Tag: ukraine

Trump Must Cut the Ukraine Albatross Loose

President Trump should avoid a snare of his own making and extricate the United States from the war between Russia and Ukraine.

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump repeatedly indicated that he expected the war between Ukraine and Russia to end quickly once he entered the oval office. He even boasted that he could bring a halt to the fighting within 24 hours. Trump has not been able to achieve his objective. Indeed, he has not been able to secure even a comprehensive ceasefire between Kyiv and Moscow. The most significant accomplishments to date are the agreements between the warring parties to refrain from attacks on infrastructure and to allow some consumer maritime traffic in the Black Sea to resume. Even those limited agreements are marked by numerous alleged violations by both sides.

Trump’s hopes for a wider ceasefire, much less a formal peace agreement, are fading fast, and his level of frustration is beginning to soar. His annoyance with Ukraine’s president Volodymr Zelensky has been apparent on several occasions, most notably during the infamous White House confrontation between Zelensky and both Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance on February 28, 2025. Recently, however, Trump’s irritation with Vladimir Putin also has increased. On one occasion, the president expressed extreme anger at the Russian leader for dragging his feet on a more comprehensive ceasefire. Other administration officials also stated that it was time for Putin to make up his mind about whether or not he wants a peace accord.

Trump seemingly has wandered into a trap of his own making. Moreover, it is a snare that resembles the one that kept the United States entangled militarily in Afghanistan throughout most of his first term, despite his rhetoric during the 2016 presidential campaign about quickly extracting U.S. military forces from that quagmire. Once in office, Trump allowed hawkish advisers, such as Secretary of Defense James Mattis, to talk him into abandoning his own instincts and following the advice of “experts” who had mired the United States in the interminable Afghan conflict.  In the case of Ukraine, there are troubling signs that Trump may be responding favorably to hawks in both the United States and Europe who insist that failing to back Kyiv’s unrealistic position would amount to a shameful betrayal of a beleaguered democracy.

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Ukraine Captured 2 Chinese Soldiers Fighting for Russia, Zelenskyy Claims

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy claimed that his country’s army has captured two Chinese soldiers fighting for Russia.

On April 8, on his official Telegram channel, Zelenskyy wrote that this happened on “Ukrainian territory—in the Donetsk region.”

“These prisoners have documents, bank cards, and personal data,” he said.

“We have information indicating that there are significantly more Chinese citizens in the occupier’s units than just these two. We are currently verifying all the facts. Intelligence, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and relevant units of the Armed Forces are working on this.”

He said that he has instructed the minister of foreign affairs of Ukraine to “immediately contact Beijing and find out how China intends to respond to this.”

“Russia’s involvement of China—whether directly or indirectly—in this war in Europe is a clear signal that Putin intends to do anything but end the war,” Zelenskyy said.

North Korea has sent thousands of its troops to Russia to support Moscow.

Last year, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) said that North Korean soldiers were being sent to Russia and are likely to be deployed to the front lines in Ukraine.

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DOJ Reveals Would-Be Trump Assassin Ryan Routh Tried to Purchase a Stinger Missile from Ukrainian to Take Out Trump – Also Discussed July Assassination Attempt in PA with Operative Before His Failed Attempt in September

New court documents reveal that would-be Trump assassin attempted to purchase a Stinger Missile to take out Trump here in the US.

A Stinger Missile reportedly costs from $119,000 to S120,000.

On the black market, a Stinger Missile costs anywhere from $50,000 to $80,000.

So where did Ryan Routh get all of his funding?

The court documents reveal that Routh was communicating with someone he “believed to be a Ukraine with access to military weapons.”

It sounds like Routh was holding talks with a federal operative.

And, Routh and his associate were talking about assassinating Trump in July 2024 in Pennsylvania!

Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Crooks shot Trump in the head before snipers shot him dead.

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US outpost not given proper air defenses before deadly attack

For three years the United States has been giving Ukraine everything it needs by way of offensive and defensive weapons in its war with Russia. Critically, this has included air defense systems, much of it taken from our own national stockpiles.

