Zelensky's Lackluster DC Tour Upstaged by Another Mass Russian Air Attack on Ukraine
As expected, the establishment has hailed Zelensky’s latest “victorious campaign” against Russian warehouse chain Wildberries as a momentum-shifting PR operation that has reportedly brought him back into good graces with Trump:
Politico takes great indulgences in writing that Zelensky “convinced” the Washington establishment that Ukraine can now “win the war”. In doing so, they admit quite openly that the brilliant plan is simply to ‘irritate’ the Russian people into pressuring Putin to come to the negotiating table:
“The whole program here is to bring Putin to the negotiating table,” Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said following a meeting with the Ukrainian president, senators and some House lawmakers. “Zelenskyy believed that Putin would think a little bit more about trying to negotiate a settlement if the sanctions were in place and actually creating more irritation and, as he put it, I believe, ‘anger’ with the war with the Russian people.”
This is apparently the depraved strategy cooked up by MI6, CIA, and co.: endlessly bomb Russian civilian properties until the people get fed up of the war. How well did that turn out in Iran?
We saw in Iran a marked shift in even the staunchly anti-clerical civilian population on the ground after the US began bombing schools, hospitals, etc.—or, in essence, the very people the US claimed to be “liberating” from the “oppressive regime”. The sentiment quickly turned against the US in even the most diehard Westernized Iranians.
How anyone could expect any different in Russia is a most baffling mystery.
But Zelensky seems to believe his plan is working:
As a slight aside, insiders are now even admitting that Ukraine is being forced to shift its campaign against Russian refineries from simply creating empty PR optics via smoke plume ‘spectacles’, to actually hitting significant components of the refineries themselves which could take them out of action:
It’s an admission that the campaign has failed: as we reported last time, Russian refineries are coming back online in full, and Ukraine is now scrambling for a Plan B. The problem is, many Russian refineries are starting to enact countermeasures, such as placing nets and other anti-drone obstructions around critical components which could make Ukraine’s pivot less successful than expected by optimistic script-writers.
One of the chief goals of Zelensky’s visit was to secure more Patriot missiles for what is feared to be the hardest winter for Ukraine yet:
Kind of counterintuitive, then—one would think—that Zelensky chose to prolong the Iranian conflict by hitting an Iranian ship, the very conflict which is eating up his precious and most-coveted Patriot missiles. The longer the Iran war drags on, the less Ukraine is prioritized for such weaponry—but low-hanging fruit is one temptation too many for the Kiev mastermind, it seems.
But Zelensky’s big PR tour of Washington—wherein he rubbed shoulders with establishment figures, hobnobbed with neocons in Congress, and was laundered through the late-night circuit, appearing on shows like Sean Hannity—was nothing more than another performative circus. Even Ukrainian media is reporting that Boeing will not allow Ukraine to license production of the homing heads it is responsible for in the supply chain:
"There is a main bottleneck: the homing head for these Patriot missiles, and especially for the PAC-3 model. Boeing produces these homing heads, and as far as I know, Boeing is unwilling to provide licenses to third countries," Wanner stated.
In the above Euromaidan Press piece they even admit it takes several Patriots to stop a single Iskander, which Russia produces 70 of per month:
Additionally, the US signed a seven-year agreement with Boeing in April 2026 to triple production of the PAC-3 guidance heads. Lockheed Martin, the sole current PAC-3 producer, plans to triple its own production by 2030. Global PAC-3 MSE production currently runs at about 550 units per year, while Russia produces about 70 ballistic missiles per month, each of which typically requires two to three Patriots to stop, analyst Oleh Katkov says.
As Zelensky dances and flirts his way across Washington, even neutral analysts and cartographers have announced that Russian advances across the front have been gaining momentum to levels unseen since last year:
