Blumenthal: Iran has a lot of cards. Americans are paying much higher prices for gasoline, food and everything dependent on petrochemicals and plastics.
You can't count on war being quick and easy or base it on bombing alone. The costs of this war have yet to be fully felt. 1/
Blumenthal: A nuclear armed Iran is unacceptable. The President made a fundamental miscalculation that bombing alone would accomplish his objectives.
Those objectives have been shifting and contradictory. None has been achieved. 2/
Blumenthal: Iran is weakened economically, but it is in control of the strait. Where Trump is now headed seems very much the JCPOA 2.0.
It could have been the result of negotiations, not a war based on a fundamental miscalculation. 3X
Russian GRU opened its own Hogwarts — where students learn to hack servers, write viruses, produce disinformation videos and run propaganda campaigns.
The Insider reveals how Russia’s military intelligence trains its hackers. 1/
Department 4 is a secret faculty inside Bauman University in Moscow — 30,000 students, reputation of Russia’s MIT. The faculty’s name is deliberately meaningless: “Special Training.” 2/
It produces officers, hackers and saboteurs for the GRU. In 2024, 1,563 reservists and 429 prospective contract officers studied there across 14 military specializations. 3/
Zelenskyy: Hungary returned $82m in Ukrainian cash and gold seized from Oschadbank.
Ukraine brought the staff home earlier, now the money and valuables also returned in full.
1/
The shipment included:
- $40m cash
- €35m cash
- 9 kg of bank gold
Oschadbank transported the assets from Austria’s Raiffeisen Bank to Ukraine when Hungarian security services stopped the convoy on March 6 in Budapest. 2/
Hungary detained Ukrainian cash collectors for 24+ hours, confiscated the money, and later passed a law allowing seizure of foreign cash shipments.
Orbán claimed, without evidence, the money could fund his political opponents. 3/
Russia spent 20 years attacking the “rules-based order.” Now Trump is dismantling it faster than Putin ever could.
This may hurt Moscow more than help it: Trump ignores Russia as an equal, weakens the UN[Russia holds veto] and could target allies like Cuba next, Notte for FA. 1/
Putin wanted Russia free from rules while the US stayed constrained by them.
That strategy worked only while Washington still followed the old system. 2/
Russia mocked the UN, NATO, and “Western rules,” but still used the UN Security Council veto to project power and block Western moves.
Trump now weakens the same institutions Russia relied on. 3/
Putin’s meat grinder update — Russia lost 35,203 troops in April alone with almost no territorial gains to show.
More than 70,000 Russian troops were killed or wounded in just 2 months of spring. No major Ukrainian city captured. Front lines largely unchanged, United24. 1/
Russia’s “spring offensive” stalled almost entirely in Donetsk.
More than 2/3 of Russian attacks are concentrated there, with losses exceeding 400 soldiers per km² while failing to fully occupy the region. 2/
Kremlin has so little to present that Russia reduced the military part of its May 9 parade.
Fewer vehicles, fewer weapons displays — while Putin even discussed a possible ceasefire around Victory Day. 3/
Ukraine is building a Hague tribunal for Putin, Lukashenko, and Russia’s top leadership — while demanding over $1T in reparations from Russia.
Iryna Mudra, deputy head of Ukraine’s Presidential Office: “Accountability is not a subject of bargaining in peace talks,” EP. 1/
Russia repeatedly demanded immunity.
During talks in 2022 and in its recent 28-point “peace plan,” Moscow pushed for lifting sanctions, ending court cases, and granting amnesty for Russian leadership and war crimes. 2/
Tribunal moves from politics to implementation. Council of Europe ministers will finalize legal creation of the court in Chisinau on May 14-15. It will operate in Hague.