Russia Invades Ukraine. Again
POSTED BY: captaincrunch
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 21:09
VIEWED: 562266
PAGE 1018 of 1104
Quote:Signym's father was a prisoner of the Russians. He absorbed Russian propaganda about their superiority to Western Europeans and passed it on to his daughter. When the father did NOT prosper as highly in the US as the family felt they deserved, the daughter became bitter at the US.
Originally posted by THG:
Another point is that by reading comrade signyms’ posts, it becomes obvious she wants Putin, i.e. Russia, to win. Why, Ukraine is not a part of Russia so why does she always post Putins’ propaganda?
T
6ixStringJoker has a slightly different motivation. He is angry, poor white trash who feels like he has not prospered as highly as he deserves. He is bitter that money was spent on ammo for Ukraine instead of being spent on him.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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I’m the Foreign Minister of Sweden. Don’t Overestimate Russia.
May 20, 2026
By Maria Malmer Stenergard
Ms. Stenergard is Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs. She wrote from Stockholm.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/20/opinion/sweden-intelligence-russia-
economy.html
The war in the Middle East may be consuming much of the world’s attention, but Russia’s war against Ukraine has not abated. It will not end until we make it cost President Vladimir Putin more than he believes it is worth.
Since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, the Kremlin has tried to make the world believe that the Russian economy is strong and that sanctions don’t work. The Swedish government disagrees, and has commissioned several studies by leading economists and intelligence services to uncover the truth behind Russia’s official statistics: The economy is more fragile than it appears.
Having an accurate picture of the state of the Russian economy is crucial. We can’t afford to underestimate Russia’s strength and its ability to harm Ukraine and NATO allies — by providing Iran with intelligence, for instance — but we must not overestimate it either.
There are several reasons to believe that Russia has been exaggerating its economic strength. Russia has claimed that its economy grew by around 13 percent between 2020 and 2024, but by measuring nighttime luminosity, an established way of assessing economic activity in countries where official statistics are not available or cannot be trusted, we have estimated that the economy actually contracted by around 8 percent during this period.
We also believe inflation is substantially understated. In 2024, when inflation in Russia was reportedly around 10 percent, the central bank raised the benchmark interest rate to 21 percent, suggesting that inflation was higher. And Sweden’s Military Intelligence and Security Service believes that it is higher than the current official forecast of around 5 percent. This would mean Russia is overstating its purchasing power, and that its military spending capacity is weaker than it appears.
A study published by the British government estimates that the overall losses to the Russian economy as a result of international sanctions amount to at least $450 billion since February 2022. The effect on sectors such as energy exports has been devastating: Russia’s energy revenues in January 2026, before the beginning of the war in Iran, were down by 50 percent from the same month the year before.
Russia is benefiting from the waiving of some sanctions because of the war in Iran and the near-total closure of the Strait of Hormuz, but Swedish intelligence estimates that Russia would need the average oil price for Urals oil to remain above $100 a barrel for the rest of the year to make a significant difference. The benefits to Russia have also been limited by Ukraine’s successful strikes on Russian oil refineries.
Not everyone agrees with Sweden’s assessment of Russia’s reporting on its economy, but there is growing agreement about the economy’s general fragility. Inside the country, elites are increasingly alarmed. Mr. Putin has acknowledged some weaknesses in the economy’s performance, and last month ordered officials to improve it. A Kremlin-friendly think tank, run by the brother of the Russian defense minister, recently warned of the risks of a systemic banking crisis this year. And last week, the economic growth forecast for 2026 was downgraded to 0.4 percent, despite rising oil prices.
Then there are Russia’s strategic failures in Ukraine. Advances at the front have almost ground to a halt, with Ukraine even regaining some territory. Russia’s casualty rates at the front are catastrophic. Russia has suffered 1.2 million casualties since the start of the invasion, by some estimates, an average of roughly 35,000 a month in 2025. Recruitment is increasingly expensive.
Ukraine is in a stronger position than it has been in a long time. It has given counterdrone assist
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Unexpected Words from Ukraine: We Have an Overproduction of Drones
A chat with the Ukrainian ambassador to Poland reveals that the government in Kyiv now finds itself with more drones than it needs in certain areas.
