Ukraine’s dangerous new ‘gift’ to Washington
Striking Russia’s nuclear assets, Ukraine’s audacious operation newly imperils arms control and ensures that the war will drag on.
Aaron Maté, Jun 07, 2025
An audacious Ukrainian drone attack on four military bases across Russia, dubbed Operation Spider’s Web, handed Moscow one of its worst humiliations of the war. With a fleet of inexpensive drones hidden inside cargo trucks, Ukrainian intelligence penetrated deep inside Russian territory and caused significant damage to military aircraft, including long-range, nuclear-capable bombers. “The strike was a serious blow, and to suggest otherwise is self-delusion verging on sabotage,” wrote Rybar, a popular pro-Kremlin social media channel.
For Ukraine and its Western backers, the strikes reinforce their ability to inflict significant costs on Russia more than three years into an invasion that Kyiv was expected to lose within days — and bolster the case for continued US support. For Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, the images of smoldering Russian aircraft “help change the rhetoric in the US,” where it can no longer be said, as Donald Trump argued in their Oval Office showdown, that “Ukrainians are losing this war, and don’t have the cards.” Added former senior Zelensky aide Oleg Ustenko: “Trump said we don’t have the cards — this shows we do have the cards, and we can play them.”
Powerful elements in Washington would undoubtedly agree. By targeting part of Russia’s nuclear triad, “[s]ome officials said Ukraine’s drone attacks could be viewed as a gift to the United States,” the New York Times reported. Days after visiting Kyiv to promote his push for harsh sanctions on Russia’s trading partners, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham hailed Ukraine’s “ever-resourceful” effort “to successfully attack Russian bombers and military assets.”
As grateful proxy war sponsors like Graham illustrate, Ukraine had ample grounds to believe that it was handing the US a “gift.”…………………………………………………………………………..https://www.aaronmate.net/p/ukraines-dangerous-new-gift-to-washington?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=100118&post_id=165354982&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=ln98x&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
Global Network Statement on Golden Dome
Golden Dome would create a dangerous arms race in space. It is an offensive, not defensive program……. it will embolden the US to launch a first-strike attack and attempt to pick off any retaliatory strike.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L3Harris and SpaceX would likely be the prime beneficiaries along with Republican megadonor Peter Thiel’s Palantir and venture capital-backed startup Anduril.
Donald Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ proposal is a continuation of Ronald Reagan’s SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), the Star Wars system of early 1980’s.
Trump calls it a ‘layered defense shield, safeguarding the American homeland with unwavering precision, ensuring the security and resilience of our nation’. Trump shared few specifics in the May 20 news conference, saying “Golden Dome will be capable of intercepting missiles even if they are launched from other sides of the world and even if they are launched from space.”
Early cost estimates from Congressional sources range from $550 billion to trillions over 20 years. Trump wants a $25 billion down payment for the program in 2025. Canada is being brought into Golden Dome likely to help pay for it. We should expect that NATO members will also be hit up to help cover the massive costs.
There are already extensive missile defense programs, such as the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GBMD); the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) program; the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Satellite Tracking Layer program; the ‘Space Based Infra-Red System’ (SBIRS) of missile detection and tracking satellites and its replacement the ‘Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infra-Red’ (Next Gen OPIR) satellites. The aim of Golden Dome is to combine these with new components, such as space-based interceptors aimed at intercepting missiles soon after launch.
The price tag is bound to be the Achilles Heel of the Golden Dome program. Already, over the past 70 years, the US has spent more than $500 billion on missile defense, according to an American Physical Society (APS) report. Golden Dome would be a colossal waste of resources when the US has $37 trillion in debt. Merely replicating Israel’s Iron Dome over the US — multiplying it out to cover nearly four million square miles — would require 24,000 Iron Dome batteries at $100 million each. Development cost of Golden Dome would be more than we spend on the Pentagon budget in one year.
Golden Dome would create a dangerous arms race in space. It is an offensive, not defensive program. It is extremely unlikely to be able to provide the claimed 100% effective shield against an all-out attack from thousands of missiles incorporating countermeasures such as multiple decoy warheads or the ability to maneuver in the final stages of their trajectory. However, it will embolden the US to launch a first-strike attack and attempt to pick off any retaliatory strike.
The US and Canada land mass is so vast that Golden Dome could never successfully cover it all. Golden Dome just won’t work. It simply encourages other nations to expand hypersonics development, mass drone swarms, advanced cruise missiles and other technologies to overwhelm the US system.
Israel’s similar Iron Dome proved not to be effective when Iran launched missiles and drones that evaded that system. “Intercepting even a single, nuclear-armed intercontinental-range ballistic missile or its warheads … is extremely challenging,” physicist Frederick Lamb of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign said at an APS meeting in March. “The ability of any missile defense system to do this reliably has not been demonstrated.”
Ensuring protection from just one ‘enemy’ ICBM launch site would require more than 1,000 interceptors in Low Earth Orbit (LEO), the APS report finds. Protection from ten ICBMs might demand over 30,000 interceptors, depending on missile types. For comparison, there are currently about 12,000 active satellites in orbit around Earth, most in SpaceX’s Starlink network.
Scientists at China’s Zhejiang University have created a composite, multi-layered, heat-absorbing stealth material they say can evade detection by infrared and microwave systems at long ranges. It operates at temperatures up to 700 °C, meaning it can be potentially used in an array of military and space applications.
That’s bad news for Golden Dome, which will rely on ground and space-based early warning, tracking, fire control and radars to detect and track threats. Without help from its sensor-based eyes and ears, Golden Dome’s interceptors would be essentially useless and firing blind in the event of a crisis.
Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, L3Harris and SpaceX would likely be the prime beneficiaries along with Republican megadonor Peter Thiel’s Palantir and venture capital-backed startup Anduril.
Any war in space would lead to the Kessler Syndrome – masses of orbiting debris – making it virtually impossible to utilize orbits that are becoming dangerously congested like Lower Earth Orbit (LEO). There are currently more than 1,550 Starlink satellites in LEO with thousands more planned.
Elon Musk’s Starlink satellites are launched from Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Space Force bases. All space launches today have major environmental impacts – particularly exhaust products trapped for long periods in the upper atmosphere that are further damaging the ozone layer. Space is an environment that must be protected. Golden Dome’s huge number of launches would be the stake in the heart of planet Earth.
Deployment of Golden Dome would also doom any hopes for nuclear disarmament as China, Russia, North Korea and others could not afford to get rid of their nuclear retaliatory capabilities. No other nation will surrender to US becoming the Master of Space.
The Pentagon (Space Force) has long been planning to control the pathway from the Earth to the Moon and beyond. Plans for space-based orbiting battle stations, used to ‘police’ the Earth-Moon gravity well to ensure US and allies ‘control and domination’ of space, are called for in the 1997 US Space Command document ‘Vision for 2020’.
The US unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty with Russia in 2002. From 1972 until 2002 the Treaty bound the US and Russia to very limited missile defense systems in order to maintain the deadly nuclear balance. What is needed now is a new global ABM Treaty that all states can sign up to and ensure that no state, or group of states, can hold the threat of a nuclear first strike over others.
If the US truly wishes to protect the US and Canada, then it should honor the spirit of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It should agree to negotiate and sign a treaty at the United Nations to ban all weapons in space. China and Russia have been annually introducing a space weapons ban treaty for more than 30 years but the US and Israel have been blocking its development.
We, the undersigned, call upon the US Congress, the White House, and the Canadian government to abandon plans for the creation of the Golden Dome. Rather than wasting massive amounts of tax dollars on a new space arms race those funds should be used for human needs, environmental protection, education, health care and long neglected infrastructure repair. The US and Canada should lead a global initiative to protect our global commons and keep space for peace.
List in formation: (long list of the undersigned): ………………………………………………………………………………………………. To add your name to this statement, email globalnet@mindspring.com. https://space4peace.org/global-network-statement-on-golden-dome/
Nuclear-powered submarines, F35A fighter jets, a ‘more lethal’ army by 2035, and AI: How Starmer will spend billions to beef up Britain’s defences to make country ‘war-ready’
By MARK NICOL DEFENCE AND DIPLOMACY EDITOR, 3 June 2025 , https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14773857/Nuclear-powered-submarines-fighter-army-2035-Starmer.html
More submarines, soldiers and drones, along with an airborne nuclear strike capability and the exploration of technologies such as lasers, AI and robotics, are among the proposals in the Strategic Defence Review.
