For Those Who Might Be Wondering Why We Might Be In Ukraine

[ChloeTzang]

Part 2

In those cases where the Russian officers run out of meat before receiving their next batch from Moscow, however, even elite Russians are made to play at being cannon fodder. An operational vulnerability Ukraine will be certain to exploit. When an army is run like a pyramid scheme, it’s prone to rapid collapse when layers that think themselves reasonably secure come under threat. Recall how Muscovite professionals broke and ran from Izium three years ago. With desertions upping the unrecoverable toll another ten percent, the Russians are rocking a deficit of up to ten thousand bodies a month, depending on how many of the wounded can be returned to health. Plenty are soon sent out on crutches to soak up another drone. Coupled to the near-depletion of equipment reserves and insufficient new production forcing a reliance on North Korean imports, this loss rate puts the Russians short about a full combined arms army. Even The Economist in a recent issue caught on to the quadratic increase in orc fatalities over the course of the conflict. If this continues for another year, Moscow is going to be losing a combined arms army every month.

As for now, the Ukrainians getting about 5% stronger while the orcs have become at least 10% weaker on the ground is not, in and of itself, sufficient to turn the tide. But once you layer that onto Ukraine’s ever-escalating deep strike campaign, fast-spreading cracks in the Russian war economy, and emerging Ukrainian dominance in the next generation of drones, and the picture for Moscow looks extraordinarily bleak.

Which begs that constant question of mine: why is this not the story you’ll get from most of the news? Pick a big-name publication, from BBC to any US partisan rag you like, and Ukraine’s fight is portrayed in universally negative terms. The clear message to Ukrainians from these outlets: Give up while you still own some of Donbas. You’ve had your fifteen minutes in the spotlight. What a contrast to 2022, when serious people were insisting that Putin was on the verge of dying from a chronic illness or (my favorite) that he only did this because he was too isolated during the pandemic (what, because normally he’s kissing everyone in reach?). So: if Trump is well aware of Ukrainian intentions and actual capabilities, then why is he still hedging his bets?

Another two-part answer. It’s one half partisanship, the other vanity. The first, funnily enough, is why it’s a net plus that he’s back to being stupid on Ukraine - the people in the US and Europe who let Trump live in their subconscious are bound to turn on Kyiv if he ever does actually embrace Ukraine for real. In any case, Trump is facing a midterm election cycle that stands to go very badly for his party, because that’s just how the US partisan system works at the federal level. The incumbent president's party gets blamed for every silly campaign promise they couldn’t immediately fulfill and all problems someone with power decides that the country currently faces, so loses seats in Congress. There are exceptions, but they’re rare. And Trump is no more popular now than he was in 2018, the last time he faced this dynamic.

The Senate is pretty much lost to Democrats for the rest of this decade, but despite around eighty percent of House seats being non-competitive, a few dozen are still subject to switching, and the Republican margin in the House is in single digits. Which explains the new rush by Team Trump to convince Republican-dominated states to do an out of cycle redistricting as the Supreme Court decides that race can’t be a factor in creating districts. Will it be enough? Probably not. So: the US economy is bound to be either in a deep recession by 2026 thanks to the generative AI bubble bursting or coping with a lethal form of stagflation because it didn’t. Facing strong headwinds, Trump will need every vote he can possibly get, and midterm elections are dominated by older, established partisan voters - about a third of voters from presidential years, mainly independents, sit out midterms. Older Republicans tend to be more pro-Ukraine than the younger ones attracted to Trump by his juvenile antics seeming edgy for lack of a proper contrast anywhere else in mainstream American politics.

Trump’s coalition has three key wings: the remaining old-school Republicans like Rubio and Haley, christian nationalist Putin-lovers like Vance and Hegseth, and techno-fascists like Musk and Thiel. The broader coalition is split 50/50 on Ukraine. The christian nationalists and tech allies like Thiel hate Ukraine because they imagine Putin built something special in his empire instead of stitching together various bits of the Soviet system into a shambling zombie. Real republicans and the techno-pseudolibertarians like Musk who are into MAGA for the cash see either the logic in kneecapping the USA’s most serious rival or the money to be made backing the innovative underdog. To satisfy both sides, Trump has to throw each their share of red meat. That’s part of his endless rhetorical zig-zags: people only pay attention to the media that caters to them, and most outlets only report the stuff he says that’s of interest to their audience. So Trump rambles off seemingly random nonsense in the verbal equivalent of keyword stuffing on a webpage to boost it’s Google profile - one of the tricks that made Google just give up and let sites with lots of traffic have an edge in search results.

