Simplicius The Thinker

1. USAID's Demise Sparks Dizzying Acceleration Toward New Era

Trump's team has been busy dismantling core load-bearing pillars of the unfathomable globalist superstructure which has slowly suffocated the planet for decades. The USAID saga has only been the most conspicuous of the moves, as it has wrenched loud outcries from the various 'blob' parties affected by the sudden power cuts.

Less glamorized were Trump's security clearance revocations of key figures like Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, as well as the stripping of Biden of his daily classified intelligence briefings, which apparently ex-presidents receive as some kind of 'courtesy':

What could a retired ex-president possibly need intelligence briefings for? This fact only illuminates how ex-presidents like Obama and co. are utilized by the cabal even long past their expiration dates as kinds of 'shadow influence' figures who are expected to keep abreast of geopolitical and domestic developments in order to push their weight around behind the scenes. Obama is the clearest example, as he's been trotted out by handlers to put out fires here or there, or use his image to propel given narratives, etc. Such presidents become unofficial diplomatic gray eminences for backdoor deals or pressuring recalcitrant political figures, domestic or foreign.

Democrats howled in outrage at Trump's move, which is interesting, given that after stealing his election Biden did the exact same thing to Trump, to no objection whatsoever from the same establishment parrots:

But you see, these are precisely the type of incongruencies the Media Industrial Complex embodied by the USAID empire was tasked with plastering over, to shield us from the gross hypocrisies which are the essential modus operandi that keep the whole charade afloat.

On that note, the USAID story has uncovered the truly all-encompassing, global, and most importantly coordinated nature of the cabal's narrative control machine:

It has shattered the paradoxical fraud of the "independent media" which the in-actuality-non-independent media keeps tirelessly harping on about. Just like everything else in today's Orwellian 'upside-down' construct—where the term "democracy" is casually tossed about to describe repression of dissenting voices, "peace" used to describe funneling more weapons to overt Nazi and apartheid regimes—similarly "independent media" had described what was effectively an almost entirely government funded operation.

BBC, for instance, issued a statement of alarm about losing their funding, calling themselves the "free press"—what does that even mean in these circumstances? If you're objectively bought-and-paid-for by government scratch, how can you be the 'free' press? Discount press is maybe more fitting.

In fact, how can the USAID be officially designated an NGO—"Non-Governmental" Organization, when it's funded entirely by the US Congress from taxpayer's funds to the tune of almost 5% of the entire non-defense, discretionary portion of the federal budget? Marc Andreessen had the best recent riff on this:

He misses a critical portion of the definition, that NGOs are 'independent'—yet USAID lists doing the government's bidding as part of its mission statement:

Statute law places USAID under "the direct authority and policy guidance of the Secretary of State".

In short, USAID uses the same cloak of ambiguity as the 'Federal' Reserve to conceal true operating motives. As Andreessen notes, it's nothing more than the State Department and attendant deep state organs' pet instrument for bypassing constitutional limitations on antidemocratic subversion.

MoA incisively covered this angle in an article, running down the list of brazen uses of the term "independent" to describe these organizations in mainstream press like NYT.

"Independent".

But before we move on, it's worth taking a look at just how the operation went down, which the Guardian turned a self-righteously indignant eye to:

Read more

2. Ukraine Inches Closer to Final Call-Up

Zelensky has inched closer toward the final logical conclusion of Ukraine's mobilization journey and demographic acid test in one. In a new interview with Reuters, the doomed leader announced that an attractive new 'contract' for the 18-24 cohort is being designed by Ukrainian authorities:

"Combat brigades, experienced ones, together with the Ministry of Defense... are working on a contract option for young people from 18 to 24 years old... There will be a special agreement, there will be many preferences... there will be very high financial support," Zelensky said.

This is part of the recent initiative from Zelensky to tiptoe gradually toward full-on mobilization of the final youth contingent by first heavily incentivizing them, as well as tightening the yoke little by little with various provisions and constraints that remove exemption categories one at a time.

I've posted various videos in the past showing that a kind of 'stealth' mobilization of 18+ is already underway, like this one from Rada MP Dmitry Razumkov. Depending what the true scale of the stealth mobilization is, it could mean that Ukraine will face real trouble if it ever really does 'officially' announce an 18+ mobilization, because those reserves would have already been drained in advance.

In some ways, both Putin and Zelensky are playing the same game—Putin has refused to do another 'official' mass call-up, relying on various forms of 'lowkey' mobilization options, from prisoner labor, to volunteers and mercenaries, partly in order to keep society from souring on the war. Now Zelensky does the same, but is in far more dire straits.

In a new interview he remarked that he can't even imagine how Ukraine will fight the war should the US cease its support:

Interestingly he mentions that US support has stayed the same but 'no new packages' have been announced under Trump's administration. Experts have weighed in that this continuing line of armaments is from the Biden admin's orders via the Pentagon's direct support program, but nothing has come down from the White House via the president's own drawdown authorities or other direct special aid instruments.

In fact, Trump has doubled down on his idea that any future support would have to be strictly negotiated in exchange for Ukraine's resources, as seen in this new video from today. Watch the second half, where I spliced in Zelensky's new comments as well, which are quite elucidating:

Isn't it ironic that Zelensky shows a map of Ukrainian mineral wealth, suggesting that Russia is the enemy because they want Ukraine for its natural resources—yet it's his very own primary 'ally' who just openly described Ukraine as nothing more than a transactional business opportunity for natural resources. The US is literally what Zelensky believes Russia to be, yet the hypocritical mask must be upheld to unjustly cast Russia as the bad guy.

By the way, in the Reuters interview Zelensky admitted that 50% of those prized rare earths Trump's been salivating over are already under Russian control:

As one can see, the vast majority of the remaining resources will come under Russian control sometime in the not-too-distant future:

—

Now Ukraine has launched a new localized offensive in Kursk which has retaken the small settlement of Cherkasskaya Konopelka, just south of Sudzha:

The enemy's forces have been accumulating in the Sumy region for several days. The reserves were attacked, including by the Iskander OTRK, many saw the video yesterday, it was posted on Telegram channels. The enemy attacked today in Kursk region, hoping for bad weather, last time he attacked during "clear skies". In total, the enemy threw up to 30 units of equipment into the next offensive, now they are knocking it out and this offensive for the khokhol will end the same way as the previous ones, that is, with defeat and heavy losses.

👉Vysokygovorit

The purpose is to give some breathing room to Sudzha, which Russian forces have been putting the squeeze on in recent weeks. The offensive reportedly saw several battalions worth of troops and an estimated ~30-50 vehicles already claimed destroyed in another turkey shoot. The Ukrainian side on the other hand claims Russian forces suffered heavy casualties as well. In this case, the Russians held the propaganda upper hand with dozens of videos of destroyed Ukrainian gear and men flooding out, including a lot of 'rare' items—now destroyed—like Challenger tanks, Bergepanzers, Wisent-1s and IMR-2s, which led to analysts opining that the AFU was scraping the bottom of the barrel for heavy weapons to use.

A little mood-setter:

—

Meanwhile the DailyMail published another 'leaked' Trump 'peace plan':

As per usual, it has zero chance to be accepted by Putin, even if it's real.

The only real question at this point, as the Duran folks just asked in their latest program, is whether Trump will 'escalate' or walk away. In a new interview with NYT, Keith Kellogg reportedly said that Russia's current sanctions 'pain level' is at about a 3 out of 10, and that Trump has much more room to raise that 'pain level' by putting sanctions pressure on Russian oil and gas.

Sanctions enforcement on Russia are "only about a 3" on a scale of 1 to 10 on how painful the economic pressure can be, Kellogg said. The US sanctions themselves — such as those targeting Russia's lucrative energy sector — are nominally twice as high, but there is still room to ratchet them up.

"You could really increase the sanctions — especially the latest sanctions [targeting oil production and exports,]" he said. "It's opened the aperture way high to do something.

If this is the only bolt left in Trump's quiver to 'hurt' Russia, then I'm afraid the US stands little chance of persuading Putin. Most of the West and Ukraine's actions against Russian energy industries ironically end up only helping Russia by raising oil prices, which drowns Russia in record profits; e.g. Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian oil refineries. But with the Munich conference coming up, Kellogg promises we'll soon learn more details of Trump's actual 'peace plan' in the near future.

One wonders if the Trump administration will continue the tradition of sparing the one special governor in upcoming sanctions packages:

Kellogg did, however, demonstrate a farthing of common sense in the interview:

"For Russia, this is kind of in their DNA in military operations — basically, you're in an attrition fight," he said. "If you look at history, you'd never want to get into an attrition fight with the Russians, because that's how they fight. They're used to it. I mean, this is a country that was willing to lose — and did — 700,000 in the Battle of Stalingrad in six months, and they didn't blink an eye."

"And so the pressure just can't be military. You have to put economic pressure, you have to put diplomatic pressure, some type of military pressures and levers that you're going to use underneath those to make sure [this goes] where we want it to go," he explained.

Let's be honest: ultimately, the only option left for the US that could even remotely affect the inexorable Russian advance is for Trump to announce a major, direct military intervention in Ukraine. For obvious reasons, I don't think it will come to that, though Trump could attempt to pull some trump card by threatening a kind of reverse Pristina Airport gambit to land troops somewhere on the other side of an imagined 'DMZ'. But without a gargantuan logistics tail in the west of the country, it would simply never be convincing to anyone, not least of which the Russian general staff. To even remotely threaten Russian forces you'd need not only a vast amount of deployable manpower but the ability to sustain them over credible periods of high intensity exchanges.

But as I said, even though it's not likely, it's the only thing Trump could possibly do to thwart Russia. No amount of sanctions could possibly stop the Russian forward march, nor a limp wet-napkin European response featuring some kind of light 'rapid deployment force' on the other side of the river. As such, Trump is left with only digging a deeper hole for himself, as the longer he waits to extricate himself from this conflict the more painful it will be for his legacy.

The Duran team made a good point in mentioning that Trump has a rare golden opportunity—albeit a short window, at that—to pull the plug on US involvement with this war amidst the deafening turmoil of the USAID scandal and the avalanche of related upheavals. He momentarily has the democrats dazed and in total disarray, with the CIA and other major subversive-foreign-enemy agencies in the process of some paralyzed convulsions that would allow Trump to act as desired. The longer he waits, the more he allows the smoke to clear and his opponents to gather their footing, organizing back into coherent formation against his most impactful policies.

Of course, one could argue the opposite side, that Trump cannot just yet dump Ukraine because he hasn't drained the swamp enough to protect himself, or get rid of the embedded deep state neocons who would put up credible roadblocks. As such, he may be biding his time to continue flushing out these deep state limpets first, before really bringing the hammer down. For instance:

With the arrival of Donald Trump in the White House, Washington is rapidly reviewing its policy on Ukraine. All Pentagon employees have already been dismissed and removed and the USAID responsible for this track has been liquidated, and Trump himself made it clear: the previous level of financial and military support for Kiev should not be expected.

As for the 'leaked plans', Julian Roepcke per usual didn't take kindly to them:

In fact, Julian has been asking some very 'uncomfortable' questions of late, here tongue lashing a pro-UA 'analyst' who was confabulating 'major' Russian losses on the front:

Roepcke appears mostly correct here—100-200 total daily casualties is about 50-100 KIA, which accords much closer to reality than common Western numbers; as can be seen, even the stalwarts are slowly coming around after three years of being drubbed by increasingly warped propaganda from their own side.

A Ukrainian politician recently had the same 'awakening':

Anna Konstantinovna Skorokhod, a Ukrainian politician, said that the Russians would have ceased to exist long ago if they were to believe the official figures, where for every dead Ukrainian there are 10 dead Russians and for every wounded, there are 17 wounded Russians.

I advise Zelenskyy to stop listening to idiots and demand reliable data.

And a last important video on this count—a Ukrainian officer describes how only 10% of Ukrainian KIA are ever removed from the field:

Think about it—it lines up with a lot of Ukrainian "official figures", even Zelensky's so called 40,000 dead: those are the officially retrieved and identified dead, while the real amount could be 400k or more, as per the above.

