REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Wednesday, April 2, 2025 07:25
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Wednesday, March 12, 2025 1:29 PM

SECOND

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


Ukraine’s Best European Missile Just Shot Down Its First Russian Jet
The Ukrainian air force has two SAMP/T batteries—and needs more.

By David Axe | Mar 11, 2025, 08:00pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/11/ukraines-best-europea
n-missile-just-shot-down-its-first-russian-jet/

One of Ukraine’s two SAMP/T surface-to-air missile batteries has shot down a Russian warplane for the first time. That’s obvious good news for Ukraine, which could rely more on the Franco-Italian air defense system—Europe’s answer to the American Patriot.

But the news belies the scarcity of SAMP/Ts—and their Aster missiles—not just in Ukraine, but everywhere.

“There is a confirmed aircraft,” Yuriy Ihnat, a Ukrainian air force spokesman, said at a recent industry event. Ukraine has received separate SAMP/T batteries, each with radars and launchers, from France and Italy. A $500-million SAMP/T battery can hit aircraft and missiles from 90 miles away.

It’s the only Western alternative to the Patriot, around six batteries of which Ukraine has received from the United States, Germany, Romania and The Netherlands.

Kyiv is badly in need of a backup plan for intercepting Russian planes and missiles amid the geopolitical chaos triggered by the increasingly Russia-aligned administration of U.S. President Donald Trump.

Demanding Ukraine end a war it did not start, Trump halted U.S. aid to Ukraine late last month, and only agreed to resume it after Ukrainian officials committed to a hard-to-enforce ceasefire framework that would require Russian consent—consent that could prove impossible to get.

German chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz was ahead of the curve last month when he called on Europe to achieve “strategic independence” from the United States, which under Trump has threatened to force Canada and Denmark’s Greenland to become part of the U.S.

Without reliable access to American Patriots, Ukraine could lose—at least temporarily—much of its protection from Russian bombardment.

Seven vital missile batteries

The two SAMP/Ts and six Patriots the Ukrainian air force currently operates should, in theory, provide slightly more than the bare minimum of long-range air-defense coverage of the biggest Ukrainian cities. Last year, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said his country needed at least seven of the best air defense batteries.

The main problem with both systems is the supply of missiles. It’s unclear how many missiles Ukraine has received, but it’s worth noting that it was headline news when the administration of former U.S. President Joe Biden arranged for Ukraine to get 90 Patriot missiles from Israeli stocks.

U.S. firm Lockheed Martin produces around 500 Patriot missiles a year—and hopes to ramp up to 650 a year by 2027. A new Patriot missile plant is under construction in Germany, but will need years to tool up. Lockheed’s target for global Patriot production is just 750 missiles a year.

The SAMP/T’s Aster missiles are even scarcer. France and Italy ordered 700 Asters in 2022. France, Italy and the United Kingdom, which fires Asters from warships, paid for an additional 220 missiles last week. Some of these missiles could make their way to Ukraine. More likely, they’ll replace older Asters the three countries donate to Kyiv.

But European missile-maker MBDA needs around two years to produce a single Aster. That’s a few months longer than it takes Lockheed to produce a Patriot—and clearly too slow to save Ukraine.

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

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Wednesday, March 12, 2025 5:07 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
WSJ's Chief Foreign Correspondent Declares It's Over For Ukraine In Kursk

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ukraine-losing-its-trump-card-k
ey-kursk-town-liberated-russian-troops

Fortunately for Russia, Zelensky hasn't got the word and is still pouring men into Kursk.

Quote:
The Almost Unbelievable Details Of The Great Gas Pipeline Caper Of 2025

This is the most astounding thing I have heard of in a long, long time. It almost is too fantastical to believe. If it happened here, it would be all over the front pages and on every newscast. Agents would be angling for the movie rights. What am I talking about? Briefly put, 800 Russian special ops marched 12 km. (7.2 miles) through an abandoned gas pipeline, came out the other side, and in conjuction with other Russian troops, closed the trap door on Zelenskyy’s Kursk misadventure.
...

Anyway, there remained a enormous gas pipeline, now completely empty, and the Russians saw an opportunity.

How did they do it? I get much of my real news from Telegram channels. This is how one explained the plan:
1) The gas pressure pumps were stopped and the gas was sucked out
2) Oxygen was pumped into the pipeline
3) Diggers dug out rooms for assembly and toilets were installed
4) Water, food and ammunition was brought in to these assembly rooms
5) 800 soldiers went through the pipe to the assembly rooms
6) The soldiers waited 4 days in the assembly rooms and in the pipe close to the exit
7) When the signal was given, they ran out and went into the industry zone of Sudzha
8) The Ukrainian army was surprised to see such a huge force in their rear, they began to panic and became disorganized
9) Russians liberated many settlements in Kursk region, due to this


MORE AT https://terrycowan.substack.com/p/the-great-gas-pipeline-caper-of-2025



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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Wednesday, March 12, 2025 5:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
U.S. firm Lockheed Martin produces around 500 Patriot missiles a year—and hopes to ramp up to 650 a year by 2027. A new Patriot missile plant is under construction in Germany, but will need years to tool up. Lockheed’s target for global Patriot production is just 750 missiles a year.

The SAMP/T’s Aster missiles are even scarcer. France and Italy ordered 700 Asters in 2022. France, Italy and the United Kingdom, which fires Asters from warships, paid for an additional 220 missiles last week. Some of these missiles could make their way to Ukraine. More likely, they’ll replace older Asters the three countries donate to Kyiv.

But European missile-maker MBDA needs around two years to produce a single Aster. That’s a few months longer than it takes Lockheed to produce a Patriot—and clearly too slow to save Ukraine.


Since Russia fires dozens of missiles and scores of drones at a time aimed at targets deep in Ukraine, and defensive use requires two anti-air missiles be fired at each target, what this is saying is that that there will never be enough air defense missiles for Ukraine. Or Europe either, for that matter. So I would advise European nations: Don't poke the bear.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Wednesday, March 12, 2025 6:19 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Trump finally got Zelensky on a leash and they're ready to talk.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Wednesday, March 12, 2025 7:04 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Trump finally got Zelensky on a leash and they're ready to talk.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon


The concept of a ceasefire has already been rejected by Russia. They've "been there, done that“ with Minsk I, Minsk II, and the peace negotiations in Instanbul.

Ukraine only reaches for a ceasefire when they're getting their ass handed to them.

Western and Ukrainian officials already admitted that they only wanted a cease fire to buy time for Ukraine to arm up, and that's exactly what they did: stuff Ukraine with weapons. This time around, they may actually want to put NATO "peacekeepers" (tripwires) into Ukraine, so EU/Ukraine can engineer an incident and pull America back into the conflict.

Would YOU agree to a deal with people who stabbed you in the back over and over? I know I wouldn't.

What does Russia get out of a ceasefire anyway? They're winning the war.

So- Sanctions relief? Maybe USA threatens Russia with MORE sanctions? Or maybe USA threatens BRICS with secondary sanctions?

I don't think threats or empty promises are going to move the Russians. But what I would do is stall, by offering a counterproposal. The longer talks go on, the more Russia wins.

We'll see what happens.


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Wednesday, March 12, 2025 7:34 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Trump finally got Zelensky on a leash and they're ready to talk.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon


The concept of a ceasefire has already been rejected by Russia. They've "been there, done that“ with Minsk I, Minsk II, and the peace negotiations in Instanbul.

Ukraine only reaches for a ceasefire when they're getting their ass handed to them.

Western and Ukrainian officials already admitted that they only wanted a cease fire to buy time for Ukraine to arm up, and that's exactly what they did: stuff Ukraine with weapons. This time around, they may actually want to put NATO "peacekeepers" (tripwires) into Ukraine, so EU/Ukraine can engineer an incident and pull America back into the conflict.


Well... not just getting their ass handed to them, but America having a President that has made it clear we're not just giving them the Platinum Card to spend whatever the fuck they want to spend for as long as they want to spend it to keep this thing going. As was their plan, up until the day after Election Day.

Six months ago, it would have been an absolute certainty that they could, but I'm not so sure that they'd be able to trick us back into a conflict if they tried pulling that shit in 2025.



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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Thursday, March 13, 2025 8:08 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

Well... not just getting their ass handed to them, but America having a President that has made it clear we're not just giving them the Platinum Card to spend whatever the fuck they want to spend for as long as they want to spend it to keep this thing going. As was their plan, up until the day after Election Day.

Six months ago, it would have been an absolute certainty that they could, but I'm not so sure that they'd be able to trick us back into a conflict if they tried pulling that shit in 2025.
Trump is supporting Ukraine, again:

Russian milbloggers claimed on March 12 that Ukrainian forces conducted HIMARS strikes against Russian forces in Kursk Oblast.[29] Western media reported on March 5 that the Trump administration specifically suspended intelligence sharing supporting target designation for Ukrainian HIMARS strikes, and US and Ukrainian officials confirmed on March 11 that the United States restarted intelligence sharing with Ukraine.[30]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-12-2025

Trump is helping because if Ukraine surrenders, Trump won't get a Nobel Peace Prize.
The prestigious award may be a tough get for Trump as he increasingly breaks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Twice in President Donald Trump’s first term, a Norwegian lawmaker stepped forward to nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. Now, when Christian Tybring-Gjedde watches Trump maneuver to stop the war between Ukraine and Russia, he doesn’t see the same sort of diplomatic outreach that warrants a third.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/trump-really-wants-win-n
obel-peace-prize-rcna193330

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

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Thursday, March 13, 2025 8:10 AM

SECOND

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


4.5 Million Drones Is A Lot Of Drones. It’s Ukraine’s New Production Target For 2025.

By David Axe | Mar 12, 2025, 04:34pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/12/45-million-drones-is-
a-lot-of-drones-its-ukraines-new-production-target-for-2025/

4.5 million drones is a lot of drones. And it’s the Ukrainian government’s new production target for 2025—solely from Ukrainian factories.

“Ukraine is now the world leader in drone warfare,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky boasted. He’s not wrong.

Russia’s own target for drone production in 2025 is between 3 and 4 million, according to The New York Times. With certain important exceptions, Ukrainian drones are better-made, more reliable and more resistant to the main defense against drones: radio jamming.

Explosive first-person-view drones, weighing just a few pounds and flown as far as six miles by remote operators wearing goggles that display feeds from the drones’ own cameras, now account for more than two-thirds of casualties on the 800-mile front line of Russia’s 37-month wider war on Ukraine.

