News & views related to the war in Ukraine …
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August 27, 2026
Ukraine Open Thread 2026-185
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Elon Musk Becomes The Latest Nazi Decorated By The Zelensky Regime
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/27/jteq-a27.html
“In honoring Musk, a committed ideological fascist and the world’s leading promoter of the global far-right movement, the Zelensky regime is once again exposing the fraud of those who claim that Ukraine is fighting for ‘democracy’…”
Posted by: John Gilberts | Aug 27 2026 17:11 utc | 1
Ah, the lowly Ukie thread! When will this neo Nazi abortion perish from the earth?!
Thanks for the contribution, John, but I thought this one was more interesting today.
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/27/uiji-a27.html
Ukrainian workers destroy army recruitment vehicle in expanding protests against “busification”
Jason Melanovski
Posted by: Ahenobarbus | Aug 27 2026 17:54 utc | 3
Given Ukraine’s strikes with British weapons, Moscow has every right to attack British military facilities, Maria Zakharova stated:
https://tass.com/politics/2178443
Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Aug 27 2026 17:54 utc | 4
Stanislav Krapivnik: Ukraine Is Reaching Its Breaking Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpkK_3LaDvQ
Posted by: unimperator | Aug 27 2026 17:58 utc | 5
“In honoring Musk, a committed ideological fascist and the world’s leading promoter of the global far-right movement, the Zelensky regime is once again exposing the fraud of those who claim that Ukraine is fighting for ‘democracy’…”
Posted by: John Gilberts | Aug 27 2026 17:11 utc | 1
Ironic that the World Socialist web site should criticize Musk and label him a fascist. Musk is an advocate of not just Universal Basic Income, but Universal High Income, to ensure the benefits of AI, robotics and and automation are of benefit to all. It would be difficult to find a more socialist idea than that.
Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Aug 27 2026 18:31 utc | 6
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF MARK SLEBODA – THE CIA CHIEF LANDS IN MOSCOW, UKR ARMY COLLAPSING IN DONBASS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_-kJy7C7hI
Posted by: unimperator | Aug 27 2026 18:51 utc | 7
It would be difficult to find a more socialist idea than that.
Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Aug 27 2026 18:31 utc | 6
Henry Ford knew enough to pay his workers a living wage so they would be able to afford his cars and he was an ardent fascist that admitted to admiring Hitler.
First Musk is smart enough to know you that you need consumers to buy your products. It’s one thing to have a disproportional concentration of wealth when you’re in the business of selling bananas to a wealthy country with a thriving middle class but when you make expensive high tech toys you will never find a market in a country of poor banana pickers … you have to make sure there are enough middle class consumers in wealthy countries to keep you in the lifestyle you aspire to.
Second the wealthy doesn’t get taxed in the USA so what he’s asking for is for poor working schmucks to share their income with even poorer schmucks that can’t even make a working schmucks income so they can afford the toys you are selling. He has no intention to share a nickle of his own wealth.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 18:54 utc | 8
Henry Ford knew enough to pay his workers a living wage so they would be able to afford his cars and he was an ardent fascist that admitted to admiring Hitler.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 18:54 utc | 8
—
Fordism is not Fascism. They are two different philosophies.
From Fordism to Fascist Nostalgia
July 17, 2025
There was a time when the production line ordered more than goods, it ordered life. Work meant wages, wages meant stability, and stability gave the illusion of progress. That was Fordism. What remains now is the shell of that promise, retrofitted as nationalist fantasy. The factory is gone, but its myth has been repurposed. Not to build, but to blame.
There was a time when the factory floor could order a life. A man clocked in, did his eight or ten hours, took home a wage that could feed a family, voted Labour or Democrat, and felt (however briefly) that he belonged to something. It was a grim belonging, often racialised, always gendered, built on compromise with capital and the state. But it came with form. Fordism was not just a system of production; it was a political settlement, a cultural project, a way of being. The postwar consensus, for all its limitations, made promises: that work would mean stability, that the nation could be managed, that politics had a direction.
That order is gone. It didn’t collapse into revolution or rupture. It eroded, hollowed out by neoliberalism, automated by platform capital, buried beneath spreadsheets and surveillance. For decades, we were told that technocracy had replaced ideology. That there were no more grand narratives. That history had ended.
Now history is back. But it’s not marching forward. It’s circling, reanimating ghosts. Trump, Farage, Meloni. Their politics is not new, and not strictly neoliberal. It is affective, mythic, death-haunted. It does not offer solutions. It offers memory: of steelworks and shipyards, of proud nations and strong men, of a world where the father ruled the dinner table and the worker knew his place. This isn’t nostalgia for the past. It’s nostalgia for power.
What died with Fordism wasn’t just an economic model. It was a structure of identity (masculine, racialised, national) and its demise has created a vacuum into which fascist fantasy rushes. Neoliberalism cannot fill it. Social democracy will not speak of it. But fascism will. That is the danger.
What follows is not an attempt to mourn Fordism. It is an attempt to name the necro-nostalgia that now stalks its ruins, and to ask, with urgency, what it is that today’s fascism wants to return to.
continues ==> https://anticapitalistmusings.com/2025/07/from-fordism-to-fascist-nostalgia/
Posted by: too scents | Aug 27 2026 19:01 utc | 9
He has no intention to share a nickle of his own wealth.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 18:54 utc | 8
This is what one tech millionaire, Marcel LeBrun did in my home town with $12 million of a windfall he got when he sold his company. https://www.12neighbours.com/ The community has a resturaunt and bakery that the residents can work at and what they make is top quality. This is his bio. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcel_LeBrun
His wealth is in the tens of millions not a $$$ Trillion like Musk and he’s still has more money than he can spend in a lifetime.
Imagine if each of the the USA 492 billionaires donated just 12 million to fund communities like this … that would be a $6 billion war chest and it wouldn’t affect their lifestyles in the least but it would have a positive inpact on the lives of millions.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 19:09 utc | 10
I’m not an political philosopher however I can use google pretty good and according to google “Fordism” refers to a manufacturing philosophy not a political philosophy.
I don’t know who wrote the piece you quoted … whether he’s writing as an academic or putting his own propagandistic spin on thing but I do know the Henry Ford was an admirer of young Adolph and young Adolph was a great admirer of Ford and had his portrait prominently displayed in his office.
If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck it’s probably a duck .
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 19:17 utc | 11
Henry Ford was an admirer of young Adolph
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 19:17 utc | 11
—
Everybody admired Adolf. He was Capitalism’s champion, invented to destroy Soviet Socialism.
Paradoxically Ford supported Stalin.
Posted by: too scents | Aug 27 2026 19:23 utc | 12
Prescott Bush, Joseph Kennedy, Charles Lindbergh, a very long list.
probably a british royalty favorite, up to a point, whatever inflection that was.
I suspect the main commonality was the target of Russia.
Whatever legendary jewish components were involved might be interesting if you could sift through all the lying and determine some basic facts.
I am fairly familiar with postwar FoMoCo history. I understand they had a nice time building things in Germany, before, during and after.
their subsequent crimes speak volumes about the actual worth of human lives. Ive got four Pintos, and know quite a bit about the decisions involved. never mind the common overblown misconceptions.
Wanna buy a Pinto?
Posted by: Not Ewe | Aug 27 2026 20:06 utc | 13
Very interesting take on the recent CIA and Vatican trip to Moscow, in Italian and Russian but you can select the auto-translate to English on either (settings -> audio track):
LE INTENZIONI NASCOSTE DEL VATICANO – Perché il capo della diplomazia Vaticana è venuto a Mosca?
THE VATICAN’S HIDDEN INTENTIONS – Why did the head of Vatican diplomacy come to Moscow?
