Russia Invades Ukraine. Again by captaincrunch

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

Business Insider reported on November 12 that European defense company Atreyd stated that it shipped its “drone wall” system to Ukraine.[20]
https://archive.ph/7bYFP
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-gets-drone-wall-to-fight-russi
an-threats-arms-maker-2025-11

The “drone wall” reportedly consists of a collection of first-person view (FPV) drones that launch from designated platforms if radar systems detect a threat, and the drones are arrayed in layers and spaced apart. The FPVs intercept Russian drones by detonating nearby. The system reportedly relies on artificial intelligence (AI) to operate autonomously, and one operator will be able to control 100 drones. Business Insider reported that the “drone wall” system is able to operate in GPS-denied areas as it uses pre-installed 3D maps of the area, augmenting the system’s electronic warfare (EW) resilience. The system’s drones are able to operate at various altitudes and are equipped with identification technology to prevent friendly fire. Business Insider noted that system operators will not require any specialized training nor prior drone pilot training. Atreyd noted that the system will likely be operational in Ukraine within a few weeks and that Ukraine will employ the system to defend its cities and critical infrastructure, but may deploy systems closer to the frontline to intercept Russian glide bombs later. Atreyd’s “drone wall” system is defensive in nature and notably differs from Ukraine’s tactical ”wall of drones” concept, which uses a large number of tactical strike drones and loitering munitions to destroy manpower and equipment on the frontline.[21]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-november-14-2025/

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, November 15, 2025 10:10 AM

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

North Korea halves shell shipments to Russia as its own stockpiles run low, Ukraine's intelligence says

By Kateryna Hodunova | November 15, 2025 12:53 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/north-korea-halves-arms-shipments-to-russi
a-as-its-own-stockpiles-run-low-ukraines-intelligence-says/

In 2023, North Korea supplied Russia with about 6.5 million artillery shells from its stockpiles.

In 2024, North Korean artillery ammunition enabled Russia to maintain its firing rate, but this year, that support has declined markedly, with both the quantity and quality of munitions delivered to the Kremlin significantly reduced.

No shipments were recorded in September, though some were tracked in October, according to Ukraine's military intelligence.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Saturday, November 15, 2025 10:10 AM

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

Russia plans to make up to 120,000 glide bombs this year, Ukrainian intelligence says

By Max Hunder and Anastasiia Malenko | November 14, 2025 8:51 AM CST

https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/russia-plans-make-u
p-120000-glide-bombs-this-year-ukrainian-intelligence-says-2025-11-14/

Russia plans to manufacture up to 120,000 of its cheap and devastating glide bombs this year, a senior Ukrainian intelligence official said, including 500 of a new, longer-range version which can reach more towns and cities.

Russia has ramped up arms production massively since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, with defence plants operating around the clock. It does not disclose details of military output, which are classified as secret.

Reuters was unable to verify the 2025 target, which Major General Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy head of Ukraine's Defence Intelligence disclosed in an interview.

He did not say how he had obtained the figure or give earlier data, but it would indicate a vast increase in the manufacture of glide bombs, which use wings, and sometimes engines, to fly dozens of kilometres to their targets.

The 120,000 number includes new munitions and existing bombs upgraded to glide.

Skibitskyi said Russian forces are firing between 200 and 250 glide bombs every day. Last month, the daily average was about 170, according to data from the defence ministry.

"It is possible to shoot them down, but the quantity of these aerial bombs produced in the Russian Federation ... is enormous," Skibitskyi said. "This is a threat. A threat that will require us to respond appropriately."

RUSSIA IS BOOSTING GLIDE BOMB RANGE

The bombs, whose range was previously estimated to be up to 90 km (56 miles), can breach Ukrainian defences without sending planes across front lines where they would be shot down.

They are much cheaper and more plentiful than missiles and their several hundred kilograms of explosive can blast through buildings and fortifications. They have pummelled frontline cities such as Kharkiv and Kherson.

Russia is launching mass production of a new glide bomb capable of flying up to 200 km (125 miles) from the point of release from a fighter jet, Skibitskyi said, adding that it plans to make about 500 by the end of this year.

Ukraine also believes that Russia is working on modifications so such bombs can fly up to 400 km, allowing Moscow to target even more Ukrainian towns and cities without using missiles, he said.
October glide bomb attacks on Mykolaiv, Poltava and Odesa regions, which are at least dozens of kilometres from the nearest front lines, have already demonstrated the increasing reach of the weapon.

The Russian defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Russia denies targeting civilians, but thousands have been killed and injured in the invasion.

Moscow argues that Kyiv's moves to ally with the West pose a threat to Russia and must be stopped.

INTENSIFYING ATTACKS AIMED AT FORCING KYIV'S HAND IN TALKS

Skibitskyi also gave estimates for Russian drone production, which he said had enabled it to target Ukraine's energy system more effectively.

In 2025 Russia would make a total of about 70,000 long-range drones, he said, including 30,000 Shahed craft which are the workhorse of Russia's attacks.

"They started with 30 drones per month, now 30 can fly to a single target," he said, expecting the attacks on gas and energy infrastructure to continue into the winter.

"They definitely want to break us. This is destabilising the internal situation," he said. Skibitskyi described it as one of the tools to pressure Ukraine into a more compliant position in any possible peace negotiations.

He also said that should Russian troops capture the besieged city of Pokrovsk, where street battles are currently raging, they would likely press towards the boundaries of Donetsk region, their long-held goal.

"It's their next direction of movement, it's obvious."

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 4:49 AM

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

Why does the Russian army's brutal culture go unchecked?

The Russian army has a reputation for murdering, torturing and treating its own recruits terribly. How does such behavior become acceptable in a military?

By Irina Chevtayeva | Nov 15, 2025

https://www.dw.com/en/why-does-the-russian-armys-brutal-culture-go-unc
hecked/a-74750242

"They killed my child," Tatjana Bykova laments in a video message. She uses the term "annulled" to describe how her son, Andrej, was killed by Russian military commanders. She names them and says she hates them.

First, they blackmailed Andrej, demanding half of the compensation he received for an injury. When he refused to give them the money and bought a car instead, they demanded that he give them the car. He was killed for refusing to hand over the car.

Bykova filed a complaint with the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation and the public prosecutor's office, but nothing happened. Andrej Bykov was simply declared missing. "I was told that he was beaten to death. He is lying in a forest near Galizynovka [a village in the Donetsk Oblast in Ukraine – editor's note]," Bykova told the independent Russian media outlet Verstka.

In October 2025, the investigative news website launched a project to highlight widespread torture and so-called "annulment" — a colloquial term for the murder of comrades in the Russian army.

Verstka also published the names of dozens of commanders involved. The next day, Aleksandr Paschtschenko, a deputy from the ruling United Russia party from Khakassia, located in southern Siberia, responded to criticism from an angry citizen by saying, "At the front, you would be annulled for such statements." Inadvertently, this remark confirmed that "annulments" are a cultural norm.
Torture and murder happen within the ranks of the army

"The murder of comrades is only part of the bitter state of the Russian army. Torture is also widespread," military expert Yuri Fyodorov told DW. Torture videos can be found on Telegram channels dedicated to the war. For example, according to the expert, soldiers are thrown into a pit and fed garbage for one or two weeks, depending on the commander's mood. Or soldiers are forced to "hug a tree." They are tied to tree trunks and left there for one or two days without food or drink.

A soldier can be shot and then declared missing or killed in action. Furthermore, it is up to officers to decide whether a soldier is deployed where the risk of death is particularly high.

The reasons for "annulment" vary widely — disobedience, disciplinary violations, alcohol consumption, arguments with officers, or refusal to hand over some earnings.

"If you view people as expendable and are capable of killing someone by sending them into a hopeless battle, then you will also kill because someone has committed a crime, failed to hand over money, or you have had a falling out," said military expert Jan Matveyev.

Psychoanalyst Alina Putilovskaya speaks of people "acting out" or "passing on" aggressive emotions: "The superiors who commit these cruel acts of violence have superiors of their own who mock them — for example, by giving them unrealistic orders and withholding vital supplies from their units. These high-ranking officials project an image of superiority, invincibility and prosperity to the outside world. This sparks very difficult feelings among field commanders, which they take out on their subordinates."

According to Putilovskaya, soldiers fear becoming the target of their superiors' aggression. But they also feel pity and guilt towards comrades who are targeted because they cannot help them.
'Annulment' culture to instill discipline

Yuri Fyodorov attributes the culture of "annulments" in the army to corrupt officers as well as to criminal and undisciplined soldiers. He says that the officer corps in Russia has become more problematic since the 1990s. Since then many people have remained in the army simply because they could not find another job. They topped up their low pay through corrupt practices, like forcing soldiers to do unpaid work. Officers like these are currently fighting in Ukraine , he said.

Experts agree that the Russian army has also changed in the war in Ukraine because it now includes mercenaries who fight for money and convicted felons who have their own values.

"To keep this whole gang under control, you had to use the most brutal methods," says Fyodorov. One of the first well-known examples of this was a video that was shared on social media in November 2022, showing Wagner Group mercenaries killing a comrade with a sledgehammer.

Why does abuse go unpunished?

According to Jan Matveev, the main reason for this violent culture is a lack of discipline and the absence of a properly structured military system.

"All of this encourages impunity, which makes leadership impossible. No one in the Russian army has been punished for serious war crimes such as the murders in Bucha and Mariupol. This immediately sent a signal that you could simply kill people without being punished," says Matveyev. He is convinced that this abuse of power has undermined discipline in the army. He added that the army's ongoing failure to clamp down on abuse, means that violence is intensifying.

Both experts believe that the Russian army would no longer be capable of fighting if the culture of torture, abuse, extortion, "annulments" and war crimes were to stop. "In reality, the functioning of the army is based on impunity and on abusing soldiers as a resource, as slaves," Fyodorov said.

From the perspective of psychoanalyst Alina Putilovskaya, killings and torture are a method of exerting coercion, control and intimidation.

"The army leadership is not interested in building long-term relationships with people because they know that new ones will soon follow. Two things hold a community together, even in war: emotional bonds and coercion. If one of these is lost, in this case, the emotional bond, then coercion gains the upper hand, which in this case turns into cruelty that escalates to the extreme."

Matveyev also added that the Russian soldiers do not understand what they are fighting for. "The Ukrainian army knows what it is fighting for, even though it is having a very difficult time and suffering from major problems. It is defending its country. Most of the Russian army is well aware that there is a serious, heinous war crime going on, involving a multitude of smaller crimes, and that they have to accept it," the expert said.

This article originally appeared in Russian.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 4:50 AM

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

Kremlin propagandists normalize terrorism abroad under 'mirror response' logic

A recent Russian state TV broadcast laid bare something that should no longer be ignored: the Kremlin’s domestic propaganda machine now speaks the language of terrorism — not metaphorically, but literally.

