Since I have been locked on the Baltics since last autumn when we suspected that Russia was preparing for conflict in the near future, much earlier than analysts had thought, we saw quite early that the countries with troops in the Baltics were the hardest hit.
It was difficult to find common denominators as to why Trump had Canada in his sights and Spain constantly getting their comeuppance besides both having the most troops in the Baltics.
The US has troops all over Europe but (had) quite few in the Baltics; when Trump started worrying about the costs, the Baltics promised to cover everything – transportation to and from, accommodation, equipment maintenance, and probably some strawberry on top like good food and four-star quality.
Trump withdrew everything but so far only from the Baltics, Poland, and Germany – for example, he has left a lot in southern Europe still.
The Baltics were also the ones who immediately started spending +5% on NATO defense just as Trump demanded, and in addition, they promised to only buy weapons from the US at any overprice – they topped Trump’s entire checklist with extras but that did not stop him from pulling all units from the area generally considered Russia’s next invasion target.
All the crap happens in Spain – the thunder-run against Ceuta and the worst forest fires in Europe, for example, besides some scattered special focus from Trump on all sorts of things. Yes, it doesn’t help that they have weak leaders in difficult times but that is not the reason all bad things are happening to them right now, hate coincidence.
Trump has never left Canada alone; he constantly goes after them with all sorts of strange tirades. Now he probably supports some province wanting to become independent and threatens to cut all import-export lines to them because Carney didn’t greet politely enough the last time they met.
Germany has just forced its brigade movement into Lithuania by the way, and all combat parts are now in place but support functions are lagging.
Poland has of course been exposed all the time, so there it is more of a steady Russian subversive activity mixed with sabotage and direct attacks like the 23 drones in autumn 2025, or that sharp missile recently. As a country, they also fail to completely protect themselves and the conflict with Ukraine became so serious that Zelensky had to go there. Nawrocki believes some are a Trojan horse.
And then the Baltics themselves naturally, but there it is direct preparation for war so it is part of the holiday package they bought from Russia.
What I do every week is see what changes and we caught early when Trump moved the last combat unit out of the Baltics without fanfare, namely the heavy battalion in Võru.
Next I scan if Canada, Germany, or Spain pull troops but so far it is calm.
If you haven’t forgotten the hybrid attack on Ceuta, the Spanish coalition government’s supporting parties have now made statements; both are suspiciously close to Russia on their respective fringes and the horseshoe theory is not just wild imagination.
Ceuta has not blown over if you thought so – in an area with 85,000 inhabitants, several thousand idle young men run around where insecurity, vandalism, and crime have risen sharply – translate that to your own residential areas and stop thinking politics.
Yesterday the residents had a large demonstration where they demanded that security be restored; they were careful to make it apolitical.
All security services with some self-respect now warn of a new call on social media for another rush into Ceuta on August 15, so we will get a receipt quite soon on the magnitude of this operation.
Russian psyops have also shifted into high gear and are capitalizing maximally on the situation to create division not only in Spain but throughout the EU. Far-right and far-left are coming up with all sorts of exciting statements.
The governing party Ezquerda Unida was deeply hurt by the 22 EU countries’ letter to Spain and wants, as proportional retaliation, to immediately withdraw all Spanish soldiers from Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania – if you still had trouble putting this together, maybe it opened your eyes a bit?
Vox, who stand on the right wing, were just as outraged but have previously preferred to withdraw all soldiers from the rest of Europe and send them to border protection, and now it became even more urgent with the chaos in Ceuta.
That the Spanish central government has failed to guarantee the safety of the citizens in Ceuta is indisputable, and if you ask yourself – “why haven’t they just sent some special forces from Spain, kicked out all who are there illegally, closed the border, and fulfilled their commitments to the citizens” – you have asked a very good question.
Spain is already in full beef with Morocco so there is no direct relationship to maintain there, rather Morocco should apologize for completely opening their side of the border and assisting with buses to get people to the area; Spain basically has the right to shoot back those who illegally sneaked in with a catapult.
The Spanish government, which then did not solve the problem in Ceuta, instead chose to impose strict border controls against Italians – now no one really likes Italians but the priority seems a bit strange even to many Spaniards now.
I stand firm that this is state-supported hybrid warfare and if the Spanish government does not soon show decisiveness, votes of no confidence from fringe parties or larger demonstrations will come as sure as mail; we can be confident of that. Russia sits as a puppet master pulling all the strings at once.
But Germany you say quickly, they are thriving in a sea of sauerkraut and bratwurst.
