Ukraine Lowers Age of Conscription by Two Years to Fill Troop Shortfalls

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a law that lowers the country’s age of conscription by two years to make up for troop shortfalls.

The new legislation lowers the age of mobilization to 25 from 27 years, meaning more young men will be removed from the struggling Ukrainian economy and sent off to the meatgrinder in anticipation of another Russia summer offensive.

Part of Ukraine’s difficulties in finding new conscripts has been driven by the fact that many young men have either fled the country, faked illnesses or offered bribes to avoid being sent to the front lines.

“Conscription has been a sensitive topic in Ukraine since nearly the beginning of the war, with videos of Ukrainian men being scooped off the streets, presumably to be sent to the front,” reports Remix News.

“The country has suffered from a lack of suitable troops after two years of war and ammunition shortages.”

Videos have previously emerged which purport to show Ukrainians who tried to avoid being conscripted being thrown off a bus and beaten by SBU, Ukraine’s equivalent of the FBI.

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Every NATO Country Already Has Troops In Ukraine, Estonia Says

Estonia has long been no friend of Russia, and a leading anti-Moscow hawkish voice within the Baltics, and that’s why a fresh interview by Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur in European media is raising eyebrows as he issued some very revealing statements.

The defense chief said in the interview with the Austrian newspaper Die Presse that all NATO countries already have NATO personnel stationed in Ukraine, but that they aren’t directly engaged in hostilities as they are there in advisory roles. He was responding to recent provocative statements by France’s Macron.

The reality is that every NATO member country already has military personnel in Ukraine, such as military attaches or people who travel to Ukraine from time to time,” the Estonian defense chief said. “What [French] President [Emmanuel] Macron said mainly related to personnel training,” he added, according to a translation in Russian media.

Starting in late February Macron had told a gathering of top defense officials in Paris that Western boots on the ground in Ukraine should be an option as “we cannot exclude anything” in the pursuit of preventing Russia from winning the war.

Still, in the interview Pevkur emphasized that currently there’s no serious talk of NATO troops directly participating in fighting and that “this has already been ruled out.”

However, he did preview a very dangerous potential plan which would certainly lead to escalation: “Western defense officials are currently planning to set up training camps in Ukraine in a bid to avoid issues with border crossings and to speed up the preparation process,” Pevkur said to the Vienna-based publication.

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Ukrainian Drones Hit Russia’s Third-Largest Oil Refinery, Prompting White House Anger

As discussed in our morning wrap, US equity futures are dipping lower as bond yields in the US continue to move higher as crude continues to surge and is up another 2% on growing fears of middle-eastern escalation after a senior Iranian commander was killed by an Israeli airstrike in Syria yesterday, with Iran immediately vowing revenge, and as Ukraine once again struck oil infrastructure targets deep inside Russia, overnight hitting Russia’s 3rd largest refinery, ~800 miles from the front lines.

As OilPrice details, Ukrainian drones hit the primary refining unit of Russia’s third-largest refinery southeast of Moscow more than 800 miles from the front line, Reuters reported on Tuesday. Ukraine keeps striking Russian oil assets despite the Biden admin’s unequivocal demands for a hard stop, suggesting that diplomatic fallout is now imminent.

The Taneco refinery of Russian company Tatneft in Tatarstan, an industrialized region southeast of Moscow, was attacked by Ukrainian drones in the latest such attack from Ukraine on Russian refining infrastructure.

The refinery has a capacity to process 340,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude. Its primary refining unit, with a capacity to process about 155,000 bpd, was hit in Tuesday’s attack, according to pictures seen by Reuters. The unit caught fire, which was swiftly extinguished, Russian media report.

They also quote Ramil Mullin, the mayor of the city of Nizhnekamsk, where the refinery is located, as saying that there have been no injured people in the attack.

“There are no injuries or serious damage,” Mullin wrote on Telegram. “The technological process of the enterprise has not been disrupted,” the mayor added.

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Global War Status: Russian Front

Bear with me. I’m going to try to tie several threads together into a coherent whole. I’ll be presenting extensive transcripts of Doug Macgregor, which I find largely convincing—with one caveat. That caveat depends on how stupid Western leaders are. That caveat will be tempered by John Helmer’s reporting on the electric war—which translates into whether the stupidity of the Western ruling class can be thwarted by sheer impossibility on the electric level.