Now it turns out that our own troops may have been denied access to anti-drone air defense systems and more sophisticated radar detection months before a lethal attack on a small American outpost in Jordan on Jan. 18, 2024. The drone assault, reportedly launched by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iranian-backed militia group, resulted in the deaths of three American Army soldiers.

According to the Washington Post, which obtained access to the massive Army internal investigation of the incident through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, the small outpost was ill-prepared for the attack on a number of levels. But this is key:

The investigation’s findings appear to have some contradictions. For instance, investigators faulted Tower 22’s leaders for failing to “visualize risk” and not appreciating the likelihood of an attack.

Yet commanders above them also failed to envision the base’s vulnerability. Four months before the attack, Army Central, which oversees operations throughout the Middle East, denied a request for an air defense system capable of shooting down drones because, investigators found, only one such system was available and troops in the United States needed it to prepare for deployments. A request for a radar system that could better detect drones also was denied, the report said.

The only counter-drone defenses at Tower 22 were electronic warfare systems designed to disable the aircraft or disrupt their path to a target, according to the investigation and previous reporting by The Post.

A spokesperson for Army Central did not respond to repeated requests for additional information, including regarding who at Army Central denied Tower 22’s appeal for an air defense system.

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Ukraine to Send ‘Team’ to US to Discuss Mineral Deal After Zelensky Botched The First Meeting

Following a fiery meeting at the White House on February 28 where Ukraine’s Dictator Vladimir Zelensky insulted America, Kiev will now be sending ‘a team‘ of delegates to Washington to begin negotiations regarding President Donald Trump’s mineral deal.

On April 1 President Trump reduced the revenue Ukraine will receive from the mineral deal from 50 percent to 0 percent while also removing any security guarantees due to the Dictator’s reluctance to peace negotiations. This follows the March 25 negotiations between Kiev and Moscow in which no deal was reached.

While the exact day the U.S. Ukrainian meeting will take place is not yet known, it will reportedly happen this week.

Representing Ukraine, the team will be comprised of members of Kiev’s Ministries of Economy, Foreign Affairs, Justice and Finance.

“This week, Ukraine will send a delegation to Washington to move forward with negotiations on a strategic agreement with the United States regarding critical natural resources,” the first deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy of Ukraine, Yulia Svyrydenko said in a social media post Monday morning. “This dialogue reflects the strategic interests of both nations and our shared commitment to building a strong, transparent partnership. The delegation will include representatives from the Ministries of Economy, Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Finance. We aim to align on project selection, legal frameworks, and long-term investment mechanisms.”

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General Cavoli’s Schizophrenia on Ukraine

The Commander of US forces in Europe (aka USEUCOM), General Chris Cavoli, was on Capitol Hill today testifying before the Senate Armed Services committee. His opening statement is a remarkable mix of candor, fantasy and pure unadulterated male bovine excrement (MBE). It highlights my past contention that senior US defense officials will shade the truth (a euphemism for “lie“) in order to keep an existing policy intact, even if that policy is failing. We saw that in the Vietnam War and, more recently, the parade of generals who repeatedly told Congress that we were winning in Afghanistan.

I will excerpt a few paragraphs from his statement that illustrate what I mean. Cavoli grudgingly admits, early on in his remarks, that Russia is not on the ropes militarily:

Russian Reconstitution
Despite extensive battlefield losses in Ukraine, the Russian military is reconstituting and growing at a faster rate than most analysts had anticipated. In fact, the Russian army, which has borne the brunt of combat, is today larger than it was at the beginning of the war—despite suffering an estimated 790,000 casualties. In December 2024, Moscow ordered the military to increase its strength to 1.5 million active service members and is recruiting approximately 30,000 troops per month. Russian forces on the frontlines of Ukraine are now at over 600,000, the highest level over the course of the war and almost double the size of the initial invasion force.

Despite repeating the canard that Russia has suffered 790,000 casualties, Cavoli concedes that the Russian military is larger today than in 2022 and that the Russians are adding at least 360,000 new soldiers to the ranks annually. I want to remind you that during the past 70 years, the US military has consistently overestimated enemy losses. The most egregious case was the Vietnam War, as I discussed in a previous article. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, CIA and DIA analysts claimed that Russia lost more than 30,000 men. Russia’s official figures were half of that. I do give Cavoli credit for admitting that the “Russian military is reconstituting and growing at a faster rate than most analysts had anticipated.”

