SITREP 8/28/25: Trump Scoffs at Russian Interests in Gross Display of Hubris
Trump made a very interesting comment during a press conference yesterday which entirely summarizes the West’s misguided approach to Russia:
Trump is asked on his opinion regarding Lavrov’s statement that Russia could not sign a deal with an illegitimate leader like Zelensky. Trump responds by saying such statements are irrelevant because “everyone is just posturing”, and “it’s all bullshit”.
Trump could not be more wrong that a civilizational state like Russia is merely “posturing” about its existential interests, and understanding this key divergence is essential for grasping the far larger implications of the ideological rift between West and East.
It also explains why observers have been tearing their hair out trying to comprehend why Russia’s consistently clear elucidations of its demands always seemingly fall on deaf ears. Russia issues the exact bullet point reduction of its demands, and the very next day Trump’s various reps and envoys muddle things by claiming they aren’t sure what Russia wants, or that a meeting is needed to further iron things out.
Trump demystifies things by explaining that these weren’t misunderstandings or a US inability to properly listen to Russia’s demands—even worse, these were outright US dismissals of Russian concerns all along. In Trump’s decadent, reality-TV-inspired world view, every global conflict is just another daytime soap opera production you can throw enough money at, ‘rizz’ up its hosts, and things fall into place.
He cannot seem to grasp the existential implications for the parties involved, a theme I recently alluded to:
The world’s a stage for silver-spooned Donnie, and its ‘inconvenient’ conflicts mere sideshows to be quickly dispensed with for the prize of accolades. That is what being uncultured gets you—the inability to understand rooted histories, barring the odd toss-off like “these people have been fighting for thousands of years” that Riviera Don occasionally rattles off about Gaza in pale imitation of erudition.
This is likely the real reason for Putin’s infamously pedantic exegesis on Russian history for Tucker Carlson, to signal to Western audiences that the conflict has much deeper roots and implications than their leaders are willing to admit.
Another implication of Trump’s crude dismissal of Russian legal objections has to do with the same so-called ‘Rules Based Order’ so often pedestaled as the sacred geometry on which the entire Western system rests. Trump callously pulls at the threads of this Order’s very seams by ignoring clearly legitimate concerns about one of the party’s legal standings, again signifying to the world that the ordurous odor coming from this Order is one of fickle arbitrariness and hypocrisy.
On the occasion of shedding light on this ideological divide between Russia and the West, it is interesting that Putin had just recently again shared his views on the origins of the West’s demonization of Russia. Many have debated this for years, citing Russia’s fraternal involvement with both US and UK in previous centuries and often attributing the ‘fall’ to the pre-WWI, Milner’s Roundtable and Mackinder’s “Heartland” years.
But Putin, for his part, traces the lineage of this schismatic hatred much farther back, to the days of Ivan IV, when he believes Papal representatives sought to convince Russia to shed its Orthodoxy, to no avail. After Ivan IV’s rebukes, Putin says the first inklings of the now-notorious “otherness” began to be applied to Russia, with Ivan deemed to be a mad tyrant and branded ‘the Terrible’.
So, how did we get from Trump’s casual table rants to plumbing historical myths? The underlying continuity can be explained simply: the West does not understand Russia, and does not care to understand it. This comes from an ingrained superiority complex and exceptionalism dating back centuries.
Rhetorical question: How can you resolve a conflict between two parties whose deepest cultural, spiritual, and geopolitical epistemologies you shroud in deliberate obfuscation?
A growing trend on the front we’ve been following concerns reports that Russian losses are decreasing while those of Ukraine continue to increase. Last time we covered Ukrainian reports showing Russian vehicular losses going up, but manpower losses going down since December of last year. But new reports claim Ukrainian losses are rising due to increased drone disparities with Russia:
Ukrainian channels report an increase in casualties on the front lines. The Ukrainian Armed Forces lose up to 300 trucks, pickups, motorcycles, minibuses, ATVs, and other logistics vehicles per day. Additionally, up to 40-50 units of more expensive armored vehicles, tanks, armored cars, and air defense systems are lost every day.
All these losses mean that the infantry and drone operators are taking over the war. However, the number of experienced drone operators is steadily decreasing. In 2024, an experienced drone operator had a lifespan of five to 11 months, with a survival rate of 70%. Now, an operator has a maximum lifespan of five months, and the survival rate has dropped to 30%. The war is becoming more expensive for Ukraine every day, leading to a catastrophic situation. Busification and attempts at a "technological breakthrough" only prolong the agony. According to many Ukrainian analysts, only the intervention of NATO countries and the United States can save Ukraine.
