Gaza to Donbass: How Israel and Ukraine Built a Fascist, Transnational War Machine.
Orinoco Tribune By Sarah B. – Aug 20, 2025
From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, a new axis of ethno-supremacy is rising, fueled by U.S. backing. Same guns. Same flags. Same ideology. Gaza and Donbass are not separate wars. They are one machine.
The Ukraine–Israel Nexus: Pragmatic Alliances Amid Paradoxes and Shared Challenges
From Bandera to Ben-Gurion, echoes of ethno-nationalist revival resonate in the modern trajectories of Ukraine and Israel, two states forged through war, hardened by siege mentalities, and fueled by historical narratives of existential struggle. But these similarities are no accident of parallel development. They reflect a deepening alignment shaped by shared adversaries like Russia and Iran, backed and brokered by the same Western patrons.
In 2022, an officer of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, toured Israel after surviving the siege of Mariupol. By 2025, Israeli drones were flying missions over Rafah, while American-made PSRL-1 rocket launchers, initially supplied to Ukraine, were spotted in conflict zones across the Middle East. Some experts suggest these may have reached Gaza through black-market channels, though a direct transfer remains unproven. What is undeniable, however, is the convergence of military technologies, intelligence doctrines, and battlefield logistics spanning both theaters.
In April 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, himself a stalwart ally to the Zionist cause, declared that he envisioned Ukraine becoming “a big Israel.” In doing so, he abandoned the pretense of liberal reform and embraced a future defined by permanent militarization, domestic surveillance, and an ideologically mobilized citizenry. Ukraine, he suggested, would survive not by joining Europe’s post-national dream, only by imitating the ethos of a heavily securitized Middle Eastern state.
Zelenskyy’s statement didn’t emerge in a vacuum. It followed decades of quietly intensifying Ukrainian–Israeli ties, in historical memory, military cooperation, tech integration, and shared narratives of victimhood. But it also exposed a deeper and more disturbing fusion. When the president of a country still reckoning with the legacy of the Holocaust and its own fascist collaborators calls for the building of a “Big Israel,” he is not just invoking a model of defense, he is invoking a model of justified violence, permanent siege, and a long tradition of selective memory, one that both Ukraine and Israel have wielded to reconcile uncomfortable historical alliances of culpability.
Just as the OUN’s collaboration with Nazi Germany is selectively reframed within the Ukrainian national mythos, Israel’s founding story often omits its own moments of strategic accommodation with fascism.
In the 1930s and ’40s, elements of the Zionist movement, most notably the Haavara Agreement between Nazi Germany and the Jewish Agency, facilitated Jewish emigration to Palestine while bypassing international boycotts of the Nazi regime. Revisionist factions like Lehi (the Stern Gang) and Irgun Zvai Leumi even sought military cooperation with the Axis powers against the British. These uncomfortable truths, long buried beneath the moral absolutism of Holocaust remembrance, underscore a shared willingness, Ukrainian and Zionist alike, to collaborate with and even become genocidal regimes when national aspirations were at stake.
What binds Gaza and Donbass is not a monolithic “machine of violence” but a transnational matrix of ideological alignment, technical cooperation, and strategic utility. Ukraine’s campaign of “decommunization” often mirrors Israel’s internal securitization and demographic engineering, both clad in the moral armor of historical trauma. In practice, both states justify aggressive internal and external policies through the language of survival.
This article maps the ideological, military, economic, and cultural architecture of the Ukraine–Israel relationship. From Soviet-era tensions to the post-2014 reconfiguration of alliances, we explore how pragmatic imperatives have forged a new axis of ethno-nationalist power, increasingly central to NATO’s long-term vision of regional dominance.
I. Historical Ties
To understand the modern partnership between Ukraine and Israel, one must begin with their shared, and often contradictory past. Ukraine was both a cradle of early Zionism and a site of violent antisemitic pogroms. Movements like Hibbat Zion, emerged in the 1880s in cities like Odessa and Kiev, decades before Theodor Herzl’s more famous Vienna-based political Zionism. Their mission: to restore the Jewish people to their ancestral homeland in Palestine. Ukraine, in this sense, was an incubator for the ideological DNA of the Israeli state……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………….
…………………….The historical relationship between Israel and Ukraine is not one of ideological clarity. It is a pragmatic evolution, shaped by war, memory, trauma, and strategy. The next sections will examine how these contradictions manifest on the battlefield through weapons, doctrine, personnel, and propaganda, across Gaza and Donbass alike.
Selective Memory: How Competing Genocides Forged Strategic Amnesia
In the narrative war between historical truth and political utility, few examples are as revealing, or as cynical, as the ways Ukraine and Israel have reframed and often embellished their respective traumas to enable strategic cooperation.
By the 1980s, Ukrainian nationalist émigrés began aggressively promoting the 1932–33 Soviet famine, or Holodomor, as the “Ukrainian Holocaust.” This was a calculated response to the rising global awareness of Jewish suffering, spurred by the 1978 NBC miniseries Holocaust, which explicitly portrayed Ukrainians as Nazi collaborators. For diaspora groups still loyal to Stepan Bandera’s legacy, the documentary posed a threat to their rehabilitated image, which they had worked fervently to whitewash. In turn, they constructed a counter-narrative of equal, if not greater, Ukrainian victimhood, one that would cast the Soviet state as genocidal and reframe Ukrainian history through the lens of national martyrdom.
This rhetorical project relied on inflating death tolls,………………………………………………………………..
The result is a pact built on strategic amnesia: a cold alliance between two states whose foundational traumas have been rewritten to serve military alignment, ideological affinity, and common enemies………………………….
…………II. Blood Ties and Battle Lines: Commanders, Crusaders, and Collaborators
The machinery of transnational warfare is not only built with weapons, laws, and doctrines, but with men. Individuals who embody the ideological convergence between Zionist ethno-nationalism and Ukrainian fascism do not operate in the shadows; they are often celebrated, recruited, and strategically deployed across theaters like Gaza and Donbass. These figures serve as ideological evangelists, field commanders, propaganda tools, and networking nodes between far-right militias, Western intelligence networks, and private security structures.