On Ukraine, accordingly, about a third to half the time Trump takes care to reassure the relevant portion of his base that Kellogg is really his guy, not Witkoff, on Ukraine. Luckily, this is enough of a commitment to prevent Trump totally siding with Putin in his ridiculous quest to be hailed as a peacemaker - despite constantly having boats blown up in the Caribbean that may or may not be involved in drug smuggling. With respect to the vanity side, Trump desperately wants a Nobel Peace Prize - or at least to be able to make more than a half-assed case for being robbed of it. This, he seems to have decided, means ending any war that was underway when Biden was president, because Biden bad, Trump good. For Trump’s brand, actually ending a war isn’t required: all that has to happen is a deal being signed that he can say ended it. Once the US partisan machine kicks in, anyone who disagrees will come off like a partisan. Just look at his team’s rhetoric around the ceasefire that released the last living hostages held by Hamas in Gaza. That’s not peace or anything close to it - all that happened was that Hamas decided it was a better look to be unilaterally victimized by Israel instead of releasing heart-wrenching videos of abused hostages, which helps Israeli actions appear justified, even if they’ve only dragged this whole disaster out.

Never mind that short ceasefires had been established and soon broken in the past, even when Hamas had the leverage offered by hostages. Or that a ceasefire is only step on on a long road to peace even according to Team Trump. All that matters to Trump is being the center of attention. No matter what happens, even renewed fighting between Israel and Hamas, it won’t be the same war in Trump’s eyes. The same logic will hold in Ukraine if he can wrangle the sides into even the most temporary of ceasefires. Trump is determined to position himself as the supposed arbiter of peace, the one guy who can get Zelensky and Putin to shake hands on a deal. Where Team Biden was happy to have Ukraine as a simmering forever war keeping Europe under the USA’s thumb as the price for protecting the continent against Moscow, Team Trump’s coalition dynamic demands that the USA act like a father impatiently observing two estranged sons fight for his affection.

Now that we’ve been through the loop a few times, the strategy Trump employs to push any pair of combatants towards his desired position is clear. He alternates between flattery and threats, promising everything under the moon to the side willing to make a show of cooperation and fire and fury if they are reluctant. Once at the table, the actual causes of the conflict can be ignored in the interests of that photogenic moment he craves. His is the role of a paternal figure who aims to sweep a troublesome dispute under the rug by siding with whoever agrees to agree first. This, he thinks, makes him look strong. Under the right circumstances, this approach might have merit. In the case of the Ukraine War, it is interpreted by one side as obvious weakness and the other as cruelly deceptive. Both are correct. Countries are not families in any sense, and this entire charade is being put on for domestic purposes.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Part 3

Zelensky once again went to D.C. with his eyes wide open, fortunately. Though the confrontation didn’t play out in public this time, he’s been pressing the question of Tomahawk missiles to force Trump to reveal his true position. It’s telling that, when Trump shifted a few weeks ago to talking about piling pressure on Putin, Zelensky didn’t simply tout this support and insist that Trump had been won over at last. Instead, he made Trump put his money where his mouth is by requesting Tomahawks, a weapon that Ukraine doesn’t strictly need to win but is a potent symbol of US power. If Trump was going to act like he was finally willing to be the antithesis to the weakness that characterized Biden’s policy on Ukraine, he had a golden opportunity. Frankly I don’t think anyone in Zelensky’s circle ever truly believed that they’d get Tomahawks - or the approval to use them on the right targets if a few dozen actually came. The point of the exercise was to remind Europeans that though Trump might start saying the right words, his policy remains unchanged. He constantly plays good cop-bad cop games with both sides in a bid to gain a measure of control.

As far as Ukraine’s Victory Campaign goes, it says a great deal that Zelensky’s meeting with Trump reportedly involved maps that Trump didn’t show much interest in. Aside from military affairs being completely beyond his ken, Trump almost certainly aimed to claim “letting” Ukraine hit Russian oil infrastructure as a major concession that demanded a favor in return - namely, Ukraine accepting in principle that it will have to surrender territory to get a ceasefire. This is the sticking point that prevents any deal from working, and Trump knows it, so he really wants to be able to leverage something against Ukraine that won’t destroy the parallel effort to keep Europe dependent on the USA. The USA under this administration isn’t even bothering to mask its duplicity, which I find rather refreshing. US allies should take the warning for what it represents. The US isn’t actually an ally at all. Biden was a bad ally. Trump is a friendly enemy. But he’s also trapped, and the most likely outcome looks to be him throwing up his hands and focusing on domestic issues, leaving Europe to handle Ukraine.