November 8, 2025, 06:45 AM

https://english.nv.ua/opinion/russian-state-tv-threatens-europe-revive
-putin-s-toilet-doctrine-50559039.html

“ The Western community supports Ukraine in this war because they see Ukraine as a victim.
Legally, therefore, every facility anywhere in the world directly or indirectly connected to Ukraine’s enemy is a legitimate target for Ukraine.
… But let’s remember — it’s a mirror situation.
We’re conducting a special military operation against Ukraine. Ukraine, in response, carries out terrorist strikes against the Russian Federation.
We, as we promised long ago, usually mochim v sortirakh — finish terrorists off in the toilets.
A toilet can be in any building in Europe, in America, in Africa, or Australia.
To finish them off in the toilet, sometimes you have to bring down a 12-story building.
Europeans live in a paradise and think they’re safe — until their gunpowder factories explode or their bridges collapse. Then they say it’s an accident. Fine. Just wait. ”

This is not just another round of bombastic rhetoric from Moscow. What we hear in this exchange is a direct, televised justification for terrorist attacks on European soil, framed as “mirror action” and wrapped in Putin’s most notorious criminal idiom.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 4:51 AM

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

Russian forces continue to boast about executing Ukrainian servicemembers. The far-right Russian paramilitary unit Rusich Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group acknowledged on its Telegram channel on November 15 that it executed three Ukrainian servicemembers in an unspecified area of the front.[32] Ukrainian military observer Yuriy Butusov reported that Rusich Group leader Alexei Milchakov — who is a self-proclaimed Nazi — is serving within the 417th Reconnaissance Battalion of the 42nd Motorized Rifle Division (58th Combined Arms Army [CAA], Southern Military District [SMD]).[33] ISW last observed reports of the battalion operating in western Zaporizhia Oblast in late October 2025.[34] Butusov reported that the execution occurred near Pokrovsk, however, but noted that Russian milbloggers have complained that Milchakov and the Rusich Group do not participate in combat operations but engage in propaganda activities in the rear. The Rusich Group’s public acknowledgement of its war crimes is in line with ISW’s long-held assessment that the Russian military command is endorsing and sometimes ordering war crimes on the battlefield.[35]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-november-15-2025/

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 5:11 AM

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

Phillips P. OBrien
Nov 16, 2025

Pokrovsk is all about the Relative Losses

The fighting in and around Pokrovsk continues. The Russians made a few small gains this week, but overall the lines have not changed much. And that in and of itself is leading to debate. The big debate is about what Ukraine should do. There is a loud group now saying that Ukraine should pull out and stop their losses in Pokrovsk at present. At the same time, the Ukrainian military, at least for now, does not seem willing to abandon the ruins of the town.

Should Ukraine withdraw? The only truth is that no one who does not know Ukrainian and Russian losses has no idea—and that means maybe no one knows. Pokrovsk is not strategically important, it makes no difference to the strategic calculus of the war, and therefore all that matters is the losses suffered by both sides in fighting over its ruins. The only other thing that could really matter is the length of time the campaign takes, as that reduces time for follow up operations afterwards.

Knowing when the Ukrainians should pull out of a town is a tricky question. Military decisions are not like war games (though analysts too often seem to think that they are). I do not have access to the data to understand exactly what Ukraine should do—so will not guess. We do know that Russia will continue to expend mass resources to take Pokrovsk, what the Ukrainians have to do, otoh, is not waste their own mass to keep them out. Ukrainian military lives are worth exponentially more than Russian military lives at present.

Have a good rest of the weekend everyone.

Thanks for reading Phillips’s Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-159-ukraine-is-m
uch

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 5:39 AM

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

Russian forces are trying to find opportunities to exploit a key weakness in Ukrainian defenses — the inability of Ukrainian drones to effectively function in poor weather conditions like fog and rain. Ukraine has thus far in the war based its defense on drones largely out of necessity. Ukraine’s “wall of drones” defensive barrier uses a large number of tactical strike drones and loitering munitions to destroy Russian manpower and equipment on the front line.[10] Ukrainian forces adopted this defensive approach in part to offset manpower and equipment shortages while protecting over 1,200 kilometers of front line from Russian advances. Sparsely held Ukrainian defensive positions have facilitated recent Russian infiltration efforts, and shortages of artillery and other traditional systems have limited Ukrainian forces’ ability to operate when bad weather disrupted some drone operations.[11] Western provisions of traditional systems like artillery are key to Ukraine’s ability to build out a layered defense system that is not dependent on any one type of weapon, such that the defenses are vulnerable and exploitable. Russia’s exploitation of this vulnerability further highlights the way that traditional weapons systems are not obsolete in modern warfare.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-november-15-2025/

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 6:30 AM

THG

Keep it real please

A lot of good reading SECOND, very informative.

T

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 11:11 AM

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

Ukraine Is Much More Than Zelensky

By Phillips P. Obrien | Nov 16, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/weekend-update-159-ukraine-is-m
uch

I am going to start this update with a short editorial. The last week has been a terrible one, rightly, for the vision of the Ukrainian government in Europe and North America. The corruption scandal that broke out involving people very close to the Ukrainian president cannot and should not be overlooked or shunted aside. It was and is terrible, pointing to the existence of real problems at the heart of the state, and rumors are circulating that it might even get worse. As I wrote two days ago, drastic action needs to be taken now to respond to this crisis and restore confidence in the Ukrainian government:

The Ukrainian People Deserve Better | Nov 14
https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-ukrainian-people-deserve-be
tter

And while the Ukrainian government and President Zelensky are, rightly, being excoriated for this corruption crisis, it is important to remember that Ukraine’s struggle for freedom matters so much more than the reputation of any individual politician, even one as widely known and hailed as Volodymyr Zelensky. Ukrainians have been fighting and dying for their freedom, for their very lives, for 11 years now. They have suffered hundreds of thousands of dead and wounded, are now experiencing daily power cuts, cold days and nights, attacks on their homes and places of work—all the while being faced by an enemy that denies their very right to existence and regularly threatens them with extinction. This is an enemy that just two days ago, continued its campaign to destroy Ukraine’s ability to supply its population with life-saving pharmaceuticals (more on that below).

Russian Drone Attack Wipes Out Another Ukrainian Medicine Warehouse
A Ukrainian Pharmaceutical Warehouse Destroyed By Russia on 14 November.

Ukrainians are making this sacrifice every day to give Europe the vital time it still needs to prepare itself for a future, a future it was woefully unready to face. Arguably, they are fighting to see if the idea of Europe that has come into being after World War II has any chance of surviving. While much of the rest of the world retreats from democracy and flirts with, even embraces, the gooeyness of authoritarianism, the Ukrainians are doing the opposite. They are fighting for their lives and fighting for democracy.

They would do this whether Zelensky was their president or otherwise. So, when you hear the voices start exclaiming, as they are now, that Ukraine should have no more help, that it needs to be cut off and left to its own devices, remember this. Ukraine is far more than Zelensky, far more than any one scandal. It is a people getting brutalized for wanting what any state should be entitled to, and at the same time making the ultimate sacrifice to gain the freedoms that too many other people take for granted or are too willing to sacrifice.

If you want to support Ukraine directly and avoid any state interaction for now, you can always donate to Come Back Alive. https://savelife.in.ua/en/ They work directly with the Ukrainian armed forces and civil society to provide vital aid. I have seen their offices and operations; they spend hardly anything on themselves. They are the true Ukraine fighting for its freedom.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 7:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

The Banderists were used by the Germans to carry out the most brutal repressions of the Russian and Belorussian people, actions that fit well with their ideology, founded as it was on the murderous advancement of Western Ukraine over all other regional peoples. [The Nazi] Dirlewanger’s SS-Sonderbattalion was created specifically for the purpose of implementing the policies associated with “Plan Ost”, the systemic annihilation of the non-Germanic population of the Soviet territory, including Belorussia, that was occupied by Nazi forces. Dirlewanger recruited rapists, murderers, and psychopaths selected for their unquestioning willingness to engage in the systematic slaughter of targeted populations. Under Plan Ost, fully 75% of Belorussians were considered by the Germans as “unfit” for “Germanization” and targeted for liquidation.
. . .
Between the Banderist extremists and the psychopaths of the Dirlewanger SS-Sonderbattalion, the population of Khatyn never stood a chance.
. . .

"That day before dinner my father and I went to the barn, to prepare hay for the cow. Suddenly we heard gunshots. We ran into the house, told all the people ... to hide in the basement. After some time the members of the punitive squad broke through the door to the basement and ordered us all out on the street. As we got out we saw that they were chasing people out of the other houses as well. They brought us to the barn, which stood a little bit outside the village.

I saw half-dressed and barefoot children. The Germans did not allow anybody to get dressed. The barn was 10 by 12 meters. The people calmed each other, told themselves ‘They are just trying to scare us and will let us go.’
...Through the cracks I could see how they gathered hay and were pouring gasoline. People went out of their minds from fear, realizing that they were to be burned.”
My mother and I stood right by the locked barn doors, and I could see between the planks of the barn wall how they piled up hay against the wall, which they then set on fire. When the burning roof caved in the people and people’s clothes caught on fire, everybody threw themselves against the doors, which broke open.

The punitive squad stood around the barn and opened fire on the people, who were running in all directions. We made it five or six meters from the doors of the barn,then my mom pushed me to the ground, and we both lay there. I wanted to get up,
but she pressed my head down: “Don’t move, son, lie still.”
Something hit me hard in my arm. I was bleeding. I told my mom, but she didn’t answer—she was already dead.

How long I was lying there, I don’t know. Everything around me was burning, even my mother’s clothes had begun to glow. Afterwards I realized that the punitive squad had left and the shooting had ended, but still I waited awhile before I got up.
The barn had burned down, burned corpses lay all around. Someone moaned: “drink… ”

I ran, brought water, but to no avail, in front of my eyes the Khatyn villagers died after another. Terrible, painful deaths..."

Some 627 Belorussian villages were subjected to the “Khatyn treatment” by the Nazis, their entire populations herded into barns and burned to death. In total, more than 3.1 million Belarussians were killed by the Nazis—one in every three of its citizens. More than 12,000 villages were destroyed. Many of the perpetrators of this crime, including members of the [UKRAINIAN] 118th Police Battalion, escaped justice by taking refuge in Canada, whose Ukrainian diaspora is marked by its pro-Bandera ideology. And today many Ukrainian soldiers proudly wear patches depicting the crossed stick grenade emblem of the Dirlewanger SS-Sonderbattalion.

MORE AT REAL SCOTT RITTER SUBSTACK "SAY HIS NAME"

-----------

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Sunday, November 16, 2025 7:25 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine Is Much More Than Zelensky

Fuck Ukraine. Fuck Zelensky twice.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 4:44 AM

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

Russian assault units increasingly hit by friendly fire near Pokrovsk — partisans

Nov 16, 2025 21:15

https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-ato/4059407-russian-assault-units-inc
reasingly-hit-by-friendly-fire-near-pokrovsk-partisans.html

Near Pokrovsk in Donetsk region, Russian drone operators are increasingly striking their own assault units. At the tactical level, friendly fire has become a common occurrence, happening not only at night but also during the daytime.

This was reported on Telegram by the ATESH partisan movement, citing their agents in the 110th Motorized Rifle Brigade, part of the 51st Combined Arms Army of the Russian Armed Forces, according to Ukrinform.

Friendly fire most often affects enemy assault units using infiltration tactics during combat missions. Due to the lack of identification markings and general confusion, drone operators frequently mistake them for the enemy.

The chaos is partly caused by the command’s haste, which demands the capture of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad by the end of November. Other factors include heavy casualties among Russian personnel, replacement by undertrained fighters, and problems with coordination, communication, and interaction between units.

According to ATESH agents, losses from friendly fire are already measured in dozens.

Against this backdrop, open confrontation is growing between Russian assault units and drone operators, with incidents of gunfire between them.

The assault troops increasingly accuse drone operators of allegedly “working for the Ukrainians.”

Due to losses from friendly fire, the Russian offensive in the Pokrovsk direction has noticeably slowed.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 4:44 AM

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

Russian forces continue to encourage war crimes against Ukrainian servicemembers and civilians on the battlefield. Far-right Russian paramilitary unit Rusich Sabotage Assault Reconnaissance Group leader Alexei Milchakov amplified photos of the November 15 execution of three Ukrainian prisoners-of-war (POWs) and claimed that he would offer cash prizes to the first three people who submit a photo with “clearly executed prisoners in the background.”[25] Milchakov operates as both the leader of a Russian paramilitary unit and a prominent voice in the Russian milblogger information space, and his calls to commit war crimes against Ukrainian servicemembers reflect Russian forces’ widely accepted cultural and systemic practice of committing war crimes on the battlefield.

