Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Is it negotiation when the other party actually wants to shoot the hostage?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

“But what about the lurkers?”

No one could have predicted…

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

In my day, never was longer.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

There are a lot more evil idiots than evil geniuses.

Their boy Ron is an empty plastic cup that will never know pudding.

He seems like a smart guy, but JFC, what a dick!

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

We can show the world that autocracy can be defeated.

Let there be snark.

They think we are photo bombing their nice little lives.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

This must be what justice looks like, not vengeful, just peaceful exuberance.

Motto for the House: Flip 5 and lose none.

Republicans seem to think life begins at the candlelight dinner the night before.

The current Supreme Court is a dangerous, rogue court.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 934: 103 More Ukrainian POWs and Detainees Returned Home Today

War for Ukraine Day 934: 103 More Ukrainian POWs and Detainees Returned Home Today

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A painting by Ukrainian artis NEIVANMADE. The background is white. In the center, which is black with blood red bordering, is an hourglass. Inside the hourglass is a Ukrainian Azovstal POW painted in blood red. He is shirtless. His arms are upward along the outer edges of the upper half of the hourglass forming a saltire cross. He is chained with steel gray chains shackled to his wrists. Above his head, in grey, is written "Ruzzian Captivity." below his torso in the lower half of the hourglass, written in gray, is "Kills." To the left of the hourglass "He Saved Others" is painted in gray. To the right of the hourglass "But He Can't Save Himself" is painted in gray.

(Image by NEIVANMADE)

Two quick housekeeping notes. First, Rosie is doing great. Thanks for all the good thoughts, well wishes, prayers, and donations.

Second, is it Friday yet?

The Ukrainians completed another prisoner exchange today.

Our people are home.

We have successfully brought back another 103 warriors from Russian captivity to Ukraine.

82 privates and sergeants. 21 officers. Defenders of the Kyiv and Donetsk regions, Mariupol and Azovstal, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kharkiv regions. Warriors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Guard of Ukraine, border guards, and police officers.

I thank our exchange team for delivering such good news for Ukraine.


Here is President Zelenskyy’s address from earlier today. Video below, English transcript after the jump.

We Are Putting Pressure on Russia and Doing Everything to Make the War Felt There, Where It Was Brought to Ukraine from — Address by the President

14 September 2024 – 21:21

I wish you good health, fellow Ukrainians!

Briefly about this day.

First: we conducted another exchange. 103 Ukrainian defenders were returned from Russian captivity. The guys had been in captivity since 2022 — since the first months of the war. They are warriors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the National Guard, border guards, police officers, and other units of our Defense and Security Forces of Ukraine. In particular, the defenders of Kyiv region, Donetsk region — this is Mariupol, Azovstal and other parts of the region. Also, those captured in Kharkiv and Kherson regions. Among them, there are guys in critical condition after being wounded. All of them will be provided with the necessary assistance. I thank our team involved in the exchanges. And I thank, for their bravery, all our combat brigades that replenish the exchange fund for our state. And in particular, our operation in the Kursk region gave the necessary impetus.

I have just spoken with the Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. A report on the frontline: Donetsk region, key directions. We are holding our positions, no matter how difficult it is. He also reported on the Kursk region — on our actions and the enemy’s reaction. As anticipated, we are defending our fundamental interest — to bring peace closer. We are putting pressure on Russia and doing everything to make the war felt there, where it was brought to Ukraine from.

I met with a delegation of U.S. Congressmen. It is important to keep our partners at all levels fully informed of our needs, of our positions. It is crucial that all states, and especially those like the United States, implement our agreements really promptly. This should be felt on the frontline. Every delay in military packages has its negative consequences at the front. Every truly timely, fast delivery has a positive impact. I briefed the Congressmen on the current situation and the prospects.

We are also preparing for meetings in the United States.

And a few other things. I have signed a decree to honor our tank warriors with state awards. Today is their professional day. And I thank every warrior, as well as everyone without whom the tank troops could not function — these are the guys-repairers, as well as everyone who trains our tank crews and who fights in the diplomatic sphere to ensure that Ukraine receives combat vehicles.