—

To get back to the Kellogg interview at the start as a fitting capstone, allow me to quote one last thing he said:

"Very frankly, both sides in any negotiation have to give; that's just the way it is in negotiations," he said. "And that's where you have to find out, 'OK, where is this at? What's acceptable?'"

"Is it gonna be agreeable to everybody? No. Is it gonna be acceptable to everybody? No. But you try to run this balance," he added.

This perfectly encapsulates the totally clueless nature of the Trump team, which is merely fumbling around in a theatrical 'show' of global leadership that is nothing more than bad Kabuki theater. Why would Russia have to adhere to the "rules of negotiations" as if it's some kind of board game? Russia is winning, Ukraine is running out of men—there really isn't much more to it than that. Russia doesn't have to "give" anything at all, and if Kellogg really believes so he's as flaky as his breakfast namesake.

This is really amateur hour, with an old, decaying Hegemon desperately trying to show a shell-shocked, polycrisis-ridden world that it's still "got the goods", and can push people around without having to actually make a real effort at solving complex problems, instead resorting to throwing up a front of inane and nonsensical 'logic' like a drunk ex-champ winging air punches to impress a few booze-hunched barflies.

Guess they'll have to learn the hard way that draining a few beltway NGOs does not undo decades of terminal atrophy, nor give a reality TV star and casino tycoon military primacy over the pedigreed war council of a great power.

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3. Trump Announces 'Levantine Riviera': The Ethnic Cleansing and Terraforming Mega-Project of Tomorrow!

Trump stunned the world today with his blithely unapologetic plans for the mass ethnic cleansing and terraforming of Gaza, after receiving a "golden pager" memento from a smirking Netanyahu—a more cretinous tableau could hardly be imagined:

The amount of contradiction leaves one's head spinning like a dreidel. "No one can live there, the place is hell," a hangdog, puffy-eyed Trump explains, only moments before triumphantly declaring that the place will be turned into a casino-like 'Levantine Riviera' for "the people of the world"; might those be chosen people, mayhaps?

Trump argues that Palestinians deserve to live where they aren't going to ignominiously "die", so that's why an artificial refugee camp—sorry, town—should be erected in Jordan, yet he forgets to mention that the man beside him is the reason those natives-to-the-land are 'mysteriously' dying in droves.

The whole press conference smacked of a surreal theater-of-the-absurd, like watching 'cute' Munchkins from the Land of Oz ravenously tear into a carcass with blood-soaked mouths. A servile-looking Trump blubbers out his plans for the biggest genocide and mass ethnic cleansing campaign in modern history with the casual air of someone ordering a breakfast sandwich. As per usual, though, the true slap of betrayal lay in the indifference of the establishment media shills, whose jobs should have been to deeply question and probe, set a journalistic flame to such outrages of common consciousness and decency.

Note how unctuously Trump slips the question of who will live in Gaza—not once, but twice. In the above video, a reporter asks Trump if Jewish settlements will be built in Gaza: Trump pretends he didn't hear them, and answers the question under the pretext it was Palestinian settlements that were asked about.

Then in the video below, he states the US will take over the Gaza strip and "own it"—so an American Mandate for the modern world?

Finally, CNN's Kaitlan Collins asks him directly will the Gazans be able to return, and if not, who does Trump envision living in Gaza after the US turns it into a "beautiful place"? Trump's response is an historic study in slippery artifice, and must be seen to be believed:

"I envision…world people living there."

World people? Do they happen to be related to the mysterious Sea Peoples, by any chance? Come to ransack and reclaim the Levant for a second time in as many millennia? Anthropologists the world over are in suspense.

Has a more maddening display of genocide apologetics ever been strutted out and gobbed in orange lipstick before?

Well, what can one say, Israel has found its perfect faithful servant:

Netanyahu presented Trump with two pagers at a meeting on February 4 — "a regular one and a gold-plated one," the prime minister's office stated. Trump responded by saying that "it was a grand operation."

Trump, before his election, called the Gaza Strip "prime real estate" in a phone call with Netanyahu and asked him to think about what types of hotels could be built there.

Am I the only one thinking a pager memento is more a subtly threatening reminder to stay in line, rather than a charming keepsake from an old friend?

Okay, so one reporter did manage to somewhat directly challenge Trump's bold take-over plans:

According to the above, Trump wants to take the Gaza situation completely out of the hands of everyone involved, and truly mark it as a kind of US protectorate. There is maybe some miniscule chance that Trump is actually subverting Israel in the long term with a kind of '5D holographic chess' move. Even famed Mid-East expert Alastair Crooke, in his latest interview with the Duran folks, suggested that Trump essentially 'saved' Netanyahu with these latest overtures to keep the truly hardline right-wing Likudniks from taking over, because "better the devil you know". In other words, Trump at least knows how to work with the more predictable Netanyahu, and keep him somewhat in line.

I do think some people underestimate Trump's own wiles, so we have to leave it a little open-ended for now—but at face value, it doesn't look good. After all, just yesterday Trump tacitly invoked Greater Israel by lamenting Israel's small size in comparison to the rest of the Middle East:

So, Israel has gotten its highest and most authoritative imprimatur for finally getting rid of those peskily scrappy natives: it's an unprecedented Israeli coup de grace, right?

Well, not quite.

Clouds continue to gather just on the other side of the border, as we have been pointing to here from the start.

Jolani, now wholesomely rebranded as the clean-cut vizier Ahmed al-Sharaa, has arrived in Ankara to finally prostrate himself before his greatest benefactor:

And what do you know? As predicted, major things are expected to be set into motion between the two countries:

New Syrian leader offers Erdogan to deploy Turkish military bases in the country, — Reuters

▪️During the talks in Ankara, Ahmed al-Sharaa will discuss the Syrian-Turkish defense pact, which includes the creation of Turkish air bases in central Syria, the agency writes.

▪️Meanwhile, al-Sharaa has already met with Turkish President Erdogan and invited him to visit Damascus.

That's right, foremost amongst discussions is the deployment of full-on Turkish military and airbases throughout central Syria, as well as training of a new Syrian army by Turkish forces.

The regional intelligence official, the Syrian security official and one of the Damascus-based foreign security sources said the talks would include setting up two Turkish bases in Syria's vast central desert region, known as the Badiyah.

An official in Syria's presidency told Reuters that Sharaa would discuss Turkey's "training of the new Syrian army, as well as new areas of deployment and cooperation" with Erdogan, without specifying the deployment locations.

Followed by suggestions that Turkey would be in position to defend Syrian airspace:

The senior regional intelligence official, the Syrian security official and one of the Damascus-based foreign security sources said the bases under discussion would allow Turkey to defend Syria's air space in case of any future attacks.

Could Turkish S-400s be back in play?

Possible locations for Turkish airbases were given as Palmyra military airport and the infamous T4 base in Homs. Of course it would also give Turkey newfound dominion over Kurd regions from the air.

This all came days after Jolani finally formally declared himself president of Syria, rather than some ambiguous 'transitional leader':

Israel is getting so nervous that its apologists are forced to pen increasingly unhinged theses, like the following from 'former Pentagon official' Michael Rubin for 19FortyFive:

A greater risk is the possibility that Turkey might utilize its nuclear plant to acquire fissile material for a nuclear weapon. Turkish officials—and even American counterparts—might say that the Akkuyu plant is proliferation-proof. Put aside that "proliferation proof" is never absolute. As with the Iranian civilian nuclear reactor at Bushehr, the problem has never been diversion at the civilian energy plant, but rather using the civilian program as cover to acquire and divert goods to a covert program.

You see how quickly Turkey is displacing Iran, in almost the selfsame role? Soon it will be Turkey in the country at risk of being struck by IAF bombs while funneling weapons into Syria, and being accused of perpetually 'coming close to getting the A-Bomb'.

From the above:

If Turkey gains a nuclear weapon, it might not only make good on its threats against other regional states, but it could also feel itself so immune behind its own nuclear deterrent that it could increase its terror sponsorship without fear of retribution or accountability. Such policy concern mirrors that with which many Western countries consider the possibility of Iranian nuclear acquisition.

How convenient.

The article invokes Israel's attack on Iraq's nuclear Osirak plant in 1981 as precedent. The author claims Turkey's defenses stand no chance against Israeli F-35s, just like Iran's didn't. Oh wait, just today Iran released a video showing its Bavar-373 and S-300 missile systems in full operation, proving that Israel's hoax strikes which "wiped out the entire Iranian S-300 fleet" months ago were in fact fantasy, as most people with a brain educed:

Iran shows off upgraded Bavar-373, S-300 missile systems in tandem drills.

The exercises, taking place on the last day of the massive Eqtedar 1403 (lit. 'Might 1403') drills, featured the home-grown Iranian and Russian-made long-range air defense systems attacking mock enemies in the Kavir Desert in the country's north.

Besides testing the systems' effectiveness, the drills debunked Israeli claims about its destruction of Iran's S-300s during last October's strikes, and allowed the Iranian Army's Air Defense Force to unveil a new version of the Bavar-373, which now features its own radar allowing for fully-independent operations.

-Saw the two systems plugged into Iran's powerful nationwide air defense network

In recent months, Iran has unveiled and deployed an array of new air defense and ballistic missile systems, as well as an underground missile base amid growing tensions with the US and Israel.

Either way, expect to hear more like the above regarding Turkey in the coming months and years, as the Ottoman scimitar inches ever closer toward Israel's exposed throat.

As for Riyadh, word has it the prince was not impressed with Trump's plans to redevelop the Gaza strip into a palmy lido for rich Western Shabbos goys:

Ultimately we have to wait and see precisely what Trump has in mind for the supposed 'American' take-over of Gaza; there could be more to it than meets the eye. Israel, of course, always plays the long game, with Netanyahu likely acquiescing to Trump's plan even if it ostensibly does not give Israel control of Palestine—for now—because Netanyahu knows in his spleen of spleens that American presidents come and go, but the settler colony will always pullulate like a tumor, long after the mortal mandates of its commandeered puppets have expired. In other words, keep up appearances for now, but count on the next American poltroon-in-chief in handing the 'newly redeveloped' territories back to Israel, de jure.

And as for those brawny America First congressmen? Well, you can forget the West Bank, too—the new 'guidance' from the top is the bird's the word, and the bird's been blacklisted. No more "West Bank", I present to you the Israeli provinces of Judea and Samaria:

On Friday, Republican lawmakers in the House and Senate introduced bills that would bar the use of the term "West Bank" in United States government documents and materials, replacing the phrase with "Judea and Samaria," the biblical names for the region that are widely used in Israel and the administrative name used by the state to describe the area.

How do you like them poison apples?

In the meantime, Trump is reportedly getting ready to finally withdraw from Syria for good—if you can believe it, that is:

The above report alleges an imminent withdrawal plan within the next "30, 60, or 90 days"—this time we pinky swear, promise! Recall last time the treasonous general staff literally lied to Trump and "played shell games" regarding US troop deployments in Syria in order to keep him from withdrawing the troops. Will it be more of the same bait-and-switch this time around?

It's the latest example of Trump's erratically schizophrenic foreign policy. Having promised no more wars or foreign military involvement, Trump is set to remove US troops from Syria while dispatching a new batch to the 'Red Riviera' on the ex-Gaza strip—talk about shell games!

Lastly, if you didn't have your fill of 'America First' #winning for the day, enjoy your final emetic morsel:

Remember the earlier video of Trump's speech, which elicited much criticism regarding the usually extemporaneous Trump robotically 'reading' a prepared statement given him by his 'AIPAC handler'? You know, this one:

Well, it turns out not far from the truth, from Times of Israel above:

Kushner was involved in crafting Trump's prepared remarks that he made alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House, Puck news reports, citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter.

By the way, did you catch Trump's third act of mealy ambiguity in the snippet above? Listen again:

"[We will] create economic development that will supply unlimited numbers of jobs and housing for…the people of the area."

Ah, those enigmatic people again.