We have gone through the drone attack in Leipzig but at the same time Russia attacked a German-owned cargo ship in the Black Sea with several drones, and two German company warehouses in Ukraine were totally written off – a total of four German targets were attacked over a few days.
By the way, the Russian drone in Leipzig tried to crash into the fuel tank of the Ukrainian plane before the airport employee took it down, but the detonation did not occur. Apparently God is on the Germans’ side.
It is also claimed that the government is lying and that the plane was fully loaded with ammunition from France.
Trump has tailored his tariffs from time to time and in May they were especially targeted at Germany according to the Germans. Hard to see anything else actually unless it is specifically Morrison Garage he dislikes the most?
But Denmark and Sweden also have troops in the Baltics you say as proof that this does not hold up to reasonable scrutiny – Greenland maybe or have you forgotten that?
Trump has not forgotten Greenland and companies he has interests in are prospecting in Greenland even though they have not received permission from the Greenlandic government – if you thought that madness was over.
Sweden seems to have managed, I can’t recall anything major in the past year and we have also given Ukraine our Gripens now. The fact is that Russia ranks Sweden as one of the bigger threats to its imperial ambitions. We are probably in a coveted podium position, which makes me very proud since otherwise, it is usually Curling we excel in, which was indeed mesmerizing when we filmed the Canadians’ shameless cheating, but not as big as winning the World Cup in football or the decathlon in the Olympics.
Yes, Russia is doing its best to complicate our parliamentary election and probably prefers a difficult government formation. If they can’t get that, they would rather not see this government again because it has done too much good over 4 years regarding the Ukraine war. Which is what they care about.
That doesn’t mean a new government would make any deteriorations at all, just that Russia is trying to remove a problem they have today – I repeat that all 8 parliamentary parties have made the right decisions since 2022 with one exception once, which is a rounding error.
Without stepping into domestic politics, some statements from several different people have been a bit strange in recent months and mostly felt like they led to negative chaos for their own party. I usually raise an eyebrow at such things because before an election, people tend to be extra careful not to embarrass themselves and instead promise what voters want to hear, but do not intend to honor once the vote is cast. Not to be confused with demonizing the opponent in pitch-black demonization with flames behind, but more direct own goals that don’t stop even though the party tries to silence the individuals.
No party can control individuals’ statements on social media, and when the media picks up on it, it becomes “the party says/thinks,” which can then affect the optics for the entire party, and in the long run, it hits the whole group of parties they belong to.
I believe Russia has amused itself with this among us, individuals who have either stood in Russian pay or have been persuaded with a gratification of 10 million SEK into the partner’s newly opened limited company account for lecture services in an empty meeting room in Stockholm spread over a year. They have been activated before the election to create chaos, and as long as the Tax Agency gets its tax, they don’t care. The police stopped investigating crimes a long time ago.
If you pair the offer with some dirt from the individuals’ internet history, fabricated or true, and maybe also some threats against the family with the help of any gang, you can quite easily justify it to yourself with, “I actually have to protect my children, they are the most important,” which is one of God’s ten commandments.
That Russia has been caught influencing elections across the West is indisputable, so if you are one of those reading above but do not believe that Russia is also involved here, you are more than naively optimistic and should consider why you had that reflex.
Regarding Iran, Israel has fired the two high-ranking officers responsible for the regime change in Iran. Our line is that Israel wanted regime change, and I stand by that.
About European interceptors, this one is worth reading and we have an almost Soviet five-year plan where key components come from a single manufacturer, making it difficult to scale up production.
Now it is SAM/PT that is needed against ballistic missiles, and the authors hope we can increase to 500 interceptors annually around 2028, with a bit of luck.
https://www.csis.org/analysis/europe-needs-asap-program-air-defense
That is far below Russia’s own production for ballistic missiles, and since you probably need more than one interceptor per missile – too little, too late.
They build 65 Iskander Ms per month, and if we need 3 interceptors per Iskander, we should build five times that. Then, of course, it also depends on where we position the platforms and where Russia chooses to strike somewhere.
Additionally, Russia has China backing it, which is constantly expanding production lines for them – the production rate is increasing besides introducing various countermeasures such as flares, evasive maneuvers in the terminal phase, and cluster munitions in the warhead.
We follow this in waves and assume somewhere that the problem is solved when we stop hearing about it, but probably there has been some political survival with “yes, we are tackling this immediately” and then it has been left alone because decisions are required to make progress, and that is not a political specialty.
