Ukraine war mega thread

[bsnub]

Ukraine is winning...

[helge]

Ukraine is winning...

The video title says so

Petraeus didn't, did he ?

[bsnub]

Petraeus didn't, did he ?

He most surely didn't lose. Keep smoking that, though. You have no idea what is going on in Ukraine. You never have so why start now. How is your tankie buddy sabang doing?

[helge]

He most surely didn't lose. Keep smoking that, though. You have no idea what is going on in Ukraine. You never have so why start now.

Petraeus didn't mention anything about Ukraine winning

Did he ?

[bsnub]

Like I said you have no idea what is going on in Ukraine.

[Molle]

[QUOTE=bsnub;4708321]Ukraine is winning...
[/QUOTE
You said that for the last three years..
Ukraine will not win as long as your president is siding with putin

[cyrille]

Ukraine is winning...

About a week ago you maintained that protestors had taken over Tehran.

[NamPikToot]

Nepoleon lite still putting himself in front of Ukr

France opposes EU plan to buy British Storm Shadows for Ukraine


Funds should be used to boost bloc’s domestic defence industry over Kyiv’s needs, Paris believes


France is opposing an effort to make it easier for Ukraine to buy British Storm Shadow missiles, The Telegraph can reveal.


A coalition of 11 EU capitals has proposed loosening the rules for Kyiv to use a €90bn (£78bn) loan to buy British weapons, but France wants the money to be spent within the EU.


The current plan for the loan – two-thirds of which will be used to buy weapons for Ukraine’s armed forces – foresees prioritising the European and Ukrainian defence industries before shopping overseas.


But Ukrainian defence officials have estimated that they will require €24bn of military equipment from outside the EU this year, according to documents seen by The Telegraph.


This figure is mainly for the provision of American-made Patriot air defence systems and PAC-3 interceptors, but long-range missiles have been identified as another requirement that European nations may not be able to provide.


European officials from the coalition have identified Britain’s Storm Shadow cruise missile as a potential option to plug the gap.


They are proposing a four-tiered system that could effectively put the UK in front of the US, should the country be able to fulfil Ukraine’s defensive needs.


However, France had emerged as an “obvious” opponent to the proposals, a diplomatic source said.


Paris is at the centre of efforts to make the EU strategically autonomous of its allies, mainly the US, because of ruptures with Donald Trump over his threats to seize Greenland.


It has argued that any funds donated to Ukraine should be used to boost the bloc’s domestic defence industry over Kyiv’s defensive needs.


This has led to internal complaints that the approach will impede Ukraine’s ability to defend itself, especially from Russia’s aerial bombardments.




Under the scheme, Ukrainian officials would submit purchase plans, which would then be reviewed against a set of criteria.


First, the EU would establish whether Ukraine’s domestic defence industry could fulfil the orders, before exploring the bloc’s own manufacturers for potential options.


Britain would sit on a third level of the cascading system, with the US on the fourth and final tier.


The coalition is focusing its efforts on relaxing the rules to make it easier for Ukraine to purchase from the third tier, which could also include Canada and other nations with defence deals with Brussels.


“We’re trying to do two things,” a diplomatic source told The Telegraph.


“One, make sure it’s open enough for the UK to comfortably be there. Two, make sure the administrative burden on Ukrainians to reach that layer of the cascade is not so hard.”


Britain's Storm Shadow missiles in combat
Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles in combat Credit: YouTube/Ukrainian Air Force
The latest attempt to prevent French influence is being championed by the Baltic and Scandinavian states, as well as Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic and the Netherlands.


Another eight countries, including Germany, have voiced support for a more favourable approach to Britain but have not officially joined the coalition.


One of the reasons Britain is being seen as a more favourable option is its leadership of the coalition of the willing, which is planning to deploy troops to Ukraine as part of any peace settlement.


With British troops set to be serving alongside their European counterparts, and American boots absent, investing EU funds in the UK is seen as an opportunity to boost security around the wider mission.


