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/

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/

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/

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/

Putin now spends weeks in bunkers, bans officials from using internet-connected phones, and fears assassination after Iran’s supreme leader was killed in a US-Israeli strike.

Russian elites increasingly discuss what happens after him, Times. 1/ Kremlin fears Ukraine could track Putin through Moscow’s surveillance system.

After Israel used cameras to monitor Iranian officials, Russia restricted mobile internet across Moscow, where 250,000 CCTV cameras operate. 2/

In 1973, the Arab oil weapon worked once and broke within months. Iran built one that doesn't break.

Mines, drones, and small boats now hold 20% of global oil hostage in the Strait of Hormuz — and the US Navy has not pried them loose — Gregory Brew, Foreign Affairs. 1/ 20% of global oil and 20% of global LNG sit trapped in the Persian Gulf, alongside helium, aluminum, and urea.

US gasoline crossed $4 a gallon and may break $5 by late May. Global oil demand is falling for the first time since COVID. 2/

Only one ground-launched missile in Europe reaches deep into Russia today. It is Ukrainian.

Russia's Kinzhal hits Warsaw, Berlin, Munich. From Kaliningrad — London, Paris, Rome. Europe's own answer won't arrive until the 2030s — Financial Times. 1/ Trump canceled the Tomahawk deployment in Germany, but the gap predates him. Europe outsourced deep-strike to Washington for decades.

Pistorius, German defence minister, warned the cancellation would be "very unfortunate and detrimental" for Europe. 2/

One year in, 76% of voters are unhappy with Merz and their coalition. He promised to restore growth, but got Trump tariffs and an energy shock.

Yet abroad he’s taken a harder edge, openly arguing with Trump and pushing support for Ukraine, – DW. 1/ Merz came in weakened. The Bundestag did not elect him on the first ballot.
Before that, he broke two promises: he cooperated with the far right on a vote, then reversed a pledge not to take on debt. 2/

Bolton: Europeans are wrong to say the Iran war is not their war. Trump was wrong not to consult allies, but that is no excuse to sit it out.

For Britain and the US, freedom of the seas has been a foundational principle for centuries, and Hormuz goes straight to that interest 1/ Bolton: Iran is grossly violating international law by treating Hormuz like its own waterway and trying to charge a toll.

That is why Trump has to reopen the Strait by military means — to show Iran, and anyone else watching, that you cannot shut an international waterway and get away with it. 2/

Putin will be remembered as the man who broke Russia.

For a decade he outmaneuvered the West. Then he invaded Ukraine — and lost everything he had built, writes Walter Russell Mead in WSJ. 1/ For over a decade Putin outmaneuvered Western leaders. He seized Crimea in 2014, took much of Donbas, revived Russian power in the Middle East while Obama abandoned his red line in Syria. He looked unstoppable. 2/

Hodges: Trump administration is using sleight of hand with names.

They say Epic Fury is over and now call it Project Freedom so it does not sound like wartime and they do not have to go to Congress under the War Powers Resolution. 1/ Hodges: Of all the objectives floated before and after the war began, almost none have been achieved.

Yes, the US and Israel destroyed a lot of Iranian military assets. But strategically, Iran still holds the uranium, the regime, and the Strait. 2/

Trump is turning US allies into Beijing’s clients.

They hedge against Washington by flying to China. Xi pockets the optics as proof of American decline.

They go to China because they don’t trust Trump, — Michael Kovrig, Foreign Affairs. 1/ Canada shows the pattern. After weeks of Trump threatening annexation, Mark Carney walked into the Great Hall of the People and sold “a new world order” with Li Qiang.
Carney called China Canada’s top geopolitical threat months earlier. 2/

Ukraine didn’t become a “fortress state” like Israel — it built a system where others depend on it for security.

Drone tech, combat experience, and defense deals now make Ukraine a supplier — embedding itself into allied militaries, Ines Burrell for Persuasion. 1/ Estonia scrapped a €500M infantry vehicle order and redirected it to drones and air defense after lessons from Ukraine — rewriting how wars are fought and funded. 2/

Kasparov: Putin is paranoid, but his fears are real. Russian history shows that bad wars lead to massive change, sometimes revolution.

If a war goes well, the public never cares about the price of victory. But bad, unwinnable wars are what bring regimes down. 1/ Kasparov: The war against Ukraine began with a consensus that Russia would win easily. Now it looks unwinnable.

Even pro-war bloggers are expressing doubts that Putin can deliver, and for a dictator that is the greatest danger: people start believing he is weak. 2/

Gen. Hertling: These [recent Iranian attacks on merchant shipping and US naval vessels] are more than random incidents.

So yes, it does look like a violation of the ceasefire, and Trump clearly does not want to go back to kinetic operations. 1/ Hertling: I do not think the Navy can personally escort hundreds, maybe up to 2,000 ships, out of the Strait.

The real task is clearing lanes, finding where Iran laid mines, and moving ships without creating dense targets for Iranian missiles and drones. 2/

Ukraine does not have enough Patriot interceptors to stop Iskanders today. We will have them soon.

So for now, crews fire 1 missile instead of 2 to save ammo, and use drones to destroy launchers, depots, and factories behind the strikes, Kyiv Post. 1/ Patriot is the only system that can stop Iskander-M — Mach 6–7, up to 50 km altitude.

But US supplies dropped sharply after Feb 2025. Ukraine can’t intercept every launch. 2/

Ukrainian combat medics flew to the US to teach US Special Operations physicians how to keep soldiers alive under drone fire.

3rd Army Corps presented at SOMA's Scientific Assembly on May 3, the field's main international forum since 1987 — United24. 1/ The delegation came from the Training and Assault Company NSHR, the corps tactical medicine group, and the 4th Separate Medical Battalion.

They presented cases worked up in field dressing stations under fire. 2/

Rubio: Iran has always said it does not want a nuclear weapon. They just do not mean it.

They keep doing the things countries do when they want one: building long-range missiles, hiding enrichment in mountains and caves, and keeping parts of the program secret. 1/ Rubio: Iran kept highly enriched uranium at 60%, and that has no civilian use.

If all it wanted was a civilian nuclear program, it could do what many other countries do: import enriched material instead of hiding domestic enrichment underground. 2/

Rubio: Nearly 23,000 civilians from 87 countries are trapped in the Gulf and left for dead by the Iranian regime.

For more than two months, innocent sailors and commercial crews have been stranded at sea by Iran’s desperate, destructive blockade of Hormuz. 1/ Rubio: At least 10 civilian sailors have already died.

Many nations have asked the US to free their ships and restore freedom of navigation in Hormuz, so Trump ordered the military to guide stranded vessels to safety and create a protective bubble. 2X

A Ukrainian sea drone killed the entire crew of a Russian FSB patrol boat guarding the Kerch Bridge on April 30 — U24.

Eight FSB agents in the boat Project "Sobol" died. Sobol is a high-speed patrol craft for coastal interception, capable of 48 knots.

1/ Two Russian vessels were struck in the overnight operation near the Kerch Bridge.

Both were part of the maritime security perimeter protecting the bridge connecting occupied Crimea to Russia.

2/

Kellogg: The [Hormuz] blockade is working, but I think we need to go further.

There are three things we should do: take strategic targets by land, keep hitting the Revolutionary Guards, and stop talking about negotiations. We should keep going until we finish this. 1/ Kellogg: I’m talking about taking Kharg Island and the islands in the Strait of Hormuz. We do not need to go into downtown Tehran.

We take what they cannot get back. We become the arbiter, the global oil power. Don’t just blockade them. Add to the blockade. 2/