Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
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Quote:The Nuclear Stigma Has Held for Eighty Years: A Single Tactical Nuke in the Ukraine War Could End It
Originally posted by second:
Putin’s Neighbors Are Preparing for Total War: Europe Take Note
By Juliette Bretan | Aug 03, 2026 at 08:23 AM EDT
https://www.newsweek.com/putin-russia-europe-nato-war-12276230
The case against tactical nuclear use is not only humanitarian. If such weapons are shown to accomplish what the largest conventional munitions cannot, every state facing a hardened or buried adversary inherits the same argument. The demonstration effect would be immediate and general, and no diplomatic instrument currently exists to contain it.
By Michael Rubin | Aug 5, 2026
https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/the-nuclear-stigma-has-held-for-ei
ghty-years-a-single-tactical-nuke-in-the-ukraine-war-could-end-it/
From the very first minutes of his invasion, Putin sought to raise the specter of nuclear weapons in order to deter those who would oppose Russia.
“They must know that Russia will respond immediately, and the consequences will be such as you have never seen in your entire history,” Putin declared in his television address announcing the Ukraine invasion. Three days later, Putin ordered a “special service regimen” for Russia’s nuclear forces.
As Ukraine pushed Russian forces back, Putin again threatened to use “all weapon systems available to us,” underlining his statement with the declaration, “This is not a bluff.”
As the war entered its third year, Putin warned that any NATO dispatch of troops to Ukraine would trigger a “destruction of civilization.” On November 19, 2024, Putin signed a new nuclear doctrine into law. Any conventional attack into Russian or Belarusian territory could trigger a nuclear response. In May 2026, as Ukraine struck deeper into Russian territory, reaching even Moscow and St. Petersburg, Russia conducted nuclear readiness exercises. The danger now increases as Putin faces embarrassment at home.
He cannot deny the war or trap Russians in an information bubble when they see drone attacks striking at the heart of Russian cities. The war will end when Putin dies, as any successor can blame him for Russia’s loss and try to start anew, but so long as Putin remains alive, a tactical nuclear weapon in Kyiv or along the front is a real possibility.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Russia Is Losing the War. The Numbers Prove It
Pundits call it a “Russia’s advance.” The numbers call it systemic collapse: 39,500 casualties for 30 km² of rubble.
By Jason Jay Smart | August 6, 2026
https://www.kyivpost.com/videos/81788
Russia is gaining ground in Ukraine while losing the soldiers, money, industrial capacity, and political leverage needed to win. During June 2026, Moscow captured roughly 30 km² (12 mi²) at the cost of approximately 39,500 casualties and nearly $19 billion in war spending and strike-related losses. John Mearsheimer predicts an “ugly Russian victory,” but map movement cannot erase Putin’s failure to force Ukraine into submission. . . .
Russia is sacrificing the foundations of national power for territory that delivered none of Putin’s central objectives. . . .
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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US company’s AI lets Ukraine’s cheap kamikaze drones track targets on their own
By Jeremy Hsu – Aug 3, 2026 5:11 PM
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/08/ukraines-drones-get-ai-upgrades-for
-kamikaze-strikes-future-swarm-attacks/
. . . Such swarm capability provided by Auterion’s Nemyx system means that drones can autonomously work together to prioritize higher-value targets and adjust on the fly as targets are destroyed, so multiple drones aren’t wasted on the same target, Meier explained. That can all happen without any human input after the operator first directs the drone swarm toward a given objective.
“It basically means that you can point one of our swarms at an objective, and you can either decide to point all the munitions at a single target point, or you can actually spread them out from the get-go, and they will reprioritize,” Meier told Ars. “If you kick the swarm into strike mode, the whole thing strikes. If you let it abort, the whole thing aborts.”
The autonomous drone capabilities provided by Auterion’s strike kits also simplify the piloting skill required of human operators—regardless of whether they are piloting a single drone or commanding a swarm. That could help Ukraine’s military deploy more drones using a limited number of drone operators, and could prove even more invaluable for the United States or other countries that don’t yet have large numbers of trained drone operators.
“We found that we can train people within—I’m not kidding—60 seconds to operate this drone and even to operate the swarm, because you just move up and down to steer them in the right direction towards the target,” Meier said. “And when you are close enough to acquire the target, you just select it on the screen.”
The prospect of deploying fully autonomous drones on the battlefield may seem to be creeping closer. But Meier emphasized that Auterion believes in keeping a human in the target selection process.
