I told CNN Ukraine needs U.S. and European money and weapons commitments beyond 2027.

If Ukraine has that support, Russia knows the war will end. The more support Ukraine gets, the faster the war will be over.

1/ Me: Russia keeps sending more drones and missiles. Ukraine now intercepts most drones and cruise missiles, but not ballistic missiles.

That is the gap. We need Patriots and ballistic interceptors. Russia cannot move much on the front, so it doubles down on bombing civilians. 2/

"I slowly looked to the side and saw my legs. One leg was bent like the letter G. Hysteria started.

You can't move, no help coming, and you can do nothing." — Volodymyr Prostokishin, 23, lost both legs in Bakhmut.

Ukrainska Pravda writes his story.

1/ He was evacuating a 100-kilogram wounded soldier across an open minefield. A 120mm mortar hit. Two legs gone. Right arm shattered. Shrapnel entered his body and exited in spirals.

His comrade Grusha, who he was saving, died. It was two days before Volodymyr's 24th birthday.

2/

"Russians call it games. They put a bag over your head, pour water on your face until you almost drown.

They stick needles under your fingernails and apply electric shocks to your ears, your testicles, your fingers." — Yevhenii Malik, Mariupol defender — Kronen Zeitung.

1/ Malik on daily beatings: "In the morning they beat the whole barracks — just to say hello." Ten men in a 20-square-meter cell, standing from 6 AM to 10 PM.

No walking, sitting, talking, looking out the window, or smiling. Toilet and water only on command.

2/

Russia shifted air defense systems to Moscow from elsewhere in the country. Ukraine still penetrated them — The Atlantic, Phillips Payson O’Brien.

By revealing the limits of Putin's power, Ukraine has to be making his allies and flatterers very nervous.

1/ Ukraine struck the Dubna Space Communications Center twice in one week. Russia uses it to collect intelligence and coordinate army units in occupied Ukraine.

Zelenskyy: "Relevant actions are also being prepared against other similar enemy facilities."

2/

After 2022, NATO drilled scenarios that still assumed technological superiority and uninterrupted supply chains. In Ukraine, soldiers improvised with software updated overnight.

NATO is not prepared for the battlefield of the future. — Myroslava Gongadze, Ukrainska Pravda.

1/ For decades, NATO exported military knowledge to its partners. Today, Ukraine exports combat experience in drone warfare, electronic warfare, and battlefield adaptation back to NATO.

Integrating Ukraine is a strategic necessity.

2/

Foreman: Putin is becoming the Robert Mugabe of Russia. Each year he grows older, more detached from the man he used to be and more surrounded by aging sycophants.

He'll die in harness. He's driving Russia into the ground with no plan. When he goes, Russia will face crisis. 1/ Foreman: The Kursk submarine disaster was a huge political lesson for Putin.

He learned never to expose himself that way again. Everything since then has been stage-managed. 2/

Foreman: Putin wasn't a major figure in the KGB. He was a functionary in a minor town in East Germany.

The head of the KGB residency there didn't even know who he was. He was spying on East Germans, not the West. 1/ Foreman: The judo analogy fits Putin better than the idea that he is a grand strategist playing multidimensional chess.

He is reactive. He sees opportunities and takes them rather than following some master plan. 2/

Foreman: Putin grew up in post-war Leningrad. His older brother died of starvation during the siege. Another brother died before that.

His mother survived the siege. His father was wounded. I think all of that shaped his upbringing in the 1950s and 1960s. 1/ Foreman: Putin said he was a small boy who was bullied in a tough neighborhood.

He grew up in communal housing and looked for a way out of poverty. He was looking for structure and order, and that's what drew him toward the KGB. 2/

Foreman, ex-attaché in Moscow: Putin saw Biden as a weak touch after the evacuation from Afghanistan. He looked at Biden and thought: You're weak. I can get away with it

He chose badly. NATO stood together. America stood with Ukraine. Ukrainians fought for their independence. 1/ Foreman: Putin launched the invasion to absorb Ukraine, Ukrainian statehood and nationhood, and Ukrainians as an independent people, and bring them back into the fold.

He believes Russia cannot be a great power without Ukraine. 2/

Kyiv Independent: Zaluzhnyi’s electoral rating fell from 25% in July 2025 to 16% in June 2026.

Zelenskyy stayed almost unchanged: 31% then, 32% now. Budanov rose from 5% to 11%, Rating Group. 1/ If a presidential election were held now, Zelenskyy would get 32% of all respondents. Zaluzhnyi, now Ukraine’s ambassador to the UK, would come second with 16%. Budanov would come third with 11%. 2/

Matviichuk, Nobel Peace Prize laureate: The world embraced Trump's simplified idea: open negotiations, sign a peace deal, Russian war ends and Trump gets Nobel Prize.

But Russia does not want peace. Putin is only imitating negotiations. He wants to achieve his historic goals. 1/ Matviichuk: In Davos, people talked about geopolitical concessions and security guarantees.

