Richard Straub ☮️

HEGSETH: We know Russia is a nefarious actor and account for tha-- SHAHEEN: All evidence to the contrary. We're not accounting for that if we're giving Russia the opportunity to earn $4 billion a month by leaving sanctions lifted

“That day, we realized the Russians had come to kill us” is how one theater survivor put it to me. “They didn’t come to fight with Ukrainian soldiers. They just wanted to kill us.” from James Verini, an excerpt from his book "The Theater" theatlantic.com/international/…

FIONA HILL: The war in Ukraine has changed the nature of warfare itself. Ukrainians are now the most battle-hardened army in Europe, and they are keeping Russians embroiled in a stalemate or a deadlock. And they have a lot of capacity, lessons and equipment to impart to others.

Estonian Defense Minister Hanno Pevkur @HPevkur: ‼️Ukraine is the one who is giving security guarantees at this very moment to Europe. And we've always been supporting Ukraine being a member of the European Union and being a member of NATO. There is no question about it.

🇺🇦🇷🇺 RUSSIA’S PROBLEM IS DEEPER “Russia will remain a threat to the world as long as its imperial ideology exists. This ideology is the main problem, not the leadership alone.”- Kyrylo Budanov 🇺🇦 That is the part people keep trying to reduce to one man. Putin is the face of it, yes. But the empire reflex was there before him, and it will still be dangerous after him if Russia never breaks with it properly. Ukraine is not only fighting an army. It is fighting the idea that Moscow has a right to own its neighbors.

❗️Soon, virtually any holder of a Russian passport abroad could become a pretext for Russian military intervention. The EU should sharply restrict entry for Russian citizens. This is no longer about comfort or "openness" - it is a matter of security. The formula should be simple: minimal entry by default, maximum checks, and exceptions only for genuinely justified humanitarian and family cases. This is not "Russophobia," but basic self-defense. The Russian government has officially submitted draft law No. 1181659-8 to the State Duma, allowing the extraterritorial use of the Russian Armed Forces by presidential decision to "protect" Russians detained, held, or prosecuted abroad under decisions of foreign or international courts whose jurisdiction Moscow does not recognize. This is groundwork for a pretext. Russia’s draft law should not be read as concern for "its people" but as an attempt to pre-legitimize the use of force abroad. The Kremlin is systematically building a legal construct: ◾️ first - rejecting the jurisdiction of foreign and international courts (December 2025); ◾️ then - banning the extradition of those who fought for Russia (March 2026); ◾️ now - a separate provision allowing the use of the military to "protect" detained Russians abroad. Among the most notable current cases are Butyagin (now in Poland) and Torden (in Finland). For the Kremlin, almost anyone could become a future "rescue" target (they may also draw inspiration from the Maduro precedent), especially if their case is useful for propaganda. The core objective is to frame virtually anything as an "attack on Russia." If a Russian citizen is detained by a European state for any reason - war crimes, occupation-related activities, sabotage, or cooperation with proxy networks - the Kremlin seeks to portray this not as law enforcement, but as the "persecution of Russian citizens." This is the key mechanism: to turn a criminal arrest into a political incident, and a political incident into grounds for escalation. The danger is that the material for such cases already exists in Europe. Russian nationals linked to Wagner, proxy structures, sabotage activities, recruitment, and covert operations are already present across Europe. Some are already involved in investigations and court cases. Others may be used in future provocations. This means the Kremlin does not even need to wait for an accidental incident - potential figures who can later be framed as "victims of persecution" already exist. The scheme is simple and dangerous: first - a provocation, sabotage, or other subversive act; then - the arrest of the operative in Europe; followed by a media campaign about a "hunt for Russians"; and finally - invoking the new legal provision as grounds for "protection." This is how not a diplomatic dispute, but a controlled pretext for special operations, abductions, coercive pressure, or broader escalation is created. The conclusion is stark: this draft law is not about protecting citizens - it is about instrumentalizing them. The Kremlin wants any arrest of a Russian abroad - whether an archaeologist, militant, saboteur, recruiter, mercenary, or simply a Russian citizen dissatisfied with European laws - to be repackaged, when needed, into a casus belli.

