Kip McMahon

A military analyst predicted a new attempt by Ukraine to blow up the Crimean Bridge and suggested a mobilization in Russia due to the peninsula In the future, we can expect a new attempt by Ukraine to blow up the Crimean Bridge, said military analyst Franz-Stefan Gady in an interview with Der Spiegel. Increasing pressure on Crimea could push Vladimir Putin to a new mobilization. Other military analysts are also speculating about a possible mobilization. In Gady's opinion, who has repeatedly visited Ukraine and is considered a leading military expert on this war, we can already roughly understand what Kiev is planning as part of a campaign aimed at increasing Russia's costs. “They are hitting the supply routes through the land corridor to force the Russians to supply Crimea via the Kerch Bridge. And then, probably, they will try to blow it up,” the expert said. What could the attack look like? It could be a combination of cruise and ballistic missiles, as well as air and sea drones, Gady suggests. ▪️Another possible diversionary operation, the expert believes, is to take under fire control certain sections of the "land bridge" to Crimea and hit any targets there. In recent weeks, regular drone strikes on transport using this route have complicated the delivery of goods to Crimea. The crisis has intensified after a strike on the ferry - an alternative route for deliveries. ▪️In the Donbass, Russia continues to advance and may try to seize the rest of the region. For this, Russian forces may withdraw troops from the southern front. In this case, a successful Ukrainian counter-offensive on the southern front will be possible, Gady believes. ▪️Ukrainian and Russian strikes on deep rear targets (deep strikes) will intensify. Both sides have increased their production capabilities. The side that can coordinate drone strikes with actions on the front line will gain a military advantage, Gady believes. A possible response from Russia to the drone threat. Putin may announce a new wave of mobilization if Crimea comes under too much pressure, the expert believes. ▪️There are other options for responding to increased air attacks, in particular interceptor drones, new, semi-autonomous rapid-fire guns, or modern camouflage options. None of this will be quickly implemented by Russia, Gady suggests. Other opinions. That the Russian authorities may launch a large-scale wave of mobilization was reported by other military analysts. ▪️This week, analyst under the nickname Jompy wrote in an article for the independent publication Fronts that Putin has done everything possible to avoid a new wave of mobilization, but he is running out of options as Ukraine takes the initiative on the front and slows down the recruitment of contractors and suffers from logistical disruptions due to drone strikes. ▪️In these conditions, Russian troops in the south may retreat from their positions. The Kremlin is ready to put up with this as the price of taking Donbass, on which the Russian authorities are focused, writes Jompy. But if the defense on the southern front begins to collapse and the offensive on Kramatorsk and Slavyansk stalls, Moscow will have to make difficult decisions. According to Jompy, such a scenario will ultimately force Putin and his entourage to take a step they have been trying to avoid: to raise the stakes and announce a new wave of mobilization. ▪️The former commander of the US Army in Europe Ben Hodges in an interview on the Youtube channel War&Politics 24 last Thursday said that the Kremlin is likely considering a full-scale mobilization. ▪️Last week, a participant in unofficial negotiations on Ukraine said to the Financial Times that increasing the level of mobilization is the only way out for the Kremlin against the background of the Russian military-industrial complex operating at its limit, the slowdown in Russia's progress on the front and Ukraine's growing superiority in the use of drones.

@I_amMukhtar Notice he never buys tissues.

He has hay fever 24/7, all year round.

@Baumann_Mac @WhiteHouse Mammon.

@WhiteHouse Which god?

America has always been, and always will be, ONE NATION UNDER GOD.

Germany's AfD politician Maximilian Krah on Alice Weidel's wife being Sri Lankan: When you have a wife from Sri Lanka who looks like Sri Lanka, then you are not a racist.

@Bertrom Very unsettling.

Piotr Kamieniarz. I’m Still Afraid of My Old Demons. 2019. Aren’t we all.

My face in the sun...

Israel is demolishing and setting fire to homes in the village of Markaba, southern Lebanon.

@Bertrom Had to look up catenary. Interesting seeing amassed en masse together, but beautifully written.

They perched on roofs and fences and sills. They posed statue-still on catenary lines. They aligned along cables like prayer beads on rope. They amassed en masse on the cemetery lawn and marauded the broad, yawning fields like cattle. Jill Alexander Essbaum.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds of food wasted and climate change deniers lie about cost of net zero. My local co-op

@GrahamH36921247 This is me today, but at least the roses are good.

We have a new rose out! This one is called ‘Alpine Sunset’. We thought it had died but we have been nurturing it back to life. Isn’t it beautiful?

Here is the perfect photo to keep you cool whilst embracing the football fever sweeping the globe during the World Cup: It is Ernest Shackleton's crew playing football on the ice in 1915, seen here beside the trapped hull of their ship The Endurance, a few weeks before it was crushed by the Antarctic ice pack and sank on 21st November 1915. The photo was taken by the ship's photographer Frank Hurley, which I originally cleaned & shared with you 5 years ago and which remained my most popular work for quite some time.

@StuartHumphryes That’s how I feel today.

It’s not the bond markets Andy Burnham should be afraid of. It’s his own MPs | Aditya Chakrabortty. This piece is spot on👇 theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

@simonmaginn I am already concerned. This was not what I was expecting.

