though precise numbers are hard to verify due to ongoing conflict and mass displacement. https://voxukraine.org/en/false-the-same-number-of-ukrainians-live-in-
russia-as-in-ukraine

Current Estimates

• Ukrainian Government Estimates: Ukrainian officials, including former reintegration ministers, have stated that up to 6 million Ukrainians (including 1.5 million children) live in areas seized by Russia since 2014 and 2022.

• Independent and International Estimates: Other tracking groups and general consensus estimates place the active population remaining in the occupied territories (including Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia) closer to 3 to 5 million, noting that roughly half of the original population fled or was displaced following the 2022 full-scale invasion.

• Broader Context: Total population inside Ukraine's internationally recognized borders is roughly 35 million, with about 29 to 30.5 million living in territory controlled directly by the Ukrainian government.

Factors Impacting the Numbers

• Displacement and Flight: Millions fled westward or abroad at the start of the war.

• Deportations: Hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been forcibly deported or transferred deeper into Russian-controlled regions.

• Inflow of Russian Citizens: Russia has systematically moved Russian citizens and administrative workers into occupied zones like Crimea and parts of the Donbas, altering the demographic balance.

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

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Thursday, August 20, 2026 3:14 PM

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Ukraine Planned to Swarm Moscow Airports With AI-Guided Drones

By Simon Shuster | August 20, 2026, 12:03 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/08/ukraine-moscow-a
irports-ai-drones/688337/

Early this year, Ukrainian officials came to President Volodymyr Zelensky with a risky new plan to end the war with Russia. It would require expanding their bombing campaign to include a set of targets and a class of weapons they had long avoided. In addition to Ukraine’s ongoing strikes against Russian military bases, oil refineries, supply lines, and logistics hubs, the officials wanted to launch waves of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports, hoping to stop international carriers from flying in and out of the Russian capital, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the plan, which has not been previously reported.

Both people spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive military operations. If executed, the plan would mark a terrifying milestone in the history of warfare: an attack in which swarms of autonomous drones equipped with AI guidance systems would seek out and hit their targets without a human pilot controlling their movements. Such systems have been tested by various countries in recent years, including the United States. But the legality of their use has been vigorously debated as a possible violation of the laws of war, and they have never been deployed at scale.

When officials presented the plan to Zelensky this winter, he expressed strong reservations, one of the sources said. He worried that it could be seen as “piracy” if the drones hit a civilian airliner in Moscow, especially if the strikes killed or injured passengers, airport staff, or members of the flight crew. But in his desperation to find a Russian pressure point that could restart the peace process, Zelensky allowed preparations for the strikes to continue for several months this spring and early summer, both sources said.

A spokesperson for Zelensky declined to comment. Another official in the president’s office denied the existence of a plan to launch swarms of AI-enabled drones at Moscow’s airports. “That’s total nonsense,” the official told me, asking not to be named in an article about this topic. Ukraine has long sought to force the closure of Russian airports, the official added, and its drone strikes against various targets in Russia have often achieved that goal for short periods of time. But Ukraine does not have long-range weapons that are precise and reliable enough to hit Russian airports without posing an undue risk to civilians, the official said.

According to Russian aviation authorities, airports across the country were forced to close 114 times during a one-month period last summer, from June 28 to July 28, usually due to the threat of Ukrainian drones. Moscow was affected by the highest number of shutdowns—at least 17 in total at its four main airports. The Russian association of travel agents reported more than 290 of these incidents nationwide in the first quarter of this year. The airport closures, which Russians refer to as a kovyor, meaning “carpet,” usually last a few hours before authorities give the all-clear and allow flights to resume. “We’ve only ever had one operation against the airports,” the official said. “Force the Russians to declare ‘carpets’ all the time.”

By the middle of spring, the plan to force a more permanent shutdown of Moscow’s airports had advanced far enough to receive a code name: M&Ms, a reference to the many small, cheap, and nearly identical drones that the mission would require. To overwhelm Russian air defenses, the operation would need to send as many as 1,000 drones a night to airports in and around Moscow, said one of the sources familiar with it.

Attacks of that size would not be far outside the norm in this conflict. Earlier this week, Russian authorities reported shooting down 791 Ukrainian drones in a single night, one of the largest attacks of the war; more than 600 of them were flying toward the Moscow region, according to the city’s mayor.

“The idea is to shut down the Moscow airspace to civilian flights for an extended period of time,” one of the sources familiar with the plan told me. Since the start of the Russian invasion, in February 2022, civilian air travel over Ukraine has been suspended. But Russian airports have mostly remained open, and millions of passengers used them this year to travel abroad. Due to Western sanctions, only a few international carriers still fly in and out of Moscow, including Turkish Airlines and Emirates, which many well-to-do Russians use to reach hubs in Istanbul and Dubai.

Forcing those carriers to stop flying to Russia would make life less comfortable for officials, oligarchs, and other wealthy loyalists of President Vladimir Putin. “People in the elites might come to Putin and say: We have a problem here,” said one of the sources familiar with the Ukrainian plan. That kind of pressure from the elites, in combination with other wartime strains on Russia’s economy and society, could force Putin to negotiate a peace deal, the source said.

Both sources told me planning for the operation was halted in July, when Zelensky abruptly fired its mastermind, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov. As the architect of Ukraine’s military drone program, Fedorov had worked on the plan for most of this year, keeping it a secret even from some of his closest aides. He helped assemble a team of Ukrainian computer programmers to develop the AI guidance system, and he secured financing from Ukraine’s allies in Europe to produce the autonomous drones at scale, the two sources said.

Having served throughout the war as a crucial member of Zelensky’s team, Fedorov changed this month into a potential rival for the presidency. In a video address posted on YouTube yesterday, the former defense minister called for Ukraine to hold elections and choose a new government. Ukraine has not held presidential or parliamentary elections since 2019, because Ukrainian martial law, which has been in effect since the start of the invasion, prohibits elections in a time of war. Opinion polls taken in recent weeks show that Fedorov has grown popular enough in Ukraine since his dismissal to pose a serious challenge to Zelensky in a presidential race. “Democracy cannot be held hostage by Russia,” Fedorov said in his speech.

