- Ukraine’s SBU claims it carried out an attack on the Kerch Strait Bridge from Russia to Crimea, placing 1,100 kg of explosives on the bridge’s supports under water.
- Reports now coming in saying there has been a SECOND significant explosion at the Kerch Strait Bridge.
- RUSSIA: “The Kerch bridge has been reopened to the public and is now safe to use. This was an attack on a major civilian infrastructure, the longest bridge in Europe. I don’t see any western leader condemning it, please don’t cry when we retaliate.”
From Kill Chain to Kill Web
The recent air battle between India and Pakistan does not bode well for the US military’s chances against China in the South Pacific:
China was building a “Kill Chain” against any US military intervention near China’s shores. The Kill Chain was focused on what Brose termed “Assassin’s Mace” – asymmetrical weapon systems, primarily hypersonic missiles, that could prevent US forces in its Western Pacific military bases, aircraft carrier groups, and strike fighters from approaching the theatres of operations that include Taiwan, the South China Sea and the East China Sea. Such a strategy is called Anti-Access Area Denial (A2AD).
In the recent India Pakistan air combat, we have witnessed an indirect manifestation of the Chinese military concept and capabilities, which is the driving force behind Pakistan’s stellar combat performance.
The battlefield actions clearly show that China has evolved from the linear “kill chain” to a “kill web” that integrates diverse platforms, sensors, and weapons across domains to create overlapping, resilient attack vectors, ensuring mission success even in high intensity combat environment.
The systems warfare in the India Pakistan air combat consists of Chinese J-10C fighters, PL-15E air to air missile, HQ-9P air defense systems, and EDK-03 early warning aircrafts. These weapon systems executed a perfect triangulated attack vector now referred to as the ABC kill web: A (HQ-9P) – detect, B (J-10C) – shoot, and C (EDK-03) – guide. This beyond-visual-range kill web took down multiple expensive Indian fighter jets without losses of any own assets.
Such sensor-shooter fusion technology is the defining feature of future air combat.
Of course, the India Pakistan air combat demonstrated only a few elements of the multi-domain full Kill Web that China has developed. Also the weapon systems used by the Pakistan air force is a full generation behind what is deployed at the PLA.
China’s full A2/AD platform encompasses a comprehensive suite of weaponry and systems, including various air and naval assets, hypersonic missiles, and other novel weapons such as the one-of-a-kind CH-T1 Ground Effect UAV (which I’ll discuss in a separate article).
China’s warfighting doctrine and capabilities have evolved much further than the Kill Chain described by Brose 5 years ago. The Kill Web is a multi-layered, redundant, and networked arsenal to achieve mission objectives in China’s A2AD strategy.
In early 2022, I pointed out, contra experts like Lind and Van Creveld, that Russia was going to win the war in Ukraine. There certainly weren’t any politicians or generals across the West who agreed with me. Now I’m pointing out, as I have for some time now, that the USA will lose any war it chooses to fight with China in the South Pacific.
Somehow, I doubt the politicians and generals will pay me any more heed than they did three years ago.
There is No Joe Biden
But there were certainly six fake ones. President Trump draws attention to one of the more outlandish Q assertions:
President Trump has sent the country into an uproar after sharing what his haters are calling a “conspiracy theory” regarding Joe Biden.
Trump shared a post on his Truth Social from a user called llijh. In her post, she alleges Biden was executed in 2020 and has been replaced by a clone.
The president presented the post entirely without comment.
“There is no #JoeBiden – executed in 2020. #Biden clones doubles & robotic engineered soulless mindless entities are what you see. >#Democrats dont know the difference,” the post from llijh states.
As always, the only thing that we can be certain of is that the mainstream narrative is false. So far, Clown World’s propaganda machine has already altered the Official Story enough to admit that Joe Biden was non compos mentis for the entirety of his fake term to which he was never elected in the first place. How much further it will be altered remains to be seen.
What I find most interesting is the repetition of the claim that Biden was executed, which has also been made of John McCain, Hilary Clinton, and other major political figures. We know the Deep State exists, we know there is a resistance to it that appears to be centered in military circles, particularly military intelligence, but we don’t actually know much more than that. So the fact that President Trump is drawing our attention to such things is interesting, regardless of his real reasons for doing so.
Superchats are Back
An announcement from the UATV devs:
Superchat tokens can now be purchased again on UATV.
We’re still working on the chat part right now, to be completed in time for Owen’s stream tonight, but anyone who is registered with the new payment system and wishes to load up can already do so.
Note that tonight’s stream will be earlier than usual; I’ll be on with Big Bear around 5 PM EST.