The Ukrainian Zaporizhia Oblast Prosecutor’s Office reported on November 16 that it opened an investigation into Russian forces’ November 14 execution of three Ukrainian POWs in the Hulyaipole direction.[26] A source reportedly affiliated with Ukrainian military intelligence posted footage on November 15 showing Russian forces murdering two surrendering Ukrainian POWs on the outskirts of Zatyshshya (east of Hulyaipole).[27]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-november-16-2025/

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 4:45 AM

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

Putin makes almost no progress in Ukraine compared with Stalin's WWII success, says Finland's Stubb

By Bohdan Babaiev | Sun, November 16, 2025 - 18:30

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/putin-makes-almost-no-progress-in-ukra
ine-1763310524.html

Finland's President Alexander Stubb, in an interview with Associated Press, said Putin has achieved little in four years beyond dubious "territorial gains" at an enormous human cost. Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, in the same four-year period, captured Berlin.

Stubb told AP that Russia has accomplished almost nothing since February 2022. He noted that Russian forces have still failed to reach Kyiv, even as the fourth year of the war comes to an end.

Stubb also pointed out that Soviet leader Stalin, whom Russian propagandists sometimes compare to Putin, defeated Nazi Germany and took Berlin within four years. Putin, by contrast, has not reached Kyiv and will not.

"In World War II, Stalin was in Berlin for four years. We're almost four years into the war, and Russia is nowhere near Kyiv — and they're not going to get there," Stubb said.

Stubb's view is shared by US President Donald Trump, with whom the Finnish leader maintains friendly relations. On September 23, Trump called Russia a "paper tiger," saying it has been fighting aimlessly for more than three years.

The "paper tiger" comment reportedly triggered a mix of hysteria and threats from Putin toward NATO, prompting ridicule of the Russian leader across Europe.

Analysts and media report that Russia's spring 2025 offensive in Ukraine has achieved minimal gains at a staggering cost. The Armed Forces of Ukraine have killed at least 100,000 Russian troops, while Russia captured only 0.4% of Ukrainian territory.

From November 2022, after Ukraine's major counteroffensives ended, Russian forces occupied 5,842 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory by the end of August 2025, about 0.96% of the country. They suffered massive losses in the process. Nearly one million Russian soldiers were killed, severely wounded, went missing, or were captured, meaning Russia lost 171 troops for every square kilometer it seized.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 5:10 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
The Banderists were . . .

But beyond the reality of Bandera is the myth, and what he represents. Historians and analysts in Ukraine think that by attacking Bandera, Putin isn’t attacking simply a man reviled by Stalin but also the broader notion of Ukrainian independence.

“During 300 years of Russian imperial occupation, there have only been three Ukrainian nationalist heroes,” said Stanislav Kulchytsky, the head of the department of Ukrainian history at the country’s National Academy of Sciences. “All three have been turned into one-word pejoratives by the Russians. To be a Ukrainian hero is to be a Russian villain. Bandera is the most recent.”

The first was Ivan Mazepa, a Cossack Ukrainian leader who began as an ally to Peter the Great but later turned against him. That so-called betrayal was the beginning of Ukrainian nationalism, and it gave Ukraine its flag and state emblem. It’s also why the Russian Orthodox Church excommunicated Mazepa in 1708, a sanction the church has refused to lift despite entreaties from Ukraine.

The Russian pejorative for Ukrainian nationalists became “Mazepists.”

Until, that is, the arrival of Symon Petliura. Petliura was a journalist and political activist who headed Ukraine’s breakaway government after the Russian Revolution, battling the Bolsheviks until 1921, when, his forces defeated, he fled to Poland, then eventually to Paris. Petliura also drew mixed reviews, and many accused him of not doing enough to stop pogroms against Ukrainian Jews, which took thousands of lives during the independence war. It was a Ukrainian Jewish anarchist who killed him in Paris in 1926.

Soviets sniffingly renamed Mazepists “Petliurists.”

Then came Bandera.

“The real issue here is that Russians do not and never have accepted that Ukraine is a real country,” Kulchytsky said. “Poles have Poland, Germans have Germany, Turks have Turkey. But in the Russian view, Ukrainians are really Russian. It’s an imperialist view, and it isn’t going away.”

Bandera, in particular, troubles Putin, who’s known to be a student of Stalin. The Germans released Bandera in September 1944 and provided his men with weapons in hopes they would blunt the advance of the Red Army. Obviously, that failed.

At the end of the war, Bandera remained in Germany, promoting Ukrainian independence until 1959, when he was found dead in his apartment in Munich of cyanide poisoning. A German court convicted a KGB defector of the crime three years later, finding that the hit had been ordered by then-Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

https://www.sacbee.com/news/local/history/article2594053.html

--------

Bandera-phobia in the Russian Consciousness

By Igor Lossev | November 4, 2014

https://icds.ee/en/bandera-phobia-in-the-russian-consciousness/

The Russian “myth of Banderism” does not say anything about this phenomenon originating from the history of Ukraine, but it can say a lot about the Russian consciousness itself.

The phenomenon discussed below belongs among the fundamental and pioneering thought structures that manifest in the mentality of the people living in Russia and their attitude towards Ukraine and Ukrainians. “Banderism” in the Russian consciousness does not have much in common with Banderism as an actual phenomenon originating from the history of Ukraine. We can even talk about a specific Russian interpretation model for the movement and that model, with its numerous irrational elements, gives every reason to consider the interpretation a myth that coexists with other Russian myths concerning Ukraine. The attitude towards the Ukrainian nationalist movement has remained on a strictly propagandist level, even among educated and liberal Russian intellectuals, which makes us think back to the Soviet agitprop era, when the “objective” and “scientifically sound” images of anti-Soviet ideologues were developed. Great progress could be made in defining this phenomenon in the Russian consciousness even by giving up the hysterical-accusatory tone, which is prevalent in almost all Russian texts on the phenomenon, even those that aspire to be academic. In this consciousness and, moreover, the subconscious, the historical reality transforms into a symbol, which lives its own life separate from the truth. This symbol is extremely eagerly used in many pieces of writing, which aim at creating a negative picture of Ukraine as well as its regions and political forces. . . .

Many Russians consider the “Banderist” a metaphysical, almost Manichean threat, backed by the forces of darkness. The role of the actual Banderists in the emergence of those images was quite modest; the Russian consciousness itself made the main contribution with its specific peculiarities that were born of a specific history. . . .

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 5:18 AM

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

Zelensky, Macron sign declaration on Ukraine-France defense cooperation

By Martin Fornusek | November 17, 2025 12:09 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/macron-welcomes-zelensky-in-france-ahead-o
f-expected-defense-support-talks/

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 1:05 PM

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

From Poseidon to Kinzhal: Why Russia’s ‘super weapons’ may matter less than the Kremlin claims

By Tania Myronyshena, Lucy Pakhnyuk, Dmytro Basmat, Abbey Fenbert | November 17, 2025 6:25 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/what-happened-to-russian-super-weapons/

For the first time in years, the Kremlin has officially claimed to have tested one of its so-called "super weapons" — the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile — one of six "next-generation" strategic arms introduced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 that he said were designed to restore Russia’s nuclear deterrence capability.

Taken together, the systems offered new ways to deliver nuclear strikes from land, air and sea, along with a laser platform:

the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile,

the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic missile,

the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle,

the Peresvet laser system,

the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drone, and

the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile.

With Russia’s war effort in Ukraine largely stalled, and international support for Kyiv still holding, experts say the real goal of these announcements is primarily political.

"Putin’s recent trotting out of these weapon systems is a cognitive warfare effort," George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War, told the Kyiv Independent.

"It’s designed to evoke emotional responses… primarily fear — to shape Western countries’ decision-making vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and create intellectual priors that Russians can then exploit in the future."

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Monday, November 17, 2025 3:21 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

I know that Russia is winning because SECOND is studiously avoiding frontline momentum.

Pokrovsk is occupied by Russia,

Myrnograd (its sister-suburb in the same pocket) is fully surrounded, many (hundreds to thousands) of Ukrainian troops are trapped, and Russia shrinking their space

Ukraine launched dozens (by now) of attacks on the Pokrovsk/ Myrnograd pocket, attempting to break the siege, only to lose dozens of vehicles and hundreds of men

Russia is storming thru Zaparozhiy, taking a series of fortified villages and now aiming at Hulyaipole, an important crossroad.

Ukrainian troops in Kupiansk are being whittled away in their own trap

Russian troops have entered Lyman and Sieversk.

*****

About Bandera

Quote:
Involved in nationalist organisations from a young age, he joined the Ukrainian Military Organisation in 1924. In 1931, he became head of propaganda of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), and later became head of the OUN for Poland in 1932. In 1934, he organised the assassination of the Polish interior minister, Bronislaw Pieracki, and was sentenced to death after being convicted of terrorism, subsequently commuted to life imprisonment.

Bandera was freed from prison in 1939 following the invasion of Poland, and moved to Kraków. In 1940, he became head of the radical faction of the OUN, the OUN-B. On 22 June 1941, the same day as Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union, he formed the Ukrainian National Committee. The head of the Committee, Yaroslav Stetsko, announced the creation of a Ukrainian state on 30 June 1941, in German-captured Lviv. The proclamation pledged to work with Nazi Germany. [5] The Germans disapproved of the proclamation, and for his refusal to rescind the decree, Bandera was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to a concentration camp. He was released in September 1944 by the Germans in the hope that he could fight the Soviet advance. Bandera negotiated with the Nazis to create the Ukrainian National Army and the Ukrainian National Committee in March 1945.

Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine.[9] Many Ukrainians hail him as an example,[10][11] or as a martyred liberation fighter,[12] while other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east, condemn him as Bandera remains a highly controversial figure in Ukraine.[9] Many Ukrainians hail him as an example,[10][11] or as a martyred liberation fighter,[12] while other Ukrainians, particularly in the south and east, condemn him as a fascist,[13] or Nazi collaborator,[10] whose followers, called Banderites, were responsible for massacres of Polish and Jewish civilians during World War II. [14][15]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stepan_Bandera

I posted about the massacre of the village of Katyn, which was only one of over a hundred villages where people were burned to death and the village burned to the ground.

Poland, Hungary, Sweden, proto-Ukraine, France etc all had factions that, for one reason or another, actively aided and tacitly allowed Nazi occupation. Poles hated Jews... there was a reason so many concentration camps were in Poland.

Bandera believed in the superiority of the NON-SLAVIC portion of their population and sought to create a non-Slavic nation by exterminating Slavs and Jews. Swedes believed themselves to be the superior portion of the "master race".

These factions weren't GERMAN NAZIS, but they were on board with exterminating Jews, Slavs, Communists, "inferior people", and Russians (who were Communist Slavs and doubly despised)

SECOND follows that whole "inferior people" impulse. He, too, would like to kill his "inferiors".

*****

Propaganda from the Kiev Independent

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
From Poseidon to Kinzhal: Why Russia’s ‘super weapons’ may matter less than the Kremlin claims

By Tania Myronyshena, Lucy Pakhnyuk, Dmytro Basmat, Abbey Fenbert | November 17, 2025 6:25 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/what-happened-to-russian-super-weapons/

For the first time in years, the Kremlin has officially claimed to have tested one of its so-called "super weapons" — the nuclear-powered Burevestnik cruise missile — one of six "next-generation" strategic arms introduced by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2018 that he said were designed to restore Russia’s nuclear deterrence capability.

Taken together, the systems offered new ways to deliver nuclear strikes from land, air and sea, along with a laser platform:

the Sarmat intercontinental ballistic missile,

the Kinzhal air-launched hypersonic missile,

the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle,

the Peresvet laser system,

the Poseidon nuclear-powered underwater drone, and

the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile.

With Russia’s war effort in Ukraine largely stalled,

with this stinky BS, can we believe the rest of the article?

Quote:
and international support for Kyiv still holding,

More BS

Quote:
experts say the real goal of these announcements is primarily political.

"Putin’s recent trotting out of these weapon systems is a cognitive warfare effort," George Barros of the Institute for the Study of War, told the Kyiv Independent.

