Bolton: Ukraine now has the best army in Europe, better than any NATO member there except the U.S.

It has enormous combat experience and has developed drone and counter-drone technology that America should use, learn from, and take advantage of. 1/ Bolton: Ukrainians have brought Russia to a halt. Putin does not get serious about negotiations until Russian forces are really moving backward.

If you want to defeat aggression and tell others it is not in their interest, Ukraine is the model. 2/

Bolton: Trump is driven mainly by gasoline prices, not any coherent analysis of U.S. strategic interests.

Iran poses nuclear, terrorist and world-economy extortion threats — and the only real answer is eliminating the regime. If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will do. 1/ Bolton: Open the Strait militarily, keep the blockade on Iran, do not let Iranian oil out, and get as much Arab oil into global markets as possible.

That would show the U.S. can secure commerce, ease the threat to the world economy, and keep starving Iran. 2/

Kellogg: Trump may not have anyone in Iran who can make hard decisions.

Khamenei is supposed to decide, but we have not seen him and do not know if he is alive or coherent. So who do you really talk to when the hard decisions are left to him? 1/ Kellogg: Iran is following its Mosaic plan: decentralizing the Revolutionary Guards so each unit commands its own area.

That is why boats are being sent into the Gulf. Trump is in their heads, but the regime still thinks it is winning — which is nuts. 2/

Bolton: Ukraine’s ability to strike deep inside Russia and destroy much of the Black Sea Fleet caught Moscow totally unprepared.

When Russians hear targets are hit near Moscow and at deep military bases, they see the war is not going according to plan. 1/ Bolton: Russia may be trying to justify new strikes on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities, but the battlefield is at least at a standstill — and Ukraine is beginning to make small territorial gains.

It may be Russian forces that are about to crack, not Ukraine’s. 2/

Moscow wants Europe and U.S. to think it can escalate war further — NYT.
Russia is threatening Kyiv with “sustained strikes” because the battlefield is slowing against them.

[Ukrainian drones hit oil infrastructure and Russian cities daily. Drones turns every advance into a meat grinder] 1/ Russia followed its biggest strikes on Kyiv with warnings about attacks on “decision-making centers” and calls for diplomats to leave the city — psychological warfare. 2/

Zelenskyy: Gripen fighters with Meteor missiles — 200km+ range.

We believe we can push Russian aircraft back far enough to stop their mass use of guided bombs against us.

1/ Zelenskyy: First Gripens arrive in 10 months. Pilots start training now.

The challenge: our pilots are already flying combat missions in Ukrainian skies. We need to pull them out to train — and that's never easy during a war.

2/

UK spy chief Anne Keast-Butler: Almost half a million Russian soldiers have now been killed since the conflict began.

Russian forces are now going backwards on the battlefield for the first time since late 2022, — The Guardian. 1/ The estimate from British intelligence is even higher than recent calculations by Meduza and Mediazona, which estimated around 352,000 Russian deaths using probate records. 2/

Former CIA director Burns: Putin always believed Russia couldn't be a great power without controlling Ukraine.

When I met him before the invasion, he was utterly unapologetic. No denial. His message was: "So, what are you going to do about it?"

1/ Burns: The FSB — Russia's domestic security service — led the pre-invasion planning for Ukraine.

That's telling. For Putin and the Russian elite, Ukraine was never a foreign policy question. It was a domestic one.

2/

Commander of NATO’s Allied Rapid Reaction Corps Elviss: Russian soldiers don't scare me pound for pound against a Western army.

What scares me is that they've been living this war for four years. Battle-hardened, battle-tested — that's the threat.

1/ Elviss: Russia is our principal adversary. Since February 2022, their forces learned fast — they're significantly more lethal than they were and battle-hardened after four years of war. A formidable foe.

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Denys Prokopenko, 1st Azov Corps commander: Russia loses because its army is built for political control, not battlefield effectiveness.

Russians sacrifice enormous numbers of soldiers to please their leadership, even when it was doomed from the start — Ukrainska Pravda.

1/ Prokopenko: Ukraine wins because its army is built on trust and initiative.

HQ defines the goal and purpose. How to achieve it stays with the officers on the ground, who have the best picture of the battlefield. High trust, high initiative. The unit becomes a single organism.
2/

Bolton: Iran is using negotiations to prove it controls the Strait of Hormuz, that everyone must bargain with Tehran before Arab oil and cargoes leave the Gulf.

If Iran can turn Hormuz on and off like a light switch, the precedent is disastrous. 1/ Bolton: Tehran is desperately playing for time.