That means the tiny, maneuverable drones—each costing just a few hundred dollars—have killed or maimed potentially hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians and destroyed thousands of vehicles.

Drone deployments are uneven. Both sides concentrate their best drones and operators in the sectors where they believe the impact will be greatest. For the Ukrainians, the priority areas include the devastated no-man’s-land around the ruins of Chasiv Yar in eastern Ukraine.

“The main reason for the lack of success remains the enemy’s air dominance,” a Russian military blogger around Chasiv Yar complained in a recent missive translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated. “Their reconnaissance drones are in the sky 24/7, and any movement on our part is immediately met with a massive wave of [first-person-view] drones.”

Russian infantry can’t leave their trenches. When they do, “we just lose people without achieving anything,” the blogger wrote. Any armored vehicles that break cover and expose themselves to the ever-present drones “essentially operate in a one-way manner,” the blogger added.

But Ukrainian forces are equally vulnerable in the sectors where Russia has deployed its own best drone groups. On Feb. 25, a flurry of accurate Russian drone strikes knocked out dozens of Ukrainian vehicles along the main road to Sudzha, the town that was the main base for the Ukrainian force then occupying a significant salient in Kursk Oblast in western Russia.

In a chaotic two weeks, the Russian Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Systems wrecked hundreds of Ukrainian vehicles, clogging the road, starving the garrison in Sudzha—and compelling the survivors to retreat on Monday or Tuesday.

Scaling up

Given their decisiveness, it makes sense that both sides would prioritize the production of small drones. It makes even more sense for Ukraine, for which drones also offer a high degree of what German chancellor-elect Friedrich Merz has described as “strategic independence.”

Yes, Ukrainian drone factories import components—in particular, Chinese components—and they also depend in part on foreign financing. Even so, the largely nationalized production of unmanned aerial vehicles in Ukraine partially liberates the country from dependence on on-again, off-again allies such as the United States.

With a simple executive order, U.S. President Donald Trump can freeze U.S. aid to Ukraine—and has done so. Trump halted aid for two weeks after a disastrous Oval Office press conference on Feb. 28, during which he and Vice President J.D. Vance berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky for purportedly being insufficiently grateful for past U.S. aid to Ukraine. Past aid that both Trump and Vance opposed at the time.

American fickleness can deprive Ukraine of certain boutique weapons that Ukrainian industry doesn’t yet produce: the best long-range air-defense missiles, for instance. But with the massive expansion of the Ukrainian drone industry, likely the world’s best and biggest, the Americans can’t deprive Ukraine of its most casualty-inducing weapons.

The UAV ramp-up has been exponential. Ukrainian factories expected to produce around 1 million small drones in 2024. In fact, they produced 2.2 million, according to Zelensky. This year’s production target is more than double that.

Production figures for 2026 could be even higher.

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

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Thursday, March 13, 2025 8:16 AM

SECOND

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


Everywhere but Kursk, the Russians have lost momentum.

Russia has won the Battle of Kursk. Seven months after a Ukrainian force barreled across the border between northern Ukraine and western Russia and occupied a significant salient in Russia’s Kursk Oblast, the Ukrainians have retreated back into Ukraine.

But don’t mistake the Ukrainian retreat as a sign of wider weakness. Elsewhere along the 800-mile front line of Russia’s 37-month wider war on Ukraine, Russian offensives have stalled—or shifted into reverse in the face of determined Ukrainian counterattacks.

Consider what happened on the Siversk axis along the border between Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts in eastern Ukraine on or before Tuesday. A large Russian force, perhaps from the 3rd Army Corps, attacked the positions of the Ukrainian 30th and 54th Mechanized Brigades and 81st Airmobile Brigade east of Siversk.

With mines, drones and artillery, the Ukrainians made quick work of the long assault column. At least 41 vehicles departed Russian lines that day; as few as 18 returned, many of them damaged. 159 Russians were killed or wounded, according to the Luhansk Operational Tactical Group, which oversees Ukrainian brigades in the area.

Fading fortunes

The wholesale destruction of the Russian assault group is typical of recent clashes in eastern Ukraine. Yearlong Russian offensives around Chasiv Yar, Toretsk and Pokrovsk have all lost momentum as Russian losses exceeded the Kremlin’s capacity to generate fresh troops and vehicles. The Ukrainians are counterattacking in all three sectors, chipping away at territorial gains that cost Russia tens of thousands of troops and thousands of vehicles.

It’s apparent the Russians devoted their best forces to their operation in Kursk—in particular, the elite Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Systems drone group, whose attacks on Ukrainian supply lines in Kursk starting on Feb. 25 precipitated the eventual Ukrainian withdrawal. The concentration of forces in Kursk may have depleted Russian field armies farther south—and afforded Ukrainian brigades the chance to reverse some Russian gains.

The balance of power in eastern Ukraine could shift again. Having won in Kursk, Rubicon may be free to redeploy—perhaps to the east. But the Russians are trying to advance along several axes in the region, and Rubicon can’t cover all of them. It’ll take more than one elite drone group to restore Russian momentum in Ukraine.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/12/at-least-41-russian-v
ehicles-attacked-toward-siversk-fewer-than-half-returned/

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

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Thursday, March 13, 2025 8:24 AM

SECOND

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


WATCH: Ukrainian IRIS-T Blows Russian Cruise Missile Out of the Sky
The IRIS-T system has become a key element of Ukraine’s air defense strategy, providing high-precision interception against a wide range of aerial threats.

by Kyiv Post | Mar. 13, 2025, 8:05 am

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/48803

Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov announced on March 9 that Ukraine has signed a memorandum of understanding with the German defense company Diehl Defense, the manufacturer of the IRIS-T air defense system.

The agreement aims to bolster Ukraine’s air defenses by expanding cooperation and significantly increasing the supply of IRIS-T systems and missiles. Under the deal, the supply of IRIS-T air defense systems and missiles to Ukraine is set to triple.

This follows Germany’s pledge in September 2024, when Chancellor Olaf Scholz confirmed an order of 17 IRIS-T air defense systems for Ukraine, including eight medium-range IRIS-T SLM systems and nine short-range IRIS-T SLS systems.

The IRIS-T system has become a key element of Ukraine’s air defense strategy, providing high-precision interception against a wide range of aerial threats.

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

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Thursday, March 13, 2025 9:51 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Trump finally got Zelensky on a leash and they're ready to talk.


SIGNY: The concept of a ceasefire has already been rejected by Russia. They've "been there, done that“ with Minsk I, Minsk II, and the peace negotiations in Instanbul.

Ukraine only reaches for a ceasefire when they're getting their ass handed to them.

Western and Ukrainian officials already admitted that they only wanted a cease fire to buy time for Ukraine to arm up, and that's exactly what they did: stuff Ukraine with weapons. This time around, they may actually want to put NATO "peacekeepers" (tripwires) into Ukraine, so EU/Ukraine can engineer an incident and pull America back into the conflict.

SIX: Well... not just getting their ass handed to them, but America having a President that has made it clear we're not just giving them the Platinum Card to spend whatever the fuck they want to spend for as long as they want to spend it to keep this thing going. As was their plan, up until the day after Election Day.

Six months ago, it would have been an absolute certainty that they could, but I'm not so sure that they'd be able to trick us back into a conflict if they tried pulling that shit in 2025.
--------------------------------------------------

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon


Looks like we're back in. At least as far as supplying weapobs and intel. Depending on how hard-nosed Trump wants to be, he might crank up secondary sanctions on tge BRICS.

I think Trump's ego is getting in the way. He doesn't want a NATO/USA defeat, but the more he tries to avoid one the worse it's going to be.

In fact, he keeps aiming for a big splashy success somewhere/ anywhere, to back up his big slashy promises, but right now what he needs is some serious, concentrated chipping away at specific things.

More funds for deportation.

Serious waste- cutting at DOD.

Making pharma compete for Medicare dollars.

Those would be the most reachable big successes, IMHO.

Untangling Social Security's database is a long-term project.

Tariffs are a good idea, but he has to decide which ones and make them stick. Right now Trump looks like he's flailing.


Quote:
Putin Rejects US Temporary Ceasefire Plan, Appears In Military Fatigues

Thursday, Mar 13, 2025 - 05:26 AM

Russia has rejected the US-proposed 30-day ceasefire which came out of the Jeddah meeting with Ukraine, describing that it would only allow Ukrainian forces to regroup.

"This is nothing other than a temporary time-out for Ukrainian soldiers, nothing more. Our goal is a long-term peaceful resolution," Yuri Ushakov, a senior aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin, told Russian state television. "Our goal is a long-term peaceful settlement that takes into account the legitimate interests of our country and our well-known concerns. It seems to me that no one needs any steps that (merely) imitate peaceful actions in this situation," he said. He further expressed that it would "give nothing" to Russia.


Before Trump was elected I predicted that Russia wouldn't fold to Trump's razzle-dazzle "maximum pressure" tactics. They may work on Panama and Canada and Israel, but we don't have the upper hand on Russia. If Trump keeps trying, he'll risk an obvious political defeat as well as a military one.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Thursday, March 13, 2025 4:52 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
President Trump has been warning of what could happen if Moscow doesn't come the negotiating table. "I can do things financially that would be very bad for Russia," Trump said earlier. "I don't want to do that because I want to get peace. I want to see peace and we'll see. But in a financial sense, yeah, we could do things very bad for Russia. It would be devastating for Russia."


Like what?
Cut Russia off from SWIFT? Oh yeah, done that.
Steal Russia's assets that are frozen in Euroclear? Russia's already written them off.
Impose secondary sanctions on China, India, and other trading partners? China's already told the USA to stuff it. India will probably just keep on buying Russian oil.
Hijack tankers carrying Russian oil on the high seas? Piracy, Mr Trump? Act of war, Mr Trump?

Quote:
But as Moon of Alabama highlights in fresh analysis, the meager 30-day truce offering which came out of Jeddah demonstrates weakness on the US side. Asia Times had predicted:

According to the latest from Riyadh, Ukraine says it is ready for a 30 day cease fire. If this is what Washington “extracted” from the Ukrainians, it is operationally meaningless. With Russia on the brink of winning in Kursk and elsewhere, the Russians won’t accept any such deal. If it is a ruse to allow the US to resume arms shipments to Ukraine, knowing Russia will reject it, the so-called peace initiative is a dead letter.


Putin did what I expected, he sent off a counterproposal: We'll do a 30-day ceasefire provided Zelensky stops mobilizing and no more weapons are received. As expected, Zelensky rejected the counterproposal. Meanwhile, visiting the Kursk region, he directed Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff, to retake Kursk completely and to establish a buffer zone in Ukraine. Of course, we're not told where.

