REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Friday, May 9, 2025 05:16
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Sunday, May 4, 2025 4:39 AM

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Russian troops ordered to attack everywhere — Dykyi on what to expect

Author: Alex Stezhensky | May 2, 2025, 09:36 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-orders-advances-on-all-fronts-in-p
ush-to-shape-talks-expert-warns-50511019.html

Yevhen Dykyi, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, former company commander in the Aidar Battalion, and director of Ukraine’s National Antarctic Scientific Center, said during a Radio NV interview that Russian forces have received orders to advance on all fronts. He also offered a skeptical forecast about whether Moscow has the strength to pull it off.

“Since the story with the Riyadh negotiations began, [Russia] has issued an order to strain its last reserves and put on a show of force — one they haven’t truly had for months now,” Dykyi said.

“In reality, they’ve largely lost the initiative. Their peak power, their moment of momentum — that was last fall and winter. Back then, they were charging ahead full force from all directions. That hasn’t been the case for a while now.”

He pointed to Pokrovsk as the clearest example. “They crawled up to it and got stuck. And now they see clearly: they’re never going to take it.”

But Dykyi warned that with peace talks looming, Moscow needs to simulate a renewed offensive — a show of regained initiative — in order to pressure Ukraine into capitulation.

“They need to create the illusion that they’re once again calling the shots — when, where, and how the war is fought. That’s why they’re probing the Zaporizhzhya direction right now. That’s also why they’re attempting — not serious ones yet — but reconnaissance landings even on the right bank of Kherson Oblast.”

“All of this is part of the same play,” he said. “It’s a large-scale pressure campaign designed to convince our allies — and, if it works, even us — that signing these Trump-brokered agreements, which are essentially Kremlin-drafted deals, is our only option.”

“They’re building a narrative tailored to what [U.S. President Donald] Trump said. Remember, when asked what Russia’s concessions were in the proposed deal, Trump said: ‘What do you mean? Russia made a huge concession — it’s not going to take over the entire territory of Ukraine.’”

“It wasn’t the Ukrainian Armed Forces that created a situation in which seizing all of Ukraine is off the table — no,” Dykyi said. “Apparently, it was Putin who did Trump a favor and, out of the goodness of his heart, agreed not to conquer the entire country. Otherwise, Ukraine is supposedly just lying there, waiting to be taken.”

“So yes, right now the Russians have orders to attack anywhere they can and ignore the losses,” he said. “Dnipropetrovsk Oblast fits perfectly into that narrative.”

“Even if all they get is a single linear meter of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast — and honestly, they’re unlikely to get more — they’ll turn that one meter into a press release and declare another oblast under control,” Dykyi said. “And they’ll wave that around during the talks.”

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 5:39 AM

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Ex-CIA chief: We gave Ukraine enough weapons to bleed, not to win

Ralph Goff, a former chief of operations at the agency, says Biden’s White House did not give Kyiv the weapons to drive out Russia for fear of nuclear war

By Larisa Brown | Friday May 02 2025, 6.15pm BST, The Times

https://www.thetimes.com/us/news-today/article/ex-cia-chief-we-gave-uk
raine-enough-weapons-to-bleed-not-to-win-r3q0r2fcg?t=1746252583203

After Vladimir Putin’s masked commandos captured Crimea in the winter of 2014, the CIA’s chief of operations for Europe and Eurasia, based at Langley, tried to warn his superiors of what was coming next.

“I was trying to ring the alarm bell that the seeds of World War Three are being sown in the Donbas right now and we need to do something about it,” said Ralph Goff, a six-time former station chief who spent three decades in America’s foreign intelligence agency. “But there were other priorities.”

In March this year, Goff, now in his sixties, had been preparing to take over as the CIA’s chief of clandestine operations, in an effort to reform the agency and make it less risk-averse.

That was until President Trump’s administration got wind of the plan and put a stop to it. “I think people close to the president thought, ‘Who is this guy, who does he think he is?’, and went and looked and saw I wasn’t one of their people and they said, ‘No, we don’t approve’, ” he told The Times in an interview from Paris.

“Politics definitely played a role there but, what are you going to do. They can pick who they want,” he said, adding that the decision may have been because of his views on Ukraine.

When Goff got the call to say his appointment had been blocked, Trump had already appointed the political loyalists Kash Patel and Dan Bongino to run the FBI and Tulsi Gabbard, who has defended President Putin in the past, as director of national intelligence.

Goff, meanwhile, was a vocal supporter of Ukraine. Since retiring from the agency in October 2023, he has travelled there several times.

Looking back, Goff, who speaks five languages including Russian, believes the big war that started in February 2022 might have been stopped early on if the US and its allies had given Ukraine the weapons it needed from the beginning.

What transpired instead, he believes, was a deliberate strategy to give Ukraine the arms it needed to fight — but not enough to defeat Putin’s army, because of fears the Russian leader would use nuclear weapons if he got close to losing.

“Had we equipped the Ukrainians at that time with proper weaponry, they might have been able to drive the Russians all the way out of the country. It didn’t happen. It set the stage for this longer, protracted, drawn out, meat grinder war that we are witnessing today,” Goff said.

He said President Biden and his allies allowed Putin to dictate the terms of the conflict and were nervous about sending Ukraine the equipment it needed at the right time because of fears “he will go nuclear”.

Goff added: “[They] allowed themselves to be bamboozled by Vladimir Putin and his nuclear-sabre rattling. So they gave the Ukrainians this weaponry but they never gave them enough to win. They only gave them enough to bleed.”

It is a view shared by some in the heart of the UK government, but no one dares air it publicly.

Goff pointed out that Putin had a “real deadly fear of Covid” during the pandemic and “in my mind, people who are that concerned with their health are not about to play high stakes nuclear poker”.

Now, with a new administration, he thinks Trump’s strategy may be to smooth talk and possibly flatter Putin to draw him away from China. Putin, meanwhile, thinks that as a former intelligence officer he can manipulate Trump, although Goff predicts he will end up “sorely mistaken”.

“Putin will eventually overplay his hand with the administration and show them where the problem lies and the problem is in Moscow not in Kyiv,” he explained.

If a deal is not reached soon, Goff said one Ukrainian official had told him that by the end of the summer the entire front line will essentially be a 20-50km “death zone”, “where you can’t move because there are so many drones in the air and robots on the ground and sensors and mines”. He warned: “It will be an incredibly lethal environment.”

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Goff, a Russian linguist, was a signals intelligence officer in the US army, based on the East German border before the fall of the Berlin Wall, eavesdropping on Soviet forces.

What followed for him was a life in the shadows with the CIA, where Goff carried out missions across the globe using different aliases and fake passports. He operated in war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan where he came under artillery fire, rocket fire, machine-gun fire and faced the threat of suicide bombs and improvised explosives.

“You face all these different threats and your task is to not panic and get through them. More often than not you get back to the office and you’re like, holy crap, that was a close one,” he added, casually.

In the aftermath of 9/11, during the global war on terror, he said the agency “became almost like paramilitary organisations”, with an obsession with ensuring spies could defend themselves, rather than making sure they could speak languages and communicate with the local communities they were operating in.

He said: “I had case officers who could hit a moving target with an M4 rifle at 300 yards and treat a sucking chest wound with first aid and could call in an airstrike. They could do all of this stuff but none of them spoke Pashto or Dari or Arabic and so what good were they? I needed officers who could meet with the locals and collect intelligence.”

He said the war on terror was a “very lethal event” and “obviously people were looking at reducing risk”. He said: “What we lost in that, you know, was some of the collection.”

“You think back to the glory days of British intelligence, with people out in the great game, out in central Asia, where these guys dressed like natives and learned the language and they were out so long on camel back that they looked like the natives and they were out there amongst the people. There is a part of me that wishes I had been able to experience those days,” he added.

Now, he said espionage was a “whole different ball game” and travelling under an alias was a “huge deal” with the advent of internet and facial recognition cameras. “It’s a thousand times harder to operate out on the streets now than when I was a case officer.”

For the most part, Goff said the life of a spy was “not like the Hollywood movies” and a lot of the work was “sheer drudgery” such as filling out reports and accounting. “Remember the old show 24 with Jack Bauer? I love that show but you know it’s not real at all. If it were real, the first six episodes would be him arguing with some bureaucrat over his travel tickets.”

Goff, who describes himself as a “committed Atlanticist”, retired in October 2023 before being asked if he would be willing to come back to the CIA to take on the role of deputy director of operations.

If he had done, he would have run human espionage and covert action programmes.

His plan was to reform the agency.

He said there had been a “damaging” approach to the agency under John Brennan, who served as director until 2017, whereby analysts who reached senior positions were expected to be just as good at operations.

“There’s a reason why fighter pilots fly fighter jets and bomber pilots fly bombers. You don’t want to change that. And so with us, with operations officers, I think we lost some of our prestige and as a result the risk tolerance at the agency dropped as well,” he explained.

Risk avoidance was not risk management, he said, and so “people like me who are going out on the streets doing crazy things, we have a different view of risk management”.

He said: “We try to minimise risk but we recognise it is there. If you are going to conduct intelligence operations there is always the risk of failure.”

Since leaving the agency, Goff has travelled regularly to Ukraine, meeting with government and intelligence officials in the country.

He tries to persuade American companies to invest in Ukraine and introduces Ukrainian technology to the Americans.

“I think one of the reasons why I go to Ukraine now is perhaps I feel some guilt over not having been able to get the message to my leadership to avert this,” he said.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 10:41 AM

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Putin says he hopes there will be no need to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine

In comments aired Sunday in a film by Russian state television about his quarter of a century in power, Putin said Russia has the strength and the means to bring the conflict in Ukraine to a “logical conclusion.”

Responding to a question about Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, Putin said: “There has been no need to use those (nuclear) weapons ... and I hope they will not be required.”

“We have enough strength and means to bring what was started in 2022 to a logical conclusion with the outcome Russia requires,” he said.

Putin signed a revamped version of Russia’s nuclear doctrine in November 2024, spelling out the circumstances that allow him to use Moscow’s atomic arsenal, the world’s largest. That version lowered the bar, giving him that option in response to even a conventional attack backed by a nuclear power.

In the film, Putin also said Russia did not launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine — what he called a “special military operation” — in 2014, when it illegally annexed Crimea, because it was “practically unrealistic.”

“The country was not ready for such a frontal confrontation with the entire collective West,” he said. He claimed also that Russia “sincerely sought to solve the problem of Donbas by peaceful means.”

