I remember that in May 2022 I was with Ukraineโs 79th Airborne in the trenches in the forests along the banks of the Siverskyi Donets.
By then, Russian forces had already enveloped Lyman, entered Drobysheve, soon captured the city itself in northern Donbas, and advanced almost all the way to Sloviansk. You could already hear the heavy rumble of fighting there.
Then, just a few months later, during the Kharkiv counteroffensive in September 2022, our forces pushed the Russians back dozens of kilometers from Sloviansk, retook Lyman, and largely cleared the northern part of Donetsk Oblast of the enemy, wiping out months of Russian gains in the region since February 24, 2022.
Four years passed, and over all those years (!) Russian forces once again crawled back toward Sloviansk, enveloped Lyman and so on.
And now, ONCE AGAIN, judging by the reports that are emerging, Ukrainian forces, in the course of this summerโs operation, have ONCE AGAIN pushed the Russians back, ONCE AGAIN erasing years of their progress, the entire distance of which could probably be covered by car in a couple of dozen minutes.
And then Putin will once again shuffle up to a microphone, coughing, with that moronic little smirk on his face, and start talking about his astonishing military triumphs, while demanding that Ukraine be handed to him on a silver platter.
So a government fund ( Saudi/ PIF) which has virtually unlimited resources defaults on its commitments to fund LIV, a professional golf tour that, if you believed them, was meant to grow the game globally.
As I said at the beginnings of this ill conceived attempt to clean up the image of the Saudi government through LIV, the very nature of golf was drug into the sewer.
An evil ethos of corruption and consumption invaded the game trying to replace the generosity of spirit (and philanthropy) that the game has been imbued with for the better part of a century. The LIV players went from being autonomousโpicking and choosing where they play, sometimes on a whim and answering to nobodyโto going where they were told, playing courses they likely didnโt care for, under conditions they had no say in and finally and most sadly, playing for a dictatorial theocratic murderer.
So who is to blame for the damage done to professional golf? Not the Saudi government, evil people do evil thingsโฆ but those who were essential in getting LIV off the ground and setting the cataclysmic events of law suits, discovery, defections, discord, greed, the massive career derailment or regression of almost all LIV players in motionโฆthose who benefitted most from this destruction: Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau followed by EVERY player that took the money and inso doing became a puppet for a regime (against many ills) that butchered a journalist who spoke out against them.
Russia bombed Kyiv all night and kept bombing it into the morning with jet drones and loitering munitions, and it did so while the American president was on the phone offering Putin business deals for whenever he decides he has killed enough Ukrainians.
America used to have a code. You do not shake the hand that is still on the trigger. You do not talk money with a man while he bombs your friends. You do not let anyone mistake your patience for permission. Putin knows that code, which is why he struck a European capital mid-call, to see whether it still applied. It did not. The man in the White House kept talking, kept praising, kept offering. In Moscow they now know exactly what American strength is worth, nothing.
There is no red line, no cost and no consequence, only an eager counterpart who wants a handshake. The Kremlin sees a weak America that lost in Iran and has no friends left in the world, and every strike on Kyiv during that call was Putin saying so out loud.
Stay connected,
follow Gandalv @Microinteracti1
After 4 months of the Lyman counter-attack, Ukraine ๐บ๐ฆ 3rd Army Corps managed to cut Russian ๐ท๐บ salient north of Lyman and liberate more than 200 km2
This is one of the most important victory for Ukraine in 2026 which will delay the offensive on northern Donbas
๐งตTHREAD๐งต1/20โฌ๏ธ
Look at Zelensky. Look at his reaction to what Kushner is saying. Utter disgust. Heโs doing his best not to show it, but @ZelenskyyUa is rightly and utterly disgusted with the Americans talking about Putinโs โaspirations.โ Fuck Putin and his aspirations. He invaded a sovereign nation. He needs to get the fuck out of that sovereign nation. All of it. But alas, America has a president whoโs on Putinโs side.
At the press conference, Ukrainian journalist Dmytro Gordon asked US envoy Steve Witkoff if he thinks Putin has been deceiving him, if Russia only understands force, and if it feels disgusting to sit at the same table with a war criminal.
Canada is moving train manufacturing out of the United States and back home. In 2018, VIA Rail ordered new trains from Siemens Canada, but they were manufactured and assembled in Sacramento, California.
The next major order looks very different. Canada has awarded Alstom a C$4.7 billion contract for 313 passenger rail cars, with engineering in Quรฉbec, car bodies built in La Pocatiรจre and final assembly in Thunder Bay, Ontario.
