REAL WORLD EVENT DISCUSSIONS

Russia Invades Ukraine. Again

POSTED BY: CAPTAINCRUNCH
UPDATED: Friday, December 5, 2025 17:54
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PAGE 190 of 190

Sunday, November 30, 2025 2:58 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


I see TRUMP!RUSSIA!COLLUSION! is rising from the grave.

Anything to shift the blame for our impending defeat.

-----------

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

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Sunday, November 30, 2025 3:09 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Field littered with fiberoptic debris.

https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1928541569348489584

Ukraine hasn't been able to produce unjamnable fiberoptic drones in quantity, or to field night vision drones when necessary.





-----------

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

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Sunday, November 30, 2025 3:09 PM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Ukraine is finished. Fuck Ukraine.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, December 1, 2025 3:40 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Ukraine is finished. Fuck Ukraine.
There Are Piles Of Dead Russian Troops In The 'Valley Of Death' North Of Pokrovsk

The Ukrainians are shifting to a rural defense

Nov 30, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/there-are-piles-of-dead-russian-troops

After a yearlong siege, Russian forces are gradually consolidating their control over the ruins of Pokrovsk and neighboring Myrnohrad—pre-war populations 60,000 and 46,000, respectively—in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast.

Outnumbered and outgunned Ukrainian brigades, long starved of manpower owing to Ukraine’s corrupt and inefficient mobilization system, are retreating north to the fields and villages between Pokrovsk and the twin cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk, 25 miles to the north.

The twin cities, combined population 400,000, are the next major objectives for the Russian Center Group of Forces, whose 150,000 troops outnumber the local Ukrainian corps five to one. But there are good reasons to believe the march won’t be an easy one. If it took the Russians a year and tens of thousands of casualties to capture Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad, it may take them even longer—and cost even more—to even begin contesting Kramatorsk and Sloviansk.

That’s because there’s a lot of open terrain between Pokrovsk and Kramatorsk. And the Ukrainians are increasingly shifting from an urban defense strategy to a strategy that hinges on a layered defense along the fields between cities.

Cities are great for sheltering dug-in infantry fighting on the defense, but Ukraine is desperately short of infantry. There may be 100,000 empty infantry billets in a military with barely a million people. Open terrain, which offers scant cover for attacking troops, is perfect for a drone-first defense—and Ukraine is flush with drones.

Death valley

Separate lines of effort by the Russian Center Group of Forces north of Pokrovsk offer a horrific preview of the coming long bloody march for the Russians eyeing Kramatorsk. Russian infantry and Russian mechanized forces are both struggling to advance across the Kazenyi Torets River and past the village of Novotoretsk.

There’s a line of Ukrainian fortifications running along the river—razor wire and anti-vehicle concrete obstacles—that the Russians have been trying to breach for months. But there’s little cover: few tree-lines or buildings where the Russians can hide from first-person-view drones. Winter fog can blind drones, but the fog is fickle: it comes and goes.

The Russians have cut the wire in at least one spot near Novotoretsk, but it and other chokepoints are well-known to the Ukrainians. It’s not for no reason that analyst Moklasen referred to the area as the “Novotoretsk death valley.” One recent video, recorded by a Russian assault trooper, depicts an infantry group hustling along the “death valley” past literally scores of Russian corpses.

There’s at least one other heap of dead Russians in the same area.

Russian mechanized groups are struggling, as well. More and than once, tanks and other armored vehicles have gotten mired in the Kazenyi Torets River. Bridgelayers can help span the river, but they’re big fat targets for drones.

At least twice in recent days, Russian vehicle columns have tried to cross the river over hastily emplaced log bridges or the aluminum spans laid by MTU-20 bridgelayers. Drones knocked out at least one MTU-20. The Russians retreated, leaving behind a tank, an MT-LB armored tractor and a clutch of unarmored cars and vans.

Expect similar outcomes in the coming months as the Russians push toward Kramatorsk. For nearly four years of wider war, the Ukrainians’ impulse has been to fortify the big cities—and hold them for as long as possible. That impulse may no longer be the right one.

“Cities were once the main point of Ukrainian defensive strategy,” French analyst Clément Molin explained. “The overwhelming number of Russian soldiers and the possibility to hide easily from drones inside cities” now make an urban defense “more difficult,” Molin wrote.

“Paradoxically,” Molin wrote, “it has become easier to defend fields or villages than large cities: fewer soldiers are needed, the Russian infantry is quickly spotted and the increasingly numerous obstacles (ditches, barbed wire) sometimes prevent progress.”

Thanks for reading Trench Art! 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

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Monday, December 1, 2025 3:46 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I see TRUMP!RUSSIA!COLLUSION! is rising from the grave.

Anything to shift the blame for our impending defeat.
"Impending" means this year? Or in February? 2026? 2027? "Impending" loses meaning when used by Signym:

Prominent Russian milbloggers continue to contradict the Kremlin’s efforts to portray Russian victory in Ukraine as imminent or inevitable, however. A prominent Russian milblogger acknowledged that the tactical battlefield situation favors Russia, particularly near Hulyaipole, but stated that Russian state media coverage of Russian progress on the battlefield once again resembles “joyfully idiotic, rosy, self-indulgent nonsense” that does not support the war effort.[22]

The milblogger stated that such narratives of an imminent Russian victory create the false perception domestically that the Russian society no longer needs to urgently support the war effort against Ukraine, a competent adversary that uses NATO equipment and intelligence. The milblogger also noted that continuing the war effort in Ukraine will cost Russia further state resources amid growing societal dissatisfaction with the introduction of new fees and rising taxes in 2026.[23] The milblogger added that Russia continues to face manpower shortages and that the ongoing volunteer recruitment campaign is not generating a sufficient number of forces to demobilize Russian personnel that the Kremlin involuntarily called up in September 2022.

Girkin similarly assessed in a letter published on November 26 that Russia could develop its possible future seizures of Hulyaipole and Orikhiv into operational successes only if Russia has enough reserves to exploit these tactical advances.[24] Girkin observed that the most recent six-month Russian offensive on Kupyansk did not result in a “big victory” and assessed that Russian efforts to seize the “secondary” objectives of Pokrovsk, Vovchansk, Siversk, and Lyman are only tactical and will not be quick, will not degrade the combat effectiveness of the Ukrainian military writ large, and will not collapse the front lines. Girkin implied that Russia has enough troops to support tactical advances but lacks the necessary reserves and resources to achieve its strategic goals, such as seizing Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv cities.

ISW continues to assess that while the situation in some specific sectors of the front line is serious, particularly in Pokrovsk and Hulyaipole directions, the Kremlin’s efforts to present Russia’s victory in Ukraine as inevitable do not correspond to the battlefield reality.[25]

It is notable that the Kremlin’s misrepresentation of the situation on the ground was so far from reality that prominent pro-war milbloggers and ultranationalist figures continue to feel compelled to issue their own corrective statements.[26]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-november-30-2025/

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

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Monday, December 1, 2025 11:26 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine attacked a Turkish-owned tanker Mersin as it was carrying Russian oil off the coast of Senegal.

https://www.tradewindsnews.com/tankers/tanker-linked-to-russia-trade-h
it-by-explosions-off-west-africa/2-1-1909083

https://gcaptain.com/shadow-fleet-crisis-deepens-third-tanker-incident
-off-senegal-follows-black-sea-drone-strikes/

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

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Monday, December 1, 2025 11:34 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Ukraine is finished. Fuck Ukraine.
There Are Piles Of Dead Russian Troops In The 'Valley Of Death' North Of Pokrovsk


I would absolutely hate to burst your bubble, but I don't give one single fuck about dead Russians either, and I never did.

Ukraine is fucking toast, and Zelensky is a dead man.

Period.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Monday, December 1, 2025 7:20 PM

THG

Keep it real please


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Field littered with fiberoptic debris.

https://x.com/bayraktar_1love/status/1928541569348489584

Ukraine hasn't been able to produce unjamnable fiberoptic drones in quantity, or to field night vision drones when necessary.



Hitting over one million casualties

The Russian Armed Forces have suffered well over one million casualties since Vladimir Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Recent independent analysis of Putin’s losses revealed the number of soldiers killed in the war has hit a new milestone.

According to a recent count from the independent Russian media outlet Mediazona and BBC Russia, at least 152,142 Russian soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the full-scale invasion. However, this number doesn’t tell the full story of Moscow’s losses.

Excluded from the data are figures regarding the fighters from the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, according to The Moscow Times, which reported the latest number of verified Russian personnel dead published by BBC Russia on November 28th.

BBC Russia noted in its reporting that the figures it has been able to verify are likely just 45% to 65% of Russia’s total killed in action. The outlet noted that a significant number of Moscow’s war dead remain on the battlefield and have not been accounted for in the data.
The real Russian death toll could range between 234,000 to 338,100 individuals. These figures do not include personnel killed from the Donetsk or Luhansk People’s Republics.