Putin said that reconciliation with Ukraine was “inevitable.”

https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-nuclear-putin-ceasefire-
868bda4fc666ec3b05a1e512eca91b3c

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 10:52 AM

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


Points for kills: How Ukraine is using video game incentives to slay more Russians

Ukraine has created a macabre points scheme based on video games to boost the effectiveness of its soldiers.

By Veronika Melkozerova | April 29, 2025 4:50 pm CET

https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraines-army-have-video-game-like-dig
ital-weapons-store-deadly-realistic/

KYIV — Ukraine's military is turning to incentive schemes used in video games to spur its soldiers to kill more Russian troops and destroy their equipment.

The program — called Army of Drones bonus — rewards soldiers with points if they upload videos proving their drones have hit Russian targets. It will soon be integrated with a new online marketplace called Brave 1 Market, which will allow troops to convert those points into new equipment for their units.

“Brave 1 Market will be like Amazon for the military, it will allow military units to directly purchase technologies they need on the war front,” said Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and minister for digital transformation, speaking at a weekend military tech conference in Kyiv.

The program assigns points for each type of kill: 20 points for damaging and 40 for destroying a tank; up to 50 points for destroying a mobile rocket system, depending on the caliber; and six points for killing an enemy soldier.

Soldiers have to download the video footage taken by their drones confirming the kill to the military's Delta communication and situational awareness system.

Units will soon be able to use the special digital points they’ve been getting since last year by trading them in for new weapons. A Vampire drone, for example, costs 43 points. The drone, nicknamed Baba Yaga, or witch, is a large multi-rotor drone able to carry a 15-kilogram warhead. The Ukrainian government will pay for the drones that are ordered and will deliver them to the front-line unit within a week.

“In short, you destroy, you get the points, you buy a drone using the points,” Fedorov said.

He pointed to the accomplishments of Magyar's Birds, one of Ukraine's elite drone warfare units. It has run up a score of over 16,298 points, enough to buy 500 first-person view drones used in daytime operations, 500 drones for night operations, 100 Vampire drones and 40 reconnaissance drones, Fedorov said.

The scheme is aimed at directing more equipment to the most effective units.

It will also help to bypass bureaucratic procurement procedures and buy weapons directly from manufacturers. As of today there are more than a thousand articles on the Brave 1 marketplace, ranging from drones to robotic systems, electronic warfare systems, parts, AI systems and other weapons.

Soldiers will be able to leave reviews on the site to guide future purchases.

The ability to get points for killing enemy troops is also spurring competition among units; so far about 90 percent of the army's drone units have scored points. In fact, they are logging so many hits that the government has had to revamp the logistics of drone deliveries to get more of them to points-heavy units.

“They started killing so quickly that Ukraine does not have time to deliver new drones,” Fedorov said.

It also helps improve the military's verified data on the destruction of Russian targets in real time — boosting battlefield awareness.

The Ukrainian government is continually tweaking the system to make it deadlier.

“For example, we have increased the number of points for infantry elimination from two to six, and that has doubled the number of destroyed enemies in one month,” Fedorov said. “This is not just a system of motivation, this is a mechanism that changes the rules of war.”

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 2:42 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russian troops ordered to attack everywhere — Dykyi on what to expect

Author: Alex Stezhensky | May 2, 2025, 09:36 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-orders-advances-on-all-fronts-in-p
ush-to-shape-talks-expert-warns-50511019.html

Yevhen Dykyi, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, former company commander in the Aidar [NEO NAZI] Battalion...


How the fuck would he know about ... anything? Strategic orders? Troop strength?

Are we supposed to think that Russian General Staff tells him anything?

-----------
"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, May 4, 2025 7:45 PM

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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:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russian troops ordered to attack everywhere — Dykyi on what to expect

Author: Alex Stezhensky | May 2, 2025, 09:36 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-orders-advances-on-all-fronts-in-p
ush-to-shape-talks-expert-warns-50511019.html

Yevhen Dykyi, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, former company commander in the Aidar [NEO NAZI] Battalion...


How the fuck would he know about ... anything? Strategic orders? Troop strength?

Are we supposed to think that Russian General Staff tells him anything?
Putin was on TV telling the world his plans. You don't have to be a mind-reader.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 7:45 PM

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


Signym, the War won’t conclude in a year. Putin is convinced that war will go on and on and on some more.

Kremlin journalist Pavel Zarubin published a documentary on Russian state TV channel Rossiya 1 about Putin on May 4, in which Putin claimed that Russia has enough manpower and materiel to bring the war in Ukraine to its "logical conclusion with the result that Russia needs."[1]

Putin highlighted domestic support for the war and promoted the ideal of sacrifice on the frontline and the home front, likely in an effort to prepare Russian society for a longer war in Ukraine and potential future confrontations with the West. Putin told Zarubin that Russian society reacted positively to the invasion of Ukraine and that each citizen realized that "he is the state" and Russia's survival depends on each individual.[5] Putin stated that Russia is a country of "moral and ethical values" and that the basis of the Russian conscience is "the family, the state, and the future of Russia."[6] Putin is notably attempting to frame the Russian public's support for the war through shared values despite the Kremlin's reliance on financial incentives to recruit the majority of its military personnel and to maintain its war effort.[7] Putin accused the West once again of "deceiving" Russia following the 2015 Minsk agreements, likely in an effort to convince the Russian domestic audience that Russia cannot negotiate with the West and needs to continue the war.[8]

Putin's statements throughout the documentary indicate that Putin likely does not intend to slow offensive operations or transition to defensive operations in Ukraine and instead is attempting to ideologically prepare domestic Russian society for a long war. ISW has previously assessed that Russian officials are setting conditions to maintain a long war and to justify future aggression against Ukraine and NATO.[9] Russian officials have also consistently intensified efforts to militarize Russian society since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, further indicating that Russia is preparing for a protracted conflict. Russian officials are engaged in long-term efforts to consolidate control over Russia’s veteran civil society and elevate a cadre of loyal veterans to positions in Russia's regional and federal government.[10] Putin officially declared 2025 the "Year of the Defender of the Fatherland," following the launch of myriad militaristic initiatives in 2023 and 2024 to provide veterans with social and financial support and reinforce the Russian state narrative that veterans are the new "elite" class.[11] Russia is also investing heavily in military-patriotic education for Russia’s youth, demonstrating the Kremlin's interest in creating a new generation of militarized, loyal citizens in the medium to long term.[12]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-may-4-2025

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 8:03 PM

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


More American Air Defense Is on the Way to Help Ukraine

A Patriot air-defense system is moving from Israel to Ukraine, and Western allies are discussing the logistics of getting Germany or Greece to send another.

By Kim Barker, Helene Cooper, Lara Jakes, Eric Schmitt | May 4, 2025 12:37 p.m. ET

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/04/world/europe/ukraine-russia-war-pat
riot-systems.html

Ukraine is getting more help in its war with Russia.

A Patriot air-defense system that was based in Israel will be sent to Ukraine after it is refurbished, four current and former U.S. officials said in recent days, and Western allies are discussing the logistics of Germany or Greece giving another one.

The officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the discussions, declined to describe President Trump’s view of the decision to transfer more Patriot systems to Ukraine.

The White House’s National Security Council does not provide details on the strength and placement of defense systems, said James Hewitt, a spokesman for the council. “President Trump has been clear: he wants the war in Ukraine to end and the killing to stop,” he said.

A former White House official said that the Biden administration had secured the agreement with Israel in September, before the election won by Mr. Trump. The Defense Department said in a statement that “it continues to provide equipment to Ukraine from previously authorized” packages, referring to weaponry pulled from existing inventories and new purchases.

The delivery, which has not been previously reported, comes as Russia has stepped up its attacks on Ukraine, including an April 24 missile strike on Kyiv that was the deadliest since last summer.

A year ago, allies struggled to answer a demand by President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine for seven Patriot systems. Although Ukraine now has eight, only six are functioning. The other two are being refurbished, one of the U.S. officials said. With the one from Israel, and one from Germany or Greece, Ukraine would have 10 Patriot systems in total, largely to protect the capital, Kyiv.

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

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Sunday, May 4, 2025 8:38 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Russian troops ordered to attack everywhere — Dykyi on what to expect

Author: Alex Stezhensky | May 2, 2025, 09:36 AM

https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-orders-advances-on-all-fronts-in-p
ush-to-shape-talks-expert-warns-50511019.html

Yevhen Dykyi, a veteran of the Russian-Ukrainian war, former company commander in the Aidar [NEO NAZI] Battalion...


How the fuck would he know about ... anything? Strategic orders? Troop strength?

Are we supposed to think that Russian General Staff tells him anything?
Putin was on TV telling the world his plans. You don't have to be a mind-reader.


Then quote Putin.

Unless he's not saying the same thing.

/smirk

-----------
"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, May 4, 2025 9:23 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


haha!

Don't expect somebody who will still tell you in 2025 that Trump said there were fine people on both sides to quote you anything that Putin has actually had to say on any topic.


*And yes, stupid Ted. I know that this string of words came out of his mouth in that order, but I'm referring to you morons taking a 5-second out of context clip and still lying about the meaning and/or allowing yourself to be lied to about it all these years later.

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

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:05 AM

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


May 4, 2025
The Kyiv Independent’s Anna Belokur dives into the top stories of this week from the intensifying Russian spring offensive to the shocking torture and murder of Ukrainian journalist Viktoriia Roschyna. Also, the long-gestating minerals deal has finally been signed, what is in it and is it a good deal for Ukraine? All this and more in this week’s episode of Ukraine This Week.



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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:08 AM

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Zelensky and First Lady Olena Zelenska arrived in the Czech Republic on May 4 for an official visit with Pavel. A Czech ammunition initiative will deliver up to 1.8 million artillery shells to Ukraine by the end of 2025, Pavel said at the visit.

"Russia should know that we are expecting three million artillery shells from our allies. Not only North Korea is capable of helping in the war, we have allies who are helping Ukraine," Zelensky said.

https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-expects-3-million-shells-zelensky-
says/

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

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Monday, May 5, 2025 5:20 AM

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West believes Putin cannot agree to peace due to threat of domestic political issues – Bild

By Ivan Diakonov — Monday, 5 May 2025, 06:53

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/05/5/7510604/

The United States has been urging Russia to stop its aggression against Ukraine and agree to a peace deal. Meanwhile, there has been growing conviction within Western government circles that Russian leader Vladimir Putin's regime is unable to end the war without serious political consequences inside the country.

