Trump Finally Outwits Europe and the Neocons on Ukraine?
Plus: Russian pipeline warfare comes of age.
After weeks, perhaps even months, of waiting to see what Trump’s strategy would be for escaping his own self-imposed Russian “deadline” corner that he’d backed himself into, we have finally gotten the answer.
Trump appears to have fairly cunningly outplayed Europe and put the ball into their court by challenging Europeans to put their money where their mouth is:
Translation: “I will put sanctions on Russia as soon as you guys do something I know is impossible to do.”
Trump has backed Europe into a zugzwang by conditioning his actions on Europe choosing between two equally fatal positions: if Europe completely cuts its “indirect” purchase of Russian “shadow” oil, as well as tariffs China to hell, it will crash Europe’s already crumbling economy. If Europe refuses to do this, then Trump will continue the status quo of the absolute bare minimum in supporting Ukraine while essentially giving Russia carte blanche to finish Ukraine off—which is equally as politically disastrous to Europe as the first option.
With this move, Trump has managed—for now at least—to extricate himself from the deadlock by out-maneuvering critics and neocons alike who are hereby prevented from pressing Trump on “enabling Russia”. Trump will now have a ready, plausible excuse for them: “Why should we make the effort of such sanctions when Europe refuses to meet us half way? It’s their war, after all.”
For all his recent failings, this one latest maneuver, we must admit, appears to be a strong one. However, the neocon deep state immediately sprang into action. Speaker Mike Johnson said that sanctions on Russia are “far overdue” and that there is a “big appetite for that in Congress”.
Ever-devious Lindsey Graham went a step farther in trying to force a sanctions package by kitchensinking it into a federal funding bill:
Everywhere you turn the global deep state clerisy is trying their damndest to raise the temperature on the conflict in portrayal of Russia as some threat from beyond looming over all of civilization.
The recent Polish UAV scare was debunked, as even Polish FM Sikorski admitted none of the drones had warheads:
The Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski confirmed that the UAVs that entered the country's airspace were not equipped with explosives.
It took them too much time to solve the "mystery" of the decoys used to discharge air defense in Ukraine.
The Lyin’ Wonder Von der Leyen, too, was chastened for her failed hoax attempt:
The rabid foot soldiers were in full froth, doing everything in their desperate power to stoke fears and raise tensions, to no avail:
Polish citizens continued to debunk and even ridicule the preposterous ‘drone scare’:
Polish PM Donald Tusk was even forced to admit that a “wave of pro-Russian sentiment” is rippling through his country, but that it is orchestrated by “the Kremlin” as always. He believes the “role” of politicians is to impose an artificial and undemocratic “stop” to such a natural civic outpouring, rather than responding to what constituents want:
Gee, here I thought the role of politicians was to represent the people’s popular views, rather than quash them when they ‘inconveniently’ clash with the ‘guidance from above’ the politicians receive from their corporate donors and paymasters.
In their latest, NYT shamelessly employs these now-debunked hoaxes as justification for an expanded hybrid war of sabotage against Russia:
The article admits that some unnamed European countries are already taking the proactive step of secret retaliation against Russia—most likely in the form of covert terrorism as always:
Some governments are already retaliating against gray-zone strikes in secret, particularly the countries closer to Russia that are under constant hybrid attack.
“We’re taking important measures in order to enhance our resilience,” the Swedish defense minister, Pal Jonson, said in an interview. “And of course, we are we are also making sure to make things difficult for Russia, predominantly by supporting Ukraine as well.”
What could this be? Well, for one it says “particularly countries closer to Russia” which we can immediately assume to be the Baltic stoolies. The only question is what secret actions are they taking?
This too may be easy to answer: likely facilitating various Ukrainian terror attacks as seen recently. For instance, there has been huge speculation about recent drone attacks on Russian bases and refineries in the far north that appeared to originate from one of the Baltic countries. This included a hit on a ship in Primorsk:
Which is all the way here:
As well as hits even farther north in Murmansk, which seem unlikely to have originated from Ukraine proper.
