Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Thursday, September 17, 2026 16:24
VIEWED: 571621
PAGE 106 of 112
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yeah, I guess political economics is a puzzle to solve. That's my "sport“ (altho, I was pretty good at racquetball once upon a time).
That's what I figured on a second thought. Why would you pick a sport when what you did already was sport.
Interesting. I know very little to none about racquetball, so I can't even have an opinion on what that might mean. Care to give a brief description?
Quote:
I did originally come here for discussion. I was hoping to discuss some Big Ideas ... why society is like a living organism, or the misdirection that “efficiency“ builds into societies.
I kind of liked the other side of this place, but one day I eventually got sucked into the dark side of the RWED.
I always wondered if being here changed me, and if so, would it have happened somewhere else anyway if my brother never showed me this show.
Quote:
And I found a bunch of people who were way smarter than me but had their own Big Ideas. Well, I learned a few things.
Humble brag? I'll allow it.
Quote:
You have to be a little bit crazy to see what most people are trained NOT to see. I'm not even a little itty bitty bit crazy, so I have to depend on the craziness of others. (I find your new tagline interesting.)
You calling me crazy? You may be right.
Quote:
You can't believe you're so right that you dismiss other people's ideas without good reason. People dismissed Alex Jones and PN even tho there was real truth in a lot of what they said.
Anyway, despite his best efforts to convince ... who? ... I take a pretty "meta" view of SECOND. Which is to say, I'm not so interested in what he transmits (from others) as to why those others say what they say. Whose interests do they represent? So in some bassakwards way he's providing puzzle pieces, same way that other sources do.
THGR is just a lost cause. He's so completely brainwashed he has no agency. Not even interesting.
Yeah. The Ted-Bot is just a headline printer. Nothing going on upstairs anymore at all, I'm afraid.
Second is a little more interesting for sure, but he's such an evil little prick that I can't stand him even being around here most days. My "meta" with Second is that he's just become my barometer over the years. Whatever he thinks on any issue is the exact opposite stance that any reasonable person should have about that issue. Every single time.
There are articles put out there by all of the places he regularly posts from that I agree with. I've even gone out of my way and posted them here and commented that not everybody working at places like Vox is a mindfucked idiot cultist, but Second has never once posted a resonable article that Vox put out.
I used to care about trying to find the truth. 26 year old me would be pretty pissed off at 47 year old me for not bothering much anymore, but then again if 47 year old me could go back in time he'd be beating 26 year old Jack into the fucking ground for all of the very bad decisions that he's about to make and not pay for because it's 47 year old Jack that's paying for it, so 26 year old Jack can go fuck right on off with his opinion.
The Truth doesn't matter. The Truth is never going to matter. Though nobody important hardly ever goes down, even when they do they're just replaced with somebody worse. And they control the truth.
If The Truth mattered, we wouldn't see a Democrat elected to office on any level from Alderman on up to President until that party fixed itself. But we just saw that a bunch of minorities and white women doomed the state of New York with their primary votes last night.
Until we're in a war that hits all of us, which may be sooner than later if we don't take care of the Muslim problem all over the Western world, all that matters is the Perception of Truth.
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If you see this, Sigs. Please do me a favor and watch this video. I think there are things on this topic that people have said themselves that you are not aware are being said...
If you don't want to or don't have time to watch the whole video, just start it at 7:54 and watch for a few minutes. I need you to see what I'm seeing.
Because that right there is the ONLY thing that currently concerns me.
This Russia/Ukraine bullshit is just a thing to keep your mind off the largest problem facing America at home.
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
The Truth doesn't matter. The Truth is never going to matter. Though nobody important hardly ever goes down, even when they do they're just replaced with somebody worse. And they control the truth.
If The Truth mattered, we wouldn't see a Democrat elected to office on any level from Alderman on up to President until that party fixed itself. But we just saw that a bunch of minorities and white women doomed the state of New York with their primary votes last night.
Until we're in a war that hits all of us, which may be sooner than later if we don't take care of the Muslim problem all over the Western world, all that matters is the Perception of Truth.
And I'm hoping that the REAL TRUTH just comes crashing down on everyone much sooner than later, because at the rate the Muslims are going worldwide and right here at home, we're going to have a much larger problem as time goes on and this thing is going exponential rather quickly.
The only thing that makes me even a little happy about the very real possibility that the entire world might one day be living under a Muslim flag is that the white women in America and Europe who voted for it to all happen will be slaves.
But the worst part about that is I think most of them would actually enjoy it.
So fuck the rest of us.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Russia says US hasn't followed through on Trump-Putin 'understandings'
By Mark Trevelyan | June 23, 2026 12:30 PM CDT
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-us-hasnt-followed-thr
ough-trump-putin-understandings-2026-06-23/
Summary
• Three senior Russian officials make similar complaint in three days
• Lavrov says Anchorage may have been US ploy to buy time for Kyiv
• Moscow's rhetoric shifts after frequent praise for Trump's diplomacy
LONDON, June 23 (Reuters) - Russia has accused the United States of failing to deliver on "understandings" reached between presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump at a summit in Alaska last August, a shift that suggests growing frustration in Moscow.
In the space of three days, three senior Russian officials have said, without providing specifics, that Washington has not followed through.
. . . On Tuesday, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested that the summit may have been a U.S. "ploy to buy time to rearm the Kyiv regime". . . .
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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You should watch that video at 7:54 for about five minutes too, you fucking dipshit.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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The Kremlin is intensifying pressure on Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko to expand Belarusian involvement in Russia’s war against Ukraine. Lukashenko continues trying to resist the Kremlin’s demands while maintaining Russia’s approval. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on June 23, citing Russian and European officials, that the Kremlin is pressuring Lukashenko to allow Russia to more actively leverage Belarus in its war effort against Ukraine.[3] WSJ reported that the Kremlin is trying to sway Belarus into allowing Russian forces to launch drones against Ukraine from the Belarusian territory and extend the frontline westward to force Ukraine to redeploy troops from the frontline to the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. A former Russian intelligence officer briefed on the matter told WSJ that the Kremlin is threatening to withdraw financial support from Belarus in case of noncompliance. The Kremlin continues to frame Ukraine as a threat to Belarus. Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed on June 24 that Russia will always stand by Belarus and repel threats against Belarus, including from Ukraine, as both Russia and Belarus are security and economic allies.[4] Zelensky’s report about how Belarus de facto responded to his ultimatum favorably by disabling repeaters indicates that Lukashenko continues resisting fully committing Belarus to the Kremlin’s military endeavor. Minsk is instead trying to balance maintaining Russian support for Belarus while maintaining what remains of Belarus’ degraded sovereignty.[5] Lukashenko has resisted allowing Russia to operationalize the Belarusian Armed Forces to support Russian operations in Ukraine or full-scale recruit Belarusians into the Russian military at scale since 2022.[6] Lukashenko and other senior Belarusian officials notably continue avoiding adopting the Kremlin’s framing that portrays Ukraine as a threat to Belarus.[7] Lukashenko continues to stall and deflect the Kremlin’s intensified attempts to drag Belarus into the war in Ukraine while maintaining relatively neutral rhetoric towards Ukraine.[8]
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-june-24-2026/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Ukraine’s New Air-Power Paradigm
Putin says Russia is bound to win a war of attrition.
Recent developments cast doubt on his confidence.
By Jillian Kay Melchior | June 24, 2026 11:25 am ET
https://www.wsj.com/opinion/ukraines-new-air-power-paradigm-6edf1ad1
Vladimir Putin has been making the case that Russia’s battlefield advances are unstoppable and the outnumbered Ukrainians can’t win a war of attrition. It follows that Kyiv should settle before things get worse, even if it means surrendering the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions. Ukraine’s latest moves, however, call this whole argument into question.
“We are scaling middle-strike operations to systematically destroy enemy logistics and supply lines,” Ukraine’s Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on May 27, calling it “a ‘logistics lockdown’ for the Russian army.”
Senior Ukrainian military and political leaders began discussing a large-scale midrange strike campaign following the failed 2023 Ukrainian counteroffensive. Former Defense Minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk consulted with Western advisers to develop an operating concept that circulated as a strategy document among senior government and military leaders. The details of this document, described here for the first time, offer insight into what Ukraine now seeks to accomplish.
Ubiquitous short-range drones have created a deadlock at the front. The West would use air power to cover its own troops and attack the enemy there, but Ukraine’s air force is more limited. Making a virtue of necessity, Mr. Zagorodnyuk’s operating concept describes a "new paradigm for air power” whereby Ukraine can achieve "the same effects” using "less sophisticated” means that are "much cheaper” but "equally effective.”
Midrange attack drones are the quintessential weapon of this new paradigm. A key goal is to "collapse the Russian military from behind,” says Phillips OBrien, a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland and one of the Western experts who worked with Mr. Zagorodnyuk. Western military doctrine calls this “air interdiction.” It involves destroying, disrupting, diverting and delaying the supporting functions that prop up the enemy’s front line. Ukraine’s drones target Russian command posts, communication lines, ammunition and fuel storage, drone-control centers, logistics, and reserve forces.
Mr. Fedorov has said Ukraine "quadrupled” its interdiction strikes in recent months. In May alone, Ukraine hit 414 enemy headquarters, command posts and other important rear objects, said the top military commander, Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi.
Ukraine is also ramping up long-range strikes on military and energy targets deep inside Russia. These mid- and long-range attacks are forcing the Kremlin to make tough choices about how to allocate air defenses—and what to leave exposed. At the front, the Ukrainians now have more short-range drones than the Russians. Together this is "achieving an operational effect we haven’t seen before at this scale,” says Kateryna Stepanenko of the Institute for the Study of War.
During a sustained interdiction campaign, “terrain-holding will become increasingly untenable for Russian ground forces who will be under-resourced from the rear and increasingly subject to attrition from the front,” the operating concept document predicted.
For the first time since 2023 Ukraine has started to liberate more ground than it’s losing, ISW said in May. Meanwhile Russia struggles with attrition: Finnish President Alexander Stubb told the Swiss newspaper NZZ this month there are now eight Russian casualties for every Ukrainian killed or wounded, up from three in December. Russia has suffered some 35,000 casualties a month in 2026 while recruiting only some 27,000 men, Mr. Stubb said.
Ukraine hopes to liberate all occupied territory including Crimea, but one interim goal may be to force Russia to demilitarize the peninsula, which it uses to stage aerial attack
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France seizes Russian shadow fleet vessel in Mediterranean.
"We will not allow the shadow fleet to evade sanctions and fund Russia's war effort. Europe is determined," French President Emmanuel Macron wrote on X on June 25.
In addition to regularly sanctioning ships suspected of belonging to Russia's shadow fleet, which helps Moscow circumvent oil and gas sanctions, European countries are increasingly boarding the ships to stop them.
https://kyivindependent.com/france-seizes-new-russian-shadow-fleet-ves
sel-in-mediterranean/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Ukraine receives first tranche of 90 billion euro loan from EU.
June 25, 2026 2:10 pm
"The funds have already been transferred to the state budget and will be used to strengthen Ukraine's defense capabilities and social resilience," Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko wrote on Telegram.
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-receives-first-tranche-of-90-billi
on-euro-loan-from-eu/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The reason why I'm so skeptical about 95% of SECOND'S and THGR'S second-hand claims is bc I follow Military Summary channel every day. Often twice a day. The PRO-UKRAINIAN host follows the drone strikes, frontline advances and retreats, official statements and Telegram channels in excruciating, granular detail. Every day. Twice a day!
More importantly, he backs up his reporting with geolocated videos. (I generally ignore his explanations and projections, tho, bc they're almost never correct.)
Simplicius the Thinker doesn't post anywhere near as often, but he backs up his points with videos that aren't found almost anywhere else, like videos of Israeli missile damage that Israeli officials strongly censor, or frontline videos that won't make it on YouTube bc they're too gruesome, or videos of new/ unusual weapons like the first Oreshnik strike, or the Ukrainian "Hollywood special fx drones" that are loaded with kerosene and rubber and create their own black smoke plume no matter what they land on.
Literally, the only time Kiev was correct was the claim of N Koreans fighting in Kursk.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
Military Summary channel is located in Belarus. Don’t believe me? Go to the site. When at the site click on more information and listed in the popup amongst other shit, you will see their email address and where they are located. Belarus is listed comrade.
Second and I produce source after source as evidence of the truth. You promote this. A Russian bullshit propaganda source located in Belarus. No surprise here aye comrade? You use zerohedge and this shit source. You’re a clown.
They claim to be pro Ukrainian when all their posts are anything but. Just like you claiming to care about America while you promote the Russian perspective as the truth.
Fact, "When you focus just on Rural Russia, more than 60% of people don’t have indoor toilets with just under 50% using outdoor dunnies and the rest having no recognizable sewage system."
There's the good life for ya aye signym?
T
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Ukraine turns to strangling Russian logistics on Crimea — and it's working
By Jimmy Rushton
June 25, 2026, 7:52 PM
https://kyivindependent.com/how-ukraines-drone-blockade-of-crimea-is-p
ressuring-russias-hold-on-the-peninsula/
A satellite image shows multiple smoke-generating vehicles operating on the Crimea Bridge, which crosses the Kerch Strait, on June 22, 2026, obscuring parts of the roadway and bridge. (Vantor / Getty Images)
Ukraine's siege of Crimea has been a long time coming.
Crimea is under an effective siege as Ukraine has been systematically isolating the occupied peninsula with a multipronged campaign of drone strikes. "Hell is beginning," Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said in a June 17 interview. "Logistics are being cut off. Crimea is being isolated." Ukraine plans to fully isolate the peninsula, cutting it off from Russian supply while destroying critical infrastructure — ultimately allowing the Russian occupation of Crimea to "wither on the vine".
The Ukrainian "blockade" has already led to severe fuel shortages, while long-range drone strikes on electrical infrastructure have led to power outages across the peninsula. Russian tourists have been heading home, while increasingly panicked Russian military bloggers attempt to sound the alarm over the situation in Crimea. "It is grave now, but promises to become critical in just a few weeks if the enemy continues its 'strategic air offensive' against it at an increasing pace," was the gloomy assessment of former FSB officer and convicted war criminal Igor Girkin.
Ukrainian strikes on Crimea are not new, but the current campaign marks a shift from sporadic attacks on high-value military targets to a sustained effort to make the peninsula harder to supply and hold.
Since April 2026, Ukraine's mid-range drones have been systematically targeting Russian traffic transiting along the R-280 — the so-called "Novorossiya highway" — as Fedorov's "logistics lockdown" swung into action. Ukraine has also been striking the ferries Russia uses to transport oil and military materiel across the Kerch Strait, the bridges that connect the peninsula to the occupied part of Kherson Oblast, and fuel depots, gas storage facilities, and electrical infrastructure in Crimea itself.
"Ukrainian strikes are increasingly shifting towards Crimea," Oksana Kuzan, co-founder of The Ukrainian Security and Cooperation Center, told the Kyiv Independent. "What began as the use of drones to sever key logistical arteries in Donetsk Oblast has evolved into a much larger operation."
This operation is already having a significant impact. After the oil terminal in Kerch was struck by Ukrainian drones on June 21, Russian occupation authorities declared a total ban on fuel sales to civilians. "Fuel will be sold only to government agencies that ensure the functioning and security of the Republic of Crimea," Russian-installed head of the Crimean Republic Sergey Aksyonov announced later the same day. In another attempt to "conserve fuel", Russian-installed governor of Sevastopol Mikhail Razvozhaev announced the mandatory closing of supermarkets, bars, and restaurants in the regional capital at 8 p.m.