British diplomats are said to be in talks with representatives from the EU group, but are being encouraged to increase their outreach to the European Commission and European Parliament, where France has a strong presence in security-minded committees.

Access Denied

[bsnub]

As their grueling war of attrition enters its fourth year, both Russia and Ukraine are conducting strategic strike campaigns to destroy targets of economic and military value. Ukraine’s approach relies on long-range strike drones that accurately target oil refineries, rail nodes, and other infrastructure deep inside Russia. In contrast, Russia is using a more brute-force strategy, launching large numbers of drones, glide bombs, and missiles to overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses. Central to the Russian effort is the Geran drone, which is commonly referred to as the Shahed after the Iranian design on which it is based.

The Geran is a large loitering munition with a range of up to 2,000 km and a payload of approximately 40 kg of high explosives. The slow-moving, low-flying drone destroys its target by flying into it and detonating its payload. Early variants had an estimated price of around $35,000 per drone, allowing Russia to field them in large numbers. However, the drone has undergone numerous upgrades to stay ahead of Ukrainian countermeasures. As a result, the system is no longer the cost-effective weapon it was originally intended to be. Meanwhile, Ukrainian countermeasures have become both effective and substantially cheaper, shifting the economic balance of this aspect of the conflict.

Early Russian Upgrades To The Geran

When first introduced in late 2022, the Geran proved highly effective, as Ukrainian air defenses were optimized for small numbers of cruise missiles and aircraft rather than large volumes of slow, low-flying loitering munitions. At the time, Russian forces routinely launched Gerans in coordinated waves, with a significant percentage reaching their targets.

This effectiveness declined sharply in 2023 as Ukraine began targeting the drones with electronic warfare systems. Ukrainian forces increasingly relied on GPS jamming and spoofing systems positioned around key cities and critical infrastructure. These systems disrupted the Gerans’ satellite navigation, causing the drones to drift off course. The remaining drones were then engaged by ground-based air defense systems. Throughout 2024, Ukrainian officials reported interception or neutralization rates exceeding 90 percent in many regions, with some months seeing only a handful of drones reach their targets. Regardless, this approach was expensive for Ukraine. Electronic warfare and ground-based air defense systems were costly to field and became priority targets for Russian strikes.


Subsequently, Russia introduced a series of upgrades intended to restore navigational reliability. One of the most significant was the incorporation of the Kometa-M satellite navigation module, a hardened GPS receiver designed to resist jamming and spoofing. This module uses multi-band reception, improved signal filtering, and directional antennas to distinguish legitimate satellite signals from spoofed data. The first iteration employed four additional antennas, later increased to eight, and recently to sixteen. These upgrades significantly increased the cost of the platform, with the Kometa-M module reportedly costing roughly as much as the rest of the drone combined.

In parallel, Russia modified some Geran variants to allow for remote operation. In these cases, if the drone lost its navigation feed, an operator could take over and visually guide it to the target. Control is transmitted via a mesh radio network or satellite communications. These modifications required additional components, including cameras, transceivers, and more advanced flight-control systems, further increasing the cost of the platform.


Ukrainian Interceptor Drones And Recent Russian Upgrades To The Geran

With these upgrades, the Gerans became more capable at penetrating Ukrainian electronic-warfare defenses. As a result, Ukraine expanded its network of kinetic defenses, incorporating additional surface-to-air missile systems and manned aircraft employing cannons. These measures proved effective but were expensive, as surface-to-air missiles and fighter sorties cost more than the drones they intercepted. For example, a Stinger MANPADS costs approximately $100,000, more than double the price of an upgraded Geran.

Russia started launching Gerans in larger quantities to further overwhelm Ukrainian air defenses, deploying over 5,000 of these drones in December 2025. They also continued to upgrade the Geran, adding new features to increase the probability of hitting their targets. Russian forces began integrating cheaper decoy drones, known as Gerberas, alongside Gerans to numerically overwhelm Ukrainian kinetic defenses. Russia also reportedly added cameras and computer-vision systems, enabling some drones to attempt evasive maneuvers or identify and target air-defense systems. In a limited number of cases, Gerans have even been observed carrying air-to-surface missiles intended to engage those defenses directly.