Some are Azov veterans turned actors and influencers. Others are American-Israeli contractors building bridges between Tel Aviv and Kiev. ……………………..
Continue readingUkraine drone hits Russian nuclear plant, sparks huge fire at Novatek’s Ust-Luga terminal
Reuters, By Guy Faulconbridge and Lidia Kelly, August 24, 2025
- Summary
- Ukrainian drone sparks fire at nuclear plant
- Nuclear reactor cuts capacity after attack
- Ukrainian drones strike Ust-Luga fuel export terminal
- Attacks come on Ukraine’s Independence Day
MOSCOW, Aug 24 (Reuters) – Ukraine launched a drone attack on Russia on Sunday, forcing a sharp fall in the capacity of a reactor at one of Russia’s biggest nuclear power plants and sparking a huge blaze at the major Ust-Luga fuel export terminal, Russian officials said.
Despite talk of peace by Russia and Ukraine, the deadliest European war since World War Two is continuing along the 2,000 km (1,250 mile) front line accompanied by missile and drone attacks deep into both Russia and Ukraine.
Russia’s defence ministry said at least 95 Ukrainian drones had been intercepted across more than a dozen Russian regions on August 24, the day that Ukraine celebrates its declaration of independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.
The Kursk nuclear power plant, just 60 km (38 miles) from the border with Ukraine, said that air defences shot down a drone that detonated near the plant just after midnight, damaging an auxiliary transformer and forcing a 50% reduction in the operating capacity at reactor No. 3.
Radiation levels were normal and there were no injuries from the fire which the drone sparked, the plant said. Two other reactors are operating without power generation and one is undergoing scheduled repairs.
The United Nations’ nuclear agency, the International Atomic Energy Agency, said it was aware of reports that a transformer at the plant caught fire due to military activity and stressed that every nuclear facility should be protected at all times.
A thousand km north, on the Gulf of Finland, at least 10 Ukrainian drones were downed over the port of Ust-Luga in Russia’s northern Leningrad region, with debris sparking fire at the Novatek-operated terminal – a huge Baltic Sea fuel export terminal and processing complex, the regional governor said.
PLUME OF BLACK SMOKE
Unverified footage on Russian Telegram channels showed a drone flying directly into a fuel terminal, followed by a huge ball of fire rising high into the sky followed by a plume of black smoke billowing into the horizon.
“Firefighters and emergency services are currently working to extinguish the blaze,” Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s Leningrad region, said. There were no injuries, he added……………………..
Ukrainian drones also attacked an industrial enterprise in the southern Russian city of Syzran, the governor of the Samara region said on Sunday. A child was injured in the attack, according to the governor, who did not specify exactly what had been attacked.
………………………………………………………………….Earlier this month, the Ukrainian military said it had struck the Syzran oil refinery. The Rosneft-owned (ROSN.MM)
, opens new tab refinery was forced to suspend production and crude intake after the attack, sources told Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-drone-hits-russian-nuclear-plant-sparks-huge-fire-novateks-ust-luga-2025-08-24/
Russia reports blaze at one of its biggest nuclear power plants.
Guy Faulconbridge & Lidia Kelly, Sunday 24 August 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/ukraine-russia-kursk-nuclear-power-plant-b2813260.html
Russia accused Ukraine of launching multiple drone attacks on Sunday, targeting critical infrastructure.- A drone strike near the Kursk nuclear power plant damaged an auxiliary transformer, leading to a 50 per cent reduction in operating capacity at reactor No. 3, though radiation levels remained normal and there were no injuries from the fire that the drone sparked.
- A separate significant blaze erupted at the Novatek-operated Ust-Luga fuel export terminal in Russia’s Leningrad region after it was reportedly hit by Ukrainian drones.
- Drone activity resulted in temporary flight suspensions at several Russian airports, including Pulkovo.
- Ukrainian drones also attacked an industrial enterprise in Syzran, with Ukraine stating its strikes target infrastructure crucial to Russia’s military efforts.
Ukraine Drone Strikes Hit Russia’s Nuclear Plant & Fuel Terminal | War Escalates
India Times 24 Aug 25
Ukraine has carried out a powerful drone strike on Russia, crippling the Kursk nuclear power plant and setting the Ust-Luga fuel export terminal ablaze. On Ukraine’s Independence Day (August 24), Russia reported intercepting 95 drones across more than a dozen regions.
At Kursk, a drone explosion damaged a transformer, forcing reactor No. 3 to reduce capacity by 50%. Meanwhile, in Ust-Luga, a drone slammed into a Novatek fuel tank, triggering a massive fire and black smoke visible for miles. The terminal is one of Russia’s most important energy hubs, exporting jet fuel and fuel oil to China, Singapore, and Turkey.
Earlier this month, Ukraine also struck the Rosneft refinery in Syzran, intensifying pressure on Russia’s military-industrial infrastructure. Despite Putin’s downplaying of casualties and radiation risk, Ukraine insists these strikes are retaliation for Russia’s relentless missile and drone attacks. This video covers the full story, analysis, and global implications.
Downed Ukrainian Drone Causes Fire At Kursk Nuclear Power Plant
23 Aug 25, https://www.rferl.org/a/kursk-nuclear-power-plant-fire-ukraine-drone/33511527.html
A fire broke out at the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in Russia after Russian military forces shot down a Ukrainian drone flying near the plant, the press service of the plant said.
The drone — one of several reported on August 23 by Russian authorities — fell on an auxiliary transformer, sparking the fire, which has been extinguished. There were no injuries, according to the press service’s statement.
“A combat unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) belonging to the Armed Forces of Ukraine was shot down by air defense systems near the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant,” the press service said in a statement on Telegram.
“Upon impact, the drone detonated, resulting in damage to an auxiliary transformer,” the statement said.
As a result of the explosion, unit three of the plant was reduced to 50 percent capacity, the press service said.