The equilibrium that now prevails suggests that all talk of peace negotiations is just that. What happens this next year on the battlefield, which now extends two thousand kilometers into Putin’s empire, will decide which way the conflict goes. Conventional wisdom around Ukrainian operations in the field holds that the active phase of the war is all but over, stalemate conditions prevailing from here on out. I maintain that this is dead wrong, an illusion created by examining data at the wrong scale, and what’s more, the narrative itself is part of a broader effort by senior military professionals to bury their heads in the sand when it comes to the lessons Ukraine’s fight has to teach about the future of warfare.

That the Ukrainians are in the early stages of a broader counteroffensive timed to take advantage of stormy weather to roll back orc progress on multiple fronts is proving as difficult for many to accept as the hard truth that the Ukraine War indicates a deeper rot. There are two extremely problematic cognitive glitches impairing proper responses to what the past few years have unleashed. One is to imagine that the conflict can be put into a box, another series of Minsk accords returning it to the status of a permanent heavy border skirmish, an eternal frontier fight between west and east. The other is to assume that what is happening in Ukraine is not universally applicable everywhere else. It is to the latter error that I’ll turn now, before delving into the past week of operations. Frankly, it’s the view that worries me more, because failure to heed the lessons of the Ukraine War stands to kill even more people in uniform around the world before the decade is out.

Diagnosing Institutional Failure To Adapt

Lately, I’ve seen what amounts to a recurring meme pop up in writing about the lessons that NATO countries, especially the USA, should be learning from the fighting in Ukraine. It can be summed up as: the fighting in Ukraine is unique and can’t be compared to any war we’d ever wage because obviously we would never fight like that.

Sorry, but I have to call bullshit.

There exists a dangerous, misguided, laughable delusion that because NATO doctrine wills that war is to be fought a certain way, it shall be so. It’s as if nobody bothered to learn a damn thing from Iraq and Afghanistan. The Taliban, a rag-tag bunch if there ever was one, and Iraqi insurgent groups killed thousands of NATO soldiers. Learn something from their blood, idiots! Our leaders underestimated the enemy, and thousands of good people under their command paid the price. Mostly enlisted soldiers, whose surviving comrades rarely go on to be university professors who tell it like it was, not how David Petraeus or J.D. Vance want the world to remember it. A pernicious mythology about the US military’s performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has been constructed over the past decade. Today, virtually no one seems to remember how an entire paradigm of fighting was swiftly rendered obsolete by the ubiquitous improvised explosive device threat. Where in 2006 buddies of mine mostly drove mine-infested routes, by 2011 the US Army had resorted to flying as many troops places as it could by helicopter, something that would likely not be possible today thanks to drones.

Iraqi insurgents are remembered in popular US history as a bunch of walking Arab stereotypes backed by shadowy Iranian agents instead of the clever and largely patriotic improvisers they actually were. A population filled with mechanical and chemical engineers, most of whom had basic military training, many with combat experience across two vicious wars, and it comes as a surprise when they work out how to make and lay mines for years that kill thousands of US and allied personnel without the good guys coming up with a comprehensive solution? Other than fly around and generally stop pissing off the locals to the degree possible before leaving for home. And we’re all supposed to blindly believe that a force that wasn’t able to work out how to beat the Taliban is going to magically crush China, a power that has been relentlessly studying and preparing for a showdown with the USA’s fighting bureaucracies for thirty years? A force filled with officers who insist to the media that we’ve got to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater when working out how to apply lessons in Ukraine?

This is institutional inertia incarnate. A machine protecting itself at any cost because each component part fears losing out in the necessary process of reform. It will not end well. China, meanwhile, just did another purge of under-performing senior personnel. Those who believe that Xi is individually powerful enough within the CCP system to put ideological loyalists in every position know nothing about China. Fat is being trimmed ahead of a move.

Whenever a US military official is questioned about the fighting in Ukraine these days, the answer is nearly always disappointing. Their first job, it seems, is to never call into question the might and supremacy of the Pentagon or the handful of major arms manufacturers that dominate the market. All of whom have a vested interest in selling the latest edition of the highest priced product, like any US corporate behemoth. I do realize that much of this defensive posture within the military establishment stems from the popularity of equally wrong takes on the fighting in Ukraine that spread across social media because they sound good. It’s very easy to proclaim that drones and AI are the future of warfare and that tanks and artillery are obsolete when so many drone videos are available to give this impression. And if you’re heavily invested in drones and AI as a business, well, then it’s almost a law in the USA that you must over-hype your products and industry.