As always, there is nothing left for the Europeans beyond mindless escalation and wheeling their shopworn countries into the abyss. Days after the French government collapsed, Fitch downgraded France’s credit rating:
Meanwhile, the UK saw what is being billed as the largest ever ‘right wing’ rally in history, with estimates of hundreds of thousands of people, if not even higher, depending on whom you believe.
News on the front has been relatively slow for the past week, though the last few days have again ticked up with a series of Russian advances in several zones.
One of the most notable has been in Kupyansk, where even Ukrainian sources have admitted the Russians have again utilized a covert pipeline operation to cross the Oskol river and storm Kupyansk center.
From the AFU-affiliated DeepState channel:
Footage emerged of Russian troops exiting one of the pipelines:
Another video shows Russians with special carts on which they ride through the pipe as described by DeepState above. The second half shows Russians reportedly even discovering concertina wire placed into a pipe by Ukrainians to impede their movement:
In fact, for a while now Russians have been developing progressively more advanced devices and contraptions to more effectively transit through such pipes in order to scale up these operations into a kind of replicable MOS:
How long before the Russian Army gets its own official pipeline services branch?
The pipeline war has truly come of age, and memes are rife:
One write-up from a Russian source:
Since morning, the enemy has been writing in all its channels about the discovery of an underground passage, presumably through a gas pipe under the Oskol River near Kupyansk. The entrance to the approximately 10-kilometer tunnel is located in Liman Pervy on the eastern bank, and the exit is in the area of Radkovka in the northwest of Kupyansk.
According to the available data, it takes our infantry 4 days to pass through. The tunnel is equipped with sleeping and eating areas, ventilation, and, of course, electric carts for quickly moving loaded assault troops.
As per Suriyak, in the past few days Russian forces have infiltrated the shaded area and turned the entirety of it into a grayzone, with no full consolidation just yet, though Ukrainian forces are mostly withdrawing:
North of Kupyansk there were several new areas captured west of the Oskol river towards the Russian border.
One of the most successful and fastest developing of Russian fronts has now become the Krasny Lyman down to Seversk area, which is all just south of Kupyansk on the Kharkov-Lugansk-Donetsk tri-border. Here Russian forces have begun both enveloping and bypassing Shandryholove:
As well as taking most of Zarichne and pushing toward Lyman:
The RF Armed Forces are less then 7km away from Lyman.
🔻 They entered into the settlements of Shandryholovye, Derylovoye, Seredjne, and Karpovka. Fighting continues here, with some of these settlements being under at-least 75% Russian control.
🔻 To the west, the settlements of Zarochnoye and Torskoye seem to be confidently under Russian control. And there are some major advances continuing in the Serebryanskoye Forest.
In Seversk Russian forces collapsed the Serebriansky forest pocket up north, and are pushing north of Seversk, beginning to assault the town’s outskirts:
Zooming in, we see Russian DRGs have infiltrated all the way north of Seversk, though firm control has not yet been established:
On the Pokrovsk-Mirnograd front, Russian forces reportedly advanced up to the first houses at the outskirts of Mirnograd proper, though the area for now is marked as ‘loose control’ or gray zone as there hasn’t been confirmed consolidations yet:
Situation on Mirnograd front: In the last five days the situation east of Mirnograd has worsened for Ukrainian army. Russian army has intensified attacks and is approaching the first houses in the town. At the moment Ukrainian forces prevent the consolidation of Russian gains thanks to the high possession of drones in this section.
There were many other small advances, much of them coming on the Donetsk-Dnipro border on the old Velyka Novosilka line. Many areas on that western flank had new territories captured particularly around Berezove and Sosnovka:
A closer look, with specific settlements captured:
Situation on Velikomikhailovskaya & Huliaipole fronts:
Russian Army took full control over the localities of Ternove & Obratne. In addition, during the last week Russian forces captured a series of positions between Olhivske & Temyrivka.