The same day, the Ukrainian Parliament confirmed the nomination of a new defense minister, Yevhenii Khmara, a decorated military veteran. The vote in Parliament foreclosed Fedorov’s hopes of returning to his previous post anytime soon. It also threw into doubt the future of the operation known as M&Ms. One of the sources familiar with the plan expressed hope that the new defense minister would carry it forward. “We will try. Technically it’s possible,” the source said. “You can revive this project with a new team, but it would take, in my view, around three months.” By that time, another brutal winter of war will have arrived.

In the months before his dismissal, Fedorov pursued numerous high-tech plans to force the Russians to negotiate before the onset of winter. The Atlantic reported earlier this month that he had appealed for help from Elon Musk, and that Zelensky had asked President Trump to secure Musk’s assistance. The Ukrainians needed Musk to allow the use of Starlink, his satellite-communications network, as a navigation tool for drones to hit targets inside Russia, including Russian ballistic-missile launchers, with precision. Musk has refused to allow the use of Starlink over Russian territory. He has not replied to my messages seeking comment on the matter.

As an alternative to Starlink, the Ukrainians have rushed to develop reliable drones equipped with AI, which offer a way to get around Russia’s counter-drone defenses. Most attack drones require a pilot to guide them to their targets, through radio signals, mobile internet connections, or some other means of remote control. Russia, like most advanced military powers, uses electronic jamming to disrupt the signal between enemy drones and their pilots, forcing the weapons to crash or veer off course.

Last summer, the Ukrainians found an ingenious way around this problem. They hid 117 drones inside five long-haul trucks and hired unwitting drivers to bring them close to Russian air bases. Once in position, the drones connected to the internet, reportedly using Russian SIM cards, and flew out of the trucks’ secret compartments. Drone pilots back in Ukraine used the internet connection to guide most of the weapons to their targets. The mission, known as Operation Spider’s Web, damaged or destroyed roughly two dozen Russian warplanes, including nuclear-capable bombers, that stood parked on the tarmac of their bases in Russia.

Ukraine’s latest plan would allow the drones to pilot themselves, using an AI-powered technique known as map matching, the two sources familiar with the plan told me. The technique involves uploading detailed maps of a drone’s intended flight path to its onboard computer, along with pictures of its targets. As the drone flies, its camera collects images of the terrain below. The onboard computer uses an AI model to compare those images with the ones stored in its memory, a bit like a person consulting a map on an unfamiliar highway. When the camera spots something that matches, or resembles, the image of the target, the drone flies into it and explodes. A human pilot does not need to confirm that the drone has found the right target before it strikes.

When this technology first appeared in Ukraine a couple of years ago, some drone manufacturers told me, they had declined to make it available to their clients in the military, because they found it too risky. One drone maker showed me an AI-targeting system with a kind of accuracy selector, which he could slide up and down on a screen. If he chose the lower setting, it would give the drone permission to attack even if its AI model is only 30 percent certain that it sees the right target. The highest setting tells the AI to reach 90 percent certainty before it decides to strike. Even that did not seem precise enough for the manufacturer, who wondered what would happen if a child on a bicycle were to enter the frame of the drone’s camera as it locked onto its target: “Who is responsible if that kid dies?”

Ukrainian officials, arms makers, and military officers have wrestled with such questions for years. Some have called for the Ukrainian Parliament or an international body such as the United Nations to develop guidelines for the use of AI targeting in warfare. No such rules exist in Ukrainian law. The U.S. and most of its allies have vague guidelines about a human needing to be “in the loop” before an AI model decides to attack. But most experts on the laws of war see such restrictions as outdated and insufficient.

Zelensky raised concerns about unintended targets being struck when it came to the plan to attack Moscow’s airports, one of the sources familiar with these conversations told me. The officials behind the plan offered work-arounds, the source said. They suggested, for example, that Ukraine would warn civilian airlines to avoid Russian airports and evacuate their planes before the swarm of Ukrainian drones arrived. “If they say to themselves, You know what, it’s getting too risky. Why even continue flying there?” the source said. “That would already have quite an impact on the Russian elites. Those are their main connections to the outside world.”

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

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Friday, August 21, 2026 5:20 AM

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

Kuchma names three fatal mistakes in Ukraine's years of independence

August 21, 2026 11:14

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/4156202-kuchma-names-three-f
atal-mistakes-in-ukraines-years-of-independence.html

Former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma has identified the removal of Ukraine's tactical nuclear weapons, the decision not to sign an EU Association Agreement in Vilnius, and the failure to prevent Russia's seizure of Crimea in 2014 as three fatal mistakes during Ukraine's years of independence.

Kuchma, Ukraine's second president, expressed this view in an interview with Ukrinform.

"Among the unquestionable mistakes, I would definitely name the catastrophic decision not to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union in Vilnius. But, emotionally, the hardest thing for me personally to accept is the de facto surrender of Crimea in February-March 2014. There was no response to the actions of the 'little green men,' who calmly and brazenly took control of the Ukrainian peninsula. Let me remind you: formally, they were not even identified as Russians. They were unknown terrorists, and they should have been dealt with accordingly. A decisive response in Crimea could have stopped the attempted annexation at its very beginning," Kuchma said.

He also separately mentioned the loss of Ukraine's nuclear weapons. According to the former president, agreeing to the removal of Ukraine's tactical nuclear weapons in 1992 was a fatal mistake. He said that by 1994, when the Budapest Memorandum was concluded, there was essentially nothing left to decide regarding Ukraine's strategic security – everything had already been settled two years earlier.

"The point is that the Budapest Memorandum deprived Ukraine of strategic weapons whose condition and characteristics would not have allowed them to provide nuclear deterrence anyway. But at the beginning of our independence, we did have the weapons needed for that. We had about 3,000 tactical nuclear warheads. In principle, we could have used them to defend ourselves against Russia at that time. They had an optimal range of operation and included nuclear aviation bombs, artillery shells and naval torpedoes – in other words, the entire range of tactical nuclear weapons. And unlike the strategic arsenal, Ukraine could control and deploy them itself," Kuchma said.

As reported, the removal of all tactical nuclear weapons from Ukrainian territory to Russia was completed on May 7, 1992. About 2,500 tactical warheads were transferred under pressure from international partners and because Ukraine lacked the technical and financial resources to maintain them.

At a Cabinet meeting on November 21, 2013, the Ukrainian government adopted a resolution titled "Issues Concerning the Conclusion of the Association Agreement between Ukraine, on the one hand, and the European Union, the European Atomic Energy Community and their Member States, on the other," suspending preparations for the signing of the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. The decision triggered mass protests that eventually grew into the Revolution of Dignity.