By Jim Geraghty
May 20, 2026 10:20 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/the-morning-jolt/unexpected-words-from-
ukraine-we-have-an-overproduction-of-drones/
Warsaw, Poland — For a man representing a country still fighting off a full-scale invasion for the fifth year, Vasyl Bodnar, Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland, can find promising signs of a transformed landscape in the war. With the U.S. war against Iran demonstrating the terror that Shahed drones can inflict upon civilian populations, suddenly every country on earth wants to build its own anti-drone defenses, and fast. And no country has spent more time fighting off drone attacks than Ukraine, and no country has more expertise, experience, production lines . . . or, believe it or not, more extra drones lying around.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky announced last year that Ukraine was pursuing joint weapons production agreements with Canada, Denmark, Germany, Lithuania, Norway, and the United Kingdom. In April, Ukraine signed ten-year defense export agreements with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar. As mentioned yesterday, Poland is trading nine decommissioned MiG-29 fighter jets to Ukraine in exchange for some unspecified assistance with drone technology.
And now:
Kyiv has said that the US is seeking the transfer of technology and access to intellectual property rights from Ukraine as part of a drone deal that is awaiting approval at the highest political level, a person familiar with the matter said.
The US Department of Defense has asked to test a range of Ukrainian defense products, including drones and electronic warfare systems, as Washington is considering their potential purchase for military use, the official said. The agreement has not been finalized, the person added, speaking on condition of anonymity because the discussions are private.
Growing interest from the US shows how the world’s largest military is looking to tap into the drone expertise that Ukraine has acquired over four years fighting against the Russian invasion. Through a combination of new technology and tactics, Kyiv’s forces have been able to strike deep into Russia territory, to slow and in some cases even reverse battlefield gains by Moscow’s bigger army, and to inflict significant damage on oil facilities that help finance the Kremlin’s war machine.
(Hey, do you remember a bit more than a year ago, someone loudly insisting that Ukraine didn’t have any cards?)
“In the beginning of the war, we were asking for everything, because we were lacking everything,” Bodnar recalled. “We were traditionally, a peaceful country who had nothing to fight with. . . . Here at the embassy, we have an officer of the border guard who had been in the surroundings of the city of Sumy fighting for a couple of weeks without [enough] ammunition, without any supplies, just like a partisan group. They organized attacks on the Russians, and were fighting, even without any orders.”
That early desperation prompted a lot of Ukrainians in and out of uniform to start experimenting with off-the-shelf, commercially available recreational drones and jury-rigging them to drop grenades on Russian positions. “It was a completely new, an unbureaucratic approach,” Bodnar said. “Businesses that yesterday had been creating kitchens, cooking things, started making drones. They started from small innovations, which are now widely used on the front line.”
Ukraine was one of the scientific, engineering, and manufacturing cornerstones of the old Soviet Union; during one stretch, Ukraine was producing around half of all the USSR’s tanks and missiles. Even for the generation after the Cold War, the country churned out about 130,000 engineering graduates annually, which adds up to a lot of highly motivated engineering minds thinking up new ways to fly ove
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Putin threatens Armenia
May 20, 2026
Given Armenia’s extensive trade with Russia, Putin went on, the issue of EU membership really ought to be put to a referendum. And anyway, he added, remember “everything that’s happening on the Ukrainian track”? Remember how it all started? That’s right, with “Ukraine joining, or trying to join, the EU.” And look what happened next! “A coup, the Crimea incident, the positioning of southeastern Ukraine, and the military action—that’s where it all led.” Of course, Putin was blaming Western malfeasance, but the coded threat to Armenia was still transparent: Nice little country you got there. Shame if it got reduced to rubble.
Other high-level Russian officials, from Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin to foreign minister Sergei Lavrov to foreign ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, have followed up with even more belligerent messages in recent days: charges that Armenia is being “subjugated” by the West and force-fed “liberal values,” warnings that the country is in danger of losing its sovereignty and its spiritual foundations, and personal attacks on Pashinyan himself. Meanwhile, Russian authorities have, by total coincidence, found dangerous pests or harmful chemicals in imported Armenian fruit, vegetables, dairy products, cognac, and flowers. And Kremlin bots in Armenian internet spaces have been busy spreading anti-Pashinyan fakes from their familiar dog-eared playbook: allegations of corruption, rumors about grave health problems, or dire warnings of warmongering plans for confrontation with Russia.