And so the debate about drones and AI breaks along familiar and entirely stupid lines: traditionalist against technophiliac, the curmudgeon facing down the innovator, or some other insipid binary. This much I can predict with confidence about drones and AI: they are extremely important, and will be relevant to warfare in some form forever. But they will only be component elements in an increasingly complex machine, and the interaction between them and all the other parts will produce constant dynamic churn. The specific details of their employment will forever be shifting between temporarily stable equilibrium points forged by innovation.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Part 4

It is true that the Ukraine War will not forecast every aspect of the future of warfare in every situation perfectly, because technology marches on, and geography matters. However, the argument that the fighting there can’t have too much of an influence on military thinking abroad is the exact sort of error which caused the vast majority of European observers to fail to understand the lessons of the United States Civil War. What the Ukrainians have done is discover a whole set of ecological niches that have existed for years but lack of the right evolutionary pressure meant these remained undiscovered - just like the IED threat, which will always remain a serious danger. When a process evolves spontaneously and organically, like Ukraine’s use of drones, that means it’s very likely adaptive. NATO armies in extended combat would be forced to innovate along the same lines as Ukraine’s, because there just aren’t enough shiny toys or trained professionals to sustain prolonged intensive warfare and never will be.

Again, the US Civil War is a potent case study. Like today, military professionals from around the world traveled to the combatant armies to learn what they could and sometimes teach lessons of their own. Had it not been for an expatriate French general named Lafayette, the USA very likely would not exist. Military knowledge is highly portable in any era, and even vast differences in technology still lead to warfare taking certain familiar forms. During the USCW, reports constantly made it into European newspapers and military archives detailing tactical, operational, and strategic factors which all later played a decisive role in the First World War. And yet, when the combatants in that miserable conflict were fully engaged, none had fully absorbed the lessons of how bitterly fought an industrial total war is bound to be.

Had Union operational skill not been so sorely lacking, the Confederacy could have been crushed in months, not years, thanks to the combined industrial might of the Union states. Numerous operational failures bedeviled an otherwise sound strategy to strangle the Confederacy over time, leading to atrocious casualties. Aspects of the fighting, like reliance on trenches, railroad logistics, and mass mobilization, afforded the Union a serious edge the Confederacy could not withstand forever despite boasting better military leaders during the first half of the conflict. That early edge was blunted because Confederate operations never combined to achieve a decisive result at the strategic level, and when they tried they fought on Union territory with all the logistical limits that entailed. Decades later, European military leaders did not understand how the balance of industry between the Central Powers and Entente could all too easily lead to years of bloody deadlock if new tactical and operational patterns were not devised. Even if the Europeans had not widely employed machine guns by 1914, the slaughter would have turned out much the same in the end, even if it took longer for Germany to finally bleed out. It was not so much new technology that led to Allied triumph, but a new way of using it developed through trial, error, and a lot of lives during the course of the fighting. Primarily by Australian and Canadian generals, as I understand it, saying a lot about where innovative ideas emerge in most empires.

Today, US and NATO military leaders are at serious risk of missing the same essential lesson. Wars rarely unfold as anticipated in every respect, even those like the Pacific War where US leaders like Nimitz later said that at a high level it went pretty much as expected. Operations in the event looked completely different than anticipated even if their end goal - marching west across the Pacific to strangle the Japanese Empire - was the same. I know that it’s mighty tough for people educated a certain way and steeped in a particular way of thinking to accept that it might be flawed. But it happens. The fundamental reason for this state state of affairs is the institutional inertia caused by people and groups within the machine fearing where they’ll fall if it gets properly rebooted. Groupthink is real, a common affliction of teams which can only be countered by having layers of teams working at different scale levels granted defined powers in their area of responsibility. Groupthink-induced inertia is one of the oldest challenges any armed force has to deal with in peacetime. Once the threat of violence becomes increasingly theoretical, actions take on a rote character. A garrison mentality sets in where a huge amount of energy goes into seeking status. This is a potent hazard for any permanent professional military, as opposed to one mostly staffed by mobilized or reserve troops called up for a specific mission.

After a time, the incentive structures that impact promotions alter behavior. If there is any intrusion of systematic cognitive bias - and the smaller the pool of people, the higher the probability of that happening - you’ll wind up with senior personnel reflecting an artificial standard devoid of real accountability. Work becomes makework, and actual competence in the field suffers. Wartime brings its own challenges in this regard, and Ukraine is dealing with them after years of total war, but the pressure to do things that improve survival odds is a powerful force lacking in garrison. The challenge is only magnified when you start working with abstract stuff like strategy and doctrine. Where a line soldier’s experience with the bureaucracy can be limited to checklists, range rules, and tons of paperwork, a general officer is bound to encounter nuances where The Answer is a matter of opinion. Yet express the wrong one, and suddenly you’re on the outside, at risk when promotion time comes. US and NATO military doctrine are provably painfully outdated, yet asserting this automatically threatens the professional status of thousands of people. As the only alternative popularly discussed is the one pushed by Musk, Thiel, and a few other tech con artists exploiting scientific and military ignorance, people in uniform below OF-5 and above OR-4 had better get educated on their own.

