Putin: More than 71,000 men from Chechnya are fighting in the “special military operation”, and more than 20,000 of them are volunteers.

They are fighting for Russia and for their small beloved motherland, Chechnya.

[Putin openly presenting Chechnya as war manpower.] 1/ Putin: The birth rate in Chechnya is very high. This is good. Many other republics and regions of Russia should take Chechnya as an example.

If everyone had such a birth rate, we would not have demographic problems and challenges. 2X

Fiona Hill: The United States is no longer the ally it was before.

We are living in a post-America world in which countries are searching for alternatives, regional orders, and new platforms for cooperation because Washington now swings wildly back and forth. 1/ Hill: NATO is not Trump’s private army.

If the US wants allies engaged, it has to consult them. Instead Trump wanted surprise, bragged about it, then swung between asking for help and saying he did not need it. That has deepened the split. 2/

Fiona Hill: Trump still does not really listen to experts.

In the Iran crisis, he is sending out people with little high-level negotiating experience while believing he knows better than everybody. His gut, not expertise, is what drives decisions. 1/ Hill: Tactically the US campaign has been successful. Strategically it is a blunder because Trump did not understand Iran.

He assumed a top-down system like Russia or China, but Iran is resilient, deeply embedded, and full of people fighting for their lives. 2/

A pastry chef from Bucha spends her days making cakes — and her nights shooting down Russian drones.

Lyudmyla Lysenko joined a volunteer air defense unit after returning to a destroyed city in April 2022. “Bucha looked like a zombie apocalypse,” — UkrPravda. 1/ By day she holds a mixer. By night — a machine gun.

She now commands a mobile fire group in the “Bucha Witches,” a unit created in 2024 to hunt Shahed drones over Kyiv region. 2/

Europe says it fears war with Russia. But still hesitates to bring Ukraine in.

It approved €90B in loans, yet blocks EU membership. The Economist: The risk of letting Ukraine in looks big. The risk of keeping it out is bigger. 1/ Ukraine brings hard power.

800,000 troops and battlefield-tested drone systems that turned the front into a “death zone” for Russian forces. Europe needs that capacity now. 2/

Mood in Russia turns bleak.

Putin’s support is falling as war fatigue, economic decline, and repression converge.

Approval dropped to 65.6%, down 12.2pp this year. Economy shrank 1.8% in 2 months. Interest rates peaked above 20%. Businesses owe $109B in unpaid bills, WP. 1/ “This has been going on longer than World War II… and we can’t even take one region,” a Russian official says.

War enters year 5 with no decisive gains, while talks stall and expectations of quick victory collapse. 2/

Trump’s Iran war is pumping billions into Russia’s war machine.

Russia earned €713M per day from fossil fuels in Mar and collected €7.4B in taxes — a 2-year high as oil prices surged >50% after the war began, Foreign Affairs. 1/ Sanctions pressure weakened at the same time.

The US eased restrictions on Russian energy exports for 2 months to stabilize markets, allowing Moscow to sell more oil at higher prices with smaller discounts. 2/

Ukrainian combat veterans are now training German troops for a future war with Russia.

Frontline soldiers arrived in Germany before Easter to train Bundeswehr units in drone warfare and modern combat, as Berlin prepares for a possible Russian attack by 2029, Kyiv Post. 1/ Training runs across core combat schools.

Ukrainians teach at tank, engineer, and unmanned systems centers, with artillery schools next. Focus: drone use, protection, and integration into armored and artillery units. 2/

Bolton: The US military did sink all Iranian mine-laying ships. But Iran is using fast boats, each carrying one mine and able to swarm tankers with man-portable rockets.

Trump has said for weeks the Iranian navy was destroyed. Except for these boats. 1/ Bolton: I wouldn't have entered into this ceasefire — it purely benefits Iran. They were getting pounded for six weeks.

When the bombing stops, they regroup and reorganize. Military pressure is what moved Iran at all. When you relent — they see American weakness. 2/

Von der Leyen: Europe doubles down on support for Ukraine, while Russia doubles down on aggression.

We also adopted the 20th sanctions package. The sanctions are biting so hard that the Kremlin is restricting internet and free communication, creating a digital iron curtain. 1/ Von der Leyen: This is Europe’s second energy crisis in four years. In just 60 days of conflict, our fossil-fuel import bill rose by more than €27 billion without one extra molecule of energy.

The answer is obvious: cut imported fossil-fuel dependence and electrify Europe. 2/

Rubio: It’s unclear whether new Ayatollah has authority.

The key questions are his credibility versus his father, whether succession should be hereditary, if he has the clerical credentials, and whether he’s actually making decisions or someone else is.