On February 20, 2014, Russian troops without identifying insignia began landing in Crimea. On March 16, 2014, a so-called referendum on Crimea's status was held in the temporarily Russian-occupied Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, in violation of Ukrainian and Crimean legislation. It took place under pressure from Russian troops and paramilitary "self-defense" groups and with the support of Russian propaganda media.

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

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Friday, August 21, 2026 5:26 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 US Does Not Understand Air Power, But Does Ukraine?

The Wildberries Campaign And The Fallacy Of Signalling

Phillips P. OBrien
Aug 21, 2026

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-us-does-not-understand-air-
power

This piece might be a little technical. It is about conceptions of air power, and in particular how states are using it now (particularly the USA and Ukraine). It is built on the ideas that I have mentioned in a number of places before, from books to articles, but not brought together in this way. I hope that it makes sense.

The piece is built around the idea that the US has (once again) revealed that it does not understand how to use air power, and as such has terribly bungled a war—and ended up weakening itself. It then moves on to Ukraine. I would say Ukraine shows signs that it grasps how to use air power better than the USA—though those signs are not as clear as many would have thought. There has been, at times, an overly celebratory discussion of the Ukrainian use of air power—when their campaign is, imho, more uneven than people realize. By that, I mean that to this point they might have been able to achieve more if they had used their air power more methodically. By looking at the Ukrainian air campaign against the Russian company Wildberries, I will try and provide some illustration of what I mean.

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

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Friday, August 21, 2026 6:01 AM

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

Putin is threatening Britain again – this time he could be cornered enough to do something reckless

It isn’t the first time the Kremlin has warned of consequences for the UK over its support for Ukraine. From arson to sabotage, Russia has been testing Britain’s defences for years. But desperation could lead to a real attack, and it is something we are in no way prepared for, writes Owen Matthews

Thursday 20 August 2026 14:09 BST

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/putin-threat-uk-drone-
ukraine-war-b3035606.html

The Kremlin’s reaction to news that British-built long-range drones had been used in the latest Ukrainian attacks deep inside Russian territory was predictably furious. And once again it came with a threat of retaliation.

“The United Kingdom is acting as an accomplice and co-perpetrator of the bloody crimes and terrorist attacks committed by Ukrainian neo-Nazis,” thundered the Russian Embassy in London in a statement. “London’s actions will inevitably carry consequences for which it will have to answer … The deeper its involvement in the conflict and the greater its support of Kiev’s terrorist machinery, the higher the price it will pay.” . . .

. . . So far, such an escalation remains remote – but only because Putin believes that his army’s slow advance across Donbas means that he will eventually crush Ukraine’s resistance. However, as I wrote last month for The Independent, trouble for Putin is much closer to home, with increasing tensions inside Russia’s elite between business interests exhausted by the war and those securocrats who owe power and incomes to continued conflict.

A cornered, desperate Putin will be far more dangerous, and more unpredictable and last month two senior Kremlin sources, one of whom meets regularly with the president, were quoted as saying they predicted a “high probability” of escalation in the coming months.

Two things are clear – one, that Britain is extremely vulnerable and unprepared for attack, whether it’s in cyberspace or on its critical infrastructure. The other is that Russian spies and soldiers have been methodically probing our weaknesses, ready to strike if and when the Kremlin grows sufficiently reckless to give the order.

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 6:39 AM

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

Russian Occupation Update, August 21, 2026

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-occupatio
n-update-august-21-2026/

Russian and occupation officials are highlighting Russian efforts to militarize schools in occupied areas ahead of the 2026-2027 school year. Russian Minister of Education Sergei Kravtsov visited School No. 25 in occupied Simferopol, Crimea, on August 17 to review preparations for the upcoming school year.[8] Images from the visit show Kravtsov and Crimea occupation head Sergei Aksyonov looking at rifles and ammunition, which are likely part of teaching materials for the now mandatory “Fundamentals of Homeland Security and Defense (OBZR)” course. Aksyonov highlighted the fact that School No. 25 has opened a museum dedicated to Russia’s war in Ukraine and has integrated military-patriotic programming into the school’s operations, including through visits by active-duty Russian personnel, volunteer activities, and “Lessons on Courage.” Russia has used the Lessons on Courage program to expose children and youth in occupied Ukraine to active-duty and veteran Russian military personnel as a way of normalizing Russia’s war in Ukraine.[9] Chair of the Commission of the Public Chamber of occupied Crimea for Education, Science, and Educational Activities Natalia Reznichenko told pro-Russian radio station Radio Sputnik Krym on August 16 about other preparations in Crimean schools in advance of September 1.[10] Reznichenko stated that the Russian Ministry of Education is trying to standardize education across Russia and occupied Ukrainian regions, and has introduced the new mandatory “Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia” and OBZR courses in line with presidential decrees. Reznichenko also noted that schools in occupied Crimea will begin testing a behavioral assessment model for grades two through eight, which Ukrainian officials have warned could endanger schoolchildren and impose punishment for any perceived anti-Russian sentiment or behavior.[11] Russia has been institutionalizing the militarization of schools in occupied Ukraine since 2014 but has significantly scaled up these efforts since 2022.[12] Federally mandated courses such as the Spiritual and Moral Culture of Russia and OBZR represent the increased formalization of militarization programs for children and youth.

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 6:51 AM

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

Ukraine Launched Record 8,477 Drones and 26 Flamingo Missiles in One Week, Russia Claims

By Vlad Litnarovych | Aug 22, 2026 11:11

https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-launched-record-8477-
drones-and-26-flamingo-missiles-in-one-week-russia-claims-21900

Ukraine carried out what appears to be its largest weekly long-range strike campaign of the war, launching 8,477 drones and 26 Flamingo cruise missiles at targets inside Russia, according to figures released by the Russian Defense Ministry, cited by Russian outlet Interfax on August 21.

If accurate, the numbers would mark a record for the amount of Ukrainian aerial strike weapons deployed against Russia over seven days. Ukrainian public officials have not commented on these figures. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry does not publicly release the number of aerial targets launched against Russia.

The Russian Defense Ministry also claimed Ukraine launched 70 guided aerial bombs and 17 rockets fired from HIMARS and Vampire systems during the same period.

Moscow asserted that Russian air defenses intercepted all of the weapons listed in its report. Those claims could not be independently verified.

