I figured that we’d have at least something to show for the last week of news following the fallout from the Trump-Zelensky press conference, but so far all we’ve gotten out of it is Trump suspended arms shipments. This is a big deal, but only if it is actually a real thing. I strongly doubt that it is a real suspension of aid and am inclined to see it instead as a negotiation tactic.
Like Trump said, Washington has all the cards.
He and his team want concessions from Zelensky related to mineral deals, and, well, elections that will kick Zelensky out of office. Trump is clearly willing to play hardball to get this done. Here:
President Donald Trump recently halted all future shipments of military aid to Ukraine after a heated meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office last week exacerbated a chasm in US-Ukraine relations.
Western allies anticipate that Ukraine could sustain its current fighting pace for several weeks before the stoppage in US assets would start to affect operations.
With the pause likely to remain in place until Trump is satisfied with what he sees as Zelensky’s commitment to peace talks, CNN looks at what exactly was in the military aid sent by the United States so far, how much was sent and how a prolonged halt could start to impact Ukraine’s war efforts.
The US is the largest single donor to the war-torn nation, sending at least $123 billion in total aid to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022. Military aid made up $69 billion of that, or 56% of the US total, according to data from Kiel Institute for the World Economy, a German think tank that closely tracks wartime aid to Ukraine.
Ukraine has expanded its domestic production of military equipment including the manufacturing of drones and artillery munitions. This week, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said it now produces more than 30% of the equipment and ammunition needed to defend itself.
Zelensky has stated that military supplies from the US cover about 40% of its defense needs, with other — mostly European — allies making up the other approximately 30%.
Europe has rallied behind Ukraine in recent days, pledging to strengthen its support for Kyiv as US foreign policy shifts away.
On Tuesday, the EU announced a plan to allow member states to borrow $158 billion to boost defense spending and supply weapons to Ukraine.
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The US has been supplying Ukraine with military equipment under the Presidential Drawdown Authority since August 2021 in response to Russia preparing to launch its full-scale invasion. The mechanism allows the president to draw equipment for Ukraine directly from US stocks.
The US has used this method on 55 occasions to provide about $31.7 billion worth of military assistance for Ukraine, according to a report from the State Department.
Stopping the flow of this aid could be disastrous for Ukraine, with one Ukrainian official warning that the country could run out of vital artillery shells by May or June.
While the EU may help fill some gaps, there are some things only the US can provide, for example the Patriot air defense system, which has proven uniquely effective in countering Russian ballistic missiles. The US controls the licensing and the production of that system and its missiles.
A Ukrainian official told CNN on Tuesday that Kyiv’s stocks of Patriot missiles could run out in a matter of weeks, though it’s unclear how many missiles Ukraine already had stockpiled and whether more supplies were already en route from the US.
So in other words, Zelensky is on the clock here.
It doesn’t really matter to Washington if he loses territory or not, by the way. Even if the war were to end tomorrow, on Moscow’s terms, Washington has already scored a huge victory against Russia and set back any chances of Russia rising up to be anything more than a regional power several decades. And statecraft has largely disintegrated at this point, with private cabals simply treating states as vestige tools to further their own business empires.
I don’t think Trump and his team give a damn whether Russia carves off some more football fields worth of territory in Donbass or not. They’re in this to secure kickbacks for their own private criminal mafia, like the Bidens and Pelosis had done before them in Ukraine. Even the Deep State in America is going private now, with corporate personalities like Erik Prince offering to take over FEMA or border control functions; Elon Musk taking over the air and space defense industry, and the Thiel people taking over the mass surveillance function. No one can argue that the government in America isn’t corrupt, so why not just privatize it? That’s the argument that they’re making with this DOGE PR blitz anyway and it seems to be working.
Russia is way ahead of the US in this department though because Russia is already carved up into fiefdoms tenuously held together by a federal police force that answers to a private Kremlin-based cabal. For now that is. It would be so so so easy to get rid of Putin if Washington ever got serious about it. They could, for example, actually impose sanctions with enough bite that it would convince the oligarchs and spooks to offer up Putin’s head on a platter to Washington so that the sanctions would be lifted. But in the end, they didn’t do this. They got close, and I think that a sizeable chunk of the Deep State elite wanted this. But more sensible characters prevailed in the end — people who know just how useful Putin is to their plans for Russia and other countries.
Meanwhile, the American Deep Staters no doubt look upon the privileges of Russia’s ruling class with envy and want to emulate the same model in America. Sure, there will be an overarching global structure holding the whole thing together, but the national structure immediately under it will be carved up and handed over to these private mercenary interests. This not only ensures that there isn’t any resistance to the globalist authority (no national governments left standing to resist it), but also guarantees windfall bounties for the corporate raiders standing poised to loot the legacy wealth that the national projects of the 20th century accumulated.
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I am almost certain that the arms will continue to flow to Ukraine one way or the other, despite Trump’s posturing. I am only interested now in learning how and who they intend to replace Zelensky with. Will it be General Syrsky? Or the dark horse, COMMANDER Arestovich? Chances are, they’ll just pick someone with close Chabad connections and the right ethnic genetic make up.
In the meantime, Trump has started saber-rattling at Russia again.
I think it is quite obvious what is going on here to a certain extent.
Trump is bending Moscow over the barrel to the same extent if not more as he’s doing Kiev. It is in his interests to extract as much out of both parties because both parties are weak and are beholden to the US even more than they were before all this unpleasantness kicked off. Moscow also needs continued American support to keep its war machine afloat, same as Kiev. If Washington wanted to, they could actually impose sanctions that work on Russia and cripple both the country and the war effort that way. It is in their interests, however, to let Russia fight and bleed itself out, slowly, while paying American defense contractors for the privilege of doing so, and sowing the seeds of centuries of enmity with Ukrainians while doing so.
It’s win, win, win and then some more win for them.
As far as I can tell, the Kremlin is trying to get something out of these negotiations, and Washington and Kiev are having none of it. From Kiev’s perspective, they’re probably dragging their heels over territorial demarcations and how much Moscow will end up having to pay restitution to Kiev for the war. From Washington’s perspective, it has to do with the sanctions and the favorable contracts that American companies want the Kremlin to sign onto related to natural resources, especially rare earth materials.
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^these are all sensible speculations on my part, which means that they’ll probably be proven wrong eventually. Why? Well, each time I try to be sensible and rational, I forget just how craven or corrupt Putin and Trump and Zelensky are and Putin in particular eventually comes out with some new statements or policies 180s that force me to dramatically lower my expectations for him and his government. In other words, the secret negotiations happening between Moscow and Washington may have absolutely nothing to do with import sanctions, territorial swaps, or Moscow’s seized investment money abroad. It may be something far more personal and banal and sinister than any of that.
Remember: these people are running Russia like their own personal casino, not a serious country with state interests.
In the meantime, the war continues, and it appears to be getting bloodier by the day.
The UAF continues to strike deeper and harder into the Russian interior with their NATO weapons. Here:
And here:
As I’ve written about before, these gas and oil and transformer strikes appear to be a separate war within a war. Both sides hit each others’ energy infrastructure, almost as if they’re competing to hurt the wallets and bottom lines of the other sides’ oligarchs and their holdings in the energy industry. There doesn’t seem to be any real military purpose behind Russia’s strikes, that much is clear. They hit these transformers and substations over and over again, doing nothing to undermine the UAF war effort, but a lot to degrade the quality of life for civilians and drive up the cost of energy in Ukraine. The same can be said for the strikes carried out by the UAF. You’re not going to knock out Russia’s oil reserves to the degree that the military simply runs out of fuel. You can, however, hurt the bottom line of Russia’s oil and gas barons.
As for the real fighting, it continues over in Kursk.
And now we hear reports that the UAF might consider a retreat from the territory that they’ve captured inside Russia. This occurs at the same time as we hear that their fortunes in Donbass are reversing, and they’re starting to push back against Russia there. What gives?
The old swaparoo again?
Too soon to tell.
I don’t really have anything to say about this because we’ve been stuck in the same limbo/stalemate since the Kursk offensive. There is clearly some political impasse between Moscow, Kiev, Washington and because of it, there have been no large attacks anywhere. Usually, these are only done when a deal is first concluded behind the scenes.
I was predicting a UAF advance in and around Kursk, as you might recall, but when it came, it advanced until it hit resistance and then stopped a couple of times. It was as if a leash was jerked and they just refused to commit any of their big units to the attack. This despite the fact that we learned that the Kremlin had deliberately left big holes with phantom brigades guarding them for the UAF to exploit. Since then, the UAF has simply been bombarding the Russians with wave upon wave of drones from a distance as Moscow has started throwing more and more men headlong against advanced UAF positions without even armored transport in some cases.
There’s those videos of old Ladas with soldiers crammed into the sedan rolling up on Ukrainian positions using paved roads as vectors for their attack. Three years into the war and that’s what the once-great Soviet army has been reduced to. Pure madness, truly. At least no one will be able to say that Slavs aren’t absolute fearless freaks when it comes to modern no holds barred all-out warfare after this.
But then, most people knew that Slavs were already pretty crazy when it comes to war and fighting, so I’m not sure whether we had anything to prove on this front at this point, frankly.
And the result? Stalemate, just the same as we had before.
In conclusion, I have nothing to report on the war front because the war front isn’t important. This war is fake fake fake. Yes, thousands are dying, but military realities do not dictate the course of this war — political back-dealing does. And we can only speculate as to what is happening on that front.
Meanwhile, Israel decided to back their new ally, Russia, up in the UNSC. Here:
Israel joined the US and Russia in voting against a United Nations General Assembly resolution calling to reaffirm Ukraine’s territorial integrity on Monday, rejecting a strongly worded condemnation of Russia’s invasion of its neighbor on the war’s third anniversary.