Source: German tabloid Bild https://www.bild.de/politik/ausland-und-internationales/wenn-der-krieg
-endet-hat-putin-ein-problem-blockiert-er-deshalb-den-friedensdeal-68109e7c3e4aff02aa6cc535

Details: Bild noted that Russia shows no willingness to compromise despite international pressure. According to Bild, high-ranking Western government circles believe the reason lies in deep internal factors: political, economic and social.

Quote: "This is because Russia has not yet achieved its military objectives. The defence industry has been inflated with huge investments. Hundreds of thousands of Russians are making good money from the war. All of this makes it very difficult for Putin to find a path to compromise."

Details: According to Russian economists, if the sectors dominated by the defence industry are excluded from the analysis, Russia's economy is effectively in a state of recession. A downturn is evident in many industries, such as food production, coal, building materials, metal products and machinery manufacturing.

"Production is falling! Only the defence industry is masking the decline," Bild said.

According to economist Alexandra Prokopenko from the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, who worked at the Central Bank of Russia until 2022, the belief that ending the war would automatically lead to the collapse of the defence industry is exaggerated.

Experts believe that an additional threat to Putin's regime comes from war veterans. Many of them, upon returning from the line of contact, may become a source of social instability, especially in regions with low living standards and limited economic prospects.

"Dealing with veterans returning after the end of the war is likely to become a challenge for Putin," said Margaret Klein, an expert on Russia at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

"Those who went to the line of contact as volunteers often received payments several times higher than the average salary. This concerns not only increased wages but also one-off recruitment bonuses amounting to over €40,000," Klein noted.

According to her, the risk of a wave of violence increases if the Kremlin cannot offer these people an economic future.

Quote from Klein: "The number of violent crimes has increased since Russia's full-scale invasion. There is a real danger that some of the veterans – like those who fought in Afghanistan or Chechnya – will become involved in [organised] crime."

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 7:10 AM

SECOND

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


Russia is forcibly deporting Ukrainian civilians from occupied Ukraine to Russia while engaging in a deeply systematic and institutionalized policy of torture against Ukrainians held in Russian detention. The Viktoriia Project, a journalism collective comprised of 13 media outlets including the Guardian, Le Monde, and the Washington Post, published an investigation on April 30 detailing Russia’s systematic use of torture against Ukrainian prisoners at 29 identified Russian-run prisons—18 in Russia and 11 in occupied Ukraine.[1] The investigation found that Russia is holding a majority of the 16,000 detained Ukrainian civilians for months or years without any formal charges except the allegation of “opposing the special military operation” at as many as 180 separate sites in occupied Ukraine and Russia, including the prison in Taganrog, Rostov Oblast, where Russia tortured and killed Ukrainian investigative journalist Viktoriia Roshchyna (after whom the Viktoriia Project is named).[2] The Viktoriia Project also found that Russia has used 695 separate forms of torture, resulting in multiple fatalities at these facilities. ISW previously reported that Russian agents are likely conducting systematic Soviet-era torture practices, including beatings, humiliation, electric shocks, and dog attacks against Ukrainian prisoners of war (POWs) and civilians detained in occupied territories and Russia.[3] Legal experts told the Viktoriia Project that there is no official crime in the Russian legal code for “opposing the special military operation,” highlighting the apparent illegality of these actions even under Russian domestic law. Russia’s mass imprisonment of Ukrainians on legally dubious grounds likely also violates international legal prohibitions on arbitrary detention and deprivation of liberty and may additionally constitute illegal deportation, as Russia is removing Ukrainians from their homes to Russian-controlled institutions en masse.[4] Russia is a signatory to the Fourth Geneva Convention, which prohibits both the forcible transfer/removal and the deportation of occupied populations by the occupying power.[5]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-occupation-updat
e-may-5-2025

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 7:12 AM

SECOND

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


How Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn Became Putin’s Spiritual Guru

The strange story of a global literary hero who went on to inspire Russia’s war on Ukraine.

By Casey Michel | April 7, 2024, 7:00 AM

https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/04/07/putin-russia-nationalism-solzheni
tsyn-became-putins-spiritual-guru-ukraine/

In 1990, as the Soviet Union hurdled toward its final crackup, a renowned Russian writer sketched out a plan for a post-Soviet future. As this author outlined, Russia must toss off its Soviet shackles by voting out the reeling Communist Party and enacting a wholesale restructuring of the economy. Additionally, the author added, the Kremlin should let a range of Moscow’s former colonies go free, most especially in places like the Baltics, the Caucasus, and across much of Central Asia.

Other borders, however, would be up for grabs. Chunks of northern Kazakhstan—areas, according to the writer, that were never truly Kazakh—should revert to Russia. So, too, should Belarus, which was hardly a distinct nation from Russia. Most importantly, swaths of Ukraine remained rightfully Russian, from eastern Ukraine to Crimea and beyond—even up to and including Kyiv. All of these lands comprised traditional Russian holdings. And all of them, this writer proposed, should comprise a future “Russian Union”—not only returning millions of ethnic Russians suddenly outside the Russian Federation’s borders to their homeland, but restoring Moscow to its rightful place in the world.

At the time, these policy proposals generated little interest, or even concern, in the West. On the one hand, that oversight is understandable, given that the West was primarily focused on securing a stable Soviet disintegration. But on the other hand, the ignorance is almost shocking, given that the author of such a blueprint, bundled into a book called Rebuilding Russia, was Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the Nobel Prize-winning author and the “dominant writer of the 20th century,” as New Yorker editor David Remnick once described him. Download the book from the mirrors at https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Solzhenitsyn+Rebuilding+Russia

While much of Solzhenitsyn’s work—not least Gulag Archipelago, as well as books like Cancer Ward and One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich—remains widely dissected and discussed, Rebuilding Russia is arguably his most overlooked read. And given how closely the Kremlin has hewed to Solzhenitsyn’s policy recommendations in Rebuilding Russia in the years since, that oversight is all the more unfortunate—not least because of what it tells us about what the Kremlin wants in Ukraine, and even beyond.

The book itself is relatively scant, with its English translation coming in at around 90 pages—more of a manifesto than a fully developed manuscript. But even in those pages, Solzhenitsyn reveals himself not only as a Russian nationalist, but as someone who dabbles in the kinds of conspiracies and mysticism that would later saturate Russian President Vladimir Putin. Like Putin, Solzhenitsyn approvingly cites Russian fascists like Ivan Ilyin, praising the “spiritual life of a nation.” He also claims that many of the smaller nations colonized by tsarist-era Russian forces “lived well” in the Russian Empire—wholly ignoring how Russian forces brutalized entire nations in northern Asia, stripping them of population and sovereignty alike, even to the point of genocide. He even wrote that countries like Kazakhstan were “stitched together … in a completely haphazard fashion”—downplaying Kazakhs’ historic claims not only to their modern country, but even to formerly Kazakh territory still considered part of the Russian Federation.

But it is in Ukraine—and in Solzhenitsyn’s calls for a Russian Union—that Solzhenitsyn’s revanchism shines through and provides insight into the forces propelling the Kremlin and designs to come. Like many other writers, including figures such as Alexander Pushkin and Joseph Brodsky, Solzhenitsyn drenched his writings on Ukraine in unabashed Russian chauvinism. In a talking point that other Russian nationalists would later pick up, Solzhenitsyn blamed both the “Mongol invasion” and “Polish colonization” for breaking apart Russians and Ukrainians (as well as Belarusians), dividing “our people” into “three branches.” Ignoring centuries of scholarship, Solzhenitsyn wrote, “All the talk of a separate Ukrainian people existing since something like the ninth century and possessing its own non-Russian language is a recently invented falsehood.” Previous attempts at Ukrainian independence were elite-driven, top-down affairs—done “without soliciting the opinion of the population at large”—while the more modern efforts to create a separate Ukrainian state were nothing more than campaigns “to lop [Ukraine] off from a living organism,” a “cruel partition” that would shred apart “the lives of millions of individuals and families.”

Instead of an independent Ukraine separating from the Russian Federation, Solzhenitsyn wrote, a new entity should rise. “There will remain nothing but an entity that might be called Rus, as it was designated in olden times … or else ‘Russia,’ a name used since the eighteenth century,” he wrote, “or—for an accurate reflection of the new circumstances—the ‘Russian Union.’”

Rather than writing for Western audiences, who’d previously praised his work exposing Soviet criminality, Solzhenitsyn put Rebuilding Russia together solely for Russian audiences. And they immediately lapped it up. With nearly 20 million copies printed, Russian readers devoured Solzhenitsyn’s calls to expand Russia’s borders and to restore the “spiritual and physical salvation of our own people.” Among those readers were soon-to-be Russian President Boris Yeltsin, for whom the book “had a big impact,” according to historian Vladislav Zubok, arguing as it did that Ukrainians and Russians were simply “one nation divided by geopolitical calamities and foreign conquest.”

So, too, did Solzhenitsyn’s policy proposals influence another future Russian president: Putin. While it’s unclear if Putin ever read Solzhenitsyn’s work, the current Kremlin chief was clearly a fan of Solzhenitsyn’s policy recommendations—and especially his nationalism.

It’s not difficult to see how Solzhenitsyn became, as one analyst wrote, Putin’s “spiritual guru.” Not only was Solzhenitsyn an “undoubted Russian nationalist,” as Robin Ashenden noted, but as the years passed following the publishing of Rebuilding Russia, Solzhenitsyn collapsed further and further into the kind of nationalist mania that would later drive Putin. By the mid-1990s, Solzhenitsyn began claiming that the Soviet collapse was propelled by the U.S.’s “common aim” to “use all means possible, no matter what the consequences, to weaken Russia.” (This, of course, ignores the fact that the George H.W. Bush administration not only tried to keep the Soviet Union together but actively pushed back against Ukrainian separatism.) Not long later, Solzhenitsyn sputtered that Ukraine’s democratic Orange Revolution was little more than a sign of NATO’s “plan to encircle Russia”—and that, in reality, “vast tracts of land, which have never been part of historical Ukraine,” were “forcibly incorporated into the modern Ukrainian state and into its policy of acquiring NATO membership at any cost.”

