Well, looks like the RU targeting change is happening.

Lots of interest in this. NB: “So if the Northern route remains closed and RU cannot find a way to significantly increase traffic from the Kerch end—Crimea is for all intents and purposes cut off. That turns the peninsula from a strategic asset to a major strategic and political headache.” Yup.

Thread. NB: “There is no cover up. Virtually everything has been known. The report questions this not with one syllable. So why the fuss?” IMO likely answer is bc she knows that most people won’t read beyond the headlines, and the report will lend fuel to conspiracy theorists in RU and generally.

About 8 hours after shadow tanker SMYRTOS was seized by UK three other shadow tankers made abrupt turns within an hour of each other, avoiding going through the English Channel. Home base called I assume. All ships in screenshots are sanctioned.

More on this.

Hmmm. Would be nice to see an actual transcript. Rather doubt it was that wonderful—and Ze has an incentive IMO to portray it that way before Trump reports on his call with Putin.

❗️Poland plans to purchase two more squadrons of F-35A aircraft, which will double their number in the Air Force — from 32 to 64 planes. This was announced by Defense Minister Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz during the ceremony for the acceptance of the first F-35s into service.

Yup.

Surprise. Bibi and team doing what they do.

Trump’s leverage over Kyiv isn’t zero but it’s a whole lot less than it was when he came into office. Pretty sure Putin knows that, and pretty sure he and his team no longer believe Trump will be a magic bullet for Putin’s UKR misadventure.

That’s a big deal. Getting more and more expensive to get RU crude to international markets.

I think his point is that that center line will be very difficult to agree to, and if it is agreed to it will likely to be contested and unstable. IOW a ceasefire agreement may not mean an actual ceasing of all fire and may not hold (see the LOC post-Minsk II).

Good lord. And we’re not even half way through his term.

Excellent analysis, w lots of good points, including this: “But where is the current line of contact? The two sides are divided by kill zones tens of kilometres wide…So even if a ceasefire is agreed in principle getting the two sides to agree on the line will be a source of numerous disputes.”

Good short summary of what is almost certainly the reality behind the “biolabs in UKR” brouhaha. www.rferl.org/a/us-biolabs...

IMO the implication re US bio warfare research in UKR etc is absurd. Why wld the US wld want extremely dangerous, highly classified, and politically fraught research carried out abroad? That is different from helping UKR manage its Soviet bio stocks/infrastructure, learning abt Soviet capabilities.

IMO Putin very likely believes this. Go back to his remarks after the Beslan massacre when he implied that nefarious Wstrn powers were seeking to dismember RU by enabling Islamist militants (and this not long after 9/11).

With very good reason.

Re RU adjusting its LRS targeting strategy — not just more civilian infrastructure but more civilians. Thing is I can’t think of a single terror bombing (aka counter-value) campaign that achieved its military-political objectives, with the possible (and contested) exception of Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

It’s too bad that this very welcome improvement in UKR-HUN relations is happening even as UKR-Polish relations are strained by the (IMO gratuitous) UKR renaming of SOF Operations Center to the "Heroes of the UPA." If I were advising Ze on diplomacy, I’d tell him to focus hard on relations w Poland.

My guess is that this will be what Putin tries to change the dynamics of the war, at least initially (say, in the coming months). Targeting restraints on RU LRS campaign will be even further scaled back, including not just dams but cultural heritage sites etc. Anything short of NPPs. We’ll see.

1/ Ukraine's forces keep hammering Russia's logistics into Crimea. Commander Filatov says a railway bridge and pontoon crossing near Chongar got hit today, after Russia tried replacing the destroyed Chongar bridge with pontoons, which also got hit.

Well, whatever one thought the odds were that Putin would seek a ceasefire along the current LOC this year, this shld make them go down. For me they’ve gone from very low to very very low.

Thread and comments.

Congratulations to Ukraine and Moldova. Incredible to think that the sequence of events that led to this point began in 2013 when Putin pressured the then-Ukrainian president into backing out of an EU Association Agreement because he didn't like Ukraine getting any closer to the EU.

Yup. And IMO it’s not just “France” in the sense of the government but the French people who are prickly about sovereignty and conflicted about losing it to the EU or sharing it in particular with Germany (or the UK before Brexit). Rather long tradition along these lines.

More evidence UKR strategy is to make RU citizens and residents of occupied territories share the pain. But always important to remember the pain is not equally distributed geographically or social hierarchy. Eg Moscow matters most politically, and Putin and team still live pretty pretty well.

