1/ If Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine had succeeded in 2022, Ukraine's industries would have been seized and taken over by Russian oligarchs. A leaked document shows that oligarch Konstantin Malofeev intended to create a 'DMZ Concern' from Ukraine's largest plants. ⬇️
2/ Malofeev is a billionaire who is a close supporter of Vladimir Putin and an aggressive promotor of religious conservatism. He's an overt monarchist who reportedly sees Putin as a new Tsar, and has links with far-right parties and individuals in Europe and the US.
3/ The EU, US and Canada have sanctioned Malofeev for trying to destabilise Ukraine and finance separatism. He's closely linked to pro-Russian separatists and was the former employer of Igor Girkin. He's been accused of funding radical nationalist movements across Europe.
4/ The DMZ Concern document, a presentation possibly dated 30 May 2022, was published recently by the VChK-OGPU Telegram channel. It sets out a business plan for the "expansion of production assets based on the results of the Special Military Operation".
5/ The first slide shows what appears to be the intended territorial division of a defeated Ukraine, with the whole of Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa oblasts – up to the Moldovan and Romanian borders – under Russian control.
6/ This would have stripped Ukraine of its entire coastline, all its ports and much of its heavy industry, hydroelectric and mineral resources. It would have become an economically devastated and landlocked rump state, likely under the control of a pro-Russian puppet government.
7/ Slide 2 describes the 'DMZ concern' as a vastly expanded version of the existing Donetsk Metallurgical Plant (DMZ) company, which operates mines and other industrial enterprises in the 'Donetsk People's Republic'. It states a goal of achieving:
8/ "consolidation of existing financial, economic, technical and market opportunities of enterprises of key industries in the liberated territories of the DPR, LPR and Kherson, Zaporizhzhia regions, which form the [economic] basis of the south-east region of the former Ukraine."
9/ After listing DMZ's existing holdings on slide 4 (#3 is missing), slide 5 of the plan lists "enterprises located in the liberated territories [that] are possible [candidates] for integration" with DMZ. They include some of Europe's largest mining and mineral processing plants.
10/ These include the Marganets Mining and Processing plant and the Nikopol Ferroalloy plant (both in Dnipropetrovsk oblast), the Zaporizhstal steel plant in Zaporizhzhia oblast and others. Slide 7 discusses a number of additional Ukrainian factories being considered for seizure.
11/ Slides 5.1 and 5.2 indicate that this was not just a theoretical exercise – the plan was already well advanced. Legal work had been done and management agreements had been signed as part of a three-stage plan to be carried out through 2022–2027.
12/ Interestingly, slide 5.3 lists among various business and growth goals for the 2023–2027 period an objective of achieving "Entry into the markets of friendly and sub-allied countries of Eurasian Economic Union, Middle East (Iran, Syria), South-East Asia, Turkey and Africa."
13/ The plan sets out a goal of aligning the DMZ Concern with a "strategic partner" (presumably Russian) and inclusion of its enterprises in "the state programmes of the Russian Federation." It also raises the possible takeover of Odesa port to serve DMZ.
14/ The end result, anticipated on slide 8, is the "reactivation of cooperation and activities of enterprises in the key sectors of the liberated territories of the DPR, LPR and south-eastern Ukraine…
15/ …in the form of a cumulative increase in annual financial indicators from RUR 70 billion [$990 million] (data for 2021) to RUR 220 billion [$3.1 billion] by 2024." This would achieve the "creation of a major enterprise in the interests of the Russian Federation."
16/ The slide indirectly acknowledges the impact of the DNR's large-scale mobilisation of fighting-age men, most of whom are now likely dead, by describing a goal of the "preservation of 8,616 jobs (excluding those mobilized)". It anticipates having over 16,000 workers by 2024.
17/ The plan doesn't specify where the extra workers would come from, but it's likely that – as has happened in Crimea – large numbers of people would be relocated from Russia to repopulate Ukraine's south-east, replacing the Ukrainians who have fled or been deported from there.
18/ Needless to say, the Ukrainian owners of the seized enterprises would not have received a kopek in compensation. With their collective value of billions of dollars, Malofeev was planning arguably the biggest heist in history – though it's now hopefully been thwarted. /end
1/ Even as Hezbollah pounds Israeli forces in Lebanon with FPV drones, Ukraine's ambassador to Israel says that the Israeli government has rebuffed offers of help from Ukraine and hasn't extended an invitation for President Volodymr Zelenskyy to visit. ⬇️
2/ In an interview with Israeli news outlet Ynet, Ukraine’s ambassador to Israel, Yevgen Korniychuk, says that Israel is missing an opportunity to learn from Ukraine's experience in countering weaponised drones.
3/ Hezbollah has recently been using fibre-optic FPV drones against IDF forces in Lebanon. They have become the dominant cause of Israeli casualties. Dozens of soldiers are reported to have been wounded and several killed by Hezbollah drone strikes.
1/ Morale is so good in the Russian army that its soldiers are deliberately committing crimes to get themselves sent to prison and thus save their lives, according to a veteran pro-Russian soldier in Ukraine who has been fighting since 2014. ⬇️
2/ The Telegram channel 'When the cannons started singing' provides an illustration of the Russian army's current state of mind, from "our friend and subscriber, a war veteran who served with the militia since 2014 and later with the Russian Armed Forces":
3/ "Here, people commit crimes deliberately to go to prison. There was this guy who called someone in his city and said the train station was mined. They took him in later.
1/ Four years into the war in Ukraine, the Russian Ministry of Defence is still leaving its soldiers critically short of all kinds of essential military supplies, according to the 'Two Majors' Telegram channel. Donated and self-purchased supplies are only a drop in the ocean. ⬇️
2/ 'Two Majors' contrasts the very slow, hugely bureaucratic and still heavily paper-based Russian approach to military procurement to Ukraine's nimble Brave1 military marketplace, which allows units to procure what they need online:
3/ "Regarding humanitarian aid, it's important to understand: it's a drop in the bucket compared to the front's immediate needs. The active Army's basic supplies are what ministries issue. And the central government's funding for this is colossal.
1/ A Russian soldier fighting in Ukraine's Donbas region provides a gloomy picture of life on the front lines. A constant flow of doomed stormtroopers go on one-way trips, drones make logistics a game of Russian roulette, and thirsty men drink from muddy, corpse-filled holes. ⬇️
2/ 'BCh 3' writes on Telegram:
"It’s been said before—war gives rise to many different truths."
3/ "The enemy has one truth—that’s understandable; the bureaucrats have another; the mothers of the killed and missing have yet another; and the soldiers whose dugouts flooded yesterday—with no supplies arriving—have their own truth as they drink the water pooled at their feet,…
1/ The war in Ukraine has been very beneficial for one particular group: Russia's aging elite of super-rich oligarchs, who have recorded a record-breaking increase in their wealth. It's a sign of how sanctions and state capture have hugely boosted the oligarch class. ⬇️
2/ 'Political Report' notes that the collective wealth of the 155 Russian members of the 2026 Forbes rich list has increased by 11 percent during 2025, reaching a record $696.5 billion, despite the pressure of sanctions and an increasingly difficult economic situation.
3/ However, the oligarch class in Russia is effectively closed to outsiders: "the path to independently accumulating billions in wealth, without inheritance or integration into the networks established in the 1990s, remains virtually inaccessible to younger generations."
1/ Yuri Kozarenko, the high-profile Russian drone developer who was arrested last Friday on fraud charges, is being accused of passing off Chinese products as his own. Other Russian UAV developers say that his firm was notorious for "brazen relabeling of products from China." ⬇️
2/ The video above shows a drone claimed by Kozarenko's company to be its 'Quadcopter Krechet' model. It's actually a Chinese-made Autel EVO MAX 4T, which has been relabelled as a Russian-made product without even any cosmetic modifications to disguise its origins.
3/ Kozarenko's arrest (see the thread below) is being greeted with glee by Russian UAV specialists who have been accusing his company, Transport of the Future (TB), of fraud for at least the past year.