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/putin-rejects-us-temporary-ceas
e-fire-plan-appears-military-fatigues

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 14, 2025 6:48 AM

SECOND

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


In all, the Ukrainians lost around 500 vehicles and other heavy equipment in Kursk. The Russians lost around 600.

While that might seem like a win of sorts for Ukraine, Russia can spare much more equipment than Ukraine can. Ukrainian commanders try to maintain a three-to-one loss ratio in their favor—a ratio they obviously failed to maintain in attempting, and ultimately failing, to hang on in Kursk.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/13/the-things-they-left-
behind-retreating-from-kursk-the-ukrainians-abandoned-some-of-their-best-weapons/

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

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Friday, March 14, 2025 6:50 AM

SECOND

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


Putin's envisioned ceasefire agreement would grant Russia greatly disproportionate advantages and set conditions for the Kremlin to renew hostilities on terms extremely favorable to Russia. Putin's envisioned ceasefire agreement would likely require the United States and Ukraine's other supporters to pause military assistance to Ukraine and require Ukraine to stop recruiting and training personnel. Such a ceasefire agreement would begin to disarm Ukraine if renewed for a long period of time by preventing its military from reconstituting, training, and equipping itself and would cause Ukraine and the West to surrender significant leverage to Russia. Putin did not suggest that Russia would also cease military recruitment efforts, the production of military equipment, and the receipt of military aid from Russia's allies. Russia's ability to continue these measures during a potential ceasefire while preventing Ukraine from doing so would allow Russia to resume offensive operations with better manned and equipped units at a time of its choosing. Russian forces are currently on the offensive across the theater, as Putin observed, so demands that would prevent Ukrainian forces from reconstituting can only be intended to preserve or enhance Russia's ability to resume the offensive at a later date. Such demands would seem a clear indication that Putin is not, in fact, committed to making peace.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-13-2025

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

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Friday, March 14, 2025 6:53 AM

SECOND

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


Next, Russia will go to war with NATO

Kremlin officials continue to use narratives similar to those that the Kremlin has used to justify its invasions of Ukraine to set informational conditions to justify future aggression against NATO member states. Russian Presidential Aide and former Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev claimed in an interview with Russian national security-focused magazine National Defense published on March 13 that NATO "traditionally" uses threats as its main instrument in interstate relations and that NATO's "European wing" is continuing its policy on "blocking" Russia in the Baltic region. Patrushev claimed that the United Kingdom (UK) is "orchestrating" NATO's "aggravation of the situation" as part of efforts to disrupt negotiations on Ukraine and Russian and American attempts to normalize their bilateral relations. Patrushev also claimed that the Finnish population, unlike Finnish authorities, is friendly to Russia and that the UK has approved Finnish authorities to "do everything to deprive their country [Finland] of its sovereignty." Patrushev threateningly claimed that the Gulf of Finland has a historical "geographic affiliation with Russia" and that "it should not be forgotten that Finland was part of the Russian Empire." Patrushev claimed that the Russian Empire "respected" and "preserved" the Finnish people and language in the Grand Duchy of Finland. Patrushev appeared to try to compare Russia's current war against Ukraine to the Soviet-Finnish Winter War in 1939–1940. Patrushev claimed that Finnish attempts to seize Soviet lands and "actively militarize" created a threat to the USSR and that Finland was "indiscriminately exterminating" the Slavic population in Karelia. Patrushev claimed that the West is "again turning [Finland] into a springboard" for aggression against Russia. The Kremlin has used similar false narratives about the Ukrainian government's discrimination of Russian-speaking minorities in Ukraine and the military threats that Ukraine supposedly poses to Russia in order to justify Moscow's invasions of Ukraine. Patrushev's claims that the UK is "orchestrating" Finland's and the Baltic states' allegedly threatening behavior are likely part of the Kremlin's ongoing efforts to drive wedges between the United States and Europe and to weaken NATO[23] The Kremlin appears to be using the same general narrative playbook that it has used against Ukraine and other former Soviet states but is adjusting its narratives to exploit any tensions among Western states.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-13-2025

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

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Friday, March 14, 2025 4:03 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND, NATO is already at war with Russia.


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 14, 2025 4:04 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


TRUMP THREATENS ADDITIONAL SANCTIONS AGAINST RUSSIA

Quote:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday he is “strongly considering” levying new sanctions and tariffs on Russia for its war against Ukraine, floating the possibility of new pressure on Moscow just days after he ordered a pause on U.S. military assistance and intelligence sharing with Kyiv.

Trump, in a post on his Truth Social platform, said he was considering the action “based on the fact that Russia is absolutely ‘pounding’ Ukraine on the battlefield right now.”

He added that the prospective sanctions could remain in place until the two sides come to a ceasefire and peace settlement.

The sanctions threat came as Trump faces criticism for increasing pressure on Ukraine to reach a deal while playing down or even denying Russia’s responsibility for starting the war with its invasion three years ago.

“To Russia and Ukraine, get to the table right now, before it is too late,” Trump added in his post.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at the Economic Club of New York on Thursday that the U.S. has kept its sanctions in place on Russia and “will not hesitate to go all in should it provide leverage in peace negotiations.”


https://apnews.com/article/trump-russia-ukraine-sanctions-intelligence
-aid-49d2b3e212cae2967abe19a48ccb306b

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

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Friday, March 14, 2025 4:08 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


WAR CRIMES IN UKRAINE-OCCUPIED KURSK

Quote:
Russia Claims Ukrainian Soldiers Killed Nearly 2 Dozen Civilians in Kursk Region

Law enforcement authorities in Russia on Friday accused Ukrainian troops of killing 22 civilians in an occupied village of the Kursk region, including eight women who were allegedly raped before being executed.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/war-and-conflicts/military/russia-claims-ukr
ainian-soldiers-killed-nearly-2-dozen-civilians-in-kursk-region/ar-AA1yay51

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 14, 2025 4:59 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


BANKING RESTRICTIONS RE-IMPOSED ON RUSSIAN ENERGY BANKS

Quote:
Trump administration toughens sanctions on Russian oil, gas and banking sectors

Washington — The Trump administration is placing more restrictions on Russia's oil, gas and banking sectors by further restricting Russian access to U.S. payment systems [SWIFT?], according to four people familiar with the plans.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday let lapse a 60-day exemption put in place by the Biden administration in January that allowed specific energy transactions involving sanctioned Russian banks to continue. By letting the waiver lapse, the banks may no longer access U.S. payment systems to conduct major energy transactions.

The Russian financial institutions that had been exempt from sanctions included Vnesheconombank, Bank Financial Corporation Otkritie, Sovcombank, Sberbank, VTB Bank, Alfa-Bank, Rosbank, Bank Zenit, Bank Saint-Petersburg and the Central Bank of Russia.

The decision to further restrict access to American banking systems makes it harder for other countries to buy Russian oil, thus limiting its global supply. It could lead to a price spike of up to $5 per barrel more, a notable jump after lower prices in recent weeks.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-sanctions-russian-oi
l-gas-banking-sectors/







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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 14, 2025 5:08 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, NATO is already at war with Russia.


This.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Friday, March 14, 2025 5:13 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


BANKING RESTRICTIONS RE-IMPOSED ON RUSSIAN ENERGY BANKS

Quote:
Trump administration toughens sanctions on Russian oil, gas and banking sectors

Washington — The Trump administration is placing more restrictions on Russia's oil, gas and banking sectors by further restricting Russian access to U.S. payment systems [SWIFT?], according to four people familiar with the plans.

The Treasury Department on Wednesday let lapse a 60-day exemption put in place by the Biden administration in January that allowed specific energy transactions involving sanctioned Russian banks to continue. By letting the waiver lapse, the banks may no longer access U.S. payment systems to conduct major energy transactions.

The Russian financial institutions that had been exempt from sanctions included Vnesheconombank, Bank Financial Corporation Otkritie, Sovcombank, Sberbank, VTB Bank, Alfa-Bank, Rosbank, Bank Zenit, Bank Saint-Petersburg and the Central Bank of Russia.

The decision to further restrict access to American banking systems makes it harder for other countries to buy Russian oil, thus limiting its global supply. It could lead to a price spike of up to $5 per barrel more, a notable jump after lower prices in recent weeks.


https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-sanctions-russian-oi
l-gas-banking-sectors/

Quote:
CBS Reports on New Sanctions Targeting Russian Economy

CBS was the first to report on the potential tightening of sanctions. Citing sources close to the White House, the network claimed that the sanctions would target Russia's oil and gas sectors as well as the banking industry.

The report emphasized that stricter measures would make it harder for Russian companies to access US payment systems and complicate oil purchases from Russia by other countries. CBS also projected that this move could lead to a $5 per barrel increase in global oil prices. The timing of the sanctions coincides with Washington's efforts to convince Moscow to agree to a 30-day ceasefire in the Ukraine conflict.
These Sanctions Existed Before Trump Took Office

There has been no official announcement from Washington regarding the new sanctions. However, prior to Trump's presidency, in January 2025, the US Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on:

Gazprom Neft and its CEO Alexander Dyukov,
Surgutneftegaz,
Other Russian oil companies and tankers.

Additionally, the sanctions affected Russian firms providing services in the oil and gas industry as well as key figures in the Russian energy sector.

Despite these restrictions, there was a loophole – General License 8L – which allowed foreign companies to continue purchasing Russian energy through sanctioned banks. However, this license expired on March 12, 2025, and the US chose not to renew it.

Trump Administration Quietly Let the Sanctions Loophole Expire

Bloomberg reported that the Trump administration allowed the license to expire without drawing much attention.

"If you are a foreign oil refinery or an oil trader or someone buying Russian gas and your bank wants to pay Russia for their oil and gas in dollars or by extension, really any other Western currency, you’re going find that very difficult to do," Edward Fishman, a former State Department official who worked on Russia sanctions in 2014.

The full impact of this decision remains unclear. Daniel Tannenbaum, a former Treasury official and partner at Oliver Wyman, emphasized that it's impossible to assess how much financial flow actually went through this channel.

Tighter Sanctions Could Be a Negotiation Tactic

The US Treasury Department did not provide a reason for its decision, but some speculate that it could be a negotiation strategy aimed at pressuring Moscow to end the Ukraine conflict.