Compounding Russian misery, Ukrainian drones struck the Simferopol Power Station and Sevastopol's main electric substation on June 24, leaving the regional capital and large parts of the peninsula without power. "The enemy is striking again, trying to deprive us of our usual living conditions and sow panic," Razvozhaev complained on Telegram.
Setting conditions for a logistics siege
Ukrainian strikes against targets in Crimea are nothing new. Since 2022, Ukraine has been slowly but surely forcing Russia to demilitarize the Crimean peninsula, hitting airfields, air defense sites, and naval bases. Since 2022, Ukraine has hit airfields, air defense sites and naval bases across the peninsula. The Saky air base in
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You're not telling me anything I don't already know, THGR. But if you listen to his narrative, it's easy to tell who he sympathizes with, and (HINT): not Russia.
In any case, since he follows events in excruciating detail, looks at other mapping projects, sources official and unofficial reports from both sides, and backs up his map with VIDEOS, it doesn't really matter where he lives, does it?
I don't expect him to be 100% correct, but it's unlikely that I'm going to miss anything big like "CRIMEA EVACUATED!" like your bullshit posts.
In any case, I have a lot of other sources. I've listed them before, and there are really just too many but here are some:
The Duran (Alex and Alexander, collectively)
Alexander Mercouris, Greek born British citizen
Alexander Christoforou, Cypriot born, American raised, individually
Colonel Douglas Macgregor, former advisor to Colin Powell and the Pentagon
Larry Johnson, Sonar 21, former CIA, current private security advisor
Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis
Nima Alkhorshid, Dialogue Works. An interview show, international guests
Danny Haiphong, based in NYC, another interview show, international guests
Glenn Diesen, Swedish academician on political matters
Robert Barnes, American lawyer who has connections in Congress and the WH, apparently
SECOND at Fireflyfans.net SECOND, permanent-state anti-Russian, anti-Trump mouthpiece
Zerohedge, libertarian-slanted news aggregator
Many more, topic depending. I listen while doing yardwork or housework.
Nobody is 100%.
Everybody has a bias.
We are all blind men feeling an elephant.
YOUR problem, THGR, is that you only listen to people who are as brainwashed as you are. They generally have 0% evidence to back up their clickbait, and their analyses are for shit.
DON'T bring up the topic of sources again, doofus!
I'm not gonna repeat this list... AGAIN!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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SIX, I think our society has already been corrupted by the uber-elite and our mideast policy by Jewish Zionists. But AFA Muslim activists are concerned, the answer to their desire to make our a Muslim society isn't more "tolerance".
We need to remember, or redetermine, what we want our society to be based on, and it's not "Whatever floats your boat". IMHO equal opportunity, fair share, respect for law, and meritocracy will create a prosperous economy and the kind of society we want, and we need everyone to buy into that, OR LEAVE.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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For the first time since early 2023, the momentum in the Russo–Ukrainian war is on Kyiv’s side, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Foreign Assistance, Humanitarian Affairs, and Religious Freedom Jeremy Lewin said on June 24.
Lewin made the remarks during the YES (Yalta European Strategy) Dinner Discussion hosted by the Victor Pinchuk Foundation in Poland’s Gdansk, on the eve of the Ukraine Recovery Conference 2026.
Lewin said Ukraine has done a lot to adapt to a new phase of the war and move toward victory.
“We do have a moment right now where Ukraine is winning the war, for the moment,” he said.
He contrasted current battlefield dynamics with past seasons. Previously, Ukrainian forces often waited out the winter because Russian forces paused offensives then. Now, he said, the roles are reversed: Ukrainian forces are on the offensive while Russia appears to be in a holding pattern. Lewin added that Ukrainians were already able to "change the dynamics" last winter by attacking Russian infrastructure.
"This is a crucial moment; Ukraine can keep applying pressure on the battlefield," he said.
Lewin also said the United States is considering ending the exemption for Russian oil from sanctions and that Washington will continue to coordinate restrictions with European partners.
https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/war-momentum-on-ukraine-s-side-state
-department-official-says-50619056.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Once again, I appreciate your posts from the bowels of the deep state, SECOND. I can get a gloss of the current propaganda narrative w/o having to hunt it down myself.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:Here is a 40-day countdown: Ukraine plans to bomb the hell out of Russia for the next 40 days to force Putin to negotiate peace.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Once again, I appreciate your posts from the bowels of the deep state, SECOND. I can get a gloss of the current propaganda narrative w/o having to hunt it down myself.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE!
1) Ukraine's Zelenskiy says he approved a 40-day campaign to 'influence' Russia to end the war
June 25, 2026 12:28 PM CDT
https://www.reuters.com/world/ukraines-zelenskiy-says-he-approved-40-d
ay-campaign-influence-russia-end-war-2026-06-25/
2) Ukraine's SBU to wage 40-day pressure campaign against Russia, Zelensky says
June 25, 2026 11:10 pm
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraines-sbu-to-wage-40-day-pressure-campa
ign-against-russia-zelensky-says/
3) The phrase “forcing Russia to peace” is absolutely delicious
Putin used to use it himself. For example, that was how he described Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008 — as if the strong were simply giving the weak a lesson to make them behave.
Now the same phrase is being applied to his own crumbling empire. Must be humiliating.
https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/2070200348581429624
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Former SBU counter-terrorism chief sentenced to life in prison for passing state secrets to Russia
By Abbey Fenbert | June 25, 2026 10:05 pm
https://kyivindependent.com/former-sbu-counter-terrorism-chief-sentenc
ed-to-life-in-prison-for-passing-state-secrets-to-russia/
Colonel Dmytro Koziura, former head of the Security Service of Ukraine's (SBU) counter-terrorism department, has been convicted of treason and sentenced to life in prison, Ukraine's Prosecutor General Ruslan Kravchenko reported on June 25.
Koziura reportedly passed secret information to Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB), including details about critical infrastructure and the consequences of Russian missile strikes against Kyiv.
"In exchange for a monetary reward, (Koziura) undertook to collect and pass on defense information, including data constituting a state secret, to Russian special services," Kravchenko said.
Koziura was recruited by the FSB in Vienna in 2018, Kravchenko said, and has been "in constant contact with his Russian handlers" ever since. When the full-scale invasion began in 2022, Koziura's role transitioned to that of an "active" agent.
During the war, Koziura "systematically transmitted information about the consequences of missile strikes on objects in Kyiv, the locations of SBU units, data from military units, official documents, and analytical materials," according to the state prosecutor.
Russian intelligence also sought personal information about Ukraine's senior military and political leadership, the SBU said.
Koziura further passed along confidential information on critical infrastructure, particularly Ukraine's gas transportation system, and plans to increase air defense at these facilities.
The SBU detained Koziura in February 2025, following a lengthy covert investigation. During the operation, codenamed "Rat," the SBU said it implicated Koziura in counterintelligence activity, "flood(ing) the Russians with a massive amount of disinformation."
The SBU shared with the prosecution the evidence it collected against Koziura, including telecommunications devices and "other material evidence of his collaboration with the FSB."
Kyiv's Shevchenkivskyi District Court found Koziura guilty of committing treason under martial law and handed down a life sentence.
"Anyone who wore Ukrainian shoulder boards and began working for the FSB becomes an enemy of Ukraine," Kravchenko said. "Only the harshest punishment is appropriate for such individuals."
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Putin’s reign may not survive the impending fall of Crimea
By Mark Toth and Jonathan Sweet, opinion contributors | June 25, 2026 7:00 AM ET
https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/5938545-putin-crimea-end
-approaching-ukraine/
Tuesday marked the third anniversary of Yevgeny Prigozhin’s mutiny against Russian President Vladimir Putin. Prigozhin failed and paid with his life. But Russia as a whole, and Russian-occupied Crimea in particular, might have been better off had the man once known as “Putin’s chef” succeeded in overthrowing the regime in Moscow. . . .
. . . Putin’s end is coming in Crimea. As we and retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges have long argued, Crimea is the decisive terrain of this war. Ukraine does not even have to retake it — it needs only to render it untenable for Russian military use. That day is now fast approaching.
The struggle for Crimea will likely culminate in Ukraine finally destroying Putin’s $4 billion Kerch Bridge. Can Putin politically survive the loss of Crimea to Ukraine? We highly doubt it.
Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.
Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.
They are the cofounders of INTREP360 and the INTREP360 Intelligence Report on Substack.
https://intrep360.substack.com/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russian army recruitment plunges as Moscow struggles to fill Ukraine ranks
Alex Stezhensky | June 25, 2026, 11:00 AM
https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/russian-army-recruitment-plunges-as-
moscow-struggles-to-fill-ukraine-war-ranks-50619231.html
Russia is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit new contract soldiers and hold occupied Ukrainian territory. In Moscow, the number of people willing to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry and go to war against Ukraine fell by one-third in the spring. The same pattern is emerging in the regions.
Russian outlet Verstka reported the figures, citing data obtained by its newsroom.
Moscow sent 1,708 contract soldiers to the war in April and 1,378 in May. The report said that was 1,000 fewer than in 2025 and roughly in line with 2024 levels, before Moscow began offering million-ruble-level payouts for signing a contract.
A source in the Moscow mayor’s office told the outlet that the numbers have continued to fall in June.
“Few people are coming in, and even fewer are motivated,” the source said.
At the start of 2026, however, interest grew. Amid U.S.-involved peace talks and expectations of a cease-fire, many applicants wanted to “catch the last train” and “make some quick cash” before a possible freeze in the fighting.
Verstka also reported problems in the Rubikon drone unit, which initially drew a large number of applicants but screened out nearly all of them because of strict requirements. Those who signed contracts with Rubikon accounted for one-third of the overall flow, Verstka’s sources said.
They also acknowledged that the quality of recruits has deteriorated.
Sources said the situation in Moscow reflects the broader picture across Russia.
The outlet also quoted a soldier in the occupying army who complained that new contract soldiers are mostly “unable to fight.” One mobilized soldier described them as “homeless people, literally” and “criminals” who cannot be taught anything, making them, as he put it, “disposable.”
He also said “new contract soldiers do not live longer than a month unless they get there through connections,” and pointed to a large number of deserters.
Various measures are being discussed to address the shortage of people willing to sign contracts with Russia’s Defense Ministry, including a new wave of mobilization.
The outlet also quoted a soldier in Russia’s occupying army who confirmed that “there are no people; the fools willing to do it for money have run out.” In his view, Russia will face either mobilization “or a deal with loss of ‘face,’ as well as unfulfilled conditions and goals of the so-called ‘special military operation.’” The soldier said “the choice here is obvious.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on May 27 that Russia, the aggressor state, was preparing to further expand mobilization, and that this was why it had stepped up the issuance of mobilization orders.
On June 1, a post appeared on the Telegram channel of Russian State Duma lawmaker Andrey Gurulyov saying the Kremlin was preparing a new mobilization in the fall because Russian forces had reached a dead end at the front. Gurulyov soon claimed his Telegram channel had been “stolen” and that “enemies are spreading texts from it.”
Mass raids on men began on June 18 in Penza, Serdobsk and other cities in Russia’s Penza Oblast. Security forces stopped cars and public transport, forcing detained men to sign contracts with the Defense Ministry to take part in the war against Ukraine.
The military commissar of Russia’s Penza Oblast later acknowledged the raids on men liable for military service.
Russia’s army lost about 1,270 more troops over the past day. From Feb. 24, 2022, to June 25, 2026, total Russian losses stood at an estimated 1,397,060 troops, Ukraine’s General Staff reported.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The problem at the top of Ukraine's judiciary
By Oleg Sukhov | June 25, 2026 10:08 PM
https://kyivindependent.com/explainer-why-is-ukraines-supreme-court-so
-controversial-and-can-it-be-reformed/
Corruption scandals have repeatedly engulfed the institution, while the court has consistently blocked efforts to reform the judiciary.
In 2023, Vsevolod Kniazev, then the Supreme Court's chairman, was charged with bribery. Kniazev's deputy, Bohdan Lvov, was fired due to his concealed Russian citizenship in 2022. Earlier this month, Kniazev was sentenced to five years in jail.
Supreme Court integrity
The root of the problem lies in 2017-2018, when the current Supreme Court was created as part of a Western-backed judicial reform.
Of the incumbent Supreme Court judges, 22.2% were found by the Public Integrity Council not to meet integrity and ethics standards at the time.
The council also submitted information indicating that another 28.8% of the Supreme Court judges could have violated ethics standards.
However, the High Qualification Commission overrode the Public Integrity Council's vetoes at the time, allowing judges with a questionable reputation to get Supreme Court jobs.
. . . the authorities' failure to reform the Supreme Court "jeopardizes Ukraine's further integration into the European Union, as membership in the European community is impossible without the rule of law."
"There is an urgent need to reform the Supreme Court and fill its ranks with judges who will serve the interests of Ukrainian society and meet EU standards by acting with integrity, professionalism, and independence," the watchdog said.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Long-awaited military reform falls short as troops express continued frustration
By Kateryna Hodunova | June 26, 2026 3:41 PM
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraines-long-awaited-military-reform-fall
s-short-for-long-serving-troops/
. . . Nearly six months later, the ministry unveiled its much-anticipated reform package, introducing new contracts, higher pay, and a simplified process for returning to service after going absent without leave (AWOL), among other changes.
But it failed to address the most important issue — the hardship faced by troops who have been serving since early 2022, and in some cases, long before that. Among the key grievances are uncertainty about the future, low pay for troops serving in rear areas, and the lack of mechanisms to protect personnel from poor service conditions within their units.
"It very much looks as though those who remain in the army are having the screws tightened even further, and the longer they stay, the worse their conditions become compared with newcomers," Oleksandr, a drone operator, told the Kyiv Independent. . . .
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Defense expert: Ukraine’s interceptor shortage has no quick fix
Only a handful of countries can build ballistic-missile interceptors. Defense expert Marc DeVore explains why money can’t fix Ukraine’s interceptor shortage fast
By Daniel Thomas | June 26, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/26/ukraine-interceptor-shortage-no
-quick-fix/
Building an interceptor capable of high-G maneuvers involving tight turning and integrating it with radars and guidance that can steer it to the target has historically been very hard. In the first Gulf War, in 1991, the US had about a 2% success rate: probably one of the roughly 70 Patriots fired hit a Scud. It's improved a lot since then, but intercepting a ballistic missile is still very challenging.
If I were Ukraine, I'd pursue programs like Freya, push diplomatically for as many Patriots as possible—along with alternatives like the L-SAM, M-SAM, or Japanese-produced Patriots—and analyze Russia's missile production and launch ecosystem to see whether I could go after it. None of those three is a perfect solution.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russia Faces Uprising: The Troops Are Plotting Mutiny
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[Maybe Trump will allow the licensed production of Patriot interceptor missiles by Ukraine. Maybe not. Who knows what Trump will do next?]
Russia demands answers from US over Trump's sudden shift toward Ukraine
Lavrov and Peskov are outraged by the White House and Macron's latest statements
By Liliana Oleniak | Fri, June 26, 2026 – 16:10
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/russia-demands-answers-from-us-over-tr
ump-1782478916.html
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was quick to refute a statement by US Secretary of State Mark Rubio regarding the results of the talks between Trump and Putin in Alaska.
Rubio had stated the day before that the US President and the Kremlin leader were unable to reach any agreements during the summit.