Years later, Solzhenitsyn’s comments are almost indistinguishable from Putin’s rhetoric about Ukraine. Like Solzhenitsyn, Putin views Ukrainian territories such as Crimea and so-called Novorossiya as rightfully Russian. Like Solzhenitsyn, Putin believes that ethnic Russians in Ukraine face the “fanatical suppression and persecution of the Russian language.” And like Solzhenitsyn, Putin believed Russia could “under no circumstances … renounce our unity” with ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Small wonder, then, that by the 2000s Solzhenitsyn had come out as a fan of Putin’s policies. Praising Putin’s “resurrection of Russia,” Solzhenitsyn accepted a state prize for cultural achievements from the Kremlin and was “deployed as part of the Kremlin’s counterrevolutionary strategy.” The famed author had become “the unofficial leader of the Russian nationalist intelligentsia,” Tomiwa Owolade wrote.

Putin chats with Solzhenitsyn at his suburban home near Moscow on Sept. 20, 2000. AFP via Getty Images

All of it culminated in a direct meeting between Putin and Solzhenitsyn, shortly before the latter’s death in 2008. Sitting at a small table, flanked by shelves upon shelves of books, Putin spoke with the ailing writer “about [Russia’s] future.” It was, at least in part, a future Solzhenitsyn had once called for. As Putin outlined, many of the policies he was pursuing—including policies regarding Russia’s former colonies, now scattered across Eastern Europe and the Caucasus and Central Asia—were “to a large extent harmonious with Solzhenitsyn’s writings.”

Russian President Vladimir Putin speaks during the opening ceremony of a new monument to Solzhenitsyn in Moscow on Dec. 11, 2018. Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images

It’s too much to say that Putin has relied solely on Solzhenitsyn’s blueprints for his monomaniacal obsession with Ukraine and for unleashing the most devastating war Europe has seen in nearly a century. The roots of Russian nationalism run far deeper than any one writer and long predate the work of even Solzhenitsyn.

But it’s clear that Solzhenitsyn—an author of unparalleled stature, especially in a collapsing Soviet Union—structured the diffuse strands of Russian nationalism in a way that proved irresistible to future Russian leaders, and to future Russian revanchists. Calling for, and even excusing, Russian irredentism, Solzhenitsyn helped lay the groundwork in 1990 for the neo-imperialism to come—and for the continued, widespread Russian belief in the subordination and inherent falsehood of a modern, independent Ukraine.

Solzhenitsyn’s defenders will point to his passages in Rebuilding Russia that downplayed militarism as a means of expanding Russia’s borders. (“Of course, if the Ukrainian people should genuinely wish to separate, no one would dare to restrain them by force,” he wrote.) But even that defense is suspect; years after Ukrainians in places like Crimea and the Donbas clearly voted for independence from Moscow, Solzhenitsyn still refused to view these regions as rightfully Ukrainian. And given his continued support for Putin in his later years—even after the Russian president claimed that Ukraine was “not even a country”—that defense hardly remains credible.

What’s even more indefensible, however, is how the West ignored and downplayed Solzhenitsyn’s unrepentant nationalism in the post-Soviet period. Distracted by Solzhenitsyn’s anti-Soviet credentials, the West missed the imperial outlines the author had sketched—and how they infused the Kremlin in the years following. Instead of confronting Solzhenitsyn’s revanchism head-on, the West—just as it’s done with so many other Russian nationalists, even after Putin’s expanded invasion in 2022—preferred to look the other way, hoping the flames feeding such views would die out on their own.

But it’s been over three decades since Solzhenitsyn first called for his Russian Union, and those flames hardly show signs of extinguishing any time soon. If anything, Putin has only hurdled further and further into the abyss that Solzhenitsyn first laid out, with no signs of stopping. Which is why Solzhenitsyn’s playbook, and Putin’s willingness to follow, must be viewed for exactly what they are—an unmitigated threat to stability in Europe and to the idea of Ukrainian (or even Belarusian and Kazakh) nationhood itself. And while Solzhenitsyn never lived to see his Russian Union return, it’s not for Putin’s lack of trying—and it’s only thanks to the sacrifice of Ukrainians themselves that we haven’t, either.

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

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 2:30 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
nThe Viktoriia Project, a journalism collective comprised of 13 media outlets including the Guardian [MI6], Le Monde [globalist neocon], and the Washington Post [CIA] ...


Now THAT'S what I call objective journalism!


It's impossible for me to get thru the first sentence of your posts, SECOND. Either make them really short, or make them more truthful.

This journalist who was supposedly tortured ... Russians released her body to Ukraine. If they had really tortured her, do you honestly think they would have released her body?

People die in Russian prisons. They're not nice places and they've filled with hardened criminals.



-----------
"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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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 2:48 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Meanwhile ...

Zelensky rejects 3-day cease fire
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/zelensky-rejects-putins-ceasefire
-as-mere-showmanship/ar-AA1E6ls6

Zelensky rejects unconditional negotiations with Russia
https://www.bbc.com/news/live/clynp1nldmxt

Zelenskys's MO: when you're not winning militarily, resort to SECOND-like threats of terrorism.
Quote:
Ukraine not responsible for safety of foreign officials traveling to Moscow for May 9 parade, Zelensky says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine cannot guarantee the safety of foreign officials planning to attend Russia’s Victory Day parade in Moscow on May 9, warning that any incidents on Russian territory fall solely under the Kremlin’s control, Interfax Ukraine reported on May 3.

“Our position is very simple for all countries traveling to Russia on May 9: We cannot be held responsible for what happens on the territory of the Russian Federation,” Zelensky said during a briefing with journalists. “They are responsible for your safety. We will not provide any guarantees, because we do not know what Russia might do on those dates.”

Zelensky cautioned that Russia could orchestrate provocations, including “arsons, explosions, or other actions,” and then attempt to blame Ukraine. He said Kyiv has advised visiting delegations accordingly.

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government has reportedly invited numerous foreign leaders to attend commemorative events marking the 80th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. Among the invited guests are leaders from EU member Slovakia, EU candidate Serbia, as well as China, India, and Brazil.

“I told the foreign minister that when countries reach out to us, we must clearly state: ‘We do not recommend visiting Russia from a (security) standpoint. And if you choose to go, that is your personal decision — do not ask us for guarantees,’” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader emphasized that Ukraine has shown respect toward nations that have remained neutral or aligned with Russia due to historic ties, including China, and that Kyiv continues to engage in diplomatic dialogue with those states.

“But Ukraine bears no responsibility for what happens inside Russia. That is a fact,” Zelensky added. “Moreover, I am sure that other countries engage in the same diplomacy with the Russians when they come to us, and experience shows that we have had many different leaders, and during their visits there were various formats of attacks, assaults, intimidation.”

In March 2024, Russia launched a missile strike on Odesa during a visit by Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis, killing five people. The explosion occurred just moments after Greek PM and President Zelensky toured the city’s port.

Russia celebrates the end of World War II in Europe on May 9, marking the occasion with pompous military parades. Most other European nations, including Ukraine, mark May 8 as Victory in Europe Day.


https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-not-responsible-for-safety-of-fore
ign-officials-traveling-to-moscow-for-may-9-parade-zelensky/

IF people are killed in Moscow, and/or foreign dignitaries are attacked, everyone will know that this was Ukraine's doing. No matter how much preventive blame-shifting Zelensky tries.

In the meantime, Putin (in interview with Zarubin) explained why Russia didn't respond to provocations. (And probably wouldn't respond to a May 9 provocation too.)

Quote:
They wanted to provoke us, to push us into making mistakes. But there was no need to use the kind of weapons you’re referring to — and I hope there won’t be. We have enough strength and resources to bring what we started in 2022 to a logical conclusion, and to achieve the outcome Russia needs.


https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/05/05/they-wanted-to-provoke-us


-----------
"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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Tuesday, May 6, 2025 2:51 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.




-----------
"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, May 7, 2025 5:23 AM

SECOND

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


Russian Security Council Secretary and former Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu published an op-ed in the official Russian government newspaper Rossiyskaya Gazeta on May 6, arguing that military and political unity against a common enemy is Russia's only path to a strong and victorious future.[8]

Shoigu repeatedly juxtaposed the Red Army's defeat of Nazi Germany in the Second World War (referred to as the Great Patriotic War in Russia) with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Shoigu extolled the Soviet State Defense Committee's (an executive governing body established following Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union) "strictly centralized framework" that ensured effective coordination and implementation of orders on the frontline and the home front.

Shoigu stated that Russian public consciousness experienced a national identity crisis following the fall of the Soviet Union and underscored the importance of preserving and strengthening traditional Russian spiritual and moral values to resolve this crisis and form an unofficial Russian state ideology (the Russian constitution forbids the adoption of a formal state ideology).[9]

Shoigu reiterated Russian narratives designed to justify Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and accused the collective West of preparing for a direct military conflict with Russia and seeking to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia.

The Kremlin appears to be consolidating around an informal state ideology predicated on perpetuating the belief that the West is determined to encircle and defeat Russia.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-may-6-2025

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 5:39 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:

Now THAT'S what I call objective journalism!


It's impossible for me to get thru the first sentence of your posts, SECOND. Either make them really short, or make them more truthful.

This journalist who was supposedly tortured ... Russians released her body to Ukraine. If they had really tortured her, do you honestly think they would have released her body?

People die in Russian prisons. They're not nice places and they've filled with hardened criminals.
Murderers and Torturers — Why Are Russian Troops So Bestial?

Why are Russian soldiers so incredibly brutal and what does this say about the culture of the Kremlin’s military?

By Julius Strauss | March 18, 2025

https://cepa.org/article/murderers-and-torturers-why-are-russian-troop
s-so-bestial/

It makes for haunting viewing.?

A Russian soldier, almost certainly a 32-year-old father-of-two-daughters called Oleg Yakovlev from the city of Saratov, shouts “Film me! Film me!” as a Ukrainian captive, one of six who have surrendered, walks slowly away from him.

As a member of his squad films, Yakovlev raises his Kalashnikov assault rifle and riddles the unarmed Ukrainian with bullets. Another Russian soldier shouts: “Leave one for me!”?

. . .

The roots of Russian military brutality run deep. During World War II, the Red Army earned a reputation for its harsh treatment of both enemies and civilians. As Soviet soldiers advanced through Eastern Europe, they left a trail of destruction, including widespread rape and looting.

Stalin once infamously suggested that rape was a reward for Soviet soldiers liberating Eastern Europe from the Nazis. In cities from Berlin to Budapest hundreds of thousands of women were brutally abused. Those who resisted were shot.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 5:42 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:

Now THAT'S what I call objective journalism!


It's impossible for me to get thru the first sentence of your posts, SECOND. Either make them really short, or make them more truthful.

