Tag: Russia

The Next Domino Falls

Russian forces have already entered Dnepropetrovsk, the second of the five additional provinces that Russia can be expected to take before new borders are finalized:

Russia’s recent advance into Ukraine’s Dnepropetrovsk Region is part of the push by Moscow to establish a “buffer zone” on the front line, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said. On Sunday, the Russian Ministry of Defense announced that the 90th Armored Division had reached the western border of the Donetsk People’s Republic and continued its offensive into the neighboring territory. The next day, it reported new territorial gains in the area, without providing details.

And if the former Ukrainian Prime Minister is to be believed, the US has already endorsed the removal of Zelensky from his position as illegitimate and unelected head of the Kiev regime, which is an obvious necessity if Ukraine is to survive as an independent entity.

Vladimir Zelensky will resign and leave Ukraine, former Prime Minister Nikolay Azarov has predicted, citing what he described as a US-backed effort to remove the country’s leader. In a post on Telegram on Sunday, Azarov suggested that the decision to remove Zelensky from power “has already been made in the US” and that Washington has given the “go-ahead” for his ouster. He wrote that although the Ukrainian leader has support in Europe, it is unlikely to change anything and will “hardly help” him.

Zelensky would then be replaced by parliamentary speaker Ruslan Stefanchuk, who would serve as acting president and begin shaping “a new political landscape” in Ukraine.

Translation: the Ukrainian parliament will be expected to make an offer to surrender. Whether anything short of an unconditional surrender will be accepted by the Russians remains to be seen.

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A Coming Catastrophe

By way of Simplicius, a pro-Kiev regime journalist and soldier reports that more than 90,000 Ukrainian troops have deserted since the beginning of 2025:

A military catastrophe is coming: More than 90,000 since the beginning of the year – a Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier on the scale of desertion in the troops

Kiev journalist Boyko, who serves in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, reports the shocking scale of flight from the army.

In the first 5 months of 2025, 90,590 criminal cases were registered on the facts of escape from military units:

January – 18,145,

February – 17,809,

March – 16,349,

April – 18,331,

May – 19,956.

A total of 213,722 cases of desertion have been registered since the beginning of the Second World War.

Boyko notes that these data reflect only those cases for which criminal proceedings have been initiated; the real situation is much worse .

According to him, deserters are not actually sought out; they do not return to service.

“The reason for the military catastrophe approaching Ukraine is obvious: the demonstrative evasion of mobilization by court fabulists like Sternenko, Leshchenko or Bigus, mass shabuning – when tens of thousands of shabunins, vakarchuks, kipianis and other leaders are fictitiously listed in the troops and the lack of law and order in the Armed Forces of Ukraine and other military formations, caused by the liquidation of the military prosecutor’s office in 2019,” he writes.

Boyko also notes that in reality there are from 30 to 50 thousand Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers on the LBS from the Ukrainian side.

This is why the Kiev strategists have increasingly resorted to operations that are nothing more than PR stunts. They don’t even have enough soldiers to prevent the Russians from taking anything that Vladimir Putin decide to take. The only thing holding back the Russians at this point is their patience, their disinclination to take unnecessary casualties, and their desire to avoiding excessively panicking Washington.

Europe and the UK are already panicking, but the Russians don’t care about that. So the sooner Kiev offers an unconditional surrender, the better off everyone will be, especially the beleaguered Ukrainian soldiers.

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Hell No, They Won’t Go

It would appear Ukrainian men are no longer willing to be conscripted and fed into the maw of the Russian military machine:

A senior recruitment officer has reportedly been killed in a car explosion in Ukraine’s Odessa Region on Friday, according to police and local media reports.

Investigators suspect the blast was intentional and may have been triggered remotely. Odessa regional police confirmed one fatality and said an investigation is under way, but did not name the person who was killed when a vehicle exploded in a village in Berezovsky District.

Law enforcement sources cited by local media said that the vehicle belonged to a local draft office. The Southern Courier named the victim as Colonel Oleg Nomerovsky, a top official at a regional military recruitment center.

While it could have been Russian intelligence behind the assassination, the fact that it was a car bomb and not a missile strike tends to indicate disaffected Ukrainians or Novyrussian rebels were responsible. To be honest, I’m a little surprised it has taken this long for the Ukrainian resistance to the draft to become violent, as it’s obviously a lot safer to fight rear-echelon UFA recruiters than frontline Russian troops.