The Ukraine War calls for a full revamp of standing doctrine, a shift on the order of what finally happened during the Iraq War after years of junior officers and senior enlisted cribbing together the working counterinsurgency approach that Petraeus later slapped his name on. No, a NATO or US military force would not fight like the orcs have in Ukraine. They’d make their own fatal mistakes, then wind up imitating the Ukrainians. Network Age technologies like drones and agent-based AI (not generative, very different, and much harder to get right, therefore much more useful) make the standard US aesthetic obsession with dominance and lethality look like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Survivors of the styles of warfare that decentralized technologies make possible are not bound to be interested in stomping across the battlefield like an armored war elephant trumpeting challenges. Yet while many of the tactics that forces in the field will have to use may resemble those of special forces operators, it’s the team and its average capabilities, not individual prowess or the ability to endure adverse environments, which offers the decisive edge.

The Ukraine War’s length, stakes, and the highly organic nature of Ukraine’s fight in a technological and organizational sense suggest that lessons from Ukraine will be extremely relevant applied elsewhere. It’s already happening: small countries like Croatia and Thailand as well as drug cartels understand what kind of equalizers they can be. Raw combat is like that: when the stakes are survival, anything inefficient or ineffective must be swiftly discarded. Combat is anarchy in its purest form: order is a luxury imposed and sustained by energy and blood. Early in the all-out invasion, it was not central command from Kyiv under Zaluzhnyi, but the dedication, courage, and skill of fighters and civilian volunteers much closer to the scene that turned the tide. Ever since, this participatory element has been a vital source of innovative and adaptive capacity that cannot be replicated save by facing a true existential threat felt by a majority of the population. In scientific terms, Ukraine’s fight is a natural experiment of a most rare sort, an engine producing data of incredible value and extreme relevance. A cold way to look at so much death and pain, but it’s when data-driven science stops driving analysis that such disasters become impossible to prevent.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Last part

It’s a real shame that the default portrayal of Ukraine in US media is as a victim in need, automatically making Ukrainian experiences less relevant. Because they don’t fight like Pentagon planners imagine is proper, somehow that means if put to the test these Pentagon types wouldn’t do far worse. It’s one thing to think about fighting a war that is in some respect on your terms, but quite another to be locked in a running battle to figure out how to not die, with one misstep easily proving fatal. However, the latter is the war that professionals are usually called to fight.

The single experience that the modern US military as an institution has with a conflict even remotely close to the scope and intensity of the Ukraine War came back in 1991. Then, though the outcome of Desert Storm now feels ordained, the best expert advice put the cost of liberating Kuwait back then as at least thousands of lives. That didn’t happen, which is great, but the triumph fostered the terrible illusion that all wars properly waged go that way. The typical best-case scenario for winning a major war against a numerically superior enemy is bound to look more like the conflict in Ukraine. Pentagon doctrine today all but requires that any fight go in a particular way. The US has to fully dominate every domain to eliminate all risk of the enemy upending carefully laid plans or inflicting casualties. Yet the history of warfare going back thousands of years warns that this is really just a way to avoid hard choices about where to invest scarce resources. You can never dominate everything, everywhere. He who tries dominates nothing. When put to the test, this sort of doctrine collapses under its own weight.

Too many professionals are downplaying or even ignoring what’s happened and happening in Ukraine because the lessons are deeply uncomfortable to those steeped in either the Cold War or War on Terror paradigm. The two have to be merged, because the future is already trending towards smaller and fewer teams playing specialized roles, like organs in an organism. Mutual aid must still be guaranteed, mediated through networks centered on data exchange. But that kind of intellectual fusion is scary for US academics, so they don’t teach students how to do it.

If I’m right, US adversaries understand the US system as a system better than nearly anyone. They will actively exploit this asymmetric advantage.

Put plainly, you can avoid screwing up and getting people needlessly killed by taking a step back once in a while and evaluating the entire framework used to evaluate and make decisions. But doing this is not easy in a big organization where a change in policy affects people’s entire career path. So those shifts are usually targeted at people at the bottom end of the chain of command - the ones with the least flexibility, because more and more their concerns revolve around simple survival.