Russia further claimed that its Aerospace Forces shot down a Ukrainian MiG-29 fighter jet during the week and destroyed two unmanned Ukrainian Navy boats in the Black Sea. Neither Ukraine nor any other sources have confirmed those losses.

For example, in mid-August, Ukrainian Flamingo cruise missiles struck a space-industry facility in Samara involved in producing rockets for a Russian satellite communications project intended to serve as an alternative to Starlink.

Previously, reports emerged that Ukraine is turning its homegrown Flamingo cruise missile from a rare deep-strike weapon into a recurring threat for Russia.

Ukraine has sharply increased its use of domestically produced Flamingo cruise missiles against targets inside Russia this summer, with the pace of attacks nearly doubling over the past six months.

Moscow also claimed that Ukraine has set another record for the scale of its drone attacks on Russia, with Russian sources claiming that its air defenses shot down 1,671 UAVs in just 24 hours.

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 7:06 AM

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

Putin Can’t Stop Russians Peeking Behind the Curtain Forever

By David Averre | Aug 21, 2026 at 09:39 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-war-economy-fuel-shortages-drone
-strikes-12352005

The scale of their suffering is considerable. But Ukrainians never thought this was anything other than a full-scale war. Almost immediately, the population understood they were locked in a battle for their statehood and survival.

The Russian public was sold something very different: a lightning offensive so precise and effective it was not classed as war, but merely a special military operation. Within weeks, if not days, Ukraine would be conquered, the troops welcomed as heroes, and Russia’s status as a great power restored.

That has not transpired.

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 7:25 AM

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

There’s a Better Way To Measure How Much Russians Support Putin

By Alexander Shulga | August 21, 2026

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/08/21/theres-a-better-way-to-measu
re-how-much-russians-support-putin-a93558

Every time new trust ratings for President Vladimir Putin are released, some commentators point out that public support for Putin’s course of continuing the war remains unchanged; others note that this support is on a slow downward trend. These arguments distract from the main point and, let us be honest, suit Putin’s administration perfectly well.

It should be stressed from the outset that the methods used cannot be considered valid and cannot provide a snapshot of Russians’ real attitudes on this question. Russian sociologists are unlikely to be unaware of this. Quite the opposite.

If, after four and a half years of the full-scale phase of the Russian-Ukrainian war, after hundreds of thousands of Russian deaths, after trillions of dollars in economic losses, after the country’s expulsion from major global markets, all manner of restrictions and bans imposed on citizens, hours-long queues for gasoline and so on, around 70% of Russians say they fully or mostly trust the Kremlin usurper, then his power is truly sacred: neither Western economic sanctions nor Ukraine’s kinetic sanctions have shaken the people’s love or their credit of trust.

However, the closed nature of the polling — choosing between a set selection of answers and the explicit question of whether they trust Putin —only measures the ability of Russians to work out what is the most acceptable answer.

Of course, the decline of this indicator is also extremely important. In regimes that are moving from consolidated autocracy toward totalitarianism, support for the father of the nation must be maximal. Anything below 80% is acceptable but undesirable, while a figure below 55% is cause for panic. In such regimes, all procedures of real democracy are replaced by acclamation of the de facto sacredness of the head of state’s power.

This, incidentally, is one of the main reasons why Lev Shlosberg was sentenced to 11 years and one month in prison. Speaking out in favor of peace and stopping the war is to commit heresy against what the usurper is carrying to the masses. Maintaining a totality of public support requires reminders of what is permitted and what is not, even for those who had previously seemed to be allowed to say such things.

What looks like an incredible success in Western democracies in terms of trust levels is, for the Russian regime and others like it, a failure and a reason to replace the head of the presidential administration at a minimum, or to start a small victorious war in the most extreme case. An even greater problem arises when the war has already been started, but is neither small nor victorious.

That is why Putin’s trust ratings, obtained through closed questions, are still regularly published despite the authorities being well aware that they don’t show the full picture. They allow the authorities to demonstrate a minimally acceptable level of what is passed off as trust. These indicators also allow attention to be diverted from the real level of trust in Putin.

And in the conditions of today’s Russia, the real level of trust in the head of state can only be attempted through open-ended questions that give respondents room to maneuver and express their own opinion rather than repeat what they currently consider to be a socially acceptable answer.

This is precisely the approach chosen by the Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia when conducting two sociological surveys in the Krasnodar and Rostov regions. Respondents were asked the same question: “Which Russian politician or statesman do you trust most of all?”

The question was not multiple choice, so respondents had to choose the first politician who came ot mind. In both regions, respondents’ answers were quite similar: Putin was named by 39% in the Krasnodar region and 37% in the Rostov region, far below the 68-70% quoted by more prescriptive surveys.

This is precisely why we no longer see open-ended questions about trust in VTsIOM polls. When they tried, they recorded just 29.5% expressing trust in Putin in April 2026.

Of course, none of the other politicians or public figures received even a tenth of Vladimir Putin’s rating in either region. Only Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov received more than 2% of mentions, reaching 4% in the Rostov region.

This hardly speaks in Putin’s favor. Lavrov has held his post for almost as many years as Putin has ruled the Russian Federation and has essentially become his transmitter. This is the clearest indicator of the system created for Putin over the years, and of the sham character of both parliamentarism and the government's role in the Russian Federation.

In addition, it is important to recall not only trust in Putin and the minuscule trust in all other political actors, but also the share of Russians in the regions who trust no one at all or cannot or do not want to answer this question. In both regions, this share exceeds Putin’s trust rating: 44% in the Krasnodar region and 47% in the Rostov region, respectively. Crucially, different generations have different levels of trust in Putin. As surveys in both regions show, an entire generation has grown up in Russia whose attitudes differ significantly from the average levels of trust in him. Among young people under 30, mentions of the Russian president as the politician or statesman they trust most of all stand at only 16% in the Rostov region and 24% in the Krasnodar region.

The difference in trust becomes even more striking when comparing the answers of young people and the older generation. In the Krasnodar region, the gap is twofold: 24% versus 48% among citizens aged 55 and over. In the Rostov region, it is almost threefold: 16% versus 45%.

In addition, residents of large cities in both regions are substantially less likely to name Putin as the politician they trust most, as well as being more likely to say they do not trust any politicians at all. They are also exactly the people who would be targeted by another round of mobilization.