"It is not very polite of Rubio to say that no agreement was reached in Anchorage," Lavrov rebuked his American counterpart.
According to the Russian Foreign Minister, proposals from Trump’s team were discussed in Alaska, and Putin supported them.
In light of recent events, the Russian diplomat demanded explanations from the White House.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also joined in the public complaints. He began asserting that Moscow has never considered the US a neutral country in the Russian-Ukrainian war. He recalled that the US had supplied Ukraine with a great deal of weaponry.
Despite this, Peskov had doubts following a statement by French President Emmanuel Macron. The latter made it clear that the US had sided with Ukraine.
"I don’t think President Macron can in any way claim to be Washington’s advocate or press secretary. But we have not yet heard any statements from the US that would confirm this," Peskov said.
At the G7 summit, Donald Trump for the first time endorsed a statement in which the US refers to itself not as a neutral mediator in the war, but as an ally of Ukraine. https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/united-states-officially-takes-ukraine
-s-1782415851.html
In addition, the US President spoke highly of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and praised his efforts to contain Putin.
As it turns out, Donald Trump is generally thrilled by the Ukrainian Defense Forces' deep strikes on Russian territory. https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/trump-impressed-by-ukraine-s-successes
-kremlin-1782238266.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Ukrainian-made long-range Flamingo FP-5 missiles "successfully struck" a key Russian military-industrial facility in the city of Volgograd overnight on June 27, President Volodymyr Zelensky said.
The strike targeted Russia's Federal Research and Production Center Titan-Barrikady, a major defense enterprise that manufactures launchers for the Yars and Topol-M strategic missile systems, as well as launchers for the Iskander-M ballistic missile system.
"Confirmed strikes were followed by a fire on the plant's premises," Zelensky said.
"It is a major industrial complex where (Russia) produces artillery systems and specialized military equipment, including components for missile launch systems used in attacks against our people."
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-reportedly-strikes-russian-militar
y-plant-in-volgograd/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Belarus, arguably one of two allies with which Russia cannot wage this war (the other is China), has changed notably. In particular, Belarus’s dictator, the nasty and thuggish Aleksandr Lukashenka, has suddenly tried to make nice with the Ukrainians.
Lukashenka has a rat-like sense of survival, and the fact that he was changing tack so dramatically and publicly meant that his perceptions of how the war was going were clearly “adjusting”.
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/watch-belarus-indeed
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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As the Tide Turns Against Putin, Beware the Drowning Man
Like a struggling swimmer, he may take desperate measures to stay afloat.
June 25, 2026, 4:16 PM
By Peter Frankopan, a professor of global history at the University of Oxford.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/25/russia-ukraine-war-putin-escalati
on-nato-europe/
. . . It can be tempting to overinterpret Kyiv’s new success and confidence. Although Ukraine is in the ascendancy, its chances of recovering significant territories or delivering a knockout blow seem remote. Nevertheless, as things get worse for Russia on the battlefield, in the economy, and for Putin personally, there is the risk that the flailing Russian leader will succumb to drowning man syndrome—when a swimmer in difficulty pushes others under the water in a desperate attempt to stay afloat.
Whenever he has felt cornered during this war, Putin’s recourse has been to threaten further escalation against Ukraine and the West. And so, Moscow’s warnings have once again become more vocal and urgent. At the end of May, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Russia would launch “systematic and sustained strikes on facilities serving the needs of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kiev, as well as relevant decision-making centres” and warned that Western countries should evacuate their diplomatic staff. (Because they’re familiar with the Kremlin’s threats, they all stayed put.)
After a Russian drone hit an apartment block in Romania, Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council (a presidential advisory body), warned Europeans that they should get used to such incidents. “[T]he citizens of [European Union] states, as the population of the belligerent countries, will not be able to sleep peacefully,” he warned. This kind of rhetoric is par for Medvedev’s course, too.
Rattling sabers is often a sign of limited leverage. But while few Russia watchers take the Kremlin’s threats of nuclear escalation seriously, the fact that Putin formally revised the country’s official nuclear doctrine at the end of 2024—significantly lowering the threshold for the use of such weapons while also declaring that aggression by a non-nuclear state against Russia could set off nuclear retaliation if that state is supported by a nuclear power—was clearly intended to send a warning. Russia has also long dropped hints that it has stationed nuclear weapons in Belarus, although some commentators have treated these hints with skepticism.
In May, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that Russian and Belarusian army units had begun joint exercises that included preparations for nuclear weapons use. The purpose of these exercises, the statement said, was to preempt alleged Western aggression in response to “provocative statements and threats made by certain Western officials against the Russian Federation.”
Playing up fears of a NATO plot to attack Russia has been a hallmark of the Kremlin playbook since Putin came to power more than 25 years ago. But it is being articulated ever more forcefully as Russia’s war in Ukraine goes from bad to worse. At the end of May, Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Director Sergei Naryshkin claimed that “hypocritical and treacherous Albion” was behind a plan for NATO to attack Russia—a claim that is out of kilter with the current capabilities of the British armed forces.
Shrill warnings also characterized this year’s St. Petersburg forum, where successive speakers talked in terms of apocalyptic showdowns with the West, of decades of war ahead, and of the assessment that the war in Ukraine “will end either with Russia’s victory or it will never end.”
Putin no longer has an easy way out. The war is financially, demographically, and politically unaffordable, as reflected by rising domestic discontent. At the same time, the transformation of the economy into one that builds and fuels a war machine also means that cutting defense expenditure,
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There needs to be a clear, grand Allied strategy to achieve victory
June 27, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/27/natos-former-deputy-commander-k
eeps-saying-the-word-others-wont-victory/
I reached out to General Shirreff, former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, at the GLOBSEC forum in Prague because he was the only Western official openly saying the V-word — victory — that had been quietly retired over four years of Russia's war against Ukraine. GLOBSEC's own scenarios oscillated between a bad peace deal or continued protracted fighting.
The general would have none of it. "There needs to be a clear, grand allied strategy to achieve victory" over Russia, he said at a panel about the scenarios. "There should be a clarion call for it, because that is what is missing at the moment in the international community."
General, I was very heartened by your comments today, that nobody apart from Ukraine has stated that the objective is victory, and that there is no “clear, grand allied strategy” to achieve the defeat of Russia in Ukraine. Why have the words "Ukrainian victory" disappeared from the agenda?
General Shirreff: What a question. I don’t know the answer. It just defies belief that people don’t see it so clearly, so crystal clear, that the only way there will be a lasting peace is the defeat of Russia.
And that means victory. Why does nobody mention it? It’s timidity, fear, lack of political will, complacency. It's Western Europe. It’s partially because a lot of people who should know better — responsible, experienced, senior policy makers and even senior military in the West — have swallowed the Russian cognitive warfare line that "Russia will prevail because of the size and the scale." I don’t accept that.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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RUSSIAN Crashing
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Nobody gives a flying fuck, loser.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SIX, I think our society has already been corrupted by the uber-elite and our mideast policy by Jewish Zionists. But AFA Muslim activists are concerned, the answer to their desire to make our a Muslim society isn't more "tolerance".
We need to remember, or redetermine, what we want our society to be based on, and it's not "Whatever floats your boat". IMHO equal opportunity, fair share, respect for law, and meritocracy will create a prosperous economy and the kind of society we want, and we need everyone to buy into that, OR LEAVE.
Did you watch the video and see what all those Imams living in our borders were saying and what their plans for us are?
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Yes, and if they're immigrants they should be deported. If they're naturalized they should be stripped of citizenship, and THEN deported.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Yes, and if they're immigrants they should be deported. If they're naturalized they should be stripped of citizenship, and THEN deported.
Absolutely.
Were you aware of this dialog before that video? I was not.
I mean, it's what I've been saying they've been planning all along, but I've never actually seen any video proof of it like that before. That's fucking scary. That means they're no longer afraid to come out and say it. I felt the same thing when Davos started putting their videos on YouTube detailing their plans for the future of the human race. You only start doing things like that if you know you've won and there's nothing that anybody else can do about it.
I've been making people I know watch it. Sometimes you have to force it. A lot of people don't even want to know these things.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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The end of Putin’s regime will spring from war spending chaos, former central bank advisor says, amid military mutiny threat and fuel-shortage brawls
By Jason Ma
June 27, 2026, 2:41 PM ET
https://fortune.com/2026/06/27/putin-regime-change-ukraine-war-spendin
g-military-mutiny-threat-fuel-shortages/
Vladimir Putin’s grip on power has remained resilient despite the economic woes caused by his invasion of Ukraine, but the seeds of an eventual decline may have already been planted, according to a former Russian central bank advisor.
A telltale sign is the Kremlin’s abandonment of any fiscal discipline as the costs of fighting the Ukraine war, which is now in its fifth year, strain existing resources.
Alexandra Prokopenko, who is now a fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, pointed out in a recent Financial Times op-ed that the war has forced Russia to unwind its long-touted fiscal restraint. https://www.ft.com/content/93d36f56-d950-46ea-a20c-02cdb1a2e672
In a striking example of the turnaround, Russia’s parliament recently gave the finance ministry a blank check to spend more and borrow past its debt ceiling without a formal budget or explicit legislative approval.
That’s as the budget deficit through May is already double 2025’s full-year level, hitting 2.6% of GDP, or about $83 billion. At the same time, Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, which has been tapped to cover budget shortfalls, is being rapidly depleted and just a fraction of prewar levels.
“A cornered autocracy is rewriting the fiscal rules as it goes, cutting parliament out of the loop, and will not admit to dangers it cannot control,” Prokopenko wrote. “It’s less dramatic than a palace coup, but this is what decline looks like.”
The precipitous deterioration in Russia’s finances coincides with Ukraine’s stunning military successes this year. Advanced drones and new tactics have allowed Kyiv to not hold off the Russian military’s attacks but push them back and regain territory. Long-range drones are also reaching deep into Russia, including St. Petersburg and Moscow, targeting refineries and the defense industrial base.
The result has been devastating battlefield casualties that now outpace the ability to raise fresh recruits as well as soaring death-benefit payouts and widespread fuel shortages across the country.
Meanwhile, the Kremlin has been unable to defend against all of Ukraine’s drone attacks, forcing companies to spend more than $1 billion of their own money on makeshift protection. But Moscow also refuses to reimburse them.
Putin’s “juggling act” has now come to an end as he can no longer fund his war, keep a lid on inflation, and continue growing the economy all at once, Prokopenko said.
“The war is increasingly paid for by quietly invoicing the population and suspending the state’s own rules,” she added. “A regime sustained this way is heading for a poorer, angrier country, a financial system out of control, and war funding it cannot count on. The end, when it comes, will spring from this kind of decline, the sort that begins long before anyone names it.”
For now, Putin’s grip on power is secure, but public discontent is growing as average citizens buckle under the pressure of high inflation and onerous interest rates.
Russia’s fuel shortage has added to the misery, creating long lines at gas stations with motorists waiting for hours to fill up. Frustration is boiling over, and fights are breaking out between people struggling to buy rationed supplies of gasoline.
https://x.com/JayinKyiv/status/2070837267774558462
In addition, the Russian military’s “meat-grinder” tactics in Ukraine, where troops suffer ruinous losses for barely any gain, are creating a backlash.
In fact, the average life expectancy of a new recruit is about 10 days to three weeks, and once on the battlefield, their survival averages just 20-35 minutes, according to Russian military bloggers.
One Russian blogger, who is a veteran the Ukraine war going by the name Aleksandr Lunin, posted a video on Thursday that went vir
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Ukraine’s Navy details multistage operation targeting Crimea
By Demian Shevko | June 28, 2026, 06:35 AM
https://english.nv.ua/russian-war/ukraine-strikes-on-crimea-part-of-ye
arslong-operation-navy-says-50619908.html
Ukraine’s Defense Forces strikes on Russian logistics in temporarily occupied Crimea are part of a multistage operation that has been underway for years, Ukrainian Navy spokesperson Dmytro Pletenchuk said June 28.
Fuel shortages and lines at gas stations on the occupied peninsula are not the Defense Forces’ ultimate objective, Pletenchuk said during the United News telethon.
“What we are seeing is another stage of a multistage operation. Some may see an emotional response — cutting something off here and now — but that is not the case,” Pletenchuk said.
“A whole range of measures preceded this, and it has taken not months, but years,” he added.
The operation can be traced back to the destruction of Russia’s naval logistics, Pletenchuk said.
“First, naval logistics were cut off — large landing ships. Then came the turn of large railway ferries, which were the foundation of Crimea’s maritime logistics,” he said.
“Then came ordinary ferries, which can also be used for this purpose. At the same time, air defense systems were being destroyed,” Pletenchuk added.
That process also took months, he said.
Ukrainian forces were simultaneously targeting sites along the so-called land corridor connecting Russia with occupied Crimea.
“Everything ultimately comes down to the so-called Crimean Bridge,” Pletenchuk said.
The Navy spokesperson said the operation was progressing “quite successfully.”
Situation in Crimea: What is known
Crimea’s fuel crisis intensified in June amid systematic Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil infrastructure and logistics facilities, according to Ukrainian reports.
Long traffic jams have been reported at the exit from Crimea. Russian-installed authorities have announced the closure of children’s camps, while the tourist season has been effectively disrupted.
Krymenergo, the Russian-controlled energy provider in Crimea, announced “temporary power supply interruptions” on the peninsula June 25.
Drones have attacked Crimea almost every night, with explosions reported in various cities. Ukrainian forces have reported strikes on Russian military sites, power substations and oil terminals.
Ukraine’s Defense Forces have also targeted bridges and crossings connecting Crimea with temporarily occupied territories in southern Ukraine.
Russian-installed authorities declared a state of emergency in Crimea on June 26.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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28 June, 11:38
In March 2026, Harbuz wrote in an article for Ukrainska Pravda that open-source data at the time indicated 23 Flamingo cruise missiles had been launched. At the time, OSINT analysts identified six missiles that had reached their intended destination, but only two were confirmed to have struck their designated targets. One additional strike remained unconfirmed.
Over the past two months, the number of confirmed successful strikes has increased. According to the analyst, FP-5 missiles hit the Progress plant in Cheboksary, Russia, as well as the Titan-Barrikady facility in Volgograd.
"Over these two months, the number of missiles used increased from 23 to 39. The number of confirmed target hits rose from two to six," Harbuz wrote.
According to the OSINT analyst, the attack on the Titan-Barrikady plant in Volgograd was the most successful in terms of the proportion of missiles that reached their target. Of the five missiles identified from open sources, three struck the facility.
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/28/8041455/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Unease deepens in Russia as Ukraine steps up long-range strikes
The Washington Post reports:
The Kremlin is scrambling to respond to an intensifying campaign of Ukrainian drone attacks reaching ever deeper into Russia, hitting key arms production facilities, destroying an ever-greater share of oil-refining capacity, and causing fuel shortages across the country.
This week alone, swarms of Ukrainian drones hit oil facilities across Russia as well as the VZPP-S semiconductor devices plant, a major producer of components for Russian ballistic missiles in Voronezh, the Dubna Satellite Communications Center near Moscow, and a chemical plant that is key for producing Russian ammunition in Tula.
In Russia-occupied Crimea, rolling power outages were triggered across the peninsula by Ukrainian strikes, and fuel sales have been suspended, causing Russian-installed authorities there to declare a state of emergency Friday.
President Vladimir Putin’s government held an emergency meeting earlier this week on the escalating fuel crisis after gasoline production plummeted 25 percent across Russia during the week of June 15-21 and pushed dozens of regions to impose rations.