When losses from the Donetsk or Luhansk People’s Republics are added, total Russian and pro-Russian troop losses would increase by another 21,000 to 23,500, which would put the real number of Russian forces killed in the conflict between 255,000 to 361,600 military personnel.

Mediazona and BBC Russia have been counting and verifying Russia’s war dead since the beginning of the conflict. Volunteers have used publicly available data and verifiable sources like social media, reports, and statements from regional authorities to build out a verified list of Russia’s war dead.

The latest data revealed that Moscow’s losses in Ukraine have fallen disproportionately on residents from small towns and the rural regions of Russia. The highest losses have occurred in regions outside of Moscow.

Roughly 67% of Russia's verified dead came from settlements that have a population of less than one hundred thousand. “These areas account for less than half the country’s population,” The Moscow Times explained.

According to the data, Moscow, a city that is home to over 13,000 million residents, has only suffered 4,520 deaths, whereas the Russian republics of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, and the Sverdlovsk region have suffered 7,643, 6,599, and 5,386 deaths. These were the regions with the most deaths in Russia, according to the data.
The estimate of Russia's war dead from Mediazona and BBC Russia is in line with other recent estimates from Western intelligence and Western world leaders. In June 2025, a report from British intelligence put the number of Russia’s dead and missing at 250,000.

“The Russian Armed Forces have likely sustained approximately 1,000,000 casualties (killed and wounded) since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022,” the UK Defense Intelligence report explained on June 12th, 2025.

“Of these, it is likely around 250,000 Russian soldiers are killed or missing (presumed dead), Russia's largest losses in an active conflict since the Second World War,” the report continued. Russian permanent combat losses stood at 400,000 to 500,000 at that time in the conflict. This number has likely only increased in the months since.

In July, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio claimed that Moscow had suffered 100,000 soldiers killed in 2025 alone at that time in the conflict.

US President Donald Trump later echoed Rubio’s comments in an August 1st Truth Social post that revealed 20,000 Russian soldiers died in July, and a total of 112,500 had been lost since the start of 2025.

A study from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington, released in June, revealed that its analysis showed roughly one million Russian soldiers had been killed or wounded since the beginning of the war in Ukraine.

On November 30th, the Ukrainian General Staff recorded in its daily report on Russian personnel and equipment losses that Russia’s losses in the conflict stood at 1,172,860, which is close to hitting a dangerous new milestone.
How high Russian losses could reach before the conflict is over isn’t clear. But it's likely they will only get worse. The recent reporting on Moscow’s war dead follows another important report that revealed Russia is sending troops into battle without helmets or body armor, according to new video footage cited by The Telegraph.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/russia-s-battlefield-losses-surge
-to-alarming-new-level-in-ukraine/ss-AA1RuxC4?ocid=msedgntp&pc=EDBBAN&cvid=0dd0f1d6ad424f1af150bb0dc371fb17&ei=44#image=18


What the field is littered with is Russian bodies.

T

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Monday, December 1, 2025 9:54 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


THGR, did you even READ your article??

Quote:
In June 2025, a report from British intelligence put the number of Russia’s dead and missing at 250,000.


Not a million. Try to get past the headline, m'kay?

Quote:

Russia Proclaims Final Victory Over Key City Of Pokrovsk On Eve Of Putin-Witkoff Peace Plan Meeting

PICTURE:
https://topwar.ru/uploads/posts/2025-01/2fe6f49ed1_snimok_2.webp

-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 7:13 AM

SECOND

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


Prominent Russian milbloggers continue to undermine the Kremlin’s effort to portray a Russian victory in Ukraine as imminent or inevitable. A Kremlin-affiliated Russian milblogger responded to the Russian Ministry of Defense’s (MoD) December 1 claim that Russian forces seized Klynove (north of Kostyantynivka, about 10 kilometers from the current Russian frontline) by criticizing the MoD’s repeated exaggerations about battlefield successes.[13]

The milblogger claimed that the Russian MoD is making premature claims that Russian forces seized settlements without offering any supporting evidence and is even claiming Russian success in settlements several kilometers away from confirmed Russian positions.

The milblogger noted that the Russian MoD has made clearly false claims over five settlements in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area in 2025 alone — Orikhovo-Vasylivka in February 2025, Novomarkove in March 2025, Markove and Mayske in September 2025, and Fedorivka in October 2025.

The milblogger added that recent developments on the battlefield are strengthening the current Russian negotiating position and insinuated that the Russian MoD is actually hurting its negotiating position by making false claims that could easily “backfire” with the emergence of evidence to the contrary. The Kremlin has repeatedly made exaggerated claims about the battlefield as part of its ongoing cognitive warfare effort to falsely portray a Russian victory as inevitable, such that Ukraine and the West should concede to Russia’s demands now.[14]

ISW continues to assess that while the situation in some specific sectors of the front line is serious, particularly in the Pokrovsk and Hulyaipole directions, the Kremlin’s efforts to present Russia’s victory in Ukraine as inevitable do not correspond to battlefield realities.[15] It is notable that the Kremlin’s misrepresentation of the situation on the ground continues to be so far from reality that prominent pro-war milbloggers continue to feel compelled to issue their own corrective statements.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-december-1-2025/

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 7:44 AM

SECOND

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


Ukraine's Flamingo Missile May Be A Lie

Despite big claims, there have been very few confirmable Flamingo strikes

Dec 01, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/ukraines-flamingo-missile-may-be

Ukraine’s new Flamingo cruise missile is a six tons of brute force firepower, ranging 1,900 miles under inertial and satellite guidance to deliver a 2,200-pound warhead.

It’s simple, purportedly inexpensive at half a million dollars and—owing to its many off-the-shelf components—mass-producible on a tight timeline.

In short, the ground-launched Flamingo may be just the thing Ukraine needs to extend its campaign of deep strikes even deeper into Russia—and inflict real and lasting damage.

Or, the Flamingo is a scam by manufacturer Fire Point. It’s not for no reason the company is under investigation by the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine for corruption and sheltering a draft-dodger.

According to The Kyiv Independent, NABU alleged that Timur Mindich—an ally of Ukrainian Pres. Volodymyr Zelensky—headed a group getting kickbacks from government contracts. Mindich allegedly has ties to Fire Point, although the company denies it.

It’s a mess. And while it’s obvious Fire Point does build effective weapons—the FP-1 and FP-2 attack drones stand out—it’s not yet clear the Flamingo is among them.

When Fire Point showed the Associated Press a warehouse containing around a dozen Flamingos back in August, company spokesperson Iryna Terekh insisted it was already building a missile day, and could build seven a day as soon as October.

But a careful count by observer Thorkill tells a different story. It’s possible Fire Point is building very few Flamingos—and Ukrainian forces are, as a result, firing very few of them.

Read Thorkill’s thread for all the details.
https://x.com/Thorkill65/status/1994848153678274732
Quote:
"Ten Times Better Than the Tomahawk" - An Analysis of All Combat Uses of Fire Point's FP-5 "Flaming" Missile.

"The Flaming is ten times better than the Tomahawk." "The Tomahawk is completely obsolete. Our missile performs better," I. Terek, introducing herself to journalists as Fire Point's Technical Director, said in an interview in early September 2025. However, when Ms. Terek, previously a manufacturer of concrete garden planters, was asked about the combat use and effectiveness of the FP-5 cruise missile, she cited confidentiality agreements allegedly issued by the Ukrainian General Staff.
“In summary,” Thorkill wrote, “a total of nine FP-5 Flamingos have been used in combat to date, bringing the number close to that shown to the A.P. journalist in a hangar near Kyiv during the missile’s public reveal in August.”

There have been four or five likely Flamingo strikes:

1. The Ukrainian general staff claimed Ukrainian forces fired a Flamingo as part of a combat trial in May 2025, possibly targeting Russian forces in occupied Crimea. According to a Russian source, a Russian air force Mikoyan MiG-31 fighter shot down an unidentified cruise missile, potentially over the Black Sea, on May 1.

2. On Aug. 30, Ukrainian forces fired three Flamingos at a Russian intelligence outpost and hovercraft base in Crimea. Two reached the target area. One narrowly missed and the other scored a hit on the outpost’s biggest building.

3. On Sept. 23, four Flamingos targeted a factory in Belgorod in western Russia. One hit, destroying a production hall. A Russian Pantsir air-defense system shot down at least one of the missiles.

4. The fourth combat use of the Flaming took place on the evening of November 13th. The target was the Orel Power Plant. One missile was fired, which was supposedly shot down by the Russian air defense system.