In a situation where the continuation of the war against Ukraine rests on the faith that Putin knows what he’s doing, the lack of trust evident through this methodology could have serious implications. After all, passive support is not the same as a demand for active support in its most extreme form: going to the front and dying there. Kremlin political technologists surely know about the gap between formal and real trust in Putin. And, surely, they would like Russians themselves not to discuss this gap for as long as possible.

Alexander Shulga is director of the Institute of Conflictology and Analysis of Russia

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 12:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Wow, biased much SECOND?

Tell your bot to find more credible sources instead of having it splatter all the crap it can find all over the board.

Better yet, why don't YOU do some REAL ANALYSIS instead of being such a Johnny one-note?

SIX's departure from the board exposed that you and THGR aren't DOING ANYTHING with your lives. You're not even thinking. Both of you are utterly static and BORING. As a result, the board is immensely boring.

-----------

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 5:36 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:
Wow, biased much SECOND?

SIX's departure from the board . . .

Departure? I hope the corpse of that little Nazi is rotting in the heat of a swampy basement. Same for Russians. Presumption of death in Russia requires that 6ixStringJoker has been dead five years, but if he does not return to gloat or mourn about Putin's/Trump's victories/defeats in 11 weeks, shortly after the November 3, 2026 election, I'd presume he is dead.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_death#Russia

ALL POSTS BY 6IXSTRINGJACK http://fireflyfans.net/mthreaduser.aspx?u=20928

6ix's most recent post on Russia
http://fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?bid=18&tid=64887&mid=12493
88#1249388

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
82% of Ukrainians believe Ukraine will win war with Russia, poll finds

Wow. Their propaganda machine was way better than yours was before it broke.

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

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

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

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Saturday, August 22, 2026 11:23 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

See what I mean?

All hate, all the time.

Not a smidgen of insight or intelligence.

BORING!

You probably sent a threatening email to SIX and scared him off.

-----------

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

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Sunday, August 23, 2026 6:35 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:
See what I mean?

All hate, all the time.

Not a smidgen of insight or intelligence.

BORING!

You probably sent a threatening email to SIX and scared him off.

Signym, I have seen enough Trumptards die from excess alcohol, tobacco, obesity, drugs, sex, and stupidity to know what will happen to 6ix. If he is not already dead, he will have a shortened lifespan because of his beliefs and behavior. The same is true for Russians.

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

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Sunday, August 23, 2026 6:36 AM

SECOND

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

Weekend Update #199: Ukraine’s Campaign Against Russian Oil Infrastructure Should Be The Focus

Phillips P. OBrien
Aug 23, 2026

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-199-ukraines-cam
paign

On Friday I sent out this piece on airpower that caused a little stir. People have called it the anti-Wildberries campaign, which I suppose is partly right. However, the key thing was that it called for focus in airpower and argued that signalling (showing capabilities) is usually a failure and that the best way to use airpower is to deconstruct strategic systems which underpin warfighting.

The article made the point that Ukraine needed to focus continually on Russia’s fuel system (refineries, pipelines, shipping) and that campaigns against Wildberries and the like often have much less strategic effect than understood (in that they do not damage warfighting potential). This week there were a number of examples and arguments about just how vulnerable Russia’s fuel system happens to be and it makes sense to lead on that.

Ukraine’s Campaign Against Russian Oil Infrastructure Should Be The Focus

On August 21/22 the Ukrainians hit the Russian Novokuibyshevskyi oil refinery in Samara Oblast. This facility is located about 1000 miles from Ukraine. This attack came just one day after the Ukrainians attacked another major refinery in Perm, which is also located about 1000 miles from Ukraine.

It is an indication of a recent uptick and return to refinery attacks, which is sometimes overlooked in the discussion of the Wildberries campaign, etc.

However, as this week showed, not so much in these attacks but in some other data that has been emerging, the campaign on Russia’s oil infrastructure is beginning to have strategic effect. If Ukraine can keep it up, expand it, and hit the same targets multiple times (either preventing repair or degrading quick repairs) Russia’s oil system could head towards failure.

Almost two and a half years ago (yikes, has it been so long?) I summarized both the advantages and challenges of such a campaign against Russian fuel, showing that the key thing was not flashy one off attacks, but repeated attacks to stop repairs and reconstitution.

Ukraine is Waging a Strategic Air Campaign Against Russian Oil Production
Phillips P. OBrien
Mar 15, 2024
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-waging-a-strategic-a
ir

Here was a summary from that piece.

In other words, don’t get fooled by dramatic pictures. An oil production system can be repaired and slack in the system can be made up for what is temporarily lost in other areas. That’s why I harp on stocks above. Ukraine has to keep this up for a while and attack (and re-attack) numerous facilities for this to work. It is not easy.

Now, the issue Ukraine has faced is from that point it has not consistently and repeatedly hit the same refineries to put them out of action for good. It has ramped up the campaign and then ramped down the campaign, hit new refineries but then, frustratingly, seemed to forget about other refineries that it had earlier hit.

Finally in the last few months, the Ukrainians have started doing what needs to be done. Here is a chart from Bloomberg data that I included in the Friday piece.

Now the attack rate is still not ideal. There was a severe and regrettable decline in attacks on refineries for two months in the Spring of 2026, but the focus on the whole oil infrastructure system is now clearer and the refineries, pipelines, and port attacks are starting to cause a buckling of the system.

When it comes to the refineries, as I tried to say a few years ago, the repeat attacks are finally eating away at Russia’s ability to repair these facilities. Here is a chart I put together of attacks on Russia’s largest 11 refineries this year. I have checked the data, but some of it comes solely from Ukrainian sources (which have been reliable, but I wanted to point that out).

CDU is the central distillation unit—the cracking tank—and if you want to know more about the importance of hitting certain vital parts of a refinery, this piece laid that out almost two years ago, but could be a helpful refresher.

What seems to be happening, finally, is that Russia’s ability to keep repairing these facilities is losing its integrity. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who ran the largest of Russia’s oil companies before Putin forced him out, put together this fascinating thread on what might be going on in Russia’s fuel system and the problems with repair. In a nutshell, the Russians are trying to get by with constant, short term repairs, or patching. However that can only get them so far, and at some point the system will start to fail. When that happens, the results will be pretty dramatic. Here is most of the thread.

