"Perhaps 1% of Russia's pre-war male population of fighting age has died in Ukraine. According to Marco Rubio, America's Secretary of State, 100,000 Russian troops died in the first half of 2025," The Economist states.

 

In 2025, Russian forces captured 4,562 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory, compared with 3,734 square kilometers in 2024. In November 2025, Russia recorded its biggest gains of the year, occupying 690 square kilometers.

 

However, despite a slight acceleration in 2025 due to Ukraine's multiple challenges, overall Russian progress remains very slow. Over the past three years, Russia has gained only an additional 1.45% of Ukrainian land.

 

"No large city has changed hands. Russia has fought to fully capture Pokrovsk — which, with a population of 61,000, was only Ukraine's 73rd-largest city before the war — for 14 months. Even now, the ISW says that it has not fallen completely," The Economist notes.

If Russia aims to gain full control over Ukraine's four eastern regions — Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk, and Luhansk — it still needs to capture 20,345 square kilometers. Even at the recent rate, Russia would achieve this only until May 2028, with casualties reaching staggering numbers.

 

Most combat in Ukraine is currently occurring in urban areas. This does not produce large territorial gains for Russia but could lead to significant strategic wins in the future.

According to the General Staff of Ukraine, between February 24, 2022, and December 7, 2025, estimated Russian military losses totaled about 1,180,870 personnel. In the last 24 hours alone, 1,080 Russian forces were neutralized.

More MSM Putin shills.... or merely reality beckoning, but then I've always been a Mearscheimer realist from the start despite smears and slurs from less well informed fellow members. But I have broad shoulders and a forgiving heart. 

 

David Blair  - Putin is in a win-win situation - Trump’s message to Russian leader might be summarised as: ‘End the war or I will stop helping your enemy’ -DAILY TELEGRAPH 

 

https://archive.ph/ctAtb

 

All the while, his forces march on, seizing more territory albeit at huge cost, shattering any illusion that what he wants is peace. Last month, Russia captured another 200 square miles of Ukrainian land, while night after night, Putin’s drones and missiles are still killing civilians in Kyiv and other cities.
All of this is possible because of the final crowning absurdity of Mr Trump’s diplomacy. The focus of his pressure and anger remains Ukraine. Putin faces no further threats or penalties beyond any that America has already imposed. He can watch, satisfied, from the Kremlin as Mr Trump allows him to play poker with a win-win stake.

 

I'll stick my neck out here my Nextdoor feed (the local social media for neighbours) is full of angry messages about bin collections, waits for GP appointments, and arguments about raising the council tax. Literally no one is talking about spending more on defence, and if Farage wins, that won't be high on his list either. Sorry, Kallas and the Baltic state we're going down with our migrant hotels and triple locked pensions into penury - not war. 

 

So going from the current 2.4% to 3.5% would require roughly £28-30 billion in additional annual spending, depending on GDP growth. That's about 10% of the entire NHS budget or equivalent to raising income tax by several pence on the pound.
Your point about Nextdoor priorities hits home—this would be a massive fiscal commitment when people are more focused on local services.

 

https://archive.ph/u6str

 

Boost defence spending or Russia will win, warns Navy chief

UK is at risk of losing historic advantage over Putin’s fleet in Atlantic, according to First Sea Lord  -DAILY TELEGRAPH

 

The Government has pledged to increase defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.6 per cent by April 2027. This is then meant to rise to 3 per cent in the next Parliament. It has also expressed a looser “ambition” to reach 3.5 per cent by 2035.

Concerns have been raised about where the money to hit this uplift will come from following delays to a defence investment plan that was meant to provide details. This was due in autumn, but there is now speculation it may not be published until next year.

9 hours ago, kwonitoy said:

"Perhaps 1% of Russia's pre-war male population of fighting age has died in Ukraine. According to Marco Rubio, America's Secretary of State, 100,000 Russian troops died in the first half of 2025," The Economist states.

Wow. They're going to be even more inbred than they are now with their mongoloid (idiot) heritage. Kind of like the inbred south in the US after the civil war.

 

No wonder they stole all those Ukrainian kids, to expand the gene pool.