As nervousness mounts over Russia’s weakening position and an apparent shift in tone against Moscow by President Donald Trump, Russian stocks have fallen more than 13 percent since the beginning of June — the biggest market drop since September 2022, when a Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russia to retreat from a large chunk of strategic territory in Ukraine’s northeast.
“There is a state of total uncertainty,” said one former senior Russian finance official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security matters. “There is a feeling that there is no good end to this in sight.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2026/06/27/unease-deepens-russia-
ukraine-steps-up-long-range-strikes/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:Six years passed between Gorbachev's "Perestroika" and the unintended collapse of the USSR.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
About six years will pass between Russia’s war on Ukraine and Putin accidentally collapsing Russia.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f69c4cbac5e5409b81f54552c5a7df38
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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June 28, 2026, 01:14 PM
Putin described the current period as “decisive” for Russia and accused the West of trying to weaken the country, claiming it had failed to defeat Russia militarily.
The Russian leader said “Russia cannot be defeated on the battlefield” and claimed the West was now “testing its resilience” and seeking to eliminate it because Russia had “always stood in the way of evil.”
He also repeated the unsubstantiated claim that Ukraine, “retreating along the entire front line,” had turned to what he described as “terrorist strikes” against Russia.
At the same time, he acknowledged that Russia was “adjusting some plans based on the situation” and was going through “a difficult period,” while insisting that the country’s strategic objectives “will be fully achieved.”
More at https://english.nv.ua/nation/putin-accuses-west-of-testing-russia-repe
ats-false-ukraine-claim-50619981.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Something you will never, ever see from western press
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Six years passed between Gorbachev's "Perestroika" and the unintended collapse of the USSR.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
About six years will pass between Russia’s war on Ukraine and Putin accidentally collapsing Russia.
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/f69c4cbac5e5409b81f54552c5a7df38
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:6ix, you are like every Trumptard I know. If something evil did not happen to you, it didn't happen. Likewise, when something evil does happen to you, it is not your fault, despite it being 100% your fault. Then there are the mental ghosts haunting your head. Those are the realest evils in the world, to you. Examples? Your ranting and raving about Muslims. Your fear of fires lit by Black Lives Matter rioters. Your fear of being murdered by illegal aliens. If you were Russian, you'd fear NATO.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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More than 100 civil society groups urge EU to ban alumina exports to Russia
Coalition presses Ireland to back restrictions on material linked to Russian missile supply chains.
By Peeter Helme
29/06/2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/06/29/eu-civil-society-groups-ban-iri
sh-alumina-exports-russia/
Their explanation for selling to Russia? We are making so much money. How can we stop? It is too much of a burden on us to stop making money.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ix, you are like every Trumptard I know.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
Nobody gives a fuck, loser.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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T
Sustaining the blitz: Ukraine wants to break Russia before the year ends
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Ukraine Launches Combat Bonuses of $2,200 for Captures and $330 for Enemy Kills
By Roman Kohanets | Jun 29, 2026 18:24
https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/ukraine-launches-combat-bonus
es-of-2200-for-captures-and-330-for-enemy-kills-20278
Ukrainian troops will receive cash bonuses for capturing or destroying enemy personnel under the first stage of a sweeping overhaul of the Defense Forces, the Ministry of Defense announced on June 29.
The awards stem from the Cabinet of Ministers Resolution, which launched an experimental project introducing additional payments for combat results, according to the ministry. https://mod.gov.ua/news/vijskovi-otrimuvatimut-100-000-grn-za-voroga-v
zyatogo-v-polon-i-15-000-za-znishhennya
It framed the payments as a way to reward front-line service members for confirmed action against enemy personnel.
The ministry set two award levels:
• roughly $2,200 for taking an enemy service member prisoner:
• around $330 for destroying enemy personnel.
The payments are disbursed at the unit commander's direction, together with regular pay, the ministry explained.
A captured enemy soldier also carries value beyond the battlefield, serving as currency in the prisoner exchanges Ukraine conducts with Russia.
The most recent swap, on June 26, returned 160 Ukrainians held since 2022, bringing the total recovered from Russian captivity to 9,606 service members and civilians since exchanges began.
The per-action awards form the newest layer of a broader military transformation set in motion the same month. https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/inside-ukraines-first-total-a
rmy-overhaul-higher-pay-contracts-clear-service-terms-and-foreign-recruitment-19766
On June 12, Ukraine began the first-ever overhaul of its military service, shifting toward a professional, contract-based force with fixed terms, higher combat pay, discharge guarantees, and equal conditions for foreign volunteers.
The first stage centers on infantry and combat brigades, pairing new contracts with clearer rules on where and how long a soldier serves.
That reform also reshaped battlefield incentives, extending per-task bonuses once limited to drone operators to infantry and assault units.
Under the new contracts, monthly pay on the line of contact averages about $6,700 and can exceed $10,000, with daily rewards tied to holding combat positions, seek-and-destroy missions, and assault operations.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine Launches Combat Bonuses of $2,200 for Captures and $330 for Enemy Kills
I disapprove of my tax dollars being spent in this way.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Ukraine wants to break Russia before the year ends
Oh... I'm sure it does.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Whatever You Do in Russia, Don’t Talk About the War
As Ukraine brings the war home to Russia, officials hesitate to designate shelters and blast sirens, downplaying the conflict’s consequences with euphemisms.
By Valerie Hopkins | June 29, 2026 Updated 4:02 p.m. ET
Valerie Hopkins covers the war in Ukraine and how the conflict is changing Russia, Ukraine, Europe and the United States. She is based in Moscow.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/29/world/europe/russia-ukraine-rhetori
c.html
The war in Ukraine is a “Special Military Operation,” even though it’s the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II.
Across Russia, officials blame fuel shortages on “unscheduled maintenance at refineries” without noting a cause, as Ukrainian drones attack fuel refining facilities in the country.
And Russia’s central bank governor has talked of the “structural transformation of the economy,” as code for military spending that has spiraled and reoriented the economy around the military-industrial complex.
For years, President Vladimir V. Putin has insulated Russian society from the consequences of his war in Ukraine, using euphemisms as a psychological shield. But as the war increasingly comes home, the mismatch between rhetoric and reality is becoming a source of frustration for ordinary Russians.
For days, Mr. Putin didn’t mention the June 18 long-range drone strikes on Moscow, when Ukraine attacked with nearly 200 drones. He didn’t comment as Ukrainians promised to turn Crimea, the peninsula Russia illegally annexed in 2014, into an island by pounding it with drones and missiles.
When he appeared last Tuesday for the first time since the June 18 strikes, which were the largest in the war, he used the moment to blame the West.
“These drones, strikes on civilian infrastructure — what are they for? To destabilize society, to create uncertainty about the actions of the Russian armed forces,” Mr. Putin said. At that time, he did not address the fuel shortages in at least 56 regions, according to Mediazona, an independent Russian news outlet.
On Sunday, Mr. Putin did acknowledge fuel shortages. At a meeting of top executives and officials, he said that “systemic measures that match the scale of current challenges” must be put in place, adding that a task force was working around the clock to ensure supplies, especially for agriculture.
But Mr. Putin has not publicly delegated officials to prepare shelters or early warning systems in case of future strikes.
In the Moscow suburbs of Kotelniki and Lyubertsy, both of which came under drone attack in mid-June, the authorities said they would not disclose the locations of bomb shelters or use sirens because the country was not technically on a war footing. They would make this information public only in case of a “period of mobilization and in wartime.”
Lyubertsy’s administrator suggested that people consult a PDF that appeared on a government website with practical instructions on what to do in case of a drone attack.
The head of the Republic of Bashkortostan, a region with four million people between the Volga River and the Ural Mountains where Ukraine has attacked refineries, said his administration had decided to not always activate sirens to not stress people out, mentioning a rise in antidepressant use in Russia.
After a drone attack in the Yaroslavl region in late March killed a child and injured three adults, a local newspaper reported that the Ministry of Regional Development had not activated siren warning systems “to avoid panic and further injuries.”
Russian authorities said they shot down 213 Ukrainian drones on Saturday night, and Kyiv claimed it launched an attack on a major refinery in the Krasnodar region that killed one person. Over the same period Russia attacked Ukraine with eight missiles and 142 drones.
On social media citizens have expressed shock at official statements about why sirens wouldn’t be used during drone attacks or shelters aren’t being set up. Others complained that whi
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[Superweapon ain't that good]
Ukraine’s Flagship Flamingo Missiles Perform Solidly in Combat for First Time Ever
In brief: Ukraine’s FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile achieved its best result yet, with 3 of 5 missiles hitting Russia’s Barrikady military plant. Neither Russian nor Ukrainian official sources stated where the two missiles that did not hit the plant landed. Analysts credit improved tactics and low-altitude routing, marking a major leap after earlier poor accuracy against Russian air defenses.
By Stefan Korshak | June 29, 2026, 7:57 pm
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/79225
Fire Point Director Denys Shtilerman, in a Saturday interview published on YouTube, said that building guidance systems precise enough to allow the missile to negotiate its path to a target, while flying at a nap-of-the-Earth below 20 meters (78 feet) altitude or lower, along with dense Russian air defenses, were the main reasons Flamingo missiles had failed to reach their target in the past.
All seven 2026 confirmed Flamingo attacks, including the most recent, hit targets located on the shore of a major waterway. Ukrainian planners may have decided the most effective way to use the Flamingo missile is to attack targets near and ideally along the banks of a large stretch of water, because then the missile is able to fly at wave-top altitude and is much more difficult to intercept. Flight planners need not worry about avoiding hills and tall buildings.
The main advantages of the missile, Shtilerman and other Fire Point executives have said, are that a Flamingo is designed to use discarded aircraft jet engines for power and Soviet-era aviation bombs as warheads, and so may be manufactured quickly and cheaply.
At around 14 meters (46 feet) long with a 6-meter (20-foot) wingspan, the Flamingo, costing between $500,000 and $1 million, is about four times bigger than the US military’s advanced Tomahawk cruise missile, costing about $2 million.
Fire Point executives in late 2025 claimed that serial production at Flamingo factories would produce about 30 missiles a month, rising to 200+ by the end of 2026. President Volodymyr Zelensky, in mid-February comments to Kyiv media, said that production had been set back by Russian strikes hitting a Fire Point production facility, but that manufacturing would continue and expand.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Ukrainian defence ministry adviser names Ukraine's main technological problems in war
By Iryna Levytska | 29 June, 11:02
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/06/29/8041560/
Serhii "Flash" Beskrestnov, an adviser to Ukraine's defence minister, said that alongside positive news from the war, Ukraine faces a number of technological problems and named the main ones.
Source: Flash on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=27283162834658742&id
=100001751811701&mibextid=wwXIfr&rdid=EygELGMVL6XcUXFm#
Quote:Details: Among the key problems, Flash identified the absence of a serial and mass-production solution for countering guided aerial bombs.
I will try to name the main ones:
1. We do not have a serial and mass solution against KABs. It is KABs that cause us many problems on the fronts.
2. The enemy is increasing the use of MES modems for reconnaissance and online strikes with Shahed and Gerber. We are making unacceptably slow progress in developing electronic warfare means against MES.
3. There is a huge problem with drone attacks on front-line areas. And not only villages are suffering, but also Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhia, Sumy. Warning systems and systematic actions are needed to combat drones.
4. I would like to have even more tactical radars so that the precise radar field is denser and larger. Without this, interceptors do not work.
5. We do not yet have our own ballistics. And it would radically change the course of the war.
6. There are no mass and mass solutions for electronic warfare on drone video channels. The enemy is ahead of us here both in development and in experience of application. It is such electronic warfare that would help us protect front-line zones from drones.
7. There are no proven solutions for protecting mid-range strikes and bombers from enemy anti-aircraft drones. If we do not create them, it will soon become very difficult to work.
8. There is no systematic technological approach to finding and destroying enemy tactical radars. And these are the enemy's front-line eyes in the sky.
9. Developments and solutions are needed in the field of alternative navigation for deep strikes.
This is what I can voice publicly.
"It is precisely the guided aerial bombs that are causing us many problems on the fronts," he noted.
He also said that Russian forces are increasing their use of Mesh modems for reconnaissance and strikes with Shahed and Gerber-type drones, while Ukraine is, in his opinion, unacceptably slow in developing electronic warfare countermeasures against this technology.
Flash also drew attention to the large-scale problem of drone attacks on frontline territories.
"It is not only villages that are suffering, but also Kherson, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Sumy. Alert systems and systematic action against drones are needed," Flash added.
He separately stressed the need to increase the number of tactical radar stations, since without a denser radar coverage, interceptor drones cannot operate effectively.
He also noted that Ukraine does not yet have its own ballistic missile, which in his view could radically change the course of the war.
Among other problems, the expert identified the absence of mass and serial electronic warfare systems against drone video channels, in the development and use of which, in his assessment, the Russians are ahead of Ukraine.
"Precisely this kind of electronic warfare would help us protect frontline zones from drones," Flash stressed.
He also said there is an absence of proven solutions for protecting medium-range and heavy strike UAVs from anti-drone interceptors.
"If we do not create them, working conditions will become very difficult very soon," Beskrestnov said.
Flash is convinced Ukraine also lacks a systematic technological approach to locating and destroying the Russians' tactical radar stations, which he called "the enemy's eyes in the sky at the front
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Something you will never, ever see from western press
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
You won't see it in the western press because it isn't real. You were conned by Trump. You even got to study him for years, yet you still fall for his con. You have no idea what's real. You completely lack any sound judgement skills. Watch this video. It is real.
T
Russia Uncensored
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OOOOOOOHHHHHHH.... look at that flabby sack of shit trying to look tough with those flabby slabs of shit crossed over his man boobs.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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With America in Retreat, Europe Now Depends on Ukraine
Europeans are gaming out their future defense, and it’s unthinkable without Kyiv.
June 29, 2026, 10:11 AM
By Liana Fix, a senior Europe fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and Paul B. Stares, a senior fellow for conflict prevention at the Council on Foreign Relations.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/06/29/europe-nato-war-russia-ukraine-se
curity-defense-trump-alliance-deterrence/
Europe is preparing for its future security with little or no help from the United States. And in many such scenarios that European planners are now gaming out, Ukraine emerges as the linchpin of the continent’s defense. The weaker Washington’s security guarantee becomes, the more Europe needs Kyiv. Soon, Europeans will have to confront an entirely new burden-sharing question: What must they offer Ukraine for its help shielding Europe from Russia?
Until recently, European leaders could barely disguise their dread at the prospect of another acrimonious NATO summit, set to take place in Ankara in early July. The wounds are still raw from recent trans-Atlantic fights—including over U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs, his attempts to coerce Denmark to hand over Greenland, and recent U.S. troops withdrawals from Europe. Trump’s war against Iran and his accusations that European allies were insufficiently supportive of their principal security guarantor added to these wounds. This month, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio ominously warned: “I think the next meeting of NATO … is probably the most important meeting in NATO’s history because there are some things here that need to be cleared up and fixed.”
Concerns about a fracas at next month’s summit have subsided somewhat. The apparent U.S.-Iran cease-fire deal, the announced reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and Europe’s offer to help police the strait once a final peace agreement is reached have lowered the temperature. The friendly tone of this month’s G-7 summit in France, where Trump seemed on his best behavior, was another welcome sign. Cue the longtime trans-Atlanticists, who will surely argue that this proves the enduring resilience of the U.S.-Europe partnership—and that another near-death experience for NATO has been averted.