If Iran gets control of the Strait and resumes oil revenues, it will rebuild the Quds Force, militias, nuclear program, missile program and drone program — then threaten the Gulf even more. 2/

61-year-old American neurosurgeon Rocco Armonda flies from Washington to Dnipro to operate on wounded Ukrainians at Mechnikov Hospital.

“What we saw over 20 years of war in Iraq and Afghanistan, they saw here in the first two years of the full-scale war” — The Atlantic. 1/ After Russia’s full-scale invasion, Armonda started collecting neurosurgical supplies for Ukraine: stents, coils, spirals, flow diverters.

That’s how he met Andriy Sirko, chief neurosurgeon at Mechnikov Hospital. Four weeks later, Armonda was in Ukraine. 2/

"If Russia had not invaded Ukraine, nobody would be striking Tuapse or Perm."

Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago: Russia's recent "growth" came from wartime production. Civilian sectors stagnated — The Insider. 1/ Sonin argues Russian economic statistics don’t match reality.

Official data claims incomes are rising, but Russians are buying fewer cars, traveling less, delaying healthcare spending, and consuming less overall.

“People are objectively living worse.” 2/

Russians kidnapped and killed priest Stepan Podolchak from Kherson Oblast because he refused to hold sermons in Russian and transfer his church to the control of the Moscow Patriarchate.

His wife had to identify his body after he was taken from his home — United24. 1/ By 2024 Russians had killed around 50 priests. Russia uses religion as a tool of occupation as systematically as it uses schools, internet and property. 2/

U.S. is telling Europe to defend itself.
Trump is shrinking the US military footprint in Europe toward pre-2022 levels.

The Pentagon is cutting brigade deployments from 4 to 3 and delaying 4,000 troops bound for Poland — FT. 1/ The White House says this is about “maximising American security.”
Critics inside NATO call it a dangerous signal to Moscow.

Jim Townsend: “If we are pulling troops out willy-nilly, what messages does that send?” 2/

United24: No European capital can defend itself against Russia's Oreshnik.

Europe lacks reliable defense against ballistic missiles. The US produces only 700 Patriot interceptors per year, Gulf states fired over 800 in just a few days during the Iran war.

1/ On the night of May 24, Russia launched 90 missiles and 600 drones at Kyiv. Ukraine shot down 55 out of 90 missiles — but ballistic missiles remain the main problem.

There are simply too few Patriot interceptors available.

2/

Russia jams Ukrainian drones targeting its Baltic ports and redirects them into NATO airspace.

Baltic officials warn this could gradually erode public support for Ukraine in countries that have been among Kyiv's strongest backers, — Kyiv Independent.
1/ The first major incident: March 2026, several drones crashed in Finland. At least one confirmed Ukrainian.
Kyiv apologized, saying the drones were aimed at military targets inside Russia but sent off course by Russian electronic interference.
2/

Leverage in the war has shifted to Ukraine and Europe. Russia loses 30,000 troops a month. Ukraine makes 60% of its own weapons.

Brussels is floating Merkel, Draghi and Niinistö as envoys for Putin peace talks that do not exist — Nathalie Tocci, The Guardian. 1/ Russia is escalating the war. On Sunday it hit Kyiv with the hypersonic Oreshnik, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead.
Last week Lithuanians sheltered after a drone alert. The hybrid war between Russia and Europe is already running. 2/

Snyder: The essence of MAGA is losing and pretending to win. Trump is a failed businessman whose political career depends on persuading people he is successful.

When he lost in 2020, he tried to convince people he had somehow won. 1/ Snyder: The Republican Party has become a one-person cult. For it to become a party again, Trump has to lose big.

His cult depends on the illusion of strength and invulnerability — and that illusion has to be broken. 2/

Snyder: Trump is very much on Putin’s side. He keeps saying Russia has to win, will win, or has already won — but none of that is true.

Trump moved a lot of American power onto Russia’s side, and still Russia has not won. Russia is losing the war. 1/ Snyder: America has two negotiators, and neither is a diplomat: the president’s son-in-law and the president’s friend.

In any other country, that would look corrupt and impossible to work. It has already failed with Ukraine and Iran. 2/

Zelenskyy: Lukashenko said it's time for the presidents of Ukraine and Belarus to meet.

Interesting result — Lukashenko spoke, but Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya showed up. Welcome, Sviatlana.

1/ Zelenskyy: We never relied only on leaders. Societies matter. Do people feel what Ukraine fights for — and what threatens them if Ukraine falls?

That shared sense of danger united leaders, politicians, civic figures, business and media across partner countries.

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