“I am not sure if our adversaries eventually will allow us that, because they might enter into a way of warfare where we have to send autonomous systems against autonomous systems and let them make split-second decisions,” Meier said. “But until we are at that point, we as a company, and I personally believe, it’s really good if a human operator makes a life-or-death decision.”
Ukraine’s battlefield innovation system
Having visited Ukraine eight times to talk with the country’s top political and military leaders while working alongside Ukrainian drone manufacturers, Meier praised Ukraine for developing a system that enables a rapid cycle of innovation and improvement informed by battlefield experience.
“The Ukrainian forces are relatively accepting of initial battlefield failure,” Meier told Ars. “A lot of the Ukrainian firms didn’t show up with a perfectly working product—they showed up with something that was better than nothing, and then iterated through a lot of failures towards a point where it works every single time.” . . .
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The downfall of Ukraine’s ex-ambassador to US, explained
By Oleg Sukhov, Tim Zadorozhnyy | August 6, 2026 10:39 PM
https://kyivindependent.com/the-downfall-of-ukraines-ex-ambassador-to-
us-eu-integration-chief-explained/
Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine's former ambassador to the U.S. and deputy prime minister for European integration, was widely regarded as an effective manager.
But her involvement in several corruption investigations cast a shadow over her career and likely contributed to her dismissal as ambassador on Aug. 3.
On Aug. 5, authorities charged Stefanishyna with illicit enrichment totaling Hr 13.9 million ($310,000) and filing false asset declarations. She denies the allegations.
For critics of President Volodymyr Zelensky, the timing of the case has reinforced broader concerns about how his administration handles senior officials accused of corruption.
Opposition lawmaker Yaroslav Yurchyshyn argued that Stefanishyna remained in high office despite longstanding allegations because loyalty, rather than integrity, is the president's overriding criterion for key appointments.
"The main issue is the Zelensky team's reluctance to bring in people from outside his inner circle," Yurchyshyn told the Kyiv Independent. "Loyalty takes precedence over common-sense logic."
He argued that the authorities also believe they can bring anti-corruption institutions under control and shield Zelensky's close allies from prosecution.
The Kyiv Independent has requested comments from Stefanishyna and the President's Office and will publish their responses once they are received.
Yanukovych era
Stefanishyna, 40, has degrees in international law, English translation, and finance.
She has been involved in European integration since she worked at the Justice Ministry under pro-Western President Viktor Yushchenko in the late 2000s.
When Yushchenko was voted out in favor of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, she kept her seat, being later promoted to deputy head and then head of the Justice Ministry's department for international law and European integration.
Yanukovych was ousted by the 2014 EuroMaidan Revolution.
Olena Lukash, justice minister from 2013 to 2014, and Stefanishyna were charged in 2019 with embezzlement allegedly carried out during Yanukovych's presidency.
Lukash and Stefanishyna allegedly embezzled Hr 2.52 million ($315,000 at the 2013 exchange rate) in government funds intended for bringing Ukrainian law in line with European legislation, according to the investigators.
Stefanishyna allegedly played a crucial role in the embezzlement scheme since she was responsible for signing the documents, a source familiar with the investigation told the Kyiv Independent.
In 2023, the case was sent to the High Anti-Corruption Court.
However, the trial has been delayed by the defense, and there are concerns that it may be closed due to the statute of limitations, Roman Verbovskyi, a lawyer at the Anti-Corruption Action Center, told the Kyiv Independent.
"In the positions she held (under Yanukovych), Stefanishyna was more of an implementer than a decision-maker," opposition lawmaker Yurchyshyn said in turn.
"But the real question is whether concerns should already have been raised when she joined Zelensky's team, given that she had already been charged in the Lukash case. Should that have given the authorities a sign?"
European integration portfolio
From 2017 to 2019, Stefanishyna also worked as the head of the government office responsible for European integration.
In the 2019 parliamentary election, Stefanishyna unsuccessfully ran on the list of then-Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman's party.
Later, Stefanishyna served as deputy prime minister for European integration from 2020 to 2025 and as justice minister from 2024 to 2025.
Stefanishyna was likely put in charge of European integration because she already had vast experience in the area, a
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#Rootin4Putin
Fuck Ukraine.
--------------------------------------------------
Those who dance always seem crazy to those who can't hear the music.
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Moscow’s latest church rhetoric: blessing nuclear weapons as “God’s grace”
The Russian church has traveled far from the faith it claims to represent.