How Ukraine's corrupt politicians are forcing Kyiv towards a Putin-approved peace deal: How embezzled millions, a golden toilet, and a president giving jobs to his pals could topple Zelensky-DAILY MAIL 

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15342345/How-Ukraines-corrupt-politicians-forcing-Kyiv-Putin-approved-peace-deal-embezzled-millions-golden-toilet-president-giving-jobs-pals-topple-Zelensky.html

 

'This is straight out of the Trump playbook: appoint your real estate buddy as peace envoy instead of actual diplomats,' wrote Bohdan Nahaylo, Chief Editor of the Kyiv Post, accusing both leaders of having 'chosen cronies over professionals'.

He noted that in September, AntAC published a report stating that Umerov’s family owned eight luxury properties in the U.S., but that he had only declared three of them. Dissatisfied with his explanations, they allegedly called for further investigations into the politician. 

'I see no conclusion drawn by Zelensky,' Ukrainian lawmaker Volodymyr Ariev wrote in a message to The Washington Post.

2 minutes ago, gargamon said:

Wow. They're going to be even more inbred than they are now with their mongoloid (idiot) heritage. Kind of like the inbred south in the US after the civil war.

 

No wonder they stole all those Ukrainian kids, to expand the gene pool.

I put that assertion through Claude;  

The Bitter Irony

So genetically they're about as close as the English and the Scots, or the Germans and the Austrians—part of a broader Eastern European genetic continuum but with detectable regional differences. Which makes the casualty figures you asked about earlier (potentially 1.5-2 million total casualties combined) even more tragic.

This isn't some ancient ethnic divide—it's largely a 20th-century political construct that's cost more lives than most people on your Nextdoor feed could possibly imagine while they're arguing about bin collections.

1 minute ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

I put that assertion through Claude;  

The Bitter Irony

So genetically they're about as close as the English and the Scots, or the Germans and the Austrians—part of a broader Eastern European genetic continuum but with detectable regional differences. Which makes the casualty figures you asked about earlier (potentially 1.5-2 million total casualties combined) even more tragic.

This isn't some ancient ethnic divide—it's largely a 20th-century political construct that's cost more lives than most people on your Nextdoor feed could possibly imagine while they're arguing about bin collections.

The English and the Scots I'd agree with. After all  the Royal family is Russian.

5 minutes ago, gargamon said:

The English and the Scots I'd agree with. After all  the Royal family is Russian.

The Queen never forgave the Russians for killing her family, the Romanovs, in 1918. Fast forward to the USSR's collapse the West's backing of Yeltsin, an alcoholic fool, was never going to work out well for Russia. And it's been downhill ever since. 

 

 

Uncle Sam got your back bro'! 

 

Russians at War - Inside a Russian Battalion on the Front Lines in Ukraine (Full Documentary)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_at_War

 

Venice International Film Festival

 

The world premiere of “Russians at War” took place at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2024. The film received a five-minute standing ovation from the audience.[16]

The Artistic Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera defended the film from Ukrainian critics, noting that the film is "very far from being an act of propaganda" and that "it is an anti-war film, with a very sensible and touching human approach, as well as great artistic craftsmanship.

 

 

 

Trofimova takes the audience from 180 km behind the front lines where ranks are "replenished" to the trenches of the front line where the men die. The soldiers depicted are often volunteers who say they went to the front for various personal reasons: vague patriotism, avenging fallen friends, protecting loved ones, preventing their children from going to war in the future, or, more commonly, for money.[8] Soldiers are shown drinking heavily, and sometimes note the pointlessness "of it all". One notes that they return back only dead

4 hours ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Russians at War - Inside a Russian Battalion on the Front Lines in Ukraine (Full Documentary)

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russians_at_War

 

Venice International Film Festival

 

The world premiere of “Russians at War” took place at the 81st Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2024. The film received a five-minute standing ovation from the audience.[16]

The Artistic Director of the Venice Film Festival Alberto Barbera defended the film from Ukrainian critics, noting that the film is "very far from being an act of propaganda" and that "it is an anti-war film, with a very sensible and touching human approach, as well as great artistic craftsmanship.

 

 

 

Trofimova takes the audience from 180 km behind the front lines where ranks are "replenished" to the trenches of the front line where the men die. The soldiers depicted are often volunteers who say they went to the front for various personal reasons: vague patriotism, avenging fallen friends, protecting loved ones, preventing their children from going to war in the future, or, more commonly, for money.[8] Soldiers are shown drinking heavily, and sometimes note the pointlessness "of it all". One notes that they return back only dead

.

45 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

.

 

I just finished watching this film in its entirety. It is a remarkable piece of work, and I am almost certain it was neither endorsed nor supported by the Putin regime. It portrays Russian soldiers, "warts and all" some of them conflicted about the war and the grim conditions under which so many serve. It shows a reality that propaganda would never dare to depict.
 