A Fox News source, cited by journalist Edward Lawrence on social media platform X, suggested that the timing of the CBS report was strategic. Just one day earlier, on March 11, US and Ukrainian delegations met in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where Kyiv agreed to a 30-day ceasefire with a possible extension.

Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed support for the ceasefire but with conditions. In response, Trump called Putin's statement "promising but incomplete" and said he hoped Russia would "do the right thing."

Details

Various sanctions against Russia and its affiliates have been imposed by major economic and political powers in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, including the United States, the member states of the European Union (EU), and other international organizations. In response, Russia has imposed its own sanctions against other countries, which include a complete ban on food imports from Australia, Canada, Norway, the United States, and the European Union.

https://english.pravda.ru/news/world/161817-trump-administration-russi
a-new-sanctions/

I think this will hurt Hungary and Slovakia more than anyone.


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 14, 2025 6:32 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


There are going to be quite a few ripples all around the world with the tariff "wars" going on too.

There is no future where America un-fucks itself that doesn't end up negatively affecting others who were not prepared for anything other than the system they were happy to become a part of, under the terms and conditions that they were initially offered... never once bothering to read the fine print in the TOS stating those were subject to change without your consent.

(And here's to hoping that we can keep the wars in quotation marks)

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, March 15, 2025 7:45 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, NATO is already at war with Russia.


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

Have Russian troops crossed into NATO countries? No. Have Russian missiles destroyed European ammo factories selling to Ukraine? No. Russia has not gone to war with NATO, but it has plans to. And yet Europe's cheese-eating surrender monkeys aren't responding. They continue sipping wine, not preparing any better than they did for Hitler long ago, despite Hitler telling Germans what his intentions were. The monkeys could not make the mental connection between those intentions and what the cheese-eaters should be doing in response.

For the typical European, violence is NOT the answer. The answer is *opens history book*

uh oh

*frantically starts flipping through pages*

uh oh. oh no. no no no. uh oh

Another glass of wine, please. Let us not think about the history of Russia.

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

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Saturday, March 15, 2025 7:48 AM

SECOND

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


President Donald Trump parroted a Russian lie.

No, Russia Has Not Surrounded Thousands Of Ukrainian Troops In Kursk

By David Axe | Mar 14, 2025, 07:41pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/14/no-russia-has-not-sur
rounded-thousands-of-ukrainian-troops-in-kursk/

“AT THIS VERY MOMENT, THOUSANDS OF UKRAINIAN TROOPS ARE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED BY THE RUSSIAN MILITARY, AND IN A VERY BAD AND VULNERABLE POSITION,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote in all caps on social media on Friday.

Trump’s rant is a clear reference to the Monday or Tuesday evacuation of around 10,000 Ukrainian troops from what was once a 250-square-mile salient they held in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

The Ukrainians are beaten. But they’re not surrounded. “It’s a lie,” wrote Kriegsforscher, a Ukrainian drone operator who fought in Kursk.

“Our team has a good understanding of the situation in Kursk,” Tatarigami, the founder of Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group, chimed in. “There are no encircled troops.”

A strong Ukrainian force invaded Kursk in August, aiming to seize a swathe of Russian soil that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky could eventually trade back to Russian President Vladimir Putin in exchange for Ukrainian soil the Russians occupy.

For six months, the salient held. Then, on Feb. 25, an elite Russian drone group—the Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Systems—launched a devastating wave of attacks on the main supply line supporting the Ukrainian garrison in Sudzha, the center of the Kursk salient.

Drone offensive

Employing what analyst Andrew Perpetua described as “advanced drone tactics” including elaborate ambushes involving multiple explosive drones, Rubicon swiftly knocked out hundreds of Ukrainian vehicles—and essentially strangled the Ukrainian brigades in Kursk.

Two weeks later on Monday or Tuesday, the Ukrainian survivors slipped out of Kursk, leaving behind some precious heavy equipment but preserving thousands of lives.

“The retreat was generally organized but occasionally chaotic,” Tatarigami wrote. “There is no threat of encirclement, and no evidence suggests otherwise.”

In falsely claiming thousands of Ukrainians are at risk of death or capture, Trump is effectively parroting Putin’s position as possible ceasefire negotiations loom.

Finally resolving a two-week falling out precipitated by a disastrous Feb. 28 press conference in the Oval Office, during which Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance absurdly berated Zelensky for being insufficiently grateful for past U.S. aid, Kyiv and Washington finally agreed to the basic terms of a potential 30-day ceasefire.

Moscow must agree to the same terms—or demand its own. Trump claimed informal talks with Putin were going well, and that the Russia-Ukraine war could end soon.

But Trump seems to have framed initial discussions around the false claim that Russia is essentially holding hostage thousands of Ukrainians in Kursk. “I have strongly requested to President Putin that their lives be spared,” Trump wrote.

But there aren’t thousands of Ukrainian troops in Kursk any longer. They left days ago, despite what Putin may claim. “It’s wise to rely on intelligence,” Tatarigami advised, “not Putin’s word.”

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

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Saturday, March 15, 2025 3:01 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


SECOND, stop parroting David Axe. Everything he publishes is wrong. And you don't want to be wrong, do you?
****

Quote:
SECOND
Have Russian troops crossed into NATO countries? No. Have Russian missiles destroyed European ammo factories selling to Ukraine? No. Russia has not gone to war with NATO, but it has plans to.


You just can't stop lying, can you? If you were a Firefly character, you'd be a war-twisted soul.

Anyway, that's not what I posted. What I posted was

Quote:
NATO is already at war with Russia.


Is the Ukrainian army fighting primarily with NATO-nation weapons, including tanks, artillery, multiple-rocket launchers, medium-range missiles, fighter jets, air defense systems etc etc? Yes.

Does the Ukrainian army depend on NATO-supplied satellite, AWACS, radar, intercept etc intelligence? Yes.

Does the Ukrainian army need NATO-nation supplied communications? Yes.

Was the Ukrainian army told to conduct the Spring 2023 offensive and Kursk offensive by British politicians? Yes.

Was Ukraine told by British PM Boris Johnson to break the 2022 peace deal? Yes.. Do some NATO nations direct Ukraine's foreign and military policy? Yes.

Are NATO nations commanders, technicians, trainers, spies, spec ops, and "volunteers" (French Foreign Legion, for example) present in Ukraine? Yes.

Have NATO-nation military personnel provided targeting data and programmed missiles to fire directly into Russia? Yes.

Do NATO nations train Ukrainian military? Yes.

Do NATO nations give Ukraine money to pay Ukrainian civil service and military, down to the infantryman? Yes.

Are NATO nations doing everything they can, short of sending in numerically obvious uniformed troops, to defeat Russia in Ukraine?
Yes.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Saturday, March 15, 2025 3:22 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
UK's Starmer Calls On Allies: "We Will Accelerate Our Military Support" To Ukraine


https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/uks-starmer-calls-allies-we-wil
l-accelerate-our-military-support-ukraine

The British establishment is so desperate to 'win' in Ukraine, I'm beginning to believe that report by Alex Crainer that they have existential finances tied up in it.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Sunday, March 16, 2025 5:56 AM

SECOND

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


Zelenskyy: Ukraine signs major artillery supply agreement

By Demian Shevko | March 15, 2025, 11:27 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/ukraine-secures-deal-for-155mm-artillery-
shells-with-international-partners-50498188.html

Ukraine, alongside its international partners, has signed and paid for a new initiative to supply 155mm artillery shells, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced during a press briefing on March 15.

He thanked Ukraine’s allies for their continued support in artillery, air defense, and drone production.

Zelenskyy also emphasized the importance of the Czech-led initiative to procure ammunition, which began in February 2024.

As of mid-February 2025, Czechia has supplied Ukraine with 1.6 million shells and has committed to further deliveries until April 2025.

“I won’t disclose details, but a major package for 155mm artillery supplies has been signed and paid for. Thankfully, we have achieved very good results in this initiative,” Zelenskyy said.
Czech initiative supplies millions of shells to Ukraine

On Feb. 25, 2025, Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala confirmed that Ukraine had received 500,000 artillery shells under the initiative in 2024.

The ammunition effort traces back to Feb. 17, 2024, when Czech President Petr Pavel announced the possibility of purchasing 800,000 shells for Ukraine. He revealed that 500,000 rounds of 155mm caliber and 300,000 of 122mm caliber had been secured. Several European countries soon joined the effort.

A Ukrainian security official told NV that the shells will be sourced from South Korea and South Africa, with the total contract valued at approximately $2 billion.
20 nations join Czech-led artillery initiative

Around 20 countries have contributed to Czechia’s initiative to supply Ukraine with much-needed artillery shells. The participating nations include Canada, Germany, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Belgium, Finland, Portugal, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Spain, and Slovenia.

This broad coalition ensures Ukraine continues receiving the necessary firepower to counter Russian aggression.

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

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Sunday, March 16, 2025 6:06 AM

SECOND

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


The Kremlin is likely preparing to intensify a narrative that accuses Ukrainian forces of war crimes in Kursk Oblast in an attempt to discredit the Ukrainian military, erode Western support for Ukraine, and spoil or delay straightforward discussions about the 30-day ceasefire that US President Donald Trump proposed to Putin. Russian President Vladimir Putin, other facets of the Russian government, Russian state media, and pro-Kremlin mouthpieces have recently intensified claims accusing Ukrainian forces of committing war crimes in Kursk Oblast during their seven-month incursion. Putin asked on March 13, in reaction to the US-Ukrainian temporary ceasefire proposal, whether Russia should let Ukrainian forces leave Kursk Oblast "after they committed a lot of crimes against civilians" and reiterated claims on March 14 that Ukrainian forces committed "terrorism" in Kursk Oblast.[14] The Russian Investigative Committee announced on March 12 that it is opening investigations into alleged Ukrainian war crimes in areas of Kursk Oblast that endured heavy fighting and announced the conviction of two Ukrainian soldiers for alleged "terrorism" and "war crimes" in Kursk Oblast on March 14.[15] Russian ultranationalist voices, including those with Kremlin affiliations, have been amplifying Putin's statements and Russian state media claims accusing Ukrainian forces of war crimes, including executing civilians in Kursk Oblast, more frequently in recent days.[16] Russian state media has amplified pro-Kremlin voices, including Acting Kursk Oblast Governor Alexander Khinshtein, accusing Ukrainian forces of war crimes in Kursk Oblast since the start of the incursion in August 2024 but has intensified these efforts since February 2025.[17] These claims are unsubstantiated.