On the far western Zaporozhye line, Russian forces began pushing out of previously captured Plavni and taking parts of Stepnogorsk, the next settlement up:
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A last few items:
When Keith Kellogg visited Ukraine recently, a kind of mythopoeic tale began to grow out of the observation that Russian attacks on Kiev seemed to ‘cease’ upon his arrival. Zelensky himself joked that Kellogg is more valuable than the Patriot system and offered a lifetime citizenship to Kellogg to protect Ukraine:
Kellogg himself boastfully gave life to the cringe worthy meme:
Most interesting in the photo above is the lifesize mockup of Budanov’s GUR logo in the background, which famously features a sword piercing Russia:
On this particular reworking, the words scrawled across the Russian landmass are Країна рабів, which in Ukrainian mean: “Country of slaves.”
Kellogg later heroically recounted how Ukrainians have a 3:1 advantage in morale over Russians.
If we talk not only in military terms, I have been to military hospitals and met with military personnel, and the ratio of physical strength to moral strength is somewhere around 1 to 3.
The Ukrainians' moral advantage over Russia is what is in their hearts, which is obvious. ...
Ukraine will definitely survive and remain a state (according to TikTok videos Kellogg viewed).
And if we look at the resilience of the people, we can see what the future will look like."
I saw Ukrainians in the subway during the alarm, either on TikTok or somewhere else.
And they weren't huddled together somewhere — no, they were proudly singing the national anthem.
It was unique.
And it shows that Ukraine cannot disappear," Kellogg said
He says that he and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Caine share the view that Ukraine is winning the war.
On this count, Arestovich recently disagreed, in his characteristic way:
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>Trump Finally Outwits Europe and the Neocons on Ukraine?
Stop it, please.
I understand very well why you, The Duran, and many others feel the need to stick to the charade of Trump the rebel who valiantly resists the neocons -- it comes down to the simple fact that the MAGA zombies form the major component of the income stream of most of right-leaning Western "alternative media", and if you tell them that Trump is not resisting any neocons, but is a neocon himself, and the ugliest and most rabid of them all so far, then they are more likely to abandon you than to accept that truth.
But that doesn't change the objective facts. Such as:
1) Did Trump gloat publicly on social media about the sneak attack on Iran? Oh, yes, he did.
2) Did he then continue with the most aggressive and blatantly violent foreign policy the world has ever seen from the US and from any other country not named Israel since Germany and Japan in the 1930s and 1940s? Yes, he did. Against Iran, now Venezuela, etc.
3) Was Russian strategic aviation attacked on June 1st? Which could not have happened without the CIA being in on it, likely orchestrating it? Yes, it was, and it was after Trump passive aggressively threatened on social media about "very bad things" happening to Russia.
4) Did the US just approve sending 3,500 short to medium-range cruise missiles to Ukraine, with no restrictions on targeting, i.e. something much more aggressive than what Biden did? Yes, that happened too.
5) Engels airbase was bombed in March under Trump too.
And many other such events, plus the general factor that no other president has given such a blank check to Israel, not even the previous one, nor done it so openly and blatantly.
So how can anyone in their mind or with serious commitment to objective reporting continue with the "Trump is not a neocon" narrative? Well, see above...
This pipeline operation is not like the others. In Avdiivka and Sudzha, the pipeline went under enemy positions to emerge in the enemy rear. In the case of the operation north of Kupiansk, the entire pipeline was under Russian held positions. So we are no longer avoiding enemy soldiers, this was a long pipeline journey solely to avoid enemy UAVs.
The war is inexorably shifting in Russia's favour, but it is getting more complicated rather than less. Continuous advances in drone warfare make manoeuvre warfare increasingly difficult. Thus, the big arrow offensives cannot be done without unacceptable losses in men and materiel. So attrition warfare it will be until the military, political, or economic collapse of Ukraine.