Zelenskyy is meeting Starmer, Macron, and Merz in London to decide how to force Putin into a ceasefire.

What pressure to add, which Russian targets to squeeze, and how Europe keeps negotiations moving while Trump is focused on Iran, — The Telegraph. 1/ The summit follows Zelenskyy’s open letter challenging Putin to a face-to-face meeting and a truce along the current front lines.
Putin: “I don’t see any point for now.” 2/

GPS jamming has reached space, and from orbit a single source can blank an entire continent at once, far beyond any jammer on the ground.

Scientists traced short GPS outages across Europe, from Iceland to Italy, to three Russian satellites in at least 3 of 75 cases logged since 2019, NYT. 1/ The disruptions are short, lasting under 10 seconds, but they spread across a continent.

They hit the GPS networks of the U.S., China and the EU. Russia's own system stays untouched. 2/

FT: Zelenskyy invited Roman Abramovich to Kyiv on May 21 and asked him to tell Putin he was ready for their first one-on-one summit after more than four years of Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Ukraine tried a direct peace channel. Putin still saw no point in meeting. 1/ Ukraine wanted to prove it takes direct peace talks seriously while the US, which tried to broker a ceasefire, focuses on the Middle East war.

Kyiv also sees leverage in Russia’s slowed offensive, huge casualties, and Ukraine’s deep strikes behind enemy lines. 2/

Snyder: Ukraine is a test of whether people put their country’s interests first or follow the whims of leaders who admire oligarchs and dictators.

People understand that Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves and that they can and should win this war. 1/ Snyder: You're always in history and your choices matter. Not making a choice is also a choice. Trump has weaknesses. He can't win wars, he loses them.
His corruption and greed create vulnerabilities. History won't solve these problems on its own. 2/

Putin's chief propagandists can no longer explain what Russia is fighting for.

Aleksandr Dugin spent decades justifying Russia's war against the West. Asked what is worth fighting for today, he failed to give a clear answer, The Atlantic. 1/ Dugin answered with a fantasy of Russians leaving cities for the countryside, living among "neo-ancient ruins" and connecting through an "internet of Russian villages."

Even his interviewer, Sobchak, struggled to keep a straight face. 2/

Petraeus: The single most catastrophic imaginable event would be conflict between the U.S. and China.

America is spinning more plates than at any time since the Cold War, but the China plate is bigger than all the others combined. It cannot even wobble. 1/ Petraeus: Xi’s goal is Taiwan, reunification is his last bucket-list item. The task is to make sure that every morning in Beijing, when Xi looks at Taiwan, he concludes: not today.

That is the most important mission of the U.S. military. 2/

Petraeus: The U.S. is in a strategic cul-de-sac with Iran. Any route out has downsides.

Iran has been badly weakened militarily, but it still has drones, missiles, fast boats and the ability to create serious problems in the Gulf and Strait of Hormuz. 1/ Petraeus: The challenge is restoring freedom of navigation through Hormuz without giving Iran authority to charge tolls or navigation fees.

While still dealing with enriched uranium, sanctions, proxies and the future of Iran’s nuclear program. 2/

Petraeus: Ukraine now has an advantage over Russia on the front lines.

Being outnumbered 5 to 1 and heavily outgunned matters less when Ukrainians are inflicting over 90% of Russian casualties with unmanned systems. 1/ Petraeus: The front lines are no longer really lines. The “kill zone” now extends roughly 35 km on either side.

Trenches and rural fighting positions are exposed because if there is a way to shoot out, a drone can fly in. 2/

Kasparov: A temporary ceasefire with Putin could make things worse. His army will not go home; it will go elsewhere.

Europe knows this, yet some still look for compromise while Poland, the Baltics and Finland are already preparing for war. 1/ Kasparov: Putin will not cut military spending. He will squeeze Russian businesses, oligarchs and the population harder.

He may still have resources for a year or two, but every strike on oil infrastructure hits someone’s business interest. 2/

Kasparov: This war has been a war of miracles from the beginning. On February 24, 2022, how many people expected Ukraine to survive at all?

Now we are in the fifth year, and Putin has failed to achieve his objectives one after another. 1/ Kasparov: Putin may no longer be able to continue this war on the basis of economy, production and numbers, but he cannot end it either.

If he ends the war without a meaningful result he can sell to Russia, he could be politically cooked. 2/

Putin faces a succession crisis in Chechnya that could erupt into a new war inside Russia, draining troops and money he needs for Ukraine — Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy.

The region's ruler Ramzan Kadyrov, 49, is probably terminally ill, and his heir is his 18-year-old son. 1/ Putin built his presidency by crushing Chechen rebels in the late 1990s, then made a deal with Akhmad Kadyrov. Kadyrov suppressed the insurgency and accepted Moscow's rule, and in return ran Chechnya as he pleased.

