Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Also, are you sure you want people to rate your comments?

We still have time to mess this up!

Petty moves from a petty man.

No Kings: Americans standing in the way of bad history saying “Oh, Fuck No!”

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Nothing says ‘pro-life’ like letting children go hungry.

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

“The defense has a certain level of trust in defendant that the government does not.”

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

Not loving this new fraud based economy.

“woke” is the new caravan.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Fight for a just cause, love your fellow man, live a good life.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

In my day, never was longer.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

Fight them, without becoming them!

Dear elected officials: Trump is temporary, dishonor is forever.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Giving up is unforgivable.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / War for Ukraine Day 960: President Zelenskyy & Larry the Cat

War for Ukraine Day 960: President Zelenskyy & Larry the Cat

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A quick housekeeping note: We are safely at the hotel in Tallahassee. Rosie and ruby are curled up on the bed with me as I type this. The Mominator is in the next room racking out.

All we know right now is that the power has been out in my neighborhood since about 4 PM EDT yesterday. The one neighbor that we know stayed – three time cancer survivor who’s my age and is like “FUCK IT! I’VE BEEN THROUGH WORSE!!!” – let us know that the street is flooded as of this morning. Her house is not as high up as mine and it did not flood. What we don’t know is when power will be restored, whether my house took any damage, and when we can get back in. I have a friend who is going to go over tomorrow and check the house for us. Provided there’s no damage or, just some minor stuff, as soon as we get an estimate as to whether the power will be back on is when we’ll head back. We’d like to get home Saturday or Sunday, but there’s no point driving back if there’s no power and/or if the house is damaged to the point where it isn’t livable.

As you can imagine, I’m fried. I’m just going to run down the basics and rack out.

President Zelenskyy did a number of stops today to meet with the heads of government in Italy, France, and the UK. In the UK he had an encounter with Larry the Cat, which led Larry to tweet the following:

Here’s the full text of President Zelenskyy’s tweet:

During my meeting with the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom @Keir_Starmer, I outlined the details of our Victory Plan. We have agreed to work on it together with our allies.

The Victory Plan aims to create the right conditions for a just end to the war. I thank the United Kingdom for its continued defense support of our country, including with long-range weapons.

🇺🇦🇬🇧

Because he’s traveling, there’s no address from President Zelenskyy today.

The cost:

Ukrainan journalist Viktoria Roschina has died in Russian custody.

She was just 27.

Captured and imprisoned in the Russian-occupied zone of Ukraine’s Zaporizhia Oblast, she spent over a year in captivity.

According to Ukraine’s military intel service, Viktoria was supposed to get back home soon as part of prisoner swaps between Russia and Ukraine.

It’s painful to even try and have a brief thought about what Russia could do to her to precipitate the death of a 27-year-old woman in captivity.

Putin’s Russia is a criminally insane maniac of a state.

Here’s the full text of the quoted tweet:

oday, I learned the terrible news. Our colleague, journalist Victoria Roshchyna, died in Russian captivity.

I have a question. What did they do with her? What could have been done to a young girl to make her die? I call on all journalistic organizations from different countries to officially demand an answer from Russia.

Vika, you were so brave. I’m so sorry we didn’t free you on time…

If you were curious where the “taxpayers are funding Ukraine at their own expense” influence operation originated, here you go, though this one is a British flavored variant:

Having been snubbed by the US 🇺🇸 over his “pseudo-victory” wish-list Zelensky has turned up in London to claim a consolatory batch of the UK 🇬🇧 handouts and political soundbites.

As before, the British taxpayer will foot the bill for the carnage the corrupt Kiev regime continues to inflict on its own country and people

Here’s more about how some of this works:

🚨NEW 🚨

@AmericanSunProj has identified a network of over 1000 likely automated, pro-Russian X accounts that we’re calling “Sleeper Agents,” as some have been active for over a DECADE.

1/

@AmericanSunProj This network, which has generated over 100M posts, amplifies Kremlin propaganda within seconds of it being posted. It uses AI-generated or stolen profile pictures to give the guise of grassroots, authentic support. And it engages across divisive issues in the US and beyond. 2/ 
@AmericanSunProj We weren’t surprised to find a Russian bot network; we were surprised how *old* this network is. Isn’t Elon Musk supposed to be doing something about spam and inauthentic behavior on this platform? 🙃 3/ 
@AmericanSunProj Since VP Harris entered the pres. race, we’ve observed an uptick in abusive & false content targeting her from this network. However, since Musk has monetized access to the X API, it is impossible to know the true extent of this network’s activity surrounding the election. 4/ 
@AmericanSunProj Since 2020, social media platforms like X have rolled back their content moderation operations and slashed their trust and safety teams, rendering our country and our discourse more vulnerable as we head toward what is likely to be a tumultuous election and transition period. 5/ 
@AmericanSunProj We’re calling on X to take down this network and reinstate its efforts to combat foreign influence campaigns on its platform. The Sleeper Agent network is a snapshot of a single network in Russia’s vast online influence operation. 6/ 

@AmericanSunProj We know Russia is not the only adversary attempting to influence the US. Time to wake up.

Read the full report here 7/7

France:

I met with the President of France, @EmmanuelMacron. Together, we received a briefing from the leadership of the training center where our unit, referred to in France as the Anne of Kyiv Brigade, is being trained.

France will provide significant support to this brigade: delivering armored personnel carriers, self-propelled artillery systems, trucks, situational awareness systems, and other essential equipment. With this assistance, the unit will be fully equipped to carry out combat missions.

I also held productive negotiations with Minister of the Armed Forces, @SebLecornu. The main topic was strengthening our defense capabilities.

I informed Mr. Lecornu about the situation on the front lines and presented a list of the Ukrainian army’s urgent needs. We discussed the initiation of a French cooperation format for the production of arms and ammunition.

