Tag: ukraine

Trump Believes Russia Will Win In Ukraine, It’s Just A Matter Of How Long

“The president’s view is Russia is going to win, it’s a matter of how long it takes,” said a senior, unnamed White House official to Politico this week, reflecting on President Trump’s view on where the war stands.

“Russia has the bigger economy, has the bigger military, has more than enough bodies to throw into the meat grinder, and just doesn’t care. And although they are making slow progress, they are still making progress,” the official added. “The president just wants to stop the killing.”

Indeed the last several weeks have seen clear Russian gains on the ground in Eastern Ukraine, with a steady flow of reports of towns, settlements, and villages being newly captured in Donetsk and elsewhere.

There’s been some confusion over Trump’s policy in arming Kiev. He has gone further than he ever has before in approving new anti-air defense systems, but still appears to be ruling out long-range offensive weapons, amid conflicting reports.

Has realism finally set in concerning Washington policy? It should have been evident from the start of this horrific ‘war of attrition’ that Ukraine was never going to win.

Still, Zelensky has resisted doing the one thing which could end the war – make territorial concessions. He hasn’t so much as offered to give up Crimea.

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Trump Clarifies No Long-Range Missiles To Ukraine, Declares “I’m On Nobody’s Side”

Only this week are further contents of a July 4 phone call between Presidents Trump and Zelensky being revealed, but it comes amid accusations of fake news and taking statements out of context.

“Volodymyr, can you hit Moscow? … Can you hit St Petersburg too?” – that’s reportedly what Trump posed to the Ukrianian leader in their July 4th call, which came the day following the president had a disappointing call Russian leader Vladimir Putin.

Zelensky responded: “Absolutely. We can if you give us the weapons.” All of this is according to a report in Financial Times, which the White House is now pushing back against. The FT presented the exchange as indicative of a new US approach of quietly encouraging Ukraine’s military to strike Moscow and other targets deeper inside Russia.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt has said the FT’s framing of the call was misleading and without proper context. “The Financial Times is notorious for taking words wildly out of context to get clicks because their paper is dying,” she has stated.

Trump sought to clarify in remarks to reporters on Tuesday that Zelensky “shouldn’t target Moscow” and proclaimed in interesting and ironic remarks that he’s “on nobody’s side” – but that simply he wants the killing to stop.

The major announcement which had been planned for Monday did not include any new package of offensive long-range missiles (that the public knowns about at least).

“President Trump was merely asking a question, not encouraging further killing. He’s working tirelessly to stop the killing and end this war,”  Leavitt has added.

All of this helped paint a picture of Trump doing a complete 180 on Ukraine policy. To some extent he has – given he has continued sending Kiev arms packages, albeit ‘defensive’ in nature, supposedly. More anti-air defenses have been approved, despite that America’s own stockpiles are being depleted.

But clearly the White House is somewhat feeling the sting of pushback and angry criticism from among the Right and Trump’s base.

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Here’s How Trump Was Manipulated Into Mission Creep

Zelensky, anti-Russian US hawks, Melania, and the Mainstream Media each exploited in their own way his false expectation that Putin would agree to a ceasefire-partnership deal.

Many are struggling to make sense of Trump’s decision to clumsily thread the needle between radically escalating US involvement in the Ukrainian Conflict and walking away from it. The preceding hyperlinked analysis concluded that he was manipulated into this by his advisors, who exploited his false expectation that Putin would agree to a ceasefire that doesn’t resolve the root security-related causes of the conflict in exchange for a resource-centric strategic partnership. This observation will now be elaborated upon.

Trump campaigned on the promise of ending the Ukrainian Conflict “on day one”, which he later admitted was an “exaggeration”. He claimed that his friendship with Putin and keen dealmaking skills would easily bring this about. In pursuit of that end, Trump tried sweet-talking Putin by blaming the conflict on Biden and Zelensky, lending credence to Russia’s claims that Ukraine’s NATO aspirations posed a threat to its security, and promising that “Crimea will stay with Russia” once the conflict ends.

To further sweeten his proposal for an unconditional ceasefire that would essentially freeze the conflict along the Line of Contact, Trump also suggested a resource-centric strategic partnership with Russia. For his part, Putin suggested the same, albeit with the intent of encouraging Trump to coerce Zelensky into Russia’s demanded concessions for peace. Nothing was ultimately achieved due to the resultant deadlock, which Trump apparently took personally, thus making him susceptible to manipulation.