The film is brutal and unflinchingly real. It humanizes suffering and the complex moral dilemmas faced when confronted by the machinery of the state and the tragic plight of those forced to fight and die for the ambitions of corrupt, powerful leaders.

 

I can now better understand what Ukraine faces, but the film also reveals that these so-called "dehumanized orcs" are themselves victims. They are victims of Putin's authoritarian system and of a long history of Western interference in regional disputes that might have been better left to local populations to resolve.

 

This forces a crucial question: if you are dehumanizing people, who would you have been in Nazi Germany? Would you have been someone taken to the camps, or someone who kept their head down, hoping it would pass? Those of us marked as different don't get to hide who we are we are the walking dead from the start, branded with an indelible mark of opposition. The rest make a choice: to see, or to look away.

 

But here is the uncomfortable mirror: I am already in Thailand, enjoying the fruits of an authoritarian rule prisons that would rival the worst that Russia has to offer. I am not in jail, exiled, or with concrete boots in the Mekong River. My safety is a privilege granted by silence, a complicity purchased with my comfort. This film strips away that luxury. It asks not for easy judgment from a distance, but for raw, inconvenient empathy that recognizes the victim in the soldier and the collaborator in myself.

 

If you find yourself cheerleading for war in any form, you are aligning with the "banality of evil," no matter the historical or political conflict in which you imagine yourself. If, however, you possess true humanity empathy and a beating heart I implore you to watch this film. It becomes impossible not to feel profound pity and a renewed call to support our shared humanity. Rage away with your emojis dear friends. No one gets our of here alive in the end. and the last thing our leaders want is their armies tunring on their leaders and their orders. The youngg female director has created a clasasic war movie on a par with John Pilger and no wonder she had a 5 minute standding ovation in Venice. It is a work of art - a profound and terrible one but a work nevertheless. 

 

 

 

 

 

5 hours ago, connda said:

Uncle Sam got your back bro'! 

 

A troll meme but within that context the USA under Putin's poodle Trump does not belong in the before part.

EUROPE HAS CARDS!

Time to use them.

Finally.

Can this really be happening?

Forget the USA -- they've gone Russia rogue.

 

21 minutes ago, Jingthing said:

EUROPE HAS CARDS!

Time to use them.

Finally.

Can this really be happening?

Totally illegal  Belgium ,Euroclear, European bank and others highly disagree with stealing frozen Russian assets and giving the money to Ukraine  for more golden toilets !!!

Time to really pressure Putin.

 

 

Trump may be an idiot - he is -  but he has acess to the best intelligence in the world period and if the US says  Ukraine is losing the war then it  most probably is and the first official death of a British serviceman from the UK has died. RIP. 

 

 

10 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Trump may be an idiot - he is -  but he has acess to the best intelligence in the world period

Trump is a serial liar and says absolutely anything to suit his aims. It is blatantly crystal clear to all commentators and analysts of every stripe that Trump has been pro-Putin for a very long time, consistently positioning himself as Putin's poodle.

 

So, based on those two facts alone, I think all can disregard anything Trump says including his most recent set of comments about Ukraine "losing the war". He has ulterior motives.

Record numbers of Ukrainians desert army amid losses to Russia

Thousands of soldiers have fled the army despite the threat of jail or social isolation - AL JAZEERA

 

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/9/record-numbers-of-ukrainians-desert-army-amid-losses-to-russia?traffic_source=rss 

 

“There’s zero training. They don’t care that I won’t survive the very first attack,” Tymofey said, referring to the drill sergeants who were training him in April after police rounded him up in central Kyiv.

He claimed that his trainers were mostly preoccupied with preventing desertions from the centre, which was surrounded by a 3-metre (9.8 ft) high concrete wall covered with barbed wire.

“They don’t care whether a soldier learns to shoot. They gave me a gun, I shot a round in the direction of a target, and they ticked a box next to my name,” he said.