Radiation levels at the site and in the surrounding area have not exceeded normal limits, it added.
There was no immediate comment from Ukraine. Kyiv has increased its drones strikes inside Russia over the past several months in response to Russia’s continued attacks on Ukraine. It says the attacks are aimed at destroying infrastructure that is crucial to Moscow’s military efforts.
The story was first reported by Russia’s federal television network REN TV. It reported that the transformer is not a part of the nuclear section of the plant, citing the plant’s press service. It was not immediately clear in which part of the plant the fire occurred.
Kursk NPP is 40 kilometers west of Kursk city, the regional capital, on the bank of Seim River. The first unit was launched in 1976. Other units were added in 1979, 1983, and 1985, according to the press service.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly warned of the dangers of fighting around nuclear plants since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Earlier on August 23, St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region were attacked by drones, regional authorities said, adding that six drones were shot down over the Leningrad region and two were shot down over St. Petersburg.
St. Petersburg authorities said windows were shattered in a residential building in the Krasnoselsky district when the drone was “neutralized.” There were no reports of injuries or deaths.
The drone attacks led to flight delays and cancellations at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport. More than 30 flights were diverted to alternate airports during the day, and more than 50 flights were delayed. The airport resumed operations by in the evening.
Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported that a drone flying toward Moscow had been shot down.
Chicago Tribune letters again avoid reality of Ukraine’s impending battlefield defeat
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL 25 Aug 25
It’s understandable the Trib would publish letters promoting further aid in weapons, severe economic sanctions, even NATO troops to enable Ukraine to prevail in their war with Russia. But it is not understandable that all 7 August 25th letters advocating that policy are disconnected from the battlefield reality.
Virtually all historians, political scientists and military realists concur that Ukraine’s military is within months, if not weeks of collapse. They also agree there is no way outside of all out war, likely to go nuclear, to reverse that collapse They understand any peace settlement must include Russia’s 3 security objectives including no NATO for Ukraine, neutrality for Ukraine going forward, and no return of the Ukraine oblasts containing Russian leaning Ukrainians seeking peace and separation from the Kyiv government bent on their destruction.
This alternative, reality based assessment of the war, deserves to be provided to the Trib’s readership. But only publishing readers promoting endless war which simply ensures Ukraine’s battlefield defeat, is not responsible journalism. Trib readers deserve a full range of views; indeed ones more connected to reality.
Russia blames nuclear site attack on Ukraine as Kyiv marks independence day.
A fire has been put out at a nuclear power plant in Russia’s western
Kursk region and air defences have shot down a Ukrainian drone, Russian
officials have said. The drone detonated when it fell and damaged a
transformer, but radiation levels were normal and there were no casualties,
a post from the plant’s account on messaging app Telegram said.
BBC 24th Aug 2025,
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czxy2v9dzgxo
Everyone will gain from a peace deal for Ukraine.
Given that the whole basis for Russia launching the war was to put a hard red line in the sand that NATO would not be expanded to include Ukraine, there is no reason to believe that Russia would attack Ukraine in future, if its core underlying concern was resolved.
But security guarantees will need to be realistic and sanctions removal must form part of the plan.
Ian Proud, Aug 25, 2025, https://thepeacemonger.substack.com/p/everyone-will-gain-from-a-peace-deal?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=3221990&post_id=171818401&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=1ise1&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email
The need for Ukraine’s postwar security has become a major talking point since President Trump’s historic meeting with President Putin in Alaska on 15 August.
U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff spoke of a ‘game-changing’ commitment by President Putin to accept Security guarantees by NATO states. This meant that ‘the United States and other European nations could effectively offer Article 5 like language’.
It is clear that security guarantees are vital for all sides, including for Russia.
Security guarantees are important to European nations, precisely to reduce the risk of Europe being engulfed in a senseless and, frankly, avoidable war with Russia. There has never been any evidence that Russia wants to invade Europe, despite that being a comfortable go-to line for European propagandists.
So, for Europe in particular, the offer of security guarantees must represent a meaningful act of deterrence. A commitment by western nations to fight, so as to prevent the possibility of future war. What this deterrence does not mean is to station NATO troops permanently or even temporarily inside of Ukraine, whether they be called a Reassurance Force, Peacekeeping Force or anything else.
If this war was provoked by a desire by Russia to stop NATO advancing to its western border through Ukraine, why then would Russia agree to have NATO troops inside Ukraine? NATO has large armies on Ukraine’s border already and mounts air patrols as it is.
So, security guarantees don’t need to mean boots on the ground, but rather a willingness to defend Ukraine against a future war which was absent during the current war.
And that is why security guarantees are important for Ukraine.
That country will be forgiven for scepticism about whether NATO states such as France, the UK or Germany would come to their military rescue in the event of a future war having gone to extreme lengths not to come to their military rescue in this war.
If NATO countries are going to make commitments to Ukraine’s future security, then they will have to mean it if they ever want to be taken seriously again.
This is important to Ukraine specifically because upon the cessation of hostilities, and whether it wants to or not, it will need to reduce the size of its army. Ursula von der Leyen has spoken about turning Ukraine into a ‘steel porcupine’ that Russia can’t swallow.
But who is going to pay for this, as Ukraine cannot?
In peacetime, European citizens will rightly press for their governments to refocus spending on domestic priorities, and to cease channeling funds into the woefully corrupt gravy train of Ukraine.
Ukrainian defence spending – $54.5bn for this year – already makes up over 67% of Ukraine’s budget and 31% of GDP. Ukraine needs yearly cash injections from western nations of at least $40bn just to stay afloat. Much of that, now, is in the form of concessionary loans which Ukraine, one day in the distant future, will need to pay back.
Ukraine is otherwise cut off from international capital markets. You don’t need to be a maths genius to see that if western funds dry up, Ukraine will have less than $15bn available each year for defence.