An Irrelevant Innovation
Larry Johnson cites an estimate that three percent of Russia’s strategic air fleet was either damaged or destroyed in the recent drone attack on five of its airfields and concludes that NATO intelligence officers were involved in the attack:
In my opinion, none of these attacks could have been planned and executed without assistance, if not the direct involvement, of Western intelligence and NATO officers. The drones likely were activated by a remote signal made possible by Western satellites and/or systems like Starlink. Those systems also played a critical role in enabling the drones to navigate to the targeted airfields.
While this is clearly a PR victory for Ukraine, it is a classic example of a Pyrrhic victory–i.e., a tactical win, leading to a strategic defeat. The Trump administration is denying any knowledge of the attack. I take that disavowal with a big grain of salt. People within the CIA and USEUCOM offices, who are providing assistance to Ukraine, likely knew about the plan, and may even have provided intelligence support to get the drones to their targets. Like any covert operation, they may have tried to give Trump plausible deniability, but the Russians know how this game is played.
I expect Russia will launch a massive retaliatory strike after the talks in Istanbul on Monday conclude. The Ukrainian attacks on the bridges, the train and the airfields have done nothing to alter the situation all along the line of contact in Ukraine. News continues to pour in from the front, from both Ukrainian and Russian news outlets, painting a picture of growing desperation, even panic, among Ukrainian forces, as Russians capture more territory and kill more Ukrainian troops.
The thing that is so pointless about these sorts of clever little innovations is that they are the sort of things that tend to appear after the outcome of the war is already determined, but the losing side hasn’t accepted its defeat yet. The flashy nature of the drone attacks reminds me of the German ME 262 and ME 163 jets, which between them shot down 542 Allied aircraft, and the Japanese kamikazes that sunk or damaged 402 ships.
Both were innovations that captured the imagination and succeeded in producing material results, but at a scale that was totally irrelevant to the outcome of the war.
Upon further review, I don’t think it’s even necessary for Russia to respond to this latest provocation by Western forces, as its best revenge and most effective deterrence will be to simply refuse to call off its infantry and armor as they continue to advance rapidly across the future Russian lands.
The Journey Begins
Today marks the beginning of the serialization of Aristotle’s RHETORIC at the Castalia Library stack. Sign up for a free subscription there to read along and join in the discussion of it there for the next three months. And, better yet, sign up for a Library subscription to receive a copy of the current subscription book, also by Aristotle, namely, his METAPHYSICS.
Aristotle’s Rhetoric is one of the most useful and important analyses of human communication ever written. It is also one of the great philosopher’s least appreciated works, as it is easily mistaken for a mere technical breakdown of the various methods of persuasion, rather than what it truly is, a brilliant conceptual guide to understanding and anticipating human behavior. While a considerable portion of the text is devoted to the mechanics of the syllogism and the enthymeme, as well as the presentation of the inevitable lists which Aristotle characteristically constructs, by far the most important element of this little book is the philosopher’s division of humanity into two fundamental classes: those who are capable of learning through information, and those who are not.
This is such an important distinction that its complete absence from the schools and universities today is remarkable. It calls into question the basis of modern pedagogical systems and explains the mystery that has confounded every intelligent individual who has tried, and failed, to explain the obvious to another person. Indeed, it is comforting to have long-held suspicions about the intrinsic limitations of one’s fellow men confirmed so comprehensively.
Strategic Drone Attacks
The Western media is convinced that a few trucks full of drones have decimated Russia’s fleet of strategic bombers:
Ukraine has launched one of its most audacious attacks of the war using a ‘swarm’ of kamikaze drones unleashed from the backs of trucks to devastate two of Russia’s most major airfields.
Dubbed ‘Operation Spiderweb’, the co-ordinated strikes have left Vladimir Putin humiliated and his prized warplanes in smouldering ruins.
Two remote military airfields, Olenya in the Arctic Murmansk region and Belaya in eastern Siberia, were rocked by massive explosions overnight, with dramatic footage showing fires raging for hours.
The bases, located thousands of miles from Ukraine, are key to Russia’s nuclear strike capability and were considered untouchable.
Yet Ukraine appears to have struck them with deadly precision, using first-person-view (FPV) drones launched from unmarked vans parked near the airfields.
Both are thousands of miles from Ukraine but were ‘under drone attack’, with dozens of Moscow’s nuclear capable warplanes evidently destroyed.
The Ukrainian media claimed more than 40 Putin aircraft had been hit, including Tu-95, Tu-22M3, and A-50 strategic bombers. The damage to the enemy was alleged to exceed £1.5billion.