The next paragraph is a real stunner:

Russia is not just reconstituting service members but is also replacing combat vehicles and munitions at an unprecedented pace. Russian ground forces in Ukraine have lost an estimated 3,000 tanks, 9,000 armored vehicles, 13,000 artillery systems, and over 400 air defense systems in the past year—but is on pace to replace them all. Russia has expanded its industrial production, opened new manufacturing facilities, and converted commercial production lines for military purposes. As a result, the Russian defense industrial base is expected to roll out 1,500 tanks, 3,000 armored vehicles, and 200 Iskander ballistic and cruise missiles this year. (Comparatively, the United States only produces about 135 tanks per year and no longer produces new Bradley Fighting Vehicles.) Additionally, we anticipate Russia to produce 250,000 artillery shells per month, which puts it on track to build a stockpile three times greater than the United States and Europe combined.

The key point is not the massive ESTIMATED losses of Russian tanks, vehicles and artillery. Despite the losses, Russia “is on pace to replace them all.” Cavoli also admits that Russia is producing 11 tanks for every one that the US can produce. And that number is misleading. The US tanks Cavoli is referencing are mostly refurbishments of existing frames. The US is not producing brand new tanks. The kicker comes in the final sentence: Russia is producing three times the number of artillery shells than the US and Europe combined. Yet, many delusional Western pundits insist Russia’s economy is struggling, on the verge of collapse. That qualifies as MBE.

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Ukrainian Special Ops Using US Tactical Vehicles Undisclosed By The Pentagon

A combat unit of NATO-trained Ukrainian soldiers was photographed using a Flyer 72-LD tactical vehicle. The Department of Defense did not report that it had transferred the platform to Ukraine, which was previously operated primarily by American special forces. 

The Flyers’ presence in Ukraine became public when blogger Praise the Steph posted a photo of the vehicle with soldiers from Kiev’s 6th Separate Ranger Regiment. “Will and faith are our weapons. Victory is our only horizon!” the blogger reported the unit’s commander said.

The Flyer is designed to be a light-weight tactical vehicle that can operate in rugged terrain.

It can be carried to the front by a number of helicopters and can carry a 5,000-pound load. The Pentagon has not previously disclosed the transfer of the Flyer to Kiev. Only a limited number of NATO countries deploy the Flyer. 

While the New York Times’s Adam Entous described the Department of Defense’s transfer of weapons to Ukraine as occurring “with remarkable transparency,” this is not the first time that Ukrainian soldiers have received US military equipment before the American public became aware of the shipment. 

The 6th Separate Ranger Regiment is one of four Ukrainian military units trained by NATO troops that make up Kiev’s special operations force.

According to the Kyiv Post, they are designed to conduct “drone, reconnaissance, sabotage, and artillery targeting operations behind enemy lines.”

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Hunter Biden got Obama admin to help Burisma subsidiary, new bombshell letter shows: ‘See where our interests may overlap’

Former first son Hunter Biden got help from the Obama administration — which his father, Joe, served as vice president — while repping Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, which paid the younger Biden a million-dollar salary based on his political connections, bombshell federal files published Friday show.

The documents — which emerged 73 days after Joe Biden’s presidency ended — show Hunter, now 55, solicited and received commitments of State Department assistance for a Burisma geothermal subsidiary’s work in Italy.

Then-US Ambassador to Rome John Phillips, who had received a letter from Hunter asking for help, wrote to the then-second son in July 2016 that he was designating a subordinate to help grease the wheels for Burisma, which was seeking to firm up relations with then-Tuscany regional president Enrico Rossi.

“Dear Hunter, It seems like yesterday that you were in Rome. I hope this finds you well. Thank you for your letter. I know Enrico Rossi well and have a good working relationship with him,” the ambassador wrote in a response printed by the New York Times.

“I spoke to the Senior Commercial Officer at the Embassy, [name redacted], and though the amount of direct support we can provide to a Ukrainian company is limited, I’ve asked him to be the point of contact, see where our interests may overlap, and facilitate contact with Mr. Rossi.”