Regarding some recent interviews that are circulating online, I can say this: Use your critical thinking, do the right things, don't waste your time, walk past information waste. Also, I haven't told you for some time how much I cherish all true friends of Ukraine. Thank you.

@IAPonomarenko I believe the expression is “Thank you for your attention to this matter”. DJT perfected it. Like everything else.

“After this interview, I, as a brave anti-Zelensky regime critic in exile, will obviously never be able to return to Ukraine again… so could I please finally have a green card now? Thank you.”

@IAPonomarenko @KernowMaya When it counted most Zelenskyy proved what kind of men he is. The Russian tanks were rolling towards Kyiv. Putin wanted Zelenskyy dead. World leaders offered Zelenskyy a ride out of town. Yet Zelenskyy stayed with his people and his military to fight. youtu.be/tLv9IqcoNe8?si…

Zelensky is taking heavy hits today for the disastrous personnel decisions he made starting from 2019, when he still seemed to see himself as the star of a comedy show about a president and filled his near circle with random people whose only real skill was “selling themselves” in job interviews — or in some cases outright opportunists, frauds, and adventurers without any principles whatsoever.

Well well, now Putin has picked himself a new Medvedchuk -- this time around it's for Germany!

@IAPonomarenko “making himself look like a moron”? This isn’t new.

By the way, want to know where this idiotic “Zelensky snorts cocaine” narrative actually comes from? Its roots go back to early 2019, when Ukraine’s presidential election campaign was in full swing. The claim that “Zelensky is a drug addict” was aggressively pushed at the time by then-president Petro Poroshenko, who was seeking reelection, along with his massive media machine. The strategy of discrediting Zelensky and his presidential ambitions through drug allegations was widely attributed to political consultant Moshe Klughaft, known for running highly aggressive election campaigns in different countries, whom Poroshenko’s camp was reportedly bringing in to save his collapsing ratings. The whole thing descended into completely absurd territory. As many remember, both leading presidential candidates publicly took urine tests in laboratories to prove they were not drug addicts, and Poroshenko then spent weeks almost literally waving around his test results on television. (In fact, that complete lack of restraint in black PR, hysterical self-promotion, and increasingly deranged campaigning was one of the reasons Poroshenko ultimately lost the presidency in 2019.) Throughout all these years -- before and after 2019 -- there has never been a shred of actual evidence that the demonstrably athletic and health-conscious Zelensky uses drugs. But after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, Putin and Russian state propaganda eagerly adopted the old smear campaign for themselves (“…that bunch of drug addicts and neo-Nazis who seized power in Kiev…”) And now Tucker Carlson is running around repeating it like a fool, unaware that he’s parroting a seven-year-old Ukrainian election dirty trick and making himself look like a moron in the process.

"The best way to help Ukraine is to force it to disarm, surrender its main defensive lines, leave it with Russia's gun to its temple, and call it peace -- omg, I'm so smart, is that all what you wanted me to say, Mr. Carlson?"

@IAPonomarenko We ❤️ you Illia.

And for those who are particularly gullible and fall for empty clickbait headlines, I'd like to remind you that Yulia Mendel was disgracefully removed from her position as the presidential spokesperson as far back as in 2021, almost A FULL YEAR BEFORE Russia's full-scale invasion. So all of her "insider knowledge" about Zelensky's plans in 2022 of "giving up Donbas to Russia" in the "Istabul talks" is nothing more than empty talk and attention craving from a nobody.

@RichardGrenell Thanks for amplifying this excellent article, which I did not write, but which I admired for its honesty and accuracy

One day Putin, Trump, and Netanyahu will be gone.

As Ukraine begins the clawback of its sovereign territory, remember the awesome price paid. Slava Ukraini