Ukraine’s army was around two hundred thousand before the war broke out and now counts at almost one million. Salary costs will come down after the war ends, because soldiers likely will lose the lucrative frontline bonuses they receive which can effectively quadruple their normal pay, if they survive long enough to spend it.
That in itself will present another major social problem for Ukraine to demobilise soldiers who will find themselves in a shattered country that is in a dire economic state. But specifically, Ukraine will need to trim the size of its army, because it won’t be able to afford to pay for it. It is completely unrealistic to expect western nations to continue to pump tens of billions each year into Ukraine to maintain an army of one million in peacetime.
So, this undoubtedly presents huge challenges, but it must surely be in Ukraine’s interest to sue for peace and to start a complicated and, I fear, long and rocky road to EU membership, reconstruction and growth. As a country, it gains nothing but death and destruction by keeping the war going and losing ground and lives each day.
Security guarantees are vitally important to Russia too. President Trump’s unequivocal stance that Ukraine won’t join NATO must be backed up by a Treaty to ensure that Russia will have confidence that this commitment to Ukrainian military neutrality is real and permanent,
Given that the whole basis for Russia launching the war was to put a hard red line in the sand that NATO would not be expanded to include Ukraine, there is no reason to believe that Russia would attack Ukraine in future, if its core underlying concern was resolved.
Conquering all of Ukraine has never been a core aim in this war, in my opinion. Even though it has the military upper hand, I believe that Russia wants peace too. Peace will mean a long and fraught process of normalisation of relations with Ukraine, Europe and with the U.S. Indeed, the reengagement in peaceable economic, social and cultural relations would surely prevent the need for a future war.
But there’s texture here, of course, both Russia and Ukraine would need to resist provocations that precipitated a future conflict. Let’s not forget that from the onset of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, and after the Minsk II agreement was reached in February 2015. It became a goal of Ukraine and western powers to impose economic sanctions on Russia.
As we seem to enter the final furlong towards peace in Ukraine after a devastating war, pressure continues from both Europe and Ukraine to continue to sanction Russia to maintain the pressure. In recent days, President Zelensky has urged more sanctions if President Putin does not meet him in person. The European Union is preparing its 19th round of sanctions since 2022, despite the prospect of peace seemingly on the horizon.
This is one of the reasons that any peace deal needs a plan for sanctions removal, not addition. As I have said many times before, setting out a clear plan to reduce Russian sanctions that do not provide Ukraine with a veto will be vital to incentivising President Putin to cut a deal.
It is deluded to believe, more than eleven years after the first sanctions were imposed on Russia, that threatening Russia with more sanctions will incentivise a peace deal. It must surely be obvious that further threats of sanctions will simply encourage President Putin to order his troops on in their campaign.
So, if a peace deal is to be agreed, despite the pain of agreeing it, it must facilitate peace or, at the very least, the absence of war. It must ensure that Europe is serious about honouring its commitment to Ukraine in the future, it must give Ukraine the confidence that it can move its army to a peacetime footing, and it must manifestly promote a normalisation of relations with Russia that is so long overdue.
Trump ‘angry’ about Ukrainian attacks on key Russian pipeline to EU – Budapest
Comment: Trump’s angry, and yet, as we learned from NYT and WaPo reports earlier this year, HIMARS launches rely on American satellites for targeting and delivery to conduct such attacks, it’s possible that this key pipeline delivering oil to one of Trump’s ‘allies’ in eastern Europe… was effectively carried out by the Americans.
Sat, 23 Aug 2025 https://www.sott.net/article/501415-Trump-angry-about-Ukrainian-attacks-on-key-Russian-pipeline-to-EU-Budapest
Kiev has struck the Druzhba conduit supplying oil to Hungary and Slovakia at least three times this month.
US President Donald Trump has expressed outrage over Ukrainian strikes on a key pipeline supplying Hungary and Slovakia with Russian oil, according to a senior official in Budapest.
On Friday, Balazs Orban, political director to Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (no relation), shared a letter from his boss to Trump raising the issue of the Ukrainian attacks on the Druzhba pipeline. “Hungary supports Ukraine with electricity and petrol, in return they bomb pipeline that supply us. Very unfriendly move!” the Hungarian leader wrote.
On the same letter, Trump reportedly replied in his own hand:
“Viktor – I do not like hearing this. I am very angry about it. Tell Slovakia. You are my great friend,” alongside what appeared to be his signature.
“The Druzhba pipeline is a vital source of Hungary’s crude oil supply, without which our energy security cannot be guaranteed. Hungary will not allow its security to be undermined,” Balazs Orban wrote.
Ukraine has carried out at least three strikes this month on the Druzhba (‘Friendship’) pipeline, which stretches for more than 4,000km from Russia through Belarus and Ukraine to Poland, Germany, Hungary, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic.
The Druzhba controversy has become yet another source of tension in the already strained relations between Budapest and Kiev, which are marred by Hungary’s reluctance to support EU sanctions on Russia and by sharp disagreements over the rights of ethnic Hungarians living in western Ukraine.
In response to the attacks on the Druzhba pipeline, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said he and Slovak Foreign Minister Juraj Blanar were pressuring Brussels to force Kiev to stop the raids.
“With these attacks Ukraine is not primarily hurting Russia, but Hungary and Slovakia… Brussels must understand: they are the European Commission, not the Ukrainian Commission.”
Moscow has also denounced the attacks as “outrageous,” portraying them as proof that Kiev sees no bounds when engaging in malignant activities.
Meanwhile, Slovak officials have said the section of the Druzhba pipeline damaged in the latest attack is expected to be repaired by Monday.
Kiev to replace soldiers with robots – top general
RT, Thu, 21 Aug 2025 , https://www.sott.net/article/501377-Kiev-to-replace-soldiers-with-robots-top-general
Ukrainian commanders have consistently complained of manpower shortages while recent reports suggest the country has lost nearly 2 million troops.
Ukraine plans to rely on robotic systems to offset persistent manpower shortages on the battlefield,commander-in-chief Aleksandr Syrsky has said.