This journalist who was supposedly tortured ... Russians released her body to Ukraine. If they had really tortured her, do you honestly think they would have released her body?

People die in Russian prisons. They're not nice places and they've filled with hardened criminals.
‘False choice’: GOP congressman breaks ranks to deliver Trump history lesson in NY Times

By Adam Nichols | March 31, 2025 6:47AM ET

https://www.rawstory.com/don-bacon-trump-2671641438/

A Republican congressman representing deep red Nebraska took to the New York Times Monday in an effort to convince President Donald Trump to backtrack on current Ukraine policy.

Rep. Don Bacon urged Trump to resist capitulating to Russian President Vladimir Putin — and he delivered a history lesson in an attempt to persuade him. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/31/opinion/ukraine-putin-trump-republi
cans.html

“The United States must firmly oppose any approach that rewards Mr. Putin for his ruthless aggression,” Bacon, a vocal Trump supporter, wrote in an opinion piece.

“In recent weeks, too many of my fellow Republicans — including Mr. Trump — have treated Russia with velvet gloves, shying away from calling out Mr. Putin’s flatly illegal war and even blaming Ukraine for starting it.

“As the White House works to end the fighting and forge a just and durable peace, my party must reaffirm our commitment to opposing Mr. Putin’s expansionism and to supporting Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty.”

He then laid out a history of Russia’s brutal repression of Ukraine, the nation Putin invaded three years ago and in which a bloody war is still waging. Trump has signalled he’s willing to make a deal with Russia in an attempt to end it.

Bacon described the deaths of up to five million Ukrainians under Joseph Stalin’s rule in the 1930s, followed by a life “blighted by collectivization, disappearances, executions and gulags,” up to the fall of the Soviet Union.

He then detailed the 1994 pact that “extended explicit security guarantees for Ukraine — including a commitment by Russia to respect its borders — in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.”

“The United States and the rest of Europe shamelessly abandoned these security commitments when Mr. Putin ordered the Russian military to annex and occupy the Crimean Peninsula,” Bacon wrote.

“ … This history makes clear that America has a moral obligation to continue providing aid to Ukraine until Russia commits to fair and just peace negotiations. That means including Ukraine in the conversation.”

“As the war enters its fourth year, Americans understandably question why the United States should continue supporting Kyiv,” Bacon wrote.

“They ask whether we can afford it, whether it’s our fight or whether Ukraine’s fate truly matters to them.

"To me, the answer is simple: Supporting Ukraine in its struggle against Russian aggression is not only morally right. It is also in our national interest, because the future cost of abandoning Ukraine would vastly outweigh the investment we have made in rejecting Russia’s aggression.”

He concluded, “Peace won’t be easy, but we must reject the trap of making a false choice. It is possible to end the war for Ukraine, preserve our moral clarity by holding Russia accountable and advance America’s long-term national interests in the process. This is a Ronald Reagan moment.”

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 5:52 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:

Now THAT'S what I call objective journalism!


It's impossible for me to get thru the first sentence of your posts, SECOND. Either make them really short, or make them more truthful.

This journalist who was supposedly tortured ... Russians released her body to Ukraine. If they had really tortured her, do you honestly think they would have released her body?

People die in Russian prisons. They're not nice places and they've filled with hardened criminals.
Russia killed 62 million of its own citizens.
From the book Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from http://libgen.rs/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/

1 61,911,000 Victims: Utopianism Empowered, 1917-1987

2 3,284,000 Victims: The Civil War Period, 1917-1922

3 2,200,000 Victims: The NEP Period 1923-1928

4 11,440,000 Victims: The Collectivization Period, 1929-1935

5 4,345,000 Victims: The Great Terror Period 1936-1938

6 5,104,000 Victims: Pre-World War II Period 1939-June 1941

7 13,053,000 Victims: World War II Period, June 1941-1945

8 15,613,000 Victims: Postwar and Stalin’s Twilight Period, 1945-1953

9 6,872,000 Victims: Post-Stalin Period, 1954-1987

Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 by R. J. Rummel
Download the free book from http://libgen.is/search.php?req=R.+J.+Rummel
Or buy at
https://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Politics-Soviet-Genocide-Murder-ebook/dp
/B073RQ94KF/

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 6:05 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


One of these days you'll stop,osting bullshit.

Today is not that day.

-----------
"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, May 7, 2025 1:23 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of these days you'll stop, posting bullshit.

Today is not that day.
You should copy Trump's all-purpose refutation of Truth. He writes and says "Fake News". Trumptards are convinced by those two words because they, at least the ones I know, are faking their way in life toward an early and well-deserved death. Trumptards Make America Great Again, one dead Trumptard at a time.

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 1:23 PM

SECOND

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


Europeans Have Realized Their Error

The urge to say I told you so is strong these days throughout the Baltics.

By Graeme Wood | May 7, 2025, 9:20 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2025/05/baltic-count
ries-russia-us-nato/682719/

Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are such tiny countries that if Russia wished to take a bite out of them, as it took bites out of Georgia in 2008 and Ukraine in 2014 and 2022, it would simply swallow them whole. To make themselves less toothsome, they have armed themselves and forged alliances with Europe and the United States. But the American side of that alliance suddenly looked less dependable in March, when President Donald Trump dressed down the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office and accused him of starting the war that began with his own country’s invasion. If that scene looked catastrophic in Washington or Kyiv, consider how it might have looked from the Baltics.

Soon after, I visited these states to find out how they planned to survive with the American support of their security in question. Russia parted with these states reluctantly in 1991, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has called their alliance with NATO “a serious provocation”—language and logic identical to his rationale for attacking Ukraine. In Washington, opponents of Trump and friends of Ukraine were enraged by his reversal, and freaked out by it. In the Baltics, the concern was more muted, and even top diplomats acknowledged upsides to Europe’s frantic race to rearm itself.

“Everyone understands now,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told me, “that there is no situation anymore where someone else is coming to solve” Europe’s problems. He said Estonia understood this reality long ago, and welcomed the belated realization by others. “I personally like this change of attitude.”

A certain amount of optimism must be a psychological necessity for leaders of the Baltic states. They share borders with Russia and its partner Belarus, and unlike Ukraine, they do not have hundreds of miles of steppe between Russia and their capitals. The Baltic states are tiny, each about the size of West Virginia. During the past century, the Baltic states were ruled from Moscow, and they would like to avoid that fate in the future.

In 1968, the historian Robert Conquest published The Great Terror, at the time the most unsparing account of the state-directed megadeath supervised by Joseph Stalin in the 1930s. After the book’s publication, some readers remained skeptical: Could the Soviet Union have been that bad? In fact, it was worse. But for years before his vindication, Conquest was accused of Russophobia. After glasnost, when he revised his old book, his publisher asked him to come up with a snappy new title. His friend Kingsley Amis suggested I Told You So You Fucking Fools. (The publisher eventually went with The Great Terror: A Reassessment.) Free Download from https://libgen.rs/search.php?req=Robert+Conquest&column=author

The urge to say I told you so, with or without accompanying expletives, is strong these days throughout the Baltics. The three former Soviet republics have, like Conquest, found themselves vindicated after years of accusing Moscow of planning and committing a wide range of sins. Could Putin really be planning, as Baltic leaders had suggested for years, to invade and retake the former Soviet states? In fact he was. All three republics—members of NATO since 2004—have supported Ukraine vigorously since its 2022 invasion. All three have taken only the coldest comfort in knowing that their warnings were true.

Already Baltic governments have encouraged their citizens to stock enough food in their home to weather an emergency, and to have plans for rendezvous outside the capitals. “It’s not an easy talk to have with your family,” Deividas Škelys, a defense analyst in Lithuania, told me. “People become scared, because suddenly it’s not a movie anymore. It’s reality.” It helps to have still-living memories of Soviet rule. In Tallinn, the signs of mental preparation for a Russian invasion are omnipresent. About a quarter of the Estonian population is ethnic Russian; they speak Russian at home, and in many cases they maintain close connections to Russians in Russia. But in public spaces, the Russian Federation and the Soviet Union are roundly despised. Estonia maintains a state museum dedicated to the evils of the Soviets and their suppression of Estonian nationhood and identity. It equates Communism with Nazism and spends much more time on documenting the crimes of the former. During an intermission at the Tallinn opera, an older Estonian man caught me staring up at the sprawling, Soviet-era socialist realist ceiling mural, which depicts Communism triumphant. He pointed out a smudgy area where a Leninist slogan (“Art belongs to the people”) had recently been effaced in an ongoing effort to de-Russify.

“We have been living here 7,000 years and have never witnessed any good things coming to Europe from the east,” Tsahkna told me. He was previously Estonia’s defense minister, from 2016 to 2017, and said the sight of Russians mustering at the border had long concentrated the Estonian collective mind. At that point, on the other side of the border, there were “120,000 troops ready to go within 48 hours.” But he said Estonia and its Baltic neighbors were constantly assured that the era of war in Europe had passed, and that their concerns no longer applied. Europe “didn’t believe a full-scale brutal war, like what we saw last time during the Second World War, was possible.”

Now, Tsahkna said, his European allies have realized their error. When I visited the Baltics, Germany’s Parliament had just voted to spend about $1 trillion on its military—a budgetary allocation that would have been inconceivable before the invasion. And on the streets of Baltic capitals, one sees NATO soldiers constantly. I met German soldiers, in uniform, at a café in Vilnius. In Tallinn, at the airport, British soldiers were eating hamburgers in the food court, and Prince William, colonel in chief of the Mercian Regiment, was in town to inspect his troops at a British camp just 100 miles from the Russian border. American soldiers are on the border with Belarus.

But is Europeans’ coming to their senses enough to compensate for Americans’ losing theirs? Tsahkna seemed remarkably blasé about the American president’s having begun to repeat Kremlin propaganda wholesale and assert, ludicrously, that Ukraine started the war with Russia. But Tsahkna told me Estonia had in many ways improved its position since the beginning of the Ukraine war—and he denied that Trump’s preposterous assertions and constant questioning of the value of NATO were significant. “I don’t see a change in America’s commitment to NATO,” he said. He noted that Trump called himself “very committed” to NATO in the meeting where he argued with Zelensky. (After Trump said he was “very committed to Poland,” he was asked directly by a reporter at the meeting, “What about the Baltics?” He stammered through a response and said he was “committed to NATO,” conspicuously not mentioning the Baltic states by name.)