More on the Ukrainian strike on the Russian Shahed drone base in Krasnodar Oblast, Russia:

Yesterday, Ukrainian defense forces struck a Shahed UAV storage base in the Krasnodar region (russia)— @GeneralStaffUA reports.

According to available information, approximately 400 Shahed drones were stored there. The destruction of this storage base will significantly reduce the ability of russian occupiers to spread terror.

Glory to Ukraine! Our fight continues.

Not sure where in Ukraine this is:

Kharkiv:

Kyiv:

Bucha:

Northern lights over Kyiv #aurora

The Aurora Borealis is shining over Ukraine again tonight.

I must say this is unique—never in my life did I hear about the Northern Lights seen in our latitudes as often as during the dramatic time of the Russian invasion.

It paints our skies red in memory of so many fallen friends and loved ones. And we must remember that an aurora is also a sign of hope in the dark.

So we keep the good hope.

Goodnight from Ukraine!

Odesa:

Kherson Oblast:

Feodosiya, Russian occupied Crimea:

If it burns for four more days, there’s going to be a new Jewish holiday. I do not make the rules…

Maykop Russia:

Drones attacked the Khanska military airfield near the Russian city of Maykop.
The exact number of aircraft destroyed or damaged is still being determined. However, it is already known that there are large-scale fires and detonations at the airfield. Local authorities have announced an evacuation.🔥🔥🔥

That’s enough for tonight.

Your daily Patron!

First, some adjacent material from the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense.

What? It’s a shark…

And a new video from Patron’s official TikTok:

@patron__dsns

Коротко про те, як я познайомився з паном Послом Японії 🤭🤍 #песпатрон

♬ som original – 𝑷𝒆𝒅𝒓𝒂𝒅𝒂𝒔🎵

Here’s the machine translation of the caption:

Briefly about how I met Mr. Ambassador of Japan 🤭🤍 #песпатрон

Open thread!

Reader Interactions

18Comments

  1. 1.

    J. Arthur Crank

    Thanks Adam.  I’m glad you are comparatively well.  Also too:   Larry the Cat is a good boy.

  3. 3.

    Adam L Silverman

    Everyone is preemptively most welcome.

    Also, I’m tracking the new detailed post by Kriegsforscher regarding Pokrovsk and the FT reporting on Russia’s shadow fleet. I’ll deal with them tomorrow night.

    I’m racking out.

  5. 5.

    KatKapCC

    Nice little dollop of antisemitism in that Russian embassy tweet. Assholes.

    If it burns for four more days, there’s going to be a new Jewish holiday.

    Dang it, we don’t have room for any more on the calendar.

  7. 7.

    Bill Arnold

    The UK Russian Embassy X/Twitter account is the worst.
    I occasionally reply to it, with another voice/anon account(made with burner phone/always with Tor (plus)).
    It generally has a low number of replies.
    Twitter/X is getting really bad; as you note with the Sleeper Agent thread, the API is not affordable to low/mid budget researchers, so only high-budget orgs are able to map out influence operations easily.
    Plus there is clearly more use of NLMs for such ops, including I am sure cleaning up incorrect English (incorrect target language).

  11. 11.

    Jay

    Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦
    @IAPonomarenko
    8h
    Meanwhile, in Putin’s Russia in 2024 — the boss of a de facto independent totalitarian Islamist ethnic-criminal enclave publicly declares blood feud with a Kremlin-linked oligarchic billionaire and Russian Senate member following a deadly shootout between ethnic mafia militants over a major retail business in Moscow.

    I’m not kidding at all.

    Interestingly, these people also call Ukraine, which has been combating one of the world’s largest war machines for years and won the trust and active support of over 50 nations, a failed state.

    https://nitter.poast.org/IAPonomarenko/status/1844457988695990710#m

    Logo
    Anton Gerashchenko
    @Gerashchenko_en
    14h
    ‼️ The conflict between Kadyrov and Russian senator Suleiman Kerimov has already been named the most serious conflict in the last 10 years. There is a serious discussion in Russia that it could lead to a war between Chechens and Dagestanis.

    The interethnic conflict intensified after the shooting at the office of a marketplace in Moscow. A note from the Dagestan Interior Ministry said. “The blood conflict that the Chechen leader outlined today and accusations of organizing his assassination are seriously destabilizing the situation in the North Caucasus.

    ‼️ According to political analysts close to the Kremlin, apparently the Kremlin is no longer able to extinguish or control this conflict.

    There are rumors that the National Guard of Russia and Interior Ministry forces will be redeployed to the North Caucasus, and it is also possible that army groups will be strengthened: “This may affect the course of the SMO. It is not clear yet whether Kadyrov will redeploy Akhmat units back to Chechnya.”

    The Caucasus story seriously weakens the Kremlin, demonstrating its weakness and limited resources in inter-clan squabbles. Putin cannot solve an emotional interethnic conflict with money and credit.

    We will monitor the situation.

    https://nitter.poast.org/Gerashchenko_en/status/1844376645936799761#m

    Praying for casualties.

  12. 12.

    wjca

    @Jay: Praying for casualties.

    Although even just an armed standoff could noticably cut into (sorry!) Putin’s supply of meat cubes for his war.

  15. 15.

    strange visitor (from another planet)

    thank you for your work adam. hope your house is largely unscathed.

    great googly-moogly, the big lie-bowski dances like ed grimley or pee-wee herman.

  16. 16.

    Jay

    Had a break down tonight.

    Have to talk with a therapist soon.

    I work with NAFO, and things are triggering my PTSD.

  18. 18.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jay: Send me an email. I’ve got something for you all to play with

    And don’t run yourself into the ground.

Comments are closed.