A new Italian report in Corriere della Sera makes several big claims:
Summary:
NATO drones for Ukraine turned out to be "useless," — Corriere della Sera
▪️Ukrainian military admit that NATO equipment does not cope with the reality of the front.
▪️Russia has already surpassed Kyiv in production scale and technology: fiber-optic drones in Russia fly up to 25 km, while in Ukraine — only up to 15 km.
➖"For every one of our drones, the Russians launch ten; moreover, they have more people for patrolling," added the Ukrainian serviceman.
RVvoenkor
As stated above, firstly the article mentions that NATO increasingly provides “obsolete” drones to Ukraine, while Russia innovates with progressively modern and high-tech ones.
Then it corroborates that Russian drones far exceeds those of Ukraine:
“For every one of our drones, the Russians fire ten; they also have more men to send on patrol,” says the officer. For the past few days, both armies have been launching matka, “mother” drones that can fly up to 50 kilometers away and have two small kamikaze “children” attached to their wings. These are expensive objects: over €200,000 for a single matka. So far, they have been used sparingly.
In a new Politico piece, one of Ukraine’s top drone commanders, Yurih Fedorenko of the 429th Separate Regiment of Unmanned Systems, says multiple times that Ukraine is behind Russia in drone production:
This roughly matches the scale that Fedorenko defined as the bare minimum for Ukraine’s competitiveness. “In total, we’re talking about 350,000 drones per month,” he said. “Then, we will be able to objectively reach parity with the enemy, even outpace them in some areas, and maintain a sustained tempo of destroying their forces on the battlefield.”
Interestingly, even after singing the praises of drone warfare for its entire length, the article concludes that artillery is still king:
But for now, the Ukrainian officer whose name is synonymous with drone warfare sounded a cautionary note about the transformation of the modern battlefield. The idea that unmanned systems could fully replace artillery or infantry is a misconception, said Fedorenko.
“In poor weather — heavy rain, strong wind, or snow — drones often cannot fly or gather clear imagery. “Who will kill the enemy? The artillery,” he said. “It fires in any weather. It will fulfill the task. No one will replace artillery in the next 50 years.” The same applies to infantry: It is still human beings who operate tanks and firearms, he said.
Yet they want us to believe that the country which rules in artillery warfare, and which—as admitted in the article—even produces the most drones, is somehow suffering ‘more casualties’ in the war. Who’s naive enough to fall for that?
If you want another humorous glimpse into how lost and out of touch the West is when it comes to warfare, here’s an MSM excerpt featuring leading think tank ‘expert’ on warfare, Rebecca Grant, giving her views on how a NATO force could easily “cream” Russian forces in Ukraine using the same ‘unprecedented’ airpower used against Iraq—not to mention “nuclear armed F-35s”:
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Getting back to the topic of slowing Russian losses, one of the seeming explanations for this is an increasing prioritization on safety and cautious assault approaches. Mind you, this is just a working theory as we’ll have to watch how offensives on the key semi-surrounded cities develop to truly gauge Russia’s evolving tactics. But for now, what we’ve seemingly been seeing is the refusal of Russian forces to attack major fortified cities “head on” in ways that could be described as ‘meat assaults’ as previously seen in places like Bakhmut, but more recently Avdeevka.
Recall the huge convoys of armored vehicles that rumbled out of Krasnogorovka through the fields north of the Slag Heap and Coke Plant. There has been nothing remotely approaching that despite several large cities now weakened and primed for such an assault, in particular Pokrovsk, Konstantinovka, and Kupyansk.
But it goes deeper than merely the lack of armored assault. It’s more about delaying of gratification—the lack of any main assault on the cities at all. As soon as the cities are reinforced, Russian forces now divert to capturing more of the flanks and outlying areas. In the case of Pokrovsk, now that Azov and many other ‘elite’ units like the 93rd have arrived, Russian forces have begun deflecting to areas past the infamous Dobropillya-direction breakthrough.
For instance, Rezident UA writes:
It is noted that the lack of use of armored vehicles was especially evident near Dobropol (north Pokrovsk front), although there were a lot of passenger vehicles there.
Previously, having achieved such a breakthrough, Russian troops would have immediately tried to introduce an armored reserve into battle to expand it. However, judging by visual evidence, Russian losses during the battles near Dobropolye barely reached a dozen armored vehicles —, which indicates low levels of its use.
With new statistics showing a sharp drop of Russian IFV, tank, and artillery losses:
Doomers and concern-trolls will of course characterize this as a weakening of Russian resolve. They say it’s now been a record amount of time since a last “major city” like Avdeevka has fallen, and Russia’s piecemeal tactics are merely concealing weaknesses and the inability of the Russian Armed Forces to advance. While it’s true it has been a while since a major city has fallen, at the same time, Russia could make up for all that by capturing several large cities in tandem, given that it has never encircled so many of them at once before as is currently the case.