More recently, Ukraine has found interceptor drones to be highly effective against Gerans. These small systems, such as the Sting produced by Wild Hornets, are launched and use computer-aided navigation to lock onto incoming Gerans. They then collide with the target and detonate, destroying both drones. Multiple companies are developing interceptor drones with a range of sensor packages. Brave1, a Ukrainian government defense innovation platform, recently posted the cost of different Wild Hornets interceptor drone models, with prices ranging from approximately $1,400 for a variant equipped with an analog daytime camera to about $2,400 for a version fitted with a digital thermal camera. Even at the high end, these interceptors are significantly cheaper than Gerans, particularly upgraded variants.


These interceptor drones have created significant challenges for the Geran. Russia has attempted several countermeasures, including fitting some Gerans with rear-facing cameras that allow an operator or autonomous system to detect an incoming interceptor. These efforts have generally been unsuccessful. As a result, Russia has increasingly shifted to operator-controlled Gerans flying at very low altitudes to avoid Ukrainian radar detection, reducing the time available for Ukraine to launch interceptor drones. However, this tactic has also had limited success, as low-altitude flight makes the drones more susceptible to visual detection and engagement by other short-range air defense measures.

The Future Of The Geran And The Implications For The War

The primary purpose of the Geran was to saturate Ukrainian air defense networks, creating gaps that would allow more capable Russian strike systems to reach high-value targets. A secondary objective was economic, forcing Ukraine to expend costly resources and expose expensive air defense systems to destroy the inexpensive drones. Ukraine has largely overturned this logic through the widespread adoption of interceptor drones, which has shifted the cost exchange decisively in Kyiv’s favor. As Russia has layered increasingly expensive upgrades onto the Geran to counter Ukrainian defenses, Ukraine has responded with a simpler and far cheaper means of defeating it.

As seen throughout the war with respect to drone and counter-drone technology, both sides will continue to adapt and refine their systems. However, current trends indicate a widening asymmetry in costs. Russia’s Geran drones are becoming progressively more complex and expensive, defeating their initial intent. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s countermeasures are becoming cheaper, more numerous, and more scalable. In a prolonged war of attrition, where industrial capacity and resource efficiency matter as much as manpower, this cost imbalance is increasingly favoring Ukraine.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/vikramm...-geran-drones/

[NamPikToot]

Not sure why this is still the The Dog House, surely move it to speakers? anyway...

Russian soldiers being killed faster than Kremlin can recruit them


Putin’s forces suffering almost 40,000 casualties a month since November, say Western officials

Russia is losing more troops than it can recruit for the first time since it invaded Ukraine.


Vladimir Putin’s forces were suffering almost 40,000 casualties a month since November, while recruiting up to 35,000 troops to sustain the invasion, Western officials said.


Ukraine’s intense counter-attacks have pushed Russia’s casualties to more than 1.25 million – more than the total sustained by the United States during the Second World War.


Al Carns, the UK’s Armed Forces minister, said Russia’s effort to train fresh recruits was “becoming more and more difficult” with financial incentives by the Kremlin failing to entice new soldiers to join the front lines. “People are realising that it’s a one-way ticket,” he said.


Efforts to end the war have recently stalled despite US pressure to secure a deal.


Speaking ahead of today’s fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion, Volodymyr Zelensky said Putin was seeking to launch World War Three, telling the BBC: “I believe he has already started it.”


The Telegraph revealed on Monday how Russia had bought properties near military sites across Europe as part of plans for a co-ordinated sabotage campaign, intelligence officials warned.


Suspicious property acquisitions near the MI6 headquarters in south London and the nearby US embassy, and RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus, have raised fears of Russia stepping up its “hybrid war” through the new network.


Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said Britain would continue to support Ukraine, insisting: “Russia is not winning this war.”