After spring’s US-Ukrainian minerals deal was signed, Zelensky began more loudly talking about his earlier interest in an unconditional ceasefire, which influenced Trump into thinking that Putin is the only obstacle to peace due to the ceasefire conditions that the Russian leader demanded in June 2024. Trump had already speculated that Putin is “tapping [him] along” so Zelensky’s rhetorical reversal from pledging to fight till Russia’s strategic defeat to calling for an unconditional ceasefire was timely and strategic.

It wasn’t just Zelensky whispering in Trump’s ear that Putin was playing him but also anti-Russian hawks like Lindsey Graham and even his own wife Melania, who Trump revealed on Monday would challenge his claim of “wonderful” calls with Putin by pointing out that Russia was still bombing Ukraine. In parallel with this, the Mainstream Media claimed that Putin was “humiliating” Trump, which aimed to take advantage of his pride and desire for praise from his critics alike to push him into mission creep.

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Russia Unleashes ‘Most Massive’ Attack Since War’s Start On Zelensky’s Hometown 

Russia unleashed a massive overnight assault on Ukraine, deploying 400 Shahed and decoy drones along with a ballistic missile, Ukraine military authorities say.

The drones rained down primarily on four major cities, including Kharkiv in the northeast, Kryvyi Rih in central Ukraine – which is President Zelensky’s hometown, Vinnytsia in the west, and Odesa in the south. These fresh strikes primarily targeted energy infrastructure and injured at least 15 people.

This month has seen record numbers of daily Russian drone strikes on Ukraine, coming also at a moment of conflicting reports over Trump policy toward arming Ukraine.

“Russia continues to rely on the same tactics,” President Zelensky said in response to the latest attacks, while emphasizing the need for stronger air defenses. He’s calling for a stronger support stance from Washington. 

According to details of the fresh attack on Zelensky’s hometown:

Kryvyi Rih, in central Ukraine, faced “the most massive attack … since the beginning of the war,” said the head of the city’s military administration, Oleksandr Vilkul, adding that it involved a ballistic missile and 28 drones. The onslaught sparked several fires and left parts of the city without electricity and water, he added.

Zelensky said Russia had targeted energy infrastructure in the city and that 15 people had been wounded there.

Trump’s much touted major Monday announcement merely threatened more Russian sanctions, and set a 50-day deadline for peace talks to happen.

However, the 50-day deadline has left some US lawmakers and European officials fearful that this simply gives Russia time to gain more ground before any potential peace deal is finalized.

“We appreciate President Trump’s decision to supply more weapons to Ukraine, but we would like the US to share in the cost,” said EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, at a moment Trump is calling for NATO states to do more.

Below: Kryvyi Rih, Zelensky’s hometown, faces blackouts and water cuts after waves of Russian strikes…

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Russia warns of nuclear Armageddon after Trump’s latest Ukraine move

Donald Trump was today warned by Moscow that he is pushing Russia towards nuclear war with his new go-ahead for arms to Ukraine and the threat of punitive sanctions.

State TV propagandist and war pundit Aleksandr Sladkov said: “Trump is trying to scare us with missiles, but this is difficult to do… Trump should be scared. Everyone is trying to push us to turn Kyiv and Lviv into Hiroshima and Nagasaki.”

The Ukrainian leadership – in calling for new missiles to strike Russian territory – “is taking the most active part in this”. It comes as Fox News fans declare it’s the ‘end of MAGA’ as Donald Trump loses it in press conference.

The new Trump deal green lights the supply of possible $10 billion worth of defensive and offensive missiles and other arms, to be paid for by US allies in Europe along with Canada, as well as the threat of sledgehammer sanctions if Putin refuses to negotiate in 50 days.

Sladkov declared: “Imagine our country under attack by American cruise missiles, like Yugoslavia, Iraq, etc. I am sure that the Yars should go in response.”

Yars are Russia’s main land-based strategic nuclear weapons – each missile typically carries three or four nuclear warheads.

Each has a yield estimated between 100 and 300 kilotons, making each warhead between seven and 20 times more powerful than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

Frothing Putin TV propagandist Vladimir Solovyov claimed the arming of Ukraine by NATO meant a full scale war.