Putin likely intends to use this narrative falsely portraying Ukrainian forces as brutal war criminals - as the Kremlin did in late 2021 and 2022 to justify Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine - to spoil or delay discussions about a 30-day ceasefire, especially when contrasted with Putin's efforts to portray himself as a merciful leader.[18] Russian ultranationalist voices used Putin's and Russian state media's allegations of Ukrainian war crimes to support their calls for Russia to reject any ceasefire in Ukraine whatsoever and to justify the brutal treatment of Ukrainian forces on the battlefield.[19] ISW has frequently reported on the sharp uptick of confirmed Russian executions of Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) on the battlefield in 2024 and early 2025 likely under orders from the Russian military command, and ISW observed a report of Russian forces executing Ukrainian POWs near Sudzha on March 13.[20]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-15-2025

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

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Sunday, March 16, 2025 7:09 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine's Achilles UAV battalion destroys US$56m worth of Russian anti-aircraft missile and gun systems – video

By Yevhen Buderatskyi, Roman Petrenko | Saturday, 15 March 2025, 14:14

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/03/15/7503042/

Fighters from the 429th Achilles Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Regiment have shown how they destroyed four Russian Pantsir-C1 anti-aircraft missile and gun systems worth US$56 million.

Source: Yurii Fedorenko, Commander of the 429th Achilles Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Regiment

Details: On 15 March, the Achilles Regiment released the results of its work in Russia. These missions had been secret for some time. The video shows four Russian Pantsir-S1 air defence systems destroyed by the striking winged UAVs.

For reference: Pantsir-S1 is a self-propelled anti-aircraft missile and gun system that provides close cover for civilian and military targets against air strikes.

One such system costs about US$14 million, and the total cost of the destroyed military equipment is about US$56 million.

Background:

On 29 January, Unmanned Strike Aviation Systems Battalion Achilles of the 92nd Assault Brigade named after Ivan Sirko was expanded into the 429th Achilles Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Regiment within Ukraine’s Ground Forces.

The 429th Achilles Separate Unmanned Aerial Systems Regiment has announced the launch of a recruitment campaign and is recruiting a team.

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

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Monday, March 17, 2025 6:41 AM

SECOND

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


Lying In Wait On The Ground, Russia’s Best Attack Drones Devastate Ukrainian Convoys

Advanced drone tactics drove Ukrainian troops out of Kursk.

By David Axe | Mar 16, 2025, 08:01pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/16/lying-in-wait-on-the-
ground-russias-best-attack-drones-devastate-ukrainian-convoys/

On Feb. 25, an elite Russian drone group—the Rubicon Center of Advanced Unmanned Systems—launched a devastating wave of attacks on the main supply line supporting the Ukrainian garrison in Sudzha, the center of the Ukrainian-held salient in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Two weeks later on March 10 or 11, the Ukrainians evacuated Kursk and repositioned on the Ukrainian side of the border. They weren’t surrounded, as U.S. President Donald Trump falsely claimed—but they were beaten and forced out of Kursk after occupying part of the oblast for six months.

The Rubicon drone group was key to the Russian victory. And the group’s “advanced drone tactics,” as analyst Andrew Perpetua described them, were central to Rubicon’s efforts. Now we have video evidence of those tactics. https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1898098173429907543

On or before March 12, a Russian first-person-view drone—clutching a warhead and feeding video back to its operators, likely via radio but possibly also via fiber-optic cable—flew over a road frequently traveled by Ukrainian supply trucks. That the road was dangerous was obvious: the wrecks of several vehicles dotted the road.

Rather than hovering over the road, its operator hoping a viable target passed by before the drone drained its battery, the drone settled onto the ground near the road—and waited. Resting rather than flying, the unmanned aerial vehicle preserved its precious battery life. https://x.com/AndrewPerpetua/status/1899806752020853064

In time, a Ukrainian convoy passed by. The drone lifted off, chased down the convoy—and barreled toward a pickup truck whose bed was heavy with supplies. The drone’s video feed cut out, so it’s unclear whether it struck the target. In any event, it at least got very close.

It’s not a new tactic. The best Ukrainians operators have been landing their drones in the target zone for months now. But it’s a tactic that requires skill and careful planning. Land a radio-controlled drone in the wrong spot and the operator might lose their connection. Land a fiber-optic drone in the wrong spot and its millimeters-thick cable, through which the drone sends and receives signals, could get tangled.

Rubicon’s operators clearly possess the skill and experience necessary to land a drone as part of a complex aerial ambush. And that’s not all. “They also set traps by landing drones on roads and detonating them under passing vehicles, functioning like anti-tank mines—likely using upward-facing shaped charges,” Perpetua noted.

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

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Tuesday, March 18, 2025 6:25 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine Has Been Jamming Russian Glide Bombs. Now We Know How.

Owing to sophisticated jamming, it now takes up to 16 glide bombs to hit one target.

By David Axe | Mar 17, 2025, 03:13pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/17/ukraine-has-been-jamm
ing-russian-glide-bombs-now-we-know-how/

A year ago, Russian air force fighter-bombers were lobbing a hundred glide bombs every day all along the 800-mile front line of Russia’s wider war on Ukraine.

The satellite-guided KAB or UMPK glide bombs, each traveling 25 miles or farther under pop-out wings, were a “miracle weapon” for the Russians, the Ukrainian Deep State analysis group noted at the time. And the Ukrainians had “practically no countermeasures.”

That has changed. Now the Ukrainians not only have countermeasures—some of these countermeasures appear to be extremely effective.

“Previously, the enemy used glide bombs with high accuracy to attack objects in the territory of regional centers such as Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia,” Narek Kazarian, whose 10-person Night Watch team in Ukraine develops electronic warfare systems, told Forbes.

Night Watch’s new Lima jammer is partly responsible for the recent degradation of Russian glide bombing, Kazarian claimed.

Lima isn’t a traditional jammer that simply blasts radio noise toward the enemy. “We use digital interference,” Kazarian explained. It’s “a combination of jamming, spoofing and information cyber attack on the navigation receiver.”

“After the deployment of the E.W. system, the accuracy of the bombings first decreased and then, realizing the ineffectiveness of this method of destruction and the impossibility of achieving the goal, the enemy stopped shelling regional centers altogether,” Kazarian said.

Last year, Russian forces settled into a comfortable routine. In addition to striking cities, glide bombs also rained down on Ukraine’s front-line defenses. Russian infantry would then attack the battered Ukrainian troops—and overwhelm them.

The bomb-first assault tactic helped the Russians capture the fortress city of Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine and then advance 25 miles along the same axis toward the next fortress city, Pokrovsk.

As the Russians closed on Pokrovsk, something changed. As Russian forces stalled outside the city last month, it was evident that “the golden era of the divine UMPK turned out to be short-lived,” Fighterbomber, the unofficial Telegram channel of the Russian air force, noted in a missive translated by Estonian analyst WarTranslated.

According to Kazarian, the Lima jammer was a factor in the decline in glide bombings in certain areas. Other jammers developed by different companies may be responsible for the reduction in Russian UMPK raids in other parts of Ukraine including Pokrovsk.

Blind bombs

Today Russian glide bombs struggle to communicate with the GLONASS satellite constellation, Russia’s less sophisticated and less expansive answer to the United States’ own GPS satellite constellation. Without a steady connection for course correction, the glide bombs tend to stray and harmlessly explode on some fields.

The jamming has even resulted in the Russians bombing themselves. “There were cases when glide bombs did not reach the territory of Ukraine and fell on the territory of Russia or on temporarily occupied territories,” Kazarian said.

“All high-value targets are guaranteed to be covered by [electronic warfare],” Fighterbomber claimed. It might take eight or even 16 glide bombs to reliably hit one target, the channel added. And while the glide bombs are inexpensive for a precision munition—each costing around $25,000—the Sukhoi jets that lob them two or four at a time aren’t cheap.

Launching four jets to maybe hit one target is risky and inefficient for an air force that has just a thousand or so modern jets, and has already lost 120 of them in action in Ukraine.

The intensive Ukrainian jamming has also grounded many of Russia’s drones. Night Watch’s earliest efforts focused on forcing down Shahed attack drones that routinely strike Ukrainian cities.

Radio jamming has effectively accomplished what the Ukrainian air force largely failed to accomplish with its expensive, vulnerable S-300, Patriot and SAMP/T surface-to-air missile batteries, which can hit Russian jets from scores of miles away but were always too few in number to fully protect the front line and safeguard Ukrainian cities.

The Russians jam, too, of course—but Russian jamming doesn’t have the impact that Ukrainian jamming does. Many Russian jammers are badly made and ineffective. Likewise, Russian industry hasn’t yet been able to develop a countermeasure against Ukrainian countermeasures against Russian munitions. A counter-counter-measure.

Russian forces tried switching satellite-guided munitions to new frequencies while also adding antennae—sometimes even tripling the number of antennae, to 12 instead of the usual four.

But Ukrainian forces recovered hardware from some modified drones. Night Watch studied the wreckage and then tweaked the Lima jammer and the plan for deploying the jammer, Kazarian said. “A new type of antenna was studied, a mathematical analysis was conducted and a new calculation of the location of E.W. systems on the terrain was carried out.”

As effective as it seems to be, Lima isn’t covering the entire front line—to say nothing of blanketing all of Ukraine. That would require many more systems. If the Ukrainian government decides to deploy the jammers more widely, Night Watch could build 300 of the systems a month, Kazarian said.

But the rising fortunes of one E.W. firm isn’t what’s important to the intended victims of Russian bombardment. What matters—to thousands of Ukrainian troops as well as millions of civilians—is that they’re no longer defenseless against Russian glide bombs.

As more jammers such as Lima roll out, more of Ukraine is protected by a powerful electronic shield.

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

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Wednesday, March 19, 2025 12:09 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Putin-Trump phone call: key takeaways
The Russian and US leaders have discussed the prospect of a settlement of the Ukraine conflict and improving bilateral ties

Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump held a much-anticipated phone call on Tuesday, discussing a potential settlement of the Ukraine conflict. The conversation lasted for two and a half hours, with both the White House and the Kremlin describing it as positive. Here are the key takeaways from the conversation.

Potential ceasefire

Putin and Trump discussed Trump’s idea of a 30-day ceasefire, with the Russian side outlining multiple issues to be resolved before its implementation, the Kremlin press service said in a statement following the call. Namely, Putin outlined the need to establish a mechanism to properly monitor a potential ceasefire, as well as stop forced mobilization and rearmament in Ukraine.