Such thinking, however, misses how rapidly European views of the trans-Atlantic alliance are changing. To the continent’s policymakers, NATO resembles Schrödinger’s fabled cat—simultaneously alive and dead. They treat the alliance as alive in the sense that they still do and say all the things they did before to demonstrate that they believe in its existence, not least to deter Moscow. But they also view it as dead in the sense that they can no longer rely on Washington as before.
European leaders are making plans to secure their continent without U.S. help. They no longer take seriously the assurance from Matthew Whitaker, the U.S. permanent representative to NATO, that a U.S. drawdown will leave no “strategic gaps.” They have given up on the idea that the Trump administration will agree to a road map for handing off Europe’s conventional defense in a predictable, coordinated way. So they are improvising. At the European Union level, officials are war-gaming how Article 42.7—the bloc’s closest equivalent to NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense clause—might be invoked if NATO is paralyzed. Leaders are asking what happens if NATO’s command-and-control structure simply isn’t there. Paris and Berlin have set up a nuclear steering group to discuss the possible role of the French nuclear arsenal in Europewide deterrence.
What stands out across many of these planning exercises is Ukraine’s role at the center of European security. Bolstering Europe’s own defense and deterrence as Washington’s commitment wanes will take many years. In a scenario exercise that the Council on Foreign Relations recently held with European officials and experts (which we both designed and in which one of us participated), it became readily apparent that Ukraine is the bulwark for Europe’s defense at a ti
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The Great Debate Is Between The Wrong Choices
This Is The Debate We Should Be Having
Phillips P. OBrien
Jun 30, 2026
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-great-debate-is-between-the
-wrong
Sometimes debates rumble on not because of their strong intellectual merits, but because of history, bureaucratic inertia, or simply innate conservatism (not an atypical phenomenon in militaries, it must be said). One of my favorite historical examples of such a debate was the obstinate refusal of some officers in both US and British cavalry units during the interwar period to give up their horses for combat roles. They came up with a host of what seemed to be semi-plausible arguments to justify their emotional and bureaucratic preferences.
Well, It Seemed A Rational Debate For The Time
Some claimed that vehicles would never be able to handle the varied terrain that horses could master, and therefore it was imperative to keep the man in the saddle. Other arguments were that vehicle technology still had a long way to go to mature, and in the meantime, it would be a shame to give up on horses who were tried and true. One of the favorite arguments of the horse backers was to claim that these new-fangled mechanized technologies were simply not mature enough yet, and in the meantime, it was important to prevent some “sheep-like rush to mechanization.”
These arguments effectively delayed the transition of some cavalry units to mechanized status for decades—until after World War II started in some cases.
And then, lo and behold, the horse appeared in combat next to the tank, and the whole debate was revealed as the farce that it was.
It is also worth noting that in the end, it was the most obstinate defenders of the old order that lost out. Many of those fine cavalry officers who clung to their horses in the 1920s and 1930s ended up being useless at the start of the war and had to beg and borrow their way into mechanized units to see the action that they so desperately craved.
The current debate over whether the future (present actually) belongs to human-controlled or remotely/artificially controlled combat vehicles on land, air and sea is much like the debate between cavalry and mechanization in the interwar period. It is ongoing, intense, and its result will make a big difference in the shape of future militaries for years, if not decades.
But it is also partly ridiculous.
Now let me declare an interest. I have, for many years, since before the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, argued that large, expensive, manned weapons were on their way out. They seemed to me far too difficult to defend, actually limited in their capabilities, and wildly expensive. In other words, we were spending massive amounts of money to make systems less effective.
In the Spring of 2022, I imagined an impending future where smaller, cheaper defensive weapons would have the “computational performance” to push all these legacy systems towards obsolescence. Here was a quote from one piece which discussed this (I clearly did not anticipate at that point that everyone would soon opt to call these AI/Autonomous systems, but the point was the same).
Drones will be able to stay in the air for longer and avoid detection better, while increasing their lethality and improving their own computational performance. The ability of both to destroy heavy land vehicles while remaining unseen will improve. The massacre of Russian vehicles we have seen in Ukraine will become the norm, not the exception.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 29, 2026
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-june-29-2026/
Russian President Vladimir Putin is carefully constructing a reality that seeks to portray a Russian victory in Ukraine as inevitable while downplaying the growing domestic economic costs of the war. This constructed reality is premised on a rejection of the tactical and operational developments that have characterized 2026 thus far and a continued Russian commitment to its untenable maximalist battlefield objectives. Putin’s control over the information space and his ability to shape and propagate narratives of Russian military success are critical to maintaining this false reality.
Putin appears to have accepted the reality that the August 2025 US-Russian Alaska Summit did not result in tangible or actionable diplomatic agreements. Putin stated to Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin in a likely carefully staged interview on June 28 that Russia and the United States did not reach any agreements at the Alaska Summit.[1] Putin acknowledged that there were no signed documents outlining the “spirit of Anchorage” but claimed that Russia agreed during the summit to US proposals about ending the war in Ukraine. Putin stated that Russia is ready to continue negotiations with the United States based on the Alaska Summit. The Kremlin readout of Putin’s interview omitted his statements about the Alaska Summit, but Zarubin posted a video of the full interview that retained those details.[2] Putin’s June 28 statement follows a similar remark from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on June 25 that there was only a “proposal” at the summit but no official or signed written agreement.[3] Putin is likely acknowledging lack of agreements in order to avoid directly confronting the Trump administration about what happened in Anchorage, given Rubio’s statements confirming the absence of a written agreement. Putin’s stated readiness to return to the Alaska Summit proposals, however, aims to push the United States to resume negotiations as if the battlefield situation has not changed since August 2025. Ukraine has since liberated territory on the frontline and significantly slowed Russian advances, while engaging in successful intermediate- and long-range strike campaigns against Russia — forcing Russia into a much more defensive mode of operation than it was in as of August 2025.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Wheels Are Coming Off Putin’s War
Fuel shortages, military unrest, and a strangled Crimea while the Kremlin dictator’s attempts to project confidence do nothing of the sort.
Cathy Young
Jun 30, 2026
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-wheels-are-coming-off-putin-ukrain-wa
r-crimea
A FEW YEARS AGO, when there was still some leeway for acts of public dissent in Russia, some protesters against the Kremlin’s imperialist policy toward Ukraine carried signs that flipped the patriotic slogan Krym nash, “Crimea is ours,” into Nam krysh—a humorous abbreviation of the slang phrase meaning “We’re done for.” [The literal meaning of the full phrase nam krysha is, “It’s the roof for us.”] Today, nam krysh seems prophetic: The occupied peninsula that became the (stolen) jewel in Putin’s crown in 2014 finds itself under a Ukrainian blockade that has all but cut it off from the Russian mainland—and, since Friday, under a state of emergency.
Starting in May, the vaunted “land bridge” by which Russia supplied occupied Crimea, the Novorossiya highway, turned into a death trap for trucks due to unrelenting Ukrainian drone attacks. Since then, other strikes have targeted bridges and taken out ferry operations. Severe fuel shortages are the blockade’s tangible result. Sergey Aksyonov, the Kremlin-installed governor of Crimea, recently announced a complete halt to gas sales to individual car owners; fuel is reserved for public transit and official vehicles. Power outages have become widespread; the latest reports show that food shortages are already starting. The Crimea vacation long coveted by Russians has become a nightmare. Recent data from travel websites show that nearly 80 percent of hotel bookings on the peninsula have been canceled. While a few brave or stupid souls are still heading to Crimea, far more people are getting out. Thousands of cars have been lining up at the Crimean Bridge (a.k.a. the Kerch Strait Bridge, famously attacked multiple times by Ukraine) in the direction of the mainland, with hardly any traffic the other way.
The Ukrainian effort to turn the Crimean peninsula into “an island,” in the words of Ukrainian defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov, has marked a new chapter in the war, in both symbolic and practical ways. Russia’s Krym nash moment—the annexation of Crimea in March 2014, immediately followed by the Russian incursion into the Donbas—was the beginning of Putin’s proposed reconquista of Ukraine. Moreover, the Crimea grab was almost universally seen as de facto irreversible even by those who were optimistic about the prospect for Ukraine to recapture its other occupied lands. Today, while no one believes Ukraine could recapture the peninsula soon, the occupation powers are beleaguered.
In his televised address last Wednesday, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky said that the actions taken to isolate Crimea were part of a “carefully calculated operation” intended, with help from Ukraine’s Western allies, to “force Russia to choose peace.” Some Russian propagandists saw this statement as a signal that Ukraine was preparing an actual military operation to recapture Crimea. That seems doubtful: Such an operation would be extremely costly at a time when Ukraine still faces significant manpower shortages on the frontlines. One possibility, however, is that if supply lines are cut off, the Russian military contingent on the peninsula may be forced to evacuate—opening the way to an unresisted Ukrainian capture that would, in effect, be a reversal of Russia’s bloodless seizure of Crimea in 2014. (As the saying goes, history does not repeat itself but it often rhymes.)
What’s not in doubt is that Ukraine has succeeded in turning Crimea from Russia’s prize into a liability. And it’s part of a larger Ukrainian strategy: The next day, on Thursday, Zelensky announced that he had approved a forty-day “operation of influence” against Russia, coordinated with Ukrainian intelligence and intended to force Moscow to end the war.
A creeping sense of nam krysh is spreading far beyond Crimea. The recent U
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tick tock comrade.
T
Ukraine Starts Cracking Open the Occupied Territories
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Russian threat will outlast Putin, Sweden's military intelligence chief says
By Polina Moroziuk | June 30, 2026 6:15 pm
https://kyivindependent.com/russian-threat-will-outlast-putin-swedens-
intelligence-chief-says/
Russia is likely to remain a security threat long after President Vladimir Putin leaves office, Sweden's military intelligence chief said on June 30, describing Moscow's confrontation with the West as "deep, structural and enduring."
Thomas Nilsson, head of Sweden's Military Intelligence and Security Service (MUST), made the remarks in an interview with Bloomberg published on June 30.
"We don't see this crisis as a temporary one; Russia has chosen its path, and there is no way back," Nilsson said.
Nilsson also said Sweden saw no signs that Russia's political system or Vladimir Putin's grip on power were under immediate threat, despite economic strains caused by the war and Western sanctions.
"Political opposition has effectively been eliminated – through exile, imprisonment, or, in the worst cases, assassination," Nilsson said, adding that there was no political force capable of channeling public dissatisfaction into an alternative to the current regime.
The intelligence chief also said Russia was planning to expand its military presence along NATO's northeastern flank, stretching "from northern Finland all the way down." While many of those plans remain on paper as Moscow prioritizes its war against Ukraine, Sweden expects Russia to pursue them once it regains sufficient resources and military capacity.
Sweden joined NATO in March 2024 after abandoning decades of military non-alignment in response to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Alongside neighboring Finland, Sweden has significantly strengthened the alliance's presence in the Baltic region.
Nilsson's comments came after Nordic media recently reported, based on satellite imagery, that Russia was expanding military infrastructure near the Finnish border. Moscow has previously said such deployments were a response to Finland's and Sweden's accession to NATO.
Russia has repeatedly criticized both countries' decision to join the alliance.
Sweden has remained one of Ukraine's key European partners since Russia's full-scale invasion. On June 18, Stockholm announced an additional $108 million in military aid through the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) initiative alongside additional assistance pledged by Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russia Shifts Donetsk Capture Deadlines – Now at 15 Attempts
By Kyiv Post | June 30, 2026, 12:20 am
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/79230
… in 2022, the deadlines were March 31, then May 9, June 1, Sept. 15, and Dec. 31.
In 2023, Putin set two more deadlines for the capture of Donbas – March 1 and then Dec. 31.
“In 2024, there were again two such deadlines,” Zelensky said, adding that in 2025, Russia tried to convince US President Donald Trump that Ukraine would “supposedly fall,” giving three final dates for capturing the region – Sept. 1, Dec. 1, and Dec. 25.
“Already this year, the Russians have again pushed back the date,” he said. At first, they set the deadline of March 31, then Sept. 1, “and now the deadline is Dec. 31.”
In May, Zelensky confirmed Russia has lost 145,000 troops since the start of 2026, including nearly 86,000 killed.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Tucker Carlson's podcast with Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout
By Kate Tsurkan
June 30, 2026 7:14 PM
. . . Carlson's interview with Bout wrapped up with a call for the U.S. and Russia to "unite and stop being sworn enemies."
Carlson has emerged as perhaps the most vocal proponent of the view — now gaining traction within a particular faction of the American right — that Russia is not a historic adversary of the U.S., but a natural ally.
While this view does not represent the entirety of the Republican Party, it is closely linked to longstanding currents of skepticism within the right — and as McGlynn warns, it is one that Russia is all too willing to exploit.
"Several currents feed it: hostility to NATO and foreign aid, an affinity for Russia as a socially conservative counter-model, and the simple fact that opposing Ukraine has become an identity marker," McGlynn said.
"Moscow treats these constituencies as an asset and tailors content to their tastes."
More at https://kyivindependent.com/tucker-carlson-boosts-kremlin-propaganda-a
gain-in-interview-with-arms-dealer/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The Finnish analyst Joni Askola takes a somewhat sceptical view. He wrote that it will take months before the “logistic lockdown”, as the Ukrainian defence minister called it, starts to manifest itself at the front.
“Kremlin still possesses an extensive logistic network that consists of thousands of trucks and railway trains. Russian units at the frontline can also draw from extensive stockpiles. Not even a perfectly executed campaign against logistics can magically empty these depots in a few weeks. When August or September comes, months of continuous pressure will likely cause some Russian units to struggle to secure basic supplies,” he wrote.
https://x.com/joni_askola/status/2071565456146661825
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Your party is being destroyed and all you can think about until the very end is Russia and Trump.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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How many times have we read Russia is on the back foot, Ukraine has the momentum"?
2023, when Ukraine attempted a combined arms maneuver, only to smash against the Surovikin line?
Rabotyn (over and over)?
Bakhmut?
Kursk?
Meanwhile, Russia advances like a lava flow.
Quote:
Ukraine’s Desperate Propaganda Campaign While Russia Advances along the Entire Front
Volodymyr Zelensky and his Western backers have launched a desperate 40-day “campaign of terrors” — which includes a mix of military escalations and a massive information/psyops operation designed to portray Russia as collapsing and Putin as facing an imminent uprising or coup. The goal is to force Russia into a ceasefire. Western audiences are being flooded with social media and regular media articles that paint a dire picture of Russia’s military campaign, while touting Ukraine’s incredible accomplishments. It is all a load of crap, but that is all the West has left in its quiver as Russia’s campaign of attrition continues to pulverize Ukraine.
. . .
Now for the reality. Yes, Ukraine has hit some Russian refineries and created some spectacular visuals of billowing smoke and fire. However, this is nothing more than military political theater that is intended to distract from Urkaine’s setbacks all along the front. As a side note, Russian oil exports have increased during this same period, putting to bed the narrative that Russia’s oil industry in suffering catastrophic losses. Here is a summary of Russian activity, starting in the Northern section of the front:
Sumy Direction
In the Sumy direction, the “North” assault groups advanced on 19 sectors, and some units of Ukraine’s 104th Territorial Defense Brigade abandoned their positions in Bachevsk. Russian forces continued active operations along the border, conducting strikes on Ukrainian positions and logistics. They reported repelling multiple Ukrainian attempts to cross into Russian territory and inflicting significant losses on enemy manpower and equipment. Russian soldiers are now only a few kilometers from Sumy itself.