The pace before has been one major city per year, with Mariupol in 2022, Bakhmut in 2023, Avdeevka in 2024, and nothing as big yet in 2025—Chasov Yar and Ugledar probably being the largest. But if Kupyansk, Pokrovsk, Konstantinovka, and potentially even Seversk and Lyman all fall in the next six months, with Slavyansk and Kramatorsk soon after besieged, it would more than make up for the pace.
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On that note, let’s take a look at current frontline developments.
In Pokrovsk, things remain murky as no one can seem to agree on where the line of contact is precisely drawn. Some maps have Russian forces inside a portion of the city like so, with a destroyed Leopard tank geolocated in the center below:
Kotlyne and most or all of Udachne have been captured, however:
One Ukrainian commander recently stated that Russian forces around Pokrovsk are equal in number to an amount capable of capturing most European countries, at 110,000 or more claimed surrounding the embattled town. This seems exaggerated or hard to believe given a surprise temporary breakthrough Ukrainian forces managed to effect in the area of Myrne, near Novoekonomichne, where it was noted Russian lines were ‘extremely thin’ or unmanned. Though Ukrainian forces were quickly booted, many mappers now mark it as a gray zone.
Yuri Podolyaka writes about the retreat of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from the area north of Pokrovsk, where the Armed Forces of Ukraine have been conducting a counteroffensive for a week. The 1st Corps of the National Guard of Ukraine "Azov" is actively advancing north of Rodinsky, but as time passes, the Ukrainian channels are "redrawing" the map, leaving us in control of the Kucheriv Yar region. The enemy's counterattacks have trapped them in a half-sack, without any logistics or supplies.
The 79th Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which was advancing in the Novoekonomichesky area, is not faring any better. Their "heroic breakthrough" towards Mirnoye resulted in heavy losses and no prospects of cutting off our salient towards Dobropolye.
In the north-Pokrovsk breakthrough area, things have stabilized with the arrival of Ukrainian elite forces. However, they were not able to dislodge Russian units any further beyond the initial top third of the ‘bunny ears’. Now, Russian forces have infact expanded control eastward, going with the line of “least resistance” like water flowing.
Amongst the newly captured areas was the entire shelf northwest of Rusyn Yar below:
Bulking up the flanks is an obvious precursor toward continuing the envelopment of Shakhove, which could likely fall long before Pokrovsk.
Zooming out, we see this is part and parcel to the ‘deflection’ strategy outlined earlier, wherein Russian forces merely divert to a new path of least resistance to continue gobbling up territory.
This may seem counterintuitive at first, but the accumulated ‘tactical’ gains eventually lead to operational troubles for the AFU, when key supply routes, heights, and other dominant positions are reached, which imperil the previously-diverted-from stronghold or population center.
You see in the map above, Pokrovsk was temporarily blocked, so instead of ramming against it head-on, Russian forces merely continued northward, encircling another decent-sized settlement in the process.
On the old Velyka Novosilka line southwest of Pokrovsk, Russian forces captured the settlement of Filiya, after earlier getting rebuffed from Zelenyi Hai—again diverting the flow to the opposite direction:
This begins putting pressure on the larger settlement of Novopavlovka just north of there, which is now slowly becoming encircled. The wider map shows a series of developing encirclements of the largest settlements along the broadest of the Donbass frontlines:
Apart from that, the past week has been relatively slow on the front, and some Ukrainian analysts ascribe this to a “strategic regrouping” of Russian forces, a kind of calm before another storm as Russia moves around more units into positions.
Top UA analyst Myroshnykov writes:
The enemy is currently continuing to conduct strategic regrouping.
A large number of units that were involved in the fighting in the north are being moved to Donetsk and Zaporizhzhia.
There are also some units being moved to the Kupiansk and Borova directions.
Our warriors are trying to improve positions where possible during this time.
In Sumy region, of course, there are successes on our side, and possibly more to come, because the enemy has withdrawn almost 70% of reserves and 20% of main forces.
Overall, the enemy is preparing for the autumn campaign, which may begin in a few weeks.
At the same time, they are not losing the current pace of offensive actions.
Obviously, the occupier's main focus will be concentrated on the Pokrovsk-Myronhrad agglomeration, Siversk, Lyman, Kupiansk, Konstiantynivka, and Orikhiv with Huliaipole.
And there, according to the "old scheme" — they will concentrate their main efforts where they can advance.
But the main direction will be Pokrovsk and Myronhrad. I think the battles for these cities are not as far off as we would like. Unfortunately.
