Ukraine war thread

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

Trump Shares NYPost Op-Ed Blasting Putin as a Liar Who Is ‘Standing in the Way of Peace’

According to the NYT, Trump got angry with his special envoy, Keith Kellogg, during an Oval Office visit.

“So you call Zelensky embattled and courageous?” he snapped.

“Sir, he is,” Kellogg replied. “It’s an existential fight on Ukrainian soil for his nation’s survival. When was the last time an American president faced that? It was Abraham Lincoln.”

Trump later told advisers, “He’s an idiot.”

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

After a year in which both countries seemed on the very brink of succumbing to Russia's hybrid war, Romania will end 2025 with a pro-EU president who holds a math PhD from the Sorbonne and won the International Math Olympiad twice, both times with a perfect score.

Meanwhile, Moldova, led by a formidable woman with a master's degree from Harvard and former adviser to the World Bank Executive Director, has finally truly broken free of Russian influence after more than three decades.

All in all, somewhat unexpectedly, not a bad year for Romanians I'd say.

[Dr Strangelove]

C.I.A. director, Mr. Ratcliffe, had consistently protected his own officers’ efforts for Ukraine. He kept the agency’s presence in the country at full strength; funding for its programs there even increased...

But a parallel weapon had remained in place —permission for C.I.A. and military officers to share targeting intelligence and provide other assistance for Ukrainian drone strikes against crucial components of the Russian defense industrial base. These included factories manufacturing “energetics” — chemicals used in explosives — as well as petroleum-industry facilities.

In June, beleaguered U.S. military officers met with their C.I.A. counterparts to help craft a more concerted Ukrainian campaign. It would focus exclusively on oil refineries and, instead of supply tanks, would target the refineries’ Achilles’ heel: A C.I.A. expert had identified a type of coupler that was so hard to replace or repair that a refinery would remain offline for weeks. (To avoid backlash, they would not supply weapons and other equipment that Mr. Vance’s allies wanted for other priorities.)

As the campaign began to show results, Mr. Ratcliffe discussed it with Mr. Trump. The president seemed to listen to him; they had a frequent Sunday tee time. According to U.S. officials, Mr. Trump praised America’s surreptitious role in these blows to Russia’s energy industry. They gave him deniability and leverage, he told Mr. Ratcliffe, as the Russian president continued to “jerk him off.”...

The C.I.A. would also be authorized to assist with Ukrainian drone strikes on “shadow fleet” vessels in the Black Sea and the Mediterranean."

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/202 ... =url-share

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

[Dr Strangelove]

According to the BBC, in 2025 Russia lost 40% more soldiers on the front line than at any other time since the start of the full-scale invasion. The BBC has confirmed the names of approximately 160,000 dead Russians; at the same time, journalists say the real number of deceased Russian occupiers is likely to be twice as high.