“Serious risks associated with the Kiev regime’s inability to negotiate, which has repeatedly sabotaged and violated the agreements reached, were also noted,” the Kremlin press service said, adding that Putin also drew Trump’s attention to “the barbaric terrorist crimes committed by Ukrainian militants against the civilian population of Kursk Region.”

Infrastructure strikes pause

Trump proposed that Moscow and Kiev mutually halt strikes on energy infrastructure facilities for 30 days. Putin backed the idea, immediately giving the Russian military the corresponding order.

“The leaders agreed that the movement to peace will begin with an energy and infrastructure ceasefire, as well as technical negotiations on implementation of a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, full ceasefire and permanent peace. These negotiations will begin immediately in the Middle East,” the White House said in a statement.

Prisoner swap

The Russian president told his American counterpart about an upcoming prisoner swap with Ukraine, scheduled for Wednesday, the Kremlin press service revealed. The two sides are set to exchange 175 prisoners-of-war each. In addition, Moscow will return 23 critically wounded Ukrainian servicemen to demonstrate its goodwill, the press service noted.

Need for lasting peace

Putin and Trump reaffirmed their commitment to achieving a “lasting peace” rather than a temporary solution for the Ukraine conflict. Moscow regards the need to “eliminate the root causes of the crisis,” as well as meet “Russia’s legitimate interests in the area of security” and “the complete cessation of foreign military aid and the provision of intelligence information to Kiev,” as key elements required to achieve the goal, the Kremlin press service noted.

Bilateral cooperation

Ties between Russia and the US were also discussed, with both agreeing to work on mutually beneficial projects. Washington and Moscow have been considering a “broad spectrum of areas where our two countries may establish cooperation,” the Kremlin press service stated.

“The two leaders agreed that a future with an improved bilateral relationship between the United States and Russia has huge upside. This includes enormous economic deals and geopolitical stability when peace has been achieved,” the White House said.


https://www.rt.com/russia/614453-putin-trump-talks-takeaways/


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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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Wednesday, March 19, 2025 6:03 AM

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


Uh Oh. Ukraine must inflict 3 times more casualties on Russia than Russia inflicts on Ukraine. Current estimates are a 1.86 ratio

By David Axe | Mar 18, 2025, 01:39pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/18/100000-russian-troops
-were-killed-or-badly-wounded-in-3-months-it-may-not-be-enough-to-win/

In December 2023, the Estonian defense ministry concluded Ukraine could turn the tide of the Russia-Ukraine war by killing or maiming 100,000 Russians in 2024.

In fact, Ukrainian troops killed or badly wounded closer to 200,000 Russian troops last year—double what Tallinn assumed was necessary.

And the casualty rate has actually increased in 2025. According to Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, commander-in-chief of Ukrainian forces, Russia lost another 100,000 troops killed or seriously hurt in just the first 10 weeks of this year.

But it’s still too soon to say whether the massive casualties Ukraine has inflicted on Russia have been massive enough to trigger the downward spiral in wartime readiness the Estonian ministry anticipated. Ukraine’s own heavy losses could alter the casualty math.

In the Estonian theory of victory, Ukraine could defeat Russia by eliminating more well-trained troops than Russia’s military training system can replace, thus initiating a gradual military-wide collapse.

“The Russian training system can be put under pressure and disrupted by inflicting sustained and increased attrition on Russian units in Ukraine, forcing the newly mobilized personnel to be deployed to the theatre prematurely,” the defense ministry explained.

Given that the Kremlin’s training bases can generate around 130,000 fresh—and reasonably well-trained—troops every six months, and 10,000 of those are support troops, Ukrainian commanders should aim to kill or badly wound 50,000 Russians in the same period, according to the Estonian analysis.

“This would constrain the Russian training system to deliver approximately 40,000 additional troops instead of 130,000 every six months,” the ministry asserted. Generating just 40,000 replacement troops twice a year would compel Russian commanders to bulk up their regiments with untrained troops—and that would “consistently degrade the quality of Russian force,” the Estonians claimed.

That should have the effect of “preventing Russia from regenerating offensive combat power.”

Good news for Ukraine: according to the best estimates, Ukrainian troops killed or wounded 315,000 Russian troops through 2022 and 2023. That’s 172,000 per year.

The loss rate accelerated last year, when as many as 210,000 Russians became permanent casualties—meaning they died or left military service for good after being severely wounded or deserting. Those figures come from a recent study by Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group.

What collapse?

So why hasn’t the Russian army collapsed? The answer may be that it is collapsing—but very slowly. Consider that Russia’s yearlong offensive in eastern Ukraine ground to a halt last month. Maybe that’s because Russia deployed its best surviving troops to the successful effort to eject Ukrainian forces from the salient they held in western Russia’s Kursk Oblast.

Or maybe it’s because Russia is finally running out of well-trained troops and, as a consequence, losing its ability to conduct meaningful offensive action on a large scale. Just like the analysts in Tallinn anticipated.

But there’s another potential outcome—one that should worry friends of a free Ukraine.

If Ukraine’s own losses—100,000 dead and maimed troops a year for three years—are degrading its combat capabilities, the result could be a kind of battlefield impasse, where two exhausted combatants wearily exchange softer and softer blows—and neither can deliver a knockout punch. Yet.

That kind of impasse would ultimately favor Russia, Frontelligence Insight explained. That’s because there are 38 million people in Ukraine, and 144 million in Russia.

“There is a fundamental issue—Ukraine’s smaller mobilization base and poor mobilization campaign,” Frontelligence Insight warned.

Ukraine must degrade the Russian military faster than Russia degrades the Ukrainian military. At present, the casualty ratio favors Ukraine—but not nearly enough given Russia’s greater manpower reserves.

“Russia’s population is at least three times larger, and their recruitment system is better,” Frontelligence Insight explained. Thus, “Ukraine’s preferable loss ratio should be at least 1:3, rather than the 1:1.86 ratio reflected in current estimates.”

By killing, maiming or driving to desertion three Russians for every soldier they lose, the Ukrainians could deplete Russia’s most important resource—people—faster than Russia depletes Ukraine’s own most important resource, which is also people.

But it might take “game-changing external support” from allies for Ukraine to tilt the loss ratio more steeply against Russia, Frontelligence Insight explained.

That game-changing support almost certainly won’t come from the United States, which under President Donald Trump is rapidly aligning itself with Russia and other autocracies.

That leaves one realistic prospect: Europe. And while the leading European powers—the United Kingdom, Poland, Italy, Germany and France—have all talked about boosting aid to Ukraine, talk is cheap when it comes to killing Russians.

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

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Wednesday, March 19, 2025 9:03 AM

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Trump Gets a Taste of Putin’s Tactics

The Russian leader is offering few concessions in negotiations over Ukraine. How hard is Trump willing to push for the peace he promises?

By Jonathan Lemire | March 18, 2025, 7:30 PM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/putin-trump-cease
fire-proposal/682092/

Vladimir Putin isn’t going to make this easy for Donald Trump.

For weeks, Trump has bragged about his close relationship with his Russian counterpart and declared that Putin wanted to bring a quick end to the war that he, of course, started more than three years ago. Trump’s national-security team worked with Ukraine to come up with a 30-day cease-fire proposal in hopes of persuading Moscow to accept it. And his press secretary declared yesterday that Ukraine and Russia were on the “10th yard line of peace.”

But when the two men spoke today, Putin had his own ideas.

Putin did agree during the more-than-two-hour call to halt strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, and he pledged to continue negotiations. But that limited deal fell far short of what the White House had forecast in recent days, and it now confronts Trump with a dilemma. In order to secure the peace he has promised, he might have to engage in something he has yet to do: get tough with Putin.

Trump, predictably, dressed up his call with Putin as a win, posting on social media that the conversation was “a very good and productive one.”

The peace process “is now in full force and effect, and we will, hopefully, for the sake of Humanity, get the job done!” he wrote.

In truth, Putin offered next to no concessions, and his goal, according to a Kremlin readout of the call, remains maximalist: preventing Ukraine’s rearmament and sovereignty. In order for him to accept Trump’s full cease-fire proposal, Putin said, Ukraine would have to stop rearming its military and sending new soldiers to the front lines, and all foreign governments—including the United States and Kyiv’s European allies—would have to stop sending military assistance or intelligence to Ukraine.

Taken together, those demands would severely weaken Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, and Trump did not agree to them in the call. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, speaking with reporters in Ukraine after the Trump-Putin call, expressed “skepticism” about Putin’s motivations and made clear that no lasting deal could be made without his nation’s involvement. Still, he added, “if there is a partial cease-fire, this is a positive result,” and he signaled that Ukraine would accept the limited agreement, even though it would allow Russia to continue to pummel his nation’s cities and towns.

If the strikes on energy infrastructure indeed stop, it would be the most significant mutually agreed suspension of attacks in the war. A senior White House aide framed that to me as a major achievement, the first step toward a broader peace (Trump long ago abandoned his campaign promise to end the war in 24 hours). But Trump’s national-security team will now need to debate a course of action, and the aide, who requested anonymity to discuss internal conversations, conceded that difficult decisions lie ahead. Will Trump allow the U.S. to pressure Moscow—by toughening sanctions on Russia or increasing aid to Ukraine—to push Putin to soften his demands? Or will Trump once more defer to Putin and isolate Kyiv?

The partial cease-fire holds benefits for both sides. Ukraine has struggled for years with Russia’s attacks on its energy grid, which at times have plunged cities into darkness and cold. But agreeing to the deal also was in Putin’s interest—Ukraine has recently ratcheted up its attacks on gas and oil facilities deep in Russian territory, weakening Moscow’s most crucial stream of revenue at a time when the nation’s war-weary economy is struggling.

Marc Polymeropoulos, a former U.S. intelligence official who is a Trump critic, told me that Putin’s demand for an end to those strikes—and his willingness to relinquish his own military’s ability to do the same—is proof that the strikes “are having a much more severe effect than even we imagined. Putin wants them to stop. That’s a pretty good measure of effectiveness.”

That’s all that Putin was willing to give up, though, and he telegraphed his intent to keep the war going or, at least, to end it only on terms that he could dictate. According to the Kremlin readout of the call, Putin insisted on the “absolute need to eliminate the root causes of the crisis,” which include, in Moscow’s view, Ukraine seeking security guarantees from the West, such as admission to NATO or the European Union. Putin also suggested cutting Kyiv out of future negotiations, leaving the talks solely between Washington and Moscow. And his demand for a complete end to all foreign military support to Ukraine is simply a nonstarter: Even though Trump and Vice President J. D. Vance have previously threatened to discontinue American support for Kyiv, Ukraine’s European partners have in recent weeks only increased their pledges.