For those who can stomach it, I leave you with this last video of Trump enforcer Mike Waltz waltzing on about the splendour of Trump's groundbreaking Gaza giveaway:

Heavy is the Hegemon's crown. Heaven forfend Russia ever inheriting such an onerous fate as to condemn Putin to the unenviable task of razing up a new Riviera on the Odessan waterfront to the wild cheers, or silent approvals, of the Western 'moral righteousness' peanut gallery.

We take penance for downplaying Trump's heavy cross—lord forgive us, amen!

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4. Russian SVR's Latest Intel: "West Preparing to Flush Zelensky"

Some interesting developments have produced hints as to how Ukraine's end game may shape up. Zelensky is being increasingly viewed as a problem by the Trump-Kellogg team, because of his mulishness and refusal to budge on any of the core concessions viewed as necessary to ending the war. Now, apparently a concensus around this same conclusion is forming in Europe as well.

As evidence of this, we have an official release from Russia's foreign intelligence service of the SVR, which outlines a plan by NATO members to discredit Zelensky as the kickoff to a campaign to eventually flush him in order to install someone more amenable to unconditional peace talks.

This is from the official SVR Russian government site:

The press office release in full:

03.02.2025

The press office of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation reports that, according to information received by the SVR, NATO headquarters are increasingly thinking about a change of power in Ukraine. Brussels believes that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will soon be unable to contain the growing onslaught of the Russian army. With the coming to power in the United States, D. Trump's decision increases uncertainty about the continuation of military assistance that the West will be able to provide to Kiev.

The NATO leadership considers it necessary at all costs to preserve the remnants of Ukraine as an anti-Russian springboard. It is supposed to "freeze" the conflict by bringing the warring parties to a dialogue about the "beginning of its settlement". At the same time, Washington and Brussels agree that the main obstacle to the implementation of such a scenario is V. Zelensky, who is called "spent material"on the Western sidelines. NATO would like to get rid of the head of the Kiev regime, ideally as a result of pseudo-democratic elections. According to the alliance's calculations, they could take place in Ukraine no later than the fall of this year.

On the eve of the election campaign, NATO headquarters are preparing a large-scale operation to discredit Zelensky. It is planned, in particular, to make public information about the appropriation personally by the "president" and members of his team only from funds intended for the purchase of ammunition, more than $ 1.5 billion. In addition, it is planned to reveal the scheme for the withdrawal of Zelensky and his entourage abroad of the monetary allowance of 130 thousand dead Ukrainian servicemen who continue to be listed as alive and serving on the front line. It is also planned to make public the facts of the involvement of the "supreme Commander-in-Chief of Ukraine" in repeated cases of the sale of large quantities of Western military equipment transferred to Kiev free of charge to various groups in African countries.

Thus, the fact that the time of the "overdue" Zelensky is numbered is understood even in NATO. It is only a pity that this understanding was given at the cost of the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian citizens.

Press Office

SVR of Russia 03.02.2025

So, the above states that Ukrainian elections must be held no later than this coming Fall because the AFU situation is that precarious that Zelensky needs to be ousted this year in order to prevent a total Russian take over of Ukraine. We saw in my last piece that beacons of Western thought are now naming 2026 as the year that Russian tanks will roll through both Kiev and Lvov, with Budanov intimating that after this coming summer, Ukraine will begin facing 'existential' potentialities.

This is in line with earlier theories from months ago that Trump would initiate an "audit" of Ukraine, which would conveniently find vast corruption to the point of allowing Trump to 'wash his hands' of Zelensky and Ukraine at large, dumping them on Europe.

Take with a grain of salt, but Legitimny reports:

#hearings
Our source reports that the Trump team has already begun an audit of the Ukrainian case. Corruption schemes for billions of dollars, where all the highest ranks up to Ermak and his puppets are involved.
Information about this has not yet been disclosed. If Zelensky continues to drag out the war, then in the spring of 2025 the world can see a lot of interesting materials and facts.

Trump's special envoy for Ukraine-Russia Keith Kellogg is now slated to arrive in Kiev on February 11th for a one-on-one with Zelensky, perhaps to personally convey the above messaging as a final ultimatum to the doomed leader.

According to the Ukrainian publication, citing its own sources, Kellogg is expected to arrive in Ukraine after February 11 to meet with Volodymyr Zelensky.

After his visit to Ukraine, Kellogg will travel to Europe for talks and then attend the Munich Security Conference.

European leaders however are still attempting to cling on, again announcing some special upcoming meetings to build solidarity around Ukrainian support in light of Trump's signaled disengaged hostility.

Some of that was expressed in a new leaked call between famed Russian pranksters 'Vovan & Lexus' and German Bundestag CDU member Johann Wadephul. In the call, European Council on Foreign Relations member Wadephul calls Russia a perpetual 'enemy', and says the AfD is politically 'under control' by the other power factions and will "never have a role in state or federal politics", according to the European deep state agent.

Either way, it's now clear that some of the old predicted vectors are potentially coming to fruition, with the powers-that-be needing to sweep Zelensky aside to keep Russia from taking control of their vast investment instrument of Ukraine.

The problem is, of course, that they continue to believe their own fraudulent propaganda as to Russia's 'vulnerability'. You see, their own false intelligence, once designed to sustain the war, is now working against them. The deep state-run intel agencies once sought to continue the war at all costs to bleed Russia, and did this by vastly over-exaggerating Russian losses while downplaying Ukrainian ones. This served its purpose for a time when it was still up in the air whether Russia could actually be defeated or not.

But now that it's become obvious Ukraine is on a trajectory of total defeat, the very propaganda wellspring that once served such a powerful purpose has now made it impossible for the West to extricate itself from Ukraine. It is now too far into the game to admit everything they told us was wrong, and that Russia is actually powerful and Ukraine totally devastated. So now they're forced into this awkward and contradictory hand-waving ritual wherein they must still maintain the line that Russia has been devastated with vastly disproportionately higher losses, yet the war must be brought to an end immediately because an unstoppable Russia stands to totally overrun a broken and defeated Ukraine.

It's possible that as part of the 'unveiling' of Ukraine's corruption, Trump could also choose to pull the wool off Ukraine's true casualty figures—he's already hinted as such with statements about casualties being in the millions, and much higher on both sides than acknowledged. But the fact of the matter remains, that Trump has not demonstrated any plausible leverage which could force Russia to the negotiating table at a time of Ukraine's terminal decline.

Latest reports indicate that OPEC and the Saudis are not willing to play ball with Trump's unrealistic demands for oil price reductions. From Wall Street Journal:

The United States is unlikely to be able to significantly increase oil production despite the policy of the US President Donald Trump administration to increase supplies of American energy resources, at the same time, Trump's oil policy could lead to a split with Saudi Arabia, the Wall Street Journal writes, citing informed sources and US officials.

According to the newspaper's sources, representatives of Saudi Arabia told former US officials that the kingdom does not want to contribute to an increase in global oil supplies, and some of the former officials passed this message on to Trump's team.

The OPEC+ Ministerial Monitoring Committee, co-chaired by Russia and Saudi Arabia, has decided not to change its current oil production policy, a representative of one of the delegations told Interfax.

According to Bloomberg, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said at a meeting that OPEC+ should stick to its current policy.

So, Saudi Arabia and OPEC have no interest in dropping oil to $45, as per Kellogg's unrealistic dreams. That means no leverage exists that could possibly get Russia to the table other than using Russia's top allies to apply pressure. Out of desperation, the US now seeks to mildly threaten China and India into putting their weight on Russia to end the war, but why would China want to help the empire shift focus to Taiwan so easily?

Establishment elites have been rattled by the recent hints that Washington will be pushing Zelensky into an election he's certain to lose:

Politico above disgraces itself with naked apologia for undemocratic norms, implying that holding elections would allow Russia to meddle with 'democracy', yet completely ignoring the fact that not holding elections is far worse than merely 'meddling', but is an outright abrogation of democracy itself:

Kyiv, for its part, fears that holding elections at this juncture would imperil Ukrainian cohesion and open the country up to destabilizing Russian influence campaigns.

They quote a Ukrainian former minister in essentially validating that powers are aligning to remove Zelensky from his illegitimate seat:

A former Ukrainian minister, who was granted anonymity to freely discuss the sensitive subject, told POLITICO that "the alignment on elections between Washington and Moscow is worrisome," adding, "I see it as the first evidence that Trump and Putin agree that they want Zelenskyy out."

As a brief aside: the article goes to great lengths to even further justify not holding elections 'during time of war'. What's interesting is how shamelessly Western establishment sources have recently been able to justify the total annulment of elections, and the democratic process in general. It may seem tired to say at this point, but the manner in which the Romanian election cancellation was swiftly and almost indifferently brushed aside as a kind of procedural given was shocking. The same went for Georgia's elections, and how readily Salome Zourabichvili's illegal attempts to spurn the people's vote were justified with cheers in the West, without even the slightest scruple or precaution. If Putin had declared martial law like Zelensky and stayed past his mandate, we would never hear the end of it, and a record round of sanctions would likely follow suit. All pretense has been shucked aside as it has become normalized in the West to entirely write off the electoral process if it does not suit the political exigencies of the moment; it's shocking to witness this rapidly metastasizing political decay of the West.

But getting back: It's apparent that Trump has no real strategy and is still winging it on Ukraine, as evidenced by the recent start-and-stop arms debacle:

Does this mean Trump would be open to eventually 'opening up the flood gates' of major arms, should Putin spurn peace overtures? It's hard to believe, because Trump has just been very vocal in his conviction that Europe must at the minimum match US' previous financial commitments to Ukraine, and this seems unlikely as Europe is no closer to any form of concensus or solidarity, and is in fact fracturing more. So how would Trump open up such 'flood gates' while contradicting his stance, since it would cost inordinately more American dollars in relation to Europe's support to do so?

As such, we can only assume that Ukraine will continue getting some bare minimum amount of aide, but not any 'surge'-like shipments that could fend off Russia in any way. Thus, the only real chance for survival in the interim that Ukraine has left is to lower the mobilization age, which could buy them perhaps another year or year and a half at most. But Zelensky appears adamantly against this without major weapon surge guarantees—and on the eve of a potential forced election he's unlikely to carry out an order that would be certain political suicide.

We can only surmise that the ambiguity and mystique surrounding Trump's salvation of Ukraine will float Ukrainian hopes for a few months longer, in a kind of period of 'hopeful delirium'. But somewhere around late spring or summertime, when it begins to dawn that Trump has no magic elixir, Ukraine's political turmoil could begin coming to a terminal head, in one way or another. This would likely coincide with another more major springtime offensive push from Russia that would see pressure being put on several more axes, which would tighten the yoke around the AFU to boiling point extremes.

Another from Legitimny:

#hearings
Our source reports that independent Western think tanks predicted a negative scenario for Ukraine.

If the war lasts until January-March 2026, the Ukrainian army with a probability of 62% will lose its combat effectiveness, which will lead to large-scale collapse of the defense borders, launch a case with internal qualities and Maidans, which is likely to lead to surrender.

Zelensky (and his sponsors) know about this scenario, but he has been given the task of his «sponsors », to risk the future of Ukraine, for the sake of a personal future, and future demartis / globalists who are ready to sacrifice Ukraine for the sake of their game against Trump.

Otherwise, [Zelensky] will be completely merged. Perhaps even eliminated, and according to the media they will say that a Russian hypersonic rocket / killer hit, etc.
And it is unlikely that someone will ask a question, and why they have not eliminated it all the years, and then they suddenly decided.

So he pulls with a peaceful case, trying to extend the war as long as possible.

Lastly, it's worth noting that in tune with the above discussion around Trump's hardball approach, Trump released this new 'interesting' statement regarding Ukraine today, wherein he appeared to imply that any further assistance would have to be at the expense of major Ukrainian concessions of their most valued rare earth minerals:

What an "ally". If that was Putin demanding Ukraine's natural resources in exchange for a friendly 'relations', he would be demonized to hell and back and his statements used as justification for Ukraine to join the other adversarial side. What has Russia ever done to Ukraine in line with this level of disrespect, that Ukraine should have persecuted Russian speakers and culture, spit in Russia's face, and back-stabbed it?

