New York Times archive 7-7-2025 Some excerpts full article at link.

Ukrainian Troops Struggle to Hold the Line on the Eastern Front

https://archive.ph/L7TsF#selection-497.0-497.63

Kyiv is defending Kostiantynivka from Russian drone attacks. The embattled city is a gateway to Ukraine’s last major defense in the Donetsk region.

The city stands directly in the path of Russia’s summer offensive in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, which has seen Moscow’s troops make some of their biggest monthly territorial gains since 2022. Russia now controls more than two-thirds of Donetsk. But to seize the rest of the region, it must take urban centers still under Ukraine’s control and vital to its army logistics.

That makes Kostiantynivka a prime target. The city is the southern gateway to a chain of cities that form Ukraine’s last major defensive belt in Donetsk. Should it fall, nearly all cities farther north would come within range of Russian drones. It would bring Moscow closer to its long-sought goal of seizing all of Donetsk.



Either way, Ukrainian soldiers say Russia’s expanded drone strike capacity gives it an edge it did not have during previous assaults.

“Before, they could hit targets within two or three kilometers,” or less than two miles, said the commander of the unit operating crewless vehicles in the 93rd Brigade, who asked to be identified by only his first name, Oleksandr, according to military protocol. “Now, they’re striking every 10 to 20 minutes at a consistent range of 15 kilometers from the front line. Everything within that 15-kilometer zone is being destroyed.”

Russian strikes around Kostiantynivka are so constant that Ukrainian troops avoid leaving their underground shelters altogether. “We joke that going to the bathroom is practically a heroic act now,” said Mykola, a Ukrainian serviceman fighting southeast of the city, who asked to be identified by only his first name, according to military protocol.

Full article at link

quote:

Ukrainian Troops Struggle to Hold the Line on the Eastern Front

Zelensky should have agreed to a peace deal when he had the chance and still had something to save.
He's going to FAFO that it's all gone. Ukraine has already lost a generation of men.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g3u29sQSuFg

The cost of idealism and ego. Just a damned waste.

The MSM is under reporting what motivates the Ukrainians to continue fighting. The Russians have abducted over 20,000 Ukrainian children. They are among the biggest child abductors in history. The Russian motive for the abductions vary from attempting to Russify the children to "re-educating" the chiidren to return to Ukraine as Russian soldiers to kill their fellow Ukrainians. Some were trafficked in the criminal sex trade. That's just the half of it. Russian soldiers have looted civilian households for anything of value. The Russian soldiers are not penalized by their superiors for this. Then of course there is the deliberate targeting of civilians with their drones and other munitions. Then of course there is the fact that Ukrainian prisoners are routinely tortured by their Russian captors. The hatred of the average Ukrainian for the Russians is probably not appreciated in the West.

https://medicine.yale.edu/news...f-ukraines-children/

https://www.atlanticcouncil.or...hildren-is-genocide/

https://www.theguardian.com/wo...-abduction-war-crime

https://understandingwar.org/b...g-ukrainian-children

Ukraine SBU Colonel Executed in Broad Daylight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPlH6QqWGmQ

quote:

Originally posted by wcb6092:
Ukraine SBU Colonel Executed in Broad Daylight

I believe FAFO is the correct phrase here. Putin literally killed a dude by injecting him with Polonium, did they really think he would let the drone attack on some of his most important bombers slide? The KGB did, and likely does, wet work better than anyone in the world, the US included. The person orchestrating such an embarrassing, yet fairly irrelevant towards the Ukraine conflict attack, damn sure better be confident that they’re going to effect the outcome of the war, or else they’re going to get smoked. That’s pretty much what happened here.

The longer this conflict goes on, the less sympathetic I am, and the more I feel that the leaders of both sides are being a bunch of pig headed, stubborn fools that care more about themselves than their countrymen.

Fwiw, interesting reactions from Hegseth and Ratcliffe to PDJT’s statement of continued support of providing weapons to Ukraine -

https://x.com/JDunlap1974/status/1943874108439081122

https://www.newsmax.com/politi...dkt_nbr=010102z38uew

US Deploys Nukes to UK Amid Escalating Tensions

Amid the escalating tensions in Russian President Vladimir Putin's stalling of peace in Ukraine, the U.S. is reportedly deploying its nuclear weapons arsenal on British soil for the first time in nearly two decades.