And that’s it: nine missiles in four raids over six months, resulting in two damaging hits. Maybe the Flamingo is a truly viable weapon like Fire Point’s one-way attack drones are. But if so, there isn’t yet a lot of proof.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! 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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 7:54 AM

6IXSTRINGJACK


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
It’s simple, purportedly inexpensive at half a million dollars and—owing to its many off-the-shelf components—mass-producible on a tight timeline.


One "inexpensive" bomb.

Costs roughly twice my lifetime income so far.

Would be enough money for me to live off of just the interest for the rest of my life.


This world is so fucked up.

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

Be Nice. Don't be a dick.

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 7:58 AM

SECOND

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


“Whole family fell from third floor”: Strike on Flamingo missile company employee signals Russia is hunting Ukraine’s defense innovators at their homes

Employee is dead. His family is in critical condition.

by Olena Mukhina | Dec 01, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/01/targeted-cluster-munition-strik
e-on-flamingo-missile-company-employee-signals-russia-is-hunting-ukraines-defense-innovators-at-their-homes/

Moscow's strike on Kyiv Oblast on the night of 30 November killed an employee of Fire Point in his home, a Ukrainian defense technology company, according to its chief designer and co-founder, Denys Shtilerman.

The strike on a missile systems specialist’s home is likely a signal to other defense sector employees to demoralize them.

Fire Point manufactures the long-range FP-1 UAV and the FP-5 “Flamingo” cruise missile for precision strikes against deep targets in occupied territories. Ukraine used such drones to hit the base of Russian invaders, belonging to the most elite and secretive drone Rubikon center in Avdiivka in Donetsk Oblast in 2025.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 8:04 AM

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


Study reveals Europe’s real choice on Ukraine: $972 billion for victory, or $1.8 trillion when Russia comes for Baltics

Abandoning Ukraine will cost twice as much as saving it.

By Olena Mukhina | Dec 01, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/01/study-reveals-europes-real-choi
ce-on-ukraine-972-billion-for-victory-or-1-8-trillion-when-russia-comes-for-baltics/

The report directly states that in the event of a Russian victory, millions of Ukrainian refugees would “flood into Europe,” increasing pressure on EU member state budgets.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 8:19 AM

SECOND

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


European Central Bank refuses to fund Ukraine loan using €140bn in Russian assets – FT

By Ivanna Kostina, Stanislav Pohorilov | 2 December, 10:31

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/02/8009921/

ECB concluded the European Commission's proposal would breach its mandate. Officials approached the bank to act as a lender for Euroclear Bank to prevent a liquidity crisis in Ukraine. The ECB deemed this impossible . . .

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 8:54 AM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Study reveals Europe’s real choice on Ukraine: $972 billion for victory, or $1.8 trillion when Russia comes for Baltics
Abandoning Ukraine will cost twice as much as saving it.
By Olena Mukhina | Dec 01, 2025

Because ...

WMD! East, west, north, south, somewhat of Baghdad!

Oh, wait.

Not ginning THAT war? Another one, you say?

/snicker

Quote:
Originally posted by second:
European Central Bank refuses to fund Ukraine loan using €140bn in Russian assets – FT
By Ivanna Kostina, Stanislav Pohorilov | 2 December, 10:31

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2025/12/02/8009921/


Russia's national assets aren't in the ECB, they're in Euroclear. How the EC imagines it can legally commandeer another bank's assets is beyond me.

I struggle to understand why the European political class keeps lusting for this war. Either it's a case of mass delusion, or they're hoping to keep the payday going. It's mighty suspicious that the current crop of EU leaders wants to shut down the corruption investigation. So far only $100 million has been ID'd as siphoned off. One hears that following the money leads to USA MIC and some warhawk Senators. I wonder what would turn up if someone looked into all $140+ billion?

Imagine if the FBI traced some of that money to Lindsay "Graham Cracker" and Mitch "Yurtle" McConnell. What leverage THAT would be.

-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 10:30 AM

SECOND

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


Frontline report: Russian officers privately admit war has reached ‘strategic deadlock’ maintained only by Putin’s stubbornness

Dec 02, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/02/frontline-report-2025-11-30/

Today, there is interesting news from the Russian Federation.

Here, the Russian political leadership is claiming confidently that Russia will continue the war until it achieves all the goals it has set out at the start of the war.

However, the latest poll results shocked them, because as it turns out, the Russian population has had enough of the so-called special military operation and wants the war to end now.

Recently, an internal survey prepared for regional Russian administrations ahead of the 2026 elections shows 83% of Russians feel fatigued from the war, and 56% want it to end right away, a sharp rise from the previous year. Support for continuing hostilities has fallen to around 23 percent, even as the Kremlin insists publicly that national unity remains strong.

Kremlin messaging diverges sharply from public sentiment

The gap between state messaging and private sentiment has never been wider, as Putin still expects his forces to capture all of the Donetsk region and has set deadlines by February 2026, while his foreign-policy aides continue repeating maximalist demands.

Foreign Minister Lavrov claims demilitarization and denazification remain non-negotiable, while spokesperson Peskov says Russia wants the war to end, but only once its original objectives are achieved.

The new data is a shock, not because Russians suddenly oppose the war, but because the scale of fatigue is impossible to hide even from those in power.

Economic pressure and Ukrainian strikes fuel discontent

The direct reasons named for this are that the Russians have endured hundreds of thousands of casualties, rising inflation, collapsing wages, and a permanent war economy that diverts nearly all resources toward the military.

New taxes are imposed almost monthly to fill budget gaps, with the last one raising Russia's value-added tax from 20% to 22% next year. Ukrainian deep strikes break through Russian air defenses every night, hitting refineries, power plants, ports, and ammunition depots, eroding the public confidence further.

Many citizens now feel that the Kremlin has imported the war back into Russia itself, despite continual assurances that everything is under control. For the first time since the invasion, Ukrainians are hitting strategic sites far behind the front line, and Russians notice.

The number of people who say their living standards have deteriorated is the highest since 2022. In October 2025, for every Russian who reported even a slight improvement in their finances, three said their situation had worsened.

Senior officers privately acknowledge strategic deadlock

Shockingly, the sentiment is changing even within the military, as communications among dozens of senior Russian officers reveal what many suspected: a growing belief that the war has reached a political and strategic deadlock, maintained only by Putin's personal stubbornness.

This does not signal imminent collapse, nor does it mean generals are preparing to challenge his power. Many are indifferent, and if the war ends, they will adapt.

If it continues, they will send more men forward while falsifying reports and exaggerating successes, but beneath that cynicism lies a recognition that the conflict cannot be won in the form Putin demands.

Some high-ranking officers quietly admit they would prefer the war to stop, simply to avoid wasting more soldiers' lives, yet none will directly challenge a system that rewards their obedience and punishes honesty.

Military analysts question whether objectives are achievable

Several prominent Russian military analysts have also begun to push for the peace settlement because they understood that Russia cannot achieve the objectives it set at the start of the invasion, as the army has lost too many men to sustain the current pace for the several more years needed to conquer the remaining territories.

Despite recent claims of rapid advances, progress is fast only compared to the crawling pace of the last 3 and a half years.

An army that once marched with new tanks and modern infantry fighting vehicles now advances with motorcycles, improvised Frankenstein trucks, civilian cars stripped of doors, and small infantry squads used as expendables.

As Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte put it, Putin is running out of money, ideas, and soldiers, and hundreds of thousands of Russians are dying for his reckless aggression.

War fatigue creates widening rift between society and leadership

Overall, a widening rift separates Russian society from its leadership, and the military is no longer immune to this split. After nearly four years of war, Russian forces lose over a thousand men a day, and replacing them has become increasingly complex.

Putin accepts this attritional pace because he views time as his ally, but even his generals concede that Russia's human reservoir is not infinite.

The latest poll shows the consequences clearly: those wanting to continue the war are in the minority, compared to those tired of it and those wanting an immediate truce; an alarming trend for Putin, who is still determined to achieve his goals in Ukraine.

In our regular frontline report, we pair up with the military blogger Reporting from Ukraine to keep you informed about what is happening on the battlefield in the Russo-Ukrainian war.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 2:52 PM

SECOND

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


Germany Embraced Pacifism—Now It’s Arming Itself Again to fight Russia

December 1, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/german-militarism-europea
n-security/684951/

The faltering of American support couldn’t come at a worse time. The German officials I met, a sober group of military planners, spend their days watching Moscow’s troop mobilizations, trying to determine if Vladimir Putin will order an attack on a NATO country by the end of the decade and whether the American president would, in such a case, come to Europe’s defense. “You not only have an enemy knocking at the door,” Freuding said, “but you also are in the process of losing a true ally and friend.”

So Germany has recognized that it needs to rearm. It’s spending billions on weapons and repurposing civilian industries for arms production. It’s even debating whether to reintroduce conscription. The government has promised to transform the army into the strongest in Europe. For the first time since the Second World War, Germany is permanently stationing troops beyond its borders.