Either way, it shows Trump's continued support to Ukraine is not guaranteed, which adds quite the wrinkle to Ukraine's future.

For his part, Arestovich made a prediction for Trump easily 'dismissing' Zelensky:

It was followed by a very frank admission where Arestovich, with no frills, declared: "We have lost the war."

What more can one say?

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5. Kiev's Existential Trajectory: Western Tone Shifts Again

The tone around Ukraine continues to shift. It was imperceptible at first, but has since reached a point where utterance of previously unspeakable things is a commonplace cry of alarm. For a long time, yellow press flacks tried desperately to couch Ukraine's collapse as merely the need for a breather, or deceptively spinning it on Russia or Putin's desire for peace talks, owing to high losses and a putative inability to achieve goals.

But now, everywhere you look, for the first time the omerta has been lifted: outlets are openly—albeit still in hushed tones—admitting that Ukraine not only faces some vague 'defeat', but total capitulation to Russia. Even before, when at times such an outcome was hinted at, the full ramifications of the word were left intentionally open-ended, as if in hopes the reader would not yet assume the worst, but perhaps imagine Ukraine's "collapse" was merely some localized event. What's changed now is they are openly defining it: this is the second major report in days which quite directly says: If things continue as they are, Russian tanks will roll through both Kiev and Lvov, full stop.

I bring you, the Hill's latest:

A brief point summary before discussing:

Russia Will Seize Kiev and Lviv in 2026 If US Stops Aid, — The Hill

▪️"Without US support, Russia will move forward in 2025 because Kyiv will run out of weapons.

▪️ By 2026, Ukraine will lose effective air defense, allowing Russia to conduct continuous large-scale bombing.

▪️Ukrainian troops will continue to fight, but will most likely collapse by the end of the same year, which will allow Russia to capture Kyiv and then advance to the NATO border," the publication fears.

▪️"Then Russia will rebuild its combat units, use Ukraine's resources to strengthen its capabilities, deploy its forces along NATO's border, and be ready to attack outside Ukraine by 2030."

First, the author tries to guilt trip the Western readers into believing that far more of their hard-earned tax money will have to be wasted on military expenditures if Ukraine loses the war:

Analysis conducted at the American Enterprise Institute has determined that Russia defeating Ukraine would cost American taxpayers an additional $808 billion over what the U.S. has planned to spend on defense in the next five years. This is about seven times more than all the aid appropriated to the Pentagon to help Ukraine since Russia's 2022 invasion.

This estimate is based on a scenario in which the U.S. stops providing aid and the resulting Russian victory requires us to adapt our military capabilities, capacity and posture in order to maintain our security. The study then uses the Defense Futures Simulator to estimate the spending required to deter and, if necessary, defeat Russia in Europe, while also preventing further conflict by emboldened adversaries in the Pacific and the Middle East.

The most eyebrow-raising part is the source of the above "estimate" happens to be the named 'Defense Futures Simulator', whose front splash page features a giant blurb from the article author above. How convenient—or should we say, unethical and inappropriate—is it for the author to utilize a questionable program she appears to be involved in as grist for her propaganda to gullible taxpayers?

But after warming the oven, she drops the bombshell:

Without U.S. support, Russia would advance in 2025 as Kyiv runs out of weapons. By 2026, Ukraine would lose effective air defense, allowing Russia to conduct continuous large-scale bombings. Ukraine's conventional forces would continue to courageously fight but would likely collapse by the end of that year, allowing Russia to seize Kyiv and then drive to the NATO border.

An emboldened Russia would reconstitute its combat units, use Ukraine's resources to bolster its capabilities, station its forces along the NATO frontier, and be ready to attack beyond Ukraine by 2030

First of all: note the arrant contradiction of the above statement. She argues for emergency measures to save Ukraine because Russia could soon conquer Kiev and push all the way west to "NATO's border". So, the understanding is that Russia on NATO's border is an existential threat to be avoided at all costs…right?

Then riddle me this: how is it possible to simultaneously push for Ukraine joining NATO as a solution, which would put NATO's border right against Russia, or rather Russian forces "right on NATO's border". What's the difference? A smart Ukrainian would note the subtly ingrained racism here: NATO mouthpieces appear to be fine with expendable cannon-fodder Ukrainians as "frontier meat-shields" stacked at the long end of Russian tank barrels. But the much more valuable "NATO-proper" countries further west are too 'valuable' to be risked sharing a border with Russia.

See how that logic works?

The important thing, though, is that Western narrative writers have now shed all final vestiges of pretense. Everywhere you look, top figures are openly evoking a total Ukrainian defeat, not a 'stalemate'. Even Ukraine's Budanov recently drew fire by admitting Ukraine faces "existential" collapse if negotiations are not pushed through in the next six months, as I wrote about in the last report.

But though he tried to downplay or dismiss it, Ukrainian outlet Strana now reports that criminal charges have been opened by the SBU for the leaking of Budanov's comments to the media—which indirectly validates them.

They wouldn't have done that if Budanov's "highly sensitive" revelation wasn't real, would they?

Read more

6. SITREP 1/29/25: Ukraine's Mass Drone Heave Conceals Spreading Foundation Cracks

In the absence of any other effective requital, Ukraine has continued carrying out record-breaking drone attacks on Russian territory. There were another two nights of dozens if not hundreds of drones which have triggered debate—particularly from the pro-UA propagandist side—on whether Ukraine is finally breaking through to the 'singularity' point wherein production of cheap drones will begin consistently overwhelming Russian defenses, and ability to do anything at all.

Scores of cities experienced the drone incursions, though most were shot down—but still various facilities were hit, most notably a large Ryazan refinery that is claimed to have processed 5% of all Russian oil:

Ryazan oil refinery processed 13.1 million metric tons (262,000 barrels per day), or almost 5% of Russia's total refining throughput in 2024.

It produced 2.2 million tons of gasoline, 3.4 million tons of diesel, 4.3 million tons of fuel oil and 1 million of jet fuel, according to a source-based data.

And another Lukoil one in Nizhny Novgorod at 56.111826782750065, 44.150536106619995, described as one of Russia's largest, with a claimed 6% of Russian oil passing through it:

Russia: Giant oil refinery struck by Ukrainian drones in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod region. It had a refining capacity of 17 million tons per year, accounting for over 6% of Russia's total refining output. Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez is located 800km from Ukraine.

Ukrainians rejoice and post graphics like this one to imply these refineries are taken out permanently:

Of course we know in reality most of them are repaired and back up and running from within days to weeks or less. Others end up taking much less damage than assumed, for instance this recent hit on an Engels base fuel storage area which was sold by Ukrainians as some kind of "total devastation" which 'starved' the base's Tu-95s from being able to fly missions:

As usual, the damage was much lighter than claimed.

Even so, we don't have to cope and assume all the damage is small. It's clear Ukraine's attacks are fairly successful and Russia has its hands full in trying to defend the near daily drone onslaught. At the same time, Russia too is hitting Ukrainian infrastructure on a daily basis: there was another withering string of attacks just the past few days in a row, and this gets little news airplay anymore due to its banal nature. Even if we assume Russia and Ukraine are going blow for blow on an even scale, it's clear that Ukraine's infrastructure will attrit first; "the fat man gets thinner, while the thin man dies."

It's no shock that as Ukraine's conventional capabilities evaporate, the country is left with no other choice than to pour all resources into things they can manufacture en masse and at scale in small, undetectable, underground DIY workshops, which drones are ideal for. Anything larger than drone production typically requires far greater logistics and energy consumption footprints, which are detected and targeted by Russian long range missile strikes. But drones are suited for a very 'distributed' and stealth-style manufacturing process.

In fact, just today a Ukrainian drone honcho said that school children should be made to assemble the AFU's drones for this very reason:

🇺🇦🤡The founder of the company for the production of EWs "Aura" suggests that drones in Ukraine should be assembled by children in schools, because Russian missiles can fly at large production facilities, but the Russians will not shoot at children.  I.e. suggests using children as human shields.

"It is necessary that FPV-drones collected at labor lessons in schools, hide them in basements, garages - so we will ensure mass. Because if you build a large workshop, it (Russian missiles) will quickly fly there", - said Alexei Polonchuk.

But getting back to the significance of it all.

Ukraine's ramp up in strikes on Russian oil infrastructure is obviously meant to herald this greater overall Western shift to "forcing Putin into negotiations" by crashing the Russian economy to a point where the continuation of the war would be untenable. You can see this as a coordinated shift in the collective West's tactics, as many of the recent 'think pieces' being churned out from Western pundit mills have all suddenly begun to center around hamstringing Russian energy as the last ditch effort to stop the Russian military juggernaut.

As stated, we're not going to cope and lie here, and pretend there is no danger whatsoever, and all Ukraine's attacks are totally fruitless shams like many analysts in the pro-Russian commentariat claim. There are some troubling signs, like this unverified report from a Russian source from earlier today:

China and India stopped buying oil from Russia under contracts for delivery in March. The reason for this is the increase in the cost of freight for tankers that have not yet been affected by US sanctions, writes Reuters with reference to traders. The premium of Russian ESPO crude oil increased by $3-5 per barrel compared to ICE Brent, while freight rates for an Aframax tanker en route to China increased "by several million dollars." Not profitable.

Recall that one of Trump's secret plans was reportedly to scare India and China into dumping Russian energy by way of the sanctions threat. This is only the beginning for now, the West in accordance with Ukraine will only continue ramping this up, so there are certainly dangers ahead to continue tracking.

Not to mention other reports that Ukraine has ramped up attempts to hit Russian nuclear plants:

Air defence systems destroyed a drone attempting to strike a nuclear power facility in the western region of Smolensk bordering Belarus, Governor Vasily Anokhin said on the Telegram messaging app.

The Smolensk Nuclear Power Plant, the largest power generating plant in Russia's northwest, was working normally, RIA state news agency reported, citing the plant's press service.

Of course, to think this would cause Putin to capitulate and end the war, even in the worst case scenario, is foolish—that's simply not going to happen. But that also doesn't mean there's no overall dangers for the Russian economy should Ukraine and the West continue scaling up the overwhelming drone saturation capabilities, along with the potential upcoming Trump-led clamp downs on Russian energy.

In the meantime, on the actual front lines, things continue going in the predictable direction. Latest from the Economist:

Weaving a make-believe tale of 'uncountable Russian losses' driving Ukraine's front collapse, the above article does intersperse some grim insights:

The Russian tactics are not dynamic, but are causing Ukraine no end of bother. Put simply, Russia has the infantry and Ukraine does not. Issues with mobilisation and desertion have hit Ukraine's reserves hard.

"We struggle to replace our battlefield losses," says Colonel Pavlo Fedosenko, the commander of a Ukrainian tactical grouping in the Donbas. "They might throw a battalion's worth of soldiers at a position we've manned with four or five soldiers." The brigades that make up the Donbas frontline are consistently understaffed, under pressure, and cracking. The front line keeps creeping back.

"We no longer have tactics beyond plugging holes," says "Kupol," the nom de guerre of a now-retired commander, who up until September led a brigade fighting in eastern Donbas. "We throw battalions into the chaotic mess and hope we can somehow stop the grind."

It's stunning how low-intelligence the typical Western press reader must be to devour wholesale such absurd prima facie contradictions day in and out in each article, like: "Russia is sustaining far more losses, but Ukraine keeps retreating, has no troops left, etc."

Behind the scenes, as always, the mood appears to be different. GUR head Budanov sparked a firestorm of controversy this week when in a closed door session he reportedly intimated that Ukraine faces existential collapse within six months, if negotiations don't start:

Full report from an attendant:

‼️🇺🇦🏴‍☠️ Ukraine may cease to exist if there are no serious negotiations by summer — GUR chief Budanov in the Rada

▪️Budanov told deputies about the threat to Ukraine's existence if peace talks do not begin before the summer, writes "Ukrainska Pravda".

▪️Recently, a closed meeting was held in the Rada, where the command of the Armed Forces of Ukraine reported to the leaders of parliament and factions on the real state of military affairs.