“It’s clear that Russia remains the obstacle to peace in Europe,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons told me in a statement. “I’m glad to see a halt on infrastructure strikes but many of Putin’s ‘requests’—like a ban on arms or intel sharing—make clear what he is after: a neutered Ukraine that can’t defend itself.”

Of note: Neither the White House’s nor the Kremlin’s readout of the call described any discussions between the two leaders over the fate of the territory Russia has seized from Ukraine. Russia has claimed about 20 percent of Ukraine’s land, beginning with the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. Air-raid sirens continued to go off around Ukraine today. Still, the call yielded some positives for Ukraine, which will at least for now continue to receive U.S. assistance as it tries to work out backup plans with Europe in case Trump eventually cuts off Kyiv.

“Frankly, this is the Russian playbook of using negotiations as an instrument of armed conflict,” Polymeropolous, the former intelligence officer, told me. “But in the grand scheme of things, it’s probably less bad than everyone imagined. At least the U.S. didn’t sell Ukraine down the river.”

Few in the national-security community are counting on Trump to suddenly align himself more solidly with Kyiv. For weeks, he and his administration have embraced Moscow’s view of the war in Ukraine. Trump has decreed that Zelensky is “a dictator,” repeated Putin’s lie that Ukraine started the conflict, declared that Ukraine didn’t have any “cards” in the negotiations, and already denied Kyiv’s top wish—that it be allowed to enter NATO, the alliance designed as a bulwark against Russian aggression. The pause in U.S. intelligence-sharing and shipments of military supplies to Ukraine earlier this month allowed Moscow to make gains on the battlefield, most notably in the Russian territory of Kursk, land that had been Ukraine’s strongest bargaining chip in possible upcoming negotiations. And, of course, in Trump’s first term, the United States at times levied tough sanctions against Moscow, only to be undermined by the president’s warm words for Putin, including during their infamous 2018 Helsinki summit.

So far, Trump hasn’t done anything to suggest that he’s cooling on Putin. When Zelensky didn’t give Trump everything he wanted in their Oval Office meeting last month, the U.S. president berated his Ukrainian counterpart, and Trump’s allies called for new elections in Kyiv. When Putin didn’t give Trump everything he wanted today, the Russian leader still got a friendly Truth Social post from Trump, pledges of further talks, and possibly some hockey games featuring the best players from each country.

But there were signs that Trump wasn’t happy with how Putin played his hand. Trump has rarely missed opportunities to chat with reporters during the first eight weeks of his presidency; just yesterday, he fielded questions multiple times, including when predicting that Putin wanted peace, and he often boastfully engages with the press while signing executive orders.

Another such signing was scheduled for the Oval Office this afternoon. But reporters were not invited to watch, depriving them of the chance to ask questions about the Putin call. Trump remained behind closed doors.

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

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Thursday, March 20, 2025 6:39 AM

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


Russian President Vladimir Putin is adding confusion about the timing and details of the ceasefire in an attempt to falsely blame Ukraine for violating the ceasefire before both countries have officially implemented the agreement.

The Kremlin is attempting to posture Russia as already adhering to the temporary ceasefire while claiming that Ukraine is violating the ceasefire — even though both parties have not agreed on the details of the agreement or officially implemented the ceasefire.

The Kremlin readout of the March 18 phone call between Putin and Trump stated that Putin "immediately gave the Russian military" an order that "corresponded" with his "positive response" to Trump's temporary ceasefire proposal.[7] The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed that seven Russian drones were en route to striking Ukrainian energy facilities connected to defense industrial enterprises in Mykolaiv Oblast when Putin issued the order to the Russian military.[8] The Russian MoD claimed that Russian forces received orders to "neutralize" the drones and that Russian forces used Pantsir air defense systems to down six drones and that a Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) fighter jet destroyed the other. Ukrainian officials reported that Russian forces launched a series of drone and missile strikes against Ukraine on the night of March 18 to 19, and Zelensky noted on March 19 that Russian drones had struck a hospital in Sumy Oblast and unspecified areas in Donetsk Oblast.[9] The Russian MoD claimed that Ukrainian drones struck an oil transshipment facility in Krasnodar Krai following the Trump-Putin call and attempted to frame the Ukrainian strike as a violation of the ceasefire agreement.[10]

Russian claims that Russia adhered to the ceasefire by abstaining from conducting strikes against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and that Ukraine violated the ceasefire are inaccurate as Russia and Ukraine have not yet officially implemented the agreement. Such Russian claims are attempts to take advantage of the lack of clarity about the details of the ceasefire that the Kremlin is injecting.

Putin's attempt to confuse and manipulate the temporary strikes ceasefire and blame Ukraine for violations even before the agreement has come into effect is an indicator of how Putin will likely exploit any future agreements.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-19-2025

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

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Friday, March 21, 2025 4:04 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Just reading David Axe's headaches give me a headache.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Friday, March 21, 2025 7:49 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Just reading David Axe's headaches give me a headache.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA

General Carsten Breuer from the Bundeswehr warns that Russia is preparing for a large-scale war, potentially being ready as early as 2029. He emphasizes that this development poses new challenges for the West.

12:07 PM EDT, March 20, 2025

https://essanews.com/general-breuer-warns-russian-military-ready-by-20
29,7137196148803201a

In his view, the end of the war in Ukraine will not restore peace in Europe, and Russia will be ready for a large-scale war by 2029.

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

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Friday, March 21, 2025 7:56 AM

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The Kremlin is intensifying efforts to change the demographic makeup of occupied Ukraine in order to legitimize Putin's claim over occupied areas. Putin signed a decree on March 20 mandating that Ukrainian civilians who are "illegally" living in Russia and occupied Ukraine must "regulate their legal status" or leave Russia and occupied Ukraine by September 10, 2025.[27] The Kremlin has conducted a thorough passportization campaign to coerce Ukrainians living under occupation into obtaining Russian citizenship in efforts to legitimize Russia's territorial claims over occupied areas and tighten control over local populaces.[28] The Kremlin has also conducted Russian repopulation campaigns to artificially decrease the number of Ukrainians living in occupied Ukraine and inflate the number of Russians in these areas.[29] Putin's March 20 decree also obliges "foreigners," presumably including those with Ukrainian citizenship, and stateless persons entering occupied Ukraine to take Russian medical exams and blood tests.[30] The Kremlin has historically used these tests to obtain personal data to later exert pressure on Ukrainians to comply with occupation authorities and serve in the Russian military, as well as to forcibly deport Ukrainian children to Russia.[31]

The Kremlin also continues Russifying Ukrainian children in occupied areas to further the destruction of Ukrainian national and cultural identity and to portray Russia as the humane governor of occupied Ukraine. Kremlin Children's Rights Ombudsman Maria Lvova-Belova met with Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) Head Denis Pushilin on March 20 and claimed that occupation authorities sent 127 ill Ukrainian children to medical treatment in unspecified locations, likely including in Russia, and that 1,346 Ukrainian children participated in the "Day After Tomorrow" social adaptation project for youths.[32] Lvova-Belova stated that occupation officials opened two youth centers in occupied Makiivka and Mariupol, Donetsk Oblast, and that these centers often host social events for youths, including Ukrainian minors under Russian guardianship.[33] The Kremlin has frequently used forced deportations of Ukrainian children and youth social organizations to indoctrinate Ukrainian children into Russian military-patriotic education and eradicate their Ukrainian identities.[34] Lvova-Belova also proposed that Pushilin create a social system to place 500 Ukrainian children who are currently in state custody in occupied Donetsk Oblast with Russian families and noted that many of these children have relatives who can take in the children.[35] Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently stated that Ukraine will not compromise on the return of Ukrainian children to unoccupied Ukraine, and the US-Ukrainian joint statement agreeing on a 30-day ceasefire similarly emphasized the importance of returning forcibly deported Ukrainian children.[36] The Kremlin's continued efforts to forcibly deport and indoctrinate Ukrainian children — instead of working with Ukrainian authorities to return these children to Ukraine — underscores how committed the Kremlin remains to eradicating Ukrainian identity and strengthening its claim over occupied Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-20-2025

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

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Saturday, March 22, 2025 7:38 AM

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Ukraine Lost Too Many Tanks In Kursk

Russia and Ukraine wrote off roughly the same number of tanks in the eight-month battle.

By David Axe | Mar 21, 2025, 11:13am EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/03/21/ukraine-lost-too-many
-tanks-in-kursk/

In the eight-month battle for Kursk in western Russia, the Russians wrote off 66 tanks, while the Ukrainians gave up 55. That’s a 1.2-to-1 ratio favoring Ukraine. In other words, nearly even.

That’s bad news for Ukraine, which according to one recent analysis needs to inflict three times as many losses on Russia as Russia inflicts on Ukraine in order to degrade the Russian military faster than Russia degrades the Ukrainian military.

The Ukrainians were hitting that critical benchmark prior to their August invasion of Kursk in western Russia. During the invasion, which ended in a Ukrainian retreat last week, the Russians gave as good as they got, knocking out or capturing more tanks than the Ukrainians could afford to lose.

The Ukrainian armed forces went to war in February 2022 with around 1,000 active tanks—mostly ex-Soviet T-64s and T-72s. After losing around 950 tanks to Russian action, receiving another 850 or so tanks as donations from their allies and fetching others from long-term storage in Ukraine, the Ukrainians still have … at least 1,000 tanks.

The Russian armed forces went to war three years ago with around 3,500 active tanks—T-72s, T-80s and T-90s—and have lost 3,200 to Ukrainian action. Russian industry builds 500 or 600 new tanks a year—too few to make good losses—but the Kremlin also has access to thousands of stored tanks, many of them T-62s and T-54s dating from the 1960s and ’50s, respectively.

The two armies’ respective main sources for replacement tanks mean the Ukrainian tank corps is gradually becoming more modern as it takes delivery of more Western-made tanks including German-made Leopard 1s and Leopard 2s and American-made M-1s.

By contrast, the Russian tank corps is getting less modern as it inducts hundreds of older tanks, some 60 or even 70 years old. At the time of the Ukrainian retreat from Kursk last week—a departure precipitated by an elite Russian drone group deploying to the oblast and bombarding Ukraine’s main supply line—Ukrainian tankers had already achieved local tank superiority in some areas.

But not in Kursk, a veritable graveyard for armored vehicles owing to the relatively small scale of the battlefield in the oblast, the high concentration of Russian and Ukrainian forces and, most critically, the sheer number of explosive drones patrolling overhead.