Not long ago, these plans would have set off international alarms. But as the United States upends the global order it created, Germany may have no other choice.

Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, couldn’t believe what J. D. Vance was saying. On the main stage of the Munich Security Conference last February, the vice president was attacking America’s NATO partners, comparing European democracies to authoritarian regimes and accusing Europe’s leaders of stifling free speech and suppressing support for far-right parties. The targets of his criticism sat before him: the presidents of the European Commission and the European Council; heads of government from countries including Germany, Sweden, Ireland, and Latvia. A stunned silence fell over the grand hall of the Hotel Bayerischer Hof.

The annual security conference is traditionally a chummy event, sometimes described as a “transatlantic family meeting.” It’s not always harmonious; in 2003, Germany aired doubts about American plans for the war in Iraq. But criticism of the host country is considered uncouth. And in recent years, the meeting in Munich has represented a show of Western solidarity with Ukraine. But Vance used the conference as a platform for MAGA grievances. “The threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia; it’s not China,” he said. “What I worry about is the threat from within.”

Pistorius couldn’t let the vice president’s comments pass without rebuke. “That is unacceptable,” he shouted in English from the second row. Vance continued, unfazed. Later, at the lectern, Pistorius declared that he must “explicitly contradict and oppose” Vance’s claims before turning to the focus of the conference: European and international security. Because the White House was pressing for a quick settlement to Russia’s war in Ukraine, and signaling that Europe would have to enforce the terms, Pistorius warned, “The choices we make now will determine whether we live in peace or in crisis.”

Pistorius has a restless air about him; his gait is hurried, his gestures emphatic. When I met with him at the Bendlerblock, he told me he’d never imagined that he would lead his country’s rearmament. His father was a pacifist who didn’t allow toy guns in the house. During the Cold War, Pistorius joined the Social Democratic Party, which had made Ostpolitik, aimed at easing relations with Moscow, the center of its foreign policy. “America is indispensable,” went the credo, but “Russia is immovable.” But after the Iron Curtain fell, Pistorius recalled, Germans thought they were living in a world without threats.

After Russia’s annexation of Crimea, in 2014, Germany agreed to work toward spending 2 percent of its economic output on defense within a decade. But its progress was slow in the years that followed, and Donald Trump complained in his first term that Germany and other NATO members weren’t paying their share. German soldiers told me it was common then for members of the officer corps to purchase their own gear: boots, pants, field jackets.

Then, in 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the outset of the war, Europe’s largest since World War II, Germany’s army chief admitted in a public post that the forces under his command were “more or less bare.” The German government declared a Zeitenwende, or “turning of the times.” It promised a burst of cash for the Bundeswehr—the armed forces—that would finally bring the country, which has Europe’s biggest economy, in line with NATO targets. A second shock came not long after the Munich Security Conference, when German officials watched in disbelief as Trump, in a televised Oval Office meeting, reprimanded Volodymyr Zelensky for refusing peace on terms dictated by the White House. Freuding said that he had never sent as many texts in a single night as he did on that occasion, to his friends and colleagues in Ukraine.

For Friedrich Merz, then the chancellor-in-waiting, the confrontation made clear that Europe could no longer rely on the United States. A senior German official who spoke on the condition of anonymity told me that Merz, a member of the center-right Christian Democratic Union, is haunted by the question “Will America serve its allies to the dogs?” After the spectacle in the Oval Office, he became convinced of the need to amend Germany’s constitution to authorize unlimited government borrowing for defense. Within a month, the Bundestag approved the reform.

According to Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank, effective European deterrence—averting a Russian invasion of the Baltics, for example—would require 1,400 tanks and 2,000 infantry fighting vehicles, more than the combined capabilities of Germany, France, Britain, and Italy. Although all four countries are spending more on their armed forces to close the gap, no other Western European country matches Germany, which will devote more than 460 billion euros, or $538 billion, to the Bundeswehr over the next four years.

But in Görlitz, the shift to weapons manufacturing has run up against the growing power of political extremes. The far-right Alternative for Germany is the largest opposition bloc in the Bundestag, controlling nearly a quarter of the seats. The party’s base of support is in the former Communist East, where economic hardship fuels nostalgia for the world before German reunification, and sympathy for Moscow endures. The AfD’s national co-leader Tino Chrupalla, who represents Görlitz in the Bundestag, is scornful of the need to deter Russia. In 2023, he wore a tie with the Russian tricolor to an event at the Russian embassy in Berlin. And in a recent interview with a German broadcaster, he asked, “Do we really believe that we can defeat the world’s greatest nuclear power and win this war that isn’t even ours?” Sebastian Wippel, the AfD candidate who narrowly lost Görlitz’s mayoral race in 2019, told me that weapons made in the city must be used only to defend Germany, not to arm Ukraine. Deterrence, he said, can’t mean “threatening Russia.”

Some on the left are also skeptical of rearmament. Environmental and social activists protested in the spring against the planned assembly of weapons in Görlitz. NEVER AGAIN WAR! reads graffiti on a factory wall. Outside the plant that will soon manufacture tanks, I met an expert in the technical preparation of train parts who has worked in the rail industry for 16 years. He told me he would transfer to a factory in a nearby city to avoid making weaponry. “I want no part in it,” he said.

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 4:31 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Germany Embraced Pacifism—Now It’s Arming Itself Again to fight Russia

December 1, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/german-militarism-europea
n-security/684951/


Saddam! WMD! East, west, north, south somewhat of Baghdad!

Oh, wait ... wrong hysteria.

Cue RUSSIA!RUSSIA!RUSSIA!



-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 6:04 PM

THG

Keep it real please


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Germany Embraced Pacifism—Now It’s Arming Itself Again to fight Russia

December 1, 2025

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/german-militarism-europea
n-security/684951/


Saddam! WMD! East, west, north, south somewhat of Baghdad!

Oh, wait ... wrong hysteria.

Cue RUSSIA!RUSSIA!RUSSIA!




Comrade, your buddy is talking about killing himself. He created a thread where he is talking about it in community.

T

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 7:27 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.



Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Germany Embraced Pacifism—Now It’s Arming Itself Again to fight Russia
December 1, 2025
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/01/german-militarism-europea
n-security/684951/

SIGNY:
Saddam! WMD! East, west, north, south somewhat of Baghdad!
Oh, wait ... wrong hysteria.
Cue RUSSIA!RUSSIA!RUSSIA!

THGR:
Comrade, your buddy is talking about killing himself. He created a thread where he is talking about it in community.


Yeah thanks for being a jackass. If SIX commits suicide I hope you and SECOND get sued into oblivion.



-----------

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

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Tuesday, December 2, 2025 8:51 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Ukrainian drones are killing Ukrainian soldiers who are approaching Russian troops with their hands up.
Trump (supposedly) ends intelligence sharing and weapons assistance.
Dibropillia, on a main supply road to Huliaipola, has been taken.
Huliaipola enyered from the south and pinched grom.the north
Vovchansk fully controlled
Konstantinovka approx 30% occupied in the south and being cut off from the north.



Quote:
Putin Says 'Ready For War' Against Europe If Attacks On Russian Tankers, Energy Continue

...

Russia is not planning to fight European countries, but if Europe starts a war, Russia is "ready right now" - the Russian leader said.


-----------

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 6:57 AM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:

Yeah thanks for being a jackass. If SIX commits suicide I hope you and SECOND get sued into oblivion.
Nobody will make the effort to sue because there is no loss to them when 6ixStringJoker is dead and there was no gain for him being alive.

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 6:58 AM

SECOND

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


Where is Ukraine’s front line? The answer is getting harder, and more political

By Francis Farrell | December 2, 2025 6:29 PM

https://kyivindependent.com/the-blurred-front-line-of-ukraines-drone-d
ominated-battlefield-is-making-mapping-harder-and-more-political/

. . . in a response seen to be typical of Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi's leadership, Ukraine has deployed units of its controversial new Assault Forces to counterattack.

In Pokrovsk, in an operation that blatantly prioritized narrative over military logic, soldiers of the 425th Assault Regiment drove into the city's gray zone to plant a Ukrainian flag on the council building on Nov. 6.

These were not the first such operations: over summer and autumn, several villages were claimed "liberated" or "cleared" by Kyiv thanks to the assault regiments, when in reality, little to no territory was firmly regained.

"There were moments when it was clear that we were not responding (to the General Staff's announcement), and this is testament to our objectivity," said Pohorilyi.

"The flag was raised in the gray zone, and the next day the Muscovites carried out assault operations."

As the situation deteriorated further around Huliapole over November, the dissonance between the maps' updates and the official reports from Assault Forces commander Valentyn Manko about villages being cleared and liberated reached absurd levels.