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 20:10 utc | 14
I am fairly familiar with postwar FoMoCo history.
—
My Grandfather was on the Board of the pre-war FoMoCo.
Posted by: too scents | Aug 27 2026 20:12 utc | 15
Not Ewe @ 13
Wanna buy a Pinto?
I’m hard up for cash at the moment, but maybe you want to trade for an AMC Gremlin?
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 20:14 utc | 16
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 27 2026 19:17 utc |
Posted by: too scents | Aug 27 2026 19:23 utc | 12
Well, there was the The Ford Hunger March / Ford Massacre, March 7, 1932. This pretty much made Wagner Act), which was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on July 5, 1935, a certainty. This was also the trigger for the last drpression era leg down of the Dow.
Then there wast the Battle of the Overpass – a violent attack by Ford Motor Company security guards against United Auto Workers (UAW) organizers on May 26, 1937, in Dearborn, Michigan.
So a somewhat National Socialist response on both counts I would say – kind of detracts from the Fordism revisitionist history narrative. You can see some evidence for the staving off of Uniions by paying a fair wage and providing good working conditions in some of the now completely hollowed out New England Toolmakers. I wouldn’t call it Fordism though.
Everyone in America loved Hitler and Stalin as the Great Depression worsened. They did something and Congress couldn’t. All while Walter Duranty and the NYT reported nothing of the holodomor
FDR was a huge fanboy. This is how the New Deal violence perpetrated by SCOTUS to the Constitution came about – Wickard v Filburn, US v Butler, etc. All the whole the fascination with “balancing supply and demand” turned a financial crisis that would have lasted as long as the 1921 crisis into more than a decade of unnecessary suffering.
Posted by: frithguild | Aug 27 2026 20:16 utc | 17
So a somewhat National Socialist response on both counts I would say
Posted by: frithguild | Aug 27 2026 20:16 utc | 17
—
Harry Bennett’s house was bigger than Henry’s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Bennett#Residences
Posted by: too scents | Aug 27 2026 20:20 utc | 18
Harry Bennett’s house was bigger than Henry’s ***
Posted by: too scents | Aug 27 2026 20:20 utc | 18
Stuff like this leads me to seriously question my libertarian predispositions.
Posted by: frithguild | Aug 27 2026 20:28 utc | 19
The comment that preceded my banning from Lawyers Guns & Money blog in a reply to a Robert Farley post describing Ukraine as a democracy:
Before the February 2014th coup, Ukraine was a democracy. Now Ukraine is a fascist dictatorship. Democracies do not ban the speaking of a language used by a third of its citizens. Ukraine is a client state of US strategic and special interests. The intended outcome of sponsoring the coup that took place to oust the democratically elected President Yanukovych. Few would claim that if the January 6th insurgency in Congress had succeeded and placed Trump in the presidency in 2021, the US was still a democracy.
Posted by: Keme | Aug 27 2026 20:41 utc | 20
The current speculation about Ratcliffe’s flying visit to Russia is that the US Administration was looking at driving a wedge between Iran and Ukraine by bartering Ukraine for sanctions against Iran.
It’s unlikely to have succeeded as Ukraine is already a gone burger.
Posted by: Suresh | Aug 27 2026 20:45 utc | 21
“I’m hard up for cash at the moment, but maybe you want to trade for an AMC Gremlin?
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 20:14 utc”
oh yes. What color would you like? anything but black.
Posted by: Not Ewe | Aug 27 2026 20:46 utc | 22
Posted by: Suresh | Aug 27 2026 20:45 utc | 21
I’m very sceptical of the idea that Ratcliffe flew to Moscow to negotiate some grand bargain whereby Washington “barters Ukraine” in return for Russian cooperation against Iran.
That simply isn’t the natural remit of the CIA Director. A negotiation involving sanctions, Iran, Ukraine and a fundamental change in US foreign policy would normally be handled through the President, State Department, National Security Council
If Trump wanted to barter sanctions policy over Iran against Ukraine, there are plenty of diplomats and political officials he could send. Flying the serving Director of the CIA into Moscow is an extraordinarily elaborate way of conducting what would essentially be a conventional geopolitical negotiation.
Posted by: Night Tripper | Aug 27 2026 20:54 utc | 23
Stephen Bryen at Asia Times
It is possible that the CIA has intelligence about the internal situation in Ukraine, and Ratcliffe came to Moscow to warn that the US and NATO would not tolerate a takeover of Ukraine by Russia. While much of the US press is flooded with “success” stories based on Ukrainian information, there are plenty of signs that Ukraine’s problems, even its survival as a state, are growing worse.
Russia tolerated a US takeover of Ukraine in 2014.
Posted by: Keme | Aug 27 2026 21:03 utc | 24
Not much actual Ukraine stuff in this thread up to now (the Ford Sierra Sapphire Cosworth was that company’s finest moment, BTW), so let’s see what I can find…
Ah, yes, here we go:
Supermarkets may leave producers without payment for goods destroyed by Russia
https://epravda.com.ua/biznes/supermarketi-hochut-ne-platiti-za-znishcheni-tovari-824998/
Some excerpts via translation add-on:
ATB, NOVUS, Silpo, and Fora may start not paying suppliers from half to the entire cost of goods that the chains have already accepted into their warehouses if it is destroyed by a Russian strike.
~~~
Under current contracts, ownership of the product is transferred to the network upon receipt at the distribution center or warehouse. The manufacturer receives money for this product 30-50 days after shipment.
The new agreements will allow supermarkets to avoid paying for some of the products already received if they are destroyed before the settlement is complete. NOVUS, Silpo and Fora propose to pay the supplier only half of the amount due in such cases.
ATB wants to avoid paying for the destroyed goods at all. The agreement proposed by the chain states that after the Russian strike, ownership of such products will be considered as not having passed to the retailer.
~~~
At the time of publication, no manufacturer has agreed to the new terms. Suppliers fear that once the first company agrees, the chains will use it as an argument in negotiations with other manufacturers.
~~~
On August 5, Russia attacked five grocery retail distribution centers in the Kyiv region. The strikes shut down the main logistics hub NOVUS and damaged four Fozzy Group centers.
It‘s so hard to tell these days, from the messages coming from the Wurlitzer MSM (at least here in Britain), is Ukraine winning, or not?
Is there a sudden lack of Western “game-changers”? Or has that been developing since, ooh I dunno, 2022?
And how about that “Coalition Of The Willing” that has gradually morphed into a “Coalition Of We Would If We Could, But We Can’t, So We Won’t”…
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 21:05 utc | 25
It would be difficult to find a more socialist idea than that. Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Aug 27 2026 18:31 utc | 6
Zelensky will see your socialist and raise you a National Socialist
Posted by: nwwoods | Aug 27 2026 21:11 utc | 26
when will ukriane start putting young women on frontline?
Posted by: jno3876 | Aug 27 2026 21:12 utc | 27
Suresh @ 21, NT @ 23, Keme @ 24:
I believe the CIA has an office in the same building in Kiev as the SBU does. Could it be that John Ratcliffe went to Moscow to plead with his counterpart there to allow CIA officers and their contacts in the SBU and beyond to leave Ukraine before a presumed Russian takeover? If Country 404 falls, there’ll be a lot of people whose lives are in danger for collaborating (whether real or presumed) with the Banderite government and its foreign supporters.