Today, it is also important to say a few words to those of our people without whom it is impossible to imagine a really long-term international advocacy of Ukrainian interests. Today is Cinema Day in Ukraine — celebrated every year on the second Saturday of September. Of course, in times of war, cinema serves primarily as a means of conveying the truth about what is happening and what people are going through. I want to thank all those who, through the language of cinema, provide the world with truthful knowledge about this time and about how Ukraine and Ukrainians will definitely overcome the occupier. It cannot be otherwise. Only our victory, only Ukraine’s independence, only real security of life, life and international law. And we must remember that one of our key tasks now and in the future is to tell the world about Ukraine, to establish friendship for Ukraine with as many countries, peoples, communities as possible. Ukrainian cinema, Ukrainian culture, and our people, of whom we can only be proud, will certainly do this. I thank everyone who stands with Ukraine!

Glory to our people!

Glory to Ukraine!

The reason:

During today’s prisoner exchange, Azov soldier Kyrylo Zaitsev, the father of the youngest child trapped in Azovstal’s bunkers, was released.

Little Sviat Zaitsev arrived at the plant with his family when he was just three months old. The child left the basements when he was six months old.

The family returned to Ukraine through filtration camps, but the dad, a former employee of the plant, joined the Mariupol garrison and was exchanged only now, after 2.5 years of captivity.

He hasn’t seen his wife or child in over 2 years.

Lithuania:

Today in Kyiv, I met with the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania, @GLandsbergis

We discussed the situation on the front lines: our cities are under fire every day, the enemy continues to kill civilians. Together with our allies, we must stop it.

Ukraine’s priorities remain unchanged: strengthening air defense and increasing the ability to strike the enemy. We need more air defense systems and missiles to protect our skies and strengthen our defenses.

In addition, Lithuania is providing 10 million euros to support our long-range capabilities, including funding for the Palyanytsia rocket-drone. This will help us to resist the aggressor even more effectively.

Mr. Landsbergis confirmed that Lithuania will continue to actively support Ukraine in the international arena.

I thank Lithuania for its decisive support in this difficult time. I believe that together we can achieve victory and peace. 🇺🇦🤝🇱🇹

Toronto:

Here’s the full size screen shot:

Italy:

Hundreds of posters have appeared on billboards across Italy this summer, bearing the slogan: “Russia is not our enemy” – CNN

The posters, which first appeared in northern Italy in June and have been seen in several Italian cities, were paid for by associations that were formed to protest the country’s Covid-19 lockdowns. Some of them also feature the words, “Enough money for weapons for Ukraine and Israel. We want peace. We reject war.”

“We are deeply concerned by the arrogance of Russian propaganda in the Eternal City. We ask @comuneroma to reconsider granting permits for such posters that have a clear purpose of rehabilitating the image of the aggressor state,” the Ukrainian Embassy in Italy @UKRinIT

Official reactions to the posters have varied; some regions saw local officials remove them, while others allowed them to remain until the payment expired.

Source: https://cnn.com/2024/09/13/europe/pro-russian-posters-italy-intl-scli/index.html

The anti-COVID protection movement – masking, lockdowns, anti-vaccination, taking all sorts of weird conconctions instead of getting vaccinated, terrorizing local officials – were always promoted and amplified as part of Russia’s ongoing political warfare and influence operations against the US, the EU, EU member states, and NATO. That they’re pivoting to this should not be a surprise. Similarly, Russia’s political warfare and influence operation efforts promoted that Europeans, especially the migrants that had fled to Europe, were eating pets. Russia created the migrant crisis as part of its political warfare both by setting the conditions in Syria and parts of Africa to create the migration and then using its influence operations and local proxies to attack the migrants as a threat to white Europeans and Europe’s Christian history and nature. Any of that sound familiar?

Germany:

Canada:

The US:

From Foreign Policy:

In Robert De Niro’s 2006 spy thriller The Good Shepherd, fictional mob boss Joseph Palmi (played by Joe Pesci) tells CIA officer Edward Wilson (played by Matt Damon): “You’re the guys that scare me. You’re the people that make big wars.” To which the CIA man responds: “No, we make sure the wars are small ones, Mr. Palmi.”

Viewers may be tempted to see some dark truth in that dialogue—namely, that the U.S. government plots and schemes to create wars, with the only saving grace being that it tries to keep them contained. There is, however, another possible reading that is altogether more relevant for our time: It is the wars initiated by other states that Washington tries to keep small.