Destroying roughly as many tanks as they lost in the oblast, the Russians deprived Kyiv of a badly needed victory. According to Frontelligence Insight, a Ukrainian analysis group, a 1-to-1 loss ratio is “an unfavorable scenario for Ukraine in a war of attrition, given its smaller initial stockpile and limited ability to replace lost vehicles.”

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

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Saturday, March 22, 2025 7:40 AM

SECOND

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


The Kremlin is weaponizing ongoing ceasefire negotiations and deliberately misrepresenting the status and terms of a future ceasefire agreement in order to delay and undermine negotiations for a settlement to the war. The Russian Ministry of Defense (MoD) claimed on March 21 that Ukrainian forces blew up the Sudzha gas distribution station in Kursk Oblast while withdrawing on the night of March 20 to 21 in order to discredit Russian President Vladimir Putin's "peace initiatives" and to provoke Russia.[1] The Ukrainian General Staff denied the Russian MoD's claim and stated that Russian forces shelled the station, causing a fire.[2] The Ukrainian General Staff warned that Russian authorities are attempting to mislead the international community and discredit Ukraine. Footage published on March 21 shows a fire at the station, although ISW cannot independently verify the cause of the fire.[3] Russian officials seized on the fire to claim falsely that Ukrainian forces violated the proposed 30-day ceasefire banning Russian and Ukrainian strikes on civilian and energy facilities, which is not yet formally in effect and terms of which remain disputed.[4] Kremlin Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov claimed that Russian forces are "implementing" an order from Putin to refrain from striking Ukrainian energy infrastructure in accordance with the US ceasefire proposal.[5] Russian milbloggers observed that the ceasefire proposal has not come into force yet, however, and acknowledged that Russia has continued nightly strikes on Ukraine, including Ukraine's port infrastructure in Odesa Oblast, in recent days.[6] Founder of the Kremlin-awarded Rybar telegram channel, Mikhail Zvinchuk, recently published a video of himself mocking US officials for believing that Russia is currently or intends to commit to the proposed temporary ceasefire in the area.[7] The exact contours of Putin's supposed order or a future moratorium on energy and infrastructure strikes between Russia and Ukraine remain unclear as of this report.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-21-2025

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

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Saturday, March 22, 2025 7:41 AM

SECOND

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


Kremlin officials are leveraging narratives about Ukrainian strikes and combat operations in Russian territory to justify rejecting peace negotiations with Ukraine and continuing the war to a domestic Russian audience. Peskov claimed in reaction to the Sudzha gas distribution station fire that Ukraine's denial of blowing up the station "shows how much one can believe and trust" Ukrainian officials.[8] Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) Spokesperson Maria Zakharova asked how the United States will "manage" Ukraine given Ukraine's alleged violation of the moratorium on energy infrastructure strikes (that has yet to be finalized and implemented).[9] Zakharova's and Peskov's comments are an effort to revive the narrative that Ukraine is the aggressor in this war, that Ukraine only acts under guidance or pressure from the West, and that the war in Ukraine is an existential risk to the Russian state to which Russia must respond.[10] Russian authorities have also revived narratives accusing Ukrainian forces of targeting Russian nuclear power plants and committing war crimes against Russian civilians to undermine Ukraine's credibility and heighten the invented existential threat to domestic audiences. The Russian Investigative Committee published a summary on March 21 of ongoing criminal investigations, cases, and convictions of Ukrainian soldiers and high-level commanders for allegedly targeting the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) and civilians in strikes.[11] ISW recently assessed that the Kremlin was preparing to intensify narratives accusing Ukrainian forces of war crimes in Kursk Oblast to discredit the Ukrainian military, erode Western support for Ukraine, and spoil or delay talks about temporary ceasefire proposals.[12]

The Kremlin has pushed these narratives consistently throughout the war in an attempt to distract from Russia's actions. Russian forces have committed numerous war crimes on the battlefield and in occupied Ukraine and have endangered the occupied Zaporizhzhia NPP (ZNPP) by militarizing it, and a Russian long-range Shahed drone struck the containment structure of the Chornobyl NPP's Reactor No. 4 on February 14.[13] The Kremlin may seek to leverage its narratives falsely portraying Ukraine as recklessly endangering Russian NPPs and being an unsafe operator of the ZNPP to spoil US-Ukrainian bilateral talks, given recent US and Ukrainian official statements about possible US involvement in Ukrainian energy infrastructure, including the Russian-occupied ZNPP.[14]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-21-2025

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

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Saturday, March 22, 2025 3:24 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Outrage After German Intel Chief Says Ukraine War Should Keep Going For Another 5 Years

Bruno Kahl, the head of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) made the comments in an interview, saying:

“If a war in Ukraine comes to a standstill earlier than (2029 or 2030), then all the means (of Russia) – both the technical and the material – are able much earlier to provide a threat against Europe.”

...

The former prime minister of Ukraine, who still remains one of the most powerful voices in the country, Yulia Tymoshenko, reacted to Kahl’s statements. On her Facebook page, she wrote that “something slipped” out of Kahl’s mouth that Ukrainians “did not want to admit” to themselves.

“Did someone decide to pay for the exhaustion of Russia in the name of security in Europe with the existence of Ukraine and the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians? I never thought that it would be discussed so officially and openly,” she wrote. She then called for Zelensky to immediately end the war and sign a peace agreement.


https://rmx.news/ukraine/outrage-after-german-intelligence-chief-says-
ukraine-war-should-keep-going-for-another-5-years/


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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Saturday, March 22, 2025 3:29 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Why'd Russia Only Just Now Decree That Ukrainians Must Legalize Their Presence Or Leave?

This suggests that Russia expects a political settlement or at least an armistice within the next six months so it’s now prioritizing the further legitimization of its control over the new regions by finally completing their legal integration into the country at the local administrative level by 10 September.


https://korybko.substack.com/p/whyd-russia-only-just-now-decree

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Saturday, March 22, 2025 4:31 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Fuck Ukraine.

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

"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon

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Saturday, March 22, 2025 6:14 PM

SECOND

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


Trump's negotiator assumes all of Putin's theses on the war

By PABLO R. SUANZES | 03/22/2025 - 17:24 ET

https://www.mundoamerica.com/news/2025/03/22/67df2a9a21efa026588b4586.
html

Donald Trump's special envoy for the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, chief negotiator Steve Witkoff, has assumed point by point all of Vladimir Putin's theses on the war in Ukraine. Those that explain the beginning as a reaction over a decade ago to the NATO threat. Those that say it is not about imperial ambition, a nearly religious obsession with the USSR's past, or an attempt to weaken, destabilize, and break the EU, but to recover "Russophone" territories that would have voted "overwhelmingly to be under Moscow's control," something Kiev does not allow. Those that say Russia is clearly winning and has thousands of Ukrainian soldiers surrounded in the Kursk area. And of course, those that conclude that the only way to have a just and lasting peace involves giving up territories or the security guarantee that would come with joining the Atlantic Alliance.

Witkoff made this very clear on Friday night in an interview with the Russian journalist and propagandist Tucker Carlson, a friend of Trump and his family, a former Fox News star who has visited Moscow several times in the last year and a half, including an exclusive interview with Putin.

The conversation is essential to understand how a real estate businessman with no diplomatic experience, a total lack of knowledge of geopolitics in general, and the war in Ukraine in particular sees things, but who has the absolute trust of the president, who believes that to resolve such important issues, a closer, a business shark is needed to close deals, even if they involve forever altering the lives of millions of people with arbitrary demarcations or for reasons unrelated to reality.

It all starts with an idea: Russia and Putin respect Trump and the US, while Ukraine does not. From there, everything else follows. "Putin has great respect for the president. And, as you know, you saw what happened in the Oval Office with Zelensky and the president... disrespecting him is not a good way to have a good relationship," he said last night.

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

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Saturday, March 22, 2025 6:43 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Trump's negotiator assumes all of Putin's theses on the war


Yup. Bc unlike delusional people and die-hard neocons, Witkoff recognizes reality when he sees it.

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Sunday, March 23, 2025 4:37 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Trump's negotiator assumes all of Putin's theses on the war


Yup. Bc unlike delusional people and die-hard neocons, Witkoff recognizes reality when he sees it.
Surkov responded to a question about how he sees Russian borders, stating that the ideology of the Russian World (Russkiy Mir) "has no borders" and exists "everywhere there is Russian influence," including cultural, military, economic, ideological, or humanitarian influence. Surkov claimed that Russia's influence varies across regions in the world, but "is never zero." Surkov claimed that Russia "will spread out in all directions." The Kremlin has repeatedly used the idea of the Russian World to justify Russian military interventions into former Soviet states and to claim that areas of the former Soviet Union and Russian Empire are historical Russian territories.[6] Surkov's statements about Russia's claims over southern and eastern Ukraine and the future expansion of Russkiy Mir are in direct contrast to Witkoff's statement that Russia has no territorial ambitions beyond Crimea and Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-22-2025

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

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Monday, March 24, 2025 3:36 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
SECOND
... Surkov...


Makes ya kinda glad Putin's in charge instead, dunnit?

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

AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA


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Monday, March 24, 2025 6:37 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
SECOND
... Surkov...


Makes ya kinda glad Putin's in charge instead, dunnit?
I'm guessing you don't understand the colloquialism: Putin is talking from both sides of his mouth.

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/talk-out-of-bot
h-sides-of-mouth

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

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Monday, March 24, 2025 6:38 AM

SECOND

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


The Kremlin has claimed in recent months that the inflation rate is about nine to 10 percent, but these figures are likely far below the actual inflation rate, which is closer to 20 to 25 percent.[8] Russia's current interest rate should be higher, and the Kremlin pressured the Central Bank to keep the rate at 21 percent when the Central Bank should have increased it to curb inflation.[9]

Russian President Vladimir Putin has also attempted to shift blame for the rising inflation rate on the Central Bank, and on Nabiullina in particular. This was likely in an effort to draw the ire of the Russian business community away from the Kremlin and onto her, although Nabiullina has not been able to exercise fully independent monetary policy. The audit on the Central Bank may be part of the Kremlin's ongoing efforts to apply political pressure on the bank to prevent further interest rate hikes beyond the current rate of 21 percent, manage the expectations and frustrations of the Russian business community, and further the Kremlin's narrative about Russia's economic stability. The Kremlin’s continued manipulation of the Central Bank's decisions is hampering the Russian government's ability to enact sound wartime monetary policies.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-march-23-2025

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

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