Zelenskyy: Gripen fighters with Meteor missiles — 200km+ range.
We believe we can push Russian aircraft back far enough to stop their mass use of guided bombs against us.
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Zelenskyy: First Gripens arrive in 10 months. Pilots start training now.
The challenge: our pilots are already flying combat missions in Ukrainian skies. We need to pull them out to train — and that's never easy during a war.
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Zelenskyy: Ukraine has the world's greatest experience protecting lives, infrastructure, energy, schools.
No one else has this — we'll share it. Gripens, interceptor drones, EW, aviation, helicopters. Land, air, sea. That's a modern air defense shield.
UK spy chief Anne Keast-Butler: Almost half a million Russian soldiers have now been killed since the conflict began.
Russian forces are now going backwards on the battlefield for the first time since late 2022, — The Guardian. 1/
The estimate from British intelligence is even higher than recent calculations by Meduza and Mediazona, which estimated around 352,000 Russian deaths using probate records. 2/
Ukraine’s strategy is to raise Russian losses above Moscow’s ability to recruit new soldiers. Russia suffered around 30,000 casualties in April alone. 3/
Denys Prokopenko, 1st Azov Corps commander: Russia loses because its army is built for political control, not battlefield effectiveness.
Russians sacrifice enormous numbers of soldiers to please their leadership, even when it was doomed from the start — Ukrainska Pravda.
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Prokopenko: Ukraine wins because its army is built on trust and initiative.
HQ defines the goal and purpose. How to achieve it stays with the officers on the ground, who have the best picture of the battlefield. High trust, high initiative. The unit becomes a single organism.
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In summer 2025, Russia broke through the front near Dobropil — 15 km wide, 20 km deep. Azov Corps stopped the advance, conducted counteroffensive operations, and restored the line.
Now enemy hardware, depots and positions burn at depths up to 250 km.
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Bolton: Iran is using negotiations to prove it controls the Strait of Hormuz, that everyone must bargain with Tehran before Arab oil and cargoes leave the Gulf.
If Iran can turn Hormuz on and off like a light switch, the precedent is disastrous. 1/
Bolton: Tehran is desperately playing for time.
If Iran gets control of the Strait and resumes oil revenues, it will rebuild the Quds Force, militias, nuclear program, missile program and drone program — then threaten the Gulf even more. 2/
Bolton: Freedom of the seas is the core issue. Hormuz was an international waterway where commercial vessels and even warships had the right of innocent passage.
If Iran can control passage or charge tolls, that right is becoming history. 3/