Keeping the war from going beyond Ukraine’s borders or escalating to the nuclear weapons stage is the thread running through the Biden administration’s response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine from the start. Washington has set a very clear constraint on Western assistance to Kyiv: Support is restricted to diplomatic, economic, and security assistance, while the United States and other NATO states must not become belligerents in the war. In short, sanctions and weapons supplies, but no boots on the ground or pilots in the air.

But Washington’s abundance of caution has gone much further than the simple decision of not putting U.S. and NATO personnel at risk of direct conflict with Russia. Rather than providing Kyiv as quickly as possible with the full spectrum of weapons that it needs to take on a peer adversary, there has been a long series of delays and hesitations regarding arms deliveries that cannot be explained purely by technical factors, such as the availability of weapons or the need to train Ukrainians to use them.

Instead, a pattern has emerged of purely political hesitations by the White House, notably regarding the long delays prior to authorizing deliveries of longer-range missiles and combat aircraft as well as the current blockage on any use of Western weapons against military targets and related infrastructure deep within Russia. The volume of military aid has also slowed markedly, with $6 billion of the $7.8 billion approved by the U.S. Congress in April still unused and about to expire on Sept. 30.

Taken together, these policy choices define the White House’s escalation management approach. To keep the war small, Washington has placed a very tight leash on Kyiv’s prosecution of the war. The result is a pattern of politically chosen limitations on the type of weapons and munitions delivered, the amount and speed of the aid, the numbers of Ukrainians trained on critical weapons, and the permitted uses of the equipment.

Washington has also made sure that European allies abide by the same limits, vetoing or delaying proposed deliveries and overruling key allies’ objections to targeting restrictions, even in situations where the weapons concerned are not from U.S. production.

By essentially micromanaging Ukraine’s strategy and tactics, the White House has sought to keep the war small. The Biden administration’s theory of escalation management also finds its expression in the nebulous formula of helping Ukraine “as long as it takes”—rather than declaring the goal to be a Ukrainian victory and using the formula of “whatever it takes,” which is preferred by many European allies.

Indeed, views differ among NATO member states regarding the level of military assistance that the West should provide, with Northern and Central European allies often at the forefront of pushing for more decisive assistance. It’s clear that none of these governments wants a wider war, nor one that involves nuclear weapons; they and their populations would be among the first to suffer from any such escalation. Many of them know and understand Moscow extremely well.

Hence, their more forward-leaning positions suggest that there may be something broken in how the White House seeks to manage escalation—and whether escalation management is even the right approach.

A current case is illustrated by the long-standing proposals by London and Paris to let Kyiv use British- and French-made weapons they already supplied to Ukraine—in particular, Storm Shadow and SCALP cruise missiles—to strike targets in Russia, including the military airfields that Russia uses to launch bombing runs on Ukrainian energy infrastructure and cities. By the end of May, Finland, Canada, Poland, Czechia, Denmark, and Sweden, among others, had all expressed public support for abolishing restrictions on Ukraine’s use of allied-supplied weapons.

As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said at the time, the Europeans were trying to build a new consensus before moving forward, “with the position in Washington being crucial.”

Washington responded in the narrow spirit of escalation management by avoiding the simple choice that key allies called for—and salami-slicing it into smaller steps. At the end of May, the White House apparently gave the green light to Ukraine for short-range strikes into a narrow border zone in Russia, but only if the target was directly involved in the Russian attack on the eastern Ukrainian city of Kharkiv. This was clarified in late June to allow for short-range strikes into any bordering region of Russia. Deep strikes into Russia remain verboten.

A further illustration of the Biden team’s escalation micromanagement mindset came with a visit by Ukrainian officials in Washington, D.C., in August. There, they presented the U.S. side with an exact list of targets that could be attacked with Western deep-strike capabilities, effectively asking for permission for each individual target.