Finally, in a rare admission on Nov. 11, military spokesperson Vladyslav Voloshyn reported that Ukrainian forces had had to withdraw from five unspecified villages in the area.

"One of the biggest problems with these kinds of statements is that they seem to be intentionally vague," Kastehelmi said.

"They (the General Staff) may not show maps of these developments, and it also helps them to avoid critical questions in the current information space."

Ultimately, as the front-line situation remains precarious and dynamic for Kyiv, the active role played by mapping projects, particularly DeepState, in bringing objective ground truth to the world is here to stay.

"On the one hand, it's great that we have this opportunity, trust, reputation, and that we were able to prevent all this, to draw attention to it," Pohorilyi said.

"On the other hand, it is nonsense when projects like ours are needed to talk about these problems and prevent catastrophic consequences in this way."

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 7:15 AM

SECOND

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


Two Pieces of the Puzzle

Understanding the Trump Con on Ukraine and Europe

Phillips P. OBrien

Dec 03, 2025

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/two-pieces-of-the-puzzle

With the reporting of the last two weeks, I hope it is clear that the Trump administration has been playing a con game in its periodic pivots to look like they were going to support Ukraine and hammer Russia. Indeed, the details of just how determined the Trump administration is to cut a deal with Russia (and make lots of money) has become clearer. Business negotiations have been ongoing for months, according to the Wall Street Journal, as Trump and Putin have been discussing through intermediaries, the best way to mutually benefit from the relationship.

Protecting Russian Assets So They Can Be Returned To Russia

The original 28-point plan agreed between the US and Russian governments, also made it clear how keen the US side was, at least, to get back to business with Russia. And that reveals one are that I did not credit enough for being key in the con—protecting the approximately $300 billion of seized Russian assets from being used by European states to aid Ukraine.

There has been a discussion for years about whether Europe should use seized Russian assets to help Ukraine. These funds would be invaluable to help Ukraine fight and then help Ukraine rebuild after the war. The US has always been ambivalent about this. However in January 2025, as the Biden Administration was preparing to leave, President Biden came out and said Russian assets should be given to Ukraine.

Making sure that this did not happen has been a huge priority of the Trump Administration and thus a huge part of the con. In Feb-March 2025, when the Trump administration came down like a ton of bricks on Ukraine, they seemed to help energize European leaders to push for Russian assets to be used for Ukraine.

It helps explain why the Trump administration publicly pivoted and tried to give Europeans hope that they could help Ukraine (and remain committed to Europe). The more European leaders believed this, the less likely they would be to do anything the US Government did not want with Russian assets.

As a Politico Europe story yesterday makes clear, the Trump administration has been putting heavy pressure on European states for months to return Russian seized assets to Russia after any deal, and in the meantime not to use them to help Ukraine. Here is a story on what the US has been doing.

The United States has called for the return of Russian assets frozen in European Union countries to Moscow after the conclusion of a peace agreement between Ukraine and Russia, Politico reports.

According to the agency, when EU Special Representative for Sanctions David O’Sullivan visited Washington in the summer, US officials made it clear that their position was to return these assets to Russia after the conclusion of any peace agreement.

So it turns out the US has been pressuring Europe to protect Russian assets to make sure they go back to Russia, even while pretending for months to be pivoting to Ukraine and wanting to hammer Putin. And it has worked well until now. Moreover, the Belgian PM seems happy to go along with the Trump administration and make sure those assets do not go to Ukraine.

I should have understood the central role of protecting Russian assets in Trump administration thinking. As always, follow the money.

Trump Has Always Accepted The Russian Narrative That Russia Will Win
(more at https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/two-pieces-of-the-puzzle )

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

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Wednesday, December 3, 2025 8:06 AM

SECOND

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


Fog Can Blind FPV Drones & Jamming Can Ground Them. But A.I. Drones Fly Right Thru Both.

New algorithms wave aside the obscurants that make Russian mechanized assaults possible.

Dec 02, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/fog-can-blind-fpv-drones-and-jamming

For six months between late 2024 and early 2025, Slovak volunteer Jakub Jajcay served with a Ukrainian first-person-view drone team fighting in eastern Ukraine. “When I joined the team, I was excited to work with a cutting-edge tool,” Jajcay wrote in a controversial piece for War On The Rocks. “By the end of my deployment, I was a bit disillusioned,” he added.
https://warontherocks.com/2025/06/i-fought-in-ukraine-and-heres-why-fp
v-drones-kind-of-suck/

Among other flaws, FPV drones are “highly susceptible to electronic-warfare jamming,” Jajcay wrote. Moreover, “wind, rain, snow and fog all mean a drone cannot fly.”

Cannot fly is an overstatement, but Jajcay is correct that fog, which is common in Ukraine in winter, can effectively blind an FPV unless other capabilities—ground robots or radio eavesdropping—steer the drone to within 50 feet or so a target. Close enough for the operator to make out the shape of a vehicle.

Well, most drones. New FPVs with A.I.-assisted targeting don’t need a lot of help. As the newly formed drone battalion assigned to the Ukrainian 1st Azov Corps dramatically demonstrated recently, A.I. drones can pick out the shapes of vehicles in conditions of poor visibility.

In addition to helping I.D. targets through obscurants, an A.I. can steer an FPV even when jamming or other interference severs the radio link between drone and operator. “Without the additional guidance, we simply could not hit [a target],” a drone operator with the Ukrainian 58th Separate Rifle Brigade told Reuters. “Absolutely no way.”
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/ukrainian-drone-pil
ots-look-ai-battlefield-edge-2025-11-29/

On or just before Tuesday, the Azov drone battalion struck a Russian mechanized group from the 8th and 51st Combined Arms attacking “near Dobropillya,” according to the corps. The presence of a “rare” MTU-72 armored bridgelayer among the Russian vehicles implies the assault group was making yet another attempt to cross the Kazenyi Torets River in order to encircle Ukrainian troops still fighting for the town of Myrnohrad farther south.

The winter fog wasn’t as dense as in previous days, so the Russian column made its own fog—smoke, actually, produced when crews pour fuel directly into their vehicles’ exhausts. The smoke may have obscured the column from detection by traditional FPVs that are directly controlled by remote human pilots throughout their flights.

The Azov drones weren’t traditional drones—and the smoke didn’t work. An algorithm looked for the vague blocky shapes of vehicles across the hazy landscape. Human operators chose from among the possible targets. The A.I. guided the drones in.

The Azov corps reveled in the kills. “The battalion’s fighters are actively involved in the destruction of everything enemy in the Dobropillya direction.”

With its nimbler drone industry, Ukraine may have the A.I. edge for now. But A.I. FPVs are proliferating on both sides of the Russia’s 45-month wider war on Ukraine. Conditions favor Ukraine’s A.I. FPVs, however, as Russia is on the offensive—and counting on fog and smoke to hide its assault groups.

If there’s a downside to this new technology, it’s the cost. A standard FPV costs just a few hundred dollars. An A.I. following chip alone can cost twice that.

But even if an A.I. FPV costs $1,000, it’s worth it.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! 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

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 7:46 AM

SECOND

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


During World War I, Belgium fought for 88 days, from August 4 to October 31, 1914.

During WWII, Belgium fought for 18 days, from May 10 to May 28, 1940.

In 2025, Belgium fought for zero days, the fastest surrender in its history.

The Belgian Prime Minister, a cheese-eating surrender monkey, has fearfully spoken after Putin threatened him:

Russia will not lose in Ukraine, Belgian PM says

December 3, 2025, 5:44 PM

Kremlin has warned Belgium and the PM personally, threatening some kind of retaliation if Russian assets are confiscated by Belgium. “Moscow has let us know that in the event of a seizure, Belgium and I personally will feel the effects ‘for eternity.’ That seems like a pretty long time,” he said.

https://english.nv.ua/nation/russia-will-not-lose-in-ukraine-belgian-p
m-says-50565708.html

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

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 8:20 AM

SECOND

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


Czech POW sentenced to 13 years in jail by Russian court for fighting for Ukraine

By Francis Farrell | December 4, 2025 11:50 am

https://kyivindependent.com/czech-pow-sentenced-to-13-years-jail-by-ru
ssian-court-for-fighting-for-ukraine/

Tran's case is just the latest Russian prosecution of a captured foreign fighter as a mercenary, which, in Moscow's interpretation of international law, deprives them of the rights traditionally held by prisoners of war (POWs).

Though Czech media assert that Tran signed up to defend Ukraine, the sentencing assessed his motivation as being "with the aim of financial reward."

Since Moscow recognizes foreign fighters only as mercenaries, those who end up in captivity are often charged with terrorism.