By Olena Mukhina | August 6, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/08/06/finnish-archbishop-is-shocked-b
y-moscows-latest-church-rhetoric-blessing-nuclear-weapons-as-gods-grace/
An Orthodox archbishop has publicly broken with the Moscow Patriarchate over its blessing of nuclear weapons. The head of the Finnish Orthodox Church, Archbishop Elia, said he is shocked that Russian Patriarch Kirill uses Christian rhetoric to bless nuclear weapons and justify their use, the Finnish broadcaster Yle reported.
The rebuke comes from within Orthodoxy against a patriarch who has sacralized Russia's war. Kirill is considered a close ally of Russian leader Vladimir Putin, and the Russian Orthodox Church under his leadership openly supports Russia's aggression against Ukraine, calling it a "holy war," per the Institute for the Study of War.
On Saturday, Kirill called Russian nuclear weapons a manifestation of "God's grace" and linked the creation of the Soviet atomic bomb to the prayers of Saint Serafim of Sarov, saying during the divine liturgy that the bomb was created "by God's grace and mercy."
The archbishop says there is no "Orthodox nuclear weapon"
Elia rejected the theology outright. In Orthodox liturgy, the church always prays for peace in the whole world, not for the victory of one country's weapons, he said, and there is no such thing as an "Orthodox nuclear weapon."
The archbishop drew a clear line about the church's role.
"The task of the church is not to bless weapons of mass destruction," Elia said in a statement published on the Finnish Orthodox Church's website.
Invoking a saint of love and humility angers him most
What most disturbed Elia was the act of tying a beloved saint to a nuclear blessing. He was especially angered that the name of Serafim of Sarov was linked to blessing nuclear weapons, calling the association a profound distortion.
Elia contrasted the saint with the patriarch. Serafim "was a man of love, forgiveness, and humility, and essentially embodied everything diametrically opposed to the current patriarch," he said. Serafim of Sarov is one of the most revered saints among Orthodox believers in Russia and beyond, including in Finland.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Most Ukrainians expect a long war, but 61% are ready to endure as long as needed
Only 21% of Ukrainians expect the war to end by the end of this year
By Kateryna Danishevska | Fri, August 07, 2026 - 13:23
More at https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/most-ukrainians-expect-long-war-but-61
-are-1786098015.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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The War Nobody’s Watching: Russia Is Losing, and America Has Changed the Channel
Russia is still bleeding men and machines into Ukraine, the West is still paying to keep Kyiv in the fight, and the only thing that has truly collapsed is America’s attention span.
By Eric Buer & Alex Vohr | August 7, 2026
https://sofrep.com/news/the-war-nobodys-watching-russia-is-losing-and-
america-has-changed-the-channel/
Four and a half years into Vladimir Putin’s war of expansion, the numbers coming out of Ukraine’s General Staff tell a story that almost no one in the United States is being told anymore. As of late July, Ukrainian military authorities estimate Russia has lost more than 1.44 million soldiers killed or wounded, over 12,200 tanks, more than 25,000 armored fighting vehicles, upward of 47,000 artillery systems, roughly 1,970 multiple-launch rocket systems, and 439 fixed-wing aircraft alongside 354 helicopters. A toll so large it exceeds the combined size of most European armies, twice over. These figures come from Kyiv, not Moscow, and should be read with that in mind since the Kremlin has never published comparable numbers of its own, and independent verification of exact totals is nearly impossible in an active war. But even discounted for wartime propaganda on both sides, the scale and the trend line are not in serious dispute among Western defense analysts. This is one of the most catastrophically expensive wars of attrition any modern state has fought for so little strategic return.
Four and a half years. One provincial capital, Kherson, briefly taken and then lost. A slow, grinding crawl through the Donbas, measured in individual villages and hundreds of meters, at a cost in Russian dead that a Soviet-era general staff would have found unthinkable. Vladimir Putin did not set out in February 2022 to trade a generation of Russian conscripts for a few hundred square miles of shattered farmland. He set out to erase a country; its government, its army, its claim to sovereign existence.
Four and a half years, and he has failed at that on every measure that matters, and every honest account of the war, including his own military’s battlefield performance, shows it. Russia’s air force has been so degraded and so wary of Ukrainian air defenses that it fights largely from standoff range. Its navy has been driven from most of the western Black Sea by a country with no navy of its own to speak of. Its vaunted armored formations have been reduced, again and again, to improvised infantry assaults and motorcycle-and-golf-cart tactics that have become grim internet punchlines but are, in truth, the signature of an army that has burned through its mechanized inventory faster than its defense-industrial base can replace it.