Continued at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-199-ukraines-cam
paign

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

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Sunday, August 23, 2026 6:46 AM

SECOND

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

Ex-Defence Minister Fedorov Says Corruption Is Preventing Ukraine From Ending War From Position Of Strength

By Kateryna Tyshchenko | 22 August, 20:25

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/08/22/8049868/

Former defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov has said that corruption is preventing Ukraine from ending the war from a position of strength, and there are not just a few people involved, but "hundreds of people".

Source: Fedorov in an interview with 24 Kanal

Quote: "Corruption is preventing us from ending the war from a position of strength. There are a large number of people who have constructed various schemes and pursued their own interests, and they are holding back the adoption of the right decisions. I experienced this at the Defence Ministry, I fought it, I dismantled those schemes there and I stopped them. A large number of law enforcement officers support them, and a large number of people are building these schemes.

This isn't about one project or one branch of government. It's about a new social contract. Let's find people who make effective decisions to stop the war, let's give them the opportunity to work, let's assess them through the subsequent democratic process. Because when there is no such process… We are no longer surprised by the latest NABU [National Anti-Corruption Bureau] recordings. Even if they appear every week, it seems now that the whole of society understands: 'Everyone steals.' But this is not normal."

Details: Asked why he did not name the corrupt individuals concerned, Fedorov said: "The time will come when all Ukrainians will learn their names. Some will learn them from recordings made by the law enforcement agencies, some from journalistic investigations, and some for other reasons. We are also doing our homework in this area. And eventually all the names... everyone in our country will find out everything; it has always been this way. That is our culture. And it will happen in this case as well."

Fedorov went on: "We are not talking about one or two people, or just some senior officials; we are talking about hundreds of people who over the years have become accustomed to making money from the state budget."

When the interviewer asked why these people have prevailed, given that Fedorov has not been reinstated as defence minister, he replied: "I think these people will lose, because that was a battle for the Defence Ministry, whereas this is a war for the development of the country, and they will definitely lose that war. I see a lot of evidence of this – both the activity of our citizens who took to the streets in protest and the work of the anti-corruption agencies."

Asked whether he is still in contact with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Fedorov said: "I think we haven't spoken for a few weeks, definitely."

Background: In a video address on 18 August, Fedorov said that Ukraine is facing a "systemic crisis of governance" and criticised the influence of private interests on the work of parliament, particularly with regard to defence, pharmaceuticals, gambling and taxation.

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

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Sunday, August 23, 2026 6:48 AM

SECOND

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

Casualty Evacuation Remains Improvised Chaos In Most Ukrainian Units

By Olena Mukhina | 22/08/2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/08/22/evacuation-is-force-majeure-tha
t-no-one-is-ready-for-in-most-ukrainian-units-and-robots-are-too-slow-to-fix-it-commander-says/

A Ukrainian officer says the army still has no proper system for getting its wounded off the battlefield. Tetiana Chornovov, the commander of a platoon of anti-tank guided missile systems, has called for systemic reform of casualty evacuation in Ukraine's Armed Forces, saying that in the fifth year of the full-scale war, evacuating soldiers from the battlefield remains in most units "a force majeure that no one is ready for."

Most Ukrainian units lack dedicated evacuation groups and specialized armored transport, so evacuations happen in chaos with improvised means, with exceptions only in individual brigades, she says.

Amid public debate over whether ground robots can do the job, Chornovol argues the problem is larger than any single technology, and that the absence of a reliable way out shapes how soldiers fight.

The psychological stakes

Chornovol said the certainty of rescue matters as much as the rescue itself.

"You can't imagine how the existence of professional evac groups would improve the psychological atmosphere at the front. Everyone wants to hope that someone will come for them, will save them," she said.

Her own fear is concrete. Fighting in her fifth year, she said her greatest fear is "that something happens to my people and we'll be helpless, because the evacuation problems will be my problems, and in a small platoon I can't allocate resources to create my own evac group."

One evacuation, seven casualties

Chornovol has backed her argument with a case from a year ago, when her Stuhna anti-tank missile crew was subordinated to a neighboring brigade. At four in the morning, she was told of one killed and one wounded by an enemy chemical-weapons strike, with the evacuation placed entirely on her crew despite weak coordination and unfamiliar terrain.

The rescue attempts compounded the toll.

"My combat vehicle with excellent electronic warfare and an anti-mine grader, which set out for the evacuation, blew up on an anti-tank magnetic mine dropped from a drone," she recalled.

The grader saved lives, but four of her best soldiers were badly concussed. A second vehicle from the brigade, with one of her men as a guide, hit another anti-tank mine, but without a grader: "the mine exploded under the hood, the driver lost his legs, the others were concussed." A third vehicle made it through by luck and took out the wounded and the dead.

"So one evacuation, seven casualties. One severe, without legs," she said, noting the brigade simply had no normal evac group or evac protocol.

She organized the Stuhna evacuation herself, bringing in border guards to control the road, waiting for a window in drone flights, and repairing the electronic-warfare gear stripped from the first knocked-out vehicle.

What Chornovol wants built

Chornovol believes that creating separate staffed evacuation units within brigades is the most necessary reform now, each with an autonomous team and special transport.

"There should be the best drivers, with salaries like assault troops, but also medics, pilots, EW specialists, sappers to defuse mines dropped by drones, and pros: hunters with shotguns to down drones," she said.

On equipment, she argued against relying on ground robots, which she agrees are too slow for evacuation and often easy targets for enemy drones. The main transport, she said, should be a small, fast, lightly-armored vehicle with an anti-mine bottom, light enough to survive the anti-tank mines the enemy drops.

"For a platoon, such equipment is too much, but I don't understand why the whole brigade we were attached to didn't have such an evac vehicle," she said.

She nearly lost five of her men, she added, because of the absence of adequate evacuation approaches and proper light-armored vehicles in the army, asking why the National Guard has them for evacuation while the Armed Forces do not.

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

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Sunday, August 23, 2026 12:05 PM

SECOND

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

‘I don’t think beyond tomorrow’: How Russians in occupied Crimea are surviving one of the hardest summers of the war

August 21, 2026, 7:55 am

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/08/21/i-don-t-think-beyond-tomorrow-
how-people-in-occupied-crimea-are-surviving-one-of-the-hardest-summers-of-the-war

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

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Monday, August 24, 2026 3:57 AM

SECOND

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

Ukraine has five years to turn battlefield survival into lasting independence

By Valerii Zaluzhnyi
Ambassador of Ukraine to the United Kingdom, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine (2021 -2024)

August 23, 2026, 08:12 AM

https://english.nv.ua/opinion/ukraine-at-35-five-decisive-years-to-mak
e-independence-irreversible-50635023.html

Valerii Zaluzhnyi: Instead of building the Ukrainian state that thousands fought and died for, we got a clan-based oligarchic republic.