Further north, Myroshnykov writes that the Serebriansky forest campaign is coming to an end, as Russians will soon capture the remainder of the forest:
The defense of the Serebryansky forestry, unfortunately, is coming to an end.
Along with this, the defense of the bridgehead on the eastern bank of the Zherebets River is also coming to an end.
This significantly worsens the positions for both key settlements east of the Kramatorsk-Sloviansk agglomeration - Siversk and Lyman.
Siversk is already practically half-surrounded (encircled from two sides), and if the enemy breaks out from the Serebryansky forest to Dronivka and captures it, then it will be surrounded from three sides.
Things there are, to put it mildly, not very good. If not to say, completely bad.
Lastly, some interesting things have happened in Kupyansk over the past few days. Not only have Russian forces captured the areas east of Petropavlovka as reported last time, but they have crept down the western side of Kupyansk, further encircling it and threatening the last main supply route out of the city:
Where the green arrow lies, Russian forces even reportedly made a quick raid nearly into the city center, but were pushed back. This likely signals probing actions for the suitability of quickly cutting the city in half at the main bridge (the one slightly further south is a railway-only bridge):
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A couple last interesting related points. A new video reportedly shows forcibly mobilized Ukrainian recruits explaining that thirty out of the forty of them which were mobilized have escaped—a whole 75% which will not reach the front:
Out of forty mobilized soldiers being taken to the front, thirty escaped.
This is told by one of those who did not run away — according to him, during the time the bus was traveling from the training camp to the front line, at every stop the mobilized soldiers escaped. - UARU
This is particularly interesting given a new post by a Ukrainian lawyer which states in his mobilized platoon, 60% of recruits went AWOL (СЗЧ, or ‘unauthorized leaving of unit’):
Presumably he’s also referring to stunts like this one seen last week:
This comes amidst a new report from Ukrainian Pravda that up to 250,000 Ukrainians have gone AWOL since 2022, with official data reportedly from the Prosecutor General’s office:
🇺🇦More than 250 thousand deserters and those who have unauthorizedly abandoned their units have been officially recorded in Ukraine.
As the publication "Ukrainian Truth" writes, citing a response from the Prosecutor General of Ukraine, from 2022 to July 2025, more than 200 thousand cases were opened for unauthorized abandonment of unit and more than 50 thousand cases for desertion.
It should be understood that not every case of unauthorized abandonment of unit results in an official criminal case with suspicion being handed over. Moreover, not every case of unauthorized abandonment is irreversible.
Ukrainian MP Anna Skorokhod claims this is just the ‘tip of the iceberg’ and that the real number approaches 400,000.
With such statistics and presumed casualty counts, one of the following four has to be true. Either:
Ukrainian ‘loss’ statistics are vastly exaggerated as maskirovka to fool Russia.
Ukrainian drone units are spectacularly better than given credit for, able to hold entire fronts by themselves with no other defenders present.
Ukraine is nearing total collapse.
Russian forces are in nearly as bad shape and unable to decisively ‘break through’.
What is most likely, given recent reports of AFU hardships?
UA losses vastly exaggerated.
UA FPV units are impenetrable wall.
UA nearing total collapse.
RF in nearly as bad shape.
823 VOTES · 2 DAYS REMAINING
Interestingly, a recent Ukrainian report from one drone unit even bemoaned the increasing lack of drone pilots on some fronts.
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A last item:
This week Germany announced what is essentially the closure of the Nord Stream case, as Die Zeit reports:
The attacks on the Nord Stream pipelines have largely been solved, and the alleged perpetrators are known. The German government is facing uncomfortable questions.
The investigation into the largest terrorist attack in European history has effectively been concluded with the arrest of a Ukrainian ex-AFU officer in Italy. But the most remarkable part is just a day after this announcement, Chancellor Merz had the unimaginable gall to pen this hysterically hypocritical screed against Russia, accusing it of being the ‘greatest threat to Europe’ and conducting hybrid attacks and sabotage against the wannabe-continent:
At this point, such insolence can only be explained as intentional provocation—these comprador elites are laughing at their own citizens, daring them to flag the unprecedented hypocrisy of accusing Russia of sabotage, while pumping weapons into Ukraine, a mere day after Ukraine was effectively confirmed as the perpetrator of the largest such sabotage attack on Europe in history; there’s simply no more words for it.
But alas, a clue to this paradox exists in the above article’s comments section, where a native German remarks that the Ukrainian man should be owed thanks for ridding Germany of Russian gas. Well—one supposes, then, that the Europeans are deserving of their lot, and their leadership. Of course, when nuclear holocaust comes home to roost on their soil, such perversions of logic will have been long forgotten.