Zelensky Gets the Fig Amid Trump Admin's Whacky Day
The Trump circus is off the rails this week—and maybe that’s not an altogether bad thing.
The pied ringleader and his comic-book cast of loons seem to have taken the art of trolling and ‘strategic ambiguity’ to the next level by befuddling everyone.
After needling both sides with the Tomahoax scam, Trump expectedly revealed the farce by turning Zelensky’s triumphant White House homecoming into a humiliation ritual instead.
The Tomahawks are officially off the table….for now.
For his part, “Keg Stand” Hegseth—after just last week threatening to increase costs on Russia—appeared to sport a conspicuous Russian flag for a tie to the meeting with the Ukrainian delegation.
Granted, he wore the same tie to a Netanyahu meeting earlier in the year—so it wasn’t necessarily an on-occasion impulse-buy. But you’d think the choice to wear it here was deliberate—either that or the years of beer-sloshed, negative-G hypoxia secondary to keg-stand inversions have severely degraded his conscientious faculties.
Again what we see is Trump having likely euchred the world in gaining another extension on his perpetual ‘two-more-weeks’ sham of kicking the ceasefire can down the road. The Tomahoax served as lure to drive another PR moment to re-energize “talks” in order to continue the hoodwink that the peace process is again reaching some turning point or culmination.
In reality, no such thing is happening, as the US has proven entirely incapable of so much as even passingly acknowledging Russian security interests necessary for the war’s conclusion. So, what can the newly-proposed Budapest talks possibly achieve?
In lead up, Trump has even again exclaimed that the war should simply be cut off at the current line of contact, because anything else would be ‘too complicated’, exasperatedly adding that both sides could just declare themselves ‘winners’. This kind of lazy finagling only works in Trump-World™, and the statement alone proves there’s virtually nothing left to talk about; the exercise is meant merely to lead the media through another round of PR joyrides.
Medvedev summarized it best:
Dmitry Medvedev:
During his meeting with the tearful beggar, Trump said something obvious yet interesting: “Let Russia and Ukraine both declare themselves winners.” That kind of compromise sometimes happens after wars — but not in this one.
It’s not just that Russia seeks victory on clearly defined terms — that’s a given. The problem is that the current Banderite clique in Kiev can never be seen as “victorious” at home under any circumstances. The drugged-up ghoul and his cronies know this perfectly well. Losing territory will never be forgiven, not by the rabid nationalists, nor by political rivals. For them, the end of the war means the end of the regime. That’s why Trump’s formula doesn’t apply here.
Still, the self-proclaimed peacemaker played his “Tomahawk diplomacy” card well — stirring global opinion in his usual style. He wrapped it up in classic fashion, hinting at the dispatch of nuclear submarines before jokingly admitting: “Sorry, brother, we need them ourselves.” To his credit, Trump remains firm in his stance: “It’s not my war — the senile fool is to blame.” Even the fool, however, was against sending long-range weapons to the Banderites.
But this, of course, won’t stop the ongoing flow of new arms to Kiev. The story isn’t over — and we must be ready for whatever comes next.
Beyond the vaudevillian theatrics of Hegseth’s tie and the overall bizarre optics of the Zelensky meeting, the day was filled with further oddities and improprieties alike.
Here Trump delivered a very presidential F-bomb on account of Maduro:
Not long afterwards, the White House press secretary was even more choicely decorous in her response to HuffPost irritants:
Given all that, HuffPost asked the White House: Who picked Budapest?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt responded minutes later with: “Your mom did.”
White House Communications Director Steven Cheung after a minute added the far more succinct: “Your mom.”
After HuffPost asked Leavitt if she thought her response was funny, she replied:
“It’s funny to me that you actually consider yourself a journal [sic]. You are a far left hack who nobody takes seriously, including your colleagues in the media, they just don’t tell you that to your face. Stop texting me your disingenuous, biased, and bullshit questions.”
HuffPost is devastated, and is fearful of asking any more questions, let alone escalating with “I’m rubber, you’re glue,” or some such.
Quel cirque !
Those who may scoff at such whimsical analysis should recall the Alaska meeting we were amongst the first to dismiss as a spectacle, covered up to present a PR coup for Trump.
This has now been proven correct, given new revelations by Financial Times which are quite the sizzling read—particularly this section:
Time and time again our skeptic glance has proven true here, from the Alaska kabuki, the Tomahoax debacle, to the phony B-2 strike on Fordow, now proven by multiple sources as having been theater.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with pursuing the Budapest talks, and good things could still come of them, particularly because Putin and Trump’s combined geopolitical valence is enough to cause major ripples throughout servile Europe.
Now, just as in the Alaska meeting ‘coverup’, sources indicate yesterday’s Trump-Zelensky meeting was a total bust:
“One of the sources said the meeting ‘was not easy,’ while the other simply said ‘it was bad.’...
