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/

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/

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/

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/

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/

Kellogg: When regimes near collapse, they lash out — raising risks at sea. Accept that risk, but avoid harming civilians.

Focus on IRGC command and control, overload the system, and force a breakdown while maintaining pressure.

1/ Kellogg: Increase pressure by breaking Iran’s command structure. Strike its 31 IRGC Headquarters and key nodes like Kharg Island and Hormuz.

The goal is to fracture unity of command so they can’t coordinate or control operations.

2/

Graham: I love the idea of a Second Amendment solution [arming Iranians to rise up] for the Iranian people.

We do not need American boots on the ground. We have millions of boots on the ground in Iran. They just do not have weapons. 1/ Graham: Give them weapons so they can rise up and destroy this regime. Arm the Iranian people and make the Revolutionary Guard’s life hell.

It is one thing to be bombed by America. It is another to have your own people shoot back. 2/

Kasparov: I cannot give a precise assessment of Iran, because this time the information is badly distorted from both sides.

Dictators always create fog, but here it is mirrored: Trump is no reliable narrator either. What we are seeing is a mutual deadlock. 1/ Kasparov: Trump has two options on Iran: finish it off or stop. Finishing it is politically almost impossible.

He would not get support even from loyal Republicans, and America likely is not ready for an operation of that scale. That still doesn't rule out some mad adventure. 2/

For 177 days, a Ukrainian soldier lay trapped in a factory ruin, surrounded by Russians, with no way out.

Roman Mongold, 38, survived on drone-dropped food — and weekly voice messages from his wife that kept him alive, WP. 1/ He entered Vovchansk on Mar 24, 2025.

4 bottles of water, canned food, grenades, cigarettes, a rifle — and a handwritten prayer from his wife tucked into his vest. Russians were already surrounding the city. 2/

Vincent Awiti, unemployed in Nairobi, signed up for a shop job in Russia. Weeks later he was wading past corpses floating "like waterlilies" in a Ukrainian river beaten by his squad for losing his gun.

1,000 Kenyans went. 30 came home — NYT. 1/ Vincent met a recruiter on the street who promised a shop job in Russia. The agent paid his flight to St. Petersburg on July 14.

On arrival, Russians handed him a contract in Russian. Sign, or repay travel costs. He had no money. He signed. 2/

Defense analyst Michael Clarke: If I were advising Trump, I would tell him to get out fast.

If he cannot win decisively — this war will define his legacy. He needs an exit he can sell as honorable before it damages not only the midterms, but his place in history. 1/ Clarke: That means moving toward a nuclear deal that looks a lot like 2015, even if Trump would never admit it.

Let Iran keep a civilian program, tighten the breakout routes, build international backing, and sell it as tougher and better than Obama’s deal. 2/

Defense analyst Michael Clarke: Trump set six deadlines on Iran and all of them passed.

Now we are on day 61 of a ceasefire with no real date attached. Hormuz is only partly open, Lebanon is still burning, and the whole war is effectively on hold until Trump turns back to it. 1/ Clarke: Friday matters because Trump hits the 60-day limit under the 1973 War Powers Act.

He started this war without congressional approval. Now he must face Congress, ask for more time, or try a legal dodge that is far less likely to work for him than it did for Obama. 2/

Fukuyama: Trump and Putin have been convinced for a long time that Ukraine is losing and cannot possibly win this war.

Yet we are now in year five, and the Russian victory they assumed was inevitable still has not happened. 1/ Fukuyama: A lot of Trump’s political posture has been built on the assumption of an inevitable Russian victory.

He has spoken as if Ukraine had no air force and no navy at all. That whole premise has simply not been borne out by the war. 2X