Trump Republicans cut aid funding to Ukraine intentionally. They prolonged the war. They stopped peace. They saved Putin's army. They made more Ukrainians die.

Czech President Petr Pavel: Ukraine has already received 4.4 million large caliber artillery shells under the Czech Initiative, accounting for more than 50 percent of all large-caliber ammunition provided.

I wrote another thing! Russia is out of cash, so what happens now? open.substack.com/pub/thepeopl...

Interesting. The @jakluge.de budget browser says Russia's federal road funding budget for 2024-26 went 1.2->1.3->1.4 trillion rub. Plus trillions more to subsidise mortgages & support private construction. Yet Russian road building manufacturers say 2025 sales dropped almost 30%. (Pre-inflation!?)

In the fundraiser on which I have partnered with Wild Hornets @wilendhornets for their new mobile lab, we have raised $7301 out of the target $27000! The new mobile lab is needed to improve performance of their drones. If you have $ for good causes, please consider donating.

Follow @jakluge.de if you don't yet. This graph contains SO MUCH info if you really look at it and combine it with other reporting.

Poteru has now IDd 185k russian war dead from public info. Remember the real total is far higher. For 1st Jan-14th Feb, total found by year: 👉 2026: 11.7k 👉 2025: 7.7k 👉 2024: 4.6k 👉 2023: 5.3k 2023 was the Wagner prisoner meatwaves in Bakhmut. (Many=date ID confirmed, not necessarily death date)

The ‘world order’ didn’t collapse bc Russia invaded Ukraine. It collapsed because the free world chose not to stop them. By refusing to use our wealth & power to defend even a European democracy, we showed dictators everywhere that aggression pays. That was the death blow. We did this to ourselves.

Not good - Russia still brought in enormous amounts of cash in 2025. The positives; - shipped crude oil prices are lower so exports are down by ~$0.4bn/week ATM. If continued: $20bn/yr - gas prices are lower and Europe is cutting volumes (Continued...)

Western armour supplies save lives. I know we don't see major direct tank and IFV attacks recently, but there is still the need to move people around or use Please please ask your representatives to provide massive new supplies to Ukraine.

This thread uses claimed leaked Russian docs on casualties in one unit. Anyone got time to check the mediazona/poteru databases of losses to see if it's (1) accurate and (2) how many poteru/mediazona miss?

Watch what the Republicans do here. Their actions have been strongly in favour of Putin's dictatorship and harmful to Ukraine's democracy. It's pretty clear they support the dictatorship, but so far they've worked on marketing campaigns to improve the optics first because they know it's unpopular.

If you can help please do. This funds really good investigations. I subscribed here as well. The paid annual subscription is well worth it to me frontelligence.substack.com

Our team has recently published a major investigation into the expansion of Russian artillery production, with several more reports coming soon. To support our work, we are launching a small fundraiser for the coming month and invite you to support through donations: buymeacoffee.com/frontelligence

This was clearly the republican goal. Hardly anyone is calling them out on it. Instead there's constant criticism of Europe and abject media failure to correctly label the pro-Putin efforts of the Trump republicans to help kill Ukrainians and save the dictatorship's war on the democracy.

❗️The European Parliament approved a €90 billion loan for Ukraine, with 458 lawmakers voting in favor, 140 against and 44 abstaining. #Ukraine

Official approval news release. The EU’s €90B Ukraine loan for 2026-27 includes €60B for defense procurement and €30B for macro-financial and budget support via the Ukraine Facility. Funded through common EU borrowing, Kyiv will repay once it receives war reparations from Russia. #Ukraine

1\ Poteru added 10k newly identified Russian war dead to their database already in 2026. 37 days is the fastest yet. War days to first hit 10k identified Russian KIA: 👉 2022: 235 days 👉 2023: 86 👉 2024: 89 👉 2025: 55 👉 2027: 37 Real russian deaths are higher and there are caveats...

Notes: 👉 A Russian bond auction (=attempt by the Kremlin to borrow) failed last week. 👉 The other one succeeded so they did borrow 👉 BUT they couldn't borrow enough to be on course for their official goal 👉 AND they're paying more. Over 15%/year for multi-year debt. Maybe that's why so much repo?

This is an important point. Soaring gold prices have really helped Russia maintain the war. The CBR has even larger reserves of gold than the NWF. Not sure if it's confirmed they have physical control over all of it?

One of the best bsky accounts for solid data on the Russian war machine. Follow @jakluge.de . Good work by the financial times journalist to feature his data on Russian recruitment, it's the best I've seen.

1\ @tatarigami.bsky.social and his Frontelligence group with more info on Russian arms production. Russia relies on Western machine tools and the companies are letting kit get there to build weapons to kill Ukrainians. An awful state. Many useful stats in there too.

Republicans started working on this in 2023. In front of everyone they cut aid funding to Ukraine. Knowing more Ukrainians would die and more Russian missiles would get through. Media that doesn't explain clearly that Trump republicans worked to stop peace and help Putin is incompetent or lying.

While overnight rates have dropped, Russian debt yield has risen from ~13.8% to ~15%/year for 7-10 year bonds. New issues are similar. Investors are demanding more to lend to Russia. A good trend - and it makes sense given their poor financial situation.

Russian data suggest COVID deaths added at least 1 million additional pensioner deaths in 2020/2021. github.com/dkobak/exces... The effect will fade with time, but the mass deaths probably helped Russian pension finances. Hopefully new qualifying pensioners in 2026 + weaker economy will hurt.

1/5 Problems at Credit Bank of Moscow (MKB) were spotted last year during an audit run by the Central Bank. MKB’s chairman was subsequently replaced in June by the chair of the state‑owned Russian Regional Development Bank (VBRR), with other VBRR officials parachuted in to MKB's supervisory board.