“The question is about the survival of our country,” he fumed on Kremlin-funded state TV. We are already at war. It cannot be avoided. The [Western] task is to destroy our country…. We are not fighting in Ukraine, we are fighting with NATO. Understand this already.”

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By the Numbers — Western Propaganda on Russian Losses

Over the past week, the Western media has frantically pushed the narrative that Russia is suffering massive losses. Marco Rubio’s remarks in Kuala Lumpur a couple of days ago is a typical example.

One hundred thousand since January? But it is not just Rubio… The Economist provides a more modest estimate, but the key word is estimate:

As of July 9th our tracker suggests there have been between 900,000 and 1.3m Russian casualties since the war began, including some 190,000–350,000 deaths. That updates assessments from other sources, which put total casualties above 1m at the end of June. Our numbers suggest roughly 31,000 Russians may have been killed in the summer offensive so far, which began in earnest on May 1st.

There is too little data to generate a comparable live estimate for Ukraine. However, a catalogue of the known dead and missing from UALosses, a website, implies that between 73,000 and 140,000 Ukrainian soldiers have died since the invasion began.

Talk about lazy reporters. There is plenty of data out there if you simply do basic analysis. For example, start with social media. In the age of ubiquitous smartphones and social media platforms, it is impossible to hide death notices — aka obituaries — and pictures of funerals and graveyards. There are hundreds of images of Ukrainian funerals and of graveyards with a literal sea of Ukrainian flags fluttering over a vast expanse of freshly dug graves. Not so in Russia. There are a few, but nothing to match the quantity displayed on Ukrainian channels. Here is one example from the cemetery in Khmelnitsky.

Again, there are a few videos of some cemeteries in Russia, but nothing to match the scale of what we can see in Ukraine.

Western intelligence analysts have access to satellite imagery and the capability to look at cemeteries in both Russia and Ukraine and compare where the most new graves are being dug. I swear I wrote an article on this with those images, but I can’t find it. But I did make an interesting discovery while searching for it… Western satellites and media companies are doing nothing to make that comparison.

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Over $4B Pledged to Ukraine Reconstruction

The Ukraine Recovery Conference 2025 (URC) on July 10-11 in Rome concluded with joint agreements to provide Ukraine with 3.55 billion euros for reconstruction. “We received a clear message from Ukraine’s friends and partners: they are ready to invest in our recovery,” Oleksii Kuleba, Deputy Prime Minister for the Restoration of Ukraine and Minister for the Development of Communities and Territories stated. There is false hope that Ukraine will exist after this prolonged conflict.

The Ministry approved of five agreements worth over 370 million euros during this conference. The Italian Foreign Ministry agreed to offer 100% insurance coverage for banks on export loans up to 1.5 billion euros. If a bank lends money to support exports to Ukraine but the borrower fails to repay, the government-backed institution will take the loss. The claim is that the guarantee will safeguard Italian companies so that they may continue exporting goods and services to Ukraine. Ukrainian buyers will also have access to credit, and with the 100% insurance guarantee, banks may lower credit standards to otherwise risky borrowers. The potential for fraud is enormous. Worse, the Italian government and therefore the Italian people will be on the hook for 1.5 billion euros amid a highly unstable environment where repayment is not guaranteed.

The European Union and development banks also signed 10 agreements worth 929.3 million euros at the Rome conference. The World Bank through in $200 million as well for good measure. “Rebuilding Ukraine is not just about our country. It’s also about your countries, your companies, your technology, your jobs,” Zelensky said. Quite contrary as these government programs are selling out domestic policy in favor of a foreign government. The people do not benefit in any meaningful way as Europe has never relied on Ukraine for trade. Europe was more beholden to Russia before this ongoing war, which is precisely why they are experiencing a worsening energy crisis.

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Trump vows ‘billions of dollars’ in weapons for Ukraine, ‘secondary tariffs’ on Russia if no peace in 50 days

President Trump announced Monday the US will send “billions of dollars” worth of weapons to Ukraine via Washington’s NATO allies — and threatened to impose “secondary tariffs” on Moscow’s business partners in 50 days if no peace is agreed to end the 40-month-old war.

The weapons will include “everything,” Trump said during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office — though the president did not immediately reveal specifics.