The support hasn’t stopped – it’s just stopped being news
Here is the part of the story that gets buried. The West has not walked away. NATO allies pledged roughly €70 billion (about $80 billion) in military assistance to Ukraine for 2026 and pledged to match it again in 2027. That is a level of sustained commitment that has no real precedent in a proxy conflict of this length. The PURL mechanism, the Prioritized Ukraine Requirements List, which lets allies buy American-made weapons directly for Ukraine, has moved billions of dollars in air defense interceptors, artillery ammunition, and precision munitions into Ukrainian hands this year alone, with contributions already running into the billions of euros within months of the program’s creation. Germany, the UK, and other allies have layered on additional bilateral packages on top of that.
This includes Patriot batteries and licensing arrangements to let Ukraine build its own systems, tens of thousands of first-person-view and long-range strike drones, extended-range ammunition, and joint production deals that will let Ukrainian-designed weapons roll off German assembly lines. The Ukraine Defense Contact Group, the “Ramstein” format that now brings together more than fifty countries, still meets, still coordinates, still moves steel and
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The August Coup by Robert Service review – the drink-soaked collapse of the Soviet Union
This brilliant account of attempts by the old guard to take back control captures the ludicrousness of it all beautifully
By John Simpson | Mon 3 Aug 2026 02.00 EDT
www.theguardian.com/books/2026/aug/03/the-august-coup-by-robert-servic
e-review-the-drink-soaked-collapse-of-the-soviet-union
Marxist-Leninist rule in Russia lasted 74 years, and in August 1991 it effectively collapsed in just three days: clear evidence of how hollowed out it had become. In the period that followed, Russia tried parliamentary democracy and unalloyed capitalism, then sank back into autocracy. Now it’s struggling under a wholly unnecessary war against its neighbour and former possession, Ukraine.
Why did the system of Lenin, Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev vanish so fast, without a fight? Because that’s how regimes fall in Russia: look at tsarism in 1917. (It almost happened again in June 2023, when the warlord Yevgeny Prigozhin’s men marched on Moscow largely unopposed; Vladimir Putin might have gone the way of Nicholas II had he not made some pretty wholesale promises to Prigozhin, then allegedly blown him up two months later.) . . .
. . . Yeltsin suffered from the same weaknesses as many of the plotters. In the lobby of the White House I begged to be allowed to go up to his office and interview him, but was told he was too busy speaking to world leaders and organising the opposition. Later, the former Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze arrived to see him. When he came out of the building an hour afterwards, he announced that Yeltsin had told him he would defend Russia’s freedom to the last drop of blood in his body. Stirring stuff. Three years later I reminisced with Shevardnadze about it all. He laughed. “When I got into Yeltsin’s office, he was lying unconscious on the floor with a couple of empty vodka bottles beside him.” But what about him fighting to his last drop of blood? “What do you think would have happened if I’d come out and told you I couldn’t speak to Yeltsin because he was dead drunk?”
Such was the chaos and absurdity surrounding the death of the Soviet Union. . . .
Book Review of Robert Service - The August Coup - The Destruction of the Soviet Union and the Making of New Russia 1985-1991 (2026)
Download the book for free from https://z-lib.gl/s/Robert%20Service%20The%20August%20Coup
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Aug 8, 2026
What is life like for Ukrainians in Donbas as invading Russian forces inch closer? In this report, the Kyiv Independent's Francis Farrell and Olena Zashko travel across Donetsk Oblast to document life in the remaining areas of Ukrainian-controlled Donbas.
From Sloviansk and Kramatorsk to Druzhkivka and Kostiantynivka, they meet civilians, soldiers, factory workers, and volunteers determined to hold onto their homes, despite constant Russian glide bombs and FPV drone attacks as the front line grows closer.
For more than a decade, Russia's war has revolved around Vladimir Putin’s fixation on Donbas. Now, as Russian forces push deeper into Donetsk Oblast, the remaining Ukrainian-controlled cities are entering what may be the final chapter of their existence.
00:00 Intro
00:36 Why Donbas matters
03:02 The fortress belt
03:39 Life under drones
05:29 Kramatorsk flag under attack
07:53 The geography of war
09:07 Support independent journalism in Ukraine
09:53 A wedding before leaving
10:47 A factory forced west
16:09 Cities disappearing
19:06 Gas station attack
21:38 The road to Druzhkivka
25:40 Why people stay
27:54 Russia's real target
29:30 A beach under bombs
33:33 The last chapter
35:49 Outro
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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