How can we cross this desert without turning on one another or losing ourselves in a changing world?

An exclusive essay for NV.

“Be strong and courageous. Do not fear or dread them, for the Lord your God goes with you. He will not leave or abandon you.” — Deuteronomy 31:6

Remember the past without losing sight of the future.

Thirty-five years of Ukrainian independence are not only an occasion to reflect on the road we have traveled. More importantly, they are a chance to decide where we go next.

If we compare our journey with the Israelites’ exodus from Egypt to the “land flowing with milk and honey,” then we have five years left in the desert.

Those five years may prove the hardest. They will demand unity, concentrated effort and the determination to remain free. We must fight not only an external enemy, but also the “sandstorms” of lies, exhaustion, disappointment and fading hope.

As Ivan Franko wrote in his poem Moses: “And the people lost faith and said, ‘The prophets lied! We are to live and die in the desert! What else are we waiting for? And how long?’”

Ukraine today may be closer than ever to the point at which doubt about the road ahead begins to seep into society. The questions “What are we waiting for?” and “How long?” are already appearing with growing frequency, now written not on stone tablets but on cardboard signs.

To answer the question of what comes next — and how we avoid losing our way before finally emerging from the darkness of the desert — we must look honestly at the road Ukraine has traveled over the past 35 years and identify the strategic priorities for the decisive stage ahead.

The collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geostrategic turning point of the 20th century. Russian President Vladimir Putin calls it the greatest mistake. That choice of words is no accident. A geopolitical rupture cannot be reversed. A mistake, however, can supposedly be corrected.

In much of the West, the Soviet Union’s collapse is understood as an objective historical process: Empires eventually decline and disintegrate. The Kremlin sees it differently. In Moscow’s view, the collapse should never have happened.

As long as that conviction shapes Russian policy, Moscow’s refusal to accept Ukrainian independence will remain fundamental. It leaves little room for compromise, whether through the illusion of elections or promises of a durable peace.

The “prophets” must not lie about that.

But Russia’s leadership has also made a grave mistake of its own. Its obsession with correcting history has already led to a full-scale war in which there can be no true winner — and one that Russia itself is incapable of winning.

Ukrainian independence emerged from the collapse of an empire, but it was also the culmination of decades and centuries of struggle by our ancestors for freedom. We must remember that.

At the very least, we must remember the price paid by those who, in the 35th year of the independence they fought for, were finally laid to rest in their native soil.

Today’s defenders must see and remember this as well. Will they, too, become victims of political manipulation and begin looking for peace somewhere else, as thousands who have not yet returned already have?

In 1991, history shifted like tectonic plates, producing an earthquake in the heart of Europe. It is difficult to know how much hope and expectation that moment generated among the political elite of the time. It is even harder to know whether that elite was capable of turning those expectations into the practical work of building a state.

Ukraine needed strong institutions capable of developing and protecting its economy, military, science, technology and education.

Today, we can say with confidence that something went wrong.

Instead of building the Ukrainian state for which thousands fought and died, we created a clan-based oligarchic republic. By serving the interests of a few, that system systematically eroded public trust and social cohesion in a society that, despite two revolutions, truly united only in wartime.

Will that unity be enough for the hardest stretch of the journey? Or will those concerned only with their own interests regain control and once again decide the future of our freedom?

All of this grew out of missed opportunities — including our failure to preserve our own history.

A history that some in Ukraine are still trying to rewrite.

The period since 1991 could be analyzed endlessly. But perhaps the most tragic mistake was believing that the same whirlwind of history that gave us freedom would somehow protect it for us.

Those of us who were 18 in 1991 and trusted that elite had to correct its mistakes with our own blood in 2014. Whether they were truly mistakes or part of someone’s plan is something history has yet to determine.

Neglect of national defense and security was the central failure that ultimately made this bloody full-scale war possible.

Every difficult political decision must be judged in the circumstances in which it was made. We should understand and respect that. Given the weakness and instability of a young state’s institutions, concessions to Russia may genuinely have seemed necessary more than 30 years ago to avoid war.

But was it farsighted to disarm on such a massive scale, cut military spending and decide almost overnight how to divide the Black Sea Fleet?

If that was the price of postponing war, then Ukraine was not simply buying time. It was systematically making itself weaker.

We, the citizens of Ukraine, did more than disarm our military. We lost strategic factories and enterprises, scientific capacity and advanced manufacturing — precisely the assets we now lack as we try to build our own missile and missile-defense industries.

War is a terrible condition for any society. State policy should make every possible effort to prevent escalation toward war. But escalation can be avoided in different ways.

The essential task is to build enough national strength that the country can defend itself when the critical moment comes.

There is another approach: proclaiming sincere intentions and noble aspirations while neglecting defense and security, entering into confrontation and simply hoping that war will somehow never arrive.

The Budapest Memorandum teaches us another lesson.

Today, that lesson is not primarily about nuclear weapons. Scientific and technological progress is producing weapons that are far cheaper and simpler, but no less lethal. These systems will shape the wars of the future.

The real lesson of the Budapest Memorandum is that a country’s security cannot rest exclusively on outside assurances — even formal guarantees.

No document can replace a state’s own capacity to defend itself. And that capacity ultimately depends on whether its people are prepared to resist and fight, even over the long term.

I do not reject international alliances or security blocs. But they are valuable only when backed by a country’s own strength, economic resilience and technological advantage.

We must align ourselves with those whose defense strategies reflect an understanding of — and readiness for — the profound changes that scientific and technological progress is bringing to the world.

No assessment of Ukraine’s independence can ignore 2014.

That was the beginning of the war we had tried to prevent not by becoming stronger, but by disarming and drifting toward Russia.

It was an extraordinarily difficult year of pain and loss, but also of hope.

War revealed Ukrainian society’s immense capacity for self-organization and resistance. People were willing to assume responsibility when state institutions could not act in time or simply did not exist.

Society finally understood the importance of the military. Trust in the Armed Forces grew. The Armed Forces themselves began to change. And the state was forced to make security the foundation of national policy.

