He did, then he changed it and then he announced the Alaska meeting (which, you'd think, would postpone all of the incoming sanctions). Basically, who cares what he says, he never follows through predictably.
Russian invasion of Ukraine
- Thread starter Wednesday at Stoke
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In the latest edition of the United Hour Podcast, we interview Duncan Drasdo of MUST - covering ticket prices, new stadium, INEOS and what fans should be demanding from our club.
Also, due to technical issues we couldn't put a notice up for the previous episode which was about the game against Bournemouth and other stuff. If you'd like to listen to it, click here.
Maybe Zelensky could attend the meeting and ask Trump if he could negotiate a swap deal giving Alaska to Russia and allowing Ukraine to take back its own country?
Ukraine lost land and is not getting back, if Trump walks away and the European countries stop as well sending weapons and ammo to Ukraine what Zelensky can do? Maybe an agreement with the ruskies keeping the Russian speaking regions and give back the rest to Ukraine, soon or later will be no young man in Ukraine and the Russians are using North Koreans as cannon fodder so they don’t have to conscript their own people.
The European countries are not stopping aid so remove this from this fantasy of yours.
Russia struck an Azerbaijani owned oil depot in Odesa. So Azerbaijan threatened to arm Ukraine and there's reports they are going ahead with it. Setting an example to the world that there's no reason to be afraid of Russia any more.
https://bsky.app/profile/prune602.bsky.social/post/3lw357btzkk2w
https://bsky.app/profile/prune602.bsky.social/post/3lw357btzkk2w
Europe isn’t going to stop backing Ukraine. Putler isn’t going to stop at Ukraine he has further goals, which Europe is fully aware of.
Not gonna happen.
Splendid press conference again from Trump today. He misspoke about Alaska, saying that he's visiting Russia (Freudian slip?), and again seemed to lay blame at Zelensky for the war.
The nobel committee should just tell trump that if manages to liberate ukraine they'll hand him the peace prize.
Meanwhile Russia has seemingly made a big breakthrough in the east.
Econ update with some nice little charts:
No chart covering their funding problems unfortunately as that's the key issue. You can incur massive deficits just fine if you can pay for them and push the issue a decade or so down the line. I.e. raising debt through selling government bonds on the international market, trade partners who believe there's a chance of getting their money back or access to IMF / world bank if needed. Ukraine has that, Russia has none of that, they just have their savings account and domestic bonds where they are only just managing to issue enough to cover interest payments on existing debt. Nothing help cover this years' deficit, which is set to be around 3 times that of 2024, the vast majority of bills fall due in December. Going to be interesting to see how they deal with it.
and these are the figures they publish... Shame about the western media blackout on things like this, they'll just report on whether Russia technically enters a recession, which is comical when they've just been manipulating their inflation calculation to 'officially' keep them out of one up to now.
No chart covering their funding problems unfortunately as that's the key issue. You can incur massive deficits just fine if you can pay for them and push the issue a decade or so down the line. I.e. raising debt through selling government bonds on the international market, trade partners who believe there's a chance of getting their money back or access to IMF / world bank if needed. Ukraine has that, Russia has none of that, they just have their savings account and domestic bonds where they are only just managing to issue enough to cover interest payments on existing debt. Nothing help cover this years' deficit, which is set to be around 3 times that of 2024, the vast majority of bills fall due in December. Going to be interesting to see how they deal with it.
and these are the figures they publish... Shame about the western media blackout on things like this, they'll just report on whether Russia technically enters a recession, which is comical when they've just been manipulating their inflation calculation to 'officially' keep them out of one up to now.
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Finland charges captain of Russian 'shadow fleet' tanker over Baltic Sea cable sabotage
https://www.france24.com/en/europe/...w-fleet-tanker-over-baltic-sea-cable-sabotage
Europe needs to grow a pair and Skripal these people. One by one. Their associates and helpers won't even know if it was the boss or the west.
Grim WSJ piece on command issues within the Ukrainian military. There seems to be a big culture of commanders not wanting to get blamed for losing ground and therefore giving out unrealistic orders to their troops.