"It’s designed to evoke emotional responses… primarily fear — to shape Western countries’ decision-making vis-a-vis Russia and Ukraine, and create intellectual priors that Russians can then exploit in the future."

Nope! The purpose of these weapons, especially Poseidon and Burevestnik, is to ensure a response strike even if the USA launches a first strike against Russia. Because these missiles/ drones can be very close to America's shores and can't be targeted, with a flight time/ response time of just a few minutes they'e the equivalent of American missile bases within 7 minute's flight time of Moscow.

They're meant to encourage nuclear arms negotiations. Nothing to do with Ukraine.

-----------

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 6:16 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I know that Russia is winning because SECOND is studiously avoiding frontline momentum.

Have you heard the phrase Remember the Alamo? Texans remember the Alamo as a loss and a Mexican "victory". The Texas side lost a couple of hundred. The Mexican side lost a couple of thousand. Since the Mexican President was willing for as many of his soldiers to die as necessary for his personal glory, relative losses meant nothing. President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is President Antonio López de Santa Anna.

Just in case Signym is not aware, present-day Mexico is poor compared to Texas, despite Mexico being prosperous before Texas broke away from Mexico. The same dynamic will occur with Russia vs Ukraine. Russia will impoverish itself from wars fought to glorify its President. Mexicans are still angry about Texas leaving Mexican control, and the Russians will long be angry about Ukraine breaking away from Russian control.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 6:49 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Have you heard the phrase Remember the Alamo?

Why do you ask stupid questions like this all the time?

You don't have anything smart to say anymore now that Kevin Drum is dead?

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 6:57 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Have you heard the phrase Remember the Alamo?

Why do you ask stupid questions like this all the time?

You don't have anything smart to say anymore now that Kevin Drum is dead?

Do you know why awful things happen to people like Kevin Drum and 6ix? Both dropped out of life. Drum quit working to do nothing but take photographs of stars and 6ix switched to drinking. Aimlessness kills people. Does 6ix not know he has lost purpose and direction?

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 6:58 AM

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

The Biggest Under-Reported Story of 2025
Since Trump has become President, China has ramped up its support for Russia to hammer Ukraine.

By Phillips P. Obrien | Nov 18, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-biggest-under-reported-stor
y

Do you want to know what the biggest under-reported story of the year is in the Russo-Ukraine War? Its actually easy to pinpoint if one wants to be honest, but at the same time it is deeply uncomfortable to discuss for those states who say they support Ukraine. And that story is that Russia’s allies, most ominously China (the largest producer of military weaponry in the world) are piling in with support for Russia while Ukraine’s allies too often dither (or in the case of the USA, basically cease giving Ukraine aid altogether).

Russia’s New Decoy Drone is Made Entirely of Chinese Components
A “Russian” decoy drone used in one of the nightly attacks on Ukraine—only its made entirely of Chinese parts.

China has always possessed the innate economic, productive ability to transform the Russo-Ukraine War. China can make weaponry or much needed economic goods for Russia at a scale that Russia could not hope to match and which could overwhelm Ukraine. The first piece I wrote specifically about this appeared in February 2023, not long after this Substack was launched. In that piece I tried to warn people about China’s potential ability to transform the course of this war.

China and the Russo-Ukraine War
Phillips P. OBrien
February 22, 2023

Here is a brief excerpt from it.

That is why the Chinese decision to intervene for Russia with production and supplies (were it to happen) could change the character and certainly the duration of the Russo-Ukraine war. Chinese manufacturing is a whole different beast from Russia’s and if Beijing decided to really turn on the taps, they could supply a wide range of weapons and supplies that could kit out the Russian army for years. It makes a long-war possible.

Now, under the Biden Administration, the Chinese always supported the Russians, but were careful to keep that support within boundaries—which makes the developments since Donald Trump has become president much more ominous. While Trump has slashed US support for Ukraine, he has also empowered other states, particularly the Chinese, to dramatically increase their support for Russia.

The growth in Chinese support for Russia in 2025 is ominous and shows no signs of abating. Even the US government has admitted this new reality (while doing nothing about it). What the Chinese seem to be doing more and more is supplying Russia with crucial components in mass, components that are vital to Russia increasing military production in the key areas that are determining this war. At the same time they are providing technical expertise, intelligence to help targeting, and even some fully completed goods that are key to the Russian war effort. The ramping up of this support since Trump became president has reached new highs in recent months.

Just some of this Chinese support includes:

Small battlefield drones. The Chinese have provided the Russians with crucial help in mass producing the drones that are shaping the fighting on the front line, for instance sending huge amounts of fiber-optic cables. One Carnegie report on this aid stated that in August 2025 alone, China exported a record 328,000 miles of fiber-optic cable and nearly $50 million worth of lithium-ion batteries to Russia, reinforcing its role as the Kremlin’s primary wartime supplier of dual-use materials.

Shahed-Type longer range UAVs. The Wall Street Journal on October 30 published a story using private sources which outlined the detailed support Russia is receiving from China in the mass production of the Shahed type drones (the ones used to attack Ukrainian cities and critical infrastructure nightly). It said China was now “the main external supplier of critical components such as engines and navigation systems” for these systems.

Providing Russia with many fully-built Chinese military drones, such as in this September story, which the Russians can then use to improve/make their own (using Chinese components of course).

Providing the Russians with direct technical assistance, including from visiting Chinese technicians and engineers, to improve Russian production in a number of areas. One September report was that Chinese engineers are now working in Russia to help with drone production.

Providing the Russians with active intelligence support to assist with their targeting of Ukrainian assets. This could be one of the reasons that Russian attacks on critical Ukrainian infrastructure recently have seemed to be far more accurate and effective than in past years.

Providing Russia with decoy drones with all Chinese parts, such as was discovered this July.

In a report released by the Ukrainians yesterday, it was stated that the Chinese are now upping their support in advanced components that are improving the accuracy and effectiveness of Russian glide bombs and cruise missiles. https://kyivindependent.com/military-intelligence-releases-new-data-on
-foreign-equipment-used-in-russian-weapons-focusing-on-eastern-asian-companies/

When you add it all together, it is sobering and deserves far more constant attention than it is getting. China more and more seems to have decided that it wants Russia to win and will do what it must to aid the Russians. The whole Russian drone/missile campaign against Ukraine today is partially built on Chinese support.

And btw, I have not had a chance to discuss a huge range of other Chinese support including All-terrain vehicles, body armor, small arms, etc, etc.

And the US response under Trump to this Chinese move has been to occasionally wag a finger, but to do nothing material. In June the administration acknowledged it was reluctant to even discuss the issue with the Chinese. More recently, Trump admitted after meeting with President Xi, that he was reluctant to take any step against Chinese trade with Russia, because of its importance to the Chinese.

Maybe Trump will change course on Friday (which might be called secondary sanctions day—piece coming Thursday), but as of now, the US is basically encouraging the Chinese to support the Russians by making it clear that the Chinese can act with impunity.

And the Chinese (and other Russian allies such as the North Koreans and Iranians) have understood this message. Russian allies are now piling in with support to help Russia win. Ukraine’s allies, on the other hand, are not. They dither over seizing Russian assets, still are refusing to provide long-range (any signs of those Tomahawks?), etc, etc.

This needs far more attention. The behavior and support of allies often have decided wars in the past. They could certainly decide this one.

Russia, it is being shown, is receiving ever more support from its allies, such as China. Ukraine needs the same if it wants to keep pace.

Thanks for reading Phillips’s Newsletter! This post is public so feel free to share it.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 8:42 AM

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

Russia mobilises more than 46,000 Ukrainians from temporarily occupied territories

By Valentyna Romenenko — 18 November, 14:04

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/11/18/8007833/

Russia has forcibly mobilised 46,327 Ukrainians from the temporarily occupied territories.

Source: Dmytro Usov, Secretary of the Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, speaking at the Third International Conference Crimea Global, as quoted by Ukrinform

Quote: "We have established that 46,327 of our citizens have been forcibly mobilised from the occupied territories, including annexed Crimea. These people are fighting against us."

Details: According to the Coordination Headquarters, the Russians mobilised 5,368 Ukrainians in Donetsk Oblast, 4,650 in Luhansk Oblast, 560 in Zaporizhzhia Oblast and 478 in Kherson Oblast. In Crimea, 35,272 people were mobilised, and a further 5,368 in Sevastopol.

These mobilisation data cover the period from February 2022 to July 2025. They were obtained by Ukrainian military intelligence and confirmed by the Russian side, Usov noted.

He stated that 16% of prisoners held in Ukrainian POW camps are Ukrainian citizens, 6% of whom are Crimeans.

Usov also reported that draft legislative amendments are expected to be submitted to the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament), which would stipulate the exchange of Ukrainians from the temporarily occupied territories during prisoner swaps.

"We must take the right decision when the Russian side requests their exchange, because we are effectively exchanging Ukrainians for Ukrainians. We must do everything to ensure they do not come to the Russian Federation but remain in Ukraine," Usov stressed.

He added that regarding some Ukrainians currently held in captivity on Ukrainian territory, domestic courts have already issued acquittals. "And we are waiting for them to be released from the camps," Usov said.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 8:54 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I know that Russia is winning because SECOND is studiously avoiding frontline momentum.

SECOND:
Have you heard the phrase Remember the Alamo? Texans remember the Alamo as a loss and a Mexican "victory". The Texas side lost a couple of hundred. The Mexican side lost a couple of thousand. Since the Mexican President was willing for as many of his soldiers to die as necessary for his personal glory, relative losses meant nothing. President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is President Antonio López de Santa Anna.

Even more "cope"!

Both you and I know your stats aren't true.

I can only imagine that your full-on delusions are due to heavy drinking.

Bottoms up, SECOND!

------

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

America's "friends"-

Soon-to-be toppled Zelensky
Overthrown Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan
Our ally against Iran, the executed Saddam Hussein
"Our [CIA] man" in Panama, captured and jailed Manuel Noreiga
Our secular friend in the Mideast, Bashar Assad
And of course, the last President of S Vietnam, Van Thiue

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 9:18 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Even more "cope"!

Both you and I know your stats aren't true.

I can only imagine that your full-on delusions are due to heavy drinking.

Bottoms up, SECOND!

Signym, why did the soviet union collapse? The same reasons have returned, but with Ukraine substituting for Afghanistan.

• Economic stagnation: Decades of a command economy led to inefficiency, shortages of consumer goods, and low quality of life for citizens.

• Resource strain: The costly war in Afghanistan and a massive military buildup strained the economy.

• Oil price drop: A sharp decline in global oil prices in the 1980s hurt the USSR's export revenues, which were crucial for the economy.

• Failed reforms: Gorbachev's Perestroika reforms destabilized the economy further by introducing market-based changes that were not fully implemented, leading to inflation and shortages.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 10:01 AM

THG

Keep it real please

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I know that Russia is winning because SECOND is studiously avoiding frontline momentum.

SECOND:
Have you heard the phrase Remember the Alamo? Texans remember the Alamo as a loss and a Mexican "victory". The Texas side lost a couple of hundred. The Mexican side lost a couple of thousand. Since the Mexican President was willing for as many of his soldiers to die as necessary for his personal glory, relative losses meant nothing. President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is President Antonio López de Santa Anna.

Even more "cope"!

Both you and I know your stats aren't true.

I can only imagine that your full-on delusions are due to heavy drinking.

Bottoms up, SECOND!

America's "friends"-

Soon-to-be toppled Zelensky
Overthrown Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan
Our ally against Iran, the executed Saddam Hussein
"Our [CIA] man" in Panama, captured and jailed Manuel Noreiga
Our secular friend in the Mideast, Bashar Assad
And of course, the last President of S Vietnam, Van Thiue

Comrade signyms hate for America remains obvious. As does Putins' hate for anything not Putin. His front-line progress comes at a great expense and has taken years to gain very little. What we are witnessing is not a Russian success. It's the building of a vast Russian graveyard.