His comments come amid reports of a deepening crisis in Ukraine’s armed forces and a recently leaked report suggesting Kiev has lost nearly 2 million servicemen since 2022.
In an interview with RBC-Ukraine on Monday, Syrsky admitted that the situation at the front line is “really complicated” as Russia continues its strategic offensive. The general pointed to the Pokrovsk axis in northern Donetsk Region as the most difficult section of the front, noting that Moscow’s forces have conducted nearly 50 assaults there each day.
Syrsky acknowledged that Ukraine has far fewer mobilization resources than Russia and argued that one way of compensating is to rely on weapons that can be operated without personnel or controlled remotely. He claimed Kiev plans to deploy 15,000 ground robotic platforms this year in order to minimize human losses.
Ukrainian commanders have repeatedly reported persistent manpower shortages. Kiev’s general mobilization, which requires all able-bodied men aged 25 to 60 to serve, has failed to make up for battlefield losses. Desertions have also continued to mount, with officials stating that nearly 400,000 servicemen have abandoned their units, many of whom have no intention of returning.
The Telegraph reported last week that at least 650,000 Ukrainian men of fighting age have fled the country since the escalation of the conflict in 2022.
On Wednesday, several media outlets cited a leaked digital card index of Ukraine’s armed forces, allegedly obtained by Russian hackers, which claimed Kiev has lost over 1.7 million troops killed and missing since 2022.
Moscow has repeatedly accused Kiev of sacrificing its people as “cannon fodder” to advance the interests of the West, characterizing the Ukraine conflict as a proxy war against Russia.
Comment: Insanity has taken a new turn. Here is another great idea: Foreign recruitment
Ukraine should recruit for its military “millions” of foreigners willing to fight against Russia, lawmaker Aleksey Goncharenko has proposed. The MP was addressing Kiev’s frontline manpower crisis and the harsh ongoing conscription campaign, which he likened to the Nazi Gestapo.
Speaking at a Ukrainian parliamentary session on Wednesday, Goncharenko, a member of the European Solidarity party led by former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko, voiced outrage over the brutality of press gangs and proposed that Kiev could sidestep the issue by relying on foreign fighters:
“We need to engage in foreign recruitment – there are millions of people in the world who are ready to fight against Russia, especially given the financial compensation…This is realistic.”
Referring to the secret police of Nazi Germany that was notorious for its numerous atrocities, Goncharenko earlier proposed dismantling Ukraine’s current military-managed recruitment system and replacing it with a civilian-run one.
“Instead of all this, there are the shameful Territorial Recruitment Centers, which are already behaving just like the Gestapo. This cannot continue. It must be immediately corrected, because otherwise, if the people stop believing in the state, we will lose the state.”
And then there are these pesky leaked documents:
A Ukrainian MP, Artem Dmytruk, has admitted the loss of “several generations” in the country’s three-year conflict with Russia.
Russian media outlets on Wednesday cited a digital card index allegedly acquired by hacker groups from Ukraine’s Chief of Staff said to contain names of dead or missing soldiers, details of their deaths, and personal data of their families.
The entries suggested 118,500 troops were killed or went missing in 2022, 405,400 in 2023, 595,000 in 2024 and a record 621,000 so far this year.
Commenting on the reported losses, Dmytruk said:
“The lists of the missing today contain more than a million people, and of course these people are most likely dead, while their families remain in complete ignorance. The situation is tragic, the situation is frightening.”
He warned that villages had been emptied of men, including the elderly and disabled, and that Ukraine was facing “huge losses” and a “demographic crisis.”
“We have lost several generations,” he said, urging peace on the grounds that both Ukrainians and Russians were dying.
The reported figures far exceed official estimates. In February Zelensky told CBS News that 46,000 of his soldiers had been killed since 2022, alongside about 380,000 wounded – numbers questioned in Western media. Moscow has also claimed higher Ukrainian losses, putting the toll at more than 1 million killed or wounded as of early this year.
‘All for one’ – Zelensky
Why Zelensky’s main argument against peace is a lie.
After suspending Ukraine’s democratic order, he now hides behind the constitution to block negotiations
By Nadezhda Romanenko, political analyst, https://www.rt.com/russia/623171-zelenskys-main-argument-lie/
Commenting on the outcome of the Trump-Putin summit in Alaska, Ukraine’s Vladimir Zelensky declared: “The Constitution of Ukraine does not allow the surrender of territories or the trading of land.”
On paper, that sounds noble. The message is clear: Kiev won’t let others decide Ukraine’s fate behind its back. But take a closer look, and this principled stance starts to look less like constitutional fidelity – and more like political theater.
Because the very Constitution that Zelensky has suddenly invoked as sacred… has long been on hold. And that’s not an accusation – it’s his own admission.
Back in December 2022, while addressing Ukraine’s ambassadors, Zelensky quipped: “All the rights guaranteed by the Constitution – are on pause.” The context? He was joking about how diplomats don’t get holidays. But the phrase stuck. Because it turned out to be more than a joke – it became official policy.
Since then, Ukraine’s democratic institutions haven’t just been “paused” – they’ve been systematically dismantled under the banner of wartime necessity.
National elections? Canceled indefinitely. Not just presidential or parliamentary – even local races were suspended, eliminating the public’s ability to hold any level of government accountable. Zelensky’s current term, once set to expire, has been extended without a vote – and without a clear end date.
Opposition media? Silenced or outlawed. Dozens of TV channels and online outlets critical of the government were shut down or merged into a state-approved broadcasting platform. Independent journalism in Ukraine now walks a legal tightrope – with one foot over prison.
Religious freedom? Eroded beyond recognition. The Ukrainian Orthodox Church, seen as too closely linked to Moscow, has been harassed, evicted from centuries-old monasteries, and branded a security threat. Worshippers face criminal charges for sermons, symbols, or even prayers deemed “unpatriotic.”
Military conscription? Brutal and indiscriminate. Young men are pulled off the streets by recruiters, sometimes beaten or coerced into enlisting. Videos of forced mobilizations circulate regularly – and are met with silence or spin from the authorities.