But almost nobody discussed how to prevent another Minsk, or how to stop Russia from using a ceasefire to regroup and attack again. 2X

Matviichuk, Nobel Peace Prize laureate: In Russian worlds human life has no value. The Kremlin grinds through hundreds of thousands of its own soldiers.

In Ukraine, we return people their names. A person is not a number. Every life matters. 1/ Matviichuk: Every war crime we document stems from one leadership decision. Putin, Russia's political leadership and military command decided to shatter peace and launch an aggressive war.

They must be held accountable for that decision. It opened the road to hell. 2/

Zelenskyy: Russia has lost the Black Sea. Our Naval Forces, with the rest of the Defense and Security Forces, have done what many considered impossible.

22 of Russia's 90 Black Sea warships destroyed, 27 damaged since February 2022 — United24. 1/ Landing ships took the hardest hit. Ukraine destroyed 15 of Russia's 34 and damaged 10 more, the vessels that carry troops and armor ashore for landings.

It also destroyed 4 of 33 main combat ships and 3 of 23 auxiliary vessels, and left 17 more damaged across the fleet. 2/

Russia's next war on Ukraine will not redraw borders. It targets the first postwar elections, when the state is bled dry and society stays traumatized.

Moscow now fights to control what people believe rather than the map of the country — Andriy Demartino, Ukrainska Pravda. 1/ Ukraine has never run a postwar transition, while Russia spent years sharpening its tools of interference.

From the 2024 European Parliament vote to Armenia in 2026, Moscow left its digital traces across one European ballot after another. 2/

Krzysztof Bosak, a far-right deputy speaker of Poland’s parliament, says the government secretly transferred Patriot missiles to Ukraine in March.

Poland’s Defence Ministry says the list of military aid is classified — European Pravda. 1/ Bosak says the missiles were bought from the U.S. for Poland’s own layered air defense system.

The interceptors are needed for Poland’s defense against Russian Iskander missiles in Kaliningrad. 2/

FSB chief Alexander Bortnikov is personally overseeing an information operation to split Ukraine and Poland.

Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation says FSB will use forged WWII-era documents about the Volhynia tragedy, — United24. 1/ The campaign is expected to intensify on July 5 through Russian state-controlled media.

Ukraine says Russian services want to publish fabricated historical materials and push them into Polish and Ukrainian information spaces. 2/

Ukraine publicly displayed its US-supplied Harpoon coastal defense missile system for the first time since receiving it in 2022.

The missile can strike maritime targets at roughly 70–130 nautical miles, or 130–240 km, depending on the version, United24 Media. 1/ Ukraine showed the Harpoon launcher during Zelenskyy’s visit to Odesa region on July 4.

The Navy also presented domestically produced Neptune missiles, unmanned systems and torpedo weapons as part of a meeting on security in southern Ukraine. 2/

German tanks are returning to a region they once razed.

For the first time since the Cold War, Germany is permanently deploying military units abroad: the 45th Panzer Brigade in Lithuania, as American forces in the region dwindle, The Economist. 1/ The 45th Brigade trained along Lithuania’s border with Belarus to be ready to fight tonight to defend Vilnius and hold the Suwalki corridor.

It will grow from 1,600 soldiers to around 5,000 by the end of 2027, with armour, artillery, drones and air defence. 2/

Every major AI: Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, shows Crimea as Russian by default.

A Silicon Valley engineer traced why: Natural Earth, the database used by 20 million downloads a week, marks Crimea as SOVEREIGNT="Russia." — Ivan Dobrovolsky, Kyiv Independent.

1/ The engineer scanned all 34.1 million Google C4 documents used to train early LLMs. In 900,000 cases — 2.61% — Crimea is tied to Russian addresses: "Republic of Crimea" or "Simferopol, Russian Federation."

Sanctions cannot fix this. Weather forecasts carry the same data.

2/

Russia may announce a new mobilization after September's State Duma elections. United Russia needs a strong result to justify it — Moscow Times.

The party's support sits at 34% — down from 40% in 2022. Navalny's foundation estimates real support at just 16%.

1/ For the first time, residents of Russian-occupied Ukrainian territories vote in the elections. Electronic voting, criticized as a tool for rigging, approved in 33 regions covering 48 million voters.

Regional officials reportedly instructed to keep turnout at around 50%.

2/

"They really do call for their mothers sometimes, lying wounded on the battlefield. I thought it was a Hollywood thing. But it's here, and it's real." — Diana Savita Wagner, German volunteer paramedic, in her diary.

Russia killed her on January 31, 2024. — Ukrainska Pravda.

1/ Her last diary entry was 30.01.2024. A shrapnel fragment hit her between her vest and back, passed through her jacket, re-entered the vest, and exited the other side.

"I am the happiest person on earth!" she wrote. The next day, she died saving wounded Colombian volunteers.

2/