The White House also did not provide additional information on the specific weapons sent over to Europe. 

When asked whether “Patriot missiles” — officially known as Guided Mulitple Launch Rocket Systems — or “Patriot batteries” would be sent to Ukraine, the president responded: “It is all of them. It is a full complement.”

“We will have some within days,” Trump continued. “A couple of countries that have Patriots will swap over, or replace the Patriots with the ones they have.”

“NATO may choose to have certain of them sent to other countries where we can get a little additional speed, where the country will release something, and it’ll be mostly in the form of a replacement,” he added.

Later Monday, ahead of a White House faith luncheon, the 79-year-old Trump reiterated that there will be “weapons of all kinds” sent across the Atlantic, with other members of the alliance paying for them by raising their defense spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade. 

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Czech President Urges EU to Change Course and Take a Diplomatic Approach with Russia

In a candid interview with BBC Ukraine, Czech President Petr Pavel, a former general with decades of military experience, offered a pragmatic assessment of the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Pavel emphasized the need for diplomatic pressure and negotiation to achieve a sustainable resolution.

Pavel, who assumed office in early 2023 after a career dedicated to the Czech armed force, has been a vocal supporter of Ukraine since Russia’s invasion. His recent remarks signal a shift towards a conservative approach focused on minimizing human and economic costs.

Pavel’s perspective comes amid stalled Ukrainian counteroffensives and mounting international fatigue. Reflecting on the conflict’s trajectory, he acknowledged Russia’s limited tactical victories, such as the occupation of certain territories, but highlighted the exorbitant price Moscow has paid in lives and resources.

“Russia has several tactical successes. They managed to seize some parts of Ukrainian territory, but their advance is worth great sacrifices and losses,” Pavel said. “I think this is a very, very high price for land grabbing.”

He praised Ukraine’s defensive efforts, noting their effectiveness in inflicting heavy damage on Russian forces and holding strategic positions.

However, Pavel warned that prolonging the war in its current state could extend for an indefinite period, a outcome he deemed unacceptable. “If the war continues in the same spirit, it will last for years, he stated, adding that such a scenario benefits no one.

Central to Pavel’s strategy is a balanced Western response. He supports the continued bolstering of Ukraine’s defenses to demonstrate that Russia cannot prevail militarily, while ramping up non-lethal pressures to push Moscow toward talks, so that “[Russia] understands that solutions can be found only at the negotiating table”.

Pavel expressed confidence in the combined economic might of the United States and Europe as the most potent weapon against Russian aggression. He predicted that Russia’s economy, already strained, would buckle under intensified sanctions, compelling it to negotiate sooner rather than later.

The Czech leader was forthright about the harsh realities facing Ukraine, arguing against demands for a hasty full liberation of occupied lands which could inflict significant human casualties. “We do not want to exterminate the Ukrainian people,” Pavel explained.

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President Trump Says U.S. to Send More Weapons to Ukraine Just Days After Pentagon Warned of Depleted Stockpiles

In a whiplash reversal that has infuriated America-First conservatives, President Donald Trump now says the United States “has to” ship still more arms, missiles, and ammo to Ukraine — just days after the Pentagon froze deliveries because our own stockpiles are running dry.

Less than a week ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth halted Patriot interceptors, artillery shells, and precision missiles, citing “dangerously low” U.S. inventories.

The Trump Administration is withholding shipments promised by the Biden Regime after the Pentagon’s policy chief Elbridge Colby found the US’s stockpiles of munitions and air defense missiles are dangerously low.

Last September, the Biden Regime announced an eye-watering $8 billion in military aid for Ukraine during Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s visit to Washington.

Since the onset of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Congress has approved nearly $175 billion in aid and military assistance for Ukraine.

“Biden emptied out our whole country giving them weapons, and we have to make sure that we have enough for ourselves’, the president argued. ‘We’ve given so many weapons, but we are giving weapons, and we’re working with them and trying to help them,” Trump said.

Yet on Monday night, seated beside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump declared that Ukraine is being hit “very hard” and must receive more “defensive weapons.”

“We’re going to send some more weapons. We have to. They have to be able to defend themselves. They’re getting hit very hard now,” Trump told reporters.

“Defensive weapons, primarily, but they’re getting hit very, very hard. So many people are dying in that mess,” he added.

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