Look at the lower right hand corner of the map in the link to see how small an area we are talking about.

T

https://understandingwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/Pokrovsk-and-M
yrnohrad-November-11-2025.webp

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 6:04 AM

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

Suggesting massive Russian losses? Putin likens war in Ukraine to Battle of Stalingrad

By Kateryna Shkarlat | Tue, November 18, 2025 - 20:55

https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/suggesting-massive-russian-losses-puti
n-likens-1763491226.html

Russian President Vladimir Putin compared the Russian forces fighting against Ukraine to the participants of the Battle of Stalingrad, according to Russian media.

According to the Kremlin leader, the participants in the war against Ukraine, like their predecessors at Stalingrad, "will always remember that Russia is behind them."

Putin’s words were spoken during the keel-laying ceremony of the nuclear icebreaker Stalingrad, which was attended by a veteran of the Battle of Stalingrad.

What is known about the Battle of Stalingrad

The Battle of Stalingrad (July 17, 1942 – February 2, 1943) was a battle between the Soviet forces and the German, Italian, Romanian, and Hungarian troops during the German-Soviet War.

The Red Army emerged victorious, leading to the capitulation of German forces and a "decisive turning point" in the war. This battle was one of the largest during World War II and the Great Patriotic War.

According to estimates, the Soviet forces suffered nearly 480,000 irrecoverable losses during the Battle of Stalingrad alone.

Russian losses in the war

From February 24, 2022, to November 18, 2025, the estimated combat losses of the aggressor country amounted to about 1,160,380 personnel.

According to the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, on Monday, November 17, Russian forces suffered 960 casualties. Ukrainian forces destroyed 13 artillery systems, multiple rocket launchers, an air defense system, 294 operational-tactical drones, and 43 vehicles.

Russian propaganda previously circulated a video on social media claiming the complete encirclement of Kupiansk. However, it was later confirmed that this was fake.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 6:06 AM

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

Destroy. Fix. Repeat: Russia is creating a devastating doom loop inside Ukraine’s energy system

By Dominic Culverwell, Luca Léry Moffat | November 18, 2025 7:22 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/destroy-fix-repeat-the-doom-loop-inside-uk
raines-energy-system/

Within weeks of Russia's full-scale invasion, Oleksiy Povolotskiy found himself suddenly in charge of the recovery office at one of Ukraine's largest energy companies. His task: source replacements for energy equipment destroyed or damaged by Russian attacks.

Povolotskiy says that at first, he and his colleagues at DTEK had to guess the email addresses of their European counterparts, whom they'd never needed to contact before. After a few successes, they began building an impressive address book of suppliers able to send crucial equipment like transformers and turbines.

But today, those contacts have less to offer. Renewed Russian strikes on the energy system this fall are worse than ever, and after nearly four years of attacks, spare parts in Europe are scarce. Povolotskiy warns that reserves of compatible equipment could run out within a year, threatening Ukraine's ability to make repairs after each attack.

Meanwhile, manufacturing new parts is slow, air defense ammunition is running low, and financial resources are wearing thin as Kyiv approaches a cliff-edge next year in funding. To add insult to injury, a 100-million-euro corruption scandal is engulfing Ukraine's energy sector.

Describing the current efforts to find equipment amid Russia's intensifying attacks, Povolotskiy told the Kyiv Independent it's like "mopping the floor while the tap is still running."

Ukraine has received over 1 billion euros ($1.16 billion) in equipment from more than 30 donor countries via a fund run by the Energy Community. But DTEK, owned by Ukraine’s richest man Rinat Akhmetov, is just one of several companies under attack. It has already spent $166 million this year repairing its thermal plants and coal facilities.

"The problem is time and money. I try to be optimistic. Maybe another country will modernize its energy facilities next year and give us its old equipment," he says. DTEK is now looking as far as Africa and the Middle East for equipment that fits Soviet-era specs, as Ukrainian manufacturers can take months or even years to produce new parts.

But as winter nears, Ukraine's needs continue to grow. Scheduled blackouts already last up to 12 hours a day in some regions. Morale is low as Ukrainians adapt to dark homes and streets. Each mass Russian attack brings the country closer to another humanitarian disaster.

"With winter approaching, we need our allies’ help more than ever," Povolotskiy says of air defense and energy infrastructure.

Bottlenecks and solutions

Russian strikes have caused catastrophic damage to Ukraine's energy infrastructure, destroying almost 70% of the country's generation capacity, according to the think tank Green Deal Ukraina.

Tactics have shifted in 2025. While Russia still attacks energy transmission — with a focus on smaller, local elements of the distribution network — attacks have recently intensified on Ukraine's gas and centralized heating.

Russia attacked Ukraine's domestic gas production for the first time in 2025 — destroying around 60% of domestic production. Combined heat and power plants, responsible for one-third of Ukraine's heat production, have also faced intensified attacks.

It's a cynical strategy as winter approaches — 80% of Ukrainians rely on a centralized gas supply, and more than half receive water heated by gas, coal or biomass according to ACAPS, a humanitarian organization.

A wider range of attacks has broadened the list of needed equipment, which includes compressors and turbines for gas production, transformers, substations, and cable products, among others, the Energy Ministry told the Kyiv Independent.

But Ukraine's needs are often incompatible with what European countries can easily offer. Ukraine's grid widely transmits at 330 kilovolts and 750 kilovolts, higher than the lower voltages more commonly used in Europe, which means that Ukraine needs different equipment.

"This 750kV equipment, including circuit breakers and transformers, is rare globally, used only by Ukraine, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S., making procurement complex," Vitaliy Zaichenko, head of Ukrnergo, the state-run grid operator, told the Kyiv Independent, adding that the company had exhausted nearly all usable secondhand stock.

Even when equipment is found, it sometimes has to be turned down. DTEK had to refuse two decommissioned transformers from Switzerland worth $10 million each due to compatibility issues, and failed to find any suitable equipment after sending search parties in Germany to scout power plants.

Other countries are also becoming increasingly reluctant to share equipment over fears that their own energy sector is vulnerable to Russian attacks. Drone sightings in Europe this year have spooked NATO’s eastern flank, which is bracing for hybrid warfare against its energy system, Polish energy expert Wojciech Jakobik told the Kyiv Independent.

"We have a change in priorities so that might be impacting some deliveries to Ukraine," he said.

That leaves Ukrainian companies increasingly reliant on newly manufactured equipment, which takes longer to arrive. While lower voltage equipment takes up to three months to produce, 750 kV equipment can take up to a year, according to Zaichenko.

"The key, in my opinion, remains air defense."

Domestically produced equipment can arrive faster, but Ukraine doesn’t have the capacity to cover all its needs. The country faces labor shortages and simply lacks the technology to make certain equipment, like gas compressors.

What Ukraine really needs is a warehouse outside the country stocked with new energy generation equipment, like transformers, and secondhand gas equipment, said Povolotskiy. DTEK is discussing the idea with the Energy Ministry, which would enable quick deliveries in just one or two weeks after a mass attack. The ministry’s own reserves of used equipment are running low, he said.

But stockpiling requires money that cash-strapped energy firms don’t have. Hard hit local energy distribution companies are, in some cases, 30% short of their planned budget for the year, said Oleksandr Kharchenko, managing director of the Energy Industry Research Center, during the Kyiv Security Forum on Nov. 10.

"Despite effective coordination, funding shortfalls threaten ongoing operations. Ukrainian teams are running low on operational expense budgets after extensive emergency restorations," Zaichenko told the Kyiv Independent.

Europe is covering part of the financial burden, with Ursula von der Leyen announcing nearly 6 billion euros ($6.9 billion) in funding to protect and repair damaged energy facilities on Nov. 13. It’s a positive sign for Kyiv after a corruption scandal in the energy sector surfaced last week, with experts warning it could shake the EU’s fiscal support for Ukraine.

For now, Brussels sees support for Ukraine’s energy sector as paramount. The European Investment Bank (EIB) intends to stay engaged with the sector, while stressing that the only real solution is to halt the attacks "as quickly as possible," head of the EIB Ukraine investment team Matteo Rivellini told the Kyiv Independent at the ReBuild Ukraine Conference on Nov. 14.

For that to happen, Ukraine needs more air defense. Russia launched 359 missiles and over 8,000 drones in October and November, according to data from Dragon Capital, a Ukrainian investment firm, many of which targeted the energy system.

As of Nov. 18, Ukrainian forces intercepted 27% of missiles in November according to Kyiv Independent calculations, a low rate by historical standards.

"The key, in my opinion, remains air defense," said Ukraine’s ex-Prime Minister Volodymyr Hroysman at the Kyiv Security Forum.

"For years now, we’ve been asking to close the sky and for more air-defense systems. Because our partners have these capabilities, we cannot simply sit and watch as our energy system and living conditions are destroyed."

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 6:13 AM

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

'Killzone' — Devastating scale of Russia's drone terror against Ukraine's civilians laid bare in new report

By Tania Myronyshena | November 19, 2025 12:36 pm

https://kyivindependent.com/russian-drones-target-civilians-dnipro-rig
ht-bank/

Along a stretch of the southern front line on the Dnipro River, Ukraine’s largest, the civilian population is shrinking, active fighting is relatively low, and the death toll keeps rising.

A key driver of this disturbing trend is Russia’s increasing use of cheap, highly precise FPV drones. It’s a modern weapon that, in theory, should reduce civilian harm. Instead, a new report demonstrates how Russia has turned it into a tool of deliberate, calculated brutality.

In a new report called "Killzone: How Russian Drones Are Devastating the River Dnipro’s Right Bank," the human rights organization Truth Hounds documents the impact of short-range drones against civilians across the Lower Dnipro region — a roughly 400-kilometer (249-mile) stretch where civilian casualties from drone attacks are among the highest in Ukraine.
https://truth-hounds.org/en/cases/killzone-how-russian-drones-are-deva
stating-the-river-dnipros-right-bank/

"These drones are extremely accurate because the operator sees everything. They guide the drone until the very moment of impact," said Vitaliy Poberezhnyi, a researcher at Truth Hounds, during a panel at Crimea Global on Nov. 17.

"They call everyone they attack ‘military.’ We see no intention to follow the rules of war. Attacks on firefighters and police, who have unique identification marks, are proof of that, " Poberezhnyi said.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 6:54 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I know that Russia is winning because SECOND is studiously avoiding frontline momentum.

SECOND:
Have you heard the phrase Remember the Alamo? Texans remember the Alamo as a loss and a Mexican "victory". The Texas side lost a couple of hundred. The Mexican side lost a couple of thousand. Since the Mexican President was willing for as many of his soldiers to die as necessary for his personal glory, relative losses meant nothing. President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is President Antonio López de Santa Anna.

Even more "cope"!

Both you and I know your stats aren't true.

I can only imagine that your full-on delusions are due to heavy drinking.

Bottoms up, SECOND!

America's "friends"-

Soon-to-be toppled Zelensky
Overthrown Ashraf Ghani, Afghanistan
Our ally against Iran, the executed Saddam Hussein
"Our [CIA] man" in Panama, captured and jailed Manuel Noreiga
Our secular friend in the Mideast, Bashar Assad
And of course, the last President of S Vietnam, Van Thiue

The only two people here who hate America are Second and Ted.

I highly suggest that you both leave my country.

I don't think Ted could ever afford that, living paycheck to paycheck on social security, but Second's fake internet personality shouldn't have any problems.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 7:49 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The only two people here who hate America are Second and Ted.

I highly suggest that you both leave my country.

I don't think Ted could ever afford that, living paycheck to paycheck on social security, but Second's fake internet personality shouldn't have any problems.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

6ix, you are a fucking Nazi. If Libtards wanted the best for America, they would kick the shit out of people like you and Trump. Instead, they let Trump cheat on his taxes and rape children because, hey, the court system, perverted by Trumptards appointed as judges, hasn't jailed him. Regardless of what Trump does, the courts won't convict him. See the Supreme Court decision, where 6 Trumptards said Trump can't be convicted of anything he has ever done. Putin has the same privileges to do what he pleases with no consequences, except for the ones that Ukrainians might violently impose on Putin.