A bomb killed Akhmad in 2004. Power passed to his son Ramzan. 2/

Ukraine’s Ambassador to the US, Stefanishyna: If Russia had any real desire to negotiate or compromise, there would be zero obstacles.

Ukraine has shown openness and flexibility in every format proposed, including by President Trump. The aggressor never had real intent. 1/ Stefanishyna: Ukraine’s capabilities are now seen and felt by Russia on its own territory.

They deprive Moscow of the ability to attack Ukrainian cities and kill more families. That pressure is one reason Putin is being forced back toward the option of dialogue. 2/

Gen. Wesley Clark: Putin is trapped. He sees no way out that preserves his survival as Russia’s leader, so he keeps pushing and hopes Trump’s friendship, Chinese help, Iranian help and U.S. distraction will cut support to Ukraine until Ukraine somehow collapses. 1/ Clark: Putin really believed he could seize Kyiv, capture Zelenskyy, shoot him in the street and take over, despite 10 years of war already showing Ukraine’s resistance.

He did not understand the spirit of Ukraine and was blinded by his own desire. 2/

Even some of Russia’s most prominent hawks are starting to say publicly that Russia cannot win this war.

The debate inside Russia is no longer how to achieve victory in Ukraine. It is whether victory is still possible at all, WSJ. 1/ Oleg Tsaryov was supposed to become the Kremlin’s man in Kyiv after Russia captured the Ukrainian capital in 2022.

Now he says Russian propaganda created an illusion of inevitable victory that is colliding with reality “in the most painful form.” 2/

Khrushcheva, great-granddaughter of Soviet leader:

There's no [Ukraine] deal because Putin wants what he wants.

Trump likes strongmen, so Putin thought he could milk it. In Anchorage last August Trump probably said he'd push Zelenskyy out of Donbas. He couldn't deliver. 1/ Khrushcheva: Putin thinks history will favor him — that's why he pushes for Donbas, a promise he must keep.

But most Russians don't care and didn't want this war, only 20–25% did. They call it a special military operation, but an operation can't last 4.5 years. 2/

Starmer: The UK and NATO intelligence assess Russia could attack a NATO country as soon as 2030.

That's the urgency behind everything we're doing now.

1/ Starmer: Ukraine war pushed energy prices up. Iran crisis pushed them up again.

UK deploys forces to the Gulf defending civilian targets from Iranian attacks — our pilots were airborne within hours. All of this hits our resources at home.

2/

Applebaum: Trump is using a specific language from the 1930s: “enemies within,” “enemies of the people,” migrants and political opponents as “vermin,” migrants “poisoning the blood” of Americans.

That language comes from Hitler, Stalin and the Stasi. 1/ Applebaum: American politics has been racist before. Americans have called each other traitors and unpatriotic.

But calling people insects, vermin or parasites is different, it is language used by regimes that treat enemies as less than human. 2/

Garry Kasparov: Ukraine must win, and there is no other option for the future of Europe or the free world.

Putin is not on a trajectory to win. Ukraine has shifted the momentum, and the smart move now is to wait him out, The Telegraph. 1/ Kasparov: Conceding any land in Ukraine will only pause Putin's war machine for a while.

Then it keeps moving, past NATO's borders, into the Baltics, toward Europe's Western democracies. Giving up territory will not stop him. He wants Russia restored as a global superpower. 2/

Shtilierman, Firepoint co-founder: Our goal is a ballistic missile that can strike Moscow and St. Petersburg. Russia is a monocentric state. Everything is concentrated in Moscow. What happens in Volgograd, or Syzran has no impact on the elite. We need missile that can strike beyond 700 km. 1/ Shtilierman: We chose the path of simplifying and scaling fast. We use the same principle for missiles. The biggest mistake is saving money on R&D. Never buy one sample. Buy five. Even if one path has an 80% chance of success and the others 5%, develop all five at once. 2/

Putin could pay a personal price for failure in Ukraine. After four years he has not won, and defeat has ended more than one ruler in the Kremlin.

Russia has now fought longer than the Soviet Union fought Hitler, and this April it lost ground — Gideon Rachman, FT. 1/ The failure already reaches inside Russia. Moscow's main airports close often, mobile internet drops, and assassins have killed generals on the capital's streets.

Ukrainian strikes on Russian oil refineries are pushing fuel prices up across the country. 2/

Commander of Ukraine's 3rd Corps Biletsky: Russia runs short on manpower — you feel it every month.

The meat waves that were normal 7-8 months ago are gone, even at the hottest sections of the front. And Ukraine now dominates the air — from the first trench to 200km deep.

1/ Biletsky: Russia failed winter, failed spring. In May they captured roughly 10km² — Ukraine gained more.

When you can't win on the battlefield, you terrorize women and children. The tactical shift is happening right now.

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