First rule of real Mission Command is to not become a casualty - at least not an easy one. That imperative overcomes all other orders about 95% of the time. Another reason why getting operations right is so important.

 

[ChloeTzang]

 

[ChloeTzang]

Sounds good

The man says that he is from Altai Krai, where he was made to sign a contract to avoid going to trial for an unspecified offence for which he faced eight years' imprisonment. He has been serving in the army for six months and is currently a stormtrooper. He says that "every second person here drinks, to gain courage, to go somewhere [on a mission]." The reason why is understandable: "A hundred people would join a group [for a mission], take a position, and only five would come out." This, he explains, is "because half of them try to escape, and everyone would kill them." The men are under orders to shoot anyone who retreats: "On the front lines, they generally say that if someone tries to run away, they'll shoot him right away." Not surprisingly, this doesn't help with morale or developing interpersonal relationships: "Even, fuck, [it's like if] we've become friends, he's the only one I've ever been friends with. Like, okay, [even] your best friend, you have to do it."

"There's nowhere to go: it's either you or him being shot. Well, if you don't reset him, you are reset yourself. That's how it is." /end

https://twitter.com/x/status/1981452198551675161

 

[Rebel5soul]

Sounds good

The man says that he is from Altai Krai, where he was made to sign a contract to avoid going to trial for an unspecified offence for which he faced eight years' imprisonment. He has been serving in the army for six months and is currently a stormtrooper. He says that "every second person here drinks, to gain courage, to go somewhere [on a mission]." The reason why is understandable: "A hundred people would join a group [for a mission], take a position, and only five would come out." This, he explains, is "because half of them try to escape, and everyone would kill them." The men are under orders to shoot anyone who retreats: "On the front lines, they generally say that if someone tries to run away, they'll shoot him right away." Not surprisingly, this doesn't help with morale or developing interpersonal relationships: "Even, fuck, [it's like if] we've become friends, he's the only one I've ever been friends with. Like, okay, [even] your best friend, you have to do it."

"There's nowhere to go: it's either you or him being shot. Well, if you don't reset him, you are reset yourself. That's how it is." /end

https://twitter.com/x/status/1981452198551675161

It's the Russian way.

 

[ChloeTzang]

It's the Russian way.

Continuing in a great tradition.....

Let's hope the 1905 and 1917 tradition continues also......

 

[Rebel5soul]

So, China has cancelled all crude oil contracts with Russia seaborne transport. Remains to be seen how meaningful that is but the timing is damn interesting. Tie in to the "Xi stroke out" thread?

 

[ChloeTzang]

Yakutia, Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia WANT TO LEAVE RUSSIA! ​

Ukrainian Intelligece is now supporting independance movements within the Russian Federation.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Another round of crazy Russian News.....

Ukraine expands its program of deep strikes as Russia's fuel crisis spreads to Mongolia. Meanwhile, a variety of Russian defense sector factories and oil refineries continue to explode all over the country, as Kremlin propagandists are sent out to threaten the West.

In Ukraine, Russians continue to commit atrocities, targeting civilian infrastructure with missles and drones.

18% of Russian companies unable to pay their workers....
Key Russian defence plants being hit.....
The Russian fuel crisis is now hitting Mongolia (95% of fuel came from Russia, no fuel in Mongolia)
Ryazan Oil Refinery (5%of Russia's oil output) hit and burned
Ukraine is pretty much hitting whatever they like inside Russia at this point

 

[ChloeTzang]

Gazprom’s Collapse Shakes Putin’s Empire​

Russia’s once-mighty energy empire is falling apart.

Gazprom — the crown jewel of Putin’s regime — has declared record losses of $7 billion, plunging Moscow into panic and chaos. What was once the Kremlin’s greatest weapon has become its greatest weakness.

In this video, we uncover how Gazprom’s collapse is tearing through Russia’s economy, destroying jobs, and turning loyal industrial towns into ghost cities.
Millions are facing unemployment and hunger, while the oligarchs who once funded Putin’s power are secretly fleeing with their fortunes.

This video exposes how Gazprom’s downfall has triggered mass panic, silent mutiny among oligarchs, and a growing revolt within Russia’s heartland.

