Russia began a bombing campaign against all of Kiev’s retail warehouses and stores. Hopefully all of them will be gone soon.

 
https://x.com/cirnosad/status/2084784641500999745

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 5 2026 5:37 utc | 204

Cluster munitions raining down in Kyyiijeev.
 

RUSSIA UNLEASHES CLUSTER MUNITION MISSILE OVER HUGE WAREHOUSE IN KIEV
 
During the Russian night attack, the Nova Poshta distribution center in Kyiv was destroyed by a missile with cluster warhead.
 
Three people were killed—two carrier company drivers and a contracting organization employee. Eight others were injured.
 
Nova Poshta promises to fully compensate the declared value of damaged packages and contact customers.
 
-> Seems the attacks on Wildberries in Russia led to a response bigger than Zelensky expected.

 
https://x.com/MyLordBebo/status/2084929186439868774

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 5 2026 9:37 utc | 206

RE:  Posted by: Savonarole | Aug 5 2026 9:50 utc | 209
yet Russia continues to be droned, shelled and terrorized.  
go figure…this is the result of piss poor military strategy via political stranglehold.

Posted by: Trubind1 | Aug 5 2026 11:23 utc | 208

“Ending the War Would Be a Disaster for Europe” | Russia Sees Talks as Pointless – Fyodor Lukyanov

Fyodor Lukyanov, one of Russia’s most influential foreign-policy thinkers, joins me for a frank conversation about why Western Europe is clinging to the war in Ukraine — and why ending it now would be a political disaster for Brussels, Berlin and Paris.
 
We discuss:
• Why the EU needs a permanent external threat to hold itself together
• How Trump’s America is largely indifferent to the outcome
• Putin’s actual red lines (and why Donbass is non-negotiable)
• Zelensky’s political survival and Europe’s military-industrial dependence on Ukraine
• Why real diplomacy is still impossible
 
Lukyanov’s recent analysis that “Western Europe needs the conflict to continue” has sparked intense debate. Here he expands on it without filters.

 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uS_E-jRy0A

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 5 2026 11:46 utc | 210

The U.S. and EU Lie About How and Why the War in Ukraine Started.
Yes and they have been lying about it since the Maidan Coup and still are lying.

Posted by: Englishman | Aug 5 2026 12:55 utc | 212

Posted by: Trubind1 | Aug 5 2026 11:33 utc | 211

Incompetent babble and stupid polemics. All persons involved in the appointments and shiftings were promoted, not demoted, or given other tasks of higher responsibility. And the changes certainly make sense. Logistics are crucial, granting them an own branch is certainly sensible. Same goes for unmanned systems warfare.
 
In no way this is an indication of a crisis. Maybe some of the changes might have been undertaken earlier, but that is always the case. Would the Stavka have followed all the wise prescriptions of armchair generalhood, the war would long and catastrophically have been lost.

Posted by: aquadraht | Aug 5 2026 13:18 utc | 214

Putin’s reshuffling of commanders is wonderful news. The Vostok Group of Forces has been the best performing on the battlefield, so he’s moving its commander Col. Gen. Andrey Ivanayev to head the Tsentr Group of Forces, while promoting Vostok Group of Forces Chief of Staff Col. Gen. Pyotr Bolgarev to the position of its commander (acting). This is exactly the meritocracy principle I and other people have been calling for. The former Tsentr Group of Forces Commander Col. Gen. Valeriy Solodchuk will be heading a new military branch responsible for all rear services, while the former Tsentr Group of Forces Chief of Staff Col. Gen. Denis Lyamin will head the new Unmanned Systems Forces.
 
Now hopefully something will be done about the admirals who are refusing to adapt to the times and use Unmanned Surface Vehicles at scale.