Tsahkna pointed out that U.S. troops have been in all three Baltic countries since the annexation of Crimea, and that the first Trump administration had overseen the rise in their numbers. “I’m a practical person, so I look at the agreements we have made, and what I see in real life. What I see is U.S. troops in Estonia.” Before, he said, “we had no permanent presence of NATO troops—no U.S. troops here, no British, no French.” He said Estonia now feels more secure than ever. Equally noteworthy, Tsahkna said, was the decline in the number of Russian troops on the other side of the border. “They are not existing anymore there,” he said, delicately. Then he dropped the euphemism to make sure I saw his point about the 120,000 Russians formerly camped out there. “They were sent to Ukraine. They’re dead.”

“In the last two years,” a defense analyst in Latvia told me, “we have seen Russia go from being the second-strongest army in the world to being the second strongest in Ukraine.” (His joke is part of the standard humor repertoire in the region.) In all three countries, people repeatedly referred to Ukraine as a war that has bought time for other countries that might otherwise have been soft targets for Russia. Škelys, the Lithuanian defense analyst, said that his country had always had plans to mobilize its population and defend itself. But since the Ukraine invasion, that capacity became activated. “We were on sleep mode,” he told me. “Ukraine was supposed to lose in a couple of weeks. But then people rose up. We saw that, and now it’s a much different game in the Baltics.” That time, he said, has not been wasted. “We’re moving in a direction where every single adult citizen knows what to do in time of war: drivers, sausage makers, paramedics. Maybe you are a good IT guy and you’ll be trolling Russian trolls.”

And he agreed with Tsahkna, saying the geopolitical picture had changed in some positive ways since the Ukraine invasion. Poland and Finland have redoubled their support, and the latter joined NATO in 2023 after decades of neutral dithering. Suddenly the idea of taking back the Baltic states became a much more complicated affair. “If you want to attack the Baltics, you have to do something with Poland and Finland,” Škelys said, because keeping control of these small states is impossible with well-armed enemies right next door. “If you want to attack Lithuania, you have to attack Latvia and eastern Poland. It’s become a much bigger game.”

The building of alliances is the opposite of Trumpism. I told Tsahkna, as I was leaving the foreign ministry in Tallinn, that I found it odd that American liberals in Washington were so horrified by Trump’s equivocation over Ukraine, while those actually inside Russia’s artillery range were relatively calm. “Russia has even larger-scale plans for the future,” he assured me, and he said that after its campaign of overwhelming force had proved so underwhelming in Ukraine, it was resorting, as expected, to hybrid warfare: sabotage, espionage, information ops. But he left me with a soft dig at D.C. worrywarts. “We are very practical people,” he said. “We don’t have the luxury to be sad and afraid.”

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 2:24 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
One of these days you'll stop,osting bullshit.

Today is not that day.


Retard 4 lyfe!

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

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 3:09 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


50 countries making drones for Ukraine. 500 drones launched at Russia. Threats against civilians and foreign dignitaries. Assassination threats

Zelensky and the collective west sink to a new low.

No... wait. They've been at this level for years.

Quote:
Russia Thwarts Largest Drone Attack In History, Sparking Airport Chaos, Hours Before Victory Day Ceasefire

Wednesday, May 07, 2025 - 10:00 AM

Hours before Putin's unilaterally declared three-day Victory Day ceasefire is expected to go into effect (starting May 8), Ukraine has launched a huge cross-border drone attack on Russia which has reportedly unleashed air traffic and flight chaos in an around Moscow, as well as other regions.

Russian state media has said several Russian airlines were forced to cancel and reroute dozens of flights late Tuesday into Wednesday, amid off-and-on airport closures and flight stoppages. Russia's anti-air defense systems have been engaged in non-stop intercepts of inbound UAVs from Ukraine.

This marks three consecutive days of drone attacks targeting the capital, at a sensitive moment the Kremlin is preparing to host dozens of world leaders, including Chinese President Xi Jinping, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of WW2.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, are also expected. Venezuela's Maduro is also in Moscow, where he's already met with President Putin.

"Aviation authorities grounded flights at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, Vnukovo, and Zhukovsky airports, as well as in the cities of Nizhny Novgorod, Kirov, Yaroslavl, Kazan," RT confirms.

The same outlet is now saying the last hours have seen the largest drone attack against Russian soil in history...

Apparently hundreds of drones were sent. Moscow has been directly targeted once again, with Mayor Sergey Sobyanin announcing the military intercepted nearly 20 inbound drones on the capital over the last half-day.

Russia’s Federal Air Transport Agency has described of the flight chaos, "The restrictions were imposed to ensure the safety of civil aircraft flights."

The Kremlin has said that Putin's ceasefire offer remains in force, but that the Russian military will undertake the appropriate response if Ukraine doesn't abide by it. Russian officials have condemned Zelensky for appearing to directly threaten Victory Day parades, such as the main televised events in the Red Square.


-----------
"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, May 7, 2025 3:36 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
50 countries making drones for Ukraine. 500 drones launched at Russia. Threats against civilians and foreign dignitaries. Assassination threats

Zelensky and the collective west sink to a new low.

No... wait. They've been at this level for years.
Isn't it too soon for Russians to be celebrating in Victory Parades? Or is 80 years after the last Russian victory too late? Ukrainians, millions who died when Russians murdered them, aren't ready to surrender a second time so that the Russians can murder more millions. See Holodomor for the details of a previous Russian murder-rampage in Ukraine.
https://holodomor.ca/resource/holodomor-basic-facts/

Ukraine Drone Raids Spark Chaos in Russia

By Brendan Cole | May 07, 2025 at 9:50 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/ukraine-russia-drones-swarm-airports-chaos-20
69045

Ukrainian drones fired into Russia have hit military facilities and airbases, disrupted airports, caused internet outages and forced school closures, it has been reported.

Telegram channels have reported the chaos caused by Ukrainian drones ahead of Moscow's May 9 Victory Day celebrations in the Russian capital's Red Square.

Newsweek has contacted the Russian defense ministry for comment.

Why It Matters

The drone attacks by Ukraine come as Russia prepares for Victory Day celebrations marking the end of World War Two.

Ukraine's president Volodymyr Zelensky has said Ukraine could not guarantee the safety of foreign officials planning to attend the Red Square event which will be leveraged as a propaganda tool for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Victory parade preparations appear to include drills on how to evacuate top officials from Red Square, according to east European news outlet NEXTA amid likely nervousness in the Kremlin over whether it's biggest annual display of military might can pass off without a hitch.

What To Know

For a third consecutive day, Russian authorities reported how air defenses had downed Ukrainian drones that were approaching Moscow.

Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said air defenses repelled nine Ukrainian drones overnight Tuesday.

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation, said drones struck Russian strategic defense industry facilities, including weapons and military technology sites.

He said a drone strike hit a plant in Saransk, in the Mordovia region, which produces fiber-optic systems used in military communications, with fires and explosions reported by local residents. Local authorities announced the closures of schools, colleges and universities on Wednesday.

The Ukrainian telegram channel Exilenova+ reported drones attacked the Kubinka military airfield which hosts Sukhoi Su-27 and Mikoyan MiG-29 fighter jets.

Russian authorities rarely acknowledge strikes on military sites but the pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Flightbomber reported the hit on Kubinka, saying areas where personnel and equipment involved in parade preparations were hit.

The Shaikovka airbase in Kaluga region, home to Tupolev Tu-22M3 bombers and storage for missiles like the Khinzal Kh-22, was also struck, according to the Kyiv Post.

Civil Aviation Disrupted

The pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Mash said Ukrainian drones forced mass flight delays and diversions at airports around Moscow.

The Strana Telegram channel said some flights had been delayed for more than 13 hours with dozens of planes queuing on the tarmac for departure and passengers stuck on board without food or water.

Passengers on a flight from Antalya, Turkey were stuck sitting on the plane at St Petersburg's Pulkovo airport, for seven hours after landing and passengers from other flights were forced to spend the night on planes.

Meanwhile, one drone strike hit the airfield in the Moscow region, where aircraft and personnel participating in the parade on May 9 were stationed, according to one Russian Telegram channel.

Drone attacks caused internet outages in Russia's Tula, Yaroslavl and Tver regions, where people have complained of disruptions in phone coverage and ATMs, according to the Telegram channel Ostorozhno Novosti, although there are no reports of casualties.

Ukrainian telegram channels said the Tula attacks had targeted a multiple launch rocket systems manufacturer.

What People Are Saying

Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin on Wednesday: "The air defense forces of the Ministry of Defense repelled a drone attack... flying towards Moscow."

Andriy Kovalenko, head of Ukraine's Center for Countering Disinformation: "Important enterprises of the military-industrial complex were attacked in Russia."

What Happens Next

There will be anticipation over whether Ukraine will continue with drone strikes as Russia gears up for the Victory Day celebrations on Friday.

The Kremlin confirmed Wednesday that it will maintain a ceasefire between midnight May 8 and midnight May 11, a pledge which Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky dismissed as a "theatrical performance."

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

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Wednesday, May 7, 2025 6:32 PM

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


Ukraine’s New Strike Drone Flies 1,000 Miles With A Large Warhead
It’s more efficient than previous drone models.

By David Axe | May 07, 2025, 10:55am EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/05/07/ukraines-new-strike-d
rone-flies-1000-miles-with-a-large-warhead/

One of Ukraine’s newest strike drones—the UAC FP-1—travels as far as 1,000 miles with a warhead weighing up to 250 pounds, likely making it significantly more powerful than the roughly similar, but years older, UkrSpecSystems PD-1. The latter ranges maybe 600 miles, presumably with a lighter warhead. https://mezha.media/oboronka/minstrategprom-pokazav-noviy-dalekobiyniy
-bezpilotnik-fp-1-yakiy-letit-do-1600-km-301729/

Ukrainian-Czech UAC tweaked a lot of small things to extend the propeller-driven FP-1’s range and payload compared to older drones. The biggest refinement is the most obvious: the FP-1 doesn’t have landing gear. Instead of taking off on its own wheels like the PD-1 does, the FP-1 blasts off from an angled ramp, propelled by a fuselage-mounted rocket.

The new drone made its official public debut at a recent exhibition in Kyiv. But production actually began last year—and the type has already seen combat.

