[Macros]

Trumps wants to be seen to be a broker of a peace and will threaten Zelenski into it so Trump can ride rough shod over any Epstein fallout or suggestions he buried evidence.

This is text book from him

[Mentalist]

 Tiste Simeon, on 21 November 2025 - 09:38 PM, said:

Yes perhaps "wants" was wrong but he's being pushed there. I wish he could ditch the US completely but they seem to be bullying him into a corner.

UA can't ditch US, unless EU, UK, Canada, Norway, Japan, Australia, etc are ready to step in to fill the gap.
It's a tall order

Still, agreeing to yield the remainder of Donbas would finish Zelensky. He's already reeling from a massive corruption scandal, with everyone demanding he sack his head of office, Yermak. Some of his own party are calling for a wider coalition and a new government one that would become independent of Zelensky (and thus more accountable). So things aren't exactly clear RN

OTOH, putler just reiterated that the orcs captured ALL of Kup'yans'k on the 4th. So he's not exactly operating with an adequate picture of reality, either.

Difficult to say how this'll shake out. The Europeans are gonna be desperate to impact on trump AGAIN that making concessions to putler before a ceasefire will make him look like a weak loser; but whether it'll work this time is anyone's guess.

[worry]

DJT is a scorpion on the world's back.

[Werthead]

Also this deal requires Russia to withdraw from Sumy and Kharkiv Oblasts in full, including Kupyansk. I consider this "improbable" in the extreme when they're still fighting there.

I think the only way Zelensky seriously considers this deal is if the situation regarding manpower, reserves and Ukrainian assessments of what it can do to hold the line or retake territory is considerably worse than what we were previously hearing. Just a couple of weeks ago, the EU and Ukraine were discussing packages to allow Ukraine to continue fighting for three more years, something that seemed to seriously alarm Russia as they don't have three more years of fighting at this tempo in them. That suggests to me that Ukraine has more fight left in it.

The question is if Trump would really withdraw US support (not great), intelligence (pretty bad) and would also refuse to sell weapons to Ukraine via the new funding programme (extremely bad, just not as bad as if it had happened a year or ago or three years ago). It seems unlikely Trump would turn down billions of dollars of purchases from Europe.

Some suggesting that Rubio is pretty narked off about this plan, which circumvented his office, and he might be bending Trump's ear on it.

[the broken]

The only reason to take the deal would be if Ukraine was about to collapse anyway, which doesn't seem to be the case. They can fight on without the US if need be (easy for me to say, of course)

[Werthead]

Ukraine's position could be better but it also could be a lot worse. The question in play here are if the US will refuse to provide weapons and equipment in return for cold hard money. If the US continues to provide Patriot missiles, air-to-air missiles, ATACMS, HIMARS ammo etc in return for European cash, that situation can be borne, even if US intelligence is cut off. If not, the situation could be a lot more difficult. Ukraine could just run out of the Patriot missiles it needs to target Russian hypersonic and ballistic missiles, and some of the parts it needs to keep its F-16s flying.

French Intelligence's warning this week was stark: if Russia wins a bad peace deal in Ukraine, they estimate a general war between European states and Russia could begin in less than 3 years.

[Werthead]

The Ukrainian delegation talking to Rubio and Witkoff seemed a bit confused in reporting that talks with them had gone much better than expected (to the point they all went out and had a friendly dinner afterwards) and apparently the 28-point plan is more of a basis for discussions than a final ultimatum (despite Trump saying that). There's also more messaging that acceptance of the 28-point plan is also contingent on Russia accepting it by Thursday. Russian state television has said they will either not accept it, but may accept it but will not abide by it, so there's that. 

[Mentalist]

The initial plan has been reduced to a 19-point framework that requires more work. The Thanksgiving deadline's been scrapped.

A few days ago, UAF hit one of the oldest geothermap plants in muscovy- the Shaturo DRES. It was built in the 20s, to run on peat. it's part of Moscow Oblast's electric grid. They had to bring in 10 mobile generation stations to cover for it.

The strike is significant, b/c this is Moscow oblast, where anti-air is supposed to be the tightest; yet, there's ample footage of drones flying in, with only machine gun fire trying to intercept them.

The see-saw of "negotiations" boosted the ruble. Which is good, b/c less petro dollars when the ruble is strong, meaning, bigger budget deficit.

The orcs continue to try to envelop Hulyaipole in SE Zaporizhya Oblast'. There's also been an increase in activity in NE Kharkiv, where they were able to connect their earlier breach towards Velyky Burluk to their bridgehead W of the Oskil. Altogether, the orcs now control a strip about 28 km wide from the Oskil along the border. It's only 4-6 km deep, but still worrisome.