On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-3 decision in the case of
Trump v. United States that former presidents have absolute immunity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_prosecution_of_Donald_Trump_(ele
ction_obstruction_case)#Dismissal_and_report_proceedings

Quote:
As explained below, the Office commenced prosecution of Mr. Trump in the Election Case under both the original and superseding indictments because it concluded that the admissible evidence would be sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction. ... the Office concluded that Mr. Trump's conduct violated several federal criminal statutes ... Indeed, but for Mr. Trump's election and imminent return to the Presidency, the Office assessed that the admissible evidence was sufficient to obtain and sustain a conviction at trial.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 9:56 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The only two people here who hate America are Second and Ted.

I highly suggest that you both leave my country.

I don't think Ted could ever afford that, living paycheck to paycheck on social security, but Second's fake internet personality shouldn't have any problems.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

SECOND:

6ix, you are a fucking Nazi. If Libtards wanted the best for America, they would kick the shit out of people like you and Trump. Instead, they let Trump cheat on his taxes and rape children because, hey, the court system, perverted by Trumptards appointed as judges, hasn't jailed him. Regardless of what Trump does, the courts won't convict him. See the Supreme Court decision, where 6 Trumptards said Trump can't be convicted of anything he has ever done. Putin has the same privileges to do what he pleases with no consequences, except for the ones that Ukrainians might violently impose on Putin.

SECOND, you are literally wrong in every sentence.

Put down the bottle, it's not helping you.

--------

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

America's former friends:

Soon-to-be deposed Zelensky.
Deposed leader of Afghanistan Ashraf Ghani
Former ally against Iran, the executed Saddam Hussein
Former CIA friend, the jailed Manuel Noriega.
Former secular savior of the Middle East, Bashar al Assad.
And, of course, the last President of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 12:16 PM

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

Trump Was Working With Putin The Entire Time
And Now Europe and Ukraine Will Pay The Price

By Phillips P. OBrien | Nov 19, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/trump-was-working-with-putin-th
e

In the last few hours the story has been breaking across Washington DC, that Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have been negotiating in secret to come up with a US-Russian “peace” plan without any Ukrainian input. There was this article in Axios which included these nuggets.
https://www.axios.com/2025/11/19/ukraine-peace-plan-trump-russia-witko
ff

Quote:
The Trump administration has been secretly working in consultation with Russia to draft a new plan to end the war in Ukraine. U.S. and Russian officials tell Axios.

Why it matters: The 28-point U.S. plan is inspired by President Trump's successful push for a deal in Gaza. A top Russian official told Axios he's optimistic about the plan. It's not yet clear how Ukraine and its European backers will feel about it.

Zoom in: The plan's 28 points fall into four general buckets, sources tell Axios: peace in Ukraine, security guarantees, security in Europe, and future U.S. relations with Russia and Ukraine.

• It's unclear how the plan approaches contentious issues such as territorial control in eastern Ukraine — where Russian forces have been inching forward, but still control far less land than the Kremlin has demanded.

Behind the scenes: Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff is leading the drafting of the plan and has discussed it extensively with Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev, a U.S. official said.

And the Politico morning playbook reported things similarly.
https://www.politico.com/playbook

Quote:
But here’s the thing: This new peace plan has seemingly had no direct input from Ukraine, nor from America’s allies in Europe. And we have no sense yet of the details, of what’s been hammered out on the thorniest questions around Russia’s seizure of vast swathes of Ukrainian territory, the kidnapping of tens of thousands of Ukrainian children or the security guarantees being offered to Ukraine in the aftermath.

The mood inside the White House is bullish, and it seems the plan will be presented to Zelenskyy as a fait accomplis. “What we are going to present [to Ukraine] is reasonable," the senior White House official tells Dasha. The Trump administration thinks Zelenskyy, under pressure both on the battlefield and on the home front (due to a burgeoning corruption scandal), will have to accept what’s on offer.

And as for the rest of Europe? “We don't really care about the Europeans,” the official tells Dasha. “It’s about Ukraine accepting.”

Here’s how Dasha puts it on this morning’s Playbook Podcast, following conversations with White House staff: “They feel that Ukraine is in the position right now, given the corruption scandals that have been plaguing Zelenskyy, given where the battle lines are at this moment, that Ukraine is in a position where ... they feel they can get them to accept this deal. They say it's reasonable; it's something that is, they believe, going to be palatable to Ukraine.”

The similarity in reporting is so strong that we can say that the White House is making sure this story gets out, and is expecting to move soon to get this plan shoved down Ukrainian and European throats. What do all the reports agree on?

• This is a detailed deal (28 points is a large number if true) that has been worked out over weeks, and probably months.

• The negotiations were handled by Steve Witkoff (who though people make fun of him, needs to be seen as The Mouth of Trump) and Kirill Dmitriev—so Trump and Putin are deeply invested.

• Ukraine has had no input into the process

• European states have had no input into the process

• The Trump-Putin plan will soon be presented to Ukraine and other European states as a “fait accompli” and they will be expected to back it under enormous pressure from the White House.

This has been something that has been coming since Trump came back to the White House.

The timing of it seems to have been dictated by the course of the war in 2025. Putin might have wanted to spend the summer and fall taking as much Ukrainian territory as he could (while sacrificing hundreds of thousands of his soldiers) while blasting Ukrainian cities and civilians as much as possible—thinking this would get him the best deal he could.

Regardless, here we are. The deal seems close, and Trump and Putin are behind it. The details of the deal will probably leak out soon, but we can assume they will not be good for Ukraine.

The defining question now is what will Ukraine and the European states that back Ukraine do when presented with the US-Russian ultimatum? They will come under enormous pressure to accept. Indeed, there is another story just breaking, about the US giving up the Supreme Command of NATO, which shows the kind of leverage the Trump administration could use to compel Europeans to back this deal.

Trump administration considers giving up NATO command that has been exclusively American since Eisenhower
The move is being discussed as part of a possible restructuring of combatant commands that would help the Defense Department cut costs.
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/trump-admin-conside
rs-giving-nato-command-exclusively-american-eisenho-rcna196503

So here we are. It has taken somewhat longer than it might have, but Trump and Putin are completely aligned on Ukraine and have agreed on a common plan. The moment of truth is approaching for Europe.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 8:01 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Zelensky has a choice: Accept whatever is offered to him, or have Ukraine slaughtered on the battlefield.

-----------

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 8:53 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The only two people here who hate America are Second and Ted.

I highly suggest that you both leave my country.

I don't think Ted could ever afford that, living paycheck to paycheck on social security, but Second's fake internet personality shouldn't have any problems.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

SECOND:

6ix, you are a fucking Nazi. If Libtards wanted the best for America, they would kick the shit out of people like you and Trump. Instead, they let Trump cheat on his taxes and rape children because, hey, the court system, perverted by Trumptards appointed as judges, hasn't jailed him. Regardless of what Trump does, the courts won't convict him. See the Supreme Court decision, where 6 Trumptards said Trump can't be convicted of anything he has ever done. Putin has the same privileges to do what he pleases with no consequences, except for the ones that Ukrainians might violently impose on Putin.

SECOND, you are literally wrong in every sentence.

Put down the bottle, it's not helping you.

Yes. I agree.

Second really needs to get some help for his alcohol abuse.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Wednesday, November 19, 2025 8:54 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Zelensky has a choice: Accept whatever is offered to him, or have Ukraine slaughtered on the battlefield.

You forgot: "PERIOD."

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 6:15 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Zelensky has a choice: Accept whatever is offered to him, or have Ukraine slaughtered on the battlefield.

You forgot: "PERIOD."

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

If you look only at deaths, the Americans obviously lost the Revolutionary War. If you look only at the destruction of property, the Americans even more obviously lost, since they destroyed nothing in England. If you look only at the deaths of Englishmen, since Hessian troops were most of the deaths on the English side, England easily won a total victory.

An estimated 25,000 to 70,000 Americans died in the Revolutionary War, with approximately 6,800 killed in combat and 17,000 to 53,000 dying from disease. British forces suffered roughly 24,000 casualties, with a significant portion due to disease. The vast majority of both American and British deaths resulted from disease and harsh conditions, not combat.

American deaths
• Killed in action: Approximately 6,800
• Wounded: Approximately 6,100
• Died from disease: At least 17,000, with a large portion of these deaths occurring in British prison ships
• Total military dead: An estimated 25,000-70,000

British and allied deaths
• Total British and Loyalist casualties: Approximately 24,000
• Killed in action: Around 1,200 British soldiers
• Died from disease: An estimated 18,000 or more, particularly among Hessian troops

Other factors
• Disease: Diseases like typhus, dysentery, and smallpox were the deadliest killers on both sides.
• Prisoners of War: Disease and harsh conditions in prison camps, especially British prison ships, led to thousands of deaths among American soldiers.
• Civilians: An estimated 100,000 people in North America would later die from a smallpox epidemic that swept the continent during the war.

https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+died+in+the+american+war+of+i
ndependence

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 6:34 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:

The only two people here who hate America are Second and Ted.

I highly suggest that you both leave my country.

I don't think Ted could ever afford that, living paycheck to paycheck on social security, but Second's fake internet personality shouldn't have any problems.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

SECOND:

6ix, you are a fucking Nazi. If Libtards wanted the best for America, they would kick the shit out of people like you and Trump. Instead, they let Trump cheat on his taxes and rape children because, hey, the court system, perverted by Trumptards appointed as judges, hasn't jailed him. Regardless of what Trump does, the courts won't convict him. See the Supreme Court decision, where 6 Trumptards said Trump can't be convicted of anything he has ever done. Putin has the same privileges to do what he pleases with no consequences, except for the ones that Ukrainians might violently impose on Putin.

SECOND, you are literally wrong in every sentence.

Put down the bottle, it's not helping you.

Yes. I agree.

Second really needs to get some help for his alcohol abuse.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

Signym and 6ix, you two really have lost the plot of what is going on in this war. Do you also struggle to understand movies and TV shows? There are specialized websites that will explain the meaning of previous episodes. Here is a helpful guide written for Europeans:

5 lies Europe tells itself about Russia’s criminal war

By Andrew Chakhoyan | May 16, 2025 9:55 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/five-lies-europe-tells-itself-about-russia
s-criminal-war/

Russia’s President — a wanted war criminal — Vladimir Putin failed to show up in Istanbul for the “direct talks” with Ukraine that he himself proposed. For the Kremlin to wage an unprovoked war of conquest, reject a ceasefire, and call it a peace effort is nothing new. Russia lies.

In 2022, building up troops at the Ukrainian border, the Kremlin told us it had no intentions of invading. Russia lied.

Eleven years ago, Putin claimed that the unmarked troops seizing administrative buildings in Ukrainian Crimea weren't his. Russia lied.

Ninety years ago, Moscow starved millions of Ukrainians in an effort to break a nation’s will to live free. What the world knows as the Holodomor — and what 35 countries have recognized as genocide — Russia denies.

Russia lies all the time.

Much ink has already been spilled over the Istanbul talks, the Kremlin’s venal theatrics, and Washington’s mixed signals. But the fundamentals remain unchanged. No one longs for peace more than Ukraine — it accepted an unconditional ceasefire in March. Russia did not. It still refuses to stop killing Ukrainians for the crime of being Ukrainian.

Moscow frames its war of aggression as a neighborly dispute that spiraled out of control — a cynical and callous lie. But many nations entertain the claim, absolving themselves of the responsibility to help Ukraine expel the invaders.

With an economy ten times the size of Russia’s and three times the population, Europe pretends it has done all it could — sanctions, aid, thoughts, and prayers. But half-measures, laced with appeasement, have predictably failed to quench Moscow’s appetite for war. When Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, it marked the collapse of the post-Cold War order. Europe flinched. A well-known serial killer isn’t just knocking on the door — he’s already inside the house.