In 2025 Russia hid its true deficit with ~2.5tr rub cuts to the pension+welfare funds, especially in Q4. MASSIVE pension funding cuts. Lowest federal spending in the data (2017-2025). They ran down their operating funds instead. I think there's ~1tr rub or less left there, they can't do it again.

1\ As always, great stuff from Janis. Read his work. Looks like Russia cut Q4 spending by pulling ~800bn rub from the social security fund in 3 months. It should have under 1tr rub left.

What makes most US reporting on Russia's invasion of Ukraine so shit is it reports on US involvement in the conflict, not the conflict itself, and when reporting on US involvement journalists take their cue almost entirely, and uncritically, from the Whitehouse.

Notice how Republicans only put on pressure for an "energy cease fire" to save Russian refineries for their summer driving season. They were quiet while Russia plunged Ukraine into freezing dark for winter. And Republicans blocked the air defence funding to help get more Russian missiles through.

1\ A prediction:: if Russian finances turn catastrophic and it's clear Ukraine won't crack, the Republicans will suddenly be far more active, using leverage to try and force Ukrainian surrender one final time. Failing that, they'll push a for as much of a win for Putin as they can.

I agree with this. We have what looks like solid evidence that Russia's special "transfer account" aka "the bucket" is now EMPTY. Last year it provided ~1.3tr rub to the wealth fund, and it was used to plug some gaps when oil prices dropped. If it's gone that's VERY BIG NEWS. Bad for Russia.

Russia is having to do regular sales of gold & yuan from the wealth fund to raise roubles. They're also keeping the rouble stronger to hide inflation. False rouble strength = they have to sell more gold & yuan to fund their budget. Good example of how their options are getting costlier.

1\ watch the next Russian national wealth fund report. It *might* convincingly confirm that Russia's "transfer fund" is empty. Public reporting hasn't picked up on this yet, but IMO it would be a huge deal. It provided over 1.3tr rub for Russia's war last year & could now be gone

Watch this. There's a "transfer fund" that might have extra assets to sell. They should empty that first, which we won't see, *then* hit the wealth fund (NWF). If/when these monthly withdrawals hit the NWF, Russia will be announcing one of their major slush funds is dry.

"According to a Reuters source... “no longer allocate money from the NWF. [for] aviation, microelectronics, Russian Railways...” the source said. The only exception, according to him, will be the Gazprom project for gas processing in Ust-Luga." Russia considering cutting off NWF aid to banks?

1\ Russian MinFin says low oil prices mean they'll sell 226.8bn rub of gold & foreign currency in February, vs 192bn in Jan. Afaik, this can come from the transfer account or the National Wealth Fund (NWF). Watch the NWF reports: if the NWF is hit, the transfer account should be empty.

Always remember. Not defeating Russia is a choice that Europeans and Americans are making. Nothing more, nothing less.

1\ Evgen Istrebin says Russia's treasury accounts didn't shrink in Jan 2026, while Jan 2025 saw a big financial hit. Let's see if we can predict the deficit. tl;dr: my default guess is that it's a ~340bn rub deficit. How did I come up with that number? (this is a new approach, probably wrong)

Russian oil at sea increased from 80 to 140 million barrels. Equivalent of the ~3.2m/day shipped going from avg 25 to 44 days at sea. Or ~15% of exports getting stuck. It matters whether this represents slower shipping to new customers, or if it's not selling & sitting at sea. Watch this data.

It's been clear that Trump and his Republicans worked to save Putin's war, prevent peace and make more Ukrainians die since they started blockading aid packages in late 2023. Denial of reality is comforting, but it leads to catastrophe.

Russian shipped oil export volume is steady, but since Sep ~60m more barrels stuck at sea. 4-week average taxable oil price rose by over $1/bbl to ~$41.20 last week. Total *seaborne* export value ~$1bn/week recently, vs ~$1.3bn/week in 2024. And the rouble is strong = less rub income for Russia.

1\ Follow @ukrainewarpod.bsky.social for lots of Russian finance info. This graph is interesting. Russia's officially reporting only ~1% of mortgage amount as in trouble. But notice the details...

This is a beautiful story about Ukraine wiping out a Russian air defence system with cool evidence to support it. Read the thread!

Russia issued 2.76 trillion roubles in repo today. It's basically "temporary" money creation they've been doing consistently. Down from 3.38tr a week ago, up from ~ 1.05tr outstanding from this week a year ago.

1\ Interesting find by Stanimir. Russian steel production is down ~12% since 2021 and they're begging for more production to be exempt from excise tax. This one tax raised ~65bn rub last year. Russia has to choose: kill & torture more Ukrainians or save Russian steelworker jobs. Sources below.

During January 2026: Deepstate group says Russia occupied 245 sq km of Ukraine (vs 445 sq km in Dec). Poteru found 8,289 Russian obituaries (vs 9,217 in Dec). Ukraine claims it inflicted 31,680 casualties (vs 35,050 in Dec). A slower month, looks like Russia was preparing for its next push.

For years, an online meme phrase spread in the Ukrainian segment of internet, saying that a pedophile lobby was working against Ukraine. Seeing how many anti-Ukrainian figures show up in the Epstein files, from US elites to officials in Slovakia, it no longer feels like a joke

The U.S. does not need a kill switch for F-35. They can just stop supplying spare parts, and the planes will be grounded very soon.

1/ This is a good demonstration of how false claims about Russian advances are generated. A small group, or a single man, goes on a suicide mission to raise a Russian flag in a Ukrainian-held village. They do so but are quickly killed or captured.