The reports come from the OSINTdefender X account, an open source intelligence monitor, and the U.K. Defense Journal.

"For the first time since at least 2005, U.S. nuclear weapons have been deployed onto the territory of the United Kingdom, with sources reporting that several B61-12 Thermonuclear Gravity Bombs were transferred this week from the U.S. Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center (AFNWC) at Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, to the newly-built nuclear weapons storage facility at RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, England," the X post read.

"The B61-12 is an advanced low-yield 'tactical' nuclear gravity bomb that is able to be equipped by a number of aircraft, including the F-35A Lightning II, which is flown by both 493rd Fighter Squadron and 495th Fighter Squadron based at Lakenheath."

The U.K. Defense Journal reported it might be the first U.S. nuclear deployment to the U.K. since 2008. The U.S. Defense Department has not made any public statements on the deployment of nuclear assets, and the U.K. Defense Ministry does not typically confirm nuclear weapons locations and deployments, according to the report.

The news does come just days after the France and Britain agreed to reinforce cooperation over their respective nuclear arsenals to defend Europe. Currently, the Russian threat amid the Ukraine war escalation stands to be the No. 1 reason for that agreement.

"This morning, we signed the Northward declaration, confirming for the first time that we are coordinating our independent nuclear deterrence," U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told a news conference alongside French President Emmanuel Macron.

The U.K., France, and the U.S. are the only nuclear powers in NATO, which held a summit in June and held in-person talks with President Donald Trump's White House since.

Seven NATO nations contribute to the alliance's nuclear mission by contributing jets that can carry either conventional weapons or American B61 bombs stockpiled in Europe.

The U.K. has agreed in late June to buy 12 U.S.-made F-35A fighter jets capable of carrying nuclear bombs and will join NATO's shared airborne nuclear mission, in a major expansion of its nuclear deterrent, Starmer announced.

"The biggest strengthening of the U.K.'s nuclear posture in a generation," the U.K. Prime Minister hailed.

Starmer made the announcement while attending a NATO summit in the Netherlands. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte welcomed the decision, calling it "yet another robust British contribution to NATO."

The U.K. phased out air-dropped atomic weapons in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. Its nuclear arsenal had consisted of submarine-based missiles.

The above developments also come in the shadow of Trump and Israel's 60-day ceasefire against Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Iran, Britain, France, and Germany will hold nuclear talks in Istanbul, Turkey, on Friday, an Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Monday, following warnings by the three European countries that failure to resume negotiations would lead to international sanctions being reimposed on Iran.

The three European countries, along with China and Russia, are the remaining parties to the former President Barack Obama's 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal reached with Iran – from which the United States withdrew in 2018 – that lifted sanctions on the Middle Eastern country in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.

The E3 have said they would restore U.N. sanctions on Tehran via the "snapback mechanism" by the end of August if nuclear talks that were ongoing between Iran and the U.S. before the Israel-Iran air war do not resume or fail to produce concrete results.

"If EU/E3 want to have a role, they should act responsibly, and put aside the worn-out policies of threat and pressure, including the 'snap-back' for which they lack absolutely [any] moral and legal ground," Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said.

The snapback mechanism can be used to restore U.N. sanctions before the U.N. Security Council resolution enshrining the deal expires Oct. 18.

Before the Israel-Iran war, Tehran and Washington held five rounds of nuclear talks mediated by Oman but faced major stumbling blocks such as uranium enrichment in Iran, which Western powers want to bring down to zero to minimize any risk of weaponization.

Thousands in Kyiv Protest New Bill Undermining Anti-Corruption Efforts, Zelensky Still Signs Into Law

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/56777

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the highly controversial bill into law on Tuesday that effectively guts the country’s top anti-corruption organizations of their power to investigate independently, the Verkhovna Rada confirmed on its website.

Thousands of people gathered outside the presidential office in Kyiv to protest the new law approved on Tuesday that strips Ukraine’s top anti-corruption organizations of their institutional independence in what many fear is a major blow to the country’s push to eliminate graft in government.

On Tuesday night, Kyiv Post reporters on the ground observed around 2,000 to 3,000 people – mostly young – rallying near the Ivan Franko Theater in central Kyiv, close to the presidential complex.

The protest took place despite martial law, in effect since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, which officially bans public demonstrations.