Ukraine boasts an array of domestically produced strike drones, and routinely strikes targets such as air bases and oil refineries hundreds of miles inside Russia. The deepest strikes are the most demanding, of course, and usually fall to the small number of Aeroprakt A-22 sport planes that the Ukrainians have converted into far-flying attack drones by replacing the human pilot with remote and autonomous control. http://www.hisutton.com/Ukraine-OWA-UAVs.html

But the A-22s, each costing $80,000 or more before the addition of drone controls and warheads, are an awkward solution to Ukraine’s long-range strike problem. They’re designed to be manned planes and have voluminous cockpits. They are, in other words, overbuilt for what they do as drones. That might explain why an A-22 or similar sport-plane drone evidently ranges just 800 miles or so with a 220-pound warhead.

The FP-1, which might cost more than $100,000, should go farther with a similar payload. It helps that UAC omitted the landing gear, which on most manned planes accounts for up to 5% of the overall weight. If the gear folds up into the fuselage for maximum aerodynamic efficiency, it also consumes a lot of internal volume.

It’s not for no reason that, when U.S. firm Kratos developed a landing-gear version of its ramp-launched Valkyrie attack drone, it also cut the drone’s payload from four bombs (weighing 1,000 pounds in total) to just two bombs (together weighing 500 pounds).

There’s an even better way to launch a drone: mount it on a rolling trolley that the drone jettisons on takeoff. That way, it can build up a high takeoff speed on a runway—and omit the rear-mounted rocket—without also having to lug around heavy landing gear.

This only works for reusable drones if they also have internal parachutes they can deploy in order to float back down to their bases after a mission. The FP-1 is a one-way attack drone that slams into its target and explodes; it’s not expected to come home.

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

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Thursday, May 8, 2025 5:54 AM

SECOND

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


Merz gives clear answer on supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine

Wed, May 07, 2025 - 23:46

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/merz-gives-clear-answer-on-supplying-t
aurus-1746649442.html

Merz stated that he was ready to approve the transfer of long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.

Not only did Merz express his readiness to supply the aforementioned missiles, but he also suggested that Ukraine could use them for strikes on the Crimean Bridge.

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

April 17, 2025 – Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said that Russia would treat Taurus missile strikes on its "critical transport infrastructure" as "direct" German involvement in the Ukrainian conflict.

https://www.dw.com/en/russia-warns-germany-against-giving-ukraine-taur
us-missiles/a-72275970

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

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Thursday, May 8, 2025 6:04 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 forces are frequently using motorcycles to penetrate Ukrainian lines and advance in the Kupyansk, Siversk, Toretsk, Pokrovsk, and Velyka Novosilka directions.[2]

A Ukrainian artilleryman operating in the Pokrovsk direction reported on May 4 that Russian motorcyclists are currently attacking in columns of eight motorcycles with electronic warfare (EW) support and that Russian servicemembers carry EW systems at the front, center, and end of the columns to protect the motorcycles from Ukrainian drone strikes.[3]

Ukraine's Khortytsia Group of Forces Spokesperson Major Viktor Trehubov reported on May 4 that Russian motorcycle assaults can involve anywhere from a dozen to one hundred motorcycles.[4]

Russian motorcycle usage has not been consistent throughout the theater, as the Russian General Staff has traditionally struggled to disseminate lessons learned between operational areas of responsibility (AoRs).

A Ukrainian National Guard servicemember operating in the Lyman direction reported that each Russian motorcycle has two riders – a driver and a gunner – and that Russian forces continue attacking on the motorcycle in the event that Ukrainian drone operators only kill one rider.[5]

Russian forces are currently mainly using tanks as fire support for infantry assaults and are mainly using armored vehicles to transport infantry in near rear and frontline areas, but not to conduct penetrations of the Ukrainian defensive line.[8]

Trehubov stated that Russian motorcycle assaults are more effective than armored vehicles because Russian forces can advance quickly and better evade Ukrainian drone operators and force Ukrainian drone operators to expend more drones to counter motorcycle assaults. Trehubov noted that Ukrainian forces typically expend one drone per Russian motorcycle – a comparatively smaller and less valuable target, given that Ukrainian forces can also use first-person view (FPV) drones to disable Russian tanks and armored vehicles.[10]

Russian motorcycle usage appears to have begun as a grassroots tactical response to Ukrainian drone operations, comparable to how Russia's own informal frontline drone units began. The Russian MoD is responding similarly to Ukrainian ad hoc adaptations by trying to centralize and formalize Russian motorcycle usage.[20] The Russian MoD may be able to better supply Russian units with motorcycles under a more centralized system, but the MoD may also significantly constrain Russian motorcyclists' ability to adapt to new frontline realities. Russian forces will likely increasingly depend on motorcycles and other quicker unarmored vehicles, as slower-moving vehicles have become a hazard on the more transparent battlefield of Ukraine.

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-force-generation
-and-technological-adaptations-update-may-7-2025

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

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Thursday, May 8, 2025 10:50 AM

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


Russian Occupation Update, May 8, 2025

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-occupation-updat
e-may-8-2025

Russia is struggling to adequately staff occupied territories with doctors and other medical personnel. The Russian Ministry of Health published a draft bill on May 6 that would require graduates of Russian medical schools to work for three years in hospitals and clinics after their graduation, or else face a fine three times higher than their medical school tuition.[20] The Russian Ministry of Health framed this bill as a response to Russia’s growing shortage of medical staff, and Ukrainian sources noted that, if passed, the bill will impact Russian health policy in occupied Ukraine. The Ukrainian Resistance Center reported on May 6 that Russia will compel some of these recent graduates to work in Ukraine under the threat of mobilization into the Russian army.[21] Ukraine’s Luhansk Oblast Administration Head Oleksiy Kharchenko noted that Russian occupation officials hope to use these doctors to offset a “catastrophic” shortage of medical professionals in occupied Ukraine.[22]

The medical system in occupied Ukraine appears to be in a state of disarray due to Russian mismanagement. Kherson Oblast occupation Health Minister Elena Borchaninova recently claimed on April 21 that medical institutions in occupied Kherson Oblast are gravely short of qualified personnel, having only filled 40 percent of the needed quota for doctors, 58 percent of the quota for middle medical staff, and 64 percent of the quota for junior medical staff.[23] Kherson Oblast occupation head Vladimir Saldo met with the Russian Deputy Health Minister Andrei Plutnitsky on May 6 to discuss a plan to overhaul the Henichesk Medical College and convert a five-story building in occupied Novooleksiivka into housing for doctors in order to encourage medical personnel to move to occupied Kherson Oblast to remedy medical personnel shortages.[24] Russia previously implemented the “Zemskyi Doktor” (“Rural Doctor”) program to relocate Russian doctors to occupied Ukraine, and ISW previously assessed that “Zemskyi Doktor” and similar Russian programs are in part also efforts to facilitate the repopulation of areas of occupied Ukraine with Russian citizens.[25] The lack of qualified doctors in occupied Ukraine may worsen a humanitarian crisis in these areas, particularly if Russia continues to inadequately implement health policy and maintain the medical system.

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

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Thursday, May 8, 2025 10:53 AM

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Russian Mismanagement of Captured Nuclear Power Plant

Questionable operations may be dooming the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant

By Peter Fairley | 04 May 2025

https://spectrum.ieee.org/zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant

The Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in southern Ukraine has six 950-megawatt pressurized water reactors. In past years it supplied a fifth of all electricity generated in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, the largest in Europe, has provoked anxiety ever since Russian troops captured it barely two weeks into the 2022 invasion. But recently, after three years of occupation and frequent near misses that threatened radiological disaster, a promise of sunnier days suddenly popped into view, albeit briefly. In a 19 March call U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky discussed American protection and investment for Ukraine’s nuclear power—or even ownership, according to a White House summary. International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) director Rafael Grossi upped the ante one week later, telling Reuters that Zaporizhzhia’s reactors could restart within “months” of a ceasefire, and the plant could be fully operational in a year.

The promise of a rapid restart at Zaporizhzhia, which has six 950-megawatt reactors, quickly faded amid daily and deadly Russian attacks on Ukrainian cities. Nevertheless the chief executive of Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power utility, essentially endorsed Grossi’s timeline for a demilitarized scenario in an interview this month, even as he acknowledged serious technical challenges including deferred maintenance and a dearth of cooling water.

In fact, according to Ukrainian, European and U.S.-based experts interviewed by IEEE Spectrum, the challenges facing a Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) revival could go far deeper. Those experts say that Russia’s operation of the plant may have so badly damaged it that repairs could take years and cost billions of dollars. Particular problems include potential tilting of the reactor buildings, and the integrity of the complex and relatively fragile steam generators for the plant’s pressurized, light-water reactors.

Even if there is a lasting cessation of hostilities, restarting ZNPP’s reactor-generator units may cost more than Ukraine is able to spend. And at least some Ukrainian energy experts say the country should focus instead on building smaller, decentralized power plants.

Volodymyr Kudrytskyi, the former director of Ukraine’s power grid operator, said as much in March during a forum at MIT. Kudrytskyi said big nuclear power plants concentrate too much power at a few spots in the grid: “We are able to use this Soviet legacy to survive, but this is not the way forward.”

Questionable Operating Practices May Have Damaged the Plant

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, ZNPP experienced a wide range of unprecedented insults. During its armed seizure in March 2022, Russian forces fired on the plant. That October, Russia began bombing the Ukrainian power system. Those attacks repeatedly disconnected ZNPP from Ukraine’s grid, forcing the use of diesel generators to power the pumps that circulate water over spent fuel, keeping it from overheating and potentially melting down and releasing large amounts of radiation.

Russia’s attacks have destroyed some equipment and placed strain on others, but special concern arises from unprecedented longterm operating modes: hot shutdown and cold shutdown.

ZNPP is the first nuclear power plant in the world to persist in a condition of hot shutdown, in which the plant operates at minimum output. Sustained hot shutdown, for months on end, violated ZNPP’s license. But Russian plant managers insisted that it provided steam needed to sustain critical equipment, such as the water treatment plant, as well as heating for the nearby city of Enerhodar, also under Russian occupation.

Ukrainian and international safety experts argued instead that hot shutdown unnecessarily increased the risk of an accident causing a regional catastrophe, since hot reactors melt down more quickly after cooling systems fail. Ukrainians saw the enhanced risk as a form of nuclear blackmail, arguing that Russian forces could deliberately unleash a radiological incident if they were forced to retreat from the area.

In April 2024 the plant’s Russian management finally relented, placing the last operating generating unit into cold shutdown. Cold shutdown is a safer mode for the plant, but, still, several aspects of the cold shutdown are highly unusual and are provoking concern.