Posted by: S | Aug 5 2026 14:55 utc | 216

KIEV FOOD SUPPLY UNDER PRESSURE — DISTRIBUTION HUBS BURNING
 
Russian strikes hit three major distribution centers in the Kiev region today — two Fozzy Group facilities (Silpo, Fora chains) and one belonging to Novus. Not an isolated incident — on June 3rd, a nearly 38,000 sq meter ATB warehouse near Dnepropetrovsk was destroyed, a facility that supplied roughly 300 stores. ATB was forced to scramble logistics to redistribute stock and avoid shortages.
Photos of empty ATB shelves started circulating on social media afterward — the company denied any deficit.
Industry voices are less reassuring. A former top manager at a major retail chain told “Strana” that these distribution centers are the backbone of supply — one to three hubs typically serve an entire metro area like Kiev, dispatching dozens of trucks daily to individual stores. Lose the hub, and there’s nowhere left to redirect deliveries from. Supply disruptions and price hikes follow.
The head of Ukraine’s Buckwheat Association was blunter — expect shrinking assortments and rising prices, and if hits on logistics hubs keep coming, outright supply breakdowns aren’t out of the question.

Posted by: MiniMO | Aug 5 2026 16:18 utc | 218

@213
 
Demilitarization of US arms started in 1991, when U.S. adhered to the air land battle but saw no adversary but Soviet mechanized brigades.
 
As such U.S. safe distance precise missiles are unsuited for any enemy hiding and hardening military sites.
 
No big deal to deplete near useless weapons.
 
The big deal is they are for war we did not get….

Posted by: paddy | Aug 5 2026 16:29 utc | 220

Here are some of the Serbian churches/monasteries looted, desecrated and severely damaged. Croats also stole holy relics which have never been recovered. “hand of the saint Teodor Tiron…it remained in Zagreb where it was kept in silver box but it disappeared during the Croatian War of Independence”
 
 
 
Saint Nicholas Cathedral, Karlovac
 
The church was devastated during World War II, and then again in 1991, during the Croatian War of Independence, when mines were detonated inside the church by Croatian forces. The church was repeatedly blown up and robbed until final destruction in 1993.
 
 
Dragović monastery
 
Between 1991 and 1993, during the Croatian War of Independence, the monastery was broken into several times,[6] and in 1995 it was abandoned, after which the church was devastated and desecrated, making it unhabitable.
 
 
Gomirje Monastery
 
During the World War II, the Ustaše government of the Independent State of Croatia killed monastery monks and took all of the monastery’s valuable possessions to Zagreb, while the complex itself was burned in 1943.
 
 
Jasenovac Monastery
 
church was partially damaged in 1991 and in 1995 was desecrated and destroyed
 
 
Komogovina Monastery
 
One of the relics saved in 1942 was the hand of the saint Teodor Tiron which survived burning by the Ottomans. After the end of World War II it remained in Zagreb where it was kept in silver box but it disappeared during the Croatian War of Independence.
 
 
Krka monastery
After Operation Storm in 1995 the monastery was looted, but not significantly, as it was protected by the Croatian police, abandoned
Krupa monastery
 
After the outbreak of the Croatian War of Independence in 1991, the well-known monastery treasury was displaced from Krupa. During the Operation Storm, the monastery sustained damage and the local Orthodox Serbs, as well as the priests, went into exile in Serbia. The belfry and the bells were damaged, as was the chapel, while the interior was looted and partially demolished.

Posted by: MiniMO | Aug 5 2026 17:13 utc | 222

The Duran
 
Ukraine battlefield failures push Europe into desperate measures
 

Ukraine battlefield failures push Europe into desperate measures
The Duran: Episode 2589
00:00:00 40 day campaign ends
00:00:49 Campaign result: disaster
00:02:58 Russian breakthroughs begin
00:03:30 Black Sea blockade, Ukraine landlocked
00:04:01 Zaluzhny says forget NATO
00:07:47 Patriot missile deal collapses
00:08:18 Starlink and Star Shield plan fails
00:09:08 Europe’s ceasefire push
00:14:00 Russia jamming Starlink
00:16:15 Which countries send troops
 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9T9hMiUR50g

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 5 2026 19:21 utc | 224

The story of EU in short is they bet the entire European pension system and whatever remnants left of the welfare state on Ukraine winning. Of course these systems, cornerstone of the life quality in Europe were on their way out anyway but we can say with confidence the massive bets on Ukraine winning significantly accelerated the process.

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 5 2026 19:24 utc | 226

Set to around 18 mins.  Gilbert Doctorow comparing US procurement pressures with Russian.  The Judge kicks off the discussion by asking a very sharp question on the subject.
 
https://youtu.be/me7LVkh5aUY?t=1106
 
Doctorow is speaking of the oligarchs and their modern equivalents.
 
The story one usually hears about the “Oligarchs” is that in the ’90’s they were fouling their own nest.  That is, that the internecine strife as they fought over the spoils of the looting of Russian industry and natural resources had become counter-productive even in the mafia-like context they were operating in. 
 
Khairullin writes movingly of what it was like for the average Russian to live in the Russia of those days, a Clockwork Orange environment where it was sometimes risky even to walk home after work.  When they had work.  And the country spilling further into anarchy and disintegration. 
 
That last a very real risk: towards the end of that period instructions from Moscow were increasingly being ignored in some regions and had that continued Russia could well have fragmented.
 
Along comes Putin and his team, the story continues, and tames the oligarchs.  He allows them to keep their ill-gotten gains but at the price of their keeping out of politics altogether.  And he gives a rough time to any oligarch who steps out of line and continues to interfere in Russian political life.   Not always too rough a time, mind you.  Khodorkovsky got to save a few hundred million of his loot.  And his neck.
 
That story of the taming of the oligarchs has been repeated by so many and so often that it gets to be gospel by sheer repetition.   Those here who know about Russian politics can say whether it’s a  true story.      But true or not. there’s no doubt that Russia has its share of fat cats, whether their riches derive from the looting, from the period of cronyism after the looting was reined in, or just from making lucky or well considered investments.   Melnichenko, who was discussed on “b’s” site recently, falling into the last category so he’ll do to stand in for all.  
 
Melnichenko  started his business career when he was very young.  Not stealing state assets.  Instead, a lottery scheme when he was a student and the profits used for illegal or unauthorised FX trading in the last days of the Soviet Union.  Then banking.  Then buying up and investing heavily in derelict or near derelict industrial enterprises.  Turning them into going concerns and then into the basis of his colossal fortune. 
 
 He was, one could say, doing the exact opposite of the predatory asset stripping that had earlier done for so many industrial concerns in my own country.  Building up rather than tearing down.  His fortune was not derived from the looting nor, as far as can be ascertained and in spite of a court case alleging just that,  from patronage or cronyism.  So not an oligarch or a crony but ending up as wealthy as the wealthiest of them.  Diamond as big as the Ritz territory.  Or in Melnichenko’s case, yachts as big as a frigate.
 
The acumen that served Melnichenko so well in buying up and managing businesses  didn’t fail him when it came to seeing which way the wind was blowing with the Western confrontation with Russia.  Atlanticism is no longer the way to go.    Melnichenk0 wants to come back into the fold.  What’s he got to offer to the new Russia he’s throwing in his lot with?
 
He points out explicitly that he’s got management skills Russia needs.  Not just him and his extensive contacts.  The management teams that are needed to run any viable commercial enterprise.  The ability to deploy those teams successfully.  The ability to get things done.
 
He is, as his previous life demonstrates, scarcely a patriot of conviction.  Merely that he recognises Russia’s a better bet than it once looked to be.   Hoping to be welcomed back into the fold because what he has to offer are his organising and business skills.  As he points out, again unashamedly explicit, those skills were honed in a very tough environment, the ’90’s.  They could now be of use.
 
Take his yachts off him and send him packing would be the reaction you’d expect from those patriots of conviction who did stand by their country when the going was tough.  The ones who were fighting or helping the fight, not swanning around in yachts while they waited to see which way the cat jumped.
 
 But Melnichenko has a point.  Big industrial concerns do need competent CEO’s, and the management teams that go with them.  And often the oligarch or crony set up is all Russia has in that line.
 
Thus, when the Kerch bridge was wanted on schedule and solidly built – and a three or four billion dollar prestige project at that – Putin turned to a fat cat he knew well and knew would be up to the job,  Arkady Rotenberg.  The famous  and deliberately publicised scene with Deripaska    (“I’ll have my pen back now”) showed what he expects from the oligarchs.  But to my mind, it also shows Putin recognising that the oligarchs or their like are sometimes all he has when it comes to getting the results he wants: rebuilding a country once stricken almost to death and still, even now, recovering from that period.
 
Doctorow must speak for himself, and does in that clip I’ve submitted a link to.  My view, it’s a Russian paradox that’s chafing at him.  That the men who became Midas rich from looting Russia in the ’90’s, or the fat cats who succeeded them, are men who are still an essential part of the recovery from that looting.
 
You don’t have to be a hell for leather egalitarian like Mozgovoy to find that paradox irksome.  Karlof1 tells us that the new Russia will be built by many now fighting at the front and shows us that that is stated policy.  But those now fighting at the front do not fight so Melnichenko and his brethren get to keep their yachts.
 
The Russians will resolve the Ukrainian conflict soon enough and though that will not  check the Western assault on Russia elsewhere, that assault itself will be blunted as the West further decays.   But that paradox that I guess  irks Doctorow and that it is certain will irk many within Russia itself. will by no means be as easily resolved.
 
And here one speaks not merely as an uninvolved observer.  The West is also entangled in that same paradox but in far sharper form.  My own country more  than most.  And we’re even further from resolving it than the Russians.   How the hell do you get to run a country adequately, when many of those you need to run it found profit only in its ruin. 

Posted by: English Outsider | Aug 5 2026 23:21 utc | 228

@ unimperator | Aug 6 2026 4:11 utc | 231 who is sharing Russia attacks Ukraine…thx
 
It seems the gloves have come off Russia’s response to Ukraine hitting Russian civilian targets…..some would say its about time.
 
I don’t see Russia attacking outside Ukraine.  With the Odessa area ports closed off, rail systems degraded and now warehouses being hit, how much is left in the military pipeline?
Ukraine may attempt more attacks inside Russia but they do so at their own peril, eh?

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 6 2026 4:21 utc | 230

Posted by: psychohistorian | Aug 6 2026 4:21 utc | 232
 
These targets of drone storage and manufacturing, combined with destroying locomotives and gas stations and blockading/putting out of acttion all of UKraine’s ports actually should be effective reducing Nato’s potential to conduct drone attacks too. It won’t remove it completely but probably cut down on scale.
 
More Nato terror attacks are to be expected as a response.

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 6 2026 4:29 utc | 232

Media: A mass search for TCC employees and their families has begun in Ukraine.
https://eadaily.com/ru/news/2026/08/06/smi-na-ukraine-nachalas-massovaya-ohota-na-sotrudnikov-tck-i-ih-semi

Posted by: Elber | Aug 6 2026 5:00 utc | 234

The Duran said EU’s media strategy is moving from ‘Ukraine is winning’ to ‘Russia is causing a humanitarian crisis in Ukraine’ narrative.
 
Narratives keep changing while AFU keeps getting obliterated and EU goes ever deeper into bankruptcy and oblivion.

Posted by: unimperator | Aug 6 2026 8:07 utc | 236

Emotional roller coaster is a well known political trick to advance an agenda without being noticed. Russia-loose , Russia-bad : rinse & repeat and while it last , the EUrotards “bourgeoisie” is hoarding more and more prerogatives from the states in the EU.
 
In France for an example, the MSM are dropping bullshits about “Russian meddling” in the 2027 elections : they are in a “Russia bad” phase and if it can help the EUrotards for a Romanian election scenario or worse , to cancel the elections in order to keep the power : they will feel obliged. The bigger the lie…
Anyway for Democracy to die in France , it already should have been born…

Posted by: Savonarole | Aug 6 2026 10:52 utc | 238

Blackrock-Merz is resigning on August 10th by the way.  Posted by: unimperator | Aug 6 2026 4:51 utc | 235

 Source?
Posted by: malenkov | Aug 6 2026 11:19 utc | 241
 
It’s a rumour spread by the Bild tabloid.

Posted by: mk | Aug 6 2026 11:34 utc | 240

It’s a rumour spread by the Bild tabloid.

Posted by: mk | Aug 6 2026 11:34 utc | 243
 
Which means it is an attack or a push by transatlantic power. Merz served his purpose, no reason to keep this hapless chap in position. Just like Starmer! The show must go on, the theatre of democracy must continue.
Scholz was already a ghostly figure. Whatever creature they put on that seat next, will be just as pale a servant as the ones before him. Once a system is so entirely corroded and corrupted, there is no saving it. 

Posted by: Hamburger | Aug 6 2026 12:58 utc | 242