To begin, let’s just restate what this war is all about. We’ve been over this many times, but it’s useful to repeat it. The whole point of the war on Russia was—and still is—to effect regime change, break the Russia Federation up into controllable separate entities, and then loot it for its resources—as a prelude to establishing control over China and thus, ultimately, Eurasia, including the Middle East. It’s about Western Ruling Class governance of the entire world, fueled by control over global resources. Everything else, including the climate hoax, is simply subordinate to that end goal.

Ukraine was and remains a stepping stone toward Russia. In the post WW2 world the American—and, thus, Western—way of war is grounded largely on terror. It’s not so much about defeating militaries as defeating populations, forcing populations into submission via the model of Germany and Japan. The means used are flexible, depending on circumstances. Regime change and propaganda—fueled by the seeming inevitable triumph of the secular Western model—is often the preferred or only option, although regime change itself will often require force. This has happened repeatedly but, with regard to Russia, began definitively in Kiev in 2014—the earlier example of NATO’s war on Serbia could not be repeated in the Ukrainian environment. Nevertheless, a coup, fueled by a violent nationalistic minority of the Ukrainian population, was put into effect with the goal of bringing NATO up to the borders of Russia and exerting maximum—short of open war—pressure on Russia’s political structure by destabilizing the Putin government. The goal was to present to the Russia public the view of Putin as unable to prevent NATO’s triumphant eastward expansion and of Putin as opening Russia to possible catastrophe. Solution for the Russian public: regime change.

As we now know, this hasn’t worked. The magic sanctions war—which was supposed to obviate the necessity of massive kinetic warfare—proved to be an abject failure. Russia’s resolve and creative response to the Ukrainian/NATO threat has led the West to the verge of panic, as Ukraine’s military faces collapse. The West faces the collapse of the entire Globalist Project outlined above. What is so worrisome about the Crocus terrorist attack by the West on Russia is that it represents a doubling down of the regime change strategy. As Alastair Crooke has explained (in his most recent conversation with Judge Nap), the Crocus terror attack was not actually “asymmetric warfare” because it did not target Russia’s military. It was a pure terrorist act aimed at political destabilization of Putin’s government—a continuation of past, failed, strategy, but which now risks wider war.

Russia’s response, which was probably imminent anyway, has been what John Helmer calls the “electric war”. Crooke also refers to this, and specifies that it will also affect Western Europe/NATO. How that effect will occur is explained by Helmer, but first let’s mention one salient fact. The Ukrainian rail system—which is the primary means by which the Ukrainian military transfers troops and supplies—runs on electricity. Remove that capability and the Ukrainian military faces the very real possibility of being largely stranded on the east side of the Dnieper river, subjected to Russian attacks for which it has not defenses. With the fall of Ukraine’s fortress towns and cities in the east, the remains of its military is attempting to dig into the mud, which offers no protection to the Russian glide bombs.

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Russia Demands Ukraine Arrest and Hand Over SBU Head Vasyl Malyuk, After He Admits on TV Role in Terror Attacks

Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has come out and unveiled Moscow’s demand that Ukraine authorities hand over all people connected with terrorist acts committed in their territory.

The list surprisingly even includes the head of Kiev’s SBU Security Service, Vasyl Malyuk.

Besides the recent ‘bloody Crocus terrorist act’, the attacks in question include bombings that killed the daughter of a prominent nationalist philosopher, a war blogger, and another incident in which a writer was seriously hurt.

While the investigation by the Russian authorities indicate that the traces of all these crimes lead to Ukraine, in the case of Malyuk there is a voluntary admission on TV.

We will not officially admit this in any way, but at the same time I will tell you some details,” he said in an interview with a Ukrainian TV channel.

Reuters reported:

“‘Russia has turned over to Ukrainian authorities its demands … for the immediate arrest and extradition of all those connected to the terrorist acts in question’, the [Russian Ministry’s] statement said.

The ministry statement said those to be handed over included SBU head Vasyl Malyuk, who has acknowledged [in an interview with Ukrainian television channel ICTV] his service was behind attacks on the bridge linking Crimea to the Russian mainland […].

‘The Russian side demands that the Kyiv regime immediately cease all support for terrorist activity, extradite guilty parties and compensate the victims for damages’, it said.

‘Ukraine’s violation of its obligations under anti-terrorist conventions will result in it being held to account in international legal terms’.”

Here are some other excerpts by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

“Other barbaric terrorist attacks using explosive devices cost the lives of journalists D.A. Dugina and M.Yu. Fomin (V. Tatarsky), led to the serious injury of the writer E.N. Prilepin and the death of his driver A.I. Shubin, the death of five people as a result of the explosion of the Crimean Bridge, 42 people were injured in an explosion in a cafe in St. Petersburg.”