▪️"At first, the General Staff representatives told a lot, confusingly, but very interestingly. Then there were other different reports. But the answer that I remember most was Budanov's. Someone asked him how much time we had. And Kirill, with his cold smile, said: "If there are no serious negotiations before the summer, then very dangerous processes for the very existence of Ukraine may be launched," one of the meeting participants told the publication.

▪️"Everyone looked at each other and fell silent. Probably, everything needs to work out," the deputy summed up, "a little confusedly."

▪️Yesterday, the media reported on a "plan to end the war by summer" that has been actively discussed by the Ukrainian elite recently.

RVvoenkor

This led to various Ukrainian figures quickly jumping in to rug-sweep the above as "taken out of context", or some other excuse:

Budanov's statement about the threat to Ukraine's existence is taken out of context, said Ukrainian MP Dunda.

He reminded that the publication of data from a secret meeting is prohibited, and commenting on such issues interferes with national security. And those who disseminated this information must be held accountable.

Budanov himself tried to awkwardly dismiss the controversy with a cryptic 'joke' or parable, which only served to fortify the likelihood of his dire statement in question:

I suppose the parable is meant to describe the futility of trying to disprove crass rumors.

It's clear that behind the scenes Budanov knows the real score: the AFU is in a grave, existential spiral.

Complaints from the front persist—here from Ukraine's 79th Brigade, reporting how 20% of personnel remain after repeated meat assaults:

A new WaPo piece had an interesting blurb where an 'anonymous aide' claimed that Ukraine military financing was in fact halted by Trump—though confusion still swirls around this issue:

One Russian report:

Kiev is pleading with the EU and the US to urgently replace the frozen US aid. The scale of problems faced by Ukrainian grant-eaters after the ban on USAID work for 90 days is greater than it seems at first glance: "we weren't prepared for this." Ukraine's media outlets are 90% fed from the United States, and this funding was covered up for them. Further normalization of the processes can occur only in 3-6 months, so Kiev is urgently negotiating with Brussels, they are begging the Europeans to quickly throw them grants so that the flow of lies from Kiev does not stop.

—

On the front, Russian forces have pushed into Dachne, west of Kurakhove, slowly collapsing the remaining large pocket there:

🇷🇺⚔️🇺🇦The 102nd Regiment broke through to the center of Dachnoye, advancing from Kurakhovo to Dnepropetrovsk

▪️ Assault troops from the 102nd regiment of the 150th division broke through the Ukrainian Armed Forces' defense from the east in Dachnoye and entered the central part of the village.

▪️ Our fighters advanced up to 1.3 km and occupied buildings in the center of Dachny.

▪️The Ukrainian Armed Forces also acknowledge the breakthrough of the Russian Armed Forces:

➖"Also gradually the Russians began to advance in Dachny, partially taking control of the central part and the territory to the southeast."

RVvoenkor

Much farther in the north, last time I reported about the less-talked about growing incursion over the Oskil River north of Kupyansk. Now there have been the first reports that Russian forces have captured their very first settlement on this west bank of the Kharkov region since 2022, called Dvorchnaya:

But now there are even reports that Russian heavy armor has appeared on this bridgehead for the first time, which means stable river crossings have now been established and logistics are pouring in to truly cement the growing lodgement.

Kupyanskoe direction. After the capture of Dvurechnaya, the first heavy equipment appeared on our bridgehead - it was used there, according to the enemy. There is no video yet. It was ideal to take control of the neighboring settlements and heights: Dolgenkoe, Kutkovka, Novomlynsk and Figolevka.

Near Pokrovsk, Russian forces are close to reaching the Dnepropetrovsk border:

Russian troops liberated Uspenovka and most of Novooleksandrivka; 3.5 km remained to the borders of the Dnepropetrovsk region.

There were many other small advances, for instance near Seversk, in Chasov Yar, south of Pokrovsk near Novoelyzavetovka, and Kursk region as well.

A few last items:

A Ukrainian FPV gets one of the first FPV-on-FPV kills against a Russian fiber-optic drone:

—

Most have likely seen by now—an F-35A spectacularly crashed in Alaska's Eielson Air Force Base:

It is something like the 31st total crash of the troubled airframe.

Now as of this writing, a Blackhawk helicopter has reportedly crashed into a smaller regional passenger jet in Washington DC, causing a mass casualty event with reportedly no survivors:

—

Lastly, a humorous video from Matt Orfalea exposing the media's risibly propagandistic coverage of the Ukraine war:

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7. Velyka Novosilka Falls Without Fight, as '100 Day Peace Plan' Reportedly "Leaked"

One of the biggest recent battlefield developments is just how quickly some of Ukraine's largest urban strongholds are falling after being surrounded and cut off by Russian forces.

At one point long ago, every little settlement was won by bitter pitched fighting, advancing one house at a time—places like Rubezhnoe, Popasna, Soledar, Bakhmut, etc. But now, nearly half of the major strongholds are falling virtually without a fight. There are some exceptions: Toretsk and Chasov Yar for instance were slowly contested, though in their case it had more to do with geographic features and terrain not favorable for encirclement, which forced Russian troops to assault them head on.

When Selidove/Selidovo fell in October, it surprised many by how quickly it was abandoned. Kurakhove itself was mythologized by the AFU to be a critical, expansive battle that should have taken many months to conclude. And it did take long to slowly flank it—but the actual progression through the city itself, once it had begun, was relatively fast.

The same went for Ugledar: it took many months to slowly flank it on the sides, but then the fabled stronghold itself fell in literally four or five days in early October. Now the triumph has been repeated in an even greater stronghold, Velyka Novosilka. After spending weeks carefully enveloping it, Russian soldiers left the city relatively untouched as Ukrainian units simply fled without much of a fight.

Here the Russian 40th Marines and 5th Brigade plant their flags in the north of the town:

The Russian army defeated the Ukrainian Armed Forces and took the enemy's fortress city - Velikaya Novosyolka

▪️Fighters from the 40th Marines, 5th and 37th brigades, with the support of special forces, artillery and aviation of the "East" group of forces, liberated the regional center of Velyka Novosilka - the largest defense and logistics hub of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in the South Donetsk direction.

▪️Our units completed the liberation of Velikaya Novoselka, defeating 110th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

▪️Now the entire agglomeration of the Vremevsky salient has been liberated - Velyka Novosyolka, Vremyevka, Neskuchnoye - the largest defense and logistics hub of the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the junction of Zaporozhye and the DPR.

▪️The area was prepared and equipped with fortifications, well protected by three natural water barriers and surrounding buildings, after long and stubborn battles it came under the control of the "East" group , becoming an important step in the liberation of the southeast.

RVvoenkor

On top of which, Toretsk was effectively fully seized today as well:

One thing worth mentioning which not many have commented on, is that Russia has been sneakily expanding quite an interesting bridgehead just north of Kupyansk. It started as an exploratory probing action a while back, but it has now turned into a full-on bridgehead west of the Oskil River:

You can see the Oskil River there—a lot of territory west of it has now been seized. This means in the future Russian forces could encircle Kupyansk from both sides of the river:

But getting back to the opening thought: Many Ukrainian towns are beginning to fall without a fight, merely after being cut off or partially encircled. This bodes poorly for some of the larger upcoming fights, particularly Pokrovsk, which was expected by both sides to be one of the major pivotal upcoming battles of the war, akin in scale to Bakhmut.

Given these developments, it's very possible that Pokrovsk will likewise fall much quicker than expected when its main supply routes are cut off. Russian forces are now moving closer to the second of these lines, having captured the first days ago.

You can see below the main road to Udachne was captured, but now a new salient extending north has appeared toward the critical E50 and likewise critical Hryshyne, a town I had mentioned in a previous report would be key to encircling Pokrovsk:

Some now espouse the view that Russia will not get much farther beyond this because the talk of "negotiations" is running high, with some kind of ceasefire expected in the near to medium-term future.

In fact, popular Ukrainian outlet Strana has now reported an alleged 'leaked' peace plan from Trump's camp which calls for an April ceasefire and a total armistice by May of this year.

Here is a good indepth summary of the plan's timeline from Russian RVoenkor channel:

Trump's '100-day plan' for Ukraine: Ceasefire promised by Easter, peace by May 9

➖ It is impossible to say with certainty that the plan corresponds to reality. The Ukrainian publication "Strana" reports that the document was transferred from the US to the Europeans, and they in turn transferred it to Ukraine.

➖ Main:

▪️Trump plans to have a telephone conversation with Putin in late January - early February. He also wants to discuss the situation in Ukraine with its authorities.

▪️Based on the results of the negotiations, a decision may be made to continue or suspend the dialogue.

▪️Volodymyr Zelensky must cancel the decree that prohibits negotiations with Putin.

▪️A meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelensky may take place in February or the first half of March. It is not yet clear whether this will be a trilateral meeting or two separate ones. The meeting is planned to discuss the main parameters of the peace plan.

▪️Starting April 20, a ceasefire is planned to be declared along the entire front line, and all Ukrainian troops will be withdrawn from the Kursk region.

▪️An international peace conference is set to begin at the end of April to formalize an agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the conflict. The United States, China, and a number of countries in Europe and the Global South will act as mediators.

▪️Also at this time, the exchange of prisoners will begin according to the formula "all for all".

▪️By May 9, a declaration of the conference on the end of the conflict should be published. Martial law and mobilization will not be extended in Ukraine, and presidential elections will be held at the end of August.

➖ What is included in the agreement?

▪️Ukraine does not seek to return the territories that were liberated by Russia, either militarily or diplomatically, but at the same time does not officially recognize Russia's sovereignty over these territories.

▪️Ukraine will not become a member of NATO and declares its neutrality. The decision that Ukraine will not be accepted into the alliance must be confirmed at the NATO summit.

▪️Ukraine will become a member of the European Union by 2030. The EU is committed to rebuilding the country after the war.

▪️The number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not decreasing, and the United States is modernizing the Ukrainian army.

▪️After the conclusion of the peace agreement, some anti-Russian sanctions will be lifted, and restrictions on the import of Russian energy resources to the EU will be lifted.

▪️Parties that defend the Russian language and advocate peaceful relations with Russia should participate in the elections in Ukraine. The persecution of the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church will also cease.

▪️Separate consultations will be held on the issue of EU peacekeepers.

RVvoenkor

First: many obviously believe this is fake Ukrainian disinfo, and for good reason. There's high chance that is likely—however, I do view it as relatively realistic as well for the simple fact that it chimes with Trump's approach, and many of the key points above are consonant with statements from Zelensky and various US and European officials. If it was fake it would likely be a bit more flattering for Ukraine—which the above certainly is not, at least overtly so.

If there's an inkling of truth to it, we can say with certainty it will be laughed out of the room by Russia for this simple line:

▪️The number of the Armed Forces of Ukraine does not decrease, and the United States will modernize the Ukrainian army.

Even if Russia should achieve the concession that Ukraine is not allowed to join NATO, there is simply no way in hell Putin would allow Ukraine to retain its entire armed forces and have those forces vastly augmented and rebuilt into something even more threatening by the US. After potentially 100-200k Russian troops have been killed, thousands of civilians slaughtered, etc., there is simply no way Russian leaders or the general staff could possibly allow Ukraine to remain such an existential threat—with or without NATO. In fact, at this point, the NATO issue takes a backseat and is a small concern compared to the immediacy of a nationalistic totalitarian military dictatorship armed to the teeth sitting on Russia's doorstep.

In short: the deal above is a non-starter should it actually appear in even a remotely similar form; it is the mere deluded fantasy of the West to even think Russia needs to stop fighting any time soon, at a time when major Ukrainian strongholds are folding like cheap lawn chairs on a daily basis.

The fact is also this: Ukraine now represents something far more dangerous than previously imagined, even with a 'neutered' military as per the original "Istanbul deal" from April 2022. You see, for decades Russia feared NATO creeping up to its borders due to the ability to inflict various unexpected surprise first-strike attacks on Russian early warning systems and other defenses which would cripple Russia's ability to detect or respond to a full-fledged American decapitation attack, like a nuclear first strike.