The U.S. position has slowly evolved since summer 2022. At first, Ukraine was only allowed to fight within its borders and only at rocket-launcher range. Reluctantly, the White House then allowed deep-strike range—but only at targets within Ukraine (for example, to target the Russian Black Sea Fleet in occupied Crimea). Now, strikes into Russia’s border region at rocket-launcher range are permitted, but deep strikes into Russia are not. It took two years and four months for Washington to reach that position, which is still heavily and one-sidedly detrimental to Ukraine. Russia never placed any range or target limitations on itself and has launched deep strikes into Ukraine since the beginning of the war. Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis condemned this imbalance on X: “We cannot allow Russian bombers to be better protected than Ukrainian civilians are.”

Crucially, if deep strikes into Russia were a trigger for escalation, the world would know by now. Ukraine has launched repeated drone strikes at Russian energy infrastructure, including strikes on oil refineries more than 600 miles into Russia in April and May as well as an attack on a refinery in Moscow on Sept. 1. No escalation by Russia has been observed since then. Ukraine’s successful invasion of Russia’s Kursk region, the first occupation of Russia by a foreign force since World War II, also went unanswered beyond rhetoric.

In sum, what we have is a White House applying an escalation management algorithm that does not learn or self-adjust. Ideally, U.S. decision-makers would repeatedly test and update their estimates of Russia’s intentions and possible actions, with the aim of ratcheting up toward greater effectiveness. Instead, their algorithm remains impervious to their allies’ inputs and observable reality in the war as Ukraine acts and Russia reacts.

Worse, Washington’s broken algorithm subjects Ukraine to avoidable dangers and losses that will saddle any postwar scenario with greater costs and risks. These avoidable dangers and losses also threaten the entire outcome of the war.

The choice to use target distance as a key variable to salami-slice assistance into supposedly less-escalatory steps suggests a narrow mental map: one that views the Russia-Ukraine war almost exclusively as a land war where the only important variable is the location of the front line. But the location of that front line will matter a lot less if Ukraine loses the air war that Moscow wages against Ukraine’s home front. For months now, Russian airstrikes have repeatedly hit Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure and other targets across the country. Russia’s aims are obvious: to make Ukrainian cities uninhabitable in order to trigger large population movements, disrupt defense efforts, and force Kyiv to surrender.

The air war is also a key factor influencing the location of the front line—in particular, Russia’s use of devastating glide bombs delivered by bombers flying out of airfields that are located deep inside Russia and thus protected by the White House. Indeed, the use of long-range precision fires to take out these and other enemy targets is a key component of U.S. military doctrine—hence the repeated calls by prominent retired U.S. Air Force and Army commanders to lift range restrictions on Ukraine and take the air war seriously.

In every area that pertains to the air war, U.S. assistance has fallen far short of what it could be. Even in air defense, U.S. shipments have been a tiny fraction of what Washington has in its inventory and can inarguably spare. As for F-16 fighter jets, while the United States supports European transfers to Ukraine, it is not donating any of its own. A further disappointment is that the United States reportedly refuses to prioritize the training of Ukrainian pilots on these aircraft, a situation that a prominent Ukrainian lawmaker described in June as deliberate and caused by “purely political” delay tactics.

There is more at the link if you can stomach it.

Tymofiy Mylovanov, the President of the Kyiv School of Economics, places Russia’s genocidal re-invasion of Ukraine and Ukraine’s existential defense in the proper context:

Russia is not a Ukraine’s problem—it’s the EU’s

Eventually, after the war in Ukraine is over, won or lost, Russia will focus on another target: Georgia, the Baltic states, or even the Nordic countries

An aggressive Russia will remain. And what will Europe do? 1/ 

This is an unpopular, often overlooked view.

The West and Ukraine have a conflict of objectives. Many people think that Ukraine wants to escalate to defend, while it’s not the West’s war and the West should try to stay away from it. But it is not that 2/ 

Ukraine wants Russia to move on. The West wants Russia to stop being aggressive.

The point here is that Ukraine has proven to everyone and first of all Russia that it is a very costly prize, not worth the effort. Indeed, whatever the territory taken, it is burned to the ground/ 

By contrast, the EU has shown it can be bullied. Russia can send drones through NATO airspace and there will be no response. Russia can run sabotage and assassination operations in Europe and there will be no response. Russia can do cyber attacks and there will be no response 4/ 
The NATO countries and the EU are not ready to be fast and furious in their reaction to Russian bullying. They are not ready to innovate at the speed Russia does. So, Putin will continue to test them, by action 5/ 
At this point, Russia might very well believe that some of the NATO countries might be an easier target than Ukraine. If this is true, Europe is in trouble 6/ 

My take is that once the war is over, Russia will regroup and start harassing other countries, not Ukraine. And that’s the real conflict of interest between the West and Ukraine.