Whatever Ratcliffe might plead, the Russians are likely to meet him halfway: immediate CIA staff can leave but not anyone suspected of working with the SBU or cultivating networks of spies.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 27 2026 21:47 utc | 28
The Duran today did as good a job as anyone could reading the tea leaves of Ratcliffe’s trip, btwn this and the Lilin I linked above you pretty much have the speculation spectrum. The Alexs’s state what I noted here a long while back that as Russia get closer to solidifying Novorossiya the world will get more dangerous not less, first a little, then a lot:
Deep State Maximum Pressure on Russia as Ukraine Crumbles
BTW the most interesting news of the week, if true, is the below. Look at the map and you’ll get it. Risky move by a very risk averse Russia, if true then the AFU is crumbling fast.
The likelihood of a new Russian operation in Chernihiv Oblast has increased significantly following the Russian army’s deployment of significant resources near the border over the last two months. The situation for the Ukrainian army is becoming markedly more serious. From what I have been able to gather, Ukrainian forces barely have the capacity to maintain their advance in the Donbas, having deployed their troops to Zaporizhia, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv to secure political victories, but without altering the overall trend.
The opening of a new front in Chernihiv would leave Ukrainian forces facing the difficult decision of either abandoning one front or continuing to hold the entire line with fewer troops, thereby accelerating a simultaneous retreat without halting the gradual Russian advance.
The CIA meeting in Moscow may be linked to an offer from Washington to halt the war along the current front lines, in the knowledge that, following the strain caused by the regional conflict with Iran, they will be unable to maintain the current level of support for Kyiv next year. This offer is likely to be rejected by the Kremlin as it fails to meet the objectives of the so-called ‘Special Military Operation’.
If the Chernihiv front opens up, the battle for the Donbas will draw to a close more quickly than expected, and with it, possibly the end of this conflict (at this stage).
https://t.me/Novichok_Rossiya_2/60187
Lukashenko just went to Moscow, China and Belarus just ended war games together. Belarus would be a good backstop for a move on Chernihiv, is it time to play the Belarus card? Belarus is part of the SCO, if it sent up a Bat Signal would China answer? Would they communicate that to the USA beforehand? Could NATO counter by using their fleet and air force against Kaliningrad? Sure but then someone would get nuked 100% certain, if they eat the shitburger they cooked up in 2014 no one gets nuked. Be fun to watch the Eurocreeps eat their shitburger. Don’t touch that dial.
Belarus nationwide military readiness check comes as Russia continues a major military buildup in the Bryansk region of western Russia, fueling speculations that the Russian Armed Forces could potentially reopen the Chernigov front in northern Ukraine.
https://t.me/Novichok_Rossiya_2/60196
China-Belarus Swift Eagle 2026 Joint Training Concludes
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 21:55 utc | 29
Could NATO counter by using their fleet and air force against Kaliningrad?
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 21:55 utc | 29
Well, I suppose they could try, but given the logistically impoverished state of NATO’s naval fleets and air forces the outcome might well not be the one they first thought of; indeed a hasty move like that jeopardises NATO’s very existence, since NATO is ostensibly a defensive treaty arrangement.
Carrying out such an overtly aggressive/assaultive move completely negates the already woolly, lace-edged provisions of Article 5.
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 22:11 utc | 30
Most analyses of the Russian government operate from a dualistic perspective: either Putin’s government is Atlanticist, crypto-Zionist, and therefore traitorous; or Putin leads a group of chess masters who rarely make mistakes and are wholly dedicated to the Russian national cause.
In light of this, I will attempt to offer a somewhat lengthy commentary introducing a monist-Marxist analytical approach (remember, in dialectics, contradictions always result in a Synthesis) to better examine the current state of power relations in Russia.
To do so, I will take as a starting point the recent statements by Lavrov, kindly transcribed by Karlof1 or published by Sputnik Brazil.
Please excuse the division of the text into three parts and any potential formatting issues.
Posted by: Soviético | Aug 27 2026 22:15 utc | 31
Addendum: what, for example, would Türkiye’s Article 5 reaction to an assault on Kaliningrad be? As a NATO member?
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 22:17 utc | 32
Stanislav Krapivnik: Ukraine Is Reaching Its Breaking Point
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpkK_3LaDvQ
Posted by: unimperator | Aug 27 2026 17:58 utc | 5
And Russia is swimming in so many old s-400’s it is modifying them into offensive missiles.
It is possible to identify three distinct groups, based on the three main social factions vying for influence within Russian society—though they remain united around Putin, who tends to lean toward one, then another, or the third at different times:
There is the Atlanticist group, whose leading figure appears to be Kirill Dmitriev—everyone here, even the trolls, knows what they represent. Opposing them are the other two: the nationalist “Hawks,” represented by Medvedev and—I believe—Surovikin in the military arena; and the group spearheaded by Lavrov, which, it seems to me, includes Gerasimov as the current leader of military operations.
This last group could be termed “the moderates,” but I prefer to call them “Soviets,” given the central importance of “denazification” in their plans of action.
To be continued…
Posted by: Soviético | Aug 27 2026 22:21 utc | 34
Meanwhile, in military circles, rumors circulate that Surovikin will return to replace Gerasimov; Lavrov’s statements, however, indicate that his own position is strengthening vis-à-vis Dmitriev—CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and an enthusiastic proponent of the Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage (Alaska, August 2025).
Dmitriev is now banking on an electoral victory for fascists in Germany and France as a means to help resolve the war in the former Ukraine.
Lavrov, for his part, attacks Dmitriev’s position—which he deems deeply misguided—regarding Trump’s actual policies and the domestic politics of key NATO powers.
Putin has rallied a diverse array of forces to support his government, but the coexistence of such extreme antagonisms has its limits…
Posted by: Soviético | Aug 27 2026 22:26 utc | 35
Is there any detail out there about the spetznet knife attack at Druzhkovka?
Andrei has mentions it here and has a 20 second video of the aftermath
http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2026/08/as-they-say.html
This would be a 1 spetznez per target situation would it not? Did the drone operators work alone or together in squad? A squad of knife weilding spetznez against a surprised group of droners would be a brutal and chilling action.
A few weeks ago I read an article about a regiment of female Ukrainian droners (they have a witch on a broomstick ensign) who operate near the Russian border and are notorious for their civilian hits. The news of the spetznez attack needs to get to them and other droners.
Posted by: tucenz | Aug 27 2026 22:27 utc | 36
Further addendum: it’s not just Türkiye, possibly Spain, Greece and Italy ask themselves: why in the world are we part of an alliance that does something so suicidally stupid as attacking a Russian exclave?
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 22:28 utc | 37
Posted by: tucenz | Aug 27 2026 22:27 utc | 36
I am hoping the report is true, and that it was indeed this horrid gaggle of witches that got stabbed to death.
Jeremy Rhymings-Lang @ 32
Addendum: what, for example, would Türkiye’s Article 5 reaction to an assault on Kaliningrad be? As a NATO member?
Article 5 only applies to a NATO country/countries being attacked, not to a NATO act of aggression, the fact that Ukraine has been kept of NATO this long suggests the EU didn’t want to be forced to address Art. 5 if and when the shit hit the fan, which would suggest they aren’t as insane as the ClownShow would indicate, which is a hopeful thing.
As an act of aggression any attack on Kaliningrad would have to be a pre-coordinated plan and Turkiye would be on board or it wouldn’t happen. If it happens without all the members then look for (many) others to stay out, the USA will stay out, then what have you got? The pink woke army of Mertz, Macron, Burnham, Tusk and Stubb goes Drang nach Osten? “Ja, we is the supermen – super-duper super men!”
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 22:43 utc | 39
..Whatever Ratcliffe might plead, the Russians are likely to meet him halfway: immediate CIA staff can leave but not anyone suspected of working with the SBU or cultivating networks of spies.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 27 2026 21:47 utc | 28p
Not many CIA would be allowed to leave then.