If Kiev, Berlin, and London aren’t hit with major missile strikes in the next 24 hours, I think it will be safe to conclude that the damage reports are significantly exaggerated. Which I assume to be the case, in light of the number of Russian planes shot down by “the Ghost of Kiev”, the number of times Russia has run out of ammunition, and the number of times Vladimir Putin has died of cancer.
But it is interesting to observe how Ukraine is now reduced to celebrating acts of subterfuge and terrorism that may or may not even be real as the Russian military continues to advance at an increasing pace.
I’m mostly posting this here for the purposes of future comparison when the numbers are inevitably revised downward. However, it does show that Russia’s attempt at strategic deterrence through doctrine is not working.
UPDATE: It appears eight planes were confirmed damaged or destroyed.
5 Tu-95MS bombers, 2 Tu-22M3 bombers, 1 An-12 military transport aircraft.
Which is two more than Russia has lost in all of 2025, bringing the total to 14. To put this into perspective, in 2022, Russia lost 104 planes.
The Book People Speak
The poll has closed. A respectable 190 Castalians had their say and the results were remarkably close.
- 29% Aristotle – Rhetoric
- 26% The Cambridge Medieval History Vol. 2
- 26% Machiavelli – Discourses on Livy
- 09% Hemingway – A Farewell to Arms
- 09% Waugh – Decline and Fall
Tomorrow, therefore, we shall begin with the serialization of RHETORIC by Aristotle, utilizing the Library edition which begins with an Introduction by none other than your favorite dark lord. If you want to take part in the group reading and the discussion in the comments, be sure to subscribe to the Castalia Library substack.
Five Down, Six to Go
Russia makes it clear that it’s moving on to the third phase of territorial acquisition by taking 200 km2, including a lot on the new Sumy front, in the last week.
The Russian army took 18 settlements, almost 200 km², in 7 days. Russian troops are demonstrating the most active advancement in the DPR, Kharkov and Sumy regions. According to the publication’s experts, the Ukrainian Armed Forces are unable to stop the offensive due to an acute shortage of personnel, which cannot be eliminated in the near future. — Bild
As I and many others have predicted, the failure of the Kiev regime to surrender when it is observably defeated means that the Russians now intend to take on the battlefield what they obviously desired from the beginning.
State Duma Defense Committee Chairman Kartapolov issued an even more pronounced statement—that Ukraine would lose Sumy, Zaporozhye, Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkov, Nikolayev, and Odessa if it continues to resist.
There is absolutely nothing the USA, NATO, or anyone else can do to stop Russia from taking the entirety of those six additional provinces except try to negotiate a conditional surrender that confirms Russia’s control of all the territory up to the Dnieper and turns over Odessa to the Russians. I expect control of Odessa is a non-negotiable at this point and that we are likely less than one year from Russia being in a position to demand an unconditional surrender by Kiev. Russia now has the full and open support of China; the clumsy attempts of the USA to pivot from Ukraine to Taiwan, the trade war, and the US support for the Gazacaust have only increased China’s appreciation for the importance of its alliance with Russia.
Since 2022, the Chinese have resolutely refused to blame Russia for the war in Ukraine despite US demands to do so, and now, to the contrary, they have very publicly, and correctly, laid “a major responsibility” for the war on the USA.
The United States bears a major responsibility for the outbreak of the war and the continuation of the war. But, of course, the United States has a responsibility to work its efforts and play its part for an early ending of the conflict. We urge the United States to concentrate on the ongoing diplomatic effort and stop this rather boring blaming game. — Deputy UN Representative Geng Shuang
All of this highlights the intrinsic danger of allowing men and women who believe in subversion and word magic to hold power at the national level. They will cling to their belief in their fantasies even when objective reality conclusively disproves them.
Immigration and Illiteracy
Whatever could be causing the increase in Austrian illiteracy and innumeracy?
Almost a third of the population in Austria has poor reading skills, signaling an alarming trend, the EU country’s government statistics office has said. The decline is particularly noticeable among those with jobs that require medium or low qualifications, Statistics Austria said in a statement earlier this week.
In Austria, which has a population of nine million, a total of 29.0% or around 2.6 million people have a low level of literacy, according to data on the agency’s website. The number of those who have problems with reading increased by 11.9% between 2012 and 2023, the figures show.
According to Statistics Austria, the number of those with low day-to-day math skills also grew by 6.7% between 2012 and 2023, amounting to 22.6% of the population.
Well, that’s nothing that importing more low-IQ foreigners can’t fix, right? Just a little public education is all they need, and they’ll be just as product as any native Austrian, right?