So, what NATO and the EU should do is to prepare for that time. Now. 7X 

Here’s Tatarigami’s take on Mylovanov’s assessment:

Not permitted because, let me check my notes, Ukraine doesn’t have the intelligence capability to target the launch site without NATO help and that’s a redline and could have political impacts of escalation

Even though they know exactly where the launch site is, it is well within range of Ukrainian reconnaissance drones, and Ukraine has launched hundreds of Storm Shadow and SCALP-E missiles already

But yes, do tell me about how Ukraine is incapable of using this advanced technology that was, let me check my notes, developed before Intel publicly released the first i586 Pentium processor

Meet Dracarys:

Odesa:

Kharkiv:

The Kursk cross border offensive:

A Russian T-90M after being hit by a tiny AFU FPV drone somewhere in the #Kursk AO. If you look close enough, you can see that even the “Nakidka” infrared, thermal, and radar band absorbent material (ITRAM) on the the gun is on fire. This is what corruption gets you… flammable armor covered in flammable camouflage and RAM.

I have added a reference image of a T-90 covered in Nakidka ITRAM for reference.

Novorossiysk, Krasnodar Krai, Russia:

Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia:

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

First some adjacent material from the Ukrainian MOD

And here’s the full video that Patron previewed yesterday:

There’s a couple of new Pes Patron cartoons I missed being published, so I’ll post those over the next few days.

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

22Comments

  1. 1.

    hrprogressive

    Reading the assessment of Russia going after other countries if Ukraine doesn’t successfully defeat them…

    Am I wrong to be concerned that NATO doesn’t actually seem up to the task of defending its own alliance?

    And, if that is true, shouldn’t everyone else be, you know, a lot more concerned about that?

  3. 3.

    Jay

    Glasnost Gone asked if Canada has any long range missiles, in response to Trudeau’s statement.

    No, we don’t.

  5. 5.

    Adam L Silverman

    @hrprogressive: Prior to 9-11 NATO was largely aimless and struggling to figure out what it was and its mission should be in a post Cold War world without the Soviet Union. Once 9-11 happened, NATO activated as part of the US response to the attacks. And since most of that response was a combination of counter-terrorism operations and low intensity warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq (NATO participated in Afghanistan, some NATO members participated in Iraq, but the alliance as a whole did not). That gave NATO a new(ish) mission and a renewed purpose, but it did not return the alliance to being what it was created to be: a transatlantic, multi-state alliance to conduct large scale interstate campaigns. Just as the Clinton administration and the US tried to bank a peace dividend from the fall of the Soviet Union, so to did the NATO member states in Europe. In the latter’s case that included becoming overly reliant on US defense spending.

  11. 11.

    Adam L Silverman

    @hrprogressive: The Baltic states, Poland, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Romania take the threat a lot more seriously because of proximity and the unfortunate history of that proximity. They are prepared to fight alone and in concert even if the rest of NATO doesn’t make an appearance.

    But more than that, Putin does not actually want to fight NATO in a conventional war. He wants to both use it as a foil, as part of the internal to Russia propaganda blaming it and the US and the EU for all of Russia’s problems, and to fight it using all the elements of national power with a deemphasis on military power. As in not a direct mil to mil confrontation. Using military/military intelligence elements for subversion, wetwork, cyberwarfare, etc only.

  14. 14.

    Jay

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Canada hasn’t been set up to fight a war alone since WWII.

    After WWII we were reconfigured to conduct certain specialist missions with in NATO, ( anti submarine warfare, all weather interceptor, 2 armored corps, recon).

    In North America we partnered with NORAD with shared roles.

    Since Bush 1 I have argued that we need to be able to operate independently.

  16. 16.

    hrprogressive

    @Adam L Silverman: ​
     

    I suppose I find it hard to reconcile the idea that Putin doesn’t want a larger conventional war with NATO but also would like to continue conquering whatever he believes should be part of Russia.