Defense materiel needs political decisions on purchases for them to dare to scale up since they are partly not allowed to sell to whoever they want, politics has decided that, and then they cannot sell on the civilian market. If political decisions are missing, companies do not scale up, and everything has a lead time of years, then politicians naturally blame all problems on the companies, but that’s how it is.
Already last winter, Ukraine flagged an acute shortage, and at that time, it seems we have already sent some from our emergency stocks.
Now we are at a loss when the US stopped giving us Patriot interceptors, and besides worsening the situation in Ukraine since Russia can now smuggle North Korean ballistic missiles to bridge its own production, it has exposed a weakness in ourselves.
Apparently, our air-launched missiles have not worked well against ballistic missiles according to Ukraine, which has tested with F-16s; we’ll see if Gripen becomes a game changer?
Simply put, we currently have low capability in Europe to defend ourselves against FPV drones, long-range drones in mass attacks, and ballistic missiles. A bit like the Netherlands in 1940.
We have some NASAMS, guns, and Iris-T for individual drones and regular missiles, but it is a thin little picket line outside Ukraine, unfortunately.
The fact is that now when Russia has lobbed drones into the Baltics, the Balkans, and now Germany, they have not been detected on radar in most cases, so our “early-warning” systems are apparently half-good on top of all other misery.
Could it be that in all the staff functions that the US has now withdrawn, they were involved?
Bulgaria has had two drone visits with warheads, by the way, besides Romania. Earlier, an oil pipeline for S-N transport exploded in Italy, if you remember.
Easy to see that they are targeting the oil infrastructure from the Balkans up into central Europe.
Putin will probably capitalize maximally on this, one would guess, with verbal threats against us in the near future now that he knows we do not have the defense capability against ballistic missiles.
I’ve already checked the Baltics, and they have alarmingly little air defense in a country as large as Ukraine in area.
If you remember 2022, countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic started placing large orders for CV90, Gripen, and other high-value platforms. I tried then to explain to everyone that it was Russia’s way of building up a queue through orders so that nothing could be ordered by Ukraine – that drew a lot of criticism at the time, but over the years everyone now knows that Orban and Fico were/are close to Putin, so that assumption was not entirely off the mark.
Russia also projects a threat against us to get our countries’ Chiefs of Defense to start glancing at job descriptions and placing prioritized orders for national defense – Russia can further increase that concern by placing some missiles in our larger cities and blaming Ukrainian electronic warfare.
Or they use Ukrainian drones they have repaired and blame Ukraine; it seems that’s what they did in Bulgaria recently.
Both make our Chiefs of Defense full-time Omeprazole users, and Ukraine gets even less from us.
We will not declare war since it can still be interpreted as a mistake with a bit of goodwill, but the Chief of Defense will panic and order everything that can be bought for pesetas.
Moreover, some governments have been too infiltrated to function properly, with Germany being the worst – the manufacturer of Taurus started smelling morning air in 2022 and promised to begin producing Taurus in large quantities and at bargain prices as soon as orders were placed.
The Germans placed no orders, and I guess they also stopped others from placing orders because if Ukraine had been allowed to buy Taurus, they would have bought every Taurus on the market and eventually just bought the parts and assembled them themselves.
Then Germany chose not to send Taurus to Ukraine either on humanitarian grounds; it got confusing in the end with all the explanatory models and most recently “Ukraine doesn’t need them.” Tell that to the murdered children.
For a long time, at least until 2024, Ukraine was not allowed to use Western weapons inside Russia, and there were 48 Iskander platforms along the northern border launching missiles at civilians.
Compare that to the Iran war where the entire West shoots down missiles aimed at other Gulf countries, and the US is furious at Europe because we refuse to combat targets in Iran – double standards and zero equal treatment, but I no longer have the energy to cascade-cry over this.
According to rumors (unconfirmed), Syrskyi also has not prioritized taking out missile launchers after Ukraine began equipping domestic capabilities that could strike deep.
Of course, it makes a big difference if Ukraine can do as they did with Russian air defense and radar and take out the platforms for ballistic missiles; they know the geographic areas where they are but currently do not have the capability to combat them, according to their own recent statements.
But suddenly they did it anyway – some suspicion that the drone units have tested whether they can solve the problem within their mandates.
Simply put – Ukraine was not allowed to buy weapons, they were not allowed to license-produce weapons, they did not receive the right weapons in material support, and they were not allowed to engage targets inside Russia.
Now in 2026, Europe does not have enough defense because we have dismantled ourselves, Russia has produced new equipment too