Matt Salvetti

Any views expressed are my own; RTs are not necessarily endorsements

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@ricwe123 🤡🤡🤡

[NEXTA @nexta_tv]

Another knife in Putin’s back? Vučić has arrived in Kyiv!

On Ukraine’s Statehood Day, the Serbian president will join European leaders to discuss how to produce more weapons for Ukraine — and faster.

They will also discuss Ukraine’s path toward EU membership.

[Ron Wahid @RonMWahid]

A strong editorial from the Washington Examiner @dcexaminer makes an important point: supporting Ukraine’s air defense isn’t just about protecting Ukraine—it’s about protecting America and Europe as well.

We’ve often asked Ukraine to thank America. Fair enough and rightfully so.

Now it’s time America—and our NATO allies—thank Ukraine.

For more than four years, Ukrainians have been the watchers on the wall, standing between the free world and Russian aggression, defending not only their homeland but our shared security as well.

https://t.co/587iZjnv83

@POTUS @VP @ZelenskyyUa @SecGenNATO

[Walter Russell Mead @wrmead]

The world would be poorer without France and the West would be less in every way. May the God of Jeanne d’Arc bless this great nation and sustain this extraordinary people through the storms to come.

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@ulrichspeck Does anyone doubt this anymore? For awhile, the premise of any deal has been a ceasefire, not a peace agreement. Korean War, not WWII or even Vietnam War

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@tashecon In spite of everything, NATO is very much alive.

[Srđan Majstorović @s_majstorovic]

Everything you need to know about 🇪🇺 accession capacity of incumbent 🇷🇸Gov. is that, besides 🇪🇺flagburning Minister of Info & Telecomm, there's Minister of State Admin and Local Selfgov who publicly stated "If I were S. Milošević, I would have ethnically cleansed Kosovo in 1998".

[Shashank Joshi @shashj]

Interesting thread. It can of course be true - and almost certainly is - that middle power allies both want more US engagement And also want to hedge against the very real risks of abandonment. You can see signs of that hedging in many places, even if it is limited.

[Balkan TJ (BIRN) @BIRN_BTJ]

EU says Serbian minister's statement justifying ethnic cleansing in Kosovo in 1998-9 is 'inflammatory' – and that such rhetoric 'has no place in Europe'.
https://t.co/8q7R3yCojK

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@DanielSerwer @lrozen TACO is the primary driver of U.S. policy on Iran for sure, but this seems more what has become de rigueur of Trump diplomacy writ large - seeking to trade an unreasonable, mercantilist demand for more ambiguous promises of commercial concessions

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

Among Zelensky's main shortcomings as president are his endless favoritism and his carelessness in personnel policy.

Ever since 2019, there has always been someone this guy, someone at his shoulder, standing behind Zelensky and quietly whispering things into his ear. First it was the notorious lawyer Andriy Bohdan, then, until recently, the untouchable gray cardinal Andriy Yermak, then someone else.

The current situation with the reported threat of dismissing the popular young defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov reminds me of early 2020, when Zelensky suddenly fired his first defense minister, Andriy Zahorodniuk.

It seemed that, after a succession of post-Soviet parade generals, the new president had appointed the country's first genuine civilian defense minister in line with the Western principle of civilian control over the military, a man from senior business management.

Many long-overdue reforms got underway, there was a clear plan, and anti-corruption watchdogs were quite pleased.

But nope -- Less than six months later, Zelensky fired Zahorodniuk before allowing him to finish almost anything he had started.

Because he had "failed to prove himself." At the time, however, the circles around the Defense Ministry, the Presidential Office, and the press persistently said that the sudden decision had been pushed by none other than Andriy Yermak, who had become head of the Presidential Office just a couple of weeks earlier and immediately began putting his own people in place and getting rid of those he disliked.

After his dismissal, Zahorodniuk insisted in conversations that he had never had any conflict with Yermak, but the press of those years persistently reported that Yermak had convinced Zelensky to throw out the defense minister because he objected to the then-time drama of pulling back Ukrainian troops from the frontline with Russian-controlled militant formations in Donbas.

The business manager in a suit was replaced by yet another post-Soviet general from the military bureaucracy, Andriy Taran -- who, during his two years in office became memorable mainly for being unable to string two words together and for constantly failing to complete the state defense procurement program.

That is how we ended up with the endless, barely comprehensible carousel of reshuffles, dismissals, and appointments, which people here in Ukraine sometimes refer to as "rearranging the beds in a brothel."

And now it is starting again.

Fedorov, with enormous progress in Ukraine's digital transformation behind him, has served as defense minister for only about six months.

He managed to cut Russians off from Starlink, drone production is booming, digitalization is accelerating, processes are being optimized, AI is being introduced on a massive scale, and there is now a strategy for technological superiority over Russia.

And that's it -- Fedorov has already fallen out of favor because the young IT guy did not get along with General Syrskyi and his methods of working.

And, according to rumors, Fedorov and his reforms have become a thorn in the side of those who have gotten too used to making very good money from military production.

Now Ihor Klymenko, the interior minister and former chief of the National Police, is reportedly being lined up to replace Fedorov. He is remembered mainly for his video in which he boasted about how National Guard recruits are drilled obsessively to make their beds with the sheets aligned perfectly to a string.

Every time our Defense Ministry starts climbing even half a head above the stagnant swamp, Zelensky's favorites always pop up and whisper in his ear -- urging him to appoint yet another mediocrity who would be comfortable for everyone, change nothing, and get in nobody's way.

That is how we live and fight -- two steps forward, one and a half steps back.

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@mejorespatadas1 I was after you wrote this, but then learned by watching the video that you lied

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

In order to "finish the job", you’d have to launch a massive land invasion, which US officials are not prepared to do, quite rightly because that would result in a disaster with a very high probability and there is no support for such a policy either at the elite or popular level.

So all this talk of "finishing the job" is just nonsense by people who refuse to accept reality and draw the inevitable conclusion from it, which is that one way or another the US is going to have to live with the Islamic Republic of Iran for the time being and therefore find some kind of modus vivendi with it.

[Michael Martens @Andric1961]

On 11 July 1995, the genocide of Srebrenica began. It is the day of greatest shame for all Serbs. Today, in the heart of Belgrade, the capital of a EU candidate country, writer Vladimir Arsenijević was attacked by a gang of Serbian thugs.
https://t.co/g9eg2wyzIP

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

Ukraine’s drone campaign has reportedly forced Russia to suspend all shipping in the Azov Sea and through the Volga-Don canal, bottling up one fourth of Russia’s grain exports. The strait of Kerch has become Moscow’s strait of Hormuz, of sorts. The latest video from Ukraine’s Unmanned Systems Forces shows why. https://t.co/NpkIbiykQw

[Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM]

Several Russian ballistic missiles strikes on Kyiv in the last 15 minutes. No warning, with the air raid sirens coming only after the attack began.

[Kim Ghattas @KimGhattas]

My latest in @FT There is no grand plan on Iran.
The US is throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks, Iran is over-reaching, the Arab countries are hedging and Netanyahu is hoping more war will eventually break the Islamic Republic.
https://t.co/7lXkqN8eoN

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@mjpesquire @dilanesper It is good, I guess, that this guy is a lawyer and not a judge

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@dilanesper @mjpesquire Classic projection!

[Matt Salvetti @salvetti_matt]

@dilanesper Yours is the logic of a child’s. Sorry, but an ad hominem attack deserves another. What is your proof besides a spurious ipso facto claim?