Israel’s vote, likely an overture to US President Donald Trump, marks the first time the country has voted against Ukraine and with Russia since the war began. Jerusalem has previously maintained a delicate balance between its principled support for Ukraine and its need to preserve ties with Moscow, due to its influence over Syria.
The measure was adopted by the body in an overwhelming majority, with 93 member states voting to condemn Russia’s 2022 invasion and demand it return territories occupied by its forces over the course of the ongoing war.
Alongside Israel, the US and Russia, opponents of the resolution included Russia, North Korea, Hungary and 13 others. Argentina, the United Arab Emirates, China and Iran were among the 65 those who abstained.
Israel, America, Hungary, Argentina and the UAE are now Russia’s true allies!
Iran and China? Irrelevant Neo-Nazi states that do not recognize the alleged “Hall of Cost” committed on October 7th, 1944 or something.
While I don’t have much to say about the battlefield, I do think that it is quite obvious that this realignment that we are witnessing in realtime is proof of the fact that there is no so-called #AxisofResistance. And Iran and China aren’t siding with Russia because a) Russia isn’t siding with them in any discernible way for fear of upsetting their partners in Washington and b) because if they recognize Putin’s special war-of-friendly-socialist-policing-that-led-to-partial-democratic-annexations-in-neighboring-Ukraine, they’re afraid of the precedent that this will set when the US starts carving off territory on their lands next.
As for Tel-Aviv and Moscow having close ties, well, duh.
Most of Russia’s top oligarchs and top spooks have Israeli passports. The Likud faction in power in Israel now is also in power in Russia as well via Chabad. We’ve covered this all before, and I’ve been very clear about this “special” relationship between the two countries while the Z-propagandists were claiming that Russia and Israel were mortal enemies and that Russia was propping up Syria and Lebanon and Iran and Yemen in their fight against Israel. Pure fantasy. But the propaganda was good, and so it bought Putin a lot of good PR for a very affordable price tag. A successful psyop that played on people’s yearning for a savior without forcing Moscow to actually do anything.
Another variant on the old Operation Trust psyop, if you will.
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Trump promised peace on the first day of him coming to office. Since then, he said he’d have it done by Easter. Delays aside, I think that he is making great progress in this direction generally. So far, he has strong-armed Kiev into signing a mineral deal. And on the other side, Putin has offered to give him a favorable deal as well, and to reduce Russia’s war spending by 50%. I believe that they are negotiating how much Moscow will have to pay Kiev as an apology and how much territory they will have to surrender right now, and that this is causing all the hold-up. But that’s just what my rational, logical side thinks, remember that. It could be something else far more sinister or petty or grand being worked out right now.
Access to the pedophelia parties that Moscow’s elites were banned from attending, might be on the table or example. A private yacht that was confiscated, perhaps.
Or it could be a grand new strategy to get Moscow onboard with war against Iran and resource starving China via encirclement and blockade.
Also, as you will recall, Putin’s goal in starting this SMO was to “demilitarize and denazify Russia” and this war was perhaps his master plan for accomplishing this goal.
First, he donated good military hardware to Kiev when he made a goodwill withdrawal from Kiev following the Istanbul talks. Then he donated some more when his army was forced to withdraw from Kharkov in panic and then Kherson in good order (but still leaving equipment behind somehow), and then he attritioned his own army with three years of fighting during which all Soviet equipment reserves were eaten up. Now he can simply reduce military spending to make sure that no new Russian army is made while Ukraine will continue to prepare for Round 3.
Problem, liberal wokesters?
As for the denazification, well, record numbers of Islamic migrants from countries with active ISIS and other terror groups are flooding into Russia now at a rate never seen before. I’ll cover that tomorrow, because the new stats and the new wave of arrests of Russian patriots is downright alarming.
I figured I’d give you an update today, even though there wasn’t really much to update you about. Most of the Russian channels are discussing the massacres occurring in Syria now and wondering just how many of these jihadis Putin’s FSB is letting into Russia as we speak. The debate is over migration at the moment, which is good, because this Not-War is a farce and everyone knows it at this point. Let’s talk about the other war being waged on us via demographics instead.
Sadly, I didn’t even have any fun memes to share today like I did the last couple of times.
That’s the real tragedy.
Well, that and you people not signing up to support the blog financially. A handful of you did from last time, but still. Not enough … nowhere close to enough. I should be taking victory laps and raking in the “winnings” as the entire Z-narrative begins to collapse right before our eyes. But, apparently people want to be mad at me for being right. PSA: Guys, me writing about Putin’s perfidy isn’t what caused him to betray your fantasy geopolitics dream team by buddying up with Israel over this last week. You do understand that, right? I am a powerful writer, but my power level has not yet reached to those heights.
With your support though, anything is possible.
Thank you for this, I couldn't take all that ZAnon winning over the weekend, so I was waiting patiently for Stalker reality to strike
The Duran just posted a convo titled Russia-China partnership remains TOP priority :))) (all that was missing was bozo escobar's super secret hush hush insider info from his sherpas around Glazyev and shit)