These concerns stem from a complex combination of chemistry and physics. During cold shutdown the cooling flows are low—nearly stationary in some loops—and also relatively cool, in some cases dropping below 35 °C.

The result is a coolant with higher density. Ukrainian nuclear expert Georgiy Balakan says that high-density coolant puts greater mechanical load on the cooling pipes and the delicate tubes within the steam generators. That elevated load, in turn, increases strain on the many welds, as well as on the steel pipes themselves because their metal is less ductile at lower temperatures, according to Balakan.

Low temperature and flow, meanwhile, also impact boric acid that’s added to the primary cooling water to regulate the reactor’s fission reactions, allowing boric acid to crystallize in sensitive areas of the primary circuit pipes and in the steam generators. Efforts to purge crystals can then exacerbate damage. If the damage perforates the steam generator tubes, borated water can leak through and attack the secondary cooling circuits’ steel, which is of a lower grade.

Steam Leaks or Groundwater Extraction Could Doom Plant

Russian officials controlling ZNPP have reported a series of leaks to IAEA observers, including steam generator leaks in half of its power units. Balakan, a former special advisor to the president of Energoatom, the Ukrainian nuclear utility, calls those telltale signs of the physical and chemical assault on the plant’s equipment. “The Russians acted as if they could operate the water-chemical regime for an unlimited time,” he says.

Independent experts contacted by IEEE Spectrum affirmed Balakan’s analysis. They include a senior U.S. nuclear engineer familiar with Soviet-design reactors, who spoke to Spectrum on condition of anonymity because they feared retribution from national authorities, and a Ukrainian engineer who is not authorized to speak to the press.

Steam-generator issues can shutter a nuclear plant for good. That scenario played out in California in 2013 when utility Southern California Edison scrapped its only nuclear power plant after botched steam generator repairs that cost nearly $2 billion ($2.7 billion in 2025 dollars).

Another set of potentially costly issues stem from the operators’ shift to groundwater for cooling following the demolition of the Kakhovka Dam in June 2023. Potential implications include impairment a critical safety system: the reactor control rods.

After the draining of the Kakhovka Reservoir eliminated ZNPP’s original source of cooling water, Rosatom, the Russian nuclear generation and technology conglomerate, drilled 11 wells on site. Withdrawing of groundwater is cause for concern, according to Aybars Gürpinar, a former top safety official at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). “Especially when there is significant ground water extraction, settlement is always a possibility,” wrote Gürpinar, now a consultant based in Vienna and Brussels, in an email to Spectrum.

Subsidence has caused multiple expensive headaches for Soviet-designed VVER-1000 reactors, including ZNPP’s. Nearly 20 years ago Energoatom had to attach counterweights to arrest tilting of several reactor buildings settling into the site’s sandy soil, according to a 2024 LinkedIn post by Balakan. In 2011, Rosatom told then-President Dmitry Medvedev it had plans to fix the “progressing tilt” at the Balakovo and Kalinin power plants.

Gürpinar says tilting could crack ZNPP’s concrete base and interfere with reactor control rods, slowing their gravity-driven drop into the reactor to squelch fission reactions during station blackouts. He says the rods could even get “stuck,” forcing operators to rely on boric acid to control the reactor and leaving them without backup control.

In a statement to Spectrum, Rosatom asserted that: “No ground level changes or signs of subsidence have been observed.”

Restarting the Reactors Would Require Solving Multiple Problems

Addressing structural damage is only one of many challenges to safely restarting ZNPP’s reactors. Last month, ZNPP’s Russian-appointed director Yuriy Chernichuk said in an interview for Rosatom’s corporate magazine that job one is shoring up the cooling water supply, because restarting reactors will generate thousands of times more heat. Rosatom says it plans to tap the Dnieper River for this purpose.

Chernichuk went on to provide a laundry list of additional challenges, including:

• Repairing or replacing upgraded Western equipment subject to international sanctions;

• Securing operating licenses from Russia’s nuclear regulator, since Ukrainian unit licenses begin to expire this year;

• Rebuilding personnel from ZNPP’s current skeleton staff; and

• Building transmission links to Russia’s grid.

Chernichuk said that “the most realistic option” is to launch Units 2 and 6 first. Their reactors are loaded with Russian-produced fuel, whereas other reactors contain fuel produced by U.S.-based Westinghouse, for which Rosatom has neither license nor experience.

If Ukraine reclaims the plant, Energoatom might more easily address its issues. It could start with Units 1 and 3, which have fresher fuel. Energoatom also better understands ZNPP’s equipment, and it has access to Western gear and expertise.

Similar advantages could flow to the U.S. if it could pressure Russia to give up the plant. However, Zelensky has rejected U.S. ownership.

Balakan projects that Energoatom would need one year to restart just one power unit in a best-case scenario where ZNPP is “under full control of Ukraine” and equipment damage is not severe.

But show-stoppers could still emerge. If the steam generators need extensive parts or replacement, it might not make sense to proceed—new steam generators could cost over $1-billion per unit, judging by the experience of Southern California Edison. “They’re not only expensive. They’re very complicated gadgets and they’re hard to fix,” says the U.S. expert who spoke with Spectrum.

Unfortunately, only Russian firms manufacture the steam generators employed at ZNPP. And those might not be available at any price.

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

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Friday, May 9, 2025 5:11 AM

SECOND

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


Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov published an article on May 8 in which he argued that Russia's war in Ukraine will go down in history as a feat of courage and significance equal to the victory of the Soviet military and people during the Second World War.[1]

Belousov claimed that Russia's war in Ukraine is a continuation of the "glorious traditions" of Soviet bravery and heroism and of the Soviet people's enthusiasm for enlisting and otherwise supporting the war effort. Belousov claimed that Russia's victory in Ukraine is "inevitable."

Belousov reiterated the Kremlin's oft-repeated narrative that Russia had no choice but to launch its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 because the situation was "life or death."

The Kremlin is attempting to link Putin's anti-Western claims to the mythos of the Second World War in order to heighten the existential threat against Russia that the Kremlin claims Russia is currently facing.

Belousov explicitly identified large-scale Russian military reforms as preparations for a future conflict with NATO as Russian Security Council Chairperson Dmitry Medvedev threatened European countries that support Ukraine.[6]

Medvedev threatened that European countries must "remember" the "crushing defeat of Nazi Germany" when supporting Ukraine.[9]

Other senior Russian officials have also intensified accusations against European states for supporting "Naziism" in recent days.[11]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-offensive-campai
gn-assessment-may-8-2025

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

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Friday, May 9, 2025 5:13 AM

SECOND

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


Russia is inventorying real estate in occupied Ukraine in order to seize property from Ukrainian residents, likely in part to facilitate the transfer of Russian citizens to occupied territories. Russian Deputy Prime Minister Marat Khusnullin claimed on April 29 that Russia entered 251,750 real estate objects from occupied Ukraine into the Russian Unified State Register of Real Estate as part of an inventory of real estate objects in occupied territories.[1] Khusnullin claimed that the inventory process will allow residents of occupied areas to quickly formalize and “protect” their property rights and allow Russia to valuate real estate objects. Ukrainian Mariupol Mayoral Advisor Petro Andryushchenko responded to Khusnullin’s statements and emphasized on May 6 that Russia is planning to nationalize all the inventoried real estate objects in occupied Ukraine, essentially “looting” the property from its Ukrainian owners.[2] ISW previously observed how the nationalization of property in occupied Ukraine allows the Russian government to auction that property off to Russian citizens, which facilitates the illegal relocation of Russian citizens to occupied areas of Ukraine from Russia.[3]

https://www.understandingwar.org/backgrounder/russian-occupation-updat
e-may-8-2025

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

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Friday, May 9, 2025 5:16 AM

SECOND

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


To Escape Tiny Explosive Drones In Ukraine, Artillery Is Heading Underground
It’s a new era of ‘cautious’ armored vehicles.

By David Axe | May 8, 2025, 04:40pm EDT

https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidaxe/2025/05/08/to-escape-tiny-explos
ive-drones-in-ukraine-artillery-is-heading-underground/

The threat from tiny explosive drones, thousands of which prowl both sides of the front line of Russia’s 39-month wider war on Ukraine every day, is driving armored vehicles and their crews underground.

A video that circulated online recently depicts the muddy hovel of a Ukrainian artillery crew somewhere along the 700-mile front line. The four-person crew and its 18-ton, tracked 2S1 howitzer—a 122-millimeter gun in a turret on a lightly-armored chassis—live tens of feet underground in a dugout clearly carved out of the soil by heavy engineering equipment.

Logs cover the dugout. A thick net meant to catch Russian attack drones serves as the “door.” The underground position is so deep that the 2S1 struggles to climb out of it for a fire mission.

Official photos from the Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade, which defends a sector along Ukraine’s northern border opposite Russia’s Kursk Oblast, depict the same dugout—or a similar one, perhaps indicating more Ukrainian artillery batteries are going to ground.

It’s not for no reason. Ukrainian forces deploy around 2 million explosives-laden first-person-view drones every month; Russian forces deploy a similar number of FPVs, which weigh just a few pounds and pack enough explosives to damage a vehicle and kill a person. The FPVs can be controlled out to a distance of several miles by wireless radio or unspooling fiber-optic cable.

“The sky above the Ukrainian positions is a constant battleground of its own,” David Kirichenko explained in a September essay for the Washington, D.C. Center for European Policy Analysis. “Enemy and friendly drones crisscross the airspace, hunting for valuable targets like heavy armor and artillery. This aerial cat-and-mouse game has fundamentally altered tank tactics.” Artillery tactics, too.

Buried for safety

More and more, heavy vehicles hide when they’re not actively firing at the enemy. It’s a new “era of the cautious tank,” according to Kirichenko. And it’s been getting worse by the month for the vehicle crews. “We could say that it has even gotten more cautious now,” Kirichenko said eight months after publishing his essay.

No FPVs are foolproof, however: the wireless models can be jammed, the fiber-optic models leave a telltale trail of fiber that can lead enemy forces back to their operators. And all the drones can be blocked by armor, mesh or netting—or by simply closing the door to any structure a vehicle and its crew might be sheltering in.

Dirt offers excellent protection, so don’t be shocked to see more vehicle crews evolve into subterranean creatures as the war grinds on and more drones patrol the front line.

If there’s a limitation on how many vehicles can head underground—and how quickly—it’s the engineering equipment that’s necessary to dig the hideouts. It’s not for no reason that more than a few Ukrainian units have been raising funds for excavators.

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

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