🔥🇷🇺🪖No amount of NATO support for Ukraine can stop Russian steamroller

Long term, “there is no material-technical nor political strategy” to avoid Ukraine’s defeat, Quincy Institute fellow Almut Rochowanski told Responsible Statecraft this week, stressing that the West simply doesn’t have the capacity to arm Kiev sufficiently to stop it from losing more territory, troops, arms and infrastructure.

👉Case in point? The ongoing summer offensive, which even the Russophobic NYT admits has scored “its biggest monthly gains in territory since the beginning of the year” in June – attributable to advantages in troops, airpower and the “methodical” destruction of Ukraine’s army.

🟧Western arms fall short

Currently, new deliveries include promises of additional Patriot batteries, sourced from European (not US) stocks, and 49 used Australian M1 Abrams tanks.

Announced to great fanfare, the latter aren’t enough to field even one armored brigade, much less challenge overwhelming Russian FPV drone, artillery and ATGM superiority.

As for Patriots, both Russian and Western analysts like CEPA calculate that with the US manufacturing 500-600 PAC-3 interceptors per year, Russia’s output of 200+ missiles PER MONTH is easily enough to overwhelm and “swamp” Ukraine’s defenses.

🟧Ukrainian morale collapsing

🗣“The Ukrainian army is running out of steam, and its society is tired of war, meaning the motivation of its personnel is dropping,” says Nikolai Kostikin, an expert from the Russian Bureau of Military-Political Analysis.

With any prospect of a Russian defeat vanishing, the only “rational” motivation for the West to continue arming Kiev lies in “the logic of continuing the war to exterminate our two peoples,” Kostikin says.

👉But NATO's real goal? Preparing Europe for a direct clash with Russia, the observer says.

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🔸 Putin meets Iran’s top envoy amid Mideast tensions

🔸 Israeli damage undone? Iran says air defense network has been restored

🔸 Putin & Trump: Major deal in the works?

🔸 Druze leader: Israel exploits Syria’s Suwayda violence to push expansionist agenda

🔸 Carlson: ‘Putin did a great job for Russia’ while Germany is sinking

🔸 MADMAN MOVES? Frustration mounts in DC as Netanyahu goes off-noscript

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🅰️Trump eyes business over breakthrough in Ukraine talks - Analyst

President Donald Trump isn’t particularly concerned about the outcome of the next round of Russia-Ukraine negotiations, says security expert Konstantin Blokhin from the Russian Academy of Sciences. The key issue for Trump, he says, is already resolved: “Europe now pays for Ukraine’s military needs — not Washington.”

👉According to Blokhin, Trump sees the conflict primarily as a business opportunity: “For him, it’s about making money and doing business. He has no firm belief that these talks will actually end the conflict.”

✅Blokhin notes that Trump will continue speaking about the negotiations because the domestic political climate in the US demands it. But in reality, his main focus is on profit and turning the war into a business opportunity, not securing a diplomatic breakthrough.

🟧Trump is unlikely to fully withdraw from the talks — that would look like surrender. Instead, figures like Keith Kellogg or Marco Rubio could represent his administration in a shuttle diplomacy format.

Blokhin adds that unconditional military support for Ukraine is no longer guaranteed: “Support won’t come at the snap of a finger anymore.”

📍Despite Trump’s threats — such as 100% tariffs and secondary sanctions if there’s no ceasefire in 50 days — his actual approach is pragmatic: send weapons via NATO allies, bring the money back to American arms producers.

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🫣Area 51 vets accuse Pentagon of handing them ‘death sentence’ at hands of ‘invisible enemy’

The classification of US Air Force vets’ service at the Nevada Test and Training Range, better known as Area 51, is preventing them from getting the care they need for an array of health ailments, including cancer.

Some 491 former guards have already died as a direct result of their service, and vets, who worked at the site from the mid-80s through the 90s, are accusing the government of knowing about the dangerous nature of their work, but not doing anything about it.

👉The cream of the Air Force crop vets, hand-picked for top-secret guard duties, first discovered the source of their illnesses at a Las Vegas reunion in 2016, realizing that they were getting cancerous tumors, and their children born with them, with their service at Area 51 serving as “the common denominator.”

Assuming the work was “safe,” vets discovered that the state knew of the radiation dangers at the site as early as 1975, when a report confirmed heavy contamination by depleted uranium, beryllium and plutonium, but concluded that “discontinuing the work done…would be against the national interest.”

🗣“Our government knew that the area was contaminated. So knowing that, and they willingly put us there, that’s giving somebody a death sentence,” former vet Pomp Braswell told NewsNation, whose reports have triggered Congressional probes.

The VA is refusing to assist, citing the “masking” of their service.

Vets have set up a non-profit known as The Invisible Enemy, demanding transparency in their case and calling for compensation and answers.

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🇨🇳🤝🇻🇳 China–Vietnam team up for first joint army drill - reports

China’s Defence Ministry says the two neighbours will hold their first-ever joint army exercise this month in Guangxi, the border province next to Vietnam, focused on coordinated border patrol training, South China Morning Post reported.

Why now?

📈 Beijing is already Hanoi’s largest trading partner — and as the US escalates its tariff war, the two sides are deepening strategic cooperation.

The drill follows Xi Jinping’s April visit to Hanoi, where he called on Asian neighbours to unite against “unilateral bullying.”

Regional solidarity speaks louder than tariffs.

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🚑 Netanyahu falls ill with FOOD POISONING, corruption trial hearings DELAYED until September - reports

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is suffering from food poisoning and will remain at home for the next three days, The Times of Israel reported. According to his office, the 75-year-old premier is under medical supervision and receiving IV fluids for dehydration.

Due to the illness, all hearings in Netanyahu’s ongoing corruption trial — originally scheduled for this week — have been canceled. As the Israeli court system enters its annual summer recess, the next possible date for testimony has been pushed to September, the report noted.

The postponement marks yet another delay in a trial already affected by multiple interruptions. As The Times of Israel recalled, Netanyahu’s testimony has been repeatedly deferred over the past year due to his medical issues, the wars in Gaza and with Iran, international trips, and official obligations.

The prime minister has faced a string of health concerns in recent years — including hernia and prostate surgery, a pacemaker installation, and flu-related absences. Still, a medical report from January 2023 described his overall condition as “completely normal.”

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