Russia has tried to persuade volunteers from poorer regions to join the war by promising $50,000 (£40,000) bonuses, but analysts question how long the economy can maintain the incentives.


The vast majority of Moscow’s losses – about 87 per cent – came from drone strikes, which now dominate the battlefield, with one drone as effective as 22 rounds of heavy artillery, Mr Carns said.




Russia’s losses have been exacerbated this month after Elon Musk banned the use of his Starlink satellite-based internet service.


Many of their drones can no longer fly and troops must communicate via radio, which is easier to intercept.


“The Russians’ intensity dropped when they were disconnected from Starlink,” a Ukrainian soldier told The Telegraph. “In two days, we regained Sosnivka [in Dnipropetrovsk] and are on the way to Huliapole [in Zaporizhzhia].”

Access Denied

[bsnub]

Today is also the 4th year since the start of ruzzia's 3-day special military operation to take Kyiv.

I present this little nugget from 4 years ago. Right before the invasion...

Interesting observation- another week, still no 'Russian invasion' [TM]. It has been eight years now of the US warning us of this invasion that never comes.

I seriously doubt he will make a move on Ukraine proper

He regurgitated this garbage ad nauseam for months.

Then there was this one from that intellectual heavyweight skiddy...

Ukraine is where Russia came from. Ukraine is more Russian than Russia.

The war started on page 82 of this thread. Interesting reading from back then. Sabang was so exposed and humiliated that he ultimately flounced.

[NamPikToot]

Can we move this too Speakers please? its a pain when you make a typo that can't be corrected, we aren't all Cyrille

[Bettyboo]

^ jst trie nat too mack tipos!

[Norton]

The war started on page 82 of this thread. Interesting reading from back then. Sabang was so exposed and humiliated that he ultimately flounced.

4 years of war! Damn time flies.. Agree snubs, a very interesting read.

[Bettyboo]

This is very interesting; shows the "new integrated battlefield skills" Ukraine has developed. Russia picked on the wrong kid to bully...



All because of Putin's ego... This has done huge damage to Ukraine, but also huge damage to Russia in every way, expanded NATO, the list goes on...

[baldrick]

The new total war by bob seely might be an interesting read for some of you

Russia has been trying to break western alliances for the last 20 years

Bob Seely's "The New Total War" explores the modern concept of total war, particularly in the context of Russia's conflict with Ukraine, highlighting the integration of traditional military tactics with non-military strategies like disinformation and cyber attacks. The book provides insights into how these methods reshape warfare in the 21st century.

[bsnub]

he Russians are on the warpath – and Europe is Vladimir Putin’s next target. That was British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s alarming claim at the Munich Security Conference in February. Britons “must be ready to fight, to do whatever it takes to protect our people, our values, and our way of life,” Starmer warned. Britain and Germany’s top military commanders delivered the same message in a recent article. Russia’s military posture “has shifted decisively westward,” wrote Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton and General Carsten Breuer. Soon the Kremlin “may be emboldened to extend its aggression beyond Ukraine.”

Really? According to much western coverage in mainstream and social media, the Russian army is crumbling, corrupt and inept. The same Kremlin which is allegedly setting its sights on re-conquering the Baltics is also reportedly facing imminent insolvency, an inflation crisis and economic collapse. In some quarters NATO membership for Ukraine is heralded as the ultimate security guarantee against Russian aggression – yet it is also NATO which is, in the Starmer-Knighton narrative, the target of Putin’s next attack.

Are Russia and its army on the verge of collapse, or preparing for a Stalin-style assault on NATO? Both narratives cannot simultaneously be true. And as far as Putin’s army is concerned, overwhelming evidence suggests that it is rotten to the core.

An acquaintance of mine was recently killed fighting for the Russian army in Kharkiv province. I will call him Ivan. His pathetic story is a good place from which to explore the profound dysfunction of today’s Russian army. Trained as a lawyer, he suffered mental health problems, became very religious – but he also occasionally beat his wife, a journalist and close friend of mine. Ivan suffered a breakdown, impulsively kidnapped his small children and fled with them to the Russian provinces. His wife tracked them down, and he was arrested. The cops gave him a choice: join the army or face assault charges. Like other desperate men who make up the Russian army’s estimated 30,000 monthly recruits, he took the signing bonus – worth more than a year’s average wages – and duly enlisted.