Posted by: tucenz | Aug 27 2026 22:49 utc | 40
Sounds like RAF didn’t get Radcliffe’s memo:
https://southfront.press/russia-launched-massive-strikes-on-ukraines-drone-production-steel-plants-and-oil-refining/
Posted by: Elmer Fudd | Aug 27 2026 22:50 utc | 41
The pink woke army of Mertz, Macron, Burnham, Tusk and Stubb goes Drang nach Osten?
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 22:43 utc | 39
Many older Brits will be familiar with the children’s book author Enid Blyton and her Famous Five series.
That lot are definitely an Infamous Five…
Or even a Failing Five…
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 22:52 utc | 42
Posted by: tucenz | Aug 27 2026 22:27 utc | 36 I am hoping the report is true, and that it was indeed this horrid gaggle of witches that got stabbed to death.
Posted by: UWDude | Aug 27 2026 22:31 utc | 38
No apparent female corpses in the http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2026/08/as-they-say.html video
I think the witches were based near Kursk.
Posted by: tucenz | Aug 27 2026 22:54 utc | 43
Soviético @ 35
Dmitriev is now banking on an electoral victory for fascists in Germany and France as a means to help resolve the war in the former Ukraine.
You are writing a fair amount of nonsense, this is the biggest one. Relying on amorphous political happenings in other countries that you have no control of is amateur thinking and in wartime a guarantee of disaster. I have no idea if Dmitriev is a hawk or dove, an Atlanticist or a nationalist, but I doubt he’s a fool.
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 22:55 utc | 44
Jeremy Rhymings-Lang @ 42
…or the Fairy Five.
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 27 2026 22:57 utc | 45
Posted by: Keme | Aug 27 2026 20:41 utc re: Robert Farley and lawyers guns and money
farley is a dem operative. Only doctrinaire views permitted. I was accused of anti semitism for critiquing H&R Block’s usurious 435% interest rates in poor people. Farley thinks Citizens United is a correct legal judgement, you know, granting a fictitious entity rights that only pertain to natural persons. You’re wasting your time paying attention to that tool.
Posted by: Dhaibhidh | Aug 27 2026 22:57 utc | 46
when will ukriane start putting young women on frontline?
Posted by: jno3876 | Aug 27 2026 21:12 utc | 27
Access to OnlyFans will have to be closed down first…
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 23:00 utc | 47
No apparent female corpses in the http://smoothiex12.blogspot.com/2026/08/as-they-say.html videoI think the witches were based near Kursk.
Posted by: tucenz | Aug 27 2026 22:54 utc | 43
Ahh, didn’t watch the video first time you posted it. Still, fucking cool. I have a pic of the “Russian nightmare”, one of him standing in front of a tank stuck in the mud, holding a 1 ft blade, in a killer skull mask and heavy plates. Another is of him holding some kind of heavy automatic machine gun in full armor.
So story looks to be true.
Access to OnlyFans will have to be closed down first…
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 23:00 utc | 47
blowing on only fans… shameful.
Getting blown up by drones for Zelensky on fpv cams… brave.
UKRAINE CLAIMS RUSSIA CONVERTED 17 S-400 LAUNCHERS FOR GROUND ATTACK
Russia has converted as many as 17 launchers from its S-400 air defense system to fire ballistic missiles at targets in Ukraine, Ukrainian military intelligence claimed on August 26.
The launchers are being used to fire the RM-48U, a ballistic missile developed from the 48N6 family of long-range missiles originally designed for the S-400 system, according to the DIU.
Russia spokesperson Maria has issued a statement saying any British military assets inside and outside of Ukraine is legitimate targets.
Posted by: Suresh | Aug 27 2026 23:27 utc | 52
Oh, goody!! Lashings of gingerbeer.
It’ll be Lashings for the Flankie Five alright.
NATO? Here’s the thing.
Turkey is moving 450 000 troops into Syria.
Israel has moved Arms production to Greece.
If an Israel/Turkish war breaks out, Turkey and Greece could be going head to head.
Posted by: Suresh | Aug 27 2026 23:39 utc | 53
@Posted by: Soviético | Aug 27 2026 22:26 utc | 35
Putin has always balanced a troika, with the strength of each leg changing over time. There is the oligarchy, made up of about 150 billionaires at its core. In the early 2000s they were heavily Western focused and massively corrupt. Putin increased the power of the state relative to them by taking down those that did not accept the new arrangement, such as the traitorous Khodorkovsky who was about to sell a major part of the Russian oil reserves to Exxon Mobil. This is when the West turned on Putin, as they realized that he was not going to be a sober version of the vassal Yeltsin. As the Western aggression towards Russia has increased, and sanctions more and more impact the Russian oligarchs, the result has paradoxically been to make them more dependent upon the Russian state; their relative power has been reduced further, but they are still a significant highly-concentrated political grouping.
The second stool is the siloviki, the military and security state. The Ukraine War has very significantly elevated their position while also facilitating a very significant flushing of the quite extensive corruption. The siloviki was never captured by the oligarchy, nor foreign interests, it operates as a hardline sovereigntist political grouping. The third stool is Putin’s own group from his days in St. Petersburg, with this group gaining ground during the Putin years. Any “liberal” elements have been severely reduced during Putin’s leadership, with that decline greatly accelerated during the Ukraine War. Putin also enjoys a 70% approval rating among the Russian population. Among the leadership, Medvedev has become strongly nationalist and anti-Western after being played by the West with respect to Libya while he was president.
The Western educated Dmitriev (Stanford and Harvard and then Goldman Sachs and McKinsey) would have been very useful for his links with the West, but with Anchorage now seen as yet another example of Western bullshitting (a la Minsk 1, Minsk 2, Istanbul) and Europe escalating, his position will have been severely undermined. The Russian leadership is increasingly committing to imposing a settlement on the battlefield, especially with the US squandering its power across so many points of conflict. Every year the US and Europe become weaker.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 27 2026 23:41 utc | 54
The Russian leadership is increasingly committing to imposing a settlement on the battlefield, especially with the US squandering its power across so many points of conflict. Every year the US and Europe become weaker.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 27 2026 23:41 utc | 54
They have been fully committed since feb 2022. Once they crossed the Rubicon they knew there was no going back. All the diplomacy has been posturing necessary to win on the battlefield.
Posted by: Jeremy Rhymings-Lang | Aug 27 2026 21:05 utc | 25
Stiffing suppliers doesn’t sound very respectful of “the rule of law” or markets, plus it tends to have consequences. As in those suppliers refusing to deliver any further product, or demanding cash on delivery.
Sounds like the denizens of 404 may be going on a diet.
Posted by: Ghost of Zanon | Aug 28 2026 0:13 utc | 56
J Gilberts posts lots of diverse links, some very agreeable and some not so much, but this one from earlier today, Mark Sleboda talking with Garland Nixon, is what I would describe as “awesome”.
THE WIT AND WISDOM OF MARK SLEBODA – THE CIA CHIEF LANDS IN MOSCOW, UKR ARMY COLLAPSING IN DONBASS
https://www.youtube.com/live/D_-kJy7C7hI
Posted by: pointing fingers | Aug 28 2026 0:17 utc | 57
@Posted by: UWDude | Aug 27 2026 23:56 utc | 55
70,000 troops and the readiness in Istanbul to negotiate away the military advantage was not fully committed. Get real. It was only after the disaster of late 2022 that the Russians started to move from limited SMO to real war.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 28 2026 1:41 utc | 58
It seems that I listen to Mercouris anymore simply because I enjoy the way he “spins a yarn”. His posts have increasingly become more conjecture than reporting of events. Which would be fine except that over the course of the discussion he tends to blur the line between conjecture and events to the point that the whole post becomes a flight of fantasy. Having said that I am inclined to agree with his take on most things regarding the not war in Ukraine and his track record regard general trends is good, I think.