These are the key ambitions outlined in the SDR:
Army to be ‘ten times more lethal’
This ambition relies on the harnessing of new technologies and weapon systems, particularly drones. Lethality is difficult to measure and the claim is strong on political rhetoric.
Only a couple of months ago, the Chief of the Defence Staff, Admiral Sir Tony Radakin, said the ambition was to double lethality by 2027 and triple it by 2030.
The new Archer artillery system, the belated introduction of the Ajax vehicle and Challenger 3 tanks will increase lethality… but to what extent?
Three forces to be integrated into one
The Integrated Force, unveiled as part of the SDR, is not a merger of the Armed Forces, but they will lose much of the traditional
independence as they are moulded into a centralised Integrated Force. The SDR suggested the services were ‘siloed’. The need for them to train together and prepare for war shoulder to shoulder was essential in the months and years ahead.
£15billion boost for nuclear warheads
Britain’s nuclear deterrent has long been in need of recapitalisation. The £15billion will pay for these weapons to be upgraded or replaced.
It will also see the significant modernisation of infrastructure at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, supporting more than 9,000 jobs at the Berkshire site
Up to 12 new nuclear attack submarines
The as yet uncosted pledge to develop ‘up to’ 12 new attack submarines has been welcomed by military observers but the first boat is not expected to enter service before the late 2030s.
The submarines will support the AUKUS security alliance between the UK, Australia and the United States and will be used to protect the Pacific from Chinese aggression.
Over the decades ahead, the boats will replace the Royal Navy’s current fleet of seven Astute-class submarines. They will be built at key sites such as BAE in Barrow-in-Furness.
Over the decades ahead, the boats will replace the Royal Navy’s current fleet of seven Astute-class submarines. They will be built at key sites such as BAE in Barrow-in-Furness.
Six new factories to make munitions
The SDR proposes at least six factories making munitions and energetics such as explosives and propellants for weapons.
The SDR recommends creating an ‘always on’ munitions production capacity in the UK, allowing production to be scaled up at speed if needed.
Britain’s military warehouses are bare after £5billion in weaponry and munitions was provided for Ukraine since the start of the conflict in 2022. The programme will create more than 1,000 skilled jobs, according to the SDR.
Robotics, cyber warfare and AI
The review says AI will improve the quality and speed of decision-making and operational effectiveness for Britain’s military, its allies… and its enemies.
It should be an immediate priority to ‘shift towards greater use of autonomy and AI within the UK’s conventional forces’. This has shown to be transformational in Ukraine. Chiefs will launch a Defence AI Investment Fund by February 2026.
The report warns cyber threats will become harder to mitigate as technology evolves, with government departments, military hardware, communications, increasingly vulnerable.
Hardening critical defence functions to cyber-attack is crucial. Directed Energy Weapon systems, such as the UK’s DragonFire, a world-leading laser ground to air system being developed at Porton Down, Wiltshire, can save millions of pounds in expenditure on ordnance systems.
The review also calls for the MoD to seize the opportunities presented by technologies such as robots and lasers.
£4billion expansion of the drone force
The Government unveiled a £4billion investment package for drones and autonomous systems. Drones are dominating the conflict in Ukraine and in Russia, following the audacious Ukrainian attack on Russian airfields in Siberia just days ago.
Hardening critical defence functions to cyber-attack is crucial. Directed Energy Weapon systems, such as the UK’s DragonFire, a world-leading laser ground to air system being developed at Porton Down, Wiltshire, can save millions of pounds in expenditure on ordnance systems.
The review also calls for the MoD to seize the opportunities presented by technologies such as robots and lasers.
£4billion expansion of the drone force
The Government unveiled a £4billion investment package for drones and autonomous systems. Drones are dominating the conflict in Ukraine and in Russia, following the audacious Ukrainian attack on Russian airfields in Siberia just days ago.
Fighter jets to carry nuclear bombs
Britain is exploring the potential return of air-delivered nuclear weapons in collaboration with the United States. America’s F-35A Lightning II aircraft is capable of carrying tactical gravity nuclear bombs.
The proposal marks the most significant shift in UK nuclear posture since the Cold War. Currently, this country’s nuclear deterrent is carried by the Royal Navy’s ‘bomber’ submarines.
The air-launched nuclear weapons would carry a much smaller payload. The lower yield B61 munitions are already integrated into US aircraft stationed on continental Europe and could be brought to Britain.
Thousands of new long-range weapons
At least 7,000 long-range weapons will be made to restock UK military warehouses and to prepare for an extended conflict against an adversary such as Russia.
Children taught value of the military
Defence chiefs will work with the Department for Education to develop understanding of the Armed Forces among young people in schools, by means of a two-year series of public outreach events across the UK, explaining current threats and future trends.
Schools and community-based cadet forces will also be expanded, with an ambition of a 30 per cent rise by 2030 with a view to the UK having 250,000 cadets, many of whom will then go on to join the armed forces.
More reservists and investment in them
To meet the challenge of engaging in a lengthy conflict, the report identified the need to boost the number of reservists.
These part-time personnel, many of whom are former regulars with operational experience, would join full-time troops on the frontline.
The report identified the need to increase the size of the UK’s Active Reserve forces by at least 20 per cent ‘when funding allows, most likely in the 2030s’.
The UK has around 25,000 Army reservists, 3,500 Royal Navy and Royal Marines reservists and 3,200 RAF reservists.
Russia at a Crossroads
Ukraine’s devastating drone strike deep into Russian territory is a gauntlet thrown down. Will Russia under Putin’s leadership ever be able to persevere to the point of claiming a clear victory?
Or has Ukraine under the leadership of Zelensky just changed the dynamic to the point of proving to the collective West that he is a leader worthy of continued support to the point of victory at all cost?
June 3, 2025, Consortium News, https://consortiumnews.com/2025/06/03/russia-at-a-crossroads/
Moscow’s military campaign under Putin’s leadership has focused on avoiding escalation, says John Wight. But Ukraine’s drone strike deep into Russian territory is a gauntlet thrown down.
Russian President Vladimir Putin now finds himself at a monumental crossroads when it comes to his stewardship of Russia at a time when nuclear Armageddon has never been closer.
Ukraine’s devastatingly successful and audacious strike against Russia’s long-range strategic bomber aircraft stock marks a major inflection point in a conflict that evidences no sign of ending.
But let us not lose sight of the salient fact that Russia is not engaged in a conflict with President Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine. This is instead a conflict pitting the Russian Federation against NATO, with Ukraine a proxy of the latter. And NATO is taking advantage of Putin’s caution.
No consequential conflict has ever been won by half-measures. General William Sherman’s “March to the Sea” arguably did more to break the Confederacy than President Abraham Lincoln’s famed Emancipation Proclamation. The Allies firebombing of Dresden in February 1945 and the Soviets arrival on the outskirts of Berlin on April 25, 1945, did more to break the back of the Germans than Hitler’s suicide nine days later. The Vietnamese won their national liberation with the fully-committed and symbolically important Tet Offensive of 1968 rather than all of the diplomatic machinations that came thereafter.
Russia’s military campaign at Putin’s direction has placed a priority on avoiding escalation. But it is a posture that has invited escalation, evidenced by this latest major turn of events.
Russia has been fighting the West diplomatically but not militarily, while Ukraine under Zelensky has been waging its conflict with Russia in the name of the strategic aims of NATO, rather than the interests of Ukraine and its people.
Russia is at a decisive point. Does it continue its war carefully to avoid confrontation with NATO, while encouraging its continued provocations, or does it take the hardline approach of Yevgeny Prigozhin, the late outspoken leader of Russia’s Wagner Group, who made repeated demands for national mobilization in the name of a speedy victory dictated by Russia’s far superior mass and weight of industrial potential.
Putin is a deft leader. Even his adversaries in the corridors of power in the West would grudgingly admit this given his long record in power in the Kremlin. It was he who dragged Russia out of the free market abyss into which the country and its people were plunged in the wake of the demise of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.