The wider war was halted then. Once again, as in 1994, our lack of preparedness left us with only one viable decision.

Minsk delivered another lesson: Opportunities do not come twice.

There are moments when decisions must be made rather than postponed until the accumulated problems can no longer be resolved by anything except war.

Despite the tragedy that preceded it, Ukraine was given an opportunity to rethink independence and its place in the world — a place that can be secured only through our own strength.

Ultimately, the years of diplomatic maneuvering and attempts to negotiate with Russia led to the war many had predicted.

It is difficult to know whether negotiations with Russia today may also prove to be a trap, because a cease-fire may be the only way out of the current situation.

But one thing is certainly a trap: a weakened, demoralized and politicized military. Such an army would leave Ukraine with no way out of whatever negotiations may bring.

Then came 2022, and another “sandstorm” revealed an entirely different kind of war.

Modern warfare is no longer only about tanks, artillery and missiles. It is about unmanned systems, artificial intelligence, autonomous control, data collection and analysis, robotic platforms and resilient satellite communications.

In some respects, war has become cheaper and more accessible. It has also become more brutal.

Ukraine has become one of the principal proving grounds of the 21st century’s military-technological revolution. It should now become one of the world’s strongest states — a country capable of creating the weapons of a new era.

That is another lesson.

War accelerates scientific and technological progress. Tragically, that same progress kills civilians every day while creating opportunities for others to profit.

Unfortunately, history shows that this has always been the case.

No amount of attractive marketing can substitute for a real strategy grounded in science and experience.

Only a clearly defined political objective, supported by carefully developed strategies — including a military strategy — can provide a path toward achieving that objective.

And our objective remains VICTORY.

The Ukrainian people’s resistance has affirmed our national agency and demonstrated the need to abandon the policy of so-called “gray zones” in international relations.

We are leaving behind the role of a buffer between East and West, a position in which both sides tried to keep us for decades.

Ukraine has already become an epicenter of the emerging security architecture of Europe.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine have accumulated unique experience in fighting a full-scale technological war against a superior enemy — experience no NATO military possesses.

Only those who refuse to recognize the realities of modern warfare and remain trapped in a Cold War model of deterrence can ignore that fact.

Ukraine is now one of the key actors shaping Europe’s new security architecture.

Whether everyone in Europe is ready to accept that remains an open question.

We therefore face the central question: How do we turn the experience of this war into a lasting national security system?

How do we travel through this desert for perhaps another five years without turning on one another or losing ourselves in a world that is already beginning to operate according to a new logic — the logic of extraordinarily rapid scientific and technological change?

The answer requires a deliberate and effective national development strategy with SECURITY at its core.

Anyone who promises economic growth and reconstruction while ignoring the central importance of security is another “prophet” pointing us toward a road whose destination we already know.

Security is not only a modern Armed Forces.

It means educating physicists, engineers and mathematicians. It means understanding our own history and holding on to our roots as a guarantee of national survival.

That is the engine that can carry us out of the desert and allow us to secure an independence purchased with blood.

Ukraine has already proved that it knows how to fight.

Now we must prove that we know how to survive — and how to win strategically.

That means learning from the mistakes of the past, turning experience into doctrine for the future, transforming technology into economic strength, turning the military into a genuine system of deterrence and making Ukrainian independence an irreversible historical reality.

We must keep moving and do everything possible so that, in the 40th year of Ukrainian independence, we can say:

“We will surely never be ashamed again, because we did not stop in the desert. …”

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

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Monday, August 24, 2026 7:52 AM

SECOND

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

Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, August 23, 2026

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

Russian President Vladimir Putin continues to set unrealistic deadlines for the Russian military to seize the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, likely in part because of his misunderstanding of the battlefield realities. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated on August 23 that Putin most recently ordered the Russian military to complete the seizure of Donetsk Oblast by December 31, 2026 and noted that Putin’s main operational objectives in Ukraine remain the seizure of Kostyantynivka, Slovyansk, and Kramatorsk cities in Donetsk Oblast — all part of Ukraine’s heavily fortified Fortress Belt defense line.[9] Zelensky stated that Russian forces have suffered around 267,000 personnel casualties, including about 155,000 killed, along the entire frontline since the beginning of 2026 and that roughly 70 to 80 percent of all Russian losses occur in the Kostyantynivka direction. Zelensky added that the Kremlin is preparing to mobilize around 300,000 servicemembers following the September 18-20 State Duma elections in part to reinforce Russian positions in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts.

Putin has given Russian forces 15 separate deadlines since 2022 to seize the entirety of Donetsk Oblast, and Russian forces have failed to meet any of them.[10] Russian forces control roughly 21,170 square kilometers (or roughly 79.89 percent) of Donetsk Oblast and roughly 26,624 square kilometers (or roughly 99.77 percent) of Luhansk Oblast, according to the evidence that ISW has observed. ISW continues to assess that the Kremlin’s deadlines for its military objectives remain divorced from the reality of Russian forces’ battlefield performance and that Russian forces are highly unlikely to seize Donbas by the end of 2026, if at all.[11]

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

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

Ukraine Got Independence as a Gift in 1991. Now We Pay In Blood

Ukraine escaped the empire in 1991. The empire struck back.

It took 22 years of Moscow holding the strings, and then an invasion, to make Ukrainians fight for the real thing.

By Cyril Hovorun | August 24, 2026

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/08/24/ukraine-got-independence-as-a-g
ift-in-1991-now-we-pay-in-blood/

In 1991, Ukraine did not shed a drop of blood. It was a transition of power. We raised a flag, we declared ourselves independent, and we received our independence as a gift.

Now we are shedding rivers of blood for real independence.

That is the difference between this Independence Day and the ones before it, and I do not think we have absorbed it yet.

Colonial theory has a name for what happened to us thirty-five years ago. It is called flag independence. You raise the flag, you declare the state, and for a while you believe that was it—that this was the end, and now we simply continue as an independent nation.

In theory it was believed to be like that. In practice, every decolonized nation eventually discovered the same thing: it is not the end. It is the beginning.

The nations that gathered at Bandung in Indonesia in 1955 worked this out before us. They had their flags. They also had the former metropolis still holding the strings—to their economies, their cultures, their political classes. They named it: neocolonialism.

Much more at https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/08/24/ukraine-got-independence-as-a-g
ift-in-1991-now-we-pay-in-blood/

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

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