In 2022, two British volunteers, Aiden Aslin and Shaun Pinner, as well as one Moroccan, Ibrahim Sadun, were sentenced to death by Russian proxies in Donetsk Oblast after their capture in the Battle of Mariupol. They were later released.

In March 2025, nine foreign nationals were sentenced by Russia under terrorism and mercenary activity charges after being captured during the Kursk Oblast incursion.

One of them, 22-year-old British fighter James Scott Rhys Anderson, was sentenced to 19 years' jail.

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

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 8:30 AM

SECOND

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


Australia's Tiger Attack Helicopters Don't Work Very Well. Why Would Ukraine Want Them?

The finicky gunships could hunt drones.

Dec 03, 2025

https://www.trenchart.us/p/australias-tiger-attack-helicopters

Australia may give Ukraine 22 Airbus Tiger attack helicopters. The only problem is: the two-person gunships don’t work very well. It’s not for no reason the Australian army flew the Tigers for just 12 years before announcing their eventual disposal—in favor of American-made Boeing AH-64Es—back in 2016. The last of the Aussie gunships is scheduled to retire in 2028.

The Tigers are unreliable. Australian crews reported software glitches, shortages of spare parts and smoke-filled cockpits. The Australians soured on all European-made helicopters as they also abandoned 45 Airbus NH-90 transport helicopters after just 15 years of use—opting to bury them instead of donating them to Ukraine.

Worse, the Aussie Tigers have become theoretically available—pending an unlikely political decision in favor of a transfer—at a time when all attack helicopters, even the ones that work, are losing relevance. Tiny explosive drones costing $500 apiece can perform many of the tasks a multi-million-dollar gunship can perform—and at lower risk to the crew.

The same drones are a direct threat to gunships. In a notable first on Sept. 29, a first-person-view drone operator with the Ukrainian 59th Assault Brigade downed a Russian Mil Mi-8 transport helicopter using their two-pound drone.

Sensing a shift, the U.S. Army recently announced early retirement for a fifth of its own fleet of around 800 AH-64s. South Korean canceled a planned purchase of 36 AH-64s. Japan made plans to retire all of its manned combat helicopters.

U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll and U.S. Army Gen. Randy A. George, the service’s chief of staff, said it best in their joint letter codifying the AH-64 cuts. “Yesterday’s weapons will not win tomorrow’s wars,” they wrote.

Gunships are definitely yesterday’s weapons. Which is not to say both Russia and Ukraine aren’t both still deploying them. But they’re both increasingly deploying their gunships deep in their own rear, as air-defenses assets against long-range attack drones.

Flying low and slow and firing inexpensive rounds from their under-nose guns, Ukrainian Mil Mi-24s and Russian Kamov Ka-52 and Mil Mi-28 gunships are efficient drone-hunters. Check out nose art on Ukrainian Mi-24s indicating dozens of air-to-air kills apiece.

Ukrainian gunships are such an annoyance to Russia’s Shahed drones that the Russians have begun equipping some Shaheds with infrared-guided air-to-air missiles—clearly hoping to swat a few Ukrainian gunships the same way Ukraine’s own sea drones have swatted Russian aircraft patrolling the approaches to the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s anchorages.

If Australia is feeling generous like it was late last year when it gave Ukraine 49 surplus M-1 tanks, Ukrainian army aviation just might get the 22 surplus Tigers. But don’t expect the Tigers to fly the close air support missions they were designed for. “If they are still operational, they could be useful for hunting Shaheds,” Czech analyst Jakub Janovsky mused.

Thanks for reading Trench Art! 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

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 10:43 AM

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


High-ranking Kremlin officials continue to set conditions to justify potential future Russian aggression against Moldova and the Baltics. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov claimed on December 3 that authorities in the Baltic states and Moldova are passing “racist” laws and are “discriminating” against the Russian population.[28] Lavrov’s statement notably mirrors the narratives that the Kremlin used to try to justify its invasions of Ukraine. Russian officials have long applied the Kremlin’s informational playbook used against Ukraine to threaten Moldova as well as North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Finland.[29]

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-december-3-2025/

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

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 10:46 AM

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


The Kremlin is reigniting narratives that Odesa City is a Russian city. Russian State Duma Deputy Dmitry Pevtsov claimed on December 3 that Russia will likely resolve the war with the “pseudo-state” Ukraine through military means so that Russians can go to their “ancestral lands” in Odesa City.[9]

Former Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin claimed on November 26 that he would like Odesa and Mykolaiv cities to be a part of Russia through “voluntary” means, not military means.[10] Russian claims regarding Odesa and Mykolaiv cities come against the backdrop of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s December 2 threat that Russia could cut Ukraine off from the Black Sea – possibly to set conditions to seize territory on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast in Odesa and Mykolaiv oblasts.[11]

These recent Russian territorial claims and threats against the Black Sea region are not new or isolated but follow repeated statements in the past, including from Putin himself.[12] Putin claimed in December 2023 that Russia historically controlled the Black Sea region and that Odesa City is a “Russian” city.”[13] Russian officials last ignited their narrative that Odesa City is a Russian city during the height of the April 2025 peace negotiations, likely in an attempt to paint Russia as prepared to protract the war and seize even more territory from Ukraine, such that Ukraine and the West should give in to Russia’s seemingly more limited demands now.[14] Russian officials’ renewal of these narratives in December 2025 likely aims to support the Kremlin’s ongoing cognitive warfare effort to portray Russia as capable of protracting the war to achieve its goals and a Russian victory as ultimately inevitable.

The Kremlin may also aim to use repeated narratives over the years about Odesa City to set conditions to justify renewed aggression against Ukraine following a future peace settlement in the name of protecting ethnic Russians and “ancestral” Russian lands.

https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive
-campaign-assessment-december-3-2025/

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

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 11:36 AM

THG

Keep it real please


Trump is going to betray our allies and Ukraine again soon.

T

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Thursday, December 4, 2025 7:42 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Good.



-----------

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 8:18 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Good.



-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
Putin 'morally responsible for Dawn Sturgess death'

Dec 4, 2025

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgkr0wj5e8o

"I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin," said the inquiry chair, Lord Anthony Hughes.

"I therefore conclude that all those involved in the assassination attempt... were morally responsible for Dawn Sturgess' death."

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the report's findings were "a grave reminder of the Kremlin's disregard for innocent lives".

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 8:37 AM

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


Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Trump is going to betray our allies and Ukraine again soon.

T
The New US National Security Strategy

Phillips’s Newsletter by Phillips P. OBrien / Dec 5, 2025 at 4:10 AM

https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/the-new-us-national-security-st
rategy

In case you missed it, the US government has just released its new National Security Strategy. Here is a link so you can download a copy for yourself. As such I wanted to write a few words about what is said in it specifically about Europe—as these are the most fascinating and frightening parts.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Se
curity-Strategy.pdf

One thing that stands out (and we can see it in other recent moves such as the Trump administration weakening its already pathetic sanctions on Russia, cozying up to China, sandbagging Ukraine and Europe, and weakening its commitment to NATO) is that the administration is being more and more open about its intentions. This new strategy is a return to JD Vance’s speech in Munich which was delivered not long after the administration came to power. This speech, if you remember, caused consternation amongst some Europeans who had not yet grasped what the administration believed. You can watch the whole speech here if you really want to.



In Munich, Trump called for more support for the populist right in Europe—think Viktor Orban in Hungary, the AFD in Germany, National Front in France and Reform in the UK. And in the new National Security Strategy, the US is has come right back to pushing for exactly this. The major point is that European culture is under threat (the continent is becoming “non-European” and as such, even NATO is as always with Trump being questioned as a viable institution.

Here are the summary points, and they are worth looking at because they reveal everything you need to know about how the Trump administration views things.
Quote:
Over the long term, it is more than plausible that within a few decades at the latest, certain NATO members will become majority non-European. As such, it is an open question whether they will view their place in the world, or their alliance with the United States, in the same way as those who signed the NATO charter.

Our broad policy for Europe should prioritize:

• Reestablishing conditions of stability within Europe and strategic stability with Russia;
• Enabling Europe to stand on its own feet and operate as a group of aligned sovereign nations, including by taking primary responsibility for its own defense, without being dominated by any adversarial power;
• Cultivating resistance to Europe’s current trajectory within European nations;
• Opening European markets to U.S. goods and services and ensuring fair treatment of U.S. workers and businesses;
• Building up the healthy nations of Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe through commercial ties, weapons sales, political collaboration, and cultural and educational exchanges;
• Ending the perception, and preventing the reality, of NATO as a perpetually expanding alliance; and
• Encouraging Europe to take action to combat mercantilist overcapacity, technological theft, cyber espionage, and other hostile economic practices.
There is much here to pick out point by point.

• The US wants Putin’s Russia to be seamlessly reintegrated into Europe (no sanctions of war crimes punishments can be expected here.

• The US wants Europe to be “a group of aligned sovereign nations” which means of course it wants the EU to be weakened so the US can dominate the individual members.

• The US wants to cultivate “resistance” in to the present order in European states—this is the populist right rallying cry.

• The US wants to compel Europe to do what it wants economically.

• The point about “healthy” nations is also ominous. It wants them to buy US weapons (making them reliant on and beholden to the USA). Clearly also the USA does not see western Europe as having “healthy” nations.

• The NATO point is actually the second time the NSS questions the value of NATO. In the preamble it says changes in Europe make the alliance less strong and here it says no more expansion. In other words, lets all screw Ukraine together.

• The last point; ok, that is not bad, though not sure what it means.

You add this all up, this is a US, openly-stated plan to dominate Europe through the expansion of power of populist-right wing (and pro-Putin it must always be remembered) parties. It means European unity will weaken, the EU will be downgraded, NATO will be de-fanged, much of Europe will be made reliant on buying US weapons. and the continent will have to take economic dictation from the USA. At the same time Russia’s needs and interests will now be high on the agenda.

Indeed, you know who is not “unhealthy”? That would be non-democratic states such as Russia. The document reads like a brief in favor of the Russian position, calling for European states to get back to work with Russia and offering up the USA as the vehicle to do this.
Quote:
This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states.

It is a core interest of the United States to negotiate an expeditious cessation of hostilities in Ukraine, in order to stabilize European economies, prevent unintended escalation or expansion of the war, and reestablish strategic stability with Russia, as well as to enable the post-hostilities reconstruction of Ukraine to enable its survival as a viable state.
What is clear is that the US under Trump no longer views Russia as a threat and is no longer even going to pretend that it does. That phrase is never uttered and there are no military plans put in place to deter Russia (and nothing specific on China either—more on that later). At least that part of the long con, which started after Vance’s disastrous speech and the oval office ambush of Zelensky backfired, is over.

This is a strategy to destroy the present Europe, to make it MAGA. No one can say that they have not been warned.

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 10:32 AM

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


“It’s a modern form of slavery”: Russian deserters say Putin’s war is annihilating the Russian population

Their testimonies depict an army stretched by losses, internal brutality and fear imposed from within as much as from Ukrainian fire.

By Kathrine Frich | Dec 5, 2025

https://www.dagens.com/war/its-a-modern-form-of-slavery-russian-desert
ers-say-putins-war-is-annihilating-the-russian-population

Three Russian soldiers who escaped the front tell The Times they saw no path to survival except injury, flight or silence.

A modern form of slavery

One of them, Nikolai, a 34-year-old lawyer from Russia’s far east, said financial hardship pushed him into enlistment early this year.

His firm collapsed after sanctions cut off international work, leaving him desperate.

Believing predictions that political changes abroad might end the conflict, he signed a contract. Only later, he told The Times, did he grasp the consequences.

“Once you sign a contract, you can’t leave,” he said. “It’s like a modern form of slavery.”

Training lasted barely ten days before he was moved through Rostov to a camp in Mariupol.

There, he watched soldiers stripped of phones and papers and learned escape was virtually impossible.

Paths strewn with corpses

When he reached the front in May, he said his assault unit faced constant drone strikes and mines.

Bodies lay uncollected along the paths. “You walk along paths strewn with corpses,” he recalled. “It was summer, so the smell of corpses was everywhere.”

Losses became routine. By late July, he estimated only five members of his original 45-man group remained.

As an advance order arrived, he realised he would rather injure himself than continue.

Older servicemen advised on which explosives would leave him alive. Shrapnel from RGD-5 grenades, one told him, tended to spare major arteries.

With that knowledge, he slipped away to a deserted house. The blast that tore into his arm allowed him to be evacuated.

“It was scary, but not that painful,” he said.

He later left Russia while on medical leave. “The Russian leadership is not at all ready to talk about peace,” he added. “The losses are simply enormous, monstrous.”

Crisis of faith

Anton, 27, also from the far east, had already completed naval service before choosing to enlist again in late 2023.

He said he followed his father’s example, calling him “the ultimate authority in my life.”

Assigned to air defence rather than an assault unit, he monitored drones and helicopters, carrying heavy loads and digging positions.

“I couldn’t stay home knowing that my comrades were there,” he said.

Gradually, his faith in the “operation” faltered.

When his unit occupied trenches left by Ukrainians, the icons and crosses he found there unsettled him.

Later, when a priest arrived to bless weapons, he questioned him about the morality of Russians and Ukrainians shooting at each other. The reply: “They are making the mistake, not you,” did not reassure him.

After his contract expired, he sought legal advice on how to leave the army permanently.

Courts threatened him with imprisonment for desertion, he said, and the final push came when plainclothes agents forced their way into his mother’s home.

He fled soon after. “People in the shelters simply rot,” he said.

Maps and manipulation

Alexander, 21, formerly a train conductor, described himself as opposing the war. Drafted last year, he served in a ceremonial unit before signing a contract he now calls “the worst and biggest mistake.”

Sent to a command post in Donetsk, he printed updated battlefield maps and watched drone footage of Ukrainian positions.

According to his account to The Times, he saw discrepancies between maps prepared for senior commanders and those used in the field.

When told to print one file ahead of a visit by General Gerasimov, he noticed the marked positions had shifted noticeably.

“It was a blatant lie,” he said.

Already shaken by the destruction he saw, he left Russia while on leave. Of diplomatic efforts, he said:

“I think they’re just theater. Putin wants blood. He wants to kill, to plunder. It’s an annihilation of the Russian population by its own president.”

For some, like Nikolai, guilt now overshadows relief.

“I have no excuse for myself,” he said. “I realize that I was involved and complicit in this great atrocity.”

Sources: The Times, Digi24
https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/rusia/marturiile-a-trei-soldati-ru
si-care-au-dezertat-putin-vrea-sange-este-o-anihilare-a-populatiei-ruse-de-catre-propriul-sau-presedinte-3532975
Translated title: Putin wants blood. It is an annihilation of the Russian population by its own president

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 12:38 PM

SECOND

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


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
“It’s a modern form of slavery”: Russian deserters say Putin’s war is annihilating the Russian population

Their testimonies depict an army stretched by losses, internal brutality and fear imposed from within as much as from Ukrainian fire.

By Kathrine Frich | Dec 5, 2025
How Russia keeps raising an army to replace its dead

Story by Ekaterina Bodyagyna and Ibrahim Naber | Dec 5, 2025

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-russia-keeps-raising-an-army-
to-replace-its-dead/ar-AA1RLOir

A Marketplace for Soldiers

When Russia invaded Ukraine in early 2022, Olga and her husband Alexander were running a small hiring operation in Moscow — placing construction workers, security guards and couriers in civilian jobs. About 18 months ago, they pivoted to something far more lucrative via Russia’s main classified ads platform: recruiting riflemen, drone operators and other soldiers for the war.

“Our daughter saw a job ad on Avito looking for recruiters, and that’s how it all started,” Olga told POLITICO in a series of voice messages over WhatsApp. Her profile picture displays the Russian coat of arms. (Olga and Alexander’s surname has been withheld to protect their anonymity under fear of governmental reprisal.)

As what it once expected to be a blitz has become a war of exhaustion, the Kremlin has reengineered its mobilization accordingly. In September 2022, Putin announced what he called a “partial mobilization” of 300,000 reservists, triggering a surge of public anger and emigration as hundreds of thousands fled the country to avoid being sent to fight. At the same time, the state opened its prison gates to the battlefield, luring inmates into uniform with promises of clemency and pay.

The approach worked, establishing a new blueprint: less coercion, more cash. To bring in volunteers who would not qualify for the draft because of age, health or lack of prior military service, the Kremlin targeted society’s most vulnerable — from prisoners to migrant workers and indebted men — by raising wages, offering lavish signing bonuses and selling military service as a path to dignity and survival. In September 2024, Putin formalized the strategy by ordering that the armed forces grow to 1.5 million active-duty troops. The sales pitch changed, too: subpoenas and summonses were replaced by money, benefits and appeals to manhood.

“These measures target a specific demographic: socially vulnerable men,” says political scientist Ekaterina Schulmann, who studies Russian government decision-making as a lecturer at the Osteuropa Institute in Berlin. “Men with debts, criminal records, little financial literacy — or those trapped by predatory microcredit. People on the margins, with no prospects.”

Much more at https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/how-russia-keeps-raising-an-army-
to-replace-its-dead/ar-AA1RLOir

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 3:24 PM

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


Shlosberg Charged With Spreading ‘Fakes’ About Russian Army

Dec 5, 2025

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/12/05/shlosberg-charged-with-sprea
ding-fakes-about-russian-army-a91351

Authorities in the northwestern city of Pskov have filed a new criminal charge against opposition politician Lev Shlosberg, accusing him of spreading “false information” about the Russian military, the liberal Yabloko party said Friday.