Putin’s Rebuilding of Russia
In the process, Putin succeeded in restoring the primacy of the state over a new rising Russian economic oligarchy — one that had been happy to allow the masses of the Russian people into the arms of destitution and despair because of its own greed and corruption.
The Russian leader then set about rebuilding state institutions that had been destroyed in the name of the religion of free market capitalism, with the result that slowly but surely a new state emerged from the ashes of the old. Russia regained pride in a new identity embraced the indispensable role of the Soviet Union in defeating the Nazis in World War II with respect for the pre-Bolshevik role of the Russian Orthodox church as a pillar of spiritual stability and social cohesion.
From the Russian standpoint, this is why Putin is credited as their historical version of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the U.S. president who likewise saved his country from the abyss during the 1930s, when the Great Depression was at its terrible and destructive zenith and then went on to lead the bulk of the U.S. war effort during World War II.
But Putin has, it appears, misread the West’s resolve in this period of the rapidly shifting tectonic plates of geopolitics. Putin’s reasoning has been the avoidance of escalation to direct military conflict with the collective Western powers. However those powers are already heavily involved in the arming, training and direction of Kiev’s war effort.
So where now and what now?
Ukraine’s devastating drone strike deep into Russian territory is a gauntlet thrown down. Will Russia under Putin’s leadership ever be able to persevere to the point of claiming a clear victory? Or has Ukraine under the leadership of Zelensky just changed the dynamic to the point of proving to the collective West that he is a leader worthy of continued support to the point of victory at all cost?
President Donald Trump’s dressing down of the Ukrainian leader in the Oval Office back in March was driven and motivated by the belief that Ukraine’s war effort was faltering. Zelensky in this context appeared isolated, adrift and weak.
Well, not anymore.
Nuclear Proliferation’s Next Iteration
Henry Sokolski, May 2025, https://npolicy.org/nuclear-proliferations-next-iteration/
The world is about to experience the second iteration of nuclear proliferation. The first era began in 1949 with Russia’s first nuclear weapons test. It ended in 2002 when North Korea set off its own first device. Nuclear weapons spread, but slowly. Most would-be bomb-makers – South Africa, Argentina, Brazil, Iraq, Taiwan, South Korea, Libya, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Sweden, Italy, Romania, Australia, and Syria – gave up their weapons projects. Only nine completed and kept them (the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea).
It’s unclear if we’ll be as lucky with nuclear proliferation’s next iteration. Poland, Germany, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Japan will tell the tale. If any go nuclear, others — Egypt, Algeria, the UAE, Vietnam, Australia, Ukraine—will surely be tempted.
Two other headaches compound these concerns. The first is the prospect that states will target reactors in war and release dangerous amounts of radiation. The war in Ukraine serves as a poster child. Recent Chinese, North Korean, and Israeli threats to bomb their neighbors’ nuclear plants suggest Kyiv’s predicament is not a one-off.
The second concern is increased interest in nuclear weapons sharing. NATO states, Ukraine, South Korea, Japan, and Russia have all expressed an interest in either hosting or placing weapons on other nation’s soil. This practice, which was so popular during the 1950s and 1960s, will stress U.S. friendships and alliances if renewed.
There are several factors behind these developments. One is the erosion of American security guarantees and the augmentation of Chinese, Russian and North Korean nuclear arsenals. Yet another is the emergence of precision guided munitions and their use against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine. Finally, nuclear supplier nations are pushing the wholesale export of “peaceful” nuclear reactors, all of which are potentially bomb program building blocks. The key markets include the world’s most war-torn regions (e.g., Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South and East Asia).
All of this should raise concerns. Instead, governments have either ignored or denied these developments.
States have used nuclear plants to make bombs and targeted them in war. Nuclear power advocates downplay these worries. New, smaller reactors, they insist, will be extremely safe and proliferation resistant. However, some of their favorite reactor designs use or produce materials helpful to make bombs. China, Ukraine, Taiwan and Japan have publicly fretted about the military vulnerability of their plants. The U.S. and most other governments, though, are quite silent.
Then, there’s nuclear sharing. The United States largely got out of this business. It pulled thousands of U.S.nuclear weapons from South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, Okinawa, and most of NATO. But in 2023, Russia went the other way: To intimidate NATO and Ukraine, Moscow re-deployed nuclear weapons to Belarus.
Polish officials took notice and asked the United States and France to forward deploy nuclear weapons on Polish soil. South Korea’s hawkish political party leadership made similar demands, as did Japan’s former prime minister, Shinzo Abe. All of these requests reflect a deeper, not-so-secret desire to acquire bombs of their own. The latest public U.S. response to these allied requests, however, has been to dismiss them.
And what might unfold if these nations go nuclear?
We may soon find out. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman and his lieutenants have warned that the Kingdom must go nuclear if Iran gets a bomb. With any bad luck, Tehran and Riyadh could be the first of several new Middle Eastern nuclear dominos to fall.
One could imagine other new nuclear entrants. Australia once had a nuclear weapons program. So did Taiwan, Brazil, Argentina, South Africa, and Iraq. It’s also conceivable that Vietnam, the Philippines, and Bangladesh, which are all developing peaceful nuclear energy programs of their own, might exploit their civil programs to get bombs.
Why should one care? The short answer is the world may go off the rails. As Henry Kissinger explained:
“If one imagines a world of tens of nations with nuclear weapons and major powers trying to balance their own deterrent equations, plus the deterrent equations of the subsystems, deterrence calculation would become impossibly complicated. To assume that, in such a world, nuclear catastrophe could be avoided would be unrealistic.”
This volume peeks at this not-so-brave world.
NPEC designed and hosted two nuclear games. The volume features their after-action reports. The first game has China goading North Korea to get South Korean proxies to attack reactors and spent fuel ponds at South Korea’s Kori nuclear plant. These assaults prompt radiological releases and massive South Korean and Japanese evacuations. They also make military sense: They tie down and distract the United States, Japan, and South Korea from fending off a Chinese military assault against Taiwan. Beijing is pleased.
NPEC’s second scenario answers a more dire question — how might a nuclear-armed Israel and Iran face off in a crisis? Both have waged massive aerial wars against one another (twice in 2024). Some of these strikes targeted nuclear facilities. Would Israel ever use its nuclear weapons against Iran? Might Iran retaliate in kind? The game concluded the answer is yes.
The volume also features detailed analysis of what Russia’s military has gained from targeting Ukraine’s nuclear plants and supporting electrical supply system. This analysis also examines the military advantages of temporarily disabling such facilities rather than damaging them and releasing significant radiation.
It also explores five additional questions. What does international law and military science recommend to discourage dangerous assaults against nuclear plants? What does the history of Israel’s nuclear weapons acquisition and modernization tell us about these weapons’ possible use? What legal sanctions might their use trigger? What does unclassified modeling reveal about the radiation nuclear plants might release if attacked? How effective might nuclear strikes be against nuclear plants and materials?
This volume tries to tease out the answers. Its purpose is to prompt others to weigh in.
To read the full book, click here. To purchase a hard copy, click here.
Britain considering fleet of nuclear strike aircraft
The UK may acquire F-35A fighter jets as part of a broader effort to
deepen its contribution to NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements, following
a key recommendation in the newly published Strategic Defence Review (SDR).
The document states:
“More F-35s will be required over the next decade.
This could comprise a mix of F-35A and B models according to military
requirements to provide greater value for money.”
This reference to a
potential F-35A acquisition has been interpreted by experts and
parliamentarians as linked to the UK’s possible future role in NATO’s
nuclear sharing mission—an arrangement under which non-nuclear states
host US nuclear weapons and are capable of delivering them in wartime.
While the UK already possesses its own independent nuclear deterrent via
the submarine-based Trident system, participation in NATO’s air-delivered
nuclear mission would mark a significant evolution in its commitment to
Alliance nuclear burden-sharing.