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Zelensky’s Troops Injected With Various Party Drugs to ‘Promote Battle Readiness’

Facing a shortage of soldiers and the ravages of war, Ukraine has turned to the animal tranquilizer-turned party drug ketamine, the rave-scene classic MDMA and the lesser known hippy hallucinogen ibogaine to ‘promote battle readiness’. Perhaps more importantly however, by keeping its population comfortably drugged, the soldiers and citizens of Ukraine would, assumably, be less apt to protest the continuation of the war. Instead, they are likely to be satiated by the chemical-induced “Valhalla,” as one drugged Ukrainian solider recently described it.

Fascinatingly, during the Joe Biden administration, the United States Department of Defense (formerly Department of War) funded a study which allowed for the injection of ketamine or fentanyl into non-consenting Americans following a traumatic accident, like a car crash. It enrolled unconscious Americans into forced medical experiments regardless of their willingness to participate. The goal was to further develop treatment modalities for battlefield medical operations, specifically the practice of drugging soldiers and finding out if they develop a drug addiction later. The direct link between the U.S. and Ukrainian militaries became deeply intertwined during the Biden-era, as was exposed by Alex Jones in 2022 and eventually The New York Times in 2025.

The proposal to use wartime Ukraine as a testbed for psychedelic drug abuse was made by Dmytro Gurin, a member of the parliament in Kiev. Gurin is a member of the Servant of the People political party, the same party that the country’s Dictator Vladimir Zelensky is part of. Gurin is also a member of the country’s health committee. Gurin wanted MDMA (the primary drug within ecstasy, a mainstay of the electronic dance music scene) to be administered as a first-line treatment for war-related issues, not as a last-ditch effort to treat soldiers woes.

“He’d like E.U. financial support for Ukraine to develop a nationwide clinical trial to test MDMA-assisted therapy as a first treatment for trauma, rather than as a last resort, as is normally recommended,” Politico said in 2023.

While a drugged military may be a happy military, it may also be a productive military. By reducing trauma from the war via drug abuse, Kiev’s armed forces can make the most out of what manpower they have remaining. Ukraine’s military has been facing staffing shortages since soon after the war began. Conscription teams scour the country abducting young men.

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Europe’s Misguided Interventions

At last week’s Paris meeting of the ‘coalition of the willing’, Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron congratulated themselves on reinserting Europe into the peace process opened up by President Trump. In practice, they have done their best to derail it.

Nothing is more foolish than their idea of placing British and French military soldiers and aircraft in Ukraine to provide ‘reassurance’ against renewed Russian aggression after a ceasefire.

Not only cannot it not be made to happen – since both America and Russia reject it – but the attempt to make it happen distracts attention from the serious business of making peace. It is, rather, a desperate attempt to make Britain and France relevant to a peace process which they did not initiate and never wanted.

What might be made to happen, because potentially acceptable to both Russia and the United States, is a UN-supervised ceasefire with non-NATO peacekeepers. But there has been no European suggestion to this effect.

Scarcely less foolish is the Paris decision to ‘accelerate’ and ‘toughen’ economic sanctions against Russia. To keep sanctions as a pressure point is perfectly sensible, but to urge their expansion now is to derail peace talks just at the moment when a real prospect of peace has opened up.

Economic sanctions are instruments of war, successors to the blockades. Their phased withdrawal should be part of peace-making.

The project of ‘reassuring’ Ukraine against renewed Russian aggression says nothing about reassuring Russia against future NATO aggression.

This reflects the dominant western view that NATO is a purely defensive alliance, that Russia’s attack on Ukraine was unprovoked, and that therefore any Russian demand for reassurance is bogus.

This flies in face of credible evidence that NATO’s leader, the United States, played an active, and possibly crucial, role in destabilizing the elected pro-Russian government of Yanukovych in 2014, and installing a Ukrainian nationalist alternative.*

That the Russian invasion was provoked, is not to say that it was justified. It was a moral and strategic blunder, one of whose consequences was to add two new members to the NATO alliance. Nevertheless the hostility to NATO expansion which underlay it was a product not just of a long history, but of insistent repetition from Gorbachev onward which the West, confident of its victory in the Cold War, cheerfully ignored. It was naive to believe that vengeance would limp after Russia had recovered its strength.

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