More at https://www.thebulwark.com/p/the-empire-putin-tried-to-rebuild-armenia
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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It is nice to see the uppermost echelon in Ukraine has finally figured out that war is a 24/7 3-shift factory rather than an episode of Firefly ( adventure | drama | action | heroics | run the credits at the end )
Ukraine is developing low-cost interceptor missiles for Russian Shahed-type drones, Fedorov says
By Kateryna Hodunova | May 21, 2026 2:29 pm
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-developing-low-cost-missiles-to-in
tercept-russian-shahed-type-drones-fedorov-says/
Ukraine is developing low-cost interceptor missiles to counter Russian Shahed-type drones, with prototypes already undergoing testing, Ukraine's Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov told journalists at a closed-door press briefing on May 16.
"We have already identified solutions that are nearly ready and have begun testing them," Fedorov said.
The Iranian-made Shahed is one of Russia's main long-range strike systems used against targets in Ukraine. First deployed in 2022, it was later produced domestically by Russia, which developed its own variant, the Geran.
Fedorov added that Ukraine plans to increase production of the missiles "tenfold" and build up additional stockpiles for the fall and winter season, following this winter's Russian strikes on energy infrastructure that caused widespread power outages and left many areas without heating during periods of severe cold.
The minister said the steps are necessary to counter Russia's expanded use of Shahed-type jet-powered drones, which can reach speeds of up to 600 km/h. Such kamikaze drones were first recorded in Ukraine in early 2024.
Over the past four months, Ukraine has doubled its rate of downing Shahed-type drones, even as Russian attacks have increased by 35%, Fedorov said. The minister added that interceptor drone supplies have also grown 2.6-fold, with a strategic goal of achieving a 95% aerial interception rate.
"The introduction of the after-action review played a significant role in this process. This is a standard NATO procedure for conducting a detailed analysis of combat operations after they have concluded," Fedorov said.
"For us, it has become one of the key elements in building a modern air defense system."
Fedorov also said the number of private air defense units protecting businesses has increased to 27 in Ukraine, with requests to create additional units growing each week.
Fedorov added that the Defense Ministry has three main near-term priorities, including revising recruitment and service terms in the Ukrainian army, shifting to competitive defense procurement, and implementing a basic guaranteed minimum supply of drones to brigades.
However, the minister did not give a timeframe for the planned changes. The recruitment and service reforms would reportedly cover fair pay, clear terms of service, unit staffing, and efforts to reduce AWOL cases.
President Volodymyr Zelensky announced on May 1 that a reform of the Ukrainian military's pay system for soldiers, sergeants, and commanders is set to begin in June. Under the new system, personnel in non-combat roles would receive at least Hr 30,000 ($680) per month, while infantry soldiers would be paid between Hr 250,000 ($5,645) and Hr 400,000 ($9,000) depending on their combat duties.
Zelensky also said changes will be made to the way units are staffed to introduce fixed terms of service and begin the gradual discharge of personnel who have served since 2022 and earlier.
Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said in an interview with Militarnyi published on May 20 that the Ukrainian military is considering introducing new contract terms of six to 10 months for personnel who have served for an extended period.
Syrskyi added that Ukraine has the capacity to conduct rotations for troops who have been in the combat zone for a long time.
"We have calculated everything — the number of personnel stationed in brigades on average at their positions and the number of personnel deployed to the area
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Ukraine aims to inflict 200 Russian casualties per square kilometer of advance, Fedorov says
By Kateryna Hodunova | May 21, 2026 5:35 pm
https://kyivindependent.com/ukraine-aims-for-200-russian-personnel-cas
ualties-per-square-kilometer-of-advance-fedorov-says/
Ukraine's strategic objective is to impose up to 200 casualties among Russian military personnel for every square kilometer of advance, Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov said on May 16 at a closed-door press briefing.
The statement comes amid reports that earlier this year Ukraine briefly seized the initiative on the front lines, retaking more territory than it lost to Russian forces for the first time in about 10 months.
While Russia lost 67 soldiers per square kilometer of advance in October, that figure rose to 165 in January, 244 in February, 254 in March, and 179 in April, according to Fedorov.
"The situation on the ground confirms that Ukraine has succeeded in significantly slowing the enemy's advance and is gradually regaining the initiative," Fedorov said.
"At the same time, we are stepping up offensive operations and liberating territory."
Russia lost 35,203 military personnel — killed and wounded — in April 2026. In March, the figure was 35,351, and in December 2025, it was 34,544, Fedorov said, pointing to an increase in Russian casualties.
"Today, every kilometer the enemy advances comes at a disproportionately high cost in terms of casualties," the minister added.
Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi said on May 20 that since the beginning of 2026, Russia has lost 141,500 military personnel, of whom more than 83,000 were killed.
President Volodymyr Zelensky said on March 10 that "out of 100% of losses, 62% are killed and 38% wounded" among Russian forces, citing intelligence assessments reviewed by Ukraine — a ratio of nearly 2:1.
Syrskyi's latest figures show a slightly lower split: 58% killed, 42% wounded.
Ukraine's General Staff has not revealed its own losses during the full-scale invasion, citing operational secrecy.
A January 2026 CSIS report said Ukraine has likely suffered between 500,000 and 600,000 casualties from February 2022 to December 2025, of which between 100,000 and 140,000 are thought to be killed in action (KIA). https://www.csis.org/analysis/russias-grinding-war-ukraine
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Ukraine aims to inflict 200 Russian casualties per square kilometer of advance, Fedorov says
"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth"- Mike Tyson
*****
Oh, BTW SECOND, you're as misdirected about my motives as THGR is.
Yanno what formed my politics (besides Pope John XXIII's version of Catholicism)?
Like you, it was the Vietnam war.
But instead of jumping in with both feet, like you did, I became very anti-war.
I see the USA as a great source of misery and destruction across the globe, so unworthy of us.
Stop posting shit about which you know nothing.
-----------
"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
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Clearing Russian mines will take decades
By Peeter Helme | May 20, 2026
https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/05/20/ukraine-demining-bezkaravainyi-
11-billion/
The annual economic losses from contaminated land are around $11 billion. Around $9 billion of that is lost exports, and roughly $1.1 billion is lost local tax revenue. About 57,900 km² of agricultural land has been affected, which is approximately 40% of the 133,300 km² of national territory affected by the war.
Kharkiv Oblast alone accounts for roughly 475 km² of confirmed or suspected hazardous agricultural land. That is about 59% of all such areas in Ukraine. Mykolaiv has around 205 km², and Kherson around 111 km².
Peeter: Tell me about the compensation program for farmers. How does it actually function?
Bezkaravainyi: It started from a number we refused to accept. A few years ago, a widely cited report, I believe Time picked it up, suggested Ukraine would need 700 years to be demined. We were not satisfied with that, so we started thinking about what we could change.
The bottleneck was simple. We had farmers who needed clearance, and Ukrainian companies ready to provide it. The missing piece was payment, because farmers do not have those resources. So we built a state program that pays for the service when a farmer applies.
A farmer applies through the state agrarian register. We filter for farmers who are officially registered in the area, pay taxes, and have no record of cooperation with the Russian Federation. Then we assess what the clearance will require—what kind of ordnance is likely on the site, how active the area was during combat. Operators bid for the contract, and competition drives prices down.
More than 15,500 hectares have already been cleared and returned to farmers under the program. The average cost is around UAH 60,000 per hectare ($1,360). The state has allocated UAH 2 billion ($45 million) this year within the Ukraine Facility framework.
The costs have risen. Prices are about 30% higher now than two years ago, partly because of broader economic shifts and partly because the tasks themselves have become harder.
When we started, we worked on the easiest cases first—fields with a few craters and a destroyed tank or two. As we move to fields with trenches, combined minefields, and cluster munitions contamination, the work becomes much more demanding. War is not cheap. The result of war is not cheap either.
One thing the program keeps surfacing is older history. In the past year, companies clearing agricultural land have found Second World War ordnance on three different sites. Two weeks before this interview, an operator clearing a field in Kharkiv Oblast uncovered a large Second World War air bomb two meters underground. We came to clear after a modern war, and we kept finding the previous one.
The First World War left France with the Zone Rouge, territory deemed too dangerous to ever return to productive use. We can compare it to Chornobyl. To Fukushima. It is our assessment that something similar will happen in Ukraine on a large scale: areas where we will never operate safely. We do not have full evidence yet, but the trajectory points that way.