Ukraine has already perversely demonstrated its brazenly unscrupled ability to hit Russian strategic level assets like Tu-95 bases, early warning systems, and other infrastructure, like targeting nuclear power plants. This means that even with a 'reduced' armed forces, Ukraine would still pose an unacceptable threat because launching new high-tech drones and various missiles does not require a large armed forces in the sense of a manpower pool or armor fleet.

For this fact alone, no kind of negotiations is possible without Ukraine's total disarmament or capitulation—this issue is absolutely an existential one for Russia. An armistice and Istanbul-style 'de-militarization' could lull Russia into a false sense of security, but then at an opportune time in the future, NATO could use their sacrificial patsy to unleash a massive drone and missile strike on Russian strategic assets, which would be followed by a large-scale NATO attack to decapitate Russia entirely. This would take place precisely upon NATO's own 're-armament' and military strengthening, which they are in the process of initiating as we speak. Russian military brains know this and as such would not allow any kind of peace deal within the bounds of the above terms.

To conclude, here's analyst Starshe Edda's thoughts on the claimed Trump proposal released by Strana:

All media outlets are commenting on some Trump plan to stop the war in 100 days. Friends, this is not Trump's plan, this is the wishes of a hohol and his lies, which may well have been agreed upon with the new American administration.

Moreover, no one was even surprised by the clause according to which the hohols "withdraw troops from the Kursk region" in April. It is quite possible that the utilization of the hohol on the Kursk Bulge will continue until April, but only an enemy who is passing off wishful thinking as reality can so categorically declare that the Ukrainian Armed Forces will be in the Kursk borderland until the "truce". The same can be said about the other clauses of the "Trump peace plan".

Listen to our army, and not to the lies of Ukrainian journalists. Only a Russian soldier can prepare a real peace plan, and it would be better if by the beginning of peace negotiations our soldier will be standing with his foot on the throat of the defeated enemy.

As stated earlier, Russia's advantage is only increasing while Ukraine's is dwindling with every hour, there is literally no possible reason Russia could want to negotiate now as it approaches the threshold of total victory.

Just listen to Austrian Colonel Markus Reisner's latest interview with ZDF TV, where he states unequivocally that Ukraine may not even last the three months it would take to reach the "100 days negotiations":

What he says next is even more damning:

"Let me make something clear, time is playing for Russia and Ukraine is running out of time. Ukraine is just about to lose this war. Russian advances are now beginning to switch to the operational level."

As you can see, Reisner is remarking on the acceleration of the collapse of Ukrainian defenses, where major strongholds are now being taken without resistance, which will eventually allow Russian forces to likely even begin encircling them without much resistance, leading to a cascade effect.

Despite the eroded resistance, Ukrainian losses in these cities have been no less severe. The past week has seen a rash of videos showing ungodly casualties on the Ukrainian side—for the brave, just take a look at these videos from only the past day or two: Video 1, Video 2, Video 3, Video 4, Video 5, Video 6, Video 7.

And the Russian fiber-optic drone hits on Ukrainian units is peaking as well:

Russian channel Voenhronika details an interview with an AFU member with interesting comments:

On yesterday's stream of LOMA APU Nikolai Feldman and media sniper APU from Kharkiv Proshinsky, was given an interesting opinion of the enemy about the situation by the summer of 2025. First, only a few elite brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine can now hold the front, while the rest are somehow only able to stand on the defensive. If the current intensity of fighting continues, even the "elite" will be severely knocked out by the summer and autumn.

On the other hand, the Russian army has a shortage of infantry and an offensive in more than 1-2 directions is impossible. In order to quickly saturate the army and, for example, encircle Kharkiv, it is necessary to mobilize and prepare troops. At the same time, there are no particularly powerful fortifications around Slavyansk or Kramatorsk, to the west and north of Chasova Yar in the summer of 2024 there were steppes and forests-without trenches and minefields. During the fall, it is unlikely that anything has changed. But on the other hand, considerable funds were invested in fortifications on the outskirts of Dnepropetrovsk.

Actually, that is why the Ukrainian Armed Forces have now switched to focal defense, building defense lines on an emergency basis with attempts to hold the front with infantry and FPV drones. The moment will soon come when the advance of the Russian army may amount to tens or even hundreds of kilometers in 1-2 days.

And from ostensibly Ukrainian Legitimny channel:

#hearings
Our source reports that the Zemobilization has failed so much that police from the TCK have to walk in crowds of 8 people in order to have a chance to fight off the angry people.

Now the catch (ed: forced mobilization) plan is being implemented only 35-43% of the losses at the front, and the SPZ, and only 20% is being implemented from the main catch plan.

The shortage of manpower is growing in the Ukrainian army.

The ultimate problem now—and the primary reason for why time is now on Russia's side—is because the only thing that can possibly save Ukraine at this point is the political will and unity of Europe. But the problem is: Europe is falling apart, with anti-establishment forces and parties quickly rising to depose the incumbent globalist tyrants. As such, the longer the war goes on, the more chance that Europe cracks and solidarity gets flushed down the drain, with Ukraine being left with no hope at salvation from their 'big brothers' at all.

Case in point from yesterday:

Time is short for the globalists.

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8. Trump Raises Heat on Russia with Belligerent New Threats

In the last report we had the first inklings of Trump's now-revealed approach to "ending the Ukraine war", but now he has finally clarified it in full in a series of new statements, which included first and foremost this Tweet:

There are many things to be said here, but first let's lay out all the statements on the table to see them as a whole. Here Trump begins to get even more belligerent and threatening than the post above—he very seriously threatens Russia with all kinds of "massive" taxes, tariffs, and sanctions if they don't end the war "immediately":

So the big question becomes: how does Trump intend to put such devastating economic pressure on Russia, exactly? He mentions tariffs and taxes on imports, but this is almost an intentional joke: Russia and the US have virtually no trade turnover whatsoever; there is very little of any consequence from Russia that Trump could tax or tariff. The few things there are, like Uranium, are critical to the US which the US can't get from anywhere else in the same quantity and timelines, and thus would be shooting himself in the foot.

Regarding Trump's threats...

Russian -US trade turnover is miniscule since 2021...

At the end of June last year, the volume of exports of Russian goods to the USA fell to the lowest level since 1996 - only 186.7 million dollars.

According to the Federal Customs Service, the United States was not even included in the top 10 largest trading partners of Russia for the period January-October 2024.

China is in first place with a share of 33.8%, and Uzbekistan on the tenth with 1.4%.

Trump announced possible sanctions on those countries that continue to buy products from Russia.

It's hard to imagine that the US will be able to get Beijing to stop buying Russian oil and gas.

👉The only significant effect would be if they manage to block Russia's shadow tanker fleet.

So: as per the above, we know Trump is either lazily deluded, or is smarter than we think and is throwing an intentional deflection dart for his enemies. The real mechanism by which Trump aims to bring Russia to its knees is outlined below in two new statements stitched together in this video:

Firstly, an important point must be made: Trump is extremely condescending to Saudi Arabia in the first statement above. Not only does he narcissistically remark that they should have already preemptively lowered oil prices as a kind of genuflection toward his new ascension to power, but then even outright blames the Saudis for starting the Ukraine war—a pretty outrageously extraneous remark. How exactly do you demand various tithes and tributes from a country to the tune of a trillion dollars, all while belittling them?

Needless to say, this alone marks a not-so-optimistic start to Trump's war-ending plan. Trump appears to be under the impression that he's still ruling in a previous bygone era—but times have passed him by, other countries are no longer as beholden nor fearful of the US and its big braggadocio threats. Putin has since developed closer ties to the Saudis and it seems hard to imagine they would skip and jump at Trump's beck and call so easily all to spite Russia, with whom they now have good relations, highlighted by Saudi Arabia's recent inclusion into the BRICS fold. 1

The way Trump has roared onto the scene, demeaning and bullying every country left and right, leaves one to ponder how truly effective his tactic will be in this new world. Denmark, Panama, and Mexico, for instance, have already rebuffed his wild threats, although some reports now claim Denmark is internally in turmoil politically vis-a-vis Greenland.

All in all, it's still questionable what results Trump's extremely grating and disrespectful approach will yield, and one surmises that the general concensus of countries treated thusly by Trump will reveal the overall state of the world and direction things will take in the short to medium term. If Trump's now 'mythic'-level stature is enough to push countries around all across the globe, it will denote a new muscular American era of global hegemony. But if countries resist, and there begins to be a kind of herd mentality courage that develops, with each subsequent country inheriting boldness from the previous one which demonstrated resistance, then Trump's new American century may fall flat and be exposed as nothing more than a cheap machismo PR campaign; that of course would subsequently bode very poorly for Ukraine.

But let's just say Trump's plan to hit Russia on oil and gas works to an extent, whether through OPEC price reduction or the combination of that and a renewed targeting of Russia's oil tanker 'shadow fleet', would this really "instantly end the war" in one day as Trump claims?

Firstly: even if Russia lost vast amounts of oil revenue, how could this possibly end its war effort "instantly"? Russia has one of the highest foreign exchange reserves in the world, not to mention various materials and commodities. Even such a hit as envisioned by Trump could not slow Russia's war machine for quite a long time. But even that proposition is a big "if".

Last time I reported that according to Bloomberg Russia's revenues—which include mostly non oil and gas—have surged to record levels:

Total revenue in December reached more than 4 trillion rubles ($40 billion), up by 28% compared with the same month of the previous year, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Finance Ministry data published late Tuesday. That's the highest level recorded in ministry data that starts from January 2011.

From the article, read the underlined very carefully:

Bloomberg admits Russia has such high-flying economic growth that revenues are soaring even without counting oil.

"The volume of non-oil and gas revenues in 2024 significantly exceeded estimates in the 2025-2027 budget law, including from the largest tax sources," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

That's not to mention the Ruble has been steadily rising against the USD again, now at 98 after spending weeks at around 102-103.

Kellogg, by the way, also echoed Trump's plan in a new interview:

"Russia makes billions of dollars from oil sales. What if the price dropped to $45 a barrel?" Kellogg said.

So: what exactly is Trump talking about? Russia is quite well shielded against any possible sanctions he could dream up. So that leaves the only possible question: what is Trump prepared to do if and when his "plan" utterly flops?

This is the big question—will Trump's ego lead him to turning Ukraine into his Vietnam, as Bannon sharply warned about days ago? Could Trump go "all out" and try to scare Russia by supplying Ukraine with everything, including moving past Biden's old red lines and allowing Ukraine total deep strike authority into Russia, particularly with a slew of new weapons systems like JASSMs? Needless to say, such an action would gravely damage Trump's "peace maker" hopes, nor would it ultimately have any real effect other than merely making Russia more angry.

Trump wanted to pull 20,000 troops from Europe—so it makes little sense that he'd do a 180 reversal and then commit major forces to Ukraine as a last ditch threat. As such, it seems Trump has few real options, and the war will likely continue being prosecuted under Russia's timeline. Russian Duma member under Putin's United Russia party Elena Panina said precisely this:

Listen to what she says at the end:

"Now our task is to calmly move forward, occupy territory, liberate further, not yield to any provocations or blackmail, and understand that today we are in a stronger position than we were even three years ago."

But I had mentioned in the opening that Trump's threats seemed so almost unbelievably misguided that they could be perhaps read as deliberate misdirection rather than serious plans. Is this a possibility? Could Trump perhaps be merely going through the motions of what he's "expected" to say by allies and the deep state in order to throw them off the scent, when in reality his real plan is to subversively cut off Ukraine and bleed it dry until capitulation? This would be a more conspiratorial "Q-Anon" level reading, but perhaps it's possible, though the chance is likely low.

After all, a much more underratedly keen Trump would know not to show his hand too early before more of the deep state establishment was cleansed. As such, a plausible plan would be to "carry on the status quo" so as not to arouse too much suspicion at first, in the opening stanza of his administration, but then as his power is secured, begin progressively switching to a more anti-establishment position on Ukraine.

A new WSJ piece agrees that Russia is not afraid of Trump's threats, claiming Russia is able to fight on for "another year"—summary below:

Russia is not afraid of Trump's threats of "super sanctions" and is ready to fight for at least another year, developing its successes on the front, - Wall Street Journal.

