Tucker: Easter morning should have been about resurrection, peace, and victory over death.
Instead Trump threatened power plants and bridges in Iran. Civilian infrastructure, blackouts, refugees and dead noncombatants — including over a million Christians who live in Iran. 1/
Tucker: Millions of Christians backed Trump not because he was pious, but because he looked like a protector — of religious liberty, of Christians, of the unborn.
I think the first moment they should have stopped and asked what this really was came on Jan. 4, over Venezuela. 2/
Tucker: The problem was not that Maduro was anti-American. The problem was the motive Trump gave us: we did it for the oil.
That crossed a line for me. If a country says it can take what it wants by force, it is not defending order. It is legalizing theft at scale. 3X
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Ukraine is playing by its own rules in the US game. The US asked Kyiv to stop striking Russian energy facilities. On April 5 Ukrainian drones hit a Lukoil refinery near St Petersburg anyway, writes The Telegraph. 1/
A 30-drone barrage hit the Lukoil-Nizhegorodnefteorgsintez refinery in Kstovo, Nizhny Novgorod region — 250 miles east of Moscow. Two facilities were damaged. Photographs showed large flames and explosions lighting up the night sky. 2/
A separate strike damaged a Baltic oil pipeline near the port of Primorsk, between the Finnish border and St Petersburg. 3/
Trump's land-for-security-guarantees formula for Ukraine has stalled. Russia won't stop at the Donbas. It wants to block Ukraine from Western weapons.
Ukraine won't surrender the "fortress belt" and become more exposed — Samuel Charap and Jennifer Kavanagh, Foreign Affairs.
1/
Negotiations have proceeded on separate tracks. US-Ukraine, US-Russia, Europe-Ukraine.
No meeting has included Russia, Ukraine, the US and Europe together. This creates misunderstandings and makes it impossible to identify terms all parties accept.
2/
The security guarantees under discussion could actually backfire. A "coalition of the willing" led by France and the UK would deploy troops to Ukraine after a ceasefire — exactly what Russia fears most. More land for Russia, but NATO boots still on Ukrainian soil.
3/
Keane: I do not trust the Iranians at all. Trump does not trust them either. He knows they are liars and cheaters.
My preference would have been to keep the war going as leverage. A ceasefire takes pressure off them, and that is exactly what they wanted from the start. 1/
Keane: The deal has to take away everything military force took from Iran. Number one is nuclear enrichment.
That was the issue at the start. We will know quickly if Tehran is serious when we get to the fine points of the deal, the verification, and the concessions they make. 2/
Keane: If this blows up, we have to finish what we started. It comes down to Kharg Island: take control of it and its oil, or destroy it and force economic collapse.
That is the leverage to bend Iran to our will, and in my view it puts the regime on a path to collapse. 3X
A Russian artillery shell fired in August 2024 carried a message: “Subscribe to Russians With Attitude.”
The podcast has 422,000 followers on X — mostly American far-right. The Kyiv Independent unmasked the two men behind it. Both fundraised for sanctioned Russian neo-Nazi units. 1/
One lived in Germany for most of his life. Both fundraised for sanctioned Russian neo-Nazi units while building a massive English-language audience. 2/
“Russians With Attitude” built 422,000 followers on X and 5,600 on Patreon — including 1,100 paying subscribers at €5.50 per month minimum, generating at least €6,000 per month. The US makes up 27.6% of their audience. 3/
"Ukraine survived this difficult winter because we had Patriots.
We constantly ask for more. If we're left without these critically needed rockets, Russians will destroy our critical infrastructure," says Yuriy Ignat, head of communications for the Ukrainian air force in The Times. 1/
Russia has changed tactics. For the past two weeks it has been launching massive drone swarms during daylight hours — some lasting up to 24 hours, using as many as 1,000 drones in a single attack. The goal: drain Ukraine's Patriot missile stocks and exhaust interceptor teams. 2/
On Friday Ukraine was hit by a 10-hour attack: 542 drones, 27 cruise missiles and 10 ballistic missiles. 515 drones and 26 missiles were intercepted. Some got through — 18 buildings destroyed in Zhytomyr, a veterinary clinic hit in Kyiv killing 20 animals. Offices and schools shut across the country all day. 3/
For the first time since the full-scale invasion began in 2022, writes United24.
Zelenskyy: Never before in history has Ukrainian defense been so long-range and so tangible for Russia. 1/
The numbers: Russia’s Defense Ministry claimed it downed 7,347 Ukrainian drones in March — a record for the entire war, averaging 237 per day. 2/
During the same period Ukraine’s Air Force reported defending against 6,462 Russian drones and 138 missiles — averaging 208 drones and 4 missiles per day. 3/