Unsurprisingly, he hated it. After a year of service Ivan tried to get out and collected medical unfitness certificates from psychiatrists. But a group of comrades from his unit were offered a bounty to get him back. They travelled to Moscow, lured him out of his flat with an invitation to a drink, then kidnapped him. The Russian army, in other words, had offered a cash reward to serving soldiers to abduct a mentally ill comrade and forcibly return him to active service. Ivan had always managed to avoid frontline service. But his luck ran out late last month, when he was killed on his first assault south of Kharkiv. His now ex-wife is not too sad, for she gets his flat and a $130,000 death payout.

‘They tell me the only way I will leave is in a body bag. We don’t want to fight but nobody has a choice’

For a more complete depiction of the reality of the war in Ukraine from the Russian side, take a look at the feature-length documentary Russians at War, available on YouTube. This extraordinary film was made by the Canadian-Russian filmmaker Anastasia Trofimova, who got herself unofficially embedded with a frontline infantry company fighting in Donbas after a chance encounter on a train with a soldier. The picture that emerges as Trofimova follows the unit from the spring to autumn of 2023 is of a rag-tag force of undisciplined, reluctant civilians who have mostly signed up only for the money. All are, notionally, volunteers desperate enough to risk their lives for a signing bounty. But many speak of their desperation, their revulsion at the war, and of the corruption and ineptitude of their commanders.

“We are people with broken fates,” complains one private who has just returned from the front lines. “We were dumped, then got surrounded. Out of our battalion of 900 just 300 made it.” Among the survivors is a soldier with severe tics and evident mental retardation. Another is almost paralyzed in his left arm and leg – not from a wound but a pre-existing neurological condition. “Don’t believe what you see on TV, it’s all lies,” says another soldier. At a drunken party in a half-ruined village house in the rear, the soldiers – dressed in motley bits of uniform, Adidas tops and flip-flops – debate why they are fighting. “Let’s admit it, everyone here has the same motive – money,” says one. Another counters: “You have nobody to feed at home. I have 16-year-old and 18-year-old sons. I am fighting so they don’t have to.” Another admits to being a drug addict who “would have gone back to drugs if I hadn’t come here.” Vitaly, 37, a cook, says he signed up “for patriotism – but I don’t see it any more. TV is a dangerous thing. I watched it and signed up for six months. Now they tell me the only way I will leave is in a body bag. We don’t want to fight but nobody has a choice – not us, not the Ukrainians.”

In a bitter irony, two of the main protagonists of the documentary are from Ukraine. Ilya, 49, the driver who first invited Trofimova to the unit, is from Donetsk, but lost his home and business to Ukrainian shelling in 2014. “Everything that united Russia and Ukraine was destroyed by western [Ukrainian] nationalists,” says Ilya. “They say that we [Russian-speaking] Ukrainians are second-class citizens. But we had so much that we had in common. I miss that brotherly union.” “Kedr,” 35, a rifleman, says his “family roots are in Ukraine. I believe that Ukrainians and us are brotherly people. Let everyone let themselves get home alive.”

The battalion take delivery of brand-new BTR armored personnel carriers – and laugh when the driver discovers that many parts are stamped “Made in the USSR.” The unit is deployed to the front lines at Bakhmut, but most of the soldiers don’t want to advance. “We’re not refusing to go,” one soldier says to an NCO who is attempting to cajole infantrymen forward to frontline trenches, “but we’re all against it.” Even “Saturn,” a lieutenant, admits to Trofimova that “people are dying in droves, but nobody cares.” Eventually the guys advance, only to suffer heavy losses from Ukrainian drones.

When the film came out it was lambasted (absurdly) by pro-Ukrainians as Russian propaganda, and dropped from several film festivals despite its radically anti-Kremlin message. Some critics were skeptical that a reporter could have snuck into a frontline unit without accreditation or official approval from senior command. But in my experience this is totally believable, because I did exactly the same thing, twice, with the Russian army in Chechnya in 1999 and 2000.

Traveling incognito, in defiance of a Kremlin ban on foreign journalists in the battle zone, I went with a Russian photographer who had made friends with members of some frontline units. After a drunken lunch with the officers of an Interior Ministry unit stationed on the Chechnya-Dagestan border, we sat on a makeshift bench while the commanding officer ordered a tank crew to do some target practice on the Chechen village across the valley. As the heavy-caliber shells from the vintage T-55’s main armament blew up sheds, barns and houses, the officers placed bets on the gunners’ marksmanship. Near the village of Shatoy, I watched as soldiers roughed up bound suspected rebels with kicks to the head. The officers got wildly drunk every night, and the foul-mouthed senior warrant officers regularly smacked and kicked young soldiers. Standing on a nine-story building on the edge of Grozny in February 2000, I watched the terrible spectacle of the artillery of five full Russian divisions pouring indiscriminate fire – at a rate of at least 50 rounds a minute, without exaggeration – into the ruined and surrounded city.

My experiences were a generation ago. Trofimova’s film was shot in 2023. But by all accounts the situation in the Russian army in Ukraine has deteriorated dramatically since then. Storm V, a Telegram blog that reports from the Storm “penal/volunteer” battalion fighting near Pokrovsk, reported in a 14 February post that the unit – made up mostly of released prisoners – lacked “even the simplest armor, helmets, masks, generators, magazines for machine-guns.” The unit was regularly chosen for frontline duty because “they are told, ‘You know both cold and hunger, so go ahead, you are more prepared for a life of survival.’” Commanders, according to the anonymous (and unverified) author of the blog, openly talk of “meat assaults” – the practice of throwing infantry forward into the drone-saturated “death zone” between the two armies. “On all fronts [Storm V] are at the forefront of the attack,” says the blogger. “They are not given medals, those are received by those who follow.”

Commanders talk of ‘meat assaults’ – the practice of throwing infantry into the drone-saturated ‘death zone’

Footage of Russian soldiers being punished for drunkenness and desertion by being taped naked to trees in the freezing cold, then being whipped or punched by officers, appear regularly on Russian social media. This month Denis Kolesnikov, a junior sergeant in the 1435th Regiment, posted a video blog where he explained that he deserted his unit because commanders were demanding bribes not to send men to the front lines. “Over half of our squad, about 50 people, were executed by commanders,” claimed Kolesnikov, blogging from Russia, not from Ukrainian captivity. “Everyone must pay money to commanders. When we line up, everyone is told how much they owe. Each person was told to pay from one to three million rubles [$13,000 to $39,000]… not to go to the contact line. As soon as money runs out, they get sent there or killed.”

There are dozens of reports, too, of seriously unfit men being pressed into service. Footage of a black African volunteer with an anti-tank grenade strapped to his chest was recently published on a Telegram channel with the jokey caption that the man’s role was as a “bottle opener” to blast a way for his fellows. And a huge cache of messages lifted recently from the phone of the Russian major general Roman Demurchiev by Ukrainian hackers reveals a force riven by feuds between generals, plagued by corruption, and full of contempt for superiors and peers. “[New] people come, we bring them in at night, and they’re ready for battle in the morning,” complains Demurchiev to a fellow officer. “They’re zero-level trained.” He describes his own command as “idiots, sycophants and cowardly traitors” – and jokes with his wife about sending her the severed ears of dead Ukrainian soldiers.

In Iraq and Afghanistan I did 13 official journalistic “embeds” with various frontline US and British units between 2001 and 2005 – including the US Third Marine Corps during heavy fighting in Fallujah. The extreme professionalism and discipline of the British and American armies, even under fire, was hugely impressive. The contrast with the chaotic, corrupt, amateurish and utterly unwilling Russian army that is fighting in Ukraine could not be starker. Putin’s forces may command deadly missiles, long-range drones and a modern air-force. And on the ground massed artillery and successive meat-waves of men recruited as cannon fodder may grind slowly and bloodily forward. But a threat to NATO? Not in a million years.