Kharkiv Direction
Russian troops advanced in several sectors north and northeast of Kharkiv. The MOD reported the liberation of additional border settlements and improvement of tactical positions. Russian Geran drones conduct a series of high-precision strikes on gas infrastructure in Kharkiv region overnight. A gas distribution station near Panyutino was struck — disabling gas storage tanks, gas pumping plants, and a gas treatment facility. The Skvortsovskaya gas treatment system near Kosogorovka was also hit.???????????????? Ukrainian counterattacks were repelled, with Russian artillery and aviation playing a key role in degrading enemy capabilities.
Donetsk Direction (Primary Focus)
Donetsk remains the main direction of Russian offensive operations. Russian troops are steadily advancing on the Pokrovsk axis, with Russian forces capturing multiple settlements and pushing toward key logistical nodes. The most notable achievement is in Konstantinovka, where Russian units have taken control of most of the city and disrupted Ukrainian supply lines. With both Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka gone, Russia controls the two southern and eastern approaches that previously buffered the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk agglomeration. The H-32 Pokrovsk-Konstantinovka highway and the T-0504 Bakhmut-Pokrovsk highway — both of which Russian forces had been fighting to seize specifically to link these two axes — now forms a contiguous corridor under Russian control, allowing logistics and force concentration to flow directly toward Druzhkivka and Kramatorsk without contesting two separate urban battles.The Russians also are advancing around Chasiv Yar and Toretsk, including gains in urban fighting and elevated positions.
Overall, the Russian MOD described consistent liberation of territory, high daily Ukrainian losses, and effective use of glide bombs, drones, and artillery to support ground advances.
Dnipropetrovsk Oblast (Dnipro region)
In the Dnipropetrovsk directio
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My whole point is how many times have we heard either side has the upper hand?
Meanwhile, the Chinese are making videos for TikTok, trolling all the people who are being roasted alive this summer in Paris after making such a big deal about all but banning air conditioners and being all smug about it.
There are some real world issues going on, and unless somebody is going to actually expose what the US is really doing there and who's all involved, I'm not worried about Russia when we've got Muslims invading everyone and the Chinese have long been a much greater potential threat than Russia has.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Ukraine urges EU to send defense funds before battlefield window closes
Alex Stezhensky | July 1, 2026, 06:19 AM
https://english.nv.ua/nation/fedorov-urges-eu-to-send-peace-facility-f
unds-to-ukraine-s-defense-50620788.html
Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov urged EU partners in a letter to allocate 6.6 billion euros ($7.5 billion) available through the European Peace Facility for military aid to Kyiv. Reuters reported the appeal, citing the text of the letter it obtained.
The money is needed to seize a “window of opportunity” on the battlefield that will last six to nine months, Fedorov wrote.
Fedorov wrote that Ukraine’s defense needs this year are estimated at about 136 billion euros ($155 billion), with Ukraine’s budget covering about 53 billion euros ($60.4 billion) of that amount, Reuters reported.
Ukraine is expected to receive 28.3 billion euros ($32.3 billion) for defense through EU macro-financial assistance, but Fedorov said a major funding gap remains even after those funds are counted.
Money from the European Peace Facility could become “one of the most significant European contributions to Ukraine’s defense this year, but only if these resources are directed where they can generate the greatest and most immediate military effect,” Fedorov said.
Speaking at a European Council meeting on June 18, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged EU leaders to quickly send 6 billion euros ($6.8 billion) unlocked through the European Peace Facility to support Ukraine.
In an interview with Politico, Fedorov said Ukraine was urging its allies to seize a “short-lived opportunity” and fund a new wave of drones, missiles and military technology to help keep Russia under constant pressure and consolidate gains by Ukraine’s defense forces.
“We need the next level of assistance to finish the job. If we have enough resources to launch a new cycle of military innovation before Russia adapts to the current one, it will give us roughly another six months of advantage,” the minister said.
On June 30, a special fund in Ukraine’s state budget received 3.9 billion euros ($4.4 billion) from the European Union as the first defense tranche under the Ukraine Support Loan program. The money will be used to finance priority defense needs, including strengthening Ukraine’s defense industry and securing urgent supplies for the front line.
On June 25, Ukraine received the first tranche of the EU’s Ukraine Support Loan, worth 3.2 billion euros ($3.6 billion).
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Nah. They're winning. They don't need any more money. Figure it out.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:Touche.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nah. They're winning. They don't need any more money. Figure it out.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
Logic was never SECOND'S strong suit.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Ukraine’s Plan to Unnerve Putin
Recent drone attacks in the Moscow area reveal a multifaceted strategy.
By Phillips Payson O’Brien | June 30, 2026, 2:39 PM ET
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/06/moscow-ukraine-drone-attacks
/687745/
Over the past two weeks, Ukraine has launched a series of drone attacks on targets deep inside Russian territory—most consequentially in and near Moscow. Last night, near the Russian capital, according to President Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukrainian weaponry attacked the Dubna Space Communications Center, which Russia uses to collect intelligence and coordinate operations by its army units in occupied Ukraine. This was Ukraine’s second strike on the Dubna facility in about a week.
Zelensky’s announcement of the latest attacks taunted Vladimir Putin, declaring matter-of-factly that “relevant actions are also being prepared against other similar enemy facilities.” The intended message to the Russian public is that the drone campaign, which Ukraine coyly describes as “long-range sanctions” against the country that invaded its territory, is nowhere near plateauing.
The recent focus on Moscow-area targets reveals how the Ukrainian government and military, in addition to trying to defend their territory from Russian aerial attack, are now taking the war to Putin’s doorstep. They are trying to put political and economic pressure on Putin’s regime and disable his war machine by starving it of money, supplies, and soldiers. Recent attacks on the Dubna facility and on a major Moscow oil refinery typify distinct parts of the Ukrainian strategy to make the war unsustainable for the Russian dictator.
The refinery, which was targeted as part of a mass Ukrainian attack on the Russian capital on June 18, produces about 40 percent of the Moscow region’s fuel market and has reportedly been put out of action for the remainder of 2026. This attack worked on a number of levels to embarrass and undermine Putin.
First, the attack created, almost certainly intentionally, a massive fire that released a thick plume of black smoke that was visible across Moscow. The point was unmistakable: Ukraine is here and can hit even the most important economic targets. Muscovites, your days of pretending the war is far away from your own comfortable existence are over. Indeed, Ukrainian strikes on oil infrastructure have created major gas shortages that are bedeviling much of the Russian hinterland. Similar pain may soon be in store for the capital.
The Moscow-refinery attacks also point to another Ukrainian goal: threatening Putin’s access to the money that he needs to keep fighting. Putin’s war has already burned through much of Russia’s once-large sovereign wealth fund. A fascinating recent report from a German think tank concludes that the Russian economy is approaching its “endgame,” as “growth has come to a standstill and fiscal buffers are largely exhausted.” To fund the country’s armed forces, Russia is almost entirely dependent on selling oil and other petroleum products to the rest of the world.
https://www.kielinstitut.de/fileadmin/Dateiverwaltung/IfW-Publications
/fis-import/3d87c36f-c2f7-46a6-aedb-8c03627a224a-Endgame_The-State-of-the-Russian-Economy-Kiel_Report_No_9-english-Version.pdf
For the past few months, Donald Trump has been providing Putin with a reprieve—the Iran war drove up world oil prices and created many new consumers for Russian gas, thereby creating a massive surge in income. But as hostilities in the Persian Gulf have somewhat subsided, so has the global oil price—meaning that Russia is earning less per barrel of oil that it exports.
The Ukrainian strikes on oil facilities have presented Putin with a dilemma. The gasoline shortage is plainly creating public discontent. But if Russia limits exports to preserve domestic oil supply, it will also reduce the amount of money it can pour into the war. Less money coming into government coffers also means fewer goodies for the population of Moscow, whose acquiescence Putin desperately needs
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Ukraine is doing a better job of breaking through Russia's air defenses, and they're getting through with stronger payloads, hitting strategic targets more precisely in ways that create ever larger impacts.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:Wow! Time for a sports analogy from the Indianapolis 500! The race between Ukraine and Russia is at the halfway point. Since Team Ukraine and Team Russia are on the same lap, Team Ukraine is "winning" and doesn't need to stop for refueling or tire changes, which cost money. It is time to send the Ukrainian teams' pit crews home for a well-deserved weekend of rest. The Ukrainian race cars can now cruise to a guaranteed victory from here without ever stopping for the next 250 miles for fuel or maintenance.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Touche.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nah. They're winning. They don't need any more money. Figure it out.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
Logic was never SECOND'S strong suit.
Quote:
An Indy 500 race car typically stops for fuel 5 to 8 times during the 200-lap race. Because the fuel tanks hold roughly 18.5 gallons, a car can only run about 30 to 35 laps per tank, making multiple refueling stops a mandatory requirement to cover the 500-mile distance.
A precise breakdown of the variables shaping pit stops includes:
• Stint Length: Drivers can complete between 30 and 45 laps on a single tank of gas. The exact number of laps depends on engine mapping, track temperatures, and whether they are "saving fuel" to stretch their stint.
• Total Time: An ideal pit stop takes roughly 7 seconds, during which crews replenish the 18.5-gallon fuel tank, swap all four tires, and make aerodynamic wing adjustments.
• Caution Flag Impacts: The exact number of stops frequently shifts because of full-course cautions. Pitting under a caution flag costs significantly less track time than doing so under green flag conditions, forcing teams to constantly adapt their refueling strategies.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russian forces seized or infiltrated 30.42 square kilometers in June 2026 and advanced or infiltrated at an average pace of 1.01 square kilometers per day. Russian forces comparatively seized 481.25 square kilometers in June 2025, advancing at an average pace of 16.04 square kilometers per day.
Russian forces therefore reportedly suffered around 1,298 casualties per square kilometer they seized or infiltrated in June 2026. Russian forces comparatively suffered 32,680 casualties in June 2025, an average of 68 casualties per kilometer taken.[4] Russian forces suffered over 19 times more casualties per kilometer in June 2026 compared to June 2025 . . .
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-july-1-2026/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Wow! Time for a sports analogy from the Indianapolis 500! The race between Ukraine and Russia is at the halfway point. Since Team Ukraine and Team Russia are on the same lap, Team Ukraine is "winning" and doesn't need to stop for refueling or tire changes, which cost money. It is time to send the Ukrainian teams' pit crews home for a well-deserved weekend of rest. The Ukrainian race cars can now cruise to a guaranteed victory from here without ever stopping for the next 250 miles for fuel or maintenance.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Touche.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nah. They're winning. They don't need any more money. Figure it out.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
Logic was never SECOND'S strong suit.
If they can't win the war on their own, fuck 'em. Nobody gives a single fuck if they run out of fuel.
All I keep hearing out of you two fucking idiots is that they're winning.
You don't need any money then. Go fuck yourself, Zelensky. And stop raping kids.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:I don't mind telling you that Trump has been credibly accused of being a pedophile. And also a tax cheater. Like his heroic Trump, 6ixStringJoker doesn't pay income tax, but he doesn't even have to cheat to not pay, unlike Trump. Being angry, poor white trash who cheat is the natural condition of Trump voters.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
If they can't win the war on their own, fuck 'em. Nobody gives a single fuck if they run out of fuel.
All I keep hearing out of you two fucking idiots is that they're winning.
You don't need any money then. Go fuck yourself, Zelensky. And stop raping kids.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance [to Trump's tunes] 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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Ukraine can win the battles. Without the word “victory,” it loses the war.
NATO’s former deputy commander says no one but Ukraine names victory as the goal. Ukraine’s former defense minister warns that without naming it, even a battlefield win is no victory at all.
By Alya Shandra | July 2, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/07/02/ukraine-can-win-the-battles-wit
hout-the-word-victory-it-loses-the-war/
Sir Richard Shirreff has spent a decade being right about Russia and ignored for it. So when NATO's former deputy supreme commander told Euromaidan Press at the GLOBSEC conference that no one apart from Ukraine names the war's objective plainly—victory, meaning the defeat of Russia, with no lasting peace until it comes—we had to check to see precisely who.
What we found: across the people who run Western defense—the NATO Secretary General, the alliance's top soldiers, the leaders of its largest members—Shirreff is right. But there's a twist. The word was once spoken, loudly, at the very top, after Ukraine's inspirational 2022 counteroffensive. It has since drained out of the same mouths that used it—and it has not come back, even now, with deep strikes becoming so effective as to give Ukraine a realistic chance of retaking Crimea.
Occasionally, western officials slip into saying “Ukraine can win.” But it is always followed by “let’s negotiate a ceasefire.” It is never followed by “therefore, let’s make a plan so Ukraine will win.”
The gap between the premise and the conclusion is costing Ukraine the victory its soldiers are winning—because victory is a decision, not an outcome. Someone has to name the political end-state and hold to it. When no one does, the battlefield wins evaporate into a settlement that hands the loser what he could not take by force.
Admiral Rob Bauer, who chaired NATO's Military Committee through the war's first three years, told Euromaidan Press that if the West had armed Ukraine in 2022 as it eventually did, "you might have won." His explanation for why it didn't was not about Russian strength: "It was never formulated as, 'We're doing this so that Ukraine can win the war.'"
Whether this scenario repeats now depends on exactly that—whether victory is named as a goal.
The severed sentence, in one man
Nobody performs this better than Finland's President Alexander Stubb, and he did it in a single interview.
Speaking to the Swiss daily NZZ in early June, Stubb laid out the most detailed victory case any sitting leader has offered. The war, he said, has moved through three stages: "The first year of the war was about survival. The next three years were about resilience. Now it is a question of mathematics—battlefield mathematics." Then he did the math—35,000 Russian casualties a month against 27,000 recruits, a loss ratio gone from one-to-three to one-to-eight, Ukraine in April retaking more ground than it lost for the first time in the war.
His conclusion: Ukraine is in "a much stronger position on the battlefield today than at any time since the beginning of the conflict."
And the step he takes from it is not "so let us resource the win." It is: "I think we should talk to Putin." Why now? Because—his words—"you can only negotiate with the Russians when they are not in a position of power."
Read that twice. Stubb has just proven Ukraine holds the upper hand, and he converts the upper hand into a reason to open talks, not a reason to finish the job. The advantage becomes leverage for a ceasefire. It never becomes a mandate for victory. Even at his most bullish—at Munich in February he told Ukrainians "it seems to me that you will win this war" and that Putin "has suffered a strategic defeat"—the verb is descriptive.
Stubb exemplifies a pattern by Western officials. You may win, we'll grant you that. Never: we will make you win, and here is how.
The same NATO chair, the word gone
Stubb is one clever Finn. NATO
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Putin Is Slipping Into Delusion
The Russian dictator remains obsessed with his war in Ukraine but doesn’t seem to comprehend how badly it’s going.
By Simon Shuster | July 1, 2026, 10:12 AM ET
Simon Shuster has reported on armed conflicts and authoritarian regimes for nearly two decades. His best-selling book, The Showman, chronicles the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/07/putin-russia-ukr
aine-war/687753/
When things get dicey in Moscow, Vladimir Putin tends to drop out of sight for a while, retreating to one of his residences and canceling public events. Only his closest aides know how he spends his time during these absences, which can go on for days even in the middle of a national crisis. The Kremlin does its best to fill the vacant airtime on state TV with pretaped footage of the president, waiting for him to reemerge and declare that everything remains under his control.