It does seem odd for a warring party to demand another to comply with treaties and conventions.

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EASY TIGER! GOP Rep. Tim Walberg Suggests Ending War in Gaza and Russia ‘Like Nagasaki and Hiroshima’

Michigan Congressman Tim Walberg appeared to get somewhat carried away with his rhetoric during a town hall meeting with constituents this week.

The event, which was held at Dundee Village Hall in Michigan, allowed attendees to ask Walberg his view on various hot button issues of the day.

One man said he knew a soldier who was travelling to Gaza to help build a port at the request of the Biden administration as Israel carries out its war against Hamas.

“Why are we spending our money to build a port for them?” the man asked, according to a video posted on the X platform.

“It’s Joe Biden’s reason; we need to get humanitarian aid into Gaza,” Walberg responded. “I don’t think any of our aid that goes to Israel to support our greatest ally, arguably maybe in the world, to defeat Hamas and Iran and Russia, and probably North Korea’s in there, and China, too, with them helping Hamas — we shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid.”

The Congressman then brought up the example of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, when the allies dropped two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities, which together killed over 100,000 people.

Although the bombings did bring a swift end to the war with the surrender of the Axis powers, debate over the ethics of the decision is debated to this date.

“It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima,” he continued. “Get it over quick. The same should be in Ukraine. Defeat Putin quick.”

In a statement to Detroit News, Walberg’s spokesman Mike Rorke insisted that he “vehemently disagrees with putting our troops in harm’s way.”

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Speaker Johnson Wants to Pass Bill Sending Billions in Arms to Ukraine and Israel

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) says he will work to pass a massive military aid bill for Ukraine and Israel once Congress returns to session next week, a move that could trigger a backlash from his party. House Democrats have vowed to shield the speaker from a GOP rebellion should he support the legislation.

Johnson has underscored the urgency of providing aid to Ukraine and Israel, declaring it a top priority upon the House’s return from Easter recess. “We’ll turn our attention to it and we won’t delay on that,” he told reporters last week.  

Sending billions more in aid to Ukraine is a volatile issue within the Republican Caucus. Johnson won his role as leader of the House, in part, because of his past votes opposing aid to Ukraine. However, since taking over as speaker, Johnson has repeatedly stated that he supports President Joe Biden’s $61 billion aid package for Kiev. 

The issue facing Johnson is how the aid to Ukraine is currently packaged. Initially, the GOP sought to include the funding in a bill that would also supply arms to Israel and Taiwan, as well as devote billions to border security. Last month, the Senate stripped the border funding and immigration reform from the legislation and passed a $95 billion foreign aid bill, including $61 billion for Ukraine and $14 billion for Israel. 

After passing the Senate over a month ago, Johnson has prevented the legislation from coming to a vote in the House. Some Republicans in the chamber say if Johnson brings the bill to the floor, they will vote to remove him as speaker. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he spoke with the speaker by phone on Thursday and pressed Johnson to pass the bill. “In this situation, quick passage of US aid to Ukraine by Congress is vital. We recognize that there are differing views in the House of Representatives on how to proceed, but the key is to keep the issue of aid to Ukraine as a unifying factor,” Zelensky wrote on X.

To overcome the threat from a small number of Republicans, Democrats in the House have hinted that they would support Johnson’s continued role as speaker if he brings the bill for a vote. “If the choice is between Ukraine aid and providing a vote to stop a motion to vacate, or no Ukraine aid, I think there’s a lot of Democrats who would be willing to assist in getting it done,” Rep. Jim Himes (D-CT) told the Hill. 

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Did The US First Catch Wind Of The Crocus Terrorist Attack By Spying On Kiev?

This accounts for why the US only passed along vague information to Russia since it assumed that the GUR wouldn’t go through with the Crocus plot after ordering them to call it off, but Washington still wanted to discredit its rival’s government and security services, ergo its embassy’s provocative warning at the time.

The New York Times (NYT) cited unnamed sources on Thursday to report that “The adversarial relationship between Washington and Moscow prevented U.S. officials from sharing any information about the (Crocus terrorist attack) plot beyond what was necessary, out of fear Russian authorities might learn their intelligence sources or methods.” This vindicates President Putin, who the West hitherto claimed had downplayed terrorist threats in the run-up to one of the worst attacks in Russian history.