To call out Russia’s lies is no longer enough. Europe must confront — and discard — five lethal delusions of its own.

First, our fear of escalation fuels Russian aggression.

The response to 2008 wasn’t ignorance — it was fear. Instead of pacifying Moscow, our self-restraint emboldened it. Paralyzed by the belief that confronting Russia was too risky, Europe missed the memo: not confronting it was and remains the most dangerous option of all.

Second, it’s not Putin’s war — it’s Russia’s.

Blaming one man is comforting, but it is a serious misreading of history. Russia was born an empire and never became a nation. Its rulers changed — tsars, commissars, now kleptocrats — but the colonizer impulses remain. The precursor state to today’s Federation of Oppression, Muscovy, began as a tax collector for the Mongol khans, and it never stopped extracting, erasing, expanding. If the West denies agency to the millions of Russian people today and spares them responsibility for their government, it’ll guarantee that history repeats itself.

Third, yielding to nuclear coercion rewards the threat and ensures its return.

The world changed forever when Moscow rattled its nukes — and the West responded not with resolve, but retreat. Timothy Snyder said it best: "By taking nuclear blackmail seriously, we have actually increased the overall chances of nuclear war. If nuclear blackmail enables a Russian victory, the consequences will be incalculably awful." The risk of a nuclear strike is never zero — but if Russia walks away with anything resembling a victory, the collapse of the non-proliferation regime is all but assured.

Fourth, the frozen asset debate is backwards.

Europe agonizes over whether transferring $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine might set a dangerous precedent. But the flipside is worse: doing nothing signals that a pariah state can wage a war of annihilation — and keep the profits. After WWII, German assets helped rebuild what Hitler destroyed. What’s different now? The Kremlin chose to launch a criminal war and thus forfeited any claim to be treated as a respectable sovereign actor. Making Russia pay is the only fair outcome.

Finally, Ukraine is a security provider for Europe, not a security burden.

By resisting the full-scale invasion, Ukraine has severely degraded Moscow's military capabilities. It chose to stand and fight rather than surrender — a gift the Free World has yet to fully appreciate. Ukraine’s valour is Europe’s shield. A NATO-integrated Ukraine isn’t a liability — it’s what a credible and effective deterrent looks like.

Our wishes notwithstanding, Istanbul was no turning point, but yet another chapter in a centuries-long pattern of deceit driven by Moscow’s imperial ambition. Russia’s own former foreign minister, Andrei Kozyrev, put it plainly: by appointing Vladimir Medinsky — a fringe propagandist loathed even in Russia — to lead the talks, Putin signaled open contempt for diplomacy and for Washington in particular. This wasn’t negotiation — it was provocation in a cheap suit.

The Free World, and Europe in particular, has the means, the direct strategic interest, and — if it finds the will — the moral responsibility to help Ukraine restore its sovereignty. Not just to punish aggression, but to break the cycle of appeasement that brought us here. Victory for Ukraine is not a gift. It is the price of peace in Europe — and the best guarantee that your children won’t be drafted in the coming months or years to defend what remains of it.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 6:36 AM

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

Future Wars Will Look Like Ukraine

Just like Spain in 1936, Ukraine is a laboratory for new ideas and technology

By Yevhenii Valiienko | Nov 19, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/future-wars-will-look-like-ukraine

When the Spanish Civil War erupted in 1936, the world framed it as an internal struggle. But beneath the ideological slogans and street battles, Spain became something far more consequential: a live laboratory where foreign powers tested weapons, doctrines and political strategies that would soon reshape the entire world.

Nearly a century later, Ukraine has taken on an eerily similar role. Though very different in context and technology, both conflicts have functioned as proving grounds where major powers experiment with tools and tactics they may one day use in a much larger confrontation.

In Spain, Germany dispatched the Condor Legion—pilots, engineers and tacticians eager to validate emerging concepts of air power.

The infamous bombing of Guernica, which horrified the world, was not only an attack … but an experiment. It tested the psychological impact of urban bombing, the coordination of fighters and bombers and the effectiveness of new munitions.

Italy, too, used Spain to evaluate light armor, expeditionary logistics and combined-arms formations. Meanwhile, the Soviet Union supplied tanks, aircraft and advisors to the Republican side. Soviet strategists used the conflict to test early armored doctrine, political commissar structures and command-and-control models.

Spain became the first dress rehearsal for global war. Tanks that clashed near Madrid clashed again on a far larger scale in Poland. Pilots who honed their skills over the Ebro River carried those same tactics into the Battle of Britain. And European populations learned—not in theory but through newsreels and photographs—that ideology and technology were merging into something profoundly dangerous.

Ukraine now occupies the same historical position, but the tools are different and the stakes potentially higher. It’s the first major conflict fought in the age of cheap drones, artificial intelligence and electronic warfare.

Every day produces data that defense ministries around the world rush to analyze. A $500 first-person-view drone destroys a multi million-dollar tank. Hypersonic missiles veer off course under electronic jamming. Satellite networks become lifelines for entire brigades. Navigation denial zones disrupt weapons once thought invulnerable.

The same pattern repeats: great powers learn without confronting each other directly. Russia fields Iranian drones and Chinese-made electronics, revealing its supply chains and its vulnerabilities. Ukraine uses NATO precision weapons, U.S. surveillance platforms and European air-defense networks that intercept some missiles and fail against others—creating priceless real-world performance data.

As in the 1930s, rival blocs are arming opposing sides—and watching closely.

The ideological symmetry is unmistakable. In the 1930s, fascism and communism used Spain as a symbolic battleground. Today, authoritarian revisionism and democratic self-determination collide in Ukraine.

Moscow casts the war as a civilizational stand against Western influence; Kyiv frames it as a fight for freedom and the right to choose its future. These narratives echo globally, shaping alliances and defining the emerging world order.

The lessons from Ukraine will shape that order. The dominance of drones signals the end of old procurement philosophies. Traditional armored breakthroughs now look obsolete when small quadcopters can hunt tanks faster than they can maneuver.

Electronic warfare has eclipsed air superiority in importance, proving that the battle for the electromagnetic spectrum is the battle for control itself. Hypersonic weapons, once portrayed as unstoppable, demonstrate weaknesses when their guidance systems are disrupted.

Even communications infrastructure—something as mundane as a satellite terminal—has become a strategic asset as important as artillery.

Ukraine reveals not just the future of war, but the fragility of systems modern societies rely on. GPS, satellite internet, digital logistics and electronic networks—all taken for granted—are now contested. The next major conflict, should it occur, may not begin with tanks crossing borders but with signals going dark.

The parallel with Spain is more than historical curiosity. It’s a warning. Spain’s lessons were visible, documented and widely discussed—yet the world failed to prevent the catastrophe that followed. Today, Ukraine offers a similar preview: a conflict that shows how rapidly technology is changing warfare and how deeply ideology drives geopolitical competition.

The world ignored the implications of Spain. It cannot afford to ignore the implications of Ukraine.

This war is not only about territory. It is an ideological struggle and a technological proving ground. And like Spain in 1936, it may be remembered not only for what happened there—but for what it foretold.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 8:29 AM

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

‘Total nonsense’: A former Russian military cartographer on how the army cooks its maps to exaggerate gains

11:18 am, November 19, 2025

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/11/19/total-nonsense-a-former-russia
n-military-cartographer-on-how-the-army-cooks-its-maps-to-exaggerate-gains

Battlefield maps are one of Russia’s favorite propaganda tools. While the Russian army has, on average, advanced at a snail’s pace this year, dramatic visuals from its Defense Ministry and pro-war bloggers often exaggerate its progress, using bold arrows and shaded villages to create the impression its troops are sweeping through territory. This trend extends to the military’s internal maps, according to a former soldier who used to draw them for a living. For Mediazona, Vyacheslav Boyarintsev (a pseudonym) recently described his experience. Meduza shares an abridged translation of his firsthand account.

. . . My duties consisted of updating the physical map, updating the electronic map, and updating the general’s tablet. Every evening, I took his tablet and drew in the day’s changes in the battlefield situation based on reports from the command post. For example: Russian troops advanced from this tree line to that tree line, or a bit further. On the maps, tree lines are divided into squares. I’d shade in the advancement — say, from square 16 to square 18.

At first, the job seemed insanely hard. Just a huge volume of work. I was the only person tasked with updating the electronic map, the tablet, and the printed map. And we constantly had to redo the attack plan.

From the command post, they would send us one or two pages via the secure data system, with the tree lines labeled and notes on how far and where the troops had advanced since the last update. Twice a week, we printed two big maps for the Combat Control Group (GBU). All the branch chiefs updated their own information on that map. I drew in the positions and movements of the motorized rifle and tank regiments; the UAV chief added drone strike data; the artillery chief added his data; we marked incoming Ukrainian drone hits; and the GBU chief added airstrikes with glide bombs on Ukrainian troop concentrations.

Additionally, we printed smaller regiment maps, maybe 50 by 50 centimeters (20 by 20 inches), every day. Each regiment sent in its daily situation map. What was on those maps? Regiments’ attack plans for the next day. For example, on November 4 they’d send the plan for November 5. The maps showed how the regiments and their subunits would move, including their routes and numbers of personnel.

Fooling themselves

Most of the time, the command gives completely unrealistic orders during an offensive. I was the one who actually put these decisions on the map. They might plan for soldiers to advance 18 kilometers (11 miles) in five days, even though everyone understands that’s absurd.

The information that regiments send to headquarters is mostly irrelevant and made-up. The infamous practice of shading in maps “on credit” that everyone talks about — it really exists.

Regiments report that they’ve fully captured places like Rusyn Yar or Poltavka. I shade those areas in, of course. Then I open [exiled anti-war journalist] Michael Naki’s latest video in the evening, look at the DeepState map, and see that all of Rusyn Yar is still a gray zone. And I also talked directly to chiefs of staff about regimental officers — they’d tell me, “This is bullshit. The data we’re sending is total bullshit. There’s no way we can be there.”

Most likely, the falsification starts at the regimental commander level. They send the information to the division, and the division sends it to the army. And at the army level, the lies are even bigger. We’d receive electronic situation maps from army headquarters, and I personally saw that the numbers were completely unrealistic. The data I got from the regiments differed by one and a half to two kilometers (1–1.3 miles) from what the army sent. The army maps were wildly off — pure fabrication.

Let me explain how an “advance” is plotted. Say you have a forest strip one kilometer (0.6 miles) long. If two Russian soldiers sit at one end and two more sit at the other, that strip is automatically marked as fully captured on the map — as if the entire area is under Russian control. Two people sit somewhere and suddenly 300–400 meters (1,000–1,300 miles) get shaded in as “secured,” even though there’s no real fortified presence there at all.

So first they lie that the area is controlled, and then they send units there. In the end, they’re deceiving themselves.

In September, there was a case where the map showed that an area near Toretsk was almost fully under the control of the 33rd and 57th regiments. When marines and special forces went in, it turned out that Ukrainian forces were still there, and they wiped out all the Russians.

Everything the Z-bloggers say is mostly true. The inaccurate troop positions, the “meatgrinder assaults,” the soldiers conducting assaults on scooters, it’s all real.

There was the time when the 242nd regiment was supposed to reach Torske and Maiak — small settlements. I was the one who plotted that mission. Russian forces were massing in Rusyn Yar and were supposed to push north from there. Even back when I arrived, in the summer, the objective was to capture Maiak and Torske. By October, they hadn’t advanced even two kilometers (1.2 miles). I have no idea what they’re drawing on those maps.

Once I received a situation map from the General Staff. This was in September, when [Chief of the General Staff Valery] Gerasimov came to visit. They sent this map so I could make updated maps specifically for Gerasimov — to show him what our “actual” troop positions supposedly were. It was total nonsense; the positions on the map were drastically different from reality. There was no way Russian troops were where the map showed.