Mark Carney made the shift explicit: โCars that used to be built in the United States will be built right here in Thunder Bay.โ
That means Canadian steel, Canadian suppliers and Canadian jobs. Trump wanted tariffs to bring manufacturing home. They may be doing exactly that, just not to America.
This is russian General Nikolai Varpakhovich. He commanded the russian strategic bombers that launched missiles at children's hospital in Kyiv.
He was just shot outside his house this morning.
Dildo of consequences rarely arrives lubed, Nikolai ๐
Ukraine has called on the International Civil Aviation Organization to seek a complete ban on civilian flights over Russian territory.
It is reported that Ukraineโs Infrastructure Minister Mykola Kalashnyk sent a letter to ICAO Secretary General Juan Carlos Salazar Gรณmez, obtained by ZN. UA, stating:
"Ukraine, exercising its inherent right to self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter, is compelled to respond appropriately to Russian terrorist aerial attacks. We proceed from the understanding that, amid the escalation provoked by Russia, the presence of civilian aircraft in Russian airspace may pose particularly high risks. We therefore consider it our legal and humanitarian duty to issue this impartial warning about the aforementioned danger."
It was also emphasized that Ukraine closed its airspace on the night of February 24, 2022, while Russia disregarded the security risks. As a result, a number of aviation incidents followed: an Azerbaijan Airlines aircraft was hit by a Russian S-300 air defense system in 2024; an Embraer Legacy 600 business jet was struck by the same system in Tver region in 2023; and a Tor system hit an Alto NG light aircraft near Kolomna in March 2026.
"Ukraine has officially notified ICAO that the Russian airspace is not safe for civilian aviation because of increased military activity. We urge everyone to avoid it," Ukrainian FM Andrii Sybiha also said.
โ๏ธThe Atlantic's Simon Shuster says President Zelensky has officially announced the start of Operation M&Ms. Shuster said one of the sources behind his original report confirmed to him that "this is it." Last month, Shuster reported that M&Ms was designed to swarm Moscow airports with AI-guided drones, seeking to isolate Russian elites and create pressure on Putin to negotiate a truce. #Ukraine
The Skies Over Russia Just Got Interesting.
Zelensky has done something rather magnificent here, which is to declare Russian airspace unsafe with the cheerful politeness of a man telling you the restaurant you booked has a rat problem. He is not threatening a single civilian aircraft, you understand. Heavens no.
There will simply be an enormous number of drones up there, and physics will do the rest.
The genius is in the audience. This is not a message for the Kremlin, it is a memo to every airline accountant and insurance underwriter still pretending that flights into Moscow are a normal commercial proposition. Insurers do not care about ideology. They care about actuarial tables, and those tables just caught fire.
Russia started a war and exported it by missile and drone across a border. Now the war is coming home to its departure lounges, and no amount of Kremlin silence will reroute it.
A new HMP poll shows retired General Leela Gray ahead by 5 points against the Kremlin's favorite representative in Congress, Anna Paulina Luna.
@LeelaJGray
Fedorov says he is ready to help the US create its own "drone army".
In return, the former Defense Minister is requesting that Ukraine be provided with interceptor missiles for Patriot systems.
In the next few days, the results of the Lyman "counter-attack" should be announced by various pro-ukrainian ๐บ๐ฆ media outlet
The operation is still ongoing, but the most important was done. OPSEC was very well conducted and managed to avoid any attention on the operation, which means Russian command didn't send any reinforcement at the crucial moment 2 months ago (which were obviously needed). Now, it is too late to save anything. Many Russian mappers started updating there map (mainly with old information).
All the maps I have seen for now on the situation are partially or totally wrong. The dates of offensive, the main axes and secondary ones are often not mapped correctly, as well as the current situation (I've seen some good analysis on Russian Telegram chanels recently). Approximately 200 km2 (or maybe more, fighting is ongoing) that were under Russian control are currently lost, with a part of those controled by Ukraine. This is a big blow for the Kremlin, since it will further complicate the offensive on Lyman and Izium and buy time to defend Sloviansk. Since the 3rd AC is now in charge of Sloviansk defense, it already seems the situation can improve, after months of a very difficult situation. This city has favorable ground to be defended, securing a Borova-Lyman-Mykolaivka line is thus very important to protect the Sloviansk-Izium road, one of the best for logistics in to the city.
OPSEC has not been lifted, but examples such as this picture shows that it will soon be. I prepared a long text to post a thread with the information I have. I still need to clarify some other things about this offensive.
Retired Brigadier General Leela Gray is running to remove from office the most pro-Russian member of Congress, Anna Paulina Luna in Florida's 13th Congressional District. Consider supporting General Gray!
@LeelaJGray