Civil war vibes - from Claude  , in fact the very definition of a civil war. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/09/ukraine-fresh-approach-battlefield-new-top-general-oleksandr-syrskyi

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Syrskyi

 

 

I'll search for information about General Syrsky and his family in Russia.Yes, I can tell you about General Oleksandr Syrskyi's family in Russia. This is a particularly poignant story given his role as Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

His Parents

Father: Stanislav Syrskyi

• Retired colonel in the Russian army, now 84 years old
• Career Soviet military officer who served in Vladimir Oblast
• In 1980, when Oleksandr was 15, his father was transferred to serve in Kharkiv, Ukraine
• Recently suffered serious health issues requiring treatment in Moscow for a brain disease

Mother: Lyudmila Syrskyi

• 82 years old, retired, sings in a vocal group of veteran teachers
• Active on social media before the invasion, posting patriotic Russian content and subscribing to pages like "I love you, Russia"
• Reportedly liked messages wishing good health to President Putin

His Brother

Oleg Syrskyi

• About 50 years old, works as a security guard
• Told reporters he hasn't spoken to his brother in years, saying "I don't communicate with him. I don't even know where he is"
• Claims he lost his job due to association with his brother, saying "Because of him, our family is called enemies"

Where They Live

All three live in the city of Vladimir, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, in a simple panel residential building.

The Family Situation

This creates a deeply complicated situation. General Syrskyi was born in Russia in 1965 but moved to Ukraine as a teenager when his father was stationed there. He's spent his entire military career defending Ukraine, including leading the defense of Kyiv and the Kharkiv counteroffensive. Meanwhile, his parents reportedly hide their relationship with him and don't discuss his career, while his brother has publicly distanced himself from him.

9 minutes ago, beautifulthailand99 said:

Civil war vibes - from Claude  , in fact the very definition of a civil war. 

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/feb/09/ukraine-fresh-approach-battlefield-new-top-general-oleksandr-syrskyi

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oleksandr_Syrskyi

 

 

I'll search for information about General Syrsky and his family in Russia.Yes, I can tell you about General Oleksandr Syrskyi's family in Russia. This is a particularly poignant story given his role as Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.

His Parents

Father: Stanislav Syrskyi

• Retired colonel in the Russian army, now 84 years old
• Career Soviet military officer who served in Vladimir Oblast
• In 1980, when Oleksandr was 15, his father was transferred to serve in Kharkiv, Ukraine
• Recently suffered serious health issues requiring treatment in Moscow for a brain disease

Mother: Lyudmila Syrskyi

• 82 years old, retired, sings in a vocal group of veteran teachers
• Active on social media before the invasion, posting patriotic Russian content and subscribing to pages like "I love you, Russia"
• Reportedly liked messages wishing good health to President Putin

His Brother

Oleg Syrskyi

• About 50 years old, works as a security guard
• Told reporters he hasn't spoken to his brother in years, saying "I don't communicate with him. I don't even know where he is"
• Claims he lost his job due to association with his brother, saying "Because of him, our family is called enemies"

Where They Live

All three live in the city of Vladimir, less than 200 kilometers from Moscow, in a simple panel residential building.

The Family Situation

This creates a deeply complicated situation. General Syrskyi was born in Russia in 1965 but moved to Ukraine as a teenager when his father was stationed there. He's spent his entire military career defending Ukraine, including leading the defense of Kyiv and the Kharkiv counteroffensive. Meanwhile, his parents reportedly hide their relationship with him and don't discuss his career, while his brother has publicly distanced himself from him.

Absolutely, yes. This has deeply tragic "brother against brother" civil war vibes, but even more complex because it spans an international conflict.

## The Classic Civil War Elements

**Families torn apart by allegiance:**
- Father who served in the same military (Soviet/Russian army) now on opposite sides
- Brother who's lost his job and been ostracized because of family connection
- Stepson who took his surname but now supports his enemy
- Parents who have to hide their relationship with their own son

**Geographic division:**
- Parents and brother: Russia (Vladimir)
- Stepson and biological son from first marriage: Australia (pro-Russian views)
- General Syrskyi: Ukraine, leading the defense
- Current wife and young son: Ukraine

**The impossible position:**
General Syrskyi is literally ordering operations that could kill Russian soldiers - potentially people his father served with, or from his hometown. His parents live 200km from Moscow, well within the range of Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian territory.

## What Makes It Even More Painful

This isn't just ideological - it's existential. In the American Civil War, families believed in different visions for one country. Here:
- Syrskyi is defending Ukraine's right to exist as an independent nation
- His family in Russia apparently supports the country trying to eliminate that nation
- There's no compromise position - Ukraine either survives or doesn't

**The personal cost:**
His parents hide their relationship with him. His brother says "our family is called enemies". His friend says the stepson situation is "a cut off period of his life."

He's essentially been disowned by most of his blood family for defending the country where he's spent his entire adult life. That's the definition of civil war tragedy - just playing out across international borders.

According to sources, SBU maritime drones Sea Baby attacked the Russian tanker Dashan, part of Russia’s shadow fleet, in the Black Sea on December 10. The tanker flies the flag of the Comoros Islands to conceal its affiliation.

The vessel was intercepted in Ukraine’s exclusive economic zone while moving at full speed with its transponder turned off, heading toward the Novorossiysk port terminal.

 

As a result of the attack, the tanker sustained critical damage and was completely put out of action — powerful explosions can be clearly seen in video footage shown by the sources.

 

The tanker is valued at approximately $30 million, and a single voyage can carry oil worth $60 million. Dashan is subject to multiple sanctions, including those imposed by Ukraine, the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Switzerland.

 

Security Service maritime drones disable another Russian tanker in Black Sea - sources

 

Photo: Dashan tanker from the shadow fleet (marinetraffic.com)© RBC-Ukraine (UK)

 

 

PETER HITCHENS: The astonishing Starmer plot to give £100billion MORE to Ukraine will ruin us all... and pave the way for a chilling future - DAILY MAIL+

 

https://archive.ph/mUXxk#selection-496.0-507.139

 

Here is the harsh truth. Ukraine is losing the war into which it was manoeuvred and shoved by others - both from the West and in Moscow - for their own cynical ends. One of those others has lost interest. The other will fight on indefinitely and mercilessly if the conflict goes on.

Much of it is in ruins. Multitudes of its best people have gone for ever, killed in battle or fled abroad. Most of us could not bear to see the legions of maimed and disfigured people which grow daily amid the wreckage.

Yet we lightly support dangerous, tricky, actions which will extend this hell for long years to come. Have we utterly taken leave of our senses?

 

9 hours ago, bannork said:

Let me search for information about Zelensky's family history and whether this claim is accurate.Yes, this is essentially true, though the exact details are slightly more nuanced:

The Core Facts Are Accurate

Zelensky's grandfather, Semyon Ivanovich Zelensky, and three great uncles did fight in World War II for the Soviet's Red Army against the Nazis. His grandfather had four brothers who all went to war, and he was the only one who had a military education. They all died in the war except for him.

Zelensky's Own Words

In January 2020, during the 75th anniversary commemoration of Auschwitz's liberation, Zelensky told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about a family of four brothers: "Three of them, their parents and their families became victims of the Holocaust. All of them were shot by German occupiers who invaded Ukraine. The fourth brother survived. Two years after the war, he had a son, and in 31 years, he had a grandson. In 40 more years, that grandson became president".

Additional Family Holocaust History

Zelensky revealed that his great-grandparents died when the Nazis burned their village. His grandfather's father and mother were killed in a terrible fire when the Nazis set ablaze the entire village where they lived.

Zelensky described his grandfather as having graduated from military academy and fighting through the entire war in the infantry, receiving many wounds and medals. Days before taking office in 2019, Zelensky put flowers on his grandfather's grave in his hometown of Kryvyi Rih.

So the image's claim is accurate - four brothers from the same Jewish family fought against the Nazis, only one survived (Zelensky's grandfather), and his grandson is indeed the current President of Ukraine.

An interesting overview of Russian papers

On the night of December 11, drones launched a massive attack on Russian territory.  The drones hit the Dorogobuzh Thermal Power Plant, located in the Smolensk region of Russia. This thermal power plant has an electrical capacity of about 90 MW and a thermal capacity of over 240 Gcal/hour.

The station provides energy to both industrial facilities and residential infrastructure in the region.

 

There are also reports of an attack on the Acron chemical plant in Veliky Novgorod, Russia.

The company is one of the largest producers of mineral fertilizers in Russia, producing nitrogen and complex fertilizers, and has its own division for managing a fleet of railway cars. The company also produces ammonium nitrate, which is used in both the civilian and military sectors.

 

In Voronezh, power lines were damaged as a result of the drone attack. Electricity and heat supplies were temporarily cut off in the left-bank part of the city.

 

Airports shut in Moscow, blasts hit power plant and chemical factory: What's known about the attack in Russia

 

 

Due to the massive drone attack, all Moscow airports — Vnukovo, Domodedovo, Sheremetyevo, and Zhukovsky — implemented the Carpet plan.

The airports were closed for arrivals and departures for more than seven hours.