But, in reality, we have no idea what Ratface was doing in Moscow – much as we might wish we did. I find it difficult to believe that he traveled to Moscow not knowing who he would be meeting. I think the big plane was to transport the vehicles of the entourage? It is fun to think that Lavrov stiffed him, but I think the Russians dont play such games.
Posted by: jared | Aug 28 2026 1:49 utc | 59
70,000 troops and the readiness in Istanbul to negotiate away the military advantage was not fully committed. Get real. It was only after the disaster of late 2022 that the Russians started to move from limited SMO to real war.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 28 2026 1:41 utc | 58
You are talking about shit that did not actually happen. The negotiations bore no fruit for a reason. They were for show. Russia had to retreat because they could not flash take Kiev. It was worth a shot, and it lay groundwork for the advantageous position of the current phase of the war, but a larger force would have lost the element of surprise.
Of course the Russians were hoping they could flash in to Kiev, spook the government, and take the Donbass easily. That didn’t happen, Istanbul did not happen, and not because the west was in control of the situation. The west rejected conditions Russia knew they could not accept. Russia would have gotten Donetsk and Lugansk if Istanbul went through, and at the time, there were still mass Ukrainian troops in Mariupol.
That’s why it did not happen. Russia made demands they KNEW NATO would not accept. And Russia made those demands because they knew it would be solved on the ground.
When you are at war, your diplomacy is there to support the war, not visa versa. You lie, you deceive, you do whatever you have to, to win.
NATO will go berserk when Russia takes Odessa, and say “Hey, you said you just wanted the four oblasts!!” Yeah, Putin and Lavrov say a lot about the objectives, that does not mean that is the actual objectives. If you spell out your objectives for the enemy, 1) You are retarded and have no business conducting a war because, 2) your enemy will then fashion their entire strategy on countering your objectives.
Posted by: UWDude | Aug 28 2026 1:50 utc | 60
Bad timeline. Mariupol surrendered 9 days before the Istanbul talks. However, the point still stands, Russia was making demands it knew NATO.
Posted by: UWDude | Aug 28 2026 1:50 utc | 60
Nice comment. It’s refreshing to see a realpolitik pov here in Kumbuya land.
Russia/Slavs have been fighting against succeeding invasions for what, almost 2 millenia?
So they were fooled by NATO, and/or dreamed of an easy out. Lol. Sitting on a huge part of earth’s land mass + inestimable resources means one thing and one thing only:
Like chick’s learn at a very early age that dudes want their pussy, growing up Russian means you will never experience peace.
If you cant handle that fact of life, you can mosey off and relax in a semi feudal state, free from everyday stress, but still knowing you can’t escape the press if national security is threatened.
This Ukraine kerfuffle is a tremendous borefest because it only ends (for now) in one way, and that is with a new dmz on the Polish border that no one dares cross because it explicitly engages the main players.
The real key is what new tech will be brought to bear once phase 1 is complete. Thats the arena Russia (and China & Iran as well) could still lose ie its a crap shoot.
- And no, its not a production capacity issue; rather a pure competition of IQ vs IQ in the AI (not LLM) battlespace.
Posted by: Hobbes | Aug 28 2026 2:45 utc | 62
(…) This Ukraine kerfuffle is a tremendous borefest because it only ends (for now) in one way, and that is with a new dmz on the Polish border that no one dares cross because it explicitly engages the main players. The real key is what new tech will be brought to bear once phase 1 is complete.(…)
Posted by: Hobbes | Aug 28 2026 2:45 utc | 62
I agree with that. Russia’s landmass and resources means they can’t have peace and rest. In particular during the dawn of the Anglos who won’t be able to pay to import stuff.
With the current momentum, Russia needs to achieve a dmz next to Nato borders (Poland, Romania). There is no agreement that will hold with agreement-incapable crooks.
About the new tech for phase2, I guess Anglos will attempt some untraceable bioshit. Maybe that’s why Tusli quit, not to be associated with WMD unleashed. Her last report was about those Ukraine biolabs.
Posted by: Asian Frog | Aug 28 2026 4:22 utc | 63
I really don’t see that much of difference, but I’d go with Roger Boyd’s take. Russia is fully committed to its national security – the aims stated from the beginning remain the same.
The means have been flexible, too much for some, including me. On the other hand, it would have been criminal to predict the future for the nation of Ukraine that Zelensky and his supporters have chosen. No rational and empathic being would do that.
So, I agree that the Russian leadership is increasingly committing to imposing a settlement on the battlefield.
Posted by: js | Aug 28 2026 5:17 utc | 65
Posted by: jno3876 | Aug 27 2026 21:12 utc | 27
when will ukriane start putting young women on frontline?
—
I reckon this will lead to a massive increase in the number of volunteers in Russia – it’ll be called ‘catch your new wife’
Posted by: sh0tek | Aug 28 2026 5:39 utc | 66
Pepe Café – what the CIA chief went to do in Moscow (in Portuguese).
https://youtu.be/s7cJTM3g2Og?si=oHmRCg-fObHJ3cvt
Beyond the topic in the video’s title, starting at the 22-m0inute mark, Pepe discusses Trump’s new attempt to negotiate an “honorable” exit from the War of Hormuz
Posted by: Soviético | Aug 28 2026 6:23 utc | 67
Posted by: UWDude | Aug 28 2026 1:50 utc | 60 Bad timeline. Mariupol surrendered 9 days before the Istanbul talks. However,
Mala Tokmachka was taken and Pavlograd is the main logistical hub east of the Dnepr.
Posted by: Haus Habakuk | Aug 28 2026 6:45 utc | 68
Mercouris suggesting Ratcliffe went to beg the Russians to stop.
While I accept the US has serious problems at present, I don’t believe this extend to sending the CIA director to Moscow on his knees to Naryshkin.
Posted by: Night Tripper | Aug 28 2026 6:58 utc | 69
Mercouris suggesting Ratcliffe went to beg the Russians to stop. While I accept the US has serious problems at present, I don’t believe this extend to sending the CIA director to Moscow on his knees to Naryshkin.
Posted by: Night Tripper | Aug 28 2026 6:58 utc | 69
The politico claim of Ratcliffe going to warn Russia against attacking Baltics is BS, I think.
He went there for something else. Maybe Russia pulling back Iran support/trade. In exchange for US pulling back Ukraine aid. Maybe he went there after the Vatican representative to ask Russia not act as a Vatican money laundering hub for the elites so US Treasury Dept can expose money flows.
Whatever they wanted, Putin/Russia didn’t agree to it. After that they started peddling the negative lie about ‘warning not to attack Baltic’ to ramp up escalation potential. It could also just be an EU/UK propaganda.
Posted by: unimperator | Aug 28 2026 7:20 utc | 70
knives might be fun, but quantity has a quality in itself
“Over the past 24 hours, the Russian military have destroyed 147 Ukrainian unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control centers, the Russian Defense Ministry reported.”
https://tass.com/politics/2178721
Posted by: Newbie | Aug 28 2026 7:45 utc | 71
The question is not why CIA visited Russia unannounced, which they can do at any time since the 90s, but why CIA used that plane for its director.
Does he personally like it because it’s big and compensates for something?
Did Putin start to pay master Trump in gold or nuclear fuel to not send him where Diddy lives? He has a lot of oil but not the type of oil Putin likes.
A technology transfer to US as Kiril promised after the Anchorage party? Talks of a joint strike against those evil bad Iranians and their primitive tech that makes MoD look bad after almost 5 years of running in circles in Ukr doing nothing? Also a big plane like that might have a big nuke and erase Moscow from the inside. US/Nato and South Africa call Putin “a killer” who should be in ICC jail, so it’s plausible. But that won’t happen because he already surrendered in Anchorage so keeping him and his confused government in power is in Trump’s interest now.