The charge, the third brought against Shlosberg this year, was announced three days before he was due to be released from house arrest, which he has been under since June.

Shlosberg is already on trial for “discrediting” the Russian military, which carries a maximum charge of five years in prison. Last month, he was sentenced to 420 hours of community service on another charge of violating Russia’s “foreign agent” law.

Yabloko said the latest “army fakes” case stems from a Telegram post from February 2022. The party said Shlosberg was formally notified of the charge on Thursday.

Shlosberg denies the accusations.

A judge was expected to decide Friday whether to keep him under house arrest, place him in pretrial detention or release him pending trial.

Shlosberg, a senior Yabloko member, has remained in Russia despite his opposition to the war. The 62-year-old politician was already fined twice on administrative charges of “discrediting” the military.

Russia’s Justice Ministry labeled him a “foreign agent” in June 2023.

In October, a judge barred Shlosberg from using the internet or a phone and from contacting anyone outside his household for four months.

Yabloko is one of Russia’s few legal opposition parties. It has consistently opposed the war in Ukraine and called for a ceasefire, though it has faced declining visibility and pressure under wartime censorship laws.

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 3:47 PM

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


A Ukrainian’s message to Europe

We’re defending your freedom some 400 kilometers east of Warsaw.

By Oleksandr Yakovenko | Dec 05, 2025

https://euromaidanpress.com/2025/12/05/its-your-war-youve-just-outsour
ced-the-dying/

It’s your war. You’ve just outsourced the dying.

We Ukrainians are the only buffer between the cozy European theory that “Russia is weak” and reality.

If the Europeans don’t face reality now, they’ll have to confront it when these “weak” Russian divisions push past Ukraine, into Europe.

I was a presenter at the REbuild Ukraine event in Warsaw. I was explaining how, while under fire, Ukrainians are building shelters for schools, clearing rubble, and pouring new foundations. Because we cannot live inside ruins, but must live on in spite of them.

The participants would listen, come up to me, and tell me in hushed tones, as if admitting betrayal: “Very powerful… but we can only invest in dual-use technologies. Investing directly into military capabilities is too toxic for our current mandate.”

Europe, you have created a new religion. Its main dogma can be summed up as “don’t call things by their names, and they won’t exist.” It’s a kind of shamanism for the 21st century: if you start calling a munitions factory a “dual-use technology hub,” then [Russian leader Vladimir] Putin won’t notice.

Putin is not the one you are afraid of. You’re afraid of your own reflection in the mirror. Because to use the term “military spending” is to admit that Europe is already at war.

And then, you’d have to admit that for the past 30 years, you were not living in the real world, but inside your “End of History” illusion. That you disarmed, reduced your armies, built your businesses on cheap Russian gas and Chinese loans. That you raised an entire generation of politicians who only know how to negotiate, but don’t know how to win.

We’re defending your freedom some 400 kilometers east of Warsaw. And while you come up with ways to avoid calling this a war, we are dying in your stead.

For the fourth year in a row, your generals are repeating the same lullaby: “Russia is weak, its GDP is comparable to Italy’s. Its military is Soviet junk. They can’t even take Ukraine, how will they take on NATO?” And you listen to them and go back to sleep.

But Russia isn’t weak. Russia can muster millions of men who know how to kill. Russia is a country that in three years’ time learned to produce more munitions than all of NATO countries combined. A country that has 6,000 nuclear warheads and a leader who has long since stopped being afraid to use them.

Russia didn’t fail to take Kyiv in three days because it’s “weak.” It failed because it ran up against us – against people who don’t ask permission to defend their homes.

It ran up against people who, in three days, created the biggest volunteer army in recent European history. Against people who came out against tanks with Molotov cocktails, then Javelins, which you were reluctant to give us for a very long time.

Russia ran up against people who didn’t give up a single major city without battle; people who drove the occupiers out from the Kyiv and Kharkiv suburbs, from Kherson, and from the north of the country, after the rest of the world already buried us in their predictions.

We held, not because we had more tanks and aircraft. We held because for us, this is not a “conflict,” nor a “geopolitical crisis.” For us, it’s a question of whether we get to exist.

And while you calculated GDPs and “risks of escalation,” we simply decided that it’s better to die standing than live on our knees.

That is why Russia was stopped. That is why Russian troops haven't yet reached the heart of Europe.

I say again: we are the only buffer between your cozy theory about Russia's supposed weakness and reality. And the reality is, these “weak” Russian divisions would have no issue pushing past Ukraine and into Europe.

When this buffer breaks, your generals will be the first to say “Article 5 is a political decision.” Your politicians will be the first to start bargaining for neutral buffer zones.

And your soldiers will simply refuse to go into combat. Nobody will want to die for your cause because you weren't willing to make the sacrifice at a time when you could have stopped the enemy with relatively minor losses.

When Russian tanks advance on Suwalki and you are once again looking for "political solutions,” remember this moment.

Remember how you lied to yourselves about how “Russia is weak.” And how you calmly watched us die in your stead. By then, it will be too late to explain to your children why Warsaw is burning and NATO turned out to be a paper tiger.

You still have time to stop being so cynical.

For now, we are still holding the line.

By then, it’ll be too late.

----------

Oleksandr Yakovenko is a Ukrainian entrepreneur and investor. He has deep expertise in defense technology, innovation, and logistics. In 2023 Yakovenko founded TAF Industries, one of Ukraine’s largest producers of FPV loitering munitions, reconnaissance drones, electronic warfare systems and other technological solutions.

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 4:53 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Good.



-----------

"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
Putin 'morally responsible for Dawn Sturgess death'

Dec 4, 2025

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgkr0wj5e8o

"I have concluded that the operation to assassinate Sergei Skripal must have been authorised at the highest level, by President Putin," said the inquiry chair, Lord Anthony Hughes.

blah blah blah


Nothing the Brits say about Russia is to be trusted. They burned their credibility over and over. The Steele "dossier" is a shining example.

-----------

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

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Friday, December 5, 2025 5:54 PM

SIGNYM

I believe in solving problems, not sharing them.


Russia is not a threat unless we make it one. By, for example, arming and aiming Ukraine at it, and stationing nuclear capable missiles on its border.

*****

AFA "betraying" Ukraine and our "allies" ...

Let's start with our allies.
Are they under attack?
No?
Then what's the problem?
Formally?
Nothing.

But we did shape NATO to suit our anti-Russian purposes, by including the Balts and eastern Europeans, by taking over German media and infiltrating the German Green party. But I have to say the Europeans fell in with their globalist factions with their Eurotechnocrats and Eurocurrency and climate change globalists and Davos oligarchs. So not 100% responsible for Europe collectively slitting its wrists with its rabid Russophobia.

Now Ukraine.
If you truly believe that the Russian SMO was truly unprovoked, then what do we "owe" Ukraine?
Nothing, really. Not anything more than if Somalia was attacked by Ethiopia.
Do we have any vital interest in Ukraine?
And, I don't mean mush-mouthed mumbles about "democracy" or "Russia bad".
I mean, what real things might we lose in Ukraine?
AFAIK, other than possible BlackRock investments... not a USA government problem ... we don't lose anything there either.

Now, I think we ARE responsible for the war in Ukraine. We engineered the coup in 2014, and have been shaping Ukraine as our proxy, to bleed in our stead, ever since. So, having led Ukraine down this path, I think morally we owe them reconstruction, but nobody will be able to make up for all those deaths. Once again proving "It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."


-----------



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In the garden, and RAIN!!! (2)
Fri, December 5, 2025 18:08 - 6416 posts
Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
Fri, December 5, 2025 17:54 - 9491 posts
Trump Is Destroying Everything He Touches
Fri, December 5, 2025 13:29 - 1038 posts
What our Russians are up to...
Fri, December 5, 2025 11:38 - 35 posts
Low Energy Trump
Fri, December 5, 2025 11:36 - 50 posts
Browncoats that think the West is on track with world politics.
Fri, December 5, 2025 11:32 - 66 posts
Russia wants to upend Western democracy
Fri, December 5, 2025 11:26 - 261 posts
I was right again. Must be a day that ends with day... Trump: Feds Will Seek Death Penalty For All Murders In DC; "Capital Punishment In The Capital"
Fri, December 5, 2025 11:20 - 18 posts
Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
Fri, December 5, 2025 11:12 - 4023 posts
Record-setting asteroid to shave past Earth *THIS month
Thu, December 4, 2025 20:46 - 24 posts
The Thread of Court Cases Trump Is Winning
Thu, December 4, 2025 20:42 - 93 posts
Elections 2026, U.S. House and State Governors
Thu, December 4, 2025 20:42 - 6 posts
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