Much more at https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/05/20/ukraine-demining-bezkaravainyi-
11-billion/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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‘Whoever Controls Mala Tokmachka Controls the World’: How the Battle for a Ukrainian Village Became a Meme
By Anna Snegireva | May 21, 2026
https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/05/21/whoever-controls-mala-tokmac
hka-controls-the-world-how-the-battle-for-a-ukrainian-village-became-a-meme-a92734
Mala Tokmachka has been mentioned so often in Russian military reports and pro-war Telegram channels lately that it has started to sound as though it were the key to victory in the entire war.
The long-running battle for this small Ukrainian village in the southeastern Zaporizhzhia region — and Moscow’s repeated claims of progress and victory there — has now become an unexpected meme.
It all started when a video compilation of pro-Kremlin military commentator Boris Rozhin’s repeated comments over the past year that Russian forces were “continuing to press” near the village went viral on the Russian internet.
Russia’s Defense Ministry first claimed control of the village in March 2022, during the opening phase of its full-scale invasion. By that summer, reports said Ukrainian troops had returned to the area.
From then on, Mala Tokmachka became a regular feature in Russian military updates, with the Defense Ministry and war correspondents alike repeatedly reporting strikes on Ukrainian positions there.
In May 2024, the Defense Ministry even staged an exhibition showcasing what it described as Ukrainian military “trophies” captured there.
In 2025, Russian military briefings reported that troops had begun direct combat operations in and around the village itself.
Then, in November, the Defense Ministry announced what it described as the village’s “liberation” for the second time since the start of the war. Defense Minister Andrei Belousov congratulated Russia’s 42nd Guards Motor Rifle Division and called the capture “a major step toward victory.”
Yet by 2026, Russian officials and military commentators quietly dropped references to the village being under Russian control.
The back-and-forth has inspired an outpouring of memes in both Ukraine and Russia.
“Expectation: Kyiv in three days. Reality: spending an entire year ‘continuing to press’ near Mala Tokmachka,” Ukrainian journalist Denis Kazansky wrote on social media, referring to the Rozhin compilation video.
“If not for Mala Tokmachka, they’d already be in Berlin by now!” joked the Ukrainian Telegram channel Zabor Zaporizhzhia.
The jokes soon spread into Russia’s own nationalist and pro-war online circles, where some users used the village as shorthand for what they saw as exaggerated official narratives of battlefield success.
“It’s hilarious and depressing at the same time,” wrote Russian military Telegram channel, Reporter Filatov. “I get the need for propaganda. Back in the Soviet Union, under ‘wild and merciless censorship,’ they would simply say ‘local battles,’ even when there was a slaughter going on. But they didn’t spend a year and a half [in 1944-45] storming some random granny village. Stalin’s army knew how to wage both war and propaganda.”
In comment sections under pro-war Telegram channels, users voice frustration and fatigue with what they see as endless declarations of progress without decisive results.
Much more at https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/05/21/whoever-controls-mala-tokmac
hka-controls-the-world-how-the-battle-for-a-ukrainian-village-became-a-meme-a92734
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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"Every third sortie results in a hit": How the 412th Nemesis brigade destroys Russian air defence with mid-range drones
By Bohdan Miroshnychenko and Iryna Lutsak | 21 May 2026, 12:50
https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2026/05/21/8035736/
Over the past year, Ukrainian mid-range drones have conducted reconnaissance and destroyed targets up to 200 kilometres away, potentially disrupting logistics, slowing down offensives and thinning out surface-to-air missile systems, opening the way to the enemy's oil infrastructure.
Pavlo Laktionov, deputy commander of the 412th Nemesis Brigade, told Ukrainska Pravda how these drones are developing:
Why cannot Russian air defence protect itself from drones?
Soviet-designed radars are not well suited to shooting down small aircraft with composite air frames. Russian surface-to-air missile systems do shoot down our drones quite often, using up missiles in the process, but we fly at low altitudes, making the assets less visible to radar. Some of their missiles have a minimum altitude for interception, and we fly below it.
Overall, the small size of the aircraft, the right tactics, the dispersal of air defence systems and the depletion of their missile stocks give us a significant advantage. But Russian interceptor drones are causing us serious problems. Ukrainian manufacturers should already be thinking about developing countermeasures.
How effective are your strikes at the moment?
In our case, roughly every third sortie ends in an effective hit. There is a difference between "hit" and "destroyed". "Hit" means the target has been damaged and may be repaired. "Destroyed" means it no longer can be. So effectiveness is not just about whether the asset hits the target.
Much more at https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/articles/2026/05/21/8035736/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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