UK Defence Journal 3rd June 2025,
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/britain-considering-fleet-of-nuclear-strike-aircraft/
Priming us up for war – “it’s not so bad, after all” – Britain’s Labour government leads the way
The Unseen March video from 9 years ago – but now it’s getting worse. https://theaimn.net/priming-us-up-for-war-its-not-so-bad-after-all-britains-labour-government-leads-the-way/
On the outskirts of Berlin, you can visit what’s left of Sachsenhausen , one of the first Nazi concentration camps, set up in 1936, as a model for the more than 44,000 such camps they ran between 1933 and 1945.
I was impressed by the efficiency shown by the way that the Nazis carried out mass murder in this camp – which became a model for how to run this operation as quickly and with as little fuss as possible.
In the early days of the camp, the inmates were used as forced labour. Systematic extermination was carried out. Many thousands died by hunger, disease, overwork, medical experiments and mistreatment. But by 1941, tens of thousands of Jews and Soviet prisoners were being directly murdered.
I saw where this happened. Originally, the prisoners were forced down a brick path, and shot. You can still see stains on this path. But here’s the interesting bit. It turned out that the German soldiers who did the shooting became badly affected by it. Sometimes they would miss, or have to make several shots to actually kill a man. It made the soldiers unwell, having to rather messily murder their victims – it’s not like being in combat, not at all fair. It was making those soldiers mentally ill.
Here’s where the practical genius of the Nazis came in. They devised a special unit, (which was still there, when I visited a few years ago). In this unit, the shooter could be sure of doing one direct lethal hit, but the victim was placed in such a way that the shooter was unable to see him. This system solved the psychological problem of upsetting the man doing the shooting. No more mental illness, and the mass killing could proceed in an orderly way.
In a sort of sequel to this discovery, the Americans in recent years developed the efficiency of drones. targeting and killing suspected terrorists and militants in countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Afghanistan. Once again, – such a beneficial effect on the operator’s mental health. From thousands of miles away – press a button, no sight of any mess. and a beneficial effect on the the public too – all this killing being done so neatly, and so far away – so much better than an old-fashioned war battle.
So it is that the thought of war becomes much less unpleasant. With drones, and missiles, it has become a sort of distant, sort of “clean”, precision operation.
This new palatability of war comes to add to the already existing beneficial aspects of war. Getting ready for war shows that our great leaders are strong and decisive. It’s patriotic. It defends our democratic values. There are those other – nebulous, but still real, concepts of courage, heroism, and past glorious victories. The new “war-readiness” shows that we are aware, and awake-up to the threats of other countries, who undoubtedly want to attack us. And on top of all that – getting ready for war provides jobs jobs jobs!
Now Sir Keir Starmer’s UK Labour government is not so sure that the British public is convinced of all this. So they’re accentuating the already existing British trend to promote militarism. The Daily Mail announces the new education programme:
Children taught value of the military
Defence chiefs will work with the Department for Education to develop understanding of the Armed Forces among young people in schools, by means of a two-year series of public outreach events across the UK, explaining current threats and future trends.
Schools and community-based cadet forces will also be expanded, with an ambition of a 30 per cent rise by 2030 with a view to the UK having 250,000 cadets, many of whom will then go on to join the armed forces.
Those radical terrorists, The Quakers, have provided an alternative view – The military in education & youth activities. But I’m not sure that their view is widely known.
It looks as if mass education on the necessity of war is now well underway. The general public in the West is being brainwashed with the doctrine that authoritarian Russia and China are about to invade our peace-loving democracies. Sir Keir Starmer takes the initiative, showing how Labour there is in concert with the Tories. We must be ready to fight back, or perhaps better, to pre-empt such attacks. No doubt the Russian and Chinese populations are being taught a similar message, the other way around.
What now makes it easier is that we can buy ever more of those glorious distance methods, so much neater than sending our boys out for messy personal danger. The efficient Nazis got the ball rolling on this. In education Sir Keir Starmer now takes the initiative. Labour in the UK is enthusiastically backing their own and and the USA’s arms manufacturers. Weapons-making is the big thing in business now – in Europe too, and of course in the USA.
War School – The Battle for Britain’s Children – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl5Zc71KV_g
Why we should worry about nuclear weapons again
Washington Post , by Jon B. Wolfsthal, Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda,3 June 25
The Cold War prospect of global annihilation has faded from consciousness, but the warheads remain.
ver the past 30 years, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the prospect of nuclear war has faded from the American consciousness. With the end of the Cold War, films depicting the last days of humanity, such as 1959’s “On the Beach,” or the 1983 TV drama “The Day After,” largely disappeared from the Hollywood playbook. Schoolchildren no longer hid under their desks during practice drills to survive nuclear war.
But the weapons never went away. While thousands were scrapped and nuclear inventories were significantly reduced, many other weapons were put into storage and still thousands more remain deployed, ready for use.
Now, they and the dangers they pose are making a comeback.
The last nuclear age was defined by two superpowers — the United States and the Soviet Union — poised to destroy one another in less than an hour. They both kept nuclear weapons locked and loaded to deter the other by threatening retaliation and certain destruction.
Today’s global nuclear landscape is far more complicated and, in many ways, more precarious. More countries and more advanced technologies are involved. Weapons can fly farther, faster, from more places. Information, accurate or false, can move even more quickly. Autocrats and extremists hold positions of power in nuclear-armed countries. Nuclear threats, once taboo, are now increasingly common. And the last nuclear arms control treaty still in force between Russia and the United States expires in February.
Many of the most dangerous ideas from the Cold War are being resurrected: lower-yield weapons to fight “limited” nuclear wars; blockbuster missiles that could destroy multiple targets at once; the redeploying of a whole class of missiles once banned and destroyed by treaty. On top of this, countries are testing new ways to deliver these weapons, including nuclear-powered cruise missiles that can fly for days before hitting their targets; underwater unmanned nuclear torpedoes; fast-flying, maneuverable glide vehicles that can evade defenses; and nuclear weapons in space that can attack satellites or targets on Earth without warning.
Our organization, the Federation of American Scientists, was created by the same people who invented the atomic bomb at Los Alamos to ensure that when policy was made, it was informed by science and technical facts. For 80 years, we have sought to promote public accountability and transparency about nuclear arsenals. Relying only on unclassified information, including satellite imagery and government data, we maintain the world’s most accurate publicly available estimates of the world’s nuclear arsenals. Now that the nuclear threat has roared back to life, we believe it is our responsibility to provide accurate, nonpartisan information to help reduce the risk of nuclear disaster. We underestimate that risk at our collective peril.
“At this moment in human history,” the Nobel Committee said in announcing last year’s Peace Prize, “it is worth reminding ourselves what nuclear weapons are: the most destructive weapons the world has ever seen.” The prize went to Nihon Hidankyo, an association of survivors of the U.S. bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 — the only time nuclear weapons have ever been used in wartime.
The numbers
Nine nations now have nuclear weapons: Russia, the United States, Britain, China, France, Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea. Together, they possess more than 12,200 nuclear warheads, located at approximately 120 sites in 14 countries. More than 9,500 are militarily active or deployed, ready for use. Roughly 2,100 of those are on high alert and can be launched in minutes and reach any point on the planet in less than half an hour.
Russia and the U.S. have long been the dominant nuclear powers. Today, nearly 90 percent of all warheads belong to them…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
The total power of the warheads in the nine nuclear-armed states is an inconceivable destructive force: equivalent to more than 4.8 trillion pounds of TNT — or more than 145,000 Hiroshima bombs. A single U.S. strategic submarine can carry enough warheads to destroy any country, and detonation of a few hundred weapons could propel enough dust and soot into the air to block sunshine, cool the atmosphere and halt crops from growing — “nuclear winter.” Such a sequence of events would lead to worldwide famine.
In her 2024 bestseller, “Nuclear War: A Scenario,” Annie Jacobsen draws on scientific research to describe a postapocalyptic world in which cities and forests burn, temperatures plunge, lakes and rivers freeze, crops and farm animals die, toxic chemicals poison the air, people succumb to radiation poisoning or disease. “Only time will tell if we humans will survive,” she writes.
Everyone makes mistakes
The next nuclear age will bring severe new tests. Without restraint, nations will be building ever more nuclear weapons, and the chances of mistakes or miscalculations will grow.
and the chances of mistakes or miscalculations will grow.