The peaceful protesters are appealing to Kyiv to slash Bill No. 12414, which, once it becomes law, would effectively abolish the independence of anti-corruption law enforcement bodies in conducting investigations – namely, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

The draft law No. 12414, passed on Tuesday, places NABU and SAPO under the Prosecutor General’s Office – effectively within the president’s purview. The anti-corruption agencies, NABU and SAPO, have operated independently since 2015, often facing resistance from authorities.

This independence allowed them to investigate members of parliament, officials, and even ministers. Having autonomy in investigation, surveillance, and covert operations meant they did not have to share their cases with the existing structures, which tend to be lenient toward top officials.

But under the new bill, investigations – and all measures that were previously independent – will be under the control of the Office of the Prosecutor General, which is within reach of the president’s purview.

This means that as soon as a case against an official reaches a dangerous level, the prosecutor general can technically reassign it from NABU to any other prosecutor within the Prosecutor General’s Office – with unknown consequences for the case.

NABU on Tuesday also accused a senior official from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) of demanding a $300,000 bribe from a person to destroy evidence on a case related to the illegal smuggling of conscripts abroad, a day after the SBU raided NABU and SAPO’s offices, where it accused an NABU official of having Russian ties.

NABU said the SBU official demanded a $300,000 bribe from a person “under operative surveillance” without disclosing his or her identity. It is unclear if the incidents are related.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mJm4L2C7OA

Ukrainian MP Artem Dmytruk launched explosive accusations against President Volodymyr Zelensky, alleging he is stealing over $10 billion annually from the Ukrainian people. Dmytruk claims Zelensky is orchestrating raids on anti-corruption agencies to suppress investigations into his inner circle, including Deputy PM Chernyshov. The MP called Zelensky a “Grim Reaper” who is persecuting citizens, dismantling institutions, and clinging to power through fear and force. As political tensions rise, Dmytruk warns that Ukraine is descending into chaos under what he calls an illegitimate, paranoid regime.




‘A Step Back’ – EU Worried About Anti-Corruption Bodies’ Loss of Independence

https://www.kyivpost.com/post/56785

On Tuesday, the EU’s enlargement commissioner expressed her dismay at a vote by Ukrainian parliamentarians in the Verkhovna Rada to remove the independence of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO).

“Seriously concerned over today’s vote in the Rada, Marat Kos wrote on social media. “The dismantling of key safeguards protecting NABU’s independence is a serious step back.”

She said the independence of the agency, and of an anti-graft prosecutor’s office which was also put under parliament’s purview, were “essential” for Ukraine’s EU path to membership.

At the same time, however, European Commission spokesperson Guillaume Mercier said that the 27-member bloc is not going to raise the issue of suspending financial assistance to Ukraine over those actions.

In a response to a question by European Pravda on Tuesday, Mercier said, “It’s not a discussion at this stage.”

“I mean, there are safeguards that we have,” he explained. “Once we get there, I mean. We’ll see if we ever get there.

On Monday, G-7 ambassadors all expressed concern over the investigative actions of the Security Service of Ukraine against the NABU.

President Volodymyr Zelensky signed the highly controversial bill into law on Tuesday, effectively gutting the country’s top anti-corruption organizations of their power to investigate independently.



Zelensky dismantles Ukraine's anti-corruption infrastructure, brings law enforcement agencies under his thumb

https://kyivindependent.com/po...lock-eu-integration/

Why is it happening now?

Activists and lawmakers say that the crackdown on Ukraine's anti-corruption agencies is the government's backlash against high-profile cases that recently targeted Zelensky's inner circle.

These include the bribery and abuse of power case against Chernyshov, as well as an embezzlement case against a relative of Timur Mindich, a film producer and co-owner of Zelensky's Kvartal 95 production company.

"(If the NABU loses its independence), there will only remain anti-corruption investigations against low-level people," Nikolov told the Kyiv Independent. "Top corrupt officials will be able to get away with anything."

Another major factor is Donald Trump's election as U.S. president in 2024.

In contrast to the administration of former President Joe Biden, Trump's team has paid little attention to anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine and has not made any statements on the issue. Trump has frozen funding for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which had financed rule of law reforms and civil-society watchdogs in Ukraine.

Ukrainian authorities have seen this as a clear signal to act.

More at link