So yes — I made maps specifically for Gerasimov based on those General Staff shadings. The division sends one set of data, but ahead of Gerasimov’s arrival, we were given a different one from the General Staff. And I had to print maps based on that version just for him. Absurd.

‘Most others understood perfectly well’

My superior, Colonel Chernik, treated me terribly. I think he’s mentally unstable — a moral degenerate and an energy vampire. He’s 45 or 46 but looks much older. Short, wrinkled, with a huge bald spot; always groaning.

He lives in some strange world of his own. He and some of the other officers called Ukrainians “Germans.” What infuriated me most was when they occupied Yablonivka. He came in all cheerful and said, “We finally liberated Yablonivka!” That kind of newspeak disgusted me to the point of physical revulsion. It’s horrible, truly — when you see with your own eyes what’s happening, and he calls it “liberation.”

There was also one other completely unhinged idiot who stood out. I swear, every day, he raved about launching nuclear missiles at Ukraine. He arrived as an attachment from the 155th Naval Infantry Brigade. A mobilized captain, about 50. He looked like a drunk, with slurred speech and robotic movements. He’d previously served in the regiment responsible for Russia’s nuclear arsenal. He left the service as a captain, and during the war he was mobilized.

Before he joined us, this lunatic had been in Kursk region. He told me how they cut off the heads of Ukrainian POWs and put them on stakes.

There weren’t many like him, though. Most others understood perfectly well that the war was criminal and unwinnable, but they kept doing their jobs. They had no other options. . . .

More at https://meduza.io/en/feature/2025/11/19/total-nonsense-a-former-russia
n-military-cartographer-on-how-the-army-cooks-its-maps-to-exaggerate-gains

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 8:47 AM

JAYNEZTOWN

spy guy instructs the British Navy Royals

Navy could fire 'warning shot' or 'cut off' Russian spy ship after laser incident, says ex-MI6 boss
https://news.sky.com/story/navy-could-fire-warning-shot-or-cut-off-rus
sian-spy-ship-after-laser-incident-says-ex-mi6-boss-13472977

NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 9:24 AM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

And yet, SECOND, despite the "fatal" Russian flaws that critics like to post, Russia is wnning.

Its attrition strategy is paying off. As Ukraine, the EU, and the USA run out of ... well, everything... and as Ukraine runs out of soldiers and "advisors" and mercs specifically, Russia advances faster and faster.

There are now seven important fortified cities/ towns partially to almost fully occupied by Russia, and this isn't from Gerasimov's maps.

-----------

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 10:40 AM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And yet, SECOND, despite the "fatal" Russian flaws that critics like to post, Russia is wnning.

Its attrition strategy is paying off. As Ukraine, the EU, and the USA run out of ... well, everything... and as Ukraine runs out of soldiers and "advisors" and mercs specifically, Russia advances faster and faster.

There are now seven important fortified cities/ towns partially to almost fully occupied by Russia, and this isn't from Gerasimov's maps.

None of that is happening, Signym. What you should concentrate on is Russia's bombardment of Ukraine. That is actually happening. But your alternate reality story of Russian soldiers achieving victory after victory, marching faster and faster through Ukraine, is NOT happening.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 10:41 AM

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

A senior White House official confirmed to CBS News on Thursday that President Trump has approved a 28-point plan to end the war Russia started nearly four years ago with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ukraine-russia-war-trump-approves-peace-p
lan-zelenskyy-not-on-board/

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

This Deal Is Trump's--It Has Always Been Trump's
Phillips P. OBrien
Nov 20, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/this-deal-is-trumps-it-has-alwa
ys

Btw, the timing is interesting, seems that Trump was approving this plan almost at exactly the same time that he was pretending to support a vote on Graham-Blumenthal (Russia sanctions bill). In other words, Trump was actively part of a deception operation.

And then all the media voices that were trying to say that this was Witkoff and not Trump, just went silent.

It is important that people understand that this deal is Trump’s because of one thing. We now have evidence of exactly what Trump would like to see in a deal to end the war. For months there has been speculation, rumor, wild conjecture about what Trump wanted. Was he getting angry with Putin? Was he going to support Ukraine? Was he wanting to work with Europe? Now we know and the picture is not pretty.

Trump wants a peace deal that rewards Putin and punishes Ukraine. He wants a peace deal with no European input and which he can impose on Ukraine. He wants to get back to business with Putin as soon as possible and start making money. In sum, he does not care about democracy or freedom, indeed Trump wants to punish both. He wants to work with and reward a dictatorship—and now, finally, the media must acknowledge that.

Will he get his way? Maybe not. There are major possible roadblocks before this deal could become a reality. The Ukrainians might balk, European states might rally behind Ukraine and move away from the USA, or the very dysfunctional nature of the administration might cripple these plans. But that is for the future. For this moment we now know what Trump believes and wants. It is an ugly, disheartening picture.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 12:39 PM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
And yet, SECOND, despite the "fatal" Russian flaws that critics like to post, Russia is wnning.

Its attrition strategy is paying off. As Ukraine, the EU, and the USA run out of ... well, everything... and as Ukraine runs out of soldiers and "advisors" and mercs specifically, Russia advances faster and faster.

There are now seven important fortified cities/ towns partially to almost fully occupied by Russia, and this isn't from Gerasimov's maps.
None of that is happening, Signym.

Of course it's happening. There's drone video proof from bith sides of the frontline.

Quote:
SECOND:
What you should concentrate on is Russia's bombardment of Ukraine. That is actually happening.
There's video evidence of that, too, but not as much as of Ukrainian retreat.

Quote:
SECOND:
But your alternate reality story of Russian soldiers achieving victory after victory, marching faster and faster through Ukraine, is NOT happening.

And you know this how?
You see, SECOND, I have proof. I've seen videos of Russians taking village after village, settlement after settlement, city after city. Of Ukrainian soldiers literally running away, and Russian soldiers waving unit and Russian flags over multiple locations.

What do you have? Denial and a bottle?

-----------

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 1:51 PM

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

Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

You see, SECOND, I have proof. I've seen videos of Russians taking village after village, settlement after settlement, city after city. Of Ukrainian soldiers literally running away, and Russian soldiers waving unit and Russian flags over multiple locations.

What do you have? Denial and a bottle?

The Russians are winning in their drunken dreams, but in reality, they are dying.

The truth about alcohol and your brain: Scientists put a number on the years heavy drinking takes off your life

By Ani Freedman | April 11, 2025 at 2:08 PM EDT

https://fortune.com/well/article/alcohol-brain-health-lifespan/

. . . Now, scientists have uncovered the exact number of years drinking could cut from your lifespan—and how many drinks per week produce the worst health outcomes.

In a new study published in the journal Neurology, researchers found that heavy drinkers—those who had eight or more drinks per week—died 13 years earlier on average than non-drinkers. Additionally, former heavy drinkers had greater cognitive decline and brain damage.

“Heavy alcohol consumption is a major global health concern linked to increased health problems and death,” said study author Alberto Fernando Oliveira Justo, of the University of Sao Paulo Medical School in Brazil.

Statistics suggest that this year is the drunkest that Russia has been in a decade

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 5:20 PM

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

A Self-Defeating Reversal on Ukraine

The Trump administration had actually begun to make progress. Now it’s all in doubt.

By Thomas Wright | November 20, 2025, 7:12 AM ET

https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2025/11/self-defeating-rever
sal-ukraine/684990/

The Trump administration’s new plan for Ukraine is apparently to reverse all the progress it has made there in recent months. And not just that—to create a much bigger strategic problem that will bedevil the administration for the next three years. The strangest part of all of this is that the plan emerged at a moment when Donald Trump’s Ukraine policy had finally found its footing after a very turbulent start.

Over the past 24 hours, multiple media outlets, citing several administration officials with direct knowledge, have published details of a new U.S. peace proposal that is tantamount to a Ukrainian surrender. As drafted, the plan would require

• Ukraine to give up territory and fortifications in the parts of the Donbas that it still controls,
• cut the size of its armed forces by half,
• abandon weaponry that Russia deems to be offensive (including long-range missiles),
• accept an end to U.S. military assistance, and
• agree to a ban on foreign troops on Ukrainian soil.

The Trump administration is dangling a U.S. security guarantee for Ukraine in the event of future Russian aggression, but what that would entail is unclear and would almost certainly fall far short of a NATO-style mutual-defense commitment. The plan actually guts the one security guarantee that would make a real difference, namely a strong and capable Ukraine.

Russia has demanded these concessions for years, but the Trump administration, to its credit, has rejected them before now. Earlier this year, President Trump floated a proposal that was tilted toward Moscow—freezing of the front lines, no NATO membership for Ukraine, U.S. recognition of Russian sovereignty over Crimea, and a lifting of all sanctions on Russia—but stopped short of demanding that Ukraine give up additional territory or accept a unilateral demilitarization. Those negotiations reached an impasse, and so Trump had a choice. He could continue to support Ukraine, mainly through arms sales and by increasing pressure on Russia. Or he could take Russia’s side and try to impose a Vladimir Putin–backed deal on the Ukrainians.

The president eventually chose the first option. This meant accepting that the war would continue, despite his strong desire to end it; but it also allowed him to begin to create the conditions for a negotiated settlement later in his term.

The news over the past 24 hours has cast all of that into doubt. Some speculate that the latest diplomatic effort is the work of Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, Steve Witkoff. Witkoff appeared to confirm these suspicions on social media, when he replied to a post with what seems to have been intended as a direct message, saying that Axios must have gotten the original story from “K,” possibly a reference to the Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev. On Tuesday night, Secretary of State Marco Rubio seemed to distance himself from the plan with a post on social media that said the United States was developing a list of ideas with input from both sides.

The leaked initiative comes at a moment when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been weakened by a recent corruption scandal, and when General Keith Kellogg, special envoy for Ukraine and one of the administration officials most sympathetic to Kyiv, has let it be known that he will be stepping down from his role in January. Maybe Witkoff saw an opportunity in these circumstances. But Zelensky cannot accept such a punitive deal, no matter how weak he is politically. And even if he did accept it, the Trump administration would be making a world of trouble for itself.

Trump may recall that President Joe Biden’s poll numbers never recovered from the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. He can expect something similar with Ukraine. If his administration ends all arms sales and intelligence cooperation with Kyiv, it will be held responsible for the slow and painful Ukrainian defeat that will surely follow. Moscow will probably then press its advantage by stamping out every ember of sovereignty inside Ukraine, on the excuse that this is all a part of implementing the peace plan’s provisions. Russia may also act against European states that continue to help Ukraine. China and North Korea will be emboldened by their ally’s victory. And the Trump administration will find that its problem has metastasized.

All of this is completely unnecessary. After much back-and-forth, before today, Trump had landed on a Ukraine policy that was consistent with his views, workable, and sustainable. The United States was no longer spending money on Ukraine. Ukraine and the Europeans were close to putting together a $90 billion arms purchase, much of which would be produced in the United States and be a boon to the American defense industry. A strong Ukraine that could defend itself would not have to rely on the United States for a security guarantee. The United States could continue arm sales while insisting on a peace settlement that allows for an independent and sovereign Ukraine—and Trump might have had a deal to end the war later in 2026 or in 2027.

Instead, Witkoff may have convinced himself that he could reproduce the deal that ended the war in Gaza. The circumstances there were fundamentally different. Israel had defeated Hamas and Iran on the battlefield. Hamas effectively acknowledged that. The United States helped to codify that reality into a deal. But Russia has not defeated Ukraine. It is also not an ally of the United States. This latest plan trades a policy that was making slow but real progress for one that threatens to become a strategic defeat. Assuming the plan is Witkoff’s, the question now is whether it was a solo effort, leaked by the Russians to damage Ukraine—or if he has the support from the president and the rest of the administration to get his way.

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

NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | TOP | HOME

Thursday, November 20, 2025 8:13 PM