Each of the nine countries’ leaders and the systems they use to control nuclear weapons will have to get every decision right every time. Deterrence theory relies on the assumption that decision-makers are rational actors…………………………………………………
Time to wake up………………………………..
The future…………………
Without working treaties, legal limits or a mutual agreement to cap their forces, both the United States and Russia could double their deployed nuclear arsenals in a year or two without building a single new weapon. Each country could simply move several hundred warheads out of storage and redeploy them on missiles, bombers and submarines. ……………………..
While buildups proceed, nations are becoming more secretive about their nuclear weapons. During the first Trump administration, the U.S. reversed nearly a decade of transparency measures and refused to declassify the size of the American nuclear stockpile — a previously annual practice during Barack Obama’s administration. Britain immediately followed suit, in a highly out-of-character move from one of the most transparent nuclear-armed states. Our organization advocated that the Biden administration declassify its arsenal numbers, which it did in 2024 — a practice Trump will undoubtedly roll back.
………………………………………………………………………..Surviving this new nuclear age will require the constant and informed attention of leaders, policymakers and engaged citizens alike.
………………………..In the early 1980s, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in Europe and the United States to demand a nuclear freeze. These mass movements, coupled with the vision of Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, ended the last arms race.
Without renewed public pressure or political will, the world is condemned to live under the shadow of nuclear annihilation. We deserve better. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2025/us-russia-nuclear-weapons-proliferation-danger/
Kremlin and Trump aides raise nuclear war fears after Ukraine drone strike
Vladimir Putin has warned Russia will respond to Kyiv’s attacks on nuclear-capable aircraft at airfields
Andrew Roth in Washington, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jun/04/ukraine-russia-nuclear-war-fears
As Vladimir Putin pledges to retaliate against Ukraine for last weekend’s unprecedented drone attack, Kremlin advisers and figures around Donald Trump have told the US president that the risk of a nuclear confrontation is growing, in an attempt to pressure him to further reduce US support for Ukraine.
Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and an important intermediary between the Kremlin and Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, called the Ukrainian drone strike an attack on “Russian nuclear assets”, and echoed remarks from Maga-friendly figures warning of the potential for a third world war.
“Clear communication is urgent – to grasp reality and the rising risks before it’s too late,” Dmitriev wrote, adding a dove emoji.
Ukraine claimed that the strike damaged more than 40 Russian planes, including Tu-95 and Tu-22M heavy bombers that have been used to launch cruise missiles at Ukrainian cities throughout the war, killing thousands and damaging crucial infrastructure that delivers heat and electricity to millions more.
But those planes can also carry weapons armed with nuclear warheads, and are part of a nuclear triad along with submarine and silo-based missiles that form the basis for a system of deterrence between Russia and the United States.
After a phone call between the two leaders on Wednesday, Trump said: “President Putin did say, and very strongly, that he will have to respond to the recent attack on the airfields.”
Ukraine voluntarily gave up its nuclear weapons in 1994, in return for security assurances from the US, the UK and Russia.
Those skeptical of US support for Ukraine are seizing on the risks of a nuclear confrontation to argue that the conflict could possibly spin out of control.
Maga (Make America great again) influencers such as Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk have openly condemned the drone attack, with Bannon likening the strike to Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor and Kirk writing: “Most people aren’t paying attention, but we’re closer to nuclear war than we’ve been since this began in 2022.”
But more centrist advisers within the Trump camp – including some who have closer links to Ukraine – are also warning that the risks of a nuclear conflict are growing as they seek to maintain Trump’s interest in brokering a peace.
“The risk levels are going way up,” Keith Kellogg, Trump’s envoy for Ukraine and Russia, told Fox News. “When you attack an opponent’s part of their [nuclear] triad, your risk level goes up because you don’t know what the other side is going to do. And that’s what they did.”
Kellogg also repeated rumours that Ukraine had struck the Russian nuclear fleet at Severomorsk, although reports of an explosion there have not been confirmed. He said the US was “trying to avoid” an escalation.
Other current and former members of the administration skeptical of US support for Ukraine have also vocally opposed the drone strikes.
“It is not in America’s interest for Ukraine to be attacking Russia’s strategic nuclear forces the day before another round of peace talks,” said Dan Caldwell, an influential foreign policy adviser who was a senior aide to Pete Hegseth at the Pentagon until he was purged amid a leaking scandal last month.
“This has the potential to be highly escalatory and raises the risk of direct confrontation between Russia and Nato,” he said. “US should not only distance itself from this attack but end any support that could directly or indirectly enable attacks against Russian strategic nuclear forces.”
It is not the first time that concerns over Russia’s use of a nuclear weapon have been used to try to temper US support for Ukraine.
As Moscow’s forces were routed near Kharkiv and in the south at Kherson in September 2022, Russian officials sent signals that the Kremlin was considering using a battlefield nuclear weapon, senior Biden officials have said.
National security officials said they believed that if the Russian lines collapsed and left open the potential for a Ukrainian attack on Crimea, then there was a 50% chance that Russia would use a nuclear weapon as a result.
Ukrainian officials have responded by saying that Russia has embellished its threats of a nuclear attack in order to blackmail the US from giving greater support to Ukraine.
Trump’s huge military budget will accelerate U.S. economic decay
May 30, 2025 Gary Wilson, Struggle La Lucha
President Donald Trump delivered a rally-style commencement speech at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on May 24, aggressively promoting militarism, nationalism, and his ongoing attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) as well as transgender rights.
Addressing the graduating cadets, Trump glorified the U.S. military as “the greatest and most powerful army the world has ever known,” claiming personal credit for its expansion during his first term.
“I rebuilt the army and the military like nobody has ever rebuilt it before,” Trump boasted, putting military power at the center of U.S. global dominance.
Trump intensified his militaristic agenda: “We’re getting rid of the distractions and focusing our military on its core mission: crushing America’s adversaries, killing America’s enemies, and defending our great American flag.”
Trump said that’s why the U.S. will invest in new tanks, planes, drones, ships, and missiles. In addition, the U.S. will build the Golden Dome Missile Defense Shield, which has been described as a $175 billion fantasy and a boondoggle for Elon Musk’s SpaceX.
He also praised recent reactionary policies designed to dismantle DEI programs in the armed forces.
The Trump administration has moved to ban trans troops from the military — a decision the Supreme Court upheld earlier this month. Trump’s policies have reintroduced a discriminatory ban on transgender military personnel and imposed new uniform physical standards aimed at severely limiting women’s participation in combat roles.
Unprecedented military expansion
On May 2, Trump released his budget request for 2026, dubbed the “One Big Beautiful Bill.” Over 75% of Trump’s budget is allocated for the military and police.
In the budget proposal, military spending is $1.01 trillion, accounting for approximately 60% of the total requested. For the non-military Departments of Homeland Security, Justice, and Veterans Affairs, the request is $272.2 billion.
Funding for departments whose primary purpose isn’t military, military-adjacent, or policing is $409 billion, or only 24% of the budget.
The proposal includes $163 billion in federal spending cuts, all of which target non-defense programs. For a breakdown of the cuts, see: Trump’s ‘big beautiful’ cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and more.
Military Keynesianism
Both Donald Trump and Joe Biden have argued that increased military spending and the production of armaments will reindustrialize the country and create jobs, using this rationale to justify historically large Pentagon budgets. And completely ignoring that military expansion is not, in any way, shape, or form, reindustrialization.
Trump has explicitly said it would provide unmatched military strength and support job creation through the purchase of new equipment and capabilities, mirroring the arguments made by Democrats, including Biden, about the economic benefits of Pentagon budgets.
The Biden administration promoted the jobs argument, especially when seeking support for military aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. Biden described the U.S. arms industry as the “arsenal of democracy,” emphasizing the economic benefits to states involved in weapons production.
Military Keynesianism is an economic policy approach that advocates for sustained, high levels of military spending as a primary tool for government stimulus and economic growth, based on the core principles of Keynesian economics………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2025/05/30/trumps-big-beautiful-budget-military-spending-soars-accelerating-u-s-economic-decay/
Playing with Fire- Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb
Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb has crossed the threshold when it comes to triggering a Russian nuclear response. How Russia and the United States respond could determine the fate of the world.