But I suppose it takes an amount of time and a considerable amount of counternarrative information to eliminate the lasting effects of a relentless propaganda campaign, especially in the minds of naturally patriotic young men. I doubt it would take nearly as long for similar resistance to appear if the British or German governments were foolish enough to attempt to impose a draft on the very sort of young nationalists they’ve been persecuting for years in the name of diversity, immigration, and inclusion.

Regardless, this is another sign that the UFA’s will to resist Russia is crumbling, and that the rapid advance phase across the next six provinces expected this summer has likely already begun.

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Belligerence Has Consequences

The British are suddenly not celebrating the drone attacks on the Russian airbases now that Russia is showing signs of holding them responsible:

Russia has blamed Britain for Ukraine’s devastating drone attacks on its airfields.

And it claimed that this country’s alleged role in the strike that destroyed as many as 40 Russian aircraft could lead to ‘World War Three’.

The Kremlin turned its sights on Britain on Thursday night with its ambassador Andrei Kelin insisting that the UK military’s advanced technology helped Ukraine to hit targets inside Russia. He offered no evidence for the claim.

It’s an interesting shift from “the most stunning and brave and cleverest smart boy special op ever” to “you haven’t proved we were involved”. Because Russia has got to have learned by now that people who believe in word magic simply don’t pay attention at all to anything their enemies say, they only pay attention to what their enemies do.

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Report: US Intelligence Backed Kiev Strikes

If the French military and media are to be believed, it would appear the USA has effectively ruled itself out of any future peace talks:

Ukraine could not have carried out a large-scale attack on Russian airfields using drones without information from US intelligence. This was stated by a former senior officer of the French army, Guillaume Ansel.

“This is possible and conceivable only with the support of satellite communications. Ukrainians do not have such systems, and if they were able to act remotely, then, of course, thanks to the USA,” — Mr. Ansel told the newspaper Le Monde.

We are talking about attacks by the Armed Forces using FPV drones on airfields in the Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanov, Ryazan and Amur regions. The Ministry of Defense reported the fire of several units of equipment.

CNN June 2 wrote with reference to sources that US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth knew about the attacks of the Armed Forces on Russian facilities and regularly received relevant information. At the same time, according to the interlocutor, the White House authorities did not inform about this.

Important Caveat: the European Union and the Kiev regime are desperately attempting to enmesh the US military into fighting the war in Ukraine for them. So, I wouldn’t trust any report from any French source, or indeed, any Clown World source, with regards to US involvement in any attack on Russia.

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Civilian Infrastructure is Fair Game

  • 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.”

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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.

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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.

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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.

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A Chilling Warning

Also, and more importantly, a foolish and futile one:

US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth issued a chilling warning on the China threat during a defense summit in Singapore. He said on Saturday that the threat from China was potentially imminent as he pushed allies in the Indo-Pacific to spend more on their own defense.

Hegseth, speaking for the first time at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, Asia’s forum for defense leaders, militaries and diplomats, underlined that the Indo-Pacific region was a priority for the Trump administration.

‘There’s no reason to sugar coat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent’ Hegseth said, in some of his strongest comments on the Communist nation since he took office in January. He added that any attempt by China to conquer Taiwan ‘would result in devastating consequences for the Indo-Pacific and the world,’ and echoed Trump’s comment that China will not invade Taiwan on the president’s watch.

Hegseth is sufficiently educated in military affairs to know better than to spout nonsense like this. The US not only will not win a war with China in the Indo-Pacific, it cannot even put up a serious military challenge to China.

The entire world has been watching as Russia, with only limited assistance from Belarus, Iran, and North Korea, has almost singlehandedly defeated the entire might of the USA and its NATO allies. The result would not be any different even if the USA had attempted to utilize its own forces directly; the Kiev regime has already lost twice as many men as exist in the US armed forces without ever even forcing the Russians to utilize most of its frontline troops, its best hardware, or the greater part of its missile stocks.

The Russians, knowing the possibility of direct NATO intervention, have been keeping very powerful reserves in order to utilize them if necessary. This is why most of the Russian casualties have been from the provincial militaries and the mercenary companies. The Russian air force has lost all of 6 aircraft in 2025; the US Navy lost half that many from a single carrier in a single deployment in the Red Sea.

So I very much doubt that the Chinese are very impressed by the performance of the US military or are afraid to risk a confrontation with it over Taiwan. I also doubt there will be an actual invasion as such; it is far more likely that reunification will be quietly negotiated behind the scenes, then announced one day along with a series of arrests of pro-independence advocates.

It’s a shame that the foreign rulers of the USA have inverted the historical American philosophy coined by Teddy Roosevelt, and instead elect for speaking loudly while carrying a small and fragile stick.

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