Burnham's honeymoon period may well have ended already as he surrounds himself with some of the most detestable figures in politics.

Andy Burnham is now the frontrunner to be Britain's next Prime Minister. Nobody is asking what he actually built in Manchester, which has everything to do with Zone Fever, which is quietly extracting massive amounts of State aid (public money) to privatise the entire UK without any mention in the MSM whatsoever. Let me explain why that matters. Please read, share and subscribe to my Substack. No one else in the UK is focusing on the stealth nationwide rollout of free zones, initiated by the Tories, and fully backed and continued under the Labour Party. 🧵 open.substack.com/pub/europeanpo…

🇧🇫🍅 Burkina Faso is living the tomato revolution right now under President Ibrahim Traoré. This landlocked nation, where 80% of the people farm, still imported most of its rice while watching mountains of its own tomatoes—over 300,000 tons a year—rot by the roadside. No processing capacity meant raw commodity sold cheap or wasted, while the government paid out to import canned paste from Europe and China. That was the colonial trap working exactly as designed. Traoré crushed it. In November 2024, the SOBTO facility fired up in Bobo-Dioulasso: six tons of fresh tomatoes per hour, nearly 100 tons daily. Then came the SOFATO plant in Yako. These aren’t aid projects or IMF loan deals. They were built through popular shareholding—ordinary Burkinabè at home and in the diaspora buying in, community capital, coordinated with the state. 100% Burkinabè-owned. Over 10,000 indirect jobs. They even banned fresh tomato exports to feed the processors first. Now rivers of Sahel-grown tomatoes move down local conveyor belts, crushed, canned under local brands, hitting domestic shelves and crossing into Ghana. Not aid. Trade. The beginning of real regional food power. This is sovereignty in action: seeds in the ground, water systems engineered even near the Sahara, soldiers turned farmers, gold revenues redirected to the people instead of parked in Western banks. No begging. As Traoré put it, those who beg are always at the bottom. Burkina Faso stopped begging. That fight is the exact same battle raging inside America’s soul since before 1776. No colony—whether the Americas or India—was ever meant to have industry. London’s system was brutally clear: the Navigation Acts, the Iron Act, and the deliberate smashing of India’s textiles. You grow the cash crops, dig the minerals, and ship raw materials out. We keep the factories, the machines, the profits, and the power. The center stays developed; the periphery stays dependent cash-crop colonies. Forever. America’s Revolution wasn’t just about tea and stamps. It was a revolt against being locked into that raw-supplier role for eternity. Alexander Hamilton, Henry Carey, and the American System fought to build America’s own industry, protect America’s productive powers, and reject permanent colonial status. That argument never ended. It’s still the soul of America today: Hamiltonian nation-building that develops industry and sovereignty for Americans and others, versus the British imperial logic that keeps everyone else underdeveloped so the few can extract. What Traoré is doing in Burkina Faso is a direct continuation of that revolutionary spirit. He’s asserting the right of any nation to process its own resources, climb the value ladder, and own its future. It’s a living repudiation of the neo-colonial dogma that tells the Global South to stay poor on purpose. When Burkina Faso builds its own plants with its own capital and turns tomatoes into national wealth, it proves the old imperial model is a lie. This is why Burkina Faso’s tomato revolution matters to America. It forces the choice America has faced since the founding: Will Americans stand with the tradition that builds industry and sovereignty everywhere, or drift back into the British model of managed dependence? The most American revolution happening in the world today is unfolding in Ouagadougou. It shows exactly which side of America’s soul must be chosen—the one that builds, or the one that keeps colonies begging for scraps.

Trump has turned the White House into a 24/7 corruption operation. This is a national crisis. Trump thinks the public will stop paying attention. So I went to the Senate floor to call his bluff. I told the ENTIRE STORY of his 500 days of corruption. 1/ Here it is - in one🧵

@AndyBurnhamGM Tell me it’s not true re James Purnell.

Heading home after a big week in Westminster… thanks for the Z-Cars edits 😂

@Gadget440 He is closer to the mark on this compared to his regular claims, but there is never any nuance other than an anti-muslim agenda to his statements. Most maximum security prisons appear to have high numbers and the average for all prisons is around 18%. Notable, but causes mixed.

Tommy Robinson: "Muslims make up 6% of the UK, 40% of all maximum security prisons are taken over by Islam." This is false. There is no official statistic showing that 40% of UK maximum-security prisons are "taken over by Islam." The figure Tommy appears to be referring to is that some individual high-security prisons have Muslim inmate populations of around 40-45%. Tommy is pretending that this number relates to all maximum-security prisons in the UK. It does not. Karl Stefanovic simply smiled and nodded as Tommy presented this misinformation as fact. This gives you an idea of why this "interview" ended up being deleted.

@jodymcintyre_ @simonmaginn I gave Starmer 3 months and will give Burnham 6. I hope you are wrong, but it worries me greatly. Burnham did keep his promises as Mayor, but the pressures now will be much greater.

This man just overthrew the Prime Minister. But did you know that two weeks before Andy Burnham's by-election victory, Labour Together received a £125,000 donation? Their former director, Josh Simons, is in line for a top job at No. 10. The Burnham-Simons coup is underway:🧵