Donetsk, Yasynuvata, and part of Makiivka — Russian-occupied cities already receiving just a few hours of water every three days — lost their supply entirely on Friday, reportedly after a Ukrainian attack cut power to a filtration station. www.interfax.ru/russia/1095533

NB: “The enormous increase in military spending is particularly noteworthy because RU had originally planned to rein in the costs of the war this year… mil expenditure was supposed to shrink to 6.2% of GDP in 2026… However, in Q1 alone it already accounted for 2.5% of RU’s expected full-year GDP.”

Pull up to a Tatneft gas station in St. Petersburg today and you're getting no more than 20 liters (5.3 gallons) of Texas tea. The oil company imposed fuel limits at all its stations across the city this morning. Diesel fill-ups are capped at 40 liters (10.6 gallons). t.me/ejdailyru/40...

Suggests at least part of RU’s response to the impasse at the front will be to try to intensify its LRS strike campaign vs UKR infrastructure rather than mobilization or a ceasefire by, say, year’s end. But I still think ultimately Putin will provoke a crisis w EUR before accepting a sovereign UKR.

Taking Kharg Island means US troops on the ground. This has the potential to get very bad. *If* he’s not talking his usual bullshit.

No idea if this is true, but if it is doesn't speak well of Nabiullina. She's ok with war crimes & crimes against humanity & arguably genocide - abducting Ukrainian kids, rape and torture, daily drone and missile strikes on civilians and civilian infrastructure - but draws the line at martial law.

Some key ambiguity re the term “planning” here. All militaries have contingency “plans,” as they should, but almost none are ever executed. And there can be a RU “plan” to invade eg the Baltic states in the sense of “get ready to invade in a year if needed” vs “green light for x date,” etc. 1/3

Ukrainian forces continue their systematic campaign targeting key access routes to occupied Crimea. Overnight strikes targeted four important bridges. 1/3

Not sure what to make of this but for sure there’s a need for an efficient EU foreign policy apparatus. Hopefully it doesn’t get acrimonious and become a major distraction at this critical moment. Smthg to watch.

❗️Ukraine’s 1st Separate Assault Regiment said the bridge near Armyansk is in even worse condition than the Chonhar Bridge following recent strikes. The unit said further details would be released soon. #Ukraine

It’s spreading. Takeaway: RU civilians are increasingly sharing the pain, and without UKR violating the norms of war.

Basically the mentality of a thief, and saying it out loud.

Agree but hope you’re wrong about new hell. IMO huge uncertainty about how UKR evolves politically post-war, but for sure the far right will be a factor. But that’s true to in most Wstrn countries these days. Ofc an awful war like this doesn’t help, but NB the main enemy is going to be RU, not POL.

❗️German company Diehl Defence, together with Polaris Raumflugzeuge, has unveiled the concept of a large jet-powered UAV called the AIRLAS Cobra 600 — a kind of “jet taxi” designed to deliver the IRIS-T surface-to-air missile over long distances.

Romania wants Ukrainian naval drones to self-destruct near its waters after a June 5 incident in which a Ukrainian drone, disrupted by Russian electronic warfare, lost control and exploded near Constanța. Kyiv confirmed it had been jammed. www.kyivpost.com/post/77961

"Only 11% of respondents across 15 European countries now consider the United States an ally, down from 16% six months ago and 22% in November 2024, the survey found. Meanwhile, 25% view the U.S. as either a rival or an adversary." @kyivindependent.com kyivindependent.com/european-tru...

More evidence the renaming was a serious mistake. Not sure of the internal politics on this but for sure it has damaged an extremely important relationship with Poland, given the nationalist right in Poland some help, hurt UKR’s image in EUR, and helped RU efforts to portray UKRs as “fascists.”

Seems pretty likely this was deliberate.

An informed source to Iran's Tasnim News: Trump's claim that Iranian officials have directly spoken to him and requested a halt to the bombing is pure falsehood. He added: No contact has been made with Trump and Iran responds militarily to aggressions.

The current ceasefire breaches, for instance, are reported to have been prompted by an Iranian Shahed drone downing an Apache helicopter. This would be a novel use of this system. The US military has not been forthcoming as to how this unusual event happened.

Thread.

Iran’s top military command, Khatam al Anbiya central headquarter, following US strikes on Iran, has said that the Strait of Hormuz is “declared” closed to the passage of all vessels and any transit through it “will be targeted” by Iran.

To recap: Trump is bombing Iran again with no strategy, harming the world economy, inflicting cruelty on citizens and visitors and professionals coming to the world’s biggest sporting event, disenfranchising Black voters while claiming that counting is voter fraud, and burning military stockpiles.