Viara Valtchanova

Risk analyst - FSU, East Europe focus.Due to NATO past & personal relations-involved with Af/Pak. Interested in cyberconflicts,etc.Opinions mine.RT≠endorsement

[Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM]

The death toll in Zaporizhzhia, where Russia attacked residential buildings with glide bombs hours after Trump announced his diesel deal with Putin, climbs to 23.

[Darth Putin @DarthPutinKGB]

I hate it when my trolls claim Russia was forced to invade cos of the "genocide in the Donbas". It means I have to post this video of Prigozhin saying it's bullshit.

[Ostap Yarysh @OstapYarysh]

‼️ Here's how disinformation works: An anonymous account based in Nigeria, with just over 400 followers, posts a video of an Iranian attack on a port in Oman in March 2026, falsely presenting it as a Ukrainian strike and claiming Ukraine “vowed to ensure Russian oil doesn't get to the U.S.”

Thousands of people retweet it, including members of the U.S. Congress. Voilà.

Expect a flood of similar disinformation tactics in the coming weeks.

[Yaroslav Trofimov @yarotrof]

Starlink is not used in Ukrainian strikes on Russian refineries because it doesn’t work above Russia.
If Elon Musk decides to signal his dislike of Zelensky by turning off Starlink, it will lead to many thousands more Ukrainian deaths on the frontline, will severely damage the SpaceX brand internationally (countries will know they can’t rely on it in times of real crisis), but will have zero effect on Ukrainian strikes against the Russian oil and gas industry.
It will also not end the war.

[Stanimir Dobrev @delfoo]

The reason I mentioned Sberbank's datacenters as a critical point of failure for Russia's banking sector is because someone allowed them to have over 50% of the market. Yes on paper there is a Federal Antimonopoly Service but it's busy bankrupting small gas stations.

[Ruth Deyermond @ruth_deyermond]

It's important to recognise is that this *isn't* about the US getting "back" to business with Russia, because there's never been much US-Russia business of any kind beyond arms control. What the Trump admin is pushing for is an unprecedented alignment of the US with Russia.

[Tatarigami_UA @Tatarigami_UA]

This explains why Texas separatists, with their totally coincidentally identical “Veteran, Christian, Father, MAGA” bios, have suddenly gone awfully quiet today, right alongside their Quebec counterparts, conspiracy whackos, and Polish anti-EU eurosceptics

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

Since the Trump and his minions won’t tell you this, let me clarify a couple of things.

First, it’s not Zelenskyy but the Rada, which decides whether to hold elections or not. The parliament has been voting on temporary extensions that allow postponing elections because of the war for years now.

Second, while Zelenskyy’s party does have a majority, it is not the case that he can command the party what to do. Their discipline on that account is way worse than even the GOP genuflection to Trump, and you have seen that the GOP often can’t get enough votes to make its majority pass what Trump demands. In fact, a huge part of Zelenskyy’s problems domestically arises from the party’s inability to coordinate its own votes to pass the policies he wants that would address economic issues.

Ukrainians who understand their own politics quite well have been pretty clear about this. Zelenskyy is the appropriate war leader but he is not that strong on domestic issues, and the Rada — with the usual factional politics — is to blame for delays and sometimes incoherent policies being implemented.

I learned a lot about these issues from the student projects because I insisted that their policy proposals include analysis of political feasibility and adjustments to make them more likely to be adopted once the stakeholders are considered.

All of this is to say that Trump, his minions here, and fellow travelers in Europe like the AfD, aided and abetted by people like @IuliiaMendel and @HavryshkoMarta, are all barking up the wrong tree.

Elections, even if they get the Rada to agree, will not bring them respite from Zelenskyy. After the last betrayal by Trump his popularity in Ukraine will probably go up.

But even if Zelenskyy were to be replaced, the Ukrainians will never elect a lackey to either Washington or Moscow. You can bank on that.

[Branislav Slantchev @slantchev]

At some point, we will have to blame Mearsheimer, Sachs, and their fellow travelers for much more than just peddling wrong explanations and misleading people. These guys have influence in policy circles, their words have policy consequences. They are partly responsible for policies that are based on their explanations.

The U.S. has now said no NATO membership for Ukraine — and the Russians didn’t even bother to thank it.

The U.S. has pursued deescalation — and the Kremlin merely escalated in return.

The U.S. has offered lucrative deals to Moscow — and the Russians have not offered anything at all.

The U.S. denigrated and pressured Zelenskyy multiple times — and the Kremlin just clapped.

The U.S. pulled Putin out of increasing international isolation by rolling out the red carpet for him in Alaska — and the Kremlin just used “the spirit of Alaska” to support its demands for Ukraine to capitulate.

The Russians still demand all of Donbas just to start talking.

And the reason for all these failure is rather simple: the U.S. keeps offering things that should appeal to the Russians under the Mearsheimer/Sachs explanation of the war but don’t.

Because their explanation is fundamentally and irretrievably wrong.

The moment you ditch the Mearshemer/Sachs framework, everything will immediately fall into place and you will understand why all these initiatives never had any chance of success.

Putin wants to subjugate Ukraine.

That’s the starting point. From this, it follows that he does not want it in NATO. It follows that he does not want it to have an army. It follows that he does not want it to have an independent government.