In Pokrovs'k, the 7th Airborne corps is trying to keep the orcs behind the railway out of the northern part of the city, but it's a difficult process.

[Werthead]

Russia has managed to blow up one of its own apartment buildings in Novorossiysk with a mis-fired anti-aircraft missile, which flew out of control.

Ukraine has also hit the Taganrog airfield, destroying an experimental Russian AWACS aircraft equipped with a laser.

A large number of balloons carrying contraband have crossed into Lithuanian airspace from Belarus.

[Werthead]

A drone that overflew Ukraine and entered Moldovan territory crashed in Chișinău. The drone was picked up and taken to the Russian Embassy. The Russian Ambassador seemed genuinely bewildered as he spouted some nonsense lines about it.

Some reports that the Mirage-2000 is outperforming the F-16 in the role of Ukrainian drone interceptor.

The Russian State Railway is close to financial collapse, with its debts rising to $51 billion. The problem is that the Russian Central Bank can't work out how to afford it without worsening inflation.

The cost of Chinese exports to Russia have almost doubled in the last year, whilst, insanely, the cost of those non-sanctioned European goods has increased by only 9%.

Armenia says it has "effectively" left the CSTO, since Russia did not fulfil the terms of the treaty by helping Armenia against Azerbaijan's attack last year. Entertainingly, Azerbaijan also seems lukewarm on its continued membership, and Tajikistan has had words about Russia's failure to help them against Tajikistan's incursions a few years ago.

Calls to fire Witkoff are growing behind the scenes, including from Republicans, with Rubio apparently not opposed to the idea and he may be winning Vance around, with the carrot of possibly replacing Witkoff with Vance's friend and ally Dan Driscoll. Driscoll is regarded as "warmer" towards Ukraine than Witkoff but not as much as Kellogg. Driscoll has also been willing to talk to Zelensky in person (Witkoff has never been to Kyiv, despite multiple flights to Moscow). Driscoll calls himself a "realist" and has reportedly told Zelensky that the US cannot provide Kyiv with Patriot missiles and other munitions at the pace needed to deal with this intensity of fighting (experts are somewhat divided on this assessment), whilst retaining enough stocks to act as a deterrent in the Pacific. However, Driscoll has praised Ukraine's drone industry and also its ability to adapt and improve US weapons in combat conditions, and argued that the US should leverage Ukraine's massive weapons manufacturing capability to help with its own stocks once the fighting is concluded. Ukraine's ability to build at least 1.5 million drones a year (last year's figure, they will smash that this year with at least 3 million) dwarfs that of the entire United States, which is insane.

[Werthead]

Russia has managed to destroy its only manned space platform launch facility at Baikonur. The backwash from a Soyuz MS-28 launch appears to have obliterated the service platform, rendering it un-usable. They might not be able to repair it for 2+ years.

Ukraine has lost additional territory to the SE of Pokrovsk in the pocket, but the fighting in the urban areas of Pokrovsk and Myrnohrad has resulted in localised Ukrainian success: around 12 square kilometres has been regained by Ukraine in the past 48 hours. However, combat intensity remains high and Russia is sending in additional reinforcements.

Russia has sent troops to try to outflank Vovchansk on the northern edge of Kharkiv Oblast from the SW. This appears to have involved Russian forces advancing through marshland before the ground has fully frozen under overwatch from Ukrainian drones, with predictably negative results. Ukrainian forces in Vovchansk continue to hold the line. There seems to be anger that Russia is trying to advance in this sector when those troops could go to Pokrovsk instead where every Russian on the line counts.

A joint EU cyber-operations unit is apparently being proposed by various EU countries, particularly France, Italy and allied nations like the UK. The unit would be authorised to conduct offensive cyber-operations against Russian and possibly "other" state actors taking hostile action against them.

Ukrainian drones have struck multiple facilities used by the Chechen Akhmat unit, including in Grozny itself.

Turkey has offered to send peacekeeping troops to Ukraine to police a post-peace deal. Turkey has indicated it might be the only NATO nation acceptable to Putin to do so.

Ukraine has receive DITA self-propelled howitzers from the Czech Republic. DITA is one of the most advanced modern artillery systems with a 40km range.

Russia tried to launch a large ballistic missile as part of a test at Orenburg, but it exploded on the launch platform.

Two Russian shadow fleet tankers are burning in the Black Sea off the coast of Turkey. One was apparently hit by sea drones, unclear about the other one.

