Carlos Vargas

🇺🇸🇨🇴

[Azimuth 🌹 🇭🇷 @azimuthium]

Zabivaka canonically got drafted and died near Donetsk btw.

[Defense of Ukraine @DefenceU]

Sanctions will work. We'll make sure they do.

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next.

Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given. Not publicly. Not privately. A senior Army official told Fox News that Hegseth offered George nothing: no misconduct, no operational failure, no policy disagreement on the record. Just a phone call and a career ending in the middle of the most significant American combat operation in two decades.

George is the 24th general or admiral Hegseth has removed. But he is not the 24th. He is the one that matters. The Army Chief of Staff. The man whose signature sits between a president’s intent and the order that sends soldiers across a beach or into a tunnel complex. The 82nd Airborne is deploying right now. Marines from the 31st MEU are staged on the USS Tripoli. JSOC operators are at forward bases in Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Kharg Island, 90 percent of Iranian oil exports, sits 16 kilometres off a coast that someone will have to decide whether to approach. And the four-star general whose job it was to advise whether that approach should happen was removed 48 hours after Trump told the nation the war would continue for two to three more weeks.

The replacement is Vice Chief General Christopher LaNeve. He was Hegseth’s senior military aide before this appointment. The man who carried the Secretary’s briefcase now commands the Army the Secretary is reshaping. The chain of command did not break. It shortened. The distance between a television studio and a combat order just collapsed to zero intermediaries who were not personally selected by the man giving the order.

No reason was given. That is the tell. When someone is removed without explanation during a crisis, the explanation is the crisis itself. George either objected to something or was about to. The ground option. The power plant strikes. The Kharg raid. The escalation that turned a highway bridge in Karaj into rubble on the same day he was told to leave. Something in the next two weeks requires a chief who will not push back, and the Pentagon solved that problem by installing one trained as Hegseth’s aide.

A former Fox News weekend host just fired a four-star general with combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, replaced him with his own former assistant, and did it during a live war in which the next decision could put American soldiers on Iranian soil for the first time in history. No hearing was held. No misconduct cited. The Army woke up on April 3 with a new chief it did not choose, in a war it did not start, preparing for a phase the previous chief apparently could not be trusted to execute.

The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no.

The war has no perimeter. The chain of command has no objectors. And the next phase has no one left to stop it.

https://t.co/dAOBBMsgDS

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

There's one moment from the liberation of Bucha that will stay with me for the rest of my life.

At the entrance to the city from the Irpin side, near the railway line, there's a very nice and cozy apartment complex, I once wanted to buy an unfinished flat there, but it was out of my price range.

When we returned to Bucha alongside Ukrainian forces, that same complex had been badly hit. The Russians had positioned artillery in the courtyards nearby, so shell and fuse crates were scattered everywhere. Burnt, torn-off BMP tracks lay strewn around.

In the parking lots, among mountains of debris and wreckage, Teslas burned to the ground. Nearby, rows of small buildings with little shops, cafes, bakeries, riddled with bullets, looted and torched.

All around -- grayness, darkness, the feeling of an exhumed grave, as if you could feel with your very skin that something evil had happened here.

And there, on the basketball court, a man was wandering aimlessly in silence. Just walking in circles, over and over again. He still couldn't come back to himself.

All 33 days of the occupation he had hidden in a basement right there under those buildings, literally right under the Russians' noses, hiding so as not to end up among those who, as captured on camera, were marched in single file with their hands behind their heads and taken around a corner to be shot.

But that guy was lucky.

Several days had passed since the Russians left, and he was still walking there in circles, in silence. I tried to talk to him, to ask if he needed anything, and he raised his eyes to me and said: "Do you know why they hate us so much?"

He started to sob, wiping away tears. "Do you know? Tell me, why, why, what did we do to them? Tell me."

I think that evening I came home to Kyiv after a day in the field reporting on the atrocities in Bucha, and for the first time in a long time, I got drunk.

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

The reckless campaign against Iran will weaken America’s president. That will make him angry. Be warned: he makes a very bad loser https://t.co/UUNQjqewMl

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection against "shaheds" in the Middle East region. I gave instructions to provide the necessary means and ensure the presence of Ukrainian specialists who can guarantee the required security. Ukraine helps partners who help ensure our security and protect the lives of our people. Glory to Ukraine!

[Anton Gerashchenko @Gerashchenko_en]

What Russians did in Bucha is particularly painful to my heart. I was there in the first days after it was liberated, and I will never forget it.

Friends, please share this as widely as possible in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

The Ukrainian feature film Bucha is now available on Apple TV, Amazon, Google Play, and Fandango in the US, Canada, and the UK.

The world needs to see the truth about the heroism of Ukrainian civilians under Russian occupation.

Thank you for helping Ukraine's voice be heard louder!

[James Talarico @jamestalarico]

This is the interview Donald Trump didn’t want you to see.

His FCC refused to air my interview with Stephen Colbert.

Trump is worried we’re about to flip Texas.

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@SimuLiu You deserve Shang Chi 2, thank you for speaking out against a clear violation of our rights

[@holandees_errante @nederlandeer]

¿Quién recuerda cuando las fuerzas especiales 🇷🇺 intentaron secuestrar a Zelensky en febrero de 2022 y 200 matones del Dynamo Kyiv le abrieron el trasero?

[Star Wars Holocron @sw_holocron]

Thinking about this today

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@KyivIndependent Huh, who would’ve thought the Russian warmongers don’t want to end this war?

[JerryRigEverything @ZacksJerryRig]

I was indoctrinated at a young age.

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@coffeebreak_YT My dad isn’t shorting the market every two weeks

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@IAPonomarenko See you in two weeks then ?

[Carlos Vargas @CFV321]

@KyivIndependent So weak

[Mesh I ميش @MeshMushi]

HOLY AURA MY GODDDDDD

[andrew @andrewgaming131]

how mfs in 2023 were watching the wagner rebellion unfold