Syrsky is not liked.
https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-r...9?st=NTzW7V&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Syrsky is not liked.
https://www.wsj.com/world/ukraine-r...9?st=NTzW7V&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
With 30,000+ Troops Recruited Monthly, Russia Surpasses Its Targets, Ukrainian Intelligence Says
https://united24media.com/latest-ne...its-targets-ukrainian-intelligence-says-10714
I think only North Korea would be more depressing to get spawned in.
Russia coming with a heavy delegation. Note that the guy who "lead" the talks with Ukraine (Medinsky) is not present.
And Siluanov is the official in charge of Russia's response to Western sanctions. Wonder if they'll discuss lifting of some sanctions.
By the way, what’s your assessment of the recent frontline news? @AfonsoAlves
If Russia can’t secure even 20% of Ukraine after years of grinding war—much of it in areas supposedly sympathetic to them—they’re not about to blitzkrieg through (eastern) Europe. The real danger is overhyping a military that’s already shown it can bog down against a single non-NATO neighbor. And a Europe that still leans on the F-35 because its next-gen jets are a decade out is a Europe that isn’t ready to “cut both ways” with the US—yet.
Still doubt he'll turn up, but if he does I'll wait for the facial recognition analysts to do their thing.
edit for Conspiracy Theory thought!! Could this be Putin's escape to safety? Negotiate sanctuary with Trump to end the war and avoid being ousted and killed in Russia? It would all be pretence of course. It would give some other mafioso excuse to 'take over' Russia promising reform and reconciliation while Putin takes his real prize, ruling over the USA from his luxury mansion 'prison'.
edit for Conspiracy Theory thought!! Could this be Putin's escape to safety? Negotiate sanctuary with Trump to end the war and avoid being ousted and killed in Russia? It would all be pretence of course. It would give some other mafioso excuse to 'take over' Russia promising reform and reconciliation while Putin takes his real prize, ruling over the USA from his luxury mansion 'prison'.
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Seems like Shoigu's replacement Belousov has been quite effective. He was appointed Minister of Defence in May 2024.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/08/14/world/europe/putin-russia-ukraine-war-resurgence.html
Hot take: Zelensky directly or probably more likely - indirectly (by pressuring others with power in Ukraine) have been bribed into submission.
Trump desperately needs a win and distraction from the Epstein and redistricting topics. Everything is probably on the table.
Trump desperately needs a win and distraction from the Epstein and redistricting topics. Everything is probably on the table.
Is that really the real danger, as opposed to the missile and drone attacks and human wave assaults to annex territory by force, from a country in Europe with previously treaty agreed borders?
Setting that as a precedence is the problem. The EU and European nations should move heaven and earth to prevent it because next up will be an order of magnitude worse situation directly resulting from the perceived weakness.
Russia hasn't secured more of Ukraine because of the outstanding fighting by the Ukrainians. Coupled with all of the material and training by US and Europe.
I didn't say that Russia was going to blitzkrieg through Europe. More a long term series of probing and attacks on the eastern flank of Europe to identify areas of weakness.
Regarding F35, its stealth is over hyped. And its availability rates are poor.
Was wondering if Ukraine had something special in store, like last time US & Russian delegations got together to jerk each other off. Looks like they launched one of their largest drone attacks of the war last night, if that counts for anything, hitting more refineries', totally destroying one from the looks of it. They appear to have also cut off that "breakthrough" at Pokrovsk and are mopping up. If that's true I hope all the panicked drama queens on social media that sung to Russia's tune have a strong word with themselves.
More worrying, Russia has barely launched any Shahed's over the last couple weeks. Probably accumulating for something.
More worrying, Russia has barely launched any Shahed's over the last couple weeks. Probably accumulating for something.
Lavrov wearing a USSR sweater.
I swear we've had this conversation before, but it's not exactly the fault of the F-35 itself, as opposed to a generic USAF failure in procurement from 2020-2023.
I hate comments like "its stealth is overhyped". Can you actually qualify that statement? Based on what? Over hyped compared to what metrics, what end comparator? If people are expecting the RCS of an F-22 then sure, it's overhyped, but nobody does?
Unsurprising.
The military spent all of 2022-2023 hyping up that it's going to modernize into a NATO/Western style fighting force in both combat tactics, doctrine and mentality.
If anything, we've gone backwards. Syrskyi is a classic Soviet era commander. Zaluzhnyi was the only one in Ukrainian military leadership who wasn't indoctrinated from the Soviet way of military thinking and guess what? The man was purged for being a political threat.
All of his general staffers were dispersed into the wind and now we're back to the Soviet style of grind and broad front defence. Syrskyi put in his staffers in key command positions and the results have been disastrous.
Thankfully, the break in the lines is not something that the Russians can really exploit given their systemic issues too but it's just a symptom. It's a 1 brigade breach and AFU's current way of dealing with it is to launch piecemeal unorganised counter attacks, brigade at a time, against what is now fortified positions. Their method of slowing down the attack was just to launch thousands of FPV drones at the advancing brigade which, unsurprisingly, didn't do all that much.
Classic Soviet era tactics, something found more in 1941 and 1982. Lack of inter-operative communication between various combat units, lack of a systemic overall strategy on how to deal with breakthroughs. Meaning, you have obsolete commands like, "COUNTERATTACK" and rather than the brigades communicating with each other, its just as soon as one unit is ready to go in, get mashed up, and the next one goes in 24 hours later and they get mashed up. There have been two counterattacks on the 10km salient and both have been repelled.
Obsolete tactics, problems systemic with being unable to be rid of Soviet style doctrines, communication and political problems. Right now it's like having Seymon Timoshenko in charge of the AFU.
It's all redundant. The Ukrainian military is back to it's old Soviet ways due to General Staff politics and not knowing any better. You can train a brigade to fight like a NATO force, but put him in an Army where 95/100 brigades are still the Soviet way, led by a Soviet era commander, it kind of doesn't matter
Cheers, that's what I was the most worried about as the headlines vary from "it's just a few guys on foot and bikes" to "Ukraine's frontline is falling apart" and I have absolutely zero competence to understand which one's closer to reality.
To be fair they've launched an unprecedented amount of those in July*, they had to slow down eventually. Although what do I know.
*my perception may be skewed by Kiyv being bombarded more often, if I'm not mistaken, there weren't even a single day without an attack, as, say Kharkiv also suffers from such attacks daily and it doesn't get as many coverage in the media (and also through my own channels since I have a few friends in Kiyv and none in Kharkiv).
Yes I can.
The F35 RCS when it is head on and with no external stores is undoubtedly small. But it has a very big engine and that will have a huge heat signature to any heat seeking missile.
In addition, when it is required to carry external stores, its RCS is significantly increased making it more vulnerable to SAM detection.
Its range is rather limited and when used from carriers, is highly reliant on in flight refuelling. And those in flight refuelling jets are hardly stealthy are they.
That may be. I can't comment on that.
But what about the highly innovative use of drones by Ukraine, the majority of which are home made and inexpensive.
Yes, Ukraine’s fighting has been exceptional, but that’s the point. If Russia’s “big bad army” can be stalled and bled this badly by a country with a fraction of NATO’s resources, Russian capacity for sustained offensive operations against a well-armed alliance is even less credible. Probing and posturing? Sure. Rolling tanks into Warsaw or Bucharest? Not without signing their own death warrant.
As for the F-35, you can quibble over stealth or readiness rates, but right now it’s the only cutting-edge, interoperable platform Europe has in numbers. Until the Franco-German or UK-Italian projects actually take off, it’s a choice between imperfect capability now or wishful thinking later.
All good points.Yes, Ukraine’s fighting has been exceptional, but that’s the point. If Russia’s “big bad army” can be stalled and bled this badly by a country with a fraction of NATO’s resources, Russian capacity for sustained offensive operations against a well-armed alliance is even less credible. Probing and posturing? Sure. Rolling tanks into Warsaw or Bucharest? Not without signing their own death warrant.
As for the F-35, you can quibble over stealth or readiness rates, but right now it’s the only cutting-edge, interoperable platform Europe has in numbers. Until the Franco-German or UK-Italian projects actually take off, it’s a choice between imperfect capability now or wishful thinking later.
Some clips.
didn't learn anything much from this Trump/Putin press conference