Scott Ritter, Jun 01, 2025, https://scottritter.substack.com/p/playing-with-fire?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=6892&post_id=164935563&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=191n6&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
In 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that “The nuclear weapons remain the most important guarantee of Russia’s sovereignty and territorial integrity and play a key role in maintaining the regional balance and stability.”
In the intervening years, western analysts and observers have accused Russia and its leadership of irresponsibly invoking the threat of nuclear weapons as a means of “saber rattling”—a strategic bluff to hide operational and tactical shortfalls in Russian military capabilities.
In 2020 Russia published, for the first time, an unclassified version of its nuclear doctrine. The document, called “Basic Principles of State Policy of the Russian Federation on Nuclear Deterrence,” noted that Russia “reserves the right to use nuclear weapons” when Moscow is acting “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it and/or its allies, as well as in the event of aggression against the Russian Federation with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is in jeopardy.” The document also stated that Russia reserved the right to use nuclear weapons in case of an “attack by [an] adversary against critical governmental or military sites of the Russian Federation, disruption of which would undermine nuclear forces response actions.”
In 2024 Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s nuclear doctrine to be updated to consider the complicated geopolitical realities that had emerged from the ongoing Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine, where the conflict had morphed into a proxy war between the collective west (NATO and the US) and Russia.
The new doctrine declared that nuclear weapons would be authorized for use in case of an “aggression against the Russian Federation and (or) its allies by any non-nuclear state with the participation or support of a nuclear state is considered as their joint attack.”
Russia’s nuclear arsenal would also come into play in the event of “actions by an adversary affecting elements of critically important state or military infrastructure of the Russian Federation, the disablement of which would disrupt response actions by nuclear forces.”
The threats did not have to come in the form of nuclear weapons. Indeed, the new 2024 doctrine specifically stated that Russia could respond with nuclear weapons to any aggression against Russia involving “the employment of conventional weapons, which creates a critical threat to their sovereignty and (or) territorial integrity.”
Operation Spiderweb, the largescale assault on critical Russian military infrastructure directly related to Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence by unmanned drones, has demonstrably crossed Russia’s red lines when it comes to triggering a nuclear retaliation and/or pre-emptive nuclear strike to preclude follow-on attacks. The Ukrainian SBU, under the personal direction of its chief, Vasyl Malyuk, has taken responsibility for the attack.
Operation Spiderweb is a covert direct-action assault on critical Russian military infrastructure and capabilities directly related to Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent capabilities. At least three airfields were attacked using FPV drones operating out of the backs of civilian Kamaz trucks repurposed as drone launch pads. Dyagilevo airfield in Ryazan, Belaya airfield in Irkutsk, and Olenya airfield in Murmansk, home to Tu-95 and Tu-22 strategic bombers and A-50 early warning aircraft, were struck, resulting in numerous aircraft being destroyed and/or heavily damaged.
This would be the equivalent of a hostile actor launching drone strikes against US Air Force B-52H bombers stationed at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota and at Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana, and B-2 bombers stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri.
The timing of Operation Spiderweb is clearly designed to disrupt peace talks scheduled to take place in Istanbul on June 2.
First and foremost, one must understand that it is impossible for Ukraine to seriously prepare for substantive peace talks while planning and executing an operation such as Operation Spiderweb; while the SBU may have executed this attack, it could not have happened without the knowledge and consent of the Ukrainian President or the Minister of Defense.
Moreover, this attack could not have occurred without the consent of Ukraine’s European partners, in particular Great Britain, France and Germany, all of whom were engaged in direct consultations with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the days and weeks leading up to the execution of Operation Spiderweb.
The Ukrainians have been encouraged by Europe to be seen as actively supporting the Istanbul peace process, with an eye to the notion that if the talks failed, the blame would be placed on Russia, not Ukraine, thereby making it easier for Europe to continue providing military and financial support to Ukraine.
There appears to be a major role being played by US actors as well—Senator’s Lyndsay Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, and Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat from Connecticut, made a joint visit to Ukraine in the past week where they coordinated closely with the Ukrainian government about a new package of economic sanctions linked to Russia’s willingness to accept peace terms predicated on a 30-day ceasefire—one of Ukraine’s core demands.
Operation Spiderweb appears to be a concerted effort to drive Russia away from the Istanbul talks, either by provoking a Russian retaliation which would provide cover for Ukraine to stay home (and an excuse for Graham and Blumenthal to go forward with their sanctions legislation), or provoking Russia to pull out of the talks as it considers its options going forward, an act that would likewise trigger the Graham-Blumenthal sanctions action.
Unknown is the extent to which President Trump, who has been pushing for successful peace talks between Russia and Ukraine, was knowledgeable of the Ukrainian actions, including whether he approved of the action in advance (Trump appeared to be ignorant of the fact that Ukraine had targeted Russian President Putin using drones during a recent trip to Kursk.)
How Russia responds to this latest Ukrainian action is yet unknown; the drone attacks on Russian military bases came on the heels of at least two Ukrainian attacks on Russian rail lines that resulted in significant damage done to locomotives and passenger cars and killed and wounded scores of civilians.
But this much is clear: Ukraine could not have carried out Operation Spiderweb without the political approval and operational assistance of its western allies. The American and British intelligence services have both trained Ukrainian special operation forces in guerilla and unconventional warfare actions, and it is believed that previous Ukrainian attacks against critical Russian infrastructure (the Crimea bridge and Engels Air Base) were done with the assistance of US and British intelligence in the planning and execution phases. Indeed, both the Crimea bridge and Engels airbase attacks were seen as triggers for the issuing of Russia’s 2024 nuclear doctrine modifications.
Russia has in the past responded to provocations by Ukraine and its western allies with a mixture of patience and resolve.
Many have interpreted this stance as a sign of weakness, something which may have factored in the decision by Ukraine and its western facilitators to carry out such a provocative operation on the eve of critical peace discussions.
The extent to which Russia can continue to show the same level of restraint as in the past is tested by the very nature of the attack—a massive use of conventional weapons which struck Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrence force, causing damage.
It is not a stretch of the imagination to see this tactic being used in the future as a means of decapitating Russian strategic nuclear assets (aircraft and missiles) and leadership (the attack against Putin in Kursk underscores this threat.)
If Ukraine can position Kamaz trucks near Russian strategic air bases, it could do so against Russian bases housing Russia’s mobile missile forces.
That Ukraine would carry out such attack likewise shows the extent to which western intelligence services are testing the waters for any future conflict with Russia—one that NATO and EU members say they are actively preparing for.
We have reached an existential crossroads in the SMO.
For Russia, the very red lines it deemed necessary to define regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons have been blatantly violated by not only Ukraine, but its western allies.
President Trump, who has been claiming to support a peace process between Russia and Ukraine, must now decide as to where the United States stands considering these developments.
His Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, has acknowledged that under the previous administration of Joe Biden the United States was engaged in a proxy war with Russia. Trump’s Special Envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, recently acknowledged the same about NATO.
In short, by continuing to support Ukraine, both the US and NATO have become active participants in a conflict which has now crossed the threshold regarding the employment of nuclear weapons.
The United States and the world stand on the precipice of a nuclear Armageddon of our own making.
Either we separate ourselves from the policies that have brought us to this point, or we accept the consequences of our actions, and pay the price.
We cannot live in a world where are future is dictated by the patience and restraint of a Russian leader in the face of provocations we are ourselves responsible for.
Ukraine, not Russia, represents an existential threat to humanity.
NATO, not Russia, is responsible for encouraging Ukraine to behave in such a reckless manner.
So, too, is the United States. The contradictory statements made by US policy makers regarding Russia provide political cover for Ukraine and its NATO enablers to plan and execute operations like Operation Spiderweb.
Senators Graham and Blumenthal should be called out for sedition if their intervention in Ukraine was done to deliberately sabotage a peace process President Trump has said is central to his vision of American national security going forward.
But it is Trump himself who must decide the fate of the world.
In the coming hours we will undoubtedly hear from the Russian President about how Russia will respond to this existential provocation.
Trump, too, must respond.
By telling Graham and Blumenthal and their supporters to stand down regarding Russian sanctions.