Since the end of last year, when Ukraine intensified its campaign of drone and missile strikes on Russian cities, Putin has taken a few of these breaks. Two of them lasted for more than a week. He has mostly avoided talking about the Ukrainian strikes, even as they caused fuel shortages across Russia, destroyed infrastructure, and shattered the sense of stability that Putin offers his people in exchange for their loyalty. His first detailed response to the threat came on Monday, and he did his best to seem unmoved.
In a carefully scripted interview on state TV, Putin looked bored with the details of governing Russia and managing the frustrations of his citizens, but he did not appear tired of his war in Ukraine. He spent most of the 19-minute conversation with a Russian news anchor dissecting the minutiae of the fighting, even naming a particular street in one small town in the region of Donetsk where, according to Putin, his forces had managed to gain a bit of ground. The performance seemed designed to suggest that, away from the cameras, the Russian leader spends his time hunched over maps of the battlefield.
The Russian people, by contrast, have run out of patience with the war their leader seems so eager to continue. A survey released on the same day as Putin’s interview found that 81 percent of Russians want the war to end “as early as tomorrow.” The number of respondents who want the fighting to continue until Russia’s victory, no matter how long it takes, dropped in the survey to 9 percent, the lowest level ever recorded by the Institute for Conflict Studies and Analysis of Russia, which has conducted 10 rounds of polling since the start of the war, in 2022.
Its most recent survey matched up with the images and complaints that have flooded Russian social networks in the past few weeks, showing long lines at gas stations in Moscow and trucks stalled without fuel on the roadside. “There’s no gasoline in the city,” one man posted from a suburb of Moscow. “And the TV is silent about it.”
If Putin cares about such problems, he has done a decent job of hiding it. “Everything is working stably and with a big reserve of strength,” he said in Monday’s interview, referring to the fuel shortages spreading through Russia. His tone reminded me of Putin’s attitude toward the war in Syria, where Russian forces intervened in 2015 to save the regime in Damascus from a revolution. Back then, Putin still held regular meetings in Moscow with Russian businesspeople and corporate executives, hearing out their concerns about high interest rates, slow economic growth, and other matters of concern for the state.
One of the regular guests at those meetings described to me how Putin had trouble sitting through them. Obviously distracted, he would fidget in his seat and doodle in his notebook. When the conversation turned to the subject of war, however, the president would come alive, describing the kinds of fighter jets Russia used to bombard rebel positions in Syria and naming towns with stubborn pockets of resistance. “This was his passion,” the businessman told me. “Nothing else interest
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The clock is ticking on Europe's gas: barely 4 months to fill storage tanks before winter
By Mykola Kolisnyk | July 2, 2026 9:19 PM
Head of the Generation Department at Naftogaz of Ukraine
https://kyivindependent.com/the-clock-is-ticking-on-europes-gas-barely
-four-months-to-fill-the-storages-before-winter/
With the Strait of Hormuz shut and storage only a third full, Europe has barely four months until Nov. 1 to refill its tanks before winter. And this year, for the first time since the 2022 crisis, the market alone will not do it.
Across Europe, gas is pumped during spring and summer into vast underground reservoirs, mostly depleted gas fields, then drawn back out in winter as households turn up the heating. These stores are the continent's buffer against a cold snap or a sudden loss of supply. Filling them has always been left to the market: traders buy gas cheaply in summer and sell it in winter, and they fill storage only when that price gap makes it worth their while.
That is why holding gas purely as a reserve has never been standard practice — nobody is paid to do it.
And it is why, until now, there has been no policy forcing security-grade reserves at scale. After the 2022 crisis, the EU added how-full targets: 80%, then 90% by winter, but it still leaves the actual filling to traders chasing that price gap. This year, the gap has all but vanished, and with it the market's reason to fill the tanks at all.
EU storage stood at just 35 bcm at the start of May, about a third of the bloc's total capacity of a little over 100 bcm, and more than 7 bcm below the level a year earlier.
On current trends, analysts at the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies expect the bloc to reach only around 70% of capacity by Nov. 1 — short of its own 90% target, and the thinnest winter cushion since 2022.
From late February, the closure of the Strait of Hormuz cut Europe off from Qatari and Emirati LNG, together nearly a fifth of all global LNG trade.
The result was a loss of 2 bcm per month, totaling close to 8 bcm of missed supply across the prime injection season. Reopening the Strait, currently under negotiation, would stop the monthly shortfall, but it cannot recover what has already been lost. Europe is left with a shrinking window to reach its winter storage targets, and less room for error than at any point since 2022. https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/Comment-
LNG-and-Europe-Storage.pdf
This is where Europe rediscovers what Ukraine has known for years: filling storage before winter is a security obligation, not a market option.
What Ukraine has actually tested
This is not a theory for us. Ukraine has required suppliers to hold an insurance stock, up to 10% of planned monthly volumes, since 2016. On Feb. 26, 2022, two days after the full-scale invasion, we activated an emergency-level gas crisis regime and resorted to non-market tools, including halting gas exports except for volumes held under customs-warehouse rules.
In this way, we've managed to balance the gas transmission system even when part of the equipment (gas compressor stations, regulation and metering units) was occupied, and part was affected by shelling.
Today, we operate the largest underground storage system in Europe: 31 bcm, most of it concentrated in well-protected facilities in the west of the pre-mounting territory of Ukraine. It's 1.5 times the combined capacity of Hungary, Romania, Poland, and Slovakia, and we have run it through three winters of war, with the infrastructure itself under Russian missile and drone attacks.
We never had the option of treating reserves as a trade. For us, filling before winter was about survival and continuity of day-to-day operation. Despite all challenges, we didn't reject any nomination for storing or shipping gas.
In 2023, and again in 2024, together with the European Commission's Joint Research Center, the Energy Community Secretariat, and USAID, we stress-tested how the sys
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Russians want to know why Ukraine has recently been able to retaliate against Russia so late in the war. Ukraine is supposed to get weaker and weaker as victory approaches for Russia. Why isn't it weakening?
Despite it being illegal, a few Russians are openly questioning Vladimir Putin’s competence to win the war. How about the rest of Russians? They stopped praising Putin. They want the war over. Either Putin finishes the war very soon or else he loses their confidence he can ever finish it.
Complaining about the War will get you killed in Russia: Suspicious Russia-related deaths since 2022
Russian billionaires, many from the oil and gas industries, have been found dead under unusual circumstances.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suspicious_Russia-related_deaths_since_2
022
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Paul Warburg grew up in Moreno Valley, CA. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Biblical & Theological Studies from Liberty University in 2015, as well as a Master of Divinity degree from Liberty Baptist Theological Seminary in 2017. Paul moved to Utah in 2021 after learning that it had one of the smallest populations of evangelical Christians in the United States, giving him a desire to help support churches in the area. Paul currently works as a marketer in the tech industry, specializing in data science and analytics software.
In other words, he sells something about which he knows nothing.
Quote:
Paul is married to Vienna and together they are raising one child, Lucas. In his free time, Paul enjoys reading about theology and economics, creating YouTube videos...
In which he opines about Russia based on his vast experience with Russia. /snark
*****
Dood, the guy knows nothing. He doesn't speak Russian. He's never been there. He doesn't talk to people on the street.
You wanna know what tipped me off to what an idiot he is?
About two minutes in, he cites a study that polled "several Russians".
Wait, what???
SEVERAL Russians? How many was that? Three? Seven?
Then he starts blabbing percentages from this non-existent 'poll'.
That's when I stopped listening.
You should have too.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
How many times have we read Russia is on the back foot, Ukraine has the momentum"?
2023, when Ukraine attempted a combined arms maneuver, only to smash against the Surovikin line?
Rabotyn (over and over)?
Bakhmut?
Kursk?
Meanwhile, Russia advances like a lava flow.Quote:
Ukraine’s Desperate Propaganda Campaign While Russia Advances along the Entire Front
---------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
Can you Invision me laughing comrade. Cause I am.
T
Russia Military BEGINS Crimea Evacuation
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Really?? Another THGR prediction??
Let me know when it happens!
*yawn*
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Can you Invision me laughing comrade. Cause I am.
"Invision"????
Why are you so fucking retarded?
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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How Russia’s Neighbors Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
By Vitold Jancis
Vitold Jancis is a Polish-Lithuanian journalist and political commentator.
June 30, 2026
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/30/how-russias-neighbors-learne
d-to-stop-worrying-and-love-the-bomb-a93134
Mindaugas Sinkevicius, the incoming prime minister of Lithuania, said on June 30 that he supports removing from the country’s Constitution the ban on stationing weapons of mass destruction on Lithuanian territory.
Not long ago, the very idea that Lithuania or its neighbors might host nuclear weapons aimed at Russia seemed mad and dangerous. People feared Moscow’s reaction; they feared becoming targets of a nuclear strike; they feared the unforgiving logic of the Cold War itself.
Today, it is no longer the presence of the bomb that seems dangerous, but its absence. In a world where Russia openly resorts to nuclear blackmail, countries unfortunate enough to live beside it are arriving at a simple and cynical conclusion: to preserve their independence, they need a nuclear weapon — preferably more than one.
Does what I am saying sound blasphemous? It is. It should not be this way. Nuclear weapons should never be used again. One would hope that, since weapons of mass destruction exist, their sole function would be for deterrence, never to be used in real life.
But that is precisely why the threat of using nuclear weapons works. Even a very large country like Russia would be sent back to the Stone Age after the destruction of critical infrastructure hubs. Ethical doubts and questions of conscience are an unaffordable luxury for Russia’s neighbors; the Kremlin sees all of this as a sign of weakness and grounds for pressure and blackmail.
Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Finland have come to consider taking part in a common European nuclear deterrent and even hosting the weapons on their own soil, not because life has been good. The experience of Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova, as well as their own, does not merely suggest but scream that the Kremlin only respects those who are strong and ready to resist. The question that keeps coming up is whether Putin would have invaded Ukraine had it not given up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal in 1994.
For a long time, such a discussion was considered almost indecent. After leaving the U.S.S.R. and restoring its independence, Lithuania wrote into its Constitution a ban on hosting weapons of mass destruction and foreign military bases on its territory. At the time, it seemed that the country’s security could be guaranteed by international law, political alliances, democracy, the European Union and NATO. We wanted to believe that Europe’s borders had become inviolable; that Russia had become a trading empire that preferred rubles to tanks, confining nuclear weapons to films about the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Cold War.
Well, none of that happened.
The Kremlin quickly explained that the liberal international order was an illusion. Russia continued to wage wars: first in Chechnya, then in Georgia and Syria, and it has now been at war with Ukraine for 12 years. The full-scale aggression against Ukraine, which began four and a half years ago, became the largest war in Europe since the end of World War II.
Moscow revived and began actively employing nuclear blackmail — the promise to bomb European cities — in its everyday rhetoric. Russian officials, experts and propagandists discuss live on air which capital to strike first. The message is: fear us, or we will press the nuclear button. When you are constantly intimidated and blackmailed with the threat of a nuclear strike, you stop being afraid and begin to, as Stanley Kubrik would say, “love the bomb.”
You only fear your own weakness and defenselessness. Before the war in Ukraine, the main argument of opponents of firm deterrence was that Russia should not be provoked.
But the Kremlin made it clear that it needs no provocation. Moscow cannot bear the thought that its neighbors live freely, do not wish
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‘I Don’t Know When This Will End’: As Ukraine Steps Up Strikes, Crimea Grapples With Fuel Shortages and Blackouts
By Alex Talipova
June 30, 2026
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/30/i-dont-know-when-this-will-e
nd-as-ukraine-steps-up-strikes-crimea-grapples-with-fuel-shortages-and-blackouts-a93131
Olesya, a resident of the Russian-annexed port city of Sevastopol, Crimea, has resorted to desperate measures to fill up her car’s gas tank. Recently, she and a group of friends spent hours trying to obtain a QR code that would allow her to buy just 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of gasoline.
“There were 10 of us sitting there, hoping one of us would get a code,” Olesya told The Moscow Times, withholding her last name for safety reasons.
Ukraine has stepped up attacks on supply routes and energy infrastructure serving Crimea in recent weeks in what it says is an effort to isolate the annexed peninsula and disrupt military supply lines for Russia’s full-scale invasion.
For people in Crimea, the campaign is transforming daily life. Residents who spoke to The Moscow Times said fuel has become scarce, rolling blackouts and water shortages are now routine and even everyday tasks like commuting to work or buying groceries have become increasingly challenging.
Authorities in Sevastopol have repeatedly tightened fuel restrictions over the past month, initially limiting sales to cash purchases, then to prepaid fuel cards and vouchers.
Residents were later allowed to buy no more than 20 liters (5.3 gallons) per week using QR codes distributed through the state-backed messaging app Max. Fuel sales were subsequently suspended altogether before limited QR code distribution resumed last week.
While Olesya initially refused to install Max, she said she eventually relented after running out of alternatives.
"My friends and I all gathered at my apartment and everyone tried to get a code for my car," she said.
Sergei Aksyonov and Mikhail Razvozhayev, the Kremlin-appointed heads of Crimea and Sevastopol, declared a state of emergency last week without specifying how long it would remain in place.
Crimea previously faced gasoline supply disruptions in the fall of 2025, when drivers waited for hours in lines outside gas stations across the peninsula.
This time, as of late June, there were few lines left. Residents said that was because gasoline was no longer available to most private motorists.
According to residents, gasoline is largely reserved for emergency services, police, firefighters, utility companies and businesses with existing supply contracts.
People have vented their frustration in comments on Governor Aksyonov’s social media posts.
“When will the fuel problems be resolved?” one Crimean resident named Anna wrote.
Some residents have started traveling to southern Russia to buy gasoline.
Mikhail, a resident of the city of Simferopol, told The Moscow Times that gas station employees in Russia’s Krasnodar and Rostov regions have refused to sell fuel to people driving Crimean-registered cars.
“They tell me they don’t have gasoline for Crimean residents, only for locals,” he said. “To fill up a full tank and bring 200 liters of fuel home, I stopped at every gas station along the M-4 and topped up as much as I could wherever I could.”
Mikhail said he made the nearly day-long trip because he wanted to keep enough gasoline on hand to evacuate his family from Crimea if necessary.
“There’s no gasoline here. The children constantly hear explosions, and electricity and water are rationed. I don’t know when this will end,” he said. “I don’t want to rely on trains either. They’re either canceled or rescheduled. It’s better to have a supply of gasoline. Here, unlike in Sevastopol, you can’t buy gasoline, not even in theory.”
Olesya, the Sevastopol resident, said that although she does not use her car often, she prefers to keep the tank full as she regularly drives to visit her parents, who live three hours away.
In early June, she used up the fuel vouchers she had received
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Estonia's PM says Russia is weaker than it has been in years
By Alona Sonko | July 4, 2026, 05:53 AM
https://english.nv.ua/nation/estonian-pm-says-russia-is-at-its-weakest
-in-years-50621669.html
Estonian Prime Minister Kristen Michal said Russia is now in its weakest position in years, urging allies to increase military support for Ukraine and maintain pressure on the Kremlin during a joint news conference in Berlin on July 4.
"Russia is weaker today than it has been in many years. That is no accident. It is the result of our actions. Our strategy is working. So let's continue putting pressure on Russia, not on Ukraine," Michal said.
The Estonian prime minister said Russia's latest large-scale strikes on civilian infrastructure demonstrate that the Kremlin's objectives remain unchanged. According to him, Moscow still seeks to occupy all of Ukraine and undermine European unity, meaning the appropriate response is increased military support for Kyiv.