In reality, the sources said, Zelensky pushed hard on Tomahawks but Trump pushed back and showed no flexibility...
Zelensky’s number one priority from the visit was to get commitments from Trump not just on Tomahawks but on a variety of weapons systems Ukraine wishes to obtain, his chief of staff told Axios ahead of the meeting.
Trump offered no such commitments.”
The Tomahoax was a lure to stage another production, while feeding Trump’s gluttonous ego—always an important secondary, if not primary, objective; anyone who doubts this fact need only glimpse the latest official Trump social media offering:
But just as there are kernels of truth to every lie, there exists an acorn of potential for some positive outcome in every theatrical sham. Plus, the Tomahoax saga is likely not at its end, as Trump could later revive the ‘threat’ if Putin again fails to concede to the latest nonsensical offers of unconditional surrender ceasefire.
As the political carousel whirls and whirls, the inexorable Russian military machine continues steamrolling ahead. Significant breakthroughs have again been recorded over the last two days. Let’s start with the smaller ones.
On the western Zaporozhye front, Russian forces advanced deeper into Prymorske:
On the eastern edge of Zaporozhye a major breakthrough occurred out of Verbove toward the Yanchur river chain of settlements, capturing the small settlement of Pryvillya:
With this capture, we can now see the Yanchur chain we have covered many times recently is slowly being encircled toward the inevitable target of Gulyaipole:
A write-up from Military Chronicle channel states this ~10km advance happened in mere days:
On the situation in the Pokrovsko-Huliaipole direction
The assault troops of the 37th brigade have made a 9.5 km advance over the past few days on the Verbove — Pryvolia section (taking control), securing an area of 16.5 sq. km in the border region between the Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia regions. Formations of the 31st and 114th brigades of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were pushed back.
The steady advance of the “Vostok” Group of Forces in this area is achieved thanks to a ridge of dominant heights (about 150 m), which originate near Novopil. The airspace in the Dnipropetrovsk direction is actively patrolled by a flight of Su-35S, which minimizes the use of Ukrainian Air Force aviation with JDAM-ER and AASM-250 HAMMER precision bombs on the newly occupied Russian army strongpoints.
The main task in this direction is to break through to the village of Danylivka, through which one of the supply arteries for the Ukrainian grouping in Huliaipole from Pokrovske passes. The Russian military has 5 km left to reach Danylivka and occupy Yehorivka and Vyshneve.
Just northeast of there the ring around Novopavlovka is tightening with the capture of new territory out of Filiya to the south:
The most profound changes may have occurred in Pokrovsk itself—or as it will soon become known, Krasnoarmeysk. Russian forces not only captured the southern suburb settlement of Novopavlovka (not to be confused with the earlier, much larger Novopavlovka)—circled in green below—but they have broken through the western portions of Pokrovsk city proper, capturing large swaths of it:
As can be seen, Suriyak now maps virtually half of Pokrovsk in the gray zone, shown as lightly-colored red. Given that Suriyak is amongst the most conservative of cartographers, this spells bad news for Ukraine’s Pokrovsk garrison.
Rybar supplies their version of the map, and summarizes as follows:
Chaos in Pokrovsk: Russian army attacks in different parts of the city, Ukrainian Armed Forces suffer heavy losses
▪️Russian assault groups are increasingly active in the city — especially in the western part of Pokrovsk, already recorded near the railway.
➖”In the Lazurny and Shakhtyorsky neighborhoods, the situation is almost unknown, but preliminarily — the Russians are conducting cleanups of apartment buildings,” Ukrainian military analysts write with delay.
☠️”Many Ukrainian soldiers were killed and wounded as a result of ambushes.”
▪️The gray zone is expanding. The situation in Pokrovsk for the Ukrainian Armed Forces has significantly worsened — if in the summer Russian “twos and threes” entered, now the Russian Armed Forces operate in larger groups and strive to consolidate positions in the city.
▪️Detailed situation — unknown. In a word: chaos, — the enemy complains
And another map for variance:
Russian forces have captured almost the entire southern half of Pokrovsk up to the railway line.
Myrnohrad is now in serious threat of encirclement.
You can see how deep in the city center Russians have been capturing AFU troops:
It would seem Pokrovk’s last days are not far away.
Next door in Mirnograd, Russian forces have likewise tightened the siege on the city, capturing large swaths of areas corresponding to the circles below:
Just north of there on the Dobropillya ‘bunny ears’ salient, Russian forces reportedly fully recaptured Novo Shakhove:
This likely came as part of the series of armored attacks which swept through the sector the past week.
Just east of there on the Konstantinovka front, Russian forces reportedly entered Konstantinovka proper at the very outer edges:
Further north, there are very interesting things happening on the Krasny Lyman line.