By ordering NATO and the EU to cease and desist from continuing to provide military and financial support to Ukraine.
And by taking sides in the SMO.
Choose Ukraine and trigger a nuclear war.
Choose Russia and save the world.
Scott Ritter is a former Marine intelligence officer with extensive experience in arms control and disarmament, and an expert on US-Russian relations. His work can be found at ScottRitter.com. He is the author of several books, including his latest, Highway to Hell: The Armageddon Chronicles, 2014-2025, published by Clarity Press.Upgrade to paid
The 2026 bill for the Ukraine war is already in the mail
Time to bring the gravy train to a halt. With talks stalled, Zelensky says he needs more money for next year
Ian Proud, May 31, 2025, https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-war-2672231522/
Ukraine is already asking for more money to continue fighting into 2026, a sure sign that President Volodmyr Zelensky has no plans to end the war.
With the battlefield continuing to favor Russia, European leaders have their collective heads in the sand on who will pay. How long before President Trump walks away?
At the G7 Finance and Central Bank governors’ meeting in Banff on May 21, Ukraine’s Finance Minister Sergii Marchenko sought financial support for 2026, “including the provision of support to the Ukrainian army through its integration into the European security system,” according to reports.
I have said before that Ukraine cannot keep fighting into 2026 without a significant injection of European money. Even if the war were to stop tomorrow, Ukraine would still face a huge funding black hole. And that prolonging the war simply extends Ukraine’s indebtedness and delinquency, nudging it every closer towards the status of a failed state.
Making light of the price tag, German-based Kiel Institute has suggested extra EU support to Ukraine’s army would only need to cost an extra 0.2% of GDP or $43.3 billion per year. This assumes no additional U.S. funding under President Trump and is a figure practically identical to the $41.5 billion figure I forecast two months ago.
The Ukrainian side pointed out two assumptions that underpin their request — first, that funding Ukraine’s military supports macro-financial stability in that country. That is untrue. By far the leading cause of the increased financial distress of Ukraine is its vast and unsustainable prosecution of a war that it cannot win. As I have said before, ending the war would allow for immediate reductions to be made to military spending, which accounts for 65% of total government expenditure.
Second, that paying for Ukraine’s military is keeping Europe safer. It isn’t. The best route to European security would be to end the war tomorrow. The risk of escalation only grows for the longer the war continues and President Zelensky resorts to increasingly desperate tactics as the battlefield realities turn against him.
This latest request for money is a clear signal that Zelensky is not serious about U.S. demands for peace, and would prefer to continue the fight, drawing directly upon European funds. It has long been clear to me that Zelensky is evading peace because it would bring his presidency to a close, not to mention elevate risks to his personal safety.
He has therefore been piling on more pressure for Western leaders to impose more sanctions and other measures, which will only serve to prolong the war. Senator Lindsey Graham’s recent brain wave that the U.S. impose 500% secondary tariffs on countries that trade with Russia is a classic example. No doubt other countries, China in particular, would respond negatively to this, as it has already to the launch of Trump’s tariff war. It would kill President Trump’s efforts at engagement with Russia, by boxing him in to Beltway demands in an identical rerun of his first presidency, making him appear toothless in the eyes of Putin.
But these are not the real points. Having suffered over 20,000 sanctions already since 2014 yet maintaining a stable, growing economy, what makes people believe that Russia will back down to even more sanctions now?
The war continues to favor Russia on the battlefield. In recent days, in addition to expanding territory in the south of Donetsk, the Russian army has made major gains in the pocket around now-occupied Toretsk. Progress, as always, is slow and grinding as it has been since the start of 2024. Ukraine has undoubtedly mounted a formidable defence of its territory, for which its fighters deserve great credit.
But Russia has never fully mobilized the country for the fight in Ukraine, for various domestic political reasons. Putin also wants to maintain relations with developing country partners and a more devastating military offensive against Ukraine would make that harder.
Pumping more billions into Ukraine’s army will merely slow the speed of defeat. Even the Ukrainians now accept that they cannot reclaim lost territory by force. Ending the war would at least draw a line in the sand for future negotiations.
For their part, Europe simply can’t afford to pump another $40 billion per year into Ukraine’s army, at a time when member states are trying to boost their own militaries, revive their flagging economies and deal with an upsurge in nationalist political parties that want to end the war.
An April pledge for extra military donations in 2025 elicited just $2.5 billion per year from Germany, and reconfirmed the £6 billion from the UK already committed, without pledging new funds. Keir Starmer’s government is in the process of making an embarrassing U-turn on previously agreed cuts to winter fuel payments for pensioners.
I seriously doubt that British people would consider another big increase in funds for Ukraine’s war would be a sensible investment if peace was on the table. That this isn’t actively discussed in Britain, in a way that it is in the United States, is driven by the complete lockdown of debate in the UK and European mainstream media.
Right from the beginning, the war in Ukraine has been an attritional battle of who can sustain the fight for the longest period of time. A longer war will always favor Russia because the economic liability Europe faces will ratchet up to the point where it becomes politically unsustainable. We make the assumption that Russia’s aims in Ukraine are to prevent NATO expansion and to protect the rights of native Russian speakers in that country, and of course, on the surface, they are.
But on the current track, Putin gets the added benefit of watching the European Union project slowly implode, without the need to go all in on Ukraine.
President Trump for his part continues to walk a fine line that involves criticizing both Putin and Zelensky for the continuance of the war. In the face of intransigence on all sides, I wonder how long it will be before he washes his hands of the mess and walks away.
Ian Proud was a member of His Britannic Majesty’s Diplomatic Service from 1999 to 2023. He served as the Economic Counsellor at the British Embassy in Moscow from July 2014 to February 2019. Prior to Moscow, he organized the 2013 G8 Summit in Lough Erne, Northern Ireland, working out of 10 Downing Street. He recently published his memoir, “A Misfit in Moscow: How British diplomacy in Russia failed, 2014-2019.”
Ukraine Targets Russian Airfields in Major Drone Attack
According to Reuters, Ukrainian spies hid the drones in wooden sheds that were loaded onto trucks and driven near bases deep inside Russia
by Dave DeCamp June 1, 2025 https://news.antiwar.com/2025/06/01/ukraine-targets-russian-airfields-in-major-drone-attack/
The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) conducted a large-scale drone attack deep inside Russian territory on Sunday that targeted several Russian airfields.
The Russian Defense Ministry said the attack targeted five Russian regions, including the Amur Oblast in Russia’s far east, which is over 3,000 miles from Ukraine, and a base in the Irkutsk Oblast, over 2,500 miles from the Ukrainian border.
The attack also targeted the northern region of Murmansk and the western oblasts of Ivanovo and Ryazan. The Russian Defense Ministry said that “several aircraft” caught fire in Murmansk and Irkutsk and that the attacks were launched “in the exact proximity” of the airfields in the region.
The Defense Ministry said the attacks were “repelled” in the other three regions. “No casualties were reported either among servicemen or civilians. Some of those involved in the terror attacks were detained,” the ministry said.
A Ukrainian official told Reuters that the SBU was able to pull off the attack by hiding explosive-laden drones inside the roofs of wooden sheds. The sheds were loaded onto trucks driven near the bases, and the roof panels were lifted off by a remotely activated mechanism, allowing the drones to fly out.
Videos on social media show drones flying out of a truck near the Belaya airbase in Irkutsk. Ukrainian officials said the attack was planned for more than a year and claimed it destroyed 41 Russian aircraft, including TU-95 long-range bombers, though the number hasn’t been confirmed by the Russian side.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky described the attack as a “brilliant operation” in his nightly address. ” It took place on enemy territory and was aimed exclusively at military targets – specifically, the equipment used in strikes against Ukraine. Russia suffered truly significant losses – entirely justified and deserved,” he said.
US and Ukrainian officials claimed that the Trump administration was not notified ahead of the attack, although the CIA is deeply involved with the SBU and helped build up Ukraine’s intelligence services following the 2014 US-backed coup that ousted former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.
Also on Sunday, a Russian missile strike on a Ukrainian military training site killed 12 Ukrainian troops and wounded 60. Ukrainian officials said that on Sunday, Russia launched 472 drones at Ukraine overnight, marking the largest Russian drone barrage of the war.
