1/ Are NATO forces in Ukraine? That's what Russians want to believe.
Which is why they force Ukrainian prisoners of war to march chanting nursery rhymes in German, English, and Polish.
A look at school-shooter level of twisted degeneracy ... 🧵⤵️
2/ Friends who work with recently exchanged Prisoners of War are sending me testimonies from Ukrainians who survived these bizarre Russian camps.
Let's descend into a twisted world, as narrated by one of the Snake Island heroes, now back in Ukraine ⤵️
3/ Ukrainian Vladislav Zadorin, 26, recalls life in a Russian POW camp:
"Once a week, we were allowed to wash. It was a... painful process, because we had to walk to the washing area bent over so far that our heads almost touched the floor, w/our hands tied behind our backs. ⤵️
4/ “We were given... 10 seconds to wash, and then we had to quickly put on clothes... difficult to do when your body is wet...
They deliberately gave us clothes that were 2–3 sizes smaller... to make it harder to get dressed.
And then they beat us for [taking too long]" ⤵️
5/ And now to the bizarre "Nato parade."
Vladislav, whom the Russians had captured at Snake Island in 2022, writes:
"When moving to the ‘bathhouse,’ each cell had to shout a children’s counting rhyme in a foreign language." ⤵️
6/ “For example, the guys from my cell and I shouted in German, our neighbors in English, then in Polish, etc. We shouted ‘eins, zwei, drei, vier.’”
Keep in mind these are Ukrainian soldiers captured on Ukrainian soil in the early days of Russia's full-scale invasion ⤵️
7/ Vladislav continues:
“The guards were very pleased with this; they imagined that we were NATO soldiers and that they had defeated us. For them it was like an imaginary parade of NATO prisoners.” ⤵️
8/ The Russians live-out NATO fantasies as they destroy real Ukrainian lives, while actual NATO sits by on the sidelines.
Vladislav Zadorin was imprisoned at Stary Oskol, Russia, in 2022. He spent 679 days in Russian captivity.
Follow me for daily reports from Ukraine. 🧵🎬
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1/ Ukraine isn't just fighting for its own survival.
It's building the defense tech that could determine whether Taiwan survives a Chinese invasion.
Here's why Washington will want to care—and what the White House still doesn't know 🧵THREAD ⤵️
2/ While the Western defense industry focuses on what SELLS, Ukraine has become the world's leading lab for low-cost, rapidly-developing defense tech THAT WORKS.
No other democracy has anything like it, as I see here every day, and as Daniel Runde writes at @TheNatlInterest ⤵️
3/ Here's what the White House misses:
Ukraine is building the world's only near "CCP-free" drone supply chain.
Neither the United States nor Israel can claim this level of Chinese supply-chain independence.
What if China cut off supplies needed for F35s? ⤵️
Russia is running a jihadi-style recruitment operation inside Europe. Not metaphorically. Structurally.
It's from the Islamist psychological playbook—target the vulnerable, escalate slowly, create dependence.
And it only cost €50 per recruit to destabilize Europe ... 🧵⤵️
2/ This is a structured Russian operational model: civilians recruited to carry out sabotage, arson, and destabilisation as part of a deliberate hybrid warfare campaign inside Europe.
A report by @GLOBSEC has uncovered the sordid details. ⤵️
3/ The recruitment system mirrors the playbook once perfected by jihadi terrorist groups.
Target the vulnerable. Offer meaning or money. Escalate slowly. Create dependence.
Kremlinism and Islamism are indeed close cousins in bed together ⤵️
1/ I am an American in Ukraine. Reporting here every single day of the full-scale invasion, I have seen the heroes of a great resistance.
On this Thanksgiving Day, I want to toast the following groups of humans.
Please add the names of those you wish to thank— 🧵⤵️
2/ To the Ukrainian defender-warriors who hold the line, whether they volunteered freely or dutifully submitted to conscription, whole or wounded.
They face a hell most don't even want to consider. One day, the world will see they held the line for Europe and the USA. ⤵️
3/ To the Ukrainians, civilian and soldier, who resist Russian occupation any way they can.
It's not easy to see, but if Ukrainians had been like, say, Belarusians, they would be fully a part of Russia's expansionist war machine unleashing hell on Europe. Not a chance.⤵️
1/ Russia's strongest weapon against Europeans isn't nukes or gas pipelines.
It's European guilt.
And it's time to stop letting Russians use it, because Europe, when it is true to its soul, is Greater than Russia ever could be.
Here's why— 🧵⤵️
2/ Writing on Substack, Cemil Kerimoglu @cemk_cemil, says that at this dark hour Europe needs MORAL rearmament.
It's time—both internally and externally—for Europe to recall and restore its Greatness, not as a museum-piece of the past but as hard-earned useful virtue. ⤵️
3/ Every time Europe stands up to Russian aggression, Moscow plays the same card:
"You colonized Africa. You were Nazis. Who are you to judge us?"
Europe, though it is the definition of civilization, feels guilty. Russia, which never was great, counts on this. ⤵️