Political dissent? Treated as treason. Opposition politicians have been arrested, exiled, or sanctioned without trial. Entire parties have been banned. Ukraine’s Security Council now acts as judge and jury – blacklisting citizens, freezing assets, and deciding guilt without a courtroom.
Rights didn’t just get paused. They were overwritten.
To be fair, this erosion didn’t start with Zelensky. It began back in 2014 when President Yanukovich was ousted in a manner that skipped any constitutional procedure. The army was then deployed – for the first time in post-Soviet history – against a domestic protest. The rule of law quickly gave way to rule by necessity. Courts rubber-stamped sanctions lists. Parliament became a formality. The Constitution was increasingly treated as a suggestion, not a boundary.
Zelensky merely completed what others started. Under his watch, Ukraine is no longer governed by its Constitution – it’s governed by presidential decree. The Constitution hasn’t been a check on executive power for years. Instead, it’s become a stage prop: Shelved when inconvenient. Quoted when useful.
That’s precisely what happened after the Trump–Putin summit. As it became clear that the fate of the conflict was being discussed without Kiev at the table, Zelensky rushed to invoke constitutional law – not to restore legality, but to cling to legitimacy.
And it wasn’t just critics in Moscow who noticed the contradiction.
Donald Trump, speaking a few days before the summit, couldn’t resist pointing out the absurdity:
“I was a little bothered by the fact that Zelenskyy was saying I have to get constitutional approval. He has approval to go to war and kill everybody but he needs approval to do a land swap. Because there will be some land swapping going on.”
Crude? Maybe. But not wrong.
Trump’s sarcasm cuts to the core. Zelensky governs under emergency powers, suspends elections, cracks down on the opposition, yet suddenly needs constitutional sign-off to negotiate peace?
In reality, Zelensky isn’t protecting the Constitution – he’s using it. It’s not a framework that restrains him. It’s a card he plays when cornered. When it’s time to justify canceling a vote? The Constitution “gets in the way.” When it’s time to refuse compromise? Suddenly, it becomes “untouchable.”
And while the optics may still work in Western capitals – “a democracy under siege” sounds good on TV – the internal picture is far less flattering. Ukraine today is run by decree, not debate. By security councils, not courts. By urgency, not accountability.
The Constitution, once a blueprint for law and liberty, has become little more than a sign on a boarded-up storefront – left hanging so no one has to admit the place is empty inside.
Zelensky should meet with Putin…to surrender.
Walt Zlotow, West Suburban Peace Coalition, Glen Ellyn IL, 22 Aug 25
Zelensky has never acted for the betterment of his people. He was elected in 2019 garnering a majority of votes from the Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas.…..Then he betrayed them by caving to the neo fascists in Kyiv seeking to wipe out their culture, language, religion, livelihood
The only chance Ukraine President Zelensky has to prevent the further destruction of Ukraine is to surrender on Russia’s terms.
The war is lost with no chance of reversing Ukraine’s impending battlefield defeat. Since Ukraine loses more soldiers and territory every day, surrendering now will end that destruction and allow Ukraine to begin rebuilding its shattered country. Since the US and NATO forced this war upon Ukraine, they should have the moral decency to fund the rebuilding.
Russia’s terms are fair and achievable. No NATO for Ukraine which must agree to be neutral between Russia and Western Europe. It precludes any return of the 4 eastern Ukraine oblasts in and around Donbas which are now irrevocably part of Russia. Some western portion of the Zaporizhia and Kherson oblasts may be returned to Ukrainian control as a concession.
Lost territory was set to remain under Ukraine sovereignty under the Istanbul Agreement of April 2022. But the US and UK vetoed that settlement and forced Zelensky to continue the war on the promise US/NATO aid would achieve a Ukraine victory. Colossal mistake.
The third major term is the trickiest; security arrangements for the remaining Western Ukraine rump state and Russia going forward. The European deadenders in UK (Starmer), France (Macron) and Germany (Merz) seek NATO soldiers in Ukraine to keep the peace. Trump will have none of that nonsense. Russia rightly views the European plan as Ukraine NATO membership by a different means, making it a nonstarter.
Trump wants out of a war he knows is lost and represents no national security threat to the US or the European countries. They seek to keep it going in perpetuity for reasons mysterious to any sane observer of Ukraine’s impeding collapse. Since Trump has signaled he’ll be pulling the plug on endless tens of billions for Ukraine to lose more soldiers and territory, the European leaders will eventually face reality and go along with a sensible settlement to end the fighting. Without US largesse, cash poor Europe will fold PDQ.
So will Zelensky. But the clueless US puppet, who sold out his country to US/NATO promises he could defeat the Russian behemoth, shouldn’t wait another day for the surrender orders to arrive from his bosses in Washington and Brussels. Surrendering will definitely end his presidency he extended by decree but hopefully not his life from Ukraine’s real rulers in Kyiv.
Zelensky has never acted for the betterment of his people. He was elected in 2019 garnering a majority of votes from the Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas. They believed his promises to treat them inclusively with West leaning Ukrainians in Western Ukraine. Then he betrayed them by caving to the neo fascists in Kyiv seeking to wipe out their culture, language, religion, livelihood.
Zelensky has never acted for the betterment of his people. He was elected in 2019 garnering a majority of votes from the Russian leaning Ukrainians in Donbas. They believed his promises to treat them inclusively with West leaning Ukrainians in Western Ukraine. Then he betrayed them by caving to the neo fascists in Kyiv seeking to wipe out their culture, language, religion, livelihood.
Three years, six months on he’s still demanding back the land lost from his delusional reliance on his US, NATO masters. Ukraine’s battlefield collapse is months, possibly just weeks away.
Zelensky shouldn’t wait for Trump to finally pull the plug on their failed joint venture. He shouldn’t let Ukraine’s destruction last one more day.
Will Zelensky finally do the right thing by his beleaguered people and capitulate to the victorious Russians? Nothing in his 6 years in office, the last 2 as a self-appointed dictator, suggests that he will short of a complete US withdrawal from America’s failed proxy war against Russia.
Europe To Spend $100BN It Doesn’t Have, To Buy Weapons America Doesn’t Have, To Arm Soldiers Ukraine Now Lacks.
by Tyler Durden, Wednesday, Aug 20, 2025 , https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/europe-spend-100bn-it-doesnt-have-buy-weapons-america-it-doesnt-have-arm-soldiers
Part of Zelensky’s motive for wearing a suit Monday to the White House has become clearer with fresh reporting in the Financial Times, which reviewed a document showing Ukraine will promise to buy $100 billion of American weapons financed by Europe in a bid to obtain robust US security guarantees.
Additionally, “Under the proposals, Kyiv and Washington would also strike a $50bn deal to produce drones with Ukrainian companies that have pioneered the technology since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022,” the report continues. Ukraine pitched its plan during the Monday White House summit, which also involved seven EU leaders – and the $100BN arms deal became part of the key talking points pushed by the European allies.
This is an effort by design meant to ensure Ukraine can procure what it wants – and that its war efforts can still be funded uninterrupted – while still ultimately appeasing Trump. “We’re not giving anything. We’re selling weapons,” Trump had said Monday in response to a reporter’s question on the matter.
It remains very obvious that Europe’s demands of keeping up huge pressure on Russia, including through sanctions, are intended to stymie any US-backed deal seen as too favorable to Moscow. The FT report comments on this as follows:
The document details how Ukraine intends to make a counter-pitch to the US after Trump appeared to align himself with Russia’s position for ending the war following his meeting with President Vladimir Putin in Alaska last week.
It reiterates Ukraine’s call for a ceasefire that Trump had espoused but then dropped after his Putin meeting in favor of the pursuit of a comprehensive peace settlement.
Geopolitical analyst and commentator Glenn Diesen has pointed out, however, that Kiev is essentially attempting to create leverage out of nothing.
“Europe will spend $100 billion it does not have, to buy weapons from America that it does not have, to arm soldiers that Ukraine now lacks,” he wrote, explaining further: “This is to confront Russia, which for 30 years warned it would respond to NATO militarizing its borders.”
Diesen followed by doing something that Washington policy-makers refuse to do, and that is look at the big picture of how we got here [emphasis ZH]:
There was no threat to Ukraine before 2014, as only a tiny minority of Ukrainians wanted to join NATO, and Russia laid no claim to any of Ukraine’s territory. Western governments then supported a coup to pull Ukraine into NATO’s orbit – something that CIA Directors, Ambassadors, and Western state leaders had warned would instigate a security competition and likely trigger a war.
Russia predictably reacted fiercely. Ever since then, the only acceptable narrative has been that Russia wants to restore the Soviet Union and that Putin is Hitler. Any dissent is labelled as “disinformation”, “propaganda”, “hybrid warfare”, or even treason.
The war has now been lost, and the Americans are pulling away from it, asking the Europeans to absorb the consequences. How do the Europeans respond? By doubling down on this madness, which will destroy Ukraine, our economies, and our relevance in the world – and possibly trigger a nuclear war. – What is the strategy? More of the same? The best thing for Ukraine is to remove it from the frontlines of the geopolitical struggle over where to draw the new dividing lines in Europe: End the war, rebuild Ukraine, and replace expansionist military blocs with the principle of indivisible security.
This week, as negotiations proceed and Europe keeps up its drive to pile more and more pressure on Putin, the big question will be whether the Western side can indeed understand that it has lost the proxy war.
Many immense hurdles remain, and one could also point out there are too many cooks in the kitchen (judging by the over a half-dozen European leaders present in the Oval yesterday), making things all the more unnecessarily complicated – and that’s probably by design.
Glenn Greenwald agrees with this bleak assessment of Europe’s role in thwarting peace… DC foreign policy elites now know that Ukraine cannot win, but they would rather continue fueling a fruitless and deadly war than admit they were wrong and delusional about Ukraine’s prospects against Russia.
Patrick Lawrence: That Big, Beautiful Summit in Alaska
it is something Trump understands but Ukraine, the Europeans and the hawks in Washington simply refuse to accept: However long the fighting may drag pointlessly on, Ukraine is the vanquished in this war; Russia the victor.
No Western leader, if you have not noticed, has ever called for an end to the war. None among them has ever mentioned a peace accord for the simple reason the Western powers do not want peace with Russia.
Zelensky’s intent as he made plans to see Trump Monday was to persuade him to pull him back from the frightening idea of a peace agreement
SCHEERPOST, Patrick Lawrence: August 19, 2025,
No, the Trump–Putin summit at a joint-forces military base in Anchorage last Friday did not produce an agreement on a ceasefire in Ukraine. President Trump made no reference to “severe consequences” if Vladimir Putin did not consent to such an accord. Nothing was said about new sanctions against Russia and nothing about sanctions against nations that trade with Russia. Trump appears not to have mentioned those nuclear-armed submarines he ordered to “appropriate regions” a couple of weeks ago, and Putin seems not to have asked about them.
No, there was no such talk at Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson. After not quite three hours behind closed doors with the Russian president, Trump departed Anchorage ahead of schedule, dropping the thought that he and Putin might linger so that Volodymyr Zelensky, president of the autocratic Ukrainian regime, could join them for further talks.
And so the story got written after the summit concluded. “No ceasefire, no deal,” the BBC concluded curtly. “Trump and Putin Put on a Show of Friendship but Come Away Without a Deal,” The New York Times reported late Friday. And from CNN, which had a dozen reporters on the story beneath this headline: “Trump–Putin summit ends without concrete deal.”
How yesterday, how swiftly passé all that early coverage proves but three days after Trump returned to Washington and Putin to Moscow. As of follow-on talks at the White House Monday with Zelensky and a swarm of European leaders, Trump seems to have rendered a ceasefire utterly beside the point in favor of an agreement he is fashioning with Putin that, if it comes to be — and we must stay with “if” for now — will prove stunningly concrete. Trump is after an enduring peace now — this as a subset of a new era in U.S.–Russian relations. Pull this off and he will improve his place in the history texts by magnitudes.
We do not know, and may never know, precisely what the two leaders said to one another behind closed doors as their interpreters and their foreign ministers, Sergei Lavrov and Marco Rubio, sat beside them. But it did not take long for Trump to start unpacking the plan he and Putin began to fashion during their talks. In post-summit interviews and social media posts, and in his encounters with Zelensky and his European sponsors at the White House Monday, Trump has made it plain as rain that an awful lot of something was discussed at a summit where nothing was reported to get done.
Within hours of the summit, Trump said in an interview with Fox News that he and Putin were near an agreement on an exchange of territories between Russia and Ukraine and that there would be security guarantees for the latter after the cessation of hostilities. “There are points that we negotiated and those points that we largely have agreed on,” Trump told Sean Hannity.
There is no telling how close or far Washington, Moscow, Kiev and (to the extent they matter) the Europeans may be from a comprehensive settlement. “Largely” covers an infinitude of near misses and failures, and Donald Trump is, after all, Donald Trump. But I read in this quick pencil-sketch a suggestion of the give-and-take dynamic between Trump and Putin: Russia will get some of the land it has fought for these past three years, which, if you look at a map, amounts to a security guarantee against the aggressions of viscerally Russophobic Ukrainians; the United States and the Western powers will cease arming the Kiev regime — another kind of guarantee. The Ukrainians will give up land but get security guarantees of their own.
Does this strike you as an unbalanced proposition? It should. Implicit in it is something Trump understands but Ukraine, the Europeans and the hawks in Washington simply refuse to accept: However long the fighting may drag pointlessly on, Ukraine is the vanquished in this war; Russia the victor.
We have had a slow roll of revelations since the Fox News interview. Reuters reported a day after the summit that Trump told Zelensky during a post-summit telephone call that it was time to “make a deal” with Moscow, which must include ceding some land to Russian sovereignty. “Russia is a very big power, and you’re not,” Trump reportedly told the Ukrainian president. Reuters said it reflected Putin’s demand in Anchorage that the Kiev regime recognize Russian sovereignty over all of the Donbas, the eastern regions of Ukraine that Russia formally annexed in September 2022 and parts of which, but not all, are under Russian military control.
Later Saturday came the big one, or a big one, as the post-summit situation is nothing if not kinetic. “It was determined by all,” Trump declared on his Truth Social platform, “that the best way to end the horrific war between Russia and Ukraine is to go directly to a Peace Agreement, which would end the war, and not a mere Ceasefire Agreement, which oftentimes do not hold up.”
“A mere ceasefire.” Wow. So much for that. A peace agreement instead of a ceasefire, cap “P” and cap “A,” if you please. Wow times 10. This is a major, major departure from the demands long advanced by all of the Western powers and Ukraine — an implicit rejection, this is to say, of the prevalent anti–Russian orthodoxy. No Western leader, if you have not noticed, has ever called for an end to the war. None among them has ever mentioned a peace accord for the simple reason the Western powers do not want peace with Russia. It is with this statement, then, that Trump signaled his determination to chart new territory.
Zelensky’s intent as he made plans to see Trump Monday was to persuade him to pull him back from the frightening idea of a peace agreement and reinvest in the demand for a ceasefire. This was also what the crew from across the Atlantic had in mind. Kier Starmer, Emmanuel Macron, Friedrich Merz: The British, French and German leaders were there. So were Mark Rutte, the NATO sec-gen, and Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. Hawks all, this crowd. They arrived, as news reports indicated, in a state somewhere between alarm and panic.
Trump appears to have heard these people out on the ceasefire question, as was to be expected. But there is no indication that the thought went much beyond hypothetical notions of what might be discussed in an also hypothetical summit between Zelensky and Putin. And there is every indication Trump holds to his early post-summit disclosures, of which there is now more yet-to-be-confirmed detail, notably in the land-for-guarantees line and what Trump has meant in his mentions of “land swaps.”………………………………………………………………
…………………………………………………….. The “centrist” leadership in Washington and the European capitals has refused to listen to Moscow for many years now; the media that publish the bulletins of these trans–Atlantic elites routinely make the case that anything Putin says is by definition the opposite of true and that listening to the Russians on any topic is beyond all the fence posts, irretrievably out-of-bounds. It is hard to overstate the magnitude of Trump’s transgression against this background.
Trump’s second sin is his evident embrace of reality. And reality, like listening, has also been off-limits for the centrist elites and those clerking for them in media on both sides of the Atlantic. This has been so at last since the U.S.–cultivated coup that brought the current regime of crooks and neo–Nazis to power 11 years ago. Those dwelling in the Kingdom of Pretend have carried on for months as if the Kiev regime can set the terms for any kind of settlement and Moscow will have no choice but to accept them. “Ukraine is also determined not to let Russia set the terms and structure of future peace talks,” The Times reported from Kiev in a pre-summit curtain raiser.
Not to let Russia…?
……………………………………………….. To say Trump aligned with Putin, or got played or otherwise capitulated, is another way, a simpleton’s or cynic’s way, of denying or veiling reality. In my read, Trump listened to Putin’s case and has concluded, Yes, he is right. This is the ultimate reality long at issue and long unsayable. Trump has done no less and no more than speak this truth at last. The rest is rubbish.
Let us sin along with Trump, then, if we haven’t already. Let us all look past the mountain ranges of propaganda, cognitive warfare, perception management and what have you and say what Trump is now saying: It is time to acknowledge forthrightly that Putin is right about the war and its causes, about the Biden regime’s purposeful provocations, about the larger questions of which it is merely a subset and about how most sensibly to negotiate a lasting settlement in the borderlands between Europe and Russia and altogether between West and East. https://scheerpost.com/2025/08/19/patrick-lawrence-that-big-beautiful-summit-in-alaska/
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