Michal also said the European Union has already allocated additional funding to support Ukraine, but individual member states should step up bilateral assistance as well.
"Estonia has committed to providing annual military assistance worth at least 0.25% of GDP. And we can do even more. Last year, that figure reached 0.35% of our GDP," he said.
The prime minister also urged the European Union to open all negotiating clusters for Ukraine's EU accession without delay. He said Ukraine's path toward membership serves not only Ukraine's interests but also the European Union's strategic and economic interests, while strengthening security and peace across Europe.
On June 25, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Russia would not prevail in its war against Ukraine and called on Moscow to begin peace negotiations and end hostilities. He also said Germany would continue supporting Ukraine and that Europe and NATO stand ready to increase economic pressure on Russia.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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"Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, son." - Dean Wormer, *Animal House*.
Inside the Ukrainian military's fight to motivate new recruits
By Asami Terajima
July 4, 2026 1:15 PM
17 min read
https://kyivindependent.com/inside-the-ukrainian-militarys-fight-to-mo
tivate-new-recruits/
More than four years since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the majority of Ukraine's recruits were drafted to serve in the military, with the lack of motivation being an issue, especially if, in some cases, they were violently grabbed off the streets.
The recruits in the 66th Brigade are no different. Trying to get recruits to change their mentality and understand the importance of defending their country is difficult, particularly when working with full-grown adults, many of them well past middle age, according to the officers.
"If a person hasn't come on their own, motivated, it's very difficult to change them in such a short period of time," Ihor, the chief sergeant of a battalion in the 66th Brigade, tells the Kyiv Independent after the recruits finish their lunch.
The new soldiers arriving generally lack motivation, especially compared to 2022, when the war had just begun, and the military was full of highly driven individuals from top to bottom, always ready to head out to the front, according to Ihor, who goes by his callsign "Yeger." Trying to train soldiers who are not driven to learn is extremely difficult, commanders across multiple units told the Kyiv Independent.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Gotta kill off the remaining Ukrainian men so they're out of the way when we drop 2 Million battle-aged Muslim men on their heads.
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Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Really?? Another THGR prediction??
Let me know when it happens!
*yawn*
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
It's happening now. You're just too thick, Slow, dense, not very smart so you can't understand it.
T
1.4M casualties: Russia is 'losing at historical numbers'
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Dude. You couldn't count to 14, let alone 1.4 Million.
They're the same number to your stupid ass. What do you care?
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Supposedly a hacker got into Ukraine's military database and published their KIAs as 2.4 million.
Maybe true, maybe not.
In any case ...
Watch it and weep.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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I'm just imagining Putin and Zelensky jerking off and playing video games together while their AI machines churn out all this data for the Western media to put out there, and nothing at all is really happening, other than we're sending them all of our money and they're partying up with it.
That could be a funny movie plot. A buddy comedy. Something that would have been perfect for Will Farrel and John C. Rielly 20 years ago back when they could make people laugh.
Just two 30-IQ assholes that spend all day watching tiktok and whine and bitch a whole lot whenever they have to stop playing GTAVI for 5 seconds to do a photo op.
Fuck you if you steal it, Hollywood.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Ukraine Is Killing Thousands of Russians Every Week. Is It Making a Difference?
Counting enemy casualties as a metric of victory has often gone wrong in previous wars. But there are reasons to suspect it might be more successful for Ukraine.
By Stavros Atlamazoglou | July 4, 2026
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/ukraine-killing-thousands-of-ru
ssians-every-week-is-it-making-difference-sa-070426
The war in Ukraine is well into its fifth year and, despite attempts to find a negotiated solution, there seems to be no end in sight.
Over the past few months, the Ukrainian military has slowly recaptured the operational initiative and is starting to dictate the pace of the fighting once again. The Ukrainian strategy on the ground is simple and cold-blooded: kill as many Russian troops as possible, ensuring the Kremlin cannot keep up with reinforcements and forcing Moscow into retreat.
Ukraine Has a Daily Quota of Dead Russians
Ukrainian Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, recently revealed Kyiv’s straightforward strategy to defeat Russia’s invasion force: kill or wound as many as possible.
During a video interview with the British newspaper The Times, Syrskyi claimed that the Armed Forces of Ukraine had put in place a strict daily casualty quota of more than 1,000 Russian troops. The Ukrainian general assessed that such a practice, if maintained for a sufficiently long period, would precipitate the collapse of the Russian Army and foil the Kremlin’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.
“War is a constant competition,” Syrskyi said. “Our main objective is to ensure that, every day, the enemy loses more than 1,000 personnel killed or wounded.”
According to data released regularly by the Ukrainian High Command—and periodically corroborated by Western militaries and intelligence services—Ukraine has largely kept on track with this goal. Russian military and paramilitary units have lost over 1.4 million troops since February 2022, with approximately 450,000 deaths. Though the Ukrainians are far more circumspect about their own losses, Ukrainian forces are generally regarded to have lost about 500,000 troops, with roughly 150,000 deaths. Ukrainian drones account for a large number of Russian battlefield casualties.
Casualties Aren’t Always a Useful Metric of Success
The Ukrainian military is not the first to use enemy casualties as a metric of success on the battlefield—and it must be observed that past instances of the practice did not always go well.
The US military infamously used kills as a metric of success during the Vietnam War. Although US commanders on the ground reported great success in terms of North Vietnamese soldiers and Viet Cong irregulars killed, the deaths were never enough; in many cases, by killing villagers with Viet Cong affiliation, the US military antagonized other villagers into joining the same units, meaning the practical battlefield loss for the guerrillas was minimal. All the while, US forces also took losses, which were far less replaceable and led to a decisive slide in American public opinion against the war. As North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh is alleged to have told the French, America’s predecessors in the Vietnam War, “You can kill 10 of my men for every one I kill of yours, yet even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.”
A similar kill-focused strategy proved equally ineffective in the southern African country then known as Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe), whose white inhabitants attempted to preserve minority rule against the African communist guerrilla movements ZANU and ZAPU during the 1960s and 1970s. The Rhodesian military kept track of enemy fighters killed in action, and the numbers were extraordinarily encouraging; by the end of the war, security forces had killed approximately 40,000 insurgents at a cost of 1,735 troops, a 23:1 kill ratio. Nevertheless, economic losses from guerrilla activity and international sanctions forced the white government int
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Russian President Vladimir Putin used a staged meeting with several Russian commanders on July 3 to make greatly exaggerated claims of Russian advances that do not match battlefield realities in order to construct a narrative of continuous Russian military successes.
Putin met with the Russian Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov, Russian Northern Grouping of Forces Commander Colonel General Yevgeny Nikiforov, Southern Grouping of Forces Commander Colonel General Sergey Medvedev, and other Russian commanders on the evening of July 3.[1] Putin reiterated his consistent claims that Russian forces seized all of Luhansk Oblast and continue advancing across the entire frontline. Gerasimov claimed that Russian forces are advancing the fastest in the areas of responsibility (AoRs) of the Russian Northern Grouping of Forces (Sumy Oblast and northern Kharkiv Oblast) and of the Eastern Grouping of Forces (the Oleksandrivka and Hulyaipole directions) — notably not where the primary Russian offensive is in Donetsk Oblast. Putin claimed that Russian forces seized 133 settlements and over 3,000 square kilometers since January 1, 2026, and Gerasimov claimed that Russian forces seized 29 settlements and 636 square kilometers in June 2026. Other Russian commanders made similar claims about the settlements and square kilometers of land that Russian forces allegedly seized in several sectors of the frontline in Ukraine. ISW has only observed evidence to assess that Russian forces seized or infiltrated into 64 settlements and seized or infiltrated approximately 621.7 square kilometers across the theater since the start of 2026, and that Russian forces have seized or infiltrated into 20 settlements and gained or infiltrated approximately 30.42 square kilometers in the theater in June 2026. These figures include settlements into which Russian forces have only partially infiltrated into, but even including partially infiltrated settlements does not match Putin’s fabricated reality.
Putin, Russian commanders, and the Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) made a series of other claims about seizures of smaller settlements in a number of frontline sectors during and after the meeting on July 3 and 4, likely in an effort to overwhelm the information space and make it more difficult to disprove them.[3]
https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-july-4-2026/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Report was released by Seth Jones and Riley McCabe of the Center for Strategic and International Studies and is entitled: Russian Blood and Treasure: The Ballooning Costs of Putin’s War.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/russian-blood-and-treasure-ballooning-co
sts-putins-war
This is the latest in a regular series on Russian losses in the war. The picture that they paint here, using data, is one of ballooning Russian losses of soldiers and a Russian loss of territory over the last few months. They deliberately try to move beyond the anecdotal evidence that too many analysts have been using to describe the state of the war, and calculate where things stand. They even try to put the Russian “advances” of the last year and a half into historical context
Their view is that the Russian method of conducting the war is breathtakingly expensive for what it achieves.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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What makes Russia’s new “Banderol” missile so hard to shoot down?
Russia’s Banderol cruise missile is fast.
By Olena Mukhina | July 4, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/07/04/what-makes-russias-new-banderol
-missile-so-hard-to-shoot-down/
. . . Ukraine's War & Sanctions portal documented over 20 foreign-made components and approximately 20 microchips of foreign origin from 30 different companies in the missile's construction, with a Chinese Swiwin SW800Pro jet engine, available on AliExpress for approximately $16,000, powering the weapon.
Threat profile: jet engine that outruns machine guns
The Banderol was first documented at Russia's Kapustin Yar test site in late 2024 and has since been integrated into Russia's large combined missile-and-drone attacks, according to Defense Express.
Russian forces used Banderol munitions in the 24 May 2026 attack that included Oreshnik use, the 2 June 2026 record 729-weapon strike that killed 17, and Kyivans reported hearing jet aircraft sounds during the 2 July 2026 attack that killed 30 people and drove a record 52,500 people into Kyiv metro shelters. . . .
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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German Defense Minister sees no need to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine
By Alona Sonko | July 5, 2026, 07:25 AM
https://english.nv.ua/nation/pistorius-sees-no-need-to-send-taurus-mis
siles-to-ukraine-50621846.html
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he sees no need to supply Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine, arguing that Ukrainian forces are already effectively striking Russian military and infrastructure targets on July 5.
"The situation has never looked as favorable as it does now. There is very little movement on the battlefield. Sometimes it is a few kilometers in one direction, sometimes in the other, but always at an enormous cost to the Russian armed forces. Most importantly, Ukraine is increasingly able to strike targets inside Russia, destroying oil refineries and military logistics," Pistorius said in an interview with Bild. https://www.bild.de/politik/inland/boris-pistorius-macht-ukraine-hoffn
ung-so-gut-sah-es-noch-nie-aus-6a4915b9ad32e994f875b658
Pistorius added that Ukrainian forces are effectively using drones to strike Russian infrastructure, including oil refineries and logistics facilities. For that reason, he said he does not believe Ukraine still needs Taurus cruise missiles.
Taurus missile deliveries to Ukraine — key developments
In November 2024, then-German chancellor candidate Friedrich Merz said that, if elected, he would give Russia a 24-hour ultimatum to halt hostilities in Ukraine. If Russian President Vladimir Putin refused, Merz said he would be prepared to supply Ukraine with Taurus cruise missiles and authorize strikes on Russian territory.
In December, Merz said he would provide the long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine only after consultations with the United States.
In July 2025, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said the issue of supplying Taurus long-range missiles to Ukraine remained under consideration, adding that training Ukrainian personnel to operate the system would take about six months.
In November, Merz said Ukraine would receive the long-range missiles but declined to provide details on the number of missiles or the delivery timeline.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Germany Dismisses Taurus Missile Delivery, Citing Ukraine’s Drone Success
In brief: German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated in an interview that Germany does not need to supply Ukraine with long-range Taurus cruise missiles. He argued that Kyiv is already effectively targeting Russian oil refineries and military logistics using its domestic drone capabilities. Pistorius also described the frontline as relatively stable but highly attritional for Russian forces. While Berlin continues to withhold the offensive Taurus system, it remains a critical supplier of defensive weaponry.
By Kyiv Post | July 5, 2026, 4:06 pm
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/79636
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has dismissed the necessity of supplying Ukraine with long-range Taurus cruise missiles, arguing that Kyiv is already effectively striking targets deep inside Russia using its own unmanned aerial systems.
According to n-tv, Pistorius stated that Ukraine’s current long-range strike capabilities are sufficient for its strategic needs.
“Ukraine is increasingly succeeding in hitting targets on Russian territory, thereby destroying oil refineries and military logistics,” Pistorius said. Because of these successful domestic drone operations, the defense minister noted he does not believe “that Ukraine still needs Taurus missiles.”
Pistorius also provided an optimistic assessment of the broader battlefield dynamics, characterizing the frontline as largely static but highly attritional for Moscow.
“The situation has never looked so good as it does right now. There is almost no movement on the battlefield. Sometimes a few kilometers one way, sometimes the other, but always with incredible losses for the Russian armed forces,“ he added.
Focus remains on air defense cooperation
Despite Berlin’s continued refusal to supply the Taurus offensive cruise missile system, Germany remains one of Ukraine’s primary military backers, particularly in the realm of air and missile defense.
On June 22, President Volodymyr Zelensky announced that Ukraine had signed a major contract with Germany for the procurement of 600 air defense interceptor missiles. The agreement involves missiles produced by German defense contractors operating under a US manufacturing license. https://www.kyivpost.com/post/78728
Zelensky noted that the arrangement was a focal point of discussions during his meeting with US President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the recent G7 summit in Évian, France. According to Zelensky, the US currently produces about 700 interceptor missiles annually and has transferred production licenses to Germany to establish parallel manufacturing capacity in Europe.
“We have already signed a contract with them for a significant amount – for 600 missiles,” Zelensky stated at the time, though he acknowledged that the delivery schedule will be a “fairly lengthy process.”
The contract underscores a broader initiative by Ukraine’s Western partners to bolster the country’s defensive shield. During the Évian summit, G7 leaders reaffirmed their commitment in a joint statement to increasing air defense support and strengthening Ukraine’s energy resilience ahead of the upcoming winter, amid ongoing Russian aerial bombardments of civilian and critical infrastructure.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russia Attacked Ukraine with 2,200 Drones and 1,730 Guided Bombs in a Single Week
In brief: President Volodymyr Zelensky reported that Ukraine faced approximately 2,200 attack drones, over 1,730 guided aerial bombs, and 106 missiles in just one week.
While Ukrainian forces typically intercept over 90% of drones, Zelensky stressed the critical lack of anti-ballistic capabilities.
By Kyiv Post | July 5, 2026, 3:20 pm
https://www.kyivpost.com/post/79641
106 missiles of various types, with nearly half classified as ballistic.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Seriously dude? 7 posts on this topic, just today?
Nobody gives a shit. Get some help.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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SIX, you shoukd listen to Alex Christoforou of The Duran. He does great imitations and he's got Zelensky's voice down. He does these great skits of Zelensky and his ever obedient advisor, Poldolyak.
This would be something like...
Zelensky: I'm winning! Send money!
Zelensky: I'm losing! Send money!
Zelensky: Hey Poldolyak, where's my next script?
Poldolyak: Yes, Mr. President!
He also does a Clown World at the end, but, honestly, most of the Eurocrats are so stupid anything they do is Clown World worthy.
Somewhere in here is a "Hey Poldolyak" skit
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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