But, you might say, this is consistent with the other framework too. It is. But the imperialist explanation also tells you why Putin is fixated on territories, why he insists on taking Donbas, and why no economic and security concessions work on him. It tells you why all these talks will never work.

Mearsheimer is reduced to blubbering utter gibberish when confronted with that reality. After denying expansionist motives for years, he had to bow to reality and so began to claim — without a shred of evidence — that the territorial demands came only after the invasion. That’s despite the Kremlin officially annexing Donetsk and Luhansk even before the invasion, and Putin ceaselessly talking about subjugation and territory.

These people are immoral hacks who, to our collective dismay, have long had access and influence in Washington (and elsewhere). Their ideas are partly responsible for the failures of our foreign policy, with the consequences we now face.

Their vacuous insistence on peace and blaming the West for Russia’s aggression — along with their incessant clamor for talking to Moscow and normalizing relations — are contributing directly to the prolongation of the war. They embolden the Kremlin to persist and escalate in the expectation that the West would buckle because enough people come to believe these charlatans.

These people have the blood of hundreds of thousands on their hands.

[Michael Weiss @michaeldweiss]

So this deal is largely Potemkin, but the damage is obvious: the US will give something for nothing to get realignment with Russia and of course — in the long run — to line the pockets of Trump’s friends and family. Let’s assume, based on initial reporting, that Ukraine continues deep strikes with European assistance and even escalates now. Russian refineries burn. Moscow says they can’t satisfy the demands of the deal (which they couldn’t do anyway) because of those deep strikes. Whom do you think Trump will blame when his Potemkin bargain is shown to be just that? The hucksters in Moscow and Miami who sold it to him, or the country he’s sold out? Even in the deal’s inevitable implosion, Russia snags a big strategic victory. I’m guessing they factored that into their design.

[EUvsDisinfo @EUvsDisinfo]

The Kremlin is flooding the information space with AI-generated posts, bot accounts and staged ‘anti-war’ rallies, all pushing the slogan ‘Russia is not my enemy’.

The goal is to undermine support for Ukraine, fuel fear of war among Europeans and falsely portray efforts to strengthen Europe’s defences as acts of aggression against Russia.

[Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM]

The death toll has climbed to 20 civilians killed, including three children, in Russia’s glide bomb attack on Zaporizhzhia.

[Ruth Ben-Ghiat @ruthbenghiat]

Historian of fascism here. This is an escalation of an attempt to normalize extreme violence, ritualize violence, militarize the country, and make violence entertaining so when they ask you to commit violence in their name, you will be ready.

[Francis Farrell @francisjfarrell]

The ground drone revolution happening in Ukraine right now is driven not by high technology or autonomous humanoids, but by humans: well-organized and creative teams working in front-line workshops and command posts.

Our explainer, made with @93OMBr1:

https://t.co/EsKc76JGue

[Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM]

Lost count of how many bits of misinformation and completely false claims were made in this short Fox News clip.

[Illia Ponomarenko 🇺🇦 @IAPonomarenko]

These are the famous Golden Gates from the inside, the surviving remains of the once-mighty fortifications of ancient Kyiv.

For almost 1,000 years, this monument has stood on this very spot. Once, it was a magnificent main gateway, crowned by a church above its arch, through which princes, military commanders, and foreign dignitaries would make their ceremonial entrances into Kyiv, proceeding straight toward the city's holiest shrine, Saint Sophia Cathedral, knowing that they were entering a great Christian city.

For many long centuries, the Golden Gates lay in ruins and neglect, having never recovered from the tragedy of the Mongol destruction. Today, after so many reconstructions and restorations, they are among Kyiv's greatest historical treasures.

My upcoming book has an entire chapter dedicated to Yaroslav the Wise, perhaps the greatest ruler in Ukrainian history.

Despite his very slim chances of surviving a fratricidal war for his great father's throne, and despite his physical disability (he walked with a limp), Yaroslav managed to become a great builder of historical marvels, including these very Golden Gates and Saint Sophia Cathedral, a victor on the battlefield, and the father-in-law of kings across Europe, from France and Norway to Hungary.

Ukrainian history is simply full of astonishing and epic stories that you’ll definitely want to discover.

[Sir William Browder KCMG @Billbrowder]

This isn’t a massive amount of oil. It’s 15 hours worth of monthly diesel supply. But this accomplishes three very ugly things:

1) Trump can threaten Ukraine if they bomb any more of Putin’s oil refineries.

2) This can be used as a pretext for why Trump insiders can do dirty business deals with Russia.

3) This can open the door for more sanctions relief for Putin.

[Shashank Joshi @shashj]

Hard to overstate how erratic and bewildering US policy is right now. Trump envoy proposing Russia prisoner release for sanctions relief, Trump announcing diesel purchases and Kash Patel planning an imminent trip to Moscow for no apparent reason (https://t.co/7aE0HZrqJK)

[Jonathan Pie @JonathanPieNews]

American Morality
https://t.co/X899UyBwFB

[Christopher Miller @ChristopherJM]

A Russian attack with a glide bomb on an apartment building in the city of Zaporizhzhia killed at least eight people including three children overnight, reports Ukraine's human rights ombudsman. This adds to a grim tally of now more than 70 people in Ukraine slaughtered this week by Russian missiles, drones and bombs. Meanwhile, Donald Trump cuts a deal for diesel with Vladimir Putin.