Without actionable intelligence and informed only of the US’ vague warning that large gatherings like concerts could soon be targeted, his security services were unable to stop the plotters, thus meaning that Washington is partially responsible for what happened by withholding specific information about it. Just as scandalously, this bombshell also prompted speculation about the exact sources and methods that America employed to first catch wind of this attack.

While it’s possible that the US learned about this from spying on the radical Telegram channel whose curators reportedly recruited the culprits, such as if the CIA had a mole inside that preacher’s team, the case can compellingly be made that this might have actually been brought to its attention by spying on Kiev. Last spring’s Pentagon leaks confirmed that the US has been spying on Zelensky, which Ukrainian officials told CNN was “unsurprising” but still left them “deeply frustrated”.

Those documents also confirmed that the US was spying on Ukraine’s military-intelligence service GUR as well, from whom they learned about a plot to attack the Russian port of Novorossiysk on the first anniversary of the special operation and then ordered them to stand down to avoid provoking Moscow. Seeing as how the Washington Post (WaPo) reported half a year later that the CIA rebuilt the GUR from the ground-up after 2014, it’s obvious that they embedded moles within that institution from the get-go.

They don’t always learn about terrorist plots ahead of time since their infiltration of the GUR and other Ukrainian government agencies isn’t total, but they’re still usually able to conclude sometime afterwards that Kiev was responsible whenever a serious attack happens in Russia. Such was the case last May when the NYT reported that Kiev was responsible for the Kremlin drone attack, in which piece they also reminded their reader that it was behind other attacks up until that point too.

These include the assassinations of Darya Dugina and Vladlen Tatarsky, cross-border terrorist raids into Russia’s Belgorod Region, and the Nord Stream II bombing. About that last-mentioned one, the claim of Ukrainian complicity might very well be a preplanned red herring for deflecting from American involvement after Seymour Hersh served as the conduit for dissident members of the Intelligence Community (IC) to inform the public that their country was the one that ordered that attack.

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Putin Beyond ISIS: Moscow Terrorist Attack ‘A Link in a Series of Attempts by the Neo-Nazi Kiev Regime’

On the ground, Russian forces behaved in a modified, more acute way after the false flag terrorist attack ultimately organized by Ukraine claimed the lives of hundreds of Moscow civilians.

But on the world stage, Russian President Vladimir Putin is playing a longer game, waiting for the investigations to demonstrate as clearly as possible the link.

Yesterday (26), in a Kremlin meeting, Putin acknowledged that the attack was carried out by Islamic militants but suggested it was also to the benefit of Ukraine and that Kyiv may have played a role.

Alexander Bastrykin, head of Russia’s Investigative Committee, said the death toll had risen to 139, with 182 people wounded.

Reuters reported:

‘We know that the crime was carried out by the hand of radical Islamists with an ideology that the Muslim world has fought for centuries’, Putin said in remarks posted on the Telegram messaging app.

He did not directly mention Islamic State, and repeated his previous assertion that the assailants had been trying to flee to Ukraine, saying there were “many questions” to be examined.

‘The question that arises is who benefits from this?’ Putin said. ‘This atrocity may be just a link in a whole series of attempts by those who have been at war with our country since 2014 by the hands of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime.

‘We know by whose hand the crime against Russia and its people was committed. But what is of interest to us is who ordered it’.

Putin said the purpose of the attack was to ‘sow panic’. But as Russian forces were advancing through the Ukraine war theatre, he said, it could also be intended to ‘show their own population that not all is lost for the Kiev regime’.

Meanwhile, both the US and France push the ISIS story as hard as they can.

11 people have been detained, including the four gunmen, who were arrested as they made their way to cross into Ukraine.

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Western Banks Warn Against EU Plans To Give Russian Funds To Ukraine

Some Western banks are lobbying against an EU plan to use profits made by Russian central bank funds that are frozen in Europe to arm Ukraine, Reuters reported.

The European Commission has proposed sending up to 3 billion euros to Ukraine per year using the revenue. About 90% would go to a fund called the “European Peace Facility” that can be used to buy weapons for Ukraine, and the remaining funds would go to the EU’s central budget for other types of aid.

Russia has slammed the plan and has vowed to respond. “This is outright banditry and theft. These actions are a gross and unprecedented violation of basic international norms. We said that we would respond, and so we shall,” Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Wednesday.

Sources told Reuters that banks fear they could be held liable by Russia in the future for being involved in the transaction. The report said once sanctions on Russia are eased or lifted, they could face decades of legal action.

The banks also worry the move would erode trust in the Western banking system. One source said it would set a bad precedent and that stealing the funds would amount to the “weaponization of foreign-held reserves and assets.”

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