    Anyway, don’t stay up even later for me, just musing out loud. Thanks!

  17. 17.

    Bill Arnold

    Seeing a bunch of usages in the press of “nuclear sabre rattling”, and close variants, re Russia recently. Good; they weaken the emotional impact of Russian threats. These two are from today:
    Putin’s options for Ukraine missiles response include nuclear test, experts say (Reuters, Andrew Osborn and Mark Trevelyan, September 14, 2024)

    Short of nuclear sabre rattling or strikes on British assets, more predictable responses might include Russia stepping up attacks on Ukrainian civilian infrastructure, Kuehn said.

    Russia’s Medvedev threatens to turn Kyiv into ‘giant melted spot’ – UK and US are deliberating giving Kyiv permission to use Western weapons against targets deep inside Russia. (Politoco eu, SEPTEMBER 14, 2024, JONES HAYDEN)

    Medvedev, who likes to rattle nuclear sabers, said the Kremlin already has “formal” grounds to use nuclear weapons after Ukraine’s cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, but could instead utilize newer technologies to create a “giant melted spot” on the site of the Ukrainian capital.

    “newer technologies” :-) Guy may be mixing some substance like ketamine with his vodka.

    Re “nuclear sabre rattling” etymology, a quick search traced it back to 1992. Any earlier references?
    “The Cold War and the Change in the Nature of Military Power” (dissertation, Lee M. Peterson, 2004)

    “Although Khrushchev was well aware that this crisis could escalate into a nuclear exchange, he attempted to influence
    Western thinking by engaging in what William Burr called ‘nuclear sabre rattling’.”

  18. 18.

    Chet Murthy

    @hrprogressive: Anders Puck Nielsen has spoken several times about Russia’s grand strategy in Europe (which Putin shares).  It is to destroy the multilateral alliance, and deal with each European country bilaterally.  Where Russia’s mass can enable it to defeat the country.  Thereby, they think they can reconquer all the lands they lost in ’89-91.  So they don’t want to militarily engage with NATO: instead, they want to find a way to help NATO fall apart — by subversion and other nonmilitary means.  You can see that in their co-optation of Hungary and now Slovakia, their deep tendrils in Austria (not part of NATO, but part of the EU and has an association with NATO), and their work especially to subvert Germany.

  19. 19.

    Jay

    @Bill Arnold:

    ruZZia has threatened The West with nuclear “red lines” 198 times since 1991.

    ruZZia knows that a nuclear use of any kind, will be responded to by a massive nuclear counterstrike.

    In every “war game” that has been played by any nuclear country, (except Israel), use of even one single tactical nuclear weapon has escalated to a massive nuclear war, so most nations militaries have doctrine that just cuts out the middle man and get to the end as quick as possible.

  20. 20.

    Jay

    @hrprogressive:

    Poland, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania have all started fortifying their borders with ruZZia, beloruZZia, reducing the border crossing points and restricting commercial and civilian travel at the crossings.

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    Interfax.com.ua interview with the head of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense Kyrylo Budanov:

    “2025 is the year for them, the turn of the 25th – the beginning of the 26th – it is key for them. They want to end all this, because according to their own calculations, the Russian Federation, if they do not come out of this war as conditional winners, they are far away, let’s say, the future that can be calculated is a horizon of 30 years, – fall out of the possibility of seeing Russia as a superpower, which they aspire to,” he said at the 20th annual meeting of YES in Kyiv on September 13-14, organized by the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation.

    Budanov noted that Russia predicts that “all their problems will begin in the summer of the 25th year”, as both the financial and economic factor and the socio-political factor will be combined.

    According to him, currently the Russian Federation is correctly fighting the deterioration of the economic situation, because it understands that the decline is ongoing, which is already noticeable and painful.

    “But this is still far from the peak. They predict that around the summer of ’25, the negative economic impact will begin to be very felt in their country. This, by the way, is connected with many processes that they are trying to speed up in their state in order to get the most out of this period as they would like. They would like to finish with their victory, unfortunately,” Budanov added.

    Russia’s central bank just raised their interest rate to 19% to combat inflation.

    (via https://nitter.poast.org/sambendett )

    Slava Ukraini!!

    Cheers,
    Scott.

Comments are closed.