Ukraine has retaken Ivanivka in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast after heavy fighting.

One of the two damaged shadow fleet tankers in the Black Sea was hit a second time.

Russia is assigning $166 billion to defence in its 2026 budget, a post-Soviet record.

An oil loading terminal near Novorossiysk has been badly hit and is out of action.

Heavy drone strikes on Russian power distribution nodes in both Kursk and Belgorod oblasts, plunging large areas into darkness.

Heavy fighting continues in Pokrovsk, with a lot of drone activity on both sides.

A third shadow fleet vessel has been hit, this time off the coast of Senegal (!).

Kushner looks like he's going to be eaten alive by Putin.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 02 December 2025 - 07:40 PM

[Mentalist]

The next round of the endless performance called "trump's business boys trying to make nice with putler" is over, without much results. As expected by everyone who isn't a Western newspaper editor looking at "scoops".

Turkish company that owned the tanker that caught fire off Senegal announced that it won't be doing business with Muscovy anymore. Kinetic sanctions in action.

UAF reporting that they've "almost cleared" Kup'yans'k from the infiltrating orc bands. Not implausible, since it seems that the orcs threw everything and the kitchen sink at the Pokrovs'k-Myrnohrad agglomeration, without a ton of people trickling into Kup'yans'k. But given the new nature of street fighting these days (which is radically different from what the war was like in 2023, during the siege of Bakhmut), we are unlikely to see any big map changes to reflect this.

Speaking of map changes: UAF did manage to clear the sizeable village of Ivanivka and push the orcs back beyond the Vovcha river on the border b/w Zaporizhya and Dnipropetrovs'k Oblast. A company was wiped, with 19 prisoners taken. .
UAF also seemiongly stabilized the frontline further SW, halting the orcs' drive towards Hulyaipole. This was their most successful oiffensive in months, and there were concerns that the units here lost cohesion, and the enemy might drive to the city, which was one of the linchpins of the southern front. But that seems to have been averted.

Otherwise, things seem to be fairly stable.

[Werthead]

Ukraine has hoisted its flag again (briefly) in north-central Pokrovsk, confirming they still hold the north of the city, above the rail line. Russia has not been able to penetrate past the rail line for something like eight days so far, so interesting to see if Ukraine can hold that line into the New Year. Ukraine has withdrawn some troops SE of the city whose position was no longer tenable. Situation remains tense.

Ukraine has successfully retaken a large part of north-western Kupyansk.

The Ukrainians are also advancing back to the Zaporizhzhia-Donetsk-Dnipro border. One Ukrainian unit suffered heavy casualties so the 92nd Brigade was rotated in and destroyed the Russian attackers in several days of furious fighting, with possibly 700 Russian casualties which would be a huge loss if that was really in a few days.

Russia has taken additional territory near Siversk, but Ukrtaine has counter-attacked to the north-west and retaken Stavky.

Russia is starting to send units into the far south-eastern parts of Kostiantynivka (prewar pop. 67,000). This will be the next big urban fight. 

A Russian Defence Ministry An-22 has crashed near Moscow.

Tentative claims that Ukraine has recaptured around 13 square kilometres of Pokrovsk over the last 24-72 hours, out of around 30 square kilometres for the town in total.

Some Russian channels claiming over 300 Ukrainian drones attacking targets across Kursk, Bryansk and Belgorod, which if true would be the largest number to date.

This post has been edited by Werthead: 10 December 2025 - 10:13 PM

[Mentalist]

UAF successfully cleared the villages NW of Kup'yans'k.

DeepState's update has them in full control of the territory up to the Oskil. This means the supply line to the remaining orcs who infiltrated into the city is completely cut.

Zelensky showed up to the SW entry to the city, some 500 m away from the grey zone's edge- in order to refute putler's claim that the city is captured.

Assault units continue to raid into centre of Pokrovs'k, raising Ukrainian flag there. Essentially, all this means is that the orcs don't have a firm control over the city.

Unfortunately, the orcs did manage to infiltrate the western portions of Sivers'k, leading to another frontline city becoming a brutal grey zone. It is unlikely that this can be remedied in the short term.

[Werthead]

Yup, the Kupyansk operation now seems to be confirmed. A major success from the look of it. And they're also still holding onto Pokrovsk despite Russian reinforcements pouring in.

A Turkish ship in Odesa port has been hit by a Russian drone.

Ukrainian drones have started hitting Russian oil platforms in the Caspian Sea. Two waves of attacks in the last week appear to have disabled several platforms.

Hegseth and Driscoll seem to have had a falling out, with Driscoll sidelined from recent discussions.