Russian forces have advanced out of the Zarichne zone, creating a salient toward Lyman. Meanwhile, Novoselovka was partially stormed and captured, with other areas nearby likewise taken over:
What’s most interesting about this, is there now have been Ukrainian reports that Russian DRGs have for the first time broken through Krasny Lyman city itself (blue line above) from multiple directions, though for now they dismiss this merely as recon-by-fire attempts to clock Ukrainian defensive positions and observation points.
In the north, Kupyansk has not seen much changes other than consolidation of the interior pocket, which most cartographers now report as fully captured.
From Suriyak:
Of some interest is that nearby Volchansk has seen a flurry of sudden activity, with Russians capturing much of the city over the past week:
The intention seems to be to unite the entire northern front after Kupyansk falls, bridging all the border areas to begin the recapture of all Kharkov region.
Some last few items:
Ukrainian energy grid rep says Russia has changed its tactics in attacking the grid:
Russia has changed its strike tactics: now entire energy systems are being destroyed — Ukrenergo
The main target is thermal power plants, which provide heating and electricity in winter, the company noted.
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A photo showing the scale of one of the recent Russian armored assaults has surfaced:
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Rasputitsa is in full effect on the front, as can be seen by this Russian photo:
It’s clear to see why tracked armored assaults have made a comeback.
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A gallery showing what Ukraine is smartly doing to stave off destruction of its energy grid:
It’s being written that these cages built around power substations can withstand many Geran drone strikes….in theory.
Ukraine building fortifications around energy facilities that withstand strikes from 15 Shaheds with 90kg warheads hitting the same spot, says Deputy PM Kuleba. Government created Coordination Headquarters to speed up construction.
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The White House official account posts something so asinine it’s difficult to believe.
Trump says the US is profiting handsomely from the war in its gallant effort to “save thousands of lives”.
Make it make sense.
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Scott Bessent managed to upstage the stupidity of the above. Here he explains that Americans were not in fact being double taxed by tariffs, because a tariff is a surchargenot a tax:
You learn something new everyday. Isn’t that a relief to know all your divested cash which paid for Israel’s genocide was allocated from you not as tax but as surcharge?
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Lastly, Azov Brigade head Bohdan Krotevych says the quiet part out loud. He says European partners are kept from the front because AFU command does not want them to see the true reality of the situation there:
It seems at this point the AFU’s collapse is being hidden from all relevant parties, and this info blackout is trickling up to Trump and his circus who reimagine the war as Russia ‘badly losing’ with millions of casualties.
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We’ll leave off with this thought-provoking Russian post:
Our source, close to the president’s team, revealed how Putin thinks about ending the conflict
If you want to understand how the President currently thinks about the future of the conflict and the ceasefire, put yourself in his shoes and look through the eyes of those who were at the helm of Russia in 1918.
Back then, the empire, which had fought for four hard years, was one step away from claiming victory — and suddenly, because of “hidden traitors” and societal decay, the colossal effort of millions of people was betrayed and exchanged for the humiliating Brest-Litovsk peace. Chaos and collapse followed; is it necessary to remind what that led to?
Putin often repeats that it was precisely internal betrayal, elite disunity, and slogans like “let’s just stop” that cost Russia its status and entire generations of the future. Over the years of the current confrontation, the country — with its frontline soldiers, mobilized regions, and economy restructured for military needs — has suffered too many losses to now declare peace at any cost under external pressure or to the applause of Western mediators.
The peace currently signaled by Washington and European capitals means only one thing: to put an end when Russia has not achieved its goals. And history, as the president has clearly reminded more than once, does not forgive mistakes when the sacrifices of millions are laid on the altar of temporary concessions.
Those around him clearly understand: there is no goal to fight for the sake of fighting. But today — as a hundred years ago — any “peace dialogue” has a limit beyond which the country immediately slips into a new version of national humiliation, with all the political, ethnic, and economic consequences that avalanche in. Yes, peace today seems close — there have been so many meetings, calls, so many ready proposals. But the value of these documents disappears the moment the country decides to voluntarily return to the 1918 scenario.
Therefore, those trying to understand the logic of the next steps must temporarily detach themselves from streams and columns of “peace experts”: in Putin’s eyes, for Russia to concede at the threshold of resolution means to cross out all years of struggle, to give way to new chaos inside the country, and to write one’s name in the textbook alongside those who exchanged victory for temporary calm and eternal regret. This is not a justification to “drag it out to the end” — it is a harsh warning: only a hardened and self-faithful society can withstand the sweetest temptation of history — the temptation of premature peace, which then turns into an even greater drama.
This is the logic in which Vladimir Putin thinks. If the end of the special military operation is possible through negotiations, it is only on the condition that all of Russia’s demands are met. As is known, Washington disagrees with this, which means the conflict will continue.