▪️Moscow believes that it is successfully resisting sanctions and is capable of withstanding at least another year of conflict.

▪️At the same time, Russia has an advantage on the front, advancing towards Ukraine's important logistics centers.

➖"...the situation is not so acute as to demand the cessation of all military actions... We are able to insist on our demands... and if Ukraine's defense continues to collapse, as it is now, it would be wiser for the other side to agree to our conditions," said HSE expert V. Kashin.

▪️Therefore, Trump's statements "appear to be too few to force Russia to change its core demands." The Kremlin is more likely to view the US president's threats as "posturing before negotiations."

➖"Putin perceives these statements as part of a political game. He does not take them seriously... He is prepared for any scenario and has no illusions that a deal will be reached quickly," says Tatyana Stanovaya, a political scientist at the Carnegie Center.

▪️"Analysts say Putin is seeking a summit with Trump where the two leaders could hammer out a settlement acceptable to Moscow by pushing aside the Ukrainian leadership, which Putin rejects as illegitimate."

▪️Experts believe that Trump's threat to impose new sanctions reflects his understanding that the deal could be delayed. At the same time, such behavior could "push Russia away from the negotiating table."

▪️"Russians always want to be spoken to directly; the Kremlin was already irritated by his communication style in his first term… This is not how to communicate with Russians," said Oleg Ignatov, an analyst at the International Crisis Group on conflict resolution.

RVvoenkor

But the next biggest question is what will Trump do for now regarding Ukrainian aid and weapons shipments? Various "headlines" went around today claiming all foreign aid was stopped—except for Israel and Egypt. But this was apparently quickly addendum'd into:

"A Pentagon official confirmed that Trump's executive order freezing foreign aid applies only to development programs, not security assistance to Ukraine." -VOA

So, according to the above weapons aid to Ukraine continues on, but presumably at a much reduced clip.

So with nothing major changing, and Ukraine's collapse only accelerating, Ukraine needs some big internal change to have any hopes of surviving this year. And the only thing capable of producing that is of course mobilization of the 18-25 cohort.

Now there have been increasing reports about this happening soon:

This AP article notes that:

Ukraine is in the final stages of drafting recruitment reforms to attract 18- to 25-year-olds who are currently exempt from mobilization as it looks for ways to bolster its fighting force, the battlefield commander recently appointed to the President's Office said.

Ukrainian Rada member Roman Hryschuk complains that a new law has created a loophole to allow the mobilization of 'previously exempted' students and teachers:

Students and teachers may begin to be mobilized as early as this summer, says Rada deputy

▪️MP Grishchuk stated that the new Cabinet of Ministers resolution leads to uncertainty in the position of teachers in the summer and the possibility of students being called up for service during the holidays.

▪️According to the document, students and postgraduates can receive a deferment for 1 semester, but not more than 6 months.

➖ "According to this resolution, the deferment is granted until the end of the academic year, that is, May-June. What then will happen to teachers in the summer months? The same risks apply to students themselves."

RVvoenkor

Meanwhile, Rada member Goncharenko reports even advanced NATO AD Iris-T technicians are being mobilized to the front, such is the manpower drought:

This was followed by reports even a Lvov military band is being press-ganged:

A new British Times piece summarizes all of these issues:

It notes:

More US weapons would be welcome in Kyiv, which has complained about the West's grudging approach to military aid. However, that promise is accompanied by a US demand that Ukraine extend conscription to include men aged 18 to 25. For President Zelensky that would cross a red line. He has protected his country's youngest men from a conflict that is draining its limited manpower. Draft dodging is rife as war-weariness takes hold. Extending the call-up could be politically fatal.

As a further demonstration of Ukraine's loss disparity, another exchange of dead bodies has occurred with a reported 49 Russian bodies to a jaw-dropping 757 Ukrainian ones:

You'll recall I previously deep-dived these exchange reports here, proving they are real and even recorded in Ukrainian sources.

Last time the ratio ended up at:

Russian losses: 331
Ukrainian losses: 2,790
Ratio: 8.43 to 1

With the new numbers, we are at:

Russian losses: 380
Ukrainian losses: 3,547
Ratio: 9.34 to 1

That's almost a 10:1 kill ratio.

This is interesting given the new NYT article:

Which reveals:

Calculating the scale of the casualties, and therefore the war's trajectory, is difficult: The information is a state secret in both countries. The Ukrainian government has been especially secretive, restricting access to demographic data that could be used to estimate its losses.

Western intelligence agencies have been reluctant to disclose their internal calculations of Ukrainian casualties for fear of undermining an ally. American officials have previously said that Kyiv withholds this information from even the closest allies.

The most hilarious part of the article states that Russia is suffering higher losses than Ukraine, but the gap in manpower between the two continues to rise, with Ukraine "only having 250,000 men on the frontline", and Russia 400,000+. How can the side which is taking much higher losses possibly be pushing the manpower gap further in its favor? Well, according to the Times' sophistic calculations it merely comes down to Russia's higher recruiting power—sure. If Ukraine was winning and morale was high, it wouldn't be suffering a recruitment crisis. But Ukraine is losing—why? Because it's taking far higher losses; logic prevails.

While Western yellow press makes up stories to comfort their audience, Russia continues to collapse Ukrainian lines. Now the powerful stronghold of Velyka Novosilka has been split into a cauldron:

It's uncertain if any, or how many, Ukrainian forces are trapped in that southern half—but the town in general does not seem likely to hold for long.

Meanwhile Chasov Yar has been almost entirely captured:

—

A last important article alarmingly laments that Kiev has lost its major drone advantage:

It says Russia has been jamming their drones with increasing effectiveness. What's interesting about that is how it ties into the recent screed penned by a Ukrainian officer, which lambasts Ukraine's fatal over-reliance on drone tech, and how it has gradually eroded the importance and value of regular grunt infantry, which are now treated as second class soldiers:

A few last items:

Putin's responses to Trump for those interested:

—

An important clarification: a lot of reports are circulating about Russia's Tartus port being shut down by 'new' Syrian authorities. But as Izvestia finds, this does not currently affect the Russian military portion of the port but rather the contract with Russian company Stroytransgaz:

The authorities of the Syrian Arab Republic have terminated the agreement on the management of the Tartus seaport with the Russian company Stroytransgaz. At the same time, the agreement on the logistics support point of the Russian Navy, concluded in 2017 between the governments of the two countries, continues to operate. According to Izvestia sources familiar with the situation, there is no talk of a complete withdrawal from Tartus yet. However, experts call the incident a wake-up call. About the prospects of our presence and possible options for providing our fleet in the Mediterranean Sea — in the material "Izvestia".

And:

"This agreement concerns the commercial use of the port, its development, but not our MTO (Marine Terminal Operator) point," said Vasily Dandykin. — Nevertheless, this is an unpleasant scenario for us. We still have interests in the Mediterranean region and the Middle East. Our bases in Syria occupied key points. Of course, we do not have a full-fledged naval base in Tartus, but a base point. Nevertheless, there are berths where our ships and submarines operating in the Mediterranean Sea were moored. They went through some types of repairs there. There you can replenish fresh water and fuel supplies, so as not to carry them from afar. Of course, they can be purchased in Algeria, for example, but it takes time to solve this problem.

—

Milley's "Ukraine map" portrait which I covered here has reportedly been removed from the Joint Chiefs hallway.

—

Indonesia, one of the world's most powerful rising economies, has officially joined the BRICS:

—

Interesting chart of Ukraine's energy export/import, showing the damage Russian strikes have done since the start of the war. Ukraine began as a major net exporter, and now it's almost entirely flipped:

The assumption is the sharp rise in exports after 2015 was due to Ukraine no longer having to supply energy to the Donbass regions controlled by rebels and Crimea.

—

Lastly, Russian Kalashnikov Group is reportedly presenting a new AI swarm drone system:

The write up:

Kalashnikov to Present Super-Maneuverable Guided Swarm Munition for the First Time in Abu Dhabi

The Kalashnikov Concern will present a new reconnaissance and strike system with guided munitions, the KUB-SM (SM stands for super-maneuverable), at the IDEX-2025 international arms conference and exhibition, which will be held in Abu Dhabi (UAE) from 17 to 21 February 2025.

The complex includes both guided munitions (UM) in transport and launch containers (TLC, 14 pieces in total) and a reconnaissance relay based on an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV-R) in a TLC (2 pieces in total).

Both types of aircraft are launched alternately from a launcher located in a combat armored vehicle. The takeoff of the drones is gas-dynamic from the TLC.

The guided munition delivers a multi-factor warhead by the UB carrier to the target for its destruction. The BLA-R performs surveillance and reconnaissance of the area, as well as relaying information from the UB to the ground control station and back.

The combat armored vehicle provides accommodation for a combat crew, one UB and UAV-R ammunition set, equipment for preparing and using the ammunition set, as well as their movement on the march, when moving to a firing position and back.

The complex is designed to conduct mobile combat operations and destroy unarmored and lightly armored military equipment, elements of command posts of divisions, battalions, batteries, battalions of anti-aircraft missile systems (SAM), including vehicles with electronic warfare equipment (ERE) and manpower in personal armor protection; air defense and anti-missile defense (AD, ABM) facilities, electronic reconnaissance and electronic warfare (ATM radars, counter-battery radars, ground moving target reconnaissance radars), rear support facilities, launch sites of enemy UAV systems, enemy aircraft (helicopters) outside shelters at airfields (sites) of basing.

The KUB-SM complex ensures the combat use of super-maneuverable guided munitions at any time of day, in simple and difficult meteorological conditions, in winds with gusts of up to 15 m/s.

That's on top of the announcement of a new AI-powered drone already being shipped to Russian front lines by the thousands:

The first 3 thousand "Mikrob" kamikaze drones with artificial intelligence have been delivered to the SMO zone -- reported by the People's Front.

The 'Microb" has a AI guidance system. Accordingly, after the operator has captured a target, it can independently track it, no matter how the target maneuvers. The "Mikrob" has sufficient dynamic characteristics - it can fly at high speeds and overloads. According to MOD reports, only one unit, with two crews, working with 40 drones, destroyed enemy equipment for an amount, so to speak, exceeding the cost of all three thousand drones that we produced, - says the developer of the Mikrob drone, Alexander Gryaznov.

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1

Saudi Arabia has placed its BRICS membership under alleged "consideration" and is not yet an official full-fledged member, despite agreeing to be one earlier.

9. Trump Storms Out the Gate, But Already Falters on Ukraine

As promised, Trump came out the gate swinging—or in his case, signing over 100 executive orders to immediately neuter many DEI initiatives, take away clearance from ex-Biden officials, and suspending foreign aid to all countries for 90 days, which includes Ukraine.

A Ukrainian journalist who allegedly met with Washington Post staff reported that a full reboot was in order on Ukraine:

"Alarming: The Pentagon has fired and suspended everyone who was responsible for Ukraine and aid to it. The US Department of Defense is in a complete reboot"

▪️ There will be a new format of relations with Ukraine, it's all a bit alarming, - said propagandist close to the Armed Forces of Ukraine R. Bochkala following a meeting with journalists from The Washington Post.

The below is not yet corroborate, but it claims that all shipments to Ukraine have been suspended:

In the Pentagon, everyone who was responsible for Ukraine has been fired and suspended. They will all face an investigation into the use of US budget money.

The US this morning in Washington, withdrew all applications to contractors for logistics through Rzeszow, Constanta and Varna. At NATO bases in Europe, all shipments to Ukraine have been suspended and closed.

According to foreign military analysts, this is on the order of several thousand tons of weapons and equipment.

However, the most interesting development vis-a-vis Ukraine was hearing Trump's first words as president regarding the situation. You'll recall for months we were forced to listen to claims from various mouthpieces like Kellogg and Waltz who appeared to be speaking on Trump's behalf, though we could never be sure. But now President Trump has issued his first nuggets to give us an idea of the direction things might go—and they are interesting.

