Nate Mook

I just drove by the apartment building hit by a Russian missile early this morning. Part of it collapsed—you can see the stairwell. Rescue workers on the roof trying to put out fires and get to injured. And more attacks are on the way—I just saw a drone get shot down. Pure evil.

Rescuers have recovered the body of a 12-year-old girl from under the rubble at the site of the russian missile strike in Kyiv. The death toll has risen to five.

🚨 A massive Russian air attack on residential neighborhoods in Kyiv. People are trapped under the rubble, the number of victims is still unknown. Putin launched this attack while Donald Trump is visiting China.

First it was the insistence that Ukraine would be conquered swiftly and the best we could hope for was partisan warfare. Then it was fear of escalation. Recall Sullivan's comment, in response to the ATACMS question at the Munich Security Conference in 2022, about "heading down the road towards a third world war." Then it was DoD making four excuses for denying four critical platforms, all of which were eventually provided to Kyiv: ATACMS, Patriots, F-16s and Abrams. Excuse one: We don't have enough. Excuse two: They don't need them. Excuse three: They won't know how to use them. Excuse four: They may not even work properly. (Some ATACMS technically expired in 1994!) I heard this refrain after the Patriot was already in service in Ukraine, shooting down anything the Russians launched, including the state-of-the-art Kinzhal. Then it was fear of escalation -- again. Recall the decision-making crisis over whether to allow Ukraine to fire GMLRS into Russian territory when Moscow was making another play for Kharkiv. This agonized debate occurred after Ukraine had long been striking deep into Russian territory with homemade munitions and conducting regular cross-border raids into Kursk with U.S.-made kit such as MaxxPro MRAPs. Neither of these phenomena were exactly mysteries to the Kremlin. But American missile debris being recovered in Belgorod was seen as too provocative to many in the Biden NSC. And when they finally got to "yes," Ukraine had to be given a strictly delimited radius of operations -- something the Russians are of course not bound by. Where we are now? Today, Ukraine makes ample use of all of four of the critical systems the U.S. was reluctant to provide, although Russia had more time to adapt and diminish the effectiveness of these systems. Ukraine's homemade munitions are more plentiful, powerful, innovative, and longer-range and the U.S. even provides targeting assistance for strikes well inside Russian territory. Finally, Putin has to beg Trump to pressure Zelensky not to bomb Red Square on Victory Day. Panetta is correct.

🇺🇸🇺🇦 Biden Admin alums like Jake Sullivan continue to argue that giving more weapons, more quickly, such as ATACMS, wouldn't have made a difference. A talking point debunked by General Cavoli. Panetta is correct and Sullivan is wrong, unsurprisingly.

Our barbarian neighbours beg to give them a pause on May 9th. "Victory day truce" ;) In the meantime, tonight - yet another massive attacks at railway infrastructure and rolling stock. Our monitoring centers worked with precision 🎯No single causalty among passengers and crew members. Everyone was evacuated timely to safety.