00:00 – The Fall of Russia’s Energy Empire
01:05 – Gazprom’s $7 Billion Collapse
02:22 – Ghost Towns in the Heart of Siberia
03:40 – Putin’s Fatal Mistake: Turning Off Europe’s Gas
05:10 – Europe Breaks Free from Russian Energy
06:02 – China’s Humiliation of Moscow
07:00 – Ukraine’s Drone War and the Refinery Destruction
08:25 – 40% of Russia’s Fuel Capacity Lost
09:30 – Oligarchs in Panic and Silent Betrayal
10:35 – The People Turn Against the Kremlin
11:45 – The Empire Devours Itself
12:40 – Conclusion: Moscow on the Edge of Revolt

 

[ChloeTzang]

Medvedev on Trump

 

[ChloeTzang]

Xi Deals a Crippling BLOW to Russia’s WAR MACHINE​

China just hit Russia where it hurts most — its oil. After U.S. sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, President Xi Jinping ordered China’s state oil giants to suspend Russian seaborne oil imports, cutting off billions from Putin’s war machine. With India also pulling back, Moscow’s economy is bleeding cash fast. In this video, we break down how Xi’s move flipped the balance — and why Putin’s biggest ally might just become his biggest problem.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Russia’s Military is FALLING APART...​

Russian soldiers are shooting their own comrades as the Kremlin’s military collapses from within. Reports from Euromaidan Press, The Kyiv Independent, and Newsweek detail multiple incidents between 2023 and 2025 of Russian troops killing fellow soldiers, looting the dead, and using 80-year-old Nazi-era weapons amid equipment shortages and desperation.

The frontline chaos reflects a total breakdown in discipline, morale, and command. With 180,000 convicts pressed into service and even elite units staging self-harm scams for payouts worth $2.4 million, Russia’s army is spiraling. From conscripts coerced into Ukraine to commanders ordering executions, Putin’s forces face a crisis that may be beyond repair.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Russia Can’t Stop Ukraine’s Relentless STRIKES​

October 22, 2025 — Russia’s military has entered crisis mode after Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky announced a call-up of reservists to protect vital infrastructure. The move follows a relentless series of Ukrainian drone and missile strikes that have devastated refineries, pipelines, and energy hubs deep inside Russia. They'd never do this unjtil they were desperate - this is going to remove massive numbers of workers from the workforce when they are already short. They's also admitted their air defences are falling apart.

Analysts warn the Kremlin’s decision may be a disguised mobilization as Putin faces growing internal dissent, economic collapse, and battlefield losses. With over 292,000 new recruits in a “strategic reserve,” the Institute for the Study of War reports that Moscow may soon deploy reservists to Ukraine. The strikes continue, and Putin’s options are running out.

 

[ChloeTzang]

CENTRAL BANK CUTS RATE, EXPLOSIONS IN MOSCOW, WAR FACTORIES SHUTTING DOWN​

 

[ChloeTzang]

SYSTEM COLLAPSE: Generals Steal, Factories Explode​

Russia is repeating what happened in 1853 and 1905 - somebody else is seeing this

Russia's systemic collapse is accelerating, as new US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil strike Putin's war economy. This analysis connects the financial hammer to the internal rot, starting with the case of Timur Ivanov, the corrupt Deputy Defense Minister sentenced to 13 years who then offered to "volunteer" for the front line. This is a direct historical parallel to the 1853 Crimean War, where corruption in logistics led to military disaster. This 1905 Russo-Japanese War parallel is repeating as Putin's "short victorious war" fails.

The consequence of this rot is a war machine that is exploding. We analyze the breaking news of the "Plastmass" munitions plant explosion in Chelyabinsk, 1,700km from Ukraine, which killed 10. This follows the "Elastik" gunpowder plant disaster in Ryazan, which killed 25. As Russia's system implodes, Putin is raising the VAT to 22%, a war tax on 700,000 small businesses. More than a third of these may close down as a result.

This internal failure is the direct cause of Ukraine's new victories. We show footage of the liberation of Kucheriv Yar, where over 50 Russian soldiers were captured. As Russia's fleet rots, Ukraine unveils its new 2,000kg "Sea Baby" drone with a 14.5mm machine gun. Finally, as Russia's air defense fails, Ukraine secures a deal with Sweden for 100 to 150 new Gripen E fighter jets. This is the full picture of a systemic failure.

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Intro
01:23 - Ukraine Is Winning, Russia Cannot Win
02:48 - Precision Strike: Sanctions Destroy Russia's War Chest
04:11 - History Repeats: Generals Steal Money in 1853 & Today
05:58 - Russian Factories Explode: Corruption Is Killing the War Machine
07:12 - The 1905 Parallel: Humiliation, War Tax, and Internal Dissent
10:05 - 2,000kg Payload: Ukraine's New SeaBaby Drone & Victory
12:44 - Outro

 

[ChloeTzang]

Ukraine’s Military is Becoming More and More Powerful​

Ukraine has developed numerous massive breakthroughs in just a few short years. The progress is happening so quickly, that some people still aren't fully aware of its significance. The reality is that, whatever way this war goes, Ukraine has established themselves as a global power for the next century to come. In this video, I explain why, looking at Russia's war against Ukraine, and how it has made Ukraine a world leader in drones, AI, robotics, and more.