‘More than half our squad were executed’: Inside Russia’s rotten army

[misskit]

I’ll be watching The Russian at War this afternoon.

[bsnub]

I’ll be watching The Russian at War this afternoon.

If you get through that you may have interest in this;

[NamPikToot]

Not sure why this is still the The Dog House, surely move it to speakers? anyway...

Thank you to the mod for moving this thread out of TDH.

In other news, the Orange Childs Russian mate is trying to leverage the Iranian spat in his favour

Putin tells Trump: I’ll stop giving Iran intel if you cut off Ukraine

US rejects quid pro quo but offer prompts fears in Kyiv over Russian attempts to create further division between Europe and America

Russia offered to stop intelligence-sharing with Iran if the US agreed to do the same with Ukraine, according to a report.

Moscow has expanded its intelligence-sharing and military co-operation with Tehran since the US and Israeli strikes against Iran started three weeks ago, including providing co-ordinates for American military assets in the region.

Washington, however, rejected the quid pro quo last week, sources told Politico, after it was presented by Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian envoy, to Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, the US envoys, in Miami.

The offer was enough to prompt fears among Kyiv’s allies over Moscow’s ongoing attempts to create further divisions between Europe and the US.

On Friday, Donald Trump, the US president, called Nato countries “cowards” for refusing to send ships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping artery blockaded because of Iranian attacks.

“So easy for them to do, with so little risk. COWARDS, and we will REMEMBER!” he wrote on Truth Social, in his latest outburst directed at the military alliance.

As transatlantic relations boil, Ukraine is fearful that its fight against Russia has started to slip from view, with the war in Iran dominating the agenda.

Europe is also concerned that no progress is being made toward a peace deal as Russia’s war in Ukraine drags into its fifth year.

Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner are leading US negotiations with Iran while also being tasked with mediating between Israel and Hamas and Russia and Ukraine.

On Thursday, the Kremlin said the US-mediated talks were “on hold”, without providing a reason. The last time the three parties met was in February in Geneva and talks scheduled earlier this month in Abu Dhabi were postponed.

On Friday, Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president, said he would push US officials for a timeline for the next round of negotiations.

“We want clear dates – at least approximate ones. Everyone understands that the situation in the Middle East, the war, is affecting the postponement of this date,” he told reporters.

The Iran conflict is likely to have material impacts on the ground in Ukraine. US air defence stocks – which Kyiv desperately needs – are being exhausted defending against waves of Iranian drones and missiles.

Meanwhile, Russia is earning an estimated £112m a day from rising oil prices, which stand to be used to feed its war machine.

At the same time, Ukraine is offering to provide expertise to Gulf countries on how to protect their infrastructure from Iranian drones in exchange for air defence missiles.

The latest developments come as Russia’s military appears to be gearing up for a renewed push into parts of the war-battered eastern Donetsk region that remain under Ukraine’s control.

Access Denied

[bsnub]

The battlefield has not been kind to ruzzia in recent days...

[NamPikToot]

^ saw an article suggesting Russia are losing 900+ wounded or killed daily and one day last week 1,700, as declared by Ukr so not sure how accurate that is.

[bsnub]

saw an article suggesting Russia are losing 900+ wounded or killed daily and one day last week 1,700, as declared by Ukr so not sure how accurate that is.

It is higher than that mate. This map is three days old, and it is from a ruzzian milblogger Rybar, It shows a large concentration of ruzzian troops caught in pincer and being cut off in Zaporizhia,

[NamPikToot]

^ There must be lots of grieving parents in Russia, i remember the outcry when it started but you don't tend to hear that now - there must be a lot of fear and iron media control. Just such a waste.

[bsnub]

There must be lots of grieving parents in Russia

A big reason moskow has shut the internet off in much of the country.