Firstly, a far more staid and reeled-in Trump forewent the now expected blustering bravado about marching up to Putin and forcing him to end the war in a single day. Instead, in an uncharacteristically quiet and uncertain tone, Trump remarked that negotiations would depend entirely on whether Putin is interested or not:

Unfortunately, Trump exposes his complete ignorance and lack of credibility when it comes to the Ukrainian conflict by subsequently complaining that Russia has suffered an outrageous one million dead soldiers in the war. How can anyone possibly count on the man so ill-informed to be the savior that miraculously ends the war? We can understand a little flourish for the media to dress it up a bit, make things seem more dire for effect—but peremptorily citing such numbers just makes Trump look sadly disconnected, which further colors any of his efforts toward the war as similarly half-assed; that's not to even mention his claim that Spain is a member of BRICS.

He goes on to say that Putin is destroying Russia by not making a deal, and the way he says it almost feels as if Trump is now convinced that Putin has already made up his mind not to "make a deal". He further claims that Russia's economy is in ruins, and most notably, says that he would consider sanctioning or tariffing Russia:

This is the first time we've gotten confirmation straight from Trump himself, rather than Kellogg and the like, that he is in fact considering the 'nuclear option' of playing 'hardball' with Russia, should Putin refuse to bend the knee. And in fact, in a different interview he made it even more clear:

He's asked plainly whether he'll sanction Russia if Vladimir Putin doesn't come to the negotiating table, and his response is: "That sounds likely."

So there we have it. Trump the 'peace maker' has shown his cards and clarifies the possible directions he intends to take. Which means some of the earlier claims from Keith Kellogg appear to have been accurate in regard to Trump trying to put the vise on Putin should the peace deal turn sour. There is some small chance that Trump continues to merely grandstand with the usual bravado for reporters but in reality still seeks a way to dump Kiev completely.

You'll note in the first video above, he makes a very interesting comment which slips under the surface of the rest of his statement. Listen again to when he's describing Russia's failed war effort, then says: "I mean…it's a big machine so, eventually things will happen…"

What he appears to mean is that, despite his little 'dressing up' of the putative 'failed' war effort, he's acknowledging that it's not so failed after all because Russia's war machine is at this point so big and powerful that eventually Ukraine will not be able to resist at all; it appears Trump is aware of this fine point after all.

Interestingly, this jibes with a new German command report from Major General Christian Freuding, who drops a shocking bombshell that again flies totally in the face of the prevailing Western narrative on Russia:

Link to original Welt article.

"Russia is building up its forces beyond the requirements of the current conflict!"

— The head of Germany's military task force on assistance for Ukraine, Major General Christian Freuding.

Freuding essentially says that Russia is now building reserve armies by generating more manpower and armor than it's losing. Recall Shoigu's reserve armies I covered a long time ago, where much of Russia's generated manpower was going rather than merely sustaining losses on the front:

Freuding also states, by the way, that Russia now builds 3,000 UMPK glide bombs per month, and 'procures' 3.7M artillery shells per year:

Now, sensing the pitfall Trump may sleepwalk into, top Trumper Steve Bannon has warned that Trump is in danger of creating his own "Vietnam":

Donald Trump is in danger of failing to make a clean break with Ukraine and could be sucked deeper into Vladimir Putin's war — just as Richard Nixon was stung in his attempts to pull out of Vietnam — Trump's former chief strategist Steve Bannon warned in a wide-ranging interview with POLITICO.

He correctly notes:

"If we aren't careful, it will turn into Trump's Vietnam. That's what happened to Richard Nixon. He ended up owning the war and it went down as his war not Lyndon Johnson's," Bannon said.

And it's true: Trump knows China is eating the US' lunch on the economic front and as others like Rubio have pointed out, the US has a very limited time window to somehow change the calculus in a way that keeps it in the race with China. If Trump's vanity keeps him from detaching himself from Ukraine he risks doing the dance with Russia to the point of US exhaustion while an unhindered China laps them all.

Russia may not be China but on Russia's home turf—which Ukraine essentially is—the 'superpower' US does not have the advantage and will find itself sucked into a war of attrition it cannot win. That's not to mention that rumors swirl around Zelensky preparing a false flag of some kind to drag Trump into the war as much as possible, for instance from Legitimny channel:

#hearings
We confirm colleagues information that in February Zelensky and OP are preparing some provocative events that, according to their idea, will change Trump's attitude and force him to participate in the Ukrainian crisis.
Zelensky will do everything to extend the game, as he has been given the task of prolonging the conflict to prevent Trump from ending the war. They will come up with any new space requirements that will be unrealistic to fulfill.

Compounding all this is Trump's earlier boasts of the Russian economy set to implode being total bunk—here's the latest contravening data. Note it's not even oil and gas revenue that's blazing skyward:

Russian budget revenues rose to a record level in December, despite new "strongest" sanctions , - Bloomberg

▪️Russia's revenues rose to a record last month even after the United States imposed a powerful new package of sanctions on the banking sector aimed at disrupting foreign trade payments and curbing export earnings.

▪️ Total revenue in December was more than 4 trillion rubles ($40 billion), up 28% from the same month last year, according to the Finance Ministry.

▪️This is the highest level recorded in the ministry's data since January 2011.

▪️The US and its allies are trying to stop the Kremlin's war machine by restricting export revenues, and in late 2024 they imposed additional sanctions on Russia's energy sector and the banks that service it. Still, oil and gas revenues rose by a third in December from a year earlier and are up 26% in 2024. Other revenue sources showed similar gains for the full year, driven by taxes and dividends amid robust economic growth.

▪️ "The volume of non-oil and gas revenues in 2024 significantly exceeded the estimates set out in the budget law for 2025-2027, including from the largest tax sources," the Finance Ministry said in a statement.

▪️The increase in revenues allowed the government to spend more than ever before - total expenditure for the month amounted to 7.15 trillion rubles, breaking the previous record set in December 2022.

RVvoenkor

That's not to mention Patrushev's new interview wherein he expresses his learned view that Ukraine may "cease to exist" this year:

Lastly, Zelensky made another interesting statement. We had just spoken about his assertion that Russia has 600k+ troops in the SMO, while Ukraine allegedly has 800k+. In a new video from the Davos forum, Zelensky again reiterates that Russia has 600k+ but then says something which proves some of my earliest reports on this blog about Russia's force dispositions at the onset of the SMO:

He states that the current 600k+ force is up to 4.5 times larger than Russia's initial force. Doing the math, 600k is 4.5 times more than 133,000—or using his 4x number we can say 150,000.

My earliest readers will recall I was the lone voice proving with numbers that Russia's opening foray into the SMO consisted of a tiny force of a mere ~70-130k rather than the massive 250-400k claimed everywhere else as part of the official Western historiography. This was the main reason for why Russia was forced to retreat from places like Kherson and Kharkov after early gains, when Ukraine had force-mobilized upwards of a million troops while Russia was operating with a tiny raid structure. Now we have confirmation from Zelensky himself. And he even indirectly confirms General Freuding's earlier claims of Russia's continued strengthening of forces when he says in the video above that if Russia is not stopped now, it will soon have an army ten times larger than the 2022 one, rather than a mere 4.5x larger.

For now it's clear that Trump's admin likely has no real plan to negotiate with Russia and is completely misinformed by its intelligence assets. As I wrote many months ago, the only real question will be not whether negotiations will work, but what Trump will do once Putin blanks all his negotiations offers.

One supposes that one possibility is that Trump may make a kind of 'half effort' in applying 'punitive sanctions' against Russia only to appease the deep state neocons and warmongering media, but with the full knowledge that it won't do much and that Russia will overrun Ukraine either way. At least, if Trump were truly more devious and ingenius than we give him credit for, this is one avenue he could pursue. But more likely Trump will use the Ukraine situation to play various concessions off of Europe, just as he's been leveraging threats against Panama, Greenland, and the like to get Europe to fall in line.

In the end it will have to come down to which imperative of Trump's is the stronger—his will for personal glory and the fear of tarnishing his vanity by being portrayed as a 'loser' in Ukraine? Or his great desire to fashion a legacy as a historic 'peace maker' at all costs.

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10. Reflections on the Eve of Change

Tomorrow is the big day: the inauguration we thought would never come—and may yet not. It felt somehow obligatory to write up some reflections on what it could mean, where the country and world at large might be headed, given the perceived tailwinds.

To set the appropriate mood, here's TIME magazine's new cover on the right, compared to their previous one from 2017:

One Tweeter writes:

Check out the two TIME Magazine covers. The first from 2017. The second from today. In 2017, the narrative was of a man ignoring all the problems and issues. Idle hands. No concern. Oblivious. Messed up hair. Bad weather beating down inside the office. In 2025, the message is the near opposite. He's actively removing all remnants of Biden (ed: Biden's famous aviator glasses seen flying). Focused. Moving. Determined expression and head tilt. In control. Bad weather outside the office, not inside. Same guy. Same agenda, though even more aggressive. Why do you think they have a difference perspective?

And here are some of Trump's planned Day One executive orders:

SOME OF TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE ORDERS, DAY 1:

- Begin deportation raids

- Declare national emergency at the Southern border

- Jan. 6 pardons

- 'Deep state purge'

- End Biden's DEI directives

- Roll back limits on offshore drilling "Your head will spin when you see what's going to happen," Trump said. -Source

After participating in a Zoom call with Steve Bannon, Alex Krainer confirmed in his latest piece that Trump's team intends to "go on the offensive from day one":

Alex Krainer's Substack Next week start the days of thunder Last night I had the privilege of being included in a Zoom call with Steve Bannon, former investment banker and media executive, host of the "War Room" show and chief political strategist during the first seven months of Donald Trump's first term in office. Much of what Bannon presented wasn't surprising, but what seemed significant was that he confirmed that Trump and his team will go on the offensive from day one in office. "The days of thunder begin on Monday," he said, and the world will not be the same again. Bannon wasn't talking about Trump going on the offensive against the Chinese, Iranians or the Russians. Trump and his team are preparing to take on the "they… Read more 24 days ago · 286 likes · 198 comments · Alex Krainer

"The days of thunder begin on Monday," he said, and the world will not be the same again. Bannon wasn't talking about Trump going on the offensive against the Chinese, Iranians or the Russians. Trump and his team are preparing to take on the "they."

Granted, Bannon has proven himself to be a rather profligate hype-man, his tongue often writing checks he can't realistically cash, as in the many boastful promises of certain victory or 'take-no-prisoner offensives' against the 'deep state'.

That being said, it's clear that Trump has already won the early rounds against the cabal which had promised in no uncertain terms to shower his inaugural path with a string of dangerous obstacles—from the now-dispelled conviction sentencing that threatened to throw him behind bars on the eve of office, to the threats that Democrats would not certify electoral votes which likewise came to naught. Trump even seems to be ahead of the curve on any final tries against him, ordering the last minute relocation of the swearing in ceremony indoors—ostensibly due to the forecasted 'bitter cold', but perhaps more plausibly for safety reasons, lest he give the cabal another open shot at him.

The fact is, Trump's imminent inauguration marks a turning point of a new global era. We've spoken of it countless times: The world is on the brink of vast sweeping changes. The reason? The previous era's ideological arc has run its course and reached its natural limits, grounding itself on a shoal like a keeling ship on turbulent seas.

Every nation under the West's thumb has reached 'escape velocity' in its awakening to the secret history of the world order since the time of the British Empire's colonial supremacy. The 'secret' I speak of is one both unspoken and codified, in the latter versions one can consult initiatives like Kissinger's Memorandum 200 to get an idea.

The West's blindness to its own self-devouring cruel hypocrisy was highlighted this week by Marco Rubio's egregious, history-bastardizing statement on China's rise:

To summarize: He smugly lauds the West for "welcoming" China into the global fold, referring to the WTO accession engineered by the US for the sole purpose of enslaving China for its cheap labor in order to profit Western corporations, at the expense of both the Chinese and the undercut-and-gutted American workers.

Rubio goes on to chastize China for being 'ungrateful' for this bounteous 'opportunity' so altruistically bestowed from on high by the US and its corporate-financier owners.

But his following statement drags him fully into deplorable territory.

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