The future is being defined in Ukraine today.

 

[ChloeTzang]

Major Turning Point in Ukraine’s Air War​

00:00 Introduction
00:54 Sweden to sell Gripen jets to Ukraine
06:37 SAAB to produce Air Defense systems with Ukraine
07:24 Ukraine might receive US Bell helicopters
08:36 Spain considering joining the PURL program
08:58 Ukraine's kinetic sanctions on Russia
09:50 Russia targets Ukraine's energy infrastructure
11:15 Russia trying to protect enterprises with aerostats
12:15 Russia's recruitment drive failing in Yakutia
14:00 Russia moves to mobilize reserves
15:53 Military satellite from Czechia to Ukraine
17:38 Russia hits Ukrainian kindergarten with drones
19:12 Encircled Russians surrender
19:38 Concluding thoughts

 

[ChloeTzang]

How Ukraine's New SAAB ASC Plane Outsmarts Russian Jets​

This is not a hand-me-down. It's a state of the art airborne surveillance system.....

How has Ukraine been using their AWACS over the summer?

Today, we’re talking about Sweden’s ASC 890, also known as the Saab 340 AEW&C, the high-tech airborne early-warning aircraft that just changed Ukraine’s air defense game.

This passenger plane has been transformed into a flying command center with a 400-kilometer Erieye radar system capable of tracking missiles, drones, and fighter jets long before they enter Ukrainian airspace. It’s fast, precise, and very, very Swedish, which means it probably came with great documentation and a polite warning label saying, “May cause extreme panic in Russian pilots.”

In this video, I break down:
• How the ASC 890 works and why airborne radar is such a massive upgrade over ground systems.
• The truth about Ukrainian crews training in Sweden to operate this system.
• Reports that the ASC 890 may already be assisting Ukraine’s F-16s in live operations.
• How Sweden’s radar tech is helping Ukraine spot cruise missiles, drones, and Russian aircraft hundreds of kilometers away.
• The technical hurdles, like EW interference, integration with Soviet-era systems, and maintenance challenges, that Ukraine’s engineers are racing to solve.

This is one of those upgrades that doesn’t fire a single shot, but it makes every Ukrainian missile and fighter jet smarter. With real-time airborne radar data feeding directly into Ukraine’s air defense network, Russia just lost its ability to sneak anything across the border undetected.

By pairing the ASC 890’s eyes with Ukraine’s new F-16s, and maybe soon GRIPENS, Kyiv is building something truly powerful: a hybrid East-West defense network that rivals anything in Europe.

As someone who’s worked with radar systems myself, I can tell you: once you can see everything, you control everything.

 

[ChloeTzang]

 

[Lazaran]

A decent update from Ukraine:

Slava Ukraini!!!

 

[ChloeTzang]

Russian Companies IMPLODE as Putin's FATAL MISTAKE triggers DEPRESSION​

THe Kremlin is bracing for a revenue collapse

 

[ChloeTzang]

The Illusion of a Strong Russian Economy is Collapsing

The truth about Russia’s economy is a $446 billion fraud. This investigation exposes the secret off-budget debt Vladimir Putin uses to finance his war and reveals why that illusion is collapsing fast.

Since mid-2022, Russia’s corporate borrowing has surged by seventy-one percent. The Central Bank of Russia quietly recorded roughly $446 billion in forced loans directed toward war industries. This is not normal growth. A February 2022 decree ordered banks to issue “preferential loans” to military suppliers. Banks obey. The Kremlin spends. The illusion of resilience continues.

This shadow credit now equals almost the entire official defense budget. Inflation has climbed near ten percent. Food prices have quadrupled. Pensioners protest outside the Kremlin while real businesses collapse under interest rates above thirty-seven percent. The government claims a two-percent deficit, but if this hidden debt were counted, the real figure exceeds six percent of GDP.

These loans hide four converging risks: inflationary collapse, banking insolvency, industrial decline, and the post-war default wave when contracts end and firms fail. Each missile fired adds compound interest. Each drone strike drains another loan. The state is mortgaging its future to survive the present.

From recruitment failures in Yakutia to elite purges inside Moscow, the same arithmetic drives the crisis. Putin can silence dissent, but he cannot silence math. The numbers are unyielding: Russia’s economy is not strong, it is leveraged. The war is not funded by power, but by debt.

This is how empires end — not through revolution, but through receipts. Russia’s $446 billion war debt is the fuse burning toward the Kremlin.