Both sides have dramatically stepped up their drone attacks in recent weeks despite the US push for peace talks. Russian and Ukrainian negotiators are expected to hold a second round of direct peace talks in Istanbul on Sunday.
UK to build up to 12 new attack submarines
Paul Seddon, Political reporter,Jonathan Beale, Defence correspondent, BBC 1 June 25
The UK will build “up to” 12 new attack submarines, the prime minister has announced, as the government unveils its major defence review on Monday.
The new conventionally-armed, nuclear-powered submarines will replace the seven-strong Astute class from the late 2030s onwards.
The review is expected to recommend the armed forces move to “warfighting readiness” to deter growing threats faced by the UK.
Sir Keir Starmer said the government will adopt a “Nato-first” stance towards defence, so that everything it does adds to the strength of the alliance.
The threat posed by Moscow has been a key part of the government’s pitch ahead of Monday’s review, led by ex-Labour defence secretary Lord Robertson, which was commissioned by Labour shortly after it took office last July.
The report will make 62 recommendations, which the government is expected to accept in full.
Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme ahead of its publication, Sir Keir said the danger posed by Russia “cannot be ignored” and the “best way” to deter conflict was to prepare for it…………………………………………………………………………………………………………
Other announcements in the review will include:
- Commitment to £1.5bn to build six new factories to enable an “always on” munitions production capacity
- Building up to 7,000 long-range weapons including missiles or drones in the UK, to be used by British forces
- Pledge to set up a “cyber and electromagnetic command” to boost the military’s defensive and offensive capabilities in cyberspace
- Extra £1.5bn to 2029 to fund repairs to military housing
- £1bn on technology to speed up delivery of targeting information to soldiers
…………………………Submarine plans
The Astute class is the Royal Navy’s current fleet of attack submarines, which have nuclear-powered engines and are armed with conventional torpedoes and missiles.
As well as protecting maritime task groups and gathering intelligence, they protect the Vanguard class of submarines that carry the UK’s Trident nuclear missiles.
The sixth submarine in the current Astute series was launched last October, with the seventh, the final one in the series, currently under construction.
The next generation of attack submarines that will replace them, SSN-AUKUS, have been developed with the Australian Navy under a deal announced in 2021 under the previous Conservative government.
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) said it expected the rollout of the new generation would see a submarine built every 18 months.
It added the construction programme would see a “major expansion of industrial capability” at BAE Systems’ shipbuilding site in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, as well as the Derby site of Rolls-Royce, which makes nuclear reactors.
Meanwhile work on modernising the warheads carried by Trident missiles is already under way.
The £15bn investment into the warhead programme will back the government’s commitments to maintain the continuous-at-sea nuclear deterrent.
In his announcement on Monday, Sir Keir is to repeat a Labour manifesto commitment to deliver the Dreadnought class of nuclear-armed submarines, which are due to replace the ageing Vanguard fleet from the early 2030s onwards.
The MoD’s Defence Nuclear Enterprise accounts for 20% of its budget and includes the cost of building four Dreadnought class submarines.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g2jr1m49no
Off to War We Go: Starmer’s Strategic Defence Review
June 3, 2025, Dr Binoy Kampmark, https://theaimn.net/off-to-war-we-go-starmers-strategic-defence-review/
Unpopular governments always retreat to grounds of lazy convenience. Instead of engaging in exercises of courage, they take refuge in obvious distractions. And there is no more obvious distraction than preparing for war against a phantom enemy.
That is exactly where the government of Sir Keir Starmer finds itself. Despite a mammoth majority and a dramatically diminished Tory opposition, the Prime Minister acts like a man permanently besieged, his Labour Party seemingly less popular than Typhoid Mary. His inability to be unequivocal to questions of whether he will contest the next election suggest as much.
The same cannot be said about his enthusiasm for the sword and sabre. There are monsters out there to battle, and Sir Keir is rising to the plate. Sensing this, the military mandarins, most prominently General Sir Roland Walker, head of the Army, have been more than encouraging, seeing the need to ready the country for war by 2027. Given the military’s perennial love affair with astrology, that state of readiness could only be achieved with a doubling of the Army’s fighting power and tripling it by 2030.
Given that background, the UK Strategic Defence Review (SDR) was commissioned in July 2024. Led by former Labour Defence Secretary and NATO Secretary General Lord George Robertson, the freshly released report promises a fat boon for the military industrial complex. Like all efforts to encourage war, its narrative is that of supposedly making Britain safer.
Starmer’s introduction is almost grateful for the chance to out the blood lusting enemy. “In this new era for defence and security, when Russia is waging war on our continent and probing our defences at home, we must meet the danger head on.” The placing of noble Ukraine into the warming fraternity of Europe enables a civilisational twist to be made. The Russian military efforts in Ukraine are not specific to a murderous family affair and historical anxieties but directed against all Europeans. Therefore, all Europeans should militarise and join the ranks, acknowledging that “the very nature of warfare is being transformed” by that conflict.
In pursuing the guns over butter program, Starmer recapitulates the sad theme of previous eras that led to global conflict. As Europe began rearming in the 1930s, a prevalent argument was that people could have guns and butter. Greater inventories of weaponry would encourage greater prosperity. So, we find Starmer urging the forging of deeper ties between government and industry and “a radical reform of procurement,” one that could only be economically beneficial. This would be the “defence dividend,” another nonsense term the military industrial complex churns out with such disconcerting ease.
The foreword from the Defence Secretary, John Healey, outlines the objectives of the SDR. These include playing a leading role in NATO “with strengthened nuclear, new tech, and updated conventional capabilities”; moving the country to a state of “warfighting readiness”; nourishing the insatiable military industrial Moloch; learning the lessons of Ukraine (“harnessing drones, data and digital warfare”); and adopting a “whole-of-society approach”, a sly if clumsy way of enlisting the civilian populace into the military enterprise.
The review makes 62 recommendations, all accepted by the grateful government. Some £15 billion will go to the warhead programme, supporting 9,000 jobs, while £6 billion will be spent on munitions over the course of the current Parliament. A “New Hybrid Navy” is envisaged, one that will feature Dreadnought and the yet to be realised SSN-AUKUS submarines, alongside “support ships” and “autonomous vessels to patrol the North Atlantic and beyond.” Submarine production is given the most optimistic assessment: one completion every 18 months.
The Royal Air Force is not to miss out, with more F-35s, modernised Typhoons, and the next generation of jets acquired through the Global Combat Air Programme. To his splurge will be added autonomous fighters, enabling global reach.
Mindless assessments are abundant in the Review. The government promises a British army 10 times “more lethal to deter from the land, by combining more people and armoured capability with air defence, communications, AI, software, long-range weapons, and land drone swarms.” Some 7,000 new long-range weapons will be built and a New CyberEM Command established “to defend Britain from daily attacks in the grey zone.” Keeping those merchants of death happy will be a new Defence Exports Office located in the Ministry of Defence, one intended “to drive exports to our allies and growth at home.”
The fanfare of the report, festooned with fripperies for war, conceals the critical problems facing the British armed forces. The ranks are looking increasingly thinned. (In 2010, regular troop numbers stood at 110,000; the current target of 73,000 soldiers is being barely met.) Morale is ebbing. The state of equipment is embarrassingly poor. The UK’s celebrated submarine deterrent is somewhat less formidable in the deterrence department, with its personnel exhausted and subject to unpardonably lengthy stints at sea. The 204-day patrol by HMS Vanguard is a case in point.
Whether the SDR’s recommendations ever fructify remains the hovering question. It’s all very good to make promises about weapons programmes and boosting a country’s readiness to kill, but militaries can be tardy in delivery and faulty in execution. What saves the day may well be standard ineptitude rather than any firebrand conviction in war. To the unready go the spoils.
1 This Month
of the week – Shut Down Drone Warfare!
Tell the Ukrainian Government to Drop Prosecution of Peace Activist Yurii Sheliazhenko
Petition to revoke the licensing of the Near Surface Nuclear Disposal Facility (NSDF) at Chalk River. https://www.ourcommons.ca/petitions/en/Petition/Details?Petition=e-7247
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