Posted by: rk | Aug 28 2026 7:52 utc | 72
because he already surrendered in Anchorage so keeping him and his confused government in power is in Trump’s interest now.
Posted by: rk | Aug 28 2026 7:52 utc | 72
Please provide what has been agreed on in the surrender that you have been shilling here for a whole year or shut the fuck and return in 2036 like you promised you nonce.
Posted by: pinche | Aug 28 2026 8:08 utc | 73
Tucenz @ 40:
Well I did have in mind the goldfish in the office aquarium.
Posted by: Refinnejenna | Aug 28 2026 8:29 utc | 74
What have ukropians ever done for us dumbed Downton abbey throwbacks Brits?
Putrid BurntHam and poisoned eggs!
🤢 🤮
🇬🇧 The Telegraph reports there’s a salmonella outbreak in the UK – with a Ukrainian link
Investigators are now trying to track the source of the contaminated eggs, with evidence pointing to “eggs imported to the UK from abroad,” the UKHSA said.
Most eggs sold in the UK are British, but 11 per cent are imported from overseas.
The biggest single exporter of eggs to the UK is Ukraine, which accounts for almost a third of imports alone, and is where a separate Salmonella outbreak involving a strain known as ST2045 was found to have emerged from earlier this year.
🔴@DDGeopolitics
Posted by: DunGroanin | Aug 28 2026 9:42 utc | 75
Ukraine and World Affairs (includes Iran/ME): Weekly Update, 28th August, 2026: May be Useful to Some: Ukraine and World Affairs (including Iran/ME): Weekly Update
Posted by: The Busker | Aug 28 2026 9:53 utc | 76
Musk is an advocate of not just Universal Basic Income, but Universal High Income, to ensure the benefits of AI, robotics and and automation are of benefit to all. It would be difficult to find a more socialist idea than that.
Posted by: Fool Me Twice | Aug 27 2026 18:31 utc |
What ?
The billionaire universal basic income scam, suddenly makes him a voice of the worker ? When are you going to stop drinking the rich kool aid?
The Basic Income idea has some great marketing behind it and superficially appears to solve problems.
Unfortunately the tricks used to promote it come straight out of the propaganda textbooks — attributing miracles to the policy when they are not justified.
The main trick is to compare an income guarantee to the broken system we have at the moment. The result is a miraculous increase in output. But that has nothing to do with the merits of Basic Income. It is just what would happen with any system of increased spending activity that knocks our monetary production systems out of the persistent slumps they always find themselves in under ‘laissez faire’ conditions.
It’s only when you compare Basic Income with other managed economy schemes that the issues with it come to light.
Let’s compare a basic income scheme that is monetarily equivalent to a Job Guarantee. In UK terms that is a payment of £750 per week representing a £20 per hour living wage.
The rest of the economy will respond to the monetary stimulus and increase its output to its structural maximum, which for the purposes of this article we will assume is identical for both schemes. Whatever distributional outcome is required can be created in the Rest of the Economy via redistributive taxation, and the amount of stuff (goods and services) delivered to Participants is the same.
The difference is that the basic income scheme represents an extraction of goods and services from the Rest of the Economy, whereas the Job Guarantee represents an exchange of 37.5 Labour Hours per week for goods and services from the Rest of the Economy.
In other words the Basic Income participant gets paid twice in real terms . Once in terms of output from some part of the labour hours of the Rest of the Economy and once from their own 37.5 labour hours per week — which are self consumed.
Basic Income injects money into the Rest of the Economy, but without any increase in output available to others. So the total amount of money in the Rest of the Economy naturally chases fewer goods and services. If you are in the Rest of the Economy, you will end up getting less for your money. And we usually call that inflation, but perhaps it is really just a form of theft.
The argument then continues. Of course people are not going to self consume all their hours, but are going to go out into the world and do ‘good works’. But this is a fallacy of composition.
There is no more likelihood of enough volunteer opportunities springing up than there are job openings — both due to the matching problem. Instead of hearing those in charge berating people to ‘start their own business’, we will hear them imploring people to ‘start their own charity’.
Since there is no active mechanism to create things to do that are of service to others, the amount available will converge at the usual suboptimal point and a section of the population will be left high and dry — regardless of their intent. Laissez faire works no better with activity than it does with money.
The Job Guarantee solves this by creating things to do. It takes activity to the people where they are and creates roles for the people as they are. If there is to be enough useful service available for everybody, it has to be produced with a managed process.
The essential weakness of the Basic Income system is known, but hidden in platitudes. Many an article on basic income will highlight the ‘experiments’ that allegedly show wondrous benefits to the participating area.
But they avoid mentioning the hidden issues with these ‘experiments’. Why every one failed.
The first is that they are local schemes within a fixed exchange area, and are therefore linked to production areas that have no income guarantee scheme. So the shortfall in output is actually provided by an external group locked into a fixed exchange rate and with no income guarantee. The income guarantee area exports inflation to the non-guaranteed area and steals output to replace its own shortfall, much as the Germans are able to export their unemployment to the rest of the Eurozone and make it look like there is some saving miracle going on in Germany and laziness everywhere else. Look at the overall currency area and the results are less miraculous.
You find this in every experiment. There is either an external group that transfers goods and services into the income guarantee area under a fixed exchange rate system and thereby suffers a real loss themselves, or there is a sub group within the area that is not eligible for the payment and acts as a servant class. It is no co-incidence that those who believe in Basic Income are also advocates for Open Borders and Fixed Exchange rate systems. Those are required to keep the process going.
The second issue is that all the experimental income schemes end, or wither away to an amount that is insufficient to provide an existence. The schemes end because the politics changes and ends them. This is an obvious outcome once the theft of output comes to light. People vote to stop the theft. You will rarely if ever see any discussion of why schemes are ended or run down.
Once a scheme is reduced below the amount of the living wage, it becomes a form of tax credits and those are systemically a subsidy to private businesses. Tax credits induce ‘bullshit’ activities in the private sector — using labour when automation or elimination would be the better options. Only when the public sector provides enough activity for all at the living wage is the private sector required to compete for labour at all levels. Only then is the race to the bottom in wages ended. And all that requires a Job Guarantee — the active process of creating enough to do.
Tying the income to the work prevents the private sector ursuping the scheme and changing it into a subsidy structure for their own benefit. Which is what Musk wants.
The fundamental weakness at the core of Basic Income — a focus on rights without an equivalent focus on duties — sows the seeds for its own destruction. The number of failed income guarantee experiments ought to be the first sign of problems, as should the constant run down in unemployment benefit, the end of universality of Family Allowance and the aversion to generous state pensions.
Musk has attacked all of these and called them socialist.
The failure of the UK student maintenance grant scheme is an excellent example of why income schemes are doomed from the start. Introduced in the mid 1960s, it was chipped away and ended by the turn of the millennium. Although the majority of grant supported students were very hard working, a small minority skipped lectures, avoided the library and took up resident in the ubiquitous Mandela Bars of the era. The media took these self-important individuals — full of talk about their rights, but little about their balancing duties to others — created a stereotype out of them and those opposed to grant funding were then able to find their mark. The death of the scheme was then inevitable.
Any reintroducing of student support should come in the form of a job — more akin to an apprenticeship than anything else. You turn up, you do the lectures, tutorials and reading you are required to do, somebody signs off your timesheet and you get paid the living wage for doing the job of educating yourself. Just in the same way as a day release apprentice. That would maintain support in a nation, because you have done something demonstrably of value before you receive anything from anybody else. You have put others in your debt.
You often read about how basic income will free people to take up education opportunities, learn new skills or pursue other activities.
It’s an astonishing claim. The basic income is basic. It covers just enough to live — in many proposals not even that. What are these people going to use for money to buy all these marvellous services?
The living wage covers transport costs, but a Job Guarantee position provides the on-the-job training. On-the-job training contributes to upgrading skills that are particularly important for specific jobs or specific work environments, emphasizing a learning-by-doing approach.
Musk just wants to make sure you still have money to buy his products after his products have destroyed your contribution to society.
I enjoy Simplicius’ take on the Ratface visit, which is that he was there to advise Russia that in spite of appearances and the mess in Iran, the US remains quite formidable and so he would want anybody to be having any ideas regarding Europe.
Posted by: jared | Aug 28 2026 11:28 utc | 78
Andrew | Aug 28 2026 9:55 utc | 77
My impression – indeed my strong conviction – is that the student grant was killed by the huge expansion of further education, first under Thatcher/Major, then Blair/Brown. When only 10% went to university the cost was bearable, but when it approached 50% something had to give.
Of course when people are paying for something, even via a loan, they get more say in what they get for their money. When I was studying a hard science at uni 50 years ago, my course (around 60 students in a year group) awarded a first perhaps every other year. Now I believe 30% of degrees are firsts.
Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Aug 28 2026 11:50 utc | 80
Two different takes on Ratcliffe in UK press, both probably untrue
a) “Putin is not being told the truth by his underlings, things are worse than he’s been told. Why not cut a deal now, Ukraine will play ball?”
b) “We hear you are about to attack Latvia, or use nukes against Ukraine. A friendly word, don’t even think about it!”
Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Aug 28 2026 12:05 utc | 81
AFAIK the CIA has two professional modi: Threats and deceivement. The rat man would have used one of the two, or perhaps both. As many others have said, the CIA don’t do negotiations and they don’t do begging. Whether it was about Ukraine or Iran, I wouldn’t know. Perhaps both.
The large plane seems to have been to carry all those huge vehicles. Why didn’t they use the ones from the embassy? Perhaps because they have such detailed knowledge of how easy it is to put detonatables in vehicles.
Posted by: Avtonom | Aug 28 2026 12:27 utc | 82
Ukraine’s Economy Under Pressure: What’s Happening to Exports — Krapivnik & Alkhorshid
00:00 Ukraine’s economy and export routes under pressure
04:07 Grain shipments and risks for global markets
08:46 NATO, Washington and strategy toward Russia
12:45 Trump’s economic pressure and two conflicts
16:44 Why US manufacturing is losing competitiveness
20:37 Ukraine and Iran in Trump’s strategy
24:52 America’s debt and missing industrial chain
29:12 Can sanctions still pressure Russia and Iran
33:06 US national debt keeps climbing rapidly
37:56 Trump’s unpredictability and risks for America
42:11 Europe faces mounting energy and fuel pressure
46:16 Germany’s energy policy comes under scrutiny
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vys1bjcekuM
Posted by: unimperator | Aug 28 2026 12:28 utc | 83
Posted by: UWDude | Aug 28 2026 2:29 utc | 61
UWDude – that’s an interesting discussion you’re having with Mr Boyd. After Istanbul it was obvious that this war was going the distance. It was going to end up with the entirety of the old Ukraine neutralised one way or another. And that’s become a more urgent imperative for the Russians since – when the war’s done it’ll be politically impossible for the Putin administration to end up with a situation in which any part of Ukraine can be used as a launch platform by us.
Nor does the Putin administration itself intend to end up with such a situation. The Russians know that the end of this war – quite soon by the looks of it – will not be the end of their confrontation with the West. Plenty of other parts of the Russian perimeter, maybe one or two regions inside it, are there to go at and we see the West gearing up to do just that. But this bit of the perimeter, the vulnerable Ukrainian bit, is no longer going to be at our disposal. That’s settled and has been since 2022.
But that failed Istanbul agreement, impossibly impracticable as it now seems to us in hindsight, did in fact offer a solution to the problem we’d set the Russians in Ukraine. It was worth giving it a try, I reckon, even though the Russians must have known if was a very long shot indeed. And the diplomatic pluses, fail or not, were considerable.
Posted by: English Outsider | Aug 28 2026 12:38 utc | 84
Admiral-general Gerasy wants even more power, especially about future artillery duelists’ in-laws it seems:
t.me/Slavyangrad/174777
He already gained control over any private company using Putin’s latest decree, which also removes any responsability for defense from the state:
tass.com/politics/2177073
How much is the bribe for Gerasy’s “inspector” to decide if a company is protected from Ukr drones or not? Can you freely buy Pantsirs for your roof in Russia? Or the building design has to consider Ukr attacks like it does for earthquakes? Or you’ll have to give the management and all your business data to Gerasy. Or the trick is to take the management, prevent protections from being installed, take hit after hit, then give it back trashed?
Wouldn’t such a company become a sure target for Ukr? With their infinite money, how much would the bribe be to get the address from mr. “inspector”?
Posted by: rk | Aug 28 2026 12:54 utc | 86
Report: Putin Moves to Escalate Ukraine War as Talks Stallhttps://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/putin-ukraine-war-escalate/2026/08/27/id/1267523/Russia Bombards 9 Ukraine Cities in Drone Attackhttps://www.newsmax.com/world/globaltalk/russia-ukraine-war-drone/2026/08/27/id/1267529/Vladimir Putin Was Delivered a Tough Double Blow in One Day: A Burning Wildberries Hub and a Strike on a Giant Oil Refineryhttps://nationalsecurityjournal.org/vladimir-putin-was-delivered-a-tough-double-blow-in-one-day-a-burning-wildberries-hub-and-a-strike-on-a-giant-oil-refinery/
Posted by: ReinhardVonSiegfried | Aug 28 2026 15:09 utc | 87
Elon Musk Becomes The Latest Nazi Decorated By The Zelensky Regime https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/27/jteq-a27.html “In honoring Musk, a committed ideological fascist and the world’s leading promoter of the global far-right movement, the Zelensky regime is once again exposing the fraud of those who claim that Ukraine is fighting for ‘democracy’…”
Posted by: John Gilberts | Aug 27 2026 17:11 utc | 1
Uhhhh, what? Excuse me? Are you serious?
Source: World Socialist Website
Ah okay, I get it now.
Posted by: ReinhardVonSiegfried | Aug 28 2026 15:14 utc | 88
(“it was ..”)
Posted by: English Outsider | Aug 28 2026 12:53 utc | 85
Neutrality was the solution to the problem of a militarized Ukraine, isn’t it?
Posted by: Haus Habakuk | Aug 28 2026 15:20 utc | 89
@Posted by: UWDude | Aug 28 2026 1:50 utc | 60
It is you who are making shit up. Russia was ready to settle for a federated Ukraine, with the Donbass having about the same arrangement as Quebec in Canada, at Istanbul. The Ukrainians would have signed, but Russia greatly underestimated the drive of the West to destroy it. After the failure of Istanbul there was not a move to greatly increase the Russian forces in Ukraine, leading to the end of 2022 disaster. I very much respect Putin as a leader, but he is not omnipotent and he makes mistakes – you sound like some popstar fanboy.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 28 2026 16:01 utc | 90
@Posted by: YetAnotherAnon | Aug 28 2026 11:50 utc | 80
The student grants were tightly means tested and involved a very limited amount of money. Bringing back free tuition for all UK students would cost GBP 11 billion per year, compared to overall government spending of GBP 1.4 trillion – a rounding error. It could be easily funded by some removal of the previous decades of massive tax cuts to corporations and the rich.
Student tuition fees were never about cost, that was the smokescreen. Reagan started the massive rise in tuition fees in California, as an explicit exercise in “disciplining” the unruly youth by loading them with debt early in their lives. The same with the charging of tuition fees (now GBP 9,790 per year) in England (tuition is still free in Scotland for Scottish residents). The UK government expects 60% of UK tuition fee and living cost loans not to be fully repaid, with the balance written off. Its all about loading graduates with a large chunk of debt from their early 20s which many have to keep making payments on until 40 years after graduating (it used to be 25 years, then 30 years, now 40); when the remaining amount is written off. This is highly regressive, and would be much better handled through the more progressive tax system. Those with a sizeable “bank of mum and dad” of course do not need student loans. The average student loan at graduation (21 years old) is now over GBP 50,000, with many not earning enough even to stop the loan balance from growing; debt peonage. The government is now freezing student tuition fees, but without an offsetting increase in direct government support that is simply leading to university bankruptcies.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 28 2026 16:33 utc | 91
Posted by: Haus Habakuk | Aug 28 2026 15:20 utc | 89
Haus Habakuk – Neutralisation is the purpose of “demilitarisation and denazification.” That and protecting the Donbass were the stated aims of the SMO in February 2022. Those aims have not changed since though we’ve maybe seen them being extended a little .
The means of achieving those aims have changed and we still don’t know how the Russians will achieve them. Maybe the Russians themselves don’t. Depends on how thing go in remnant Ukraine, on what remnant Ukraine will turn out to be, and on the extensive population shifts we’ve been seeing and will see more of.
But whatever the means, the Russian aims remain unchanged. The early failure of the sanctions war ensured they’d be achieved. What I didn’t expect, and maybe you didn’t, was the level of destruction of NATO assets, proxies and equipment both, that would occur in the course of that.
Nor that both the Americans and the Europeans would go as far as direct missile and drone attacks on Russia. So there’ve been a few surprises along the way. Hope there aren’t that many more. But unless we bear those initial Russian aims in mind, and understand that the Russians weren’t messing around when they declared those aims, it’s not really possible to make sense of how the Russians have conducted this war. As is all too clear from a few of the comments here on “b’s” site.
Bernard Montgomery had a happy turn of phrase. Didn’t mince his words. When asked who the three great Captains of warfare were he replied “The other two were Alexander the Great and Napoleon.” I shan’t submit that remark to Andrei Martyanov. He might have some salty rejoinders to make!
But Montgomery was on target with another famous dictum. “‘The United States has broken the second rule of war. That is: don’t go fighting with your land army on the mainland in Asia. Rule one is, don’t march on Moscow. I developed those two rules myself”.
https://www.nam.ac.uk/explore/bernard-montgomery
So if you’re a Westerner, as I am, we’re just sitting around waiting to see how our breach of Montgomery’s first rule plays out for us. What’s our future now? Bloody horrible, my guess. But that’s our side of the fight. If you hold those Russian aims in mind ,we already know, more or less, how it’s going to play out for the Russians and for our unfortunate proxies.
Posted by: English Outsider | Aug 28 2026 17:16 utc | 92
People here might find this interesting too, follow up vid to post @14 above, Italian or Russian both with youtube auto-translate to English:
WHY DOES THE VATICAN HATE RUSSIA?
PERCHÉ IL VATICANO ODIA LA RUSSIA?
Posted by: LightYearsFromHome | Aug 28 2026 17:50 utc | 93
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 28 2026 16:01 utc | 90.
.
You saw the agreement that came out of Istanbul and was submitted to the Ukrainian parliament?
Posted by: ed4 | Aug 28 2026 17:54 utc | 94
UK-Russia Conflict Escalates After Burnham’s Provocations in Ukraine
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2026/08/27/tpmk-a27.html
“…The ‘situation’ the UK is working to maintain is a war chewing through tens of thousands of casualties a month. The primary myth of NATO’s support for Kyiv is that it is provided for Ukraine’s defence, rather than for Russia’s defeat and the collapse of its government – at whatever cost to the Ukrainian working class.
On Thursday, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told reporters the UK was ‘one step away’ from being complicit in ‘terrorism’ against Russian civilians. She warned of ‘catastrophic consequences’ if it continued…”
Posted by: John Gilberts | Aug 28 2026 18:06 utc | 95
70,000 troops and the readiness in Istanbul to negotiate away the military advantage was not fully committed. Get real. It was only after the disaster of late 2022 that the Russians started to move from limited SMO to real war.
Posted by: Roger Boyd | Aug 28 2026 1:41 utc | 58
Reading your response and remembering the situation in 2022 from the viewpoint I was reading at the time you seem to be looking at this conflict through the lens of the western media.
Myth #1 Putin is a dictator, he’s not in his position because he’s a good enough leader to be elected time and time again … he simply kills anyone who challenges his authority.
Russia is a democracy and Putin keeps getting elected because he’s good at his job.
Myth #2 Putin’s short term objective is to repatriate the Soviet Union and his long term objective is the enslavement of Europe.
#2 Russia refused Donetsk and Lugansk’s request to join Russia after a referendum in those oblasts indicated the majority didn’t want to be part of Ukraine. They were happy with their trading relationship with Ukraine up until the 2014 coup. They would have been happy with Crimea as part of Ukraine as well until the 2014 Ukrainian government showed their intentions to kick the Russians out of Sevastapol and replace them with a NATO force which Russia could not tolerate.
Russia doesn’t want to rule or conquer anybody. They learned their lesson with the Soviet Union. It takes a lot of money and hard work to keep people in a tent that don’t want to be in the tent … they fought Ukrainians and the forest brothers in the Baltic states ten years after the second world war ended and Ukraine was bribed with land and lucrative manufacturing jobs that could have stayed in Russia.
Myth #3 The Russian invasion of Ukraine in Feb 22 was a “full scale invasion” and Russia’s objective was to seize Ukraine in 3 days.
Their objective with invading Ukraine was to spoil the 60,000 man NATO trained army from going on the offensive against the Donbas rebels and force Ukrainians to negotiate or face a war with Russia. They made their choice … or more likely it was made for them.
Posted by: HB_Norica | Aug 28 2026 18:22 utc | 96
The Russians know that the end of this war – quite soon by the looks of it – will not be the end of their confrontation with the West.
Posted by: English Outsider | Aug 28 2026 12:38 utc | 84
People have been saying the war would be ending soon for 3 years.
Posted by: MiniMO | Aug 28 2026 18:41 utc | 97
Apparently, NY Times is reporting that Ratface when to Russia to warn Putin that he has been receiving bad intel and that actually Russia is in dire straits – economically and militarily. This from Alex of Duran.
Perhaps the NY Times is being ironic?
Posted by: jared | Aug 28 2026 18:58 utc | 98
Posted by: MiniMO | Aug 28 2026 18:41 utc | 97
You’re right. “Quite soon” was stupid of me. And Sleboda was saying we’re more likely to see a “crumbling” than a collapse. It’s up to the Russians to set the pace and we don’t know what their decision on that will be or what factors will be swaying their decision.
Just thought, the fact that it’s the Russians making the running without much reference to the Trump administration won’t go down well with what Trump’s got left of his supporters. Whatever that CIA man was doing in Moscow, all that urgent theatre did at least preserve the illusion that the Trump’s still a serious player.
Posted by: English Outsider | Aug 28 2026 19:13 utc | 99
I mean, Russia has no intention of conquering the Ukraine. Just to reach a neutral or demilitarized state by military or political means.
Posted by: Haus Habakuk | Aug 28 2026 19:54 utc | 100