1/ Rubio: Iran is run by radical Shia clerics and is deeply fractured. Talk of “moderates vs hardliners” is misleading — they’re all hardliners.

Some focus on running the state, others are driven by ideology, including the supreme leader and his circle.

2/

China is rebuilding how occupied Ukrainian territories function — step by step.

It installs 6,000 Huawei base stations, replaces dollars with yuan, and keeps factories running with Chinese engineers. no ownership, no formal role, but everything depends on Chinese tech, Babel. 1/ Telecom comes first. Huawei supplies servers, antennas, routers.

Russia cuts Ukrainian networks when it captures a city. Miranda-Media reconnects it using Chinese infrastructure — across cities, villages, and roads. 2/

Iran offered the US a new deal: reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the war, bur nuclear negotiations postponed for a later stage.

The White House received the proposal but has not said whether it will explore it, — Axios.

1/ The problem for Trump: accepting the deal removes his leverage.

Ending the war and lifting the blockade before nuclear talks means Iran keeps its enriched uranium stockpile and faces no pressure to suspend enrichment — two primary US war objectives.

2/

Petraeus: Ukraine is stopping Russia almost cold on the front lines. Its drone warfare keeps improving, with a 35 km “death zone” under constant surveillance.

Production is surging: Ukraine may make 7 million drones this year, versus about 300,000 in the US last year.

1/ Petraeus: Ukraine is ahead of the world in drones — more capable and cheaper than others can make.

But others are racing to catch up, with the Pentagon planning $50bn+ on unmanned systems. Ukraine now has a brief window to secure its lead and protect its technology.

2/

Historian Niall Ferguson: Magyar’s victory over Orbán is good not because the left defeated the right.

What happened is that a non-corrupt populist who is not a lackey of Putin and Xi defeated one who became both corrupt and a lackey of our adversaries. 1/ Ferguson: This is a great day not just for Hungary. It is a great day for Ukraine and for everybody who believes in liberty.

If populists can lose elections, they are not fascists. There is hope here for Europe and for the wider democratic world. 2X

Petraeus: The real future of war is in Ukraine. The mass of unmanned systems there is incomparably greater than anything else on earth.

Ukraine is using nearly 10,000 unmanned systems a day, and traditional combined-arms warfare no longer works on that front. 1/ Petraeus: This is now the most lethal front line in history. You cannot drive through the 35-kilometer death zone.

Drones spot you, then come suicide drones, bomber drones, and glide bombs. Even resupply and casualty evacuation now go by remote vehicle. 2/

Petraeus: The [Hormuz] blockade was the right call. Ending this war with Iran militarily wrecked but still controlling Hormuz would leave Tehran strategically stronger.

We cannot let Iran decide who sails the strait or turn it into a private Panama Canal and charge tolls. 1/ Petraeus: The benchmark is not insurance cost. It is whether crews live.

CEOs told me they will not send sailors into that risk, and about eight crew members have already been killed by Iranian attacks on ships in the Gulf. That alone is enough to freeze traffic. 2/

Keane on Iran: We have about two weeks to complete the operation, with roughly 25% still to go and we now have twice the combat power in the region that we had when we started.

It is time to go back to full military operations and keep the blockade on. 1/ Keane: Opening the Strait without a nuclear deal is not progress at all. After weeks of negotiations, it is pretty obvious the Iranians will never propose a deal we can accept.

All they want is regime survival and the chance to recover enough to become a threat again. 2/

Bolton: I’m not sure Trump knows where he is, because I’m not sure he knew what his objectives were going in.

If you do not know where you are going, any road will do. He wants this over, but because he does not think strategically, he is at a loss over what to do next. 1/ Bolton: The only long-term answer to Iran threat is regime change. New faces are not a new regime.

The ideology is the same. Trump failed to do what a serious regime-change effort required before hostilities, but he still has time to work with and resource Iran’s opponents. 2/

NYT: Europe is preparing for a long war with Russia as the US has effectively withdrawn from peace negotiations. 15 months ago Trump promised to stop the war in one day. Today analyst James Sherr: “We find ourselves largely where we began in the negotiations.” 1/ Zelenskyy has “lost 80% of his illusions” about Trump’s support. Ukrainians believe they are holding their own militarily and that any resolution “will take place on the battlefield, if at all.” 2/

Russian soldiers are eating each other — literally. The Sunday Times reports that Ukrainian intelligence documented at least five cases of cannibalism among Russian troops due to starvation and Ukrainian drone strikes on supply lines. 1/ The most detailed documented case: November 2025, Myrnohrad, Donetsk Oblast. A soldier with the call sign Khromoy from the 95th Regiment of the 5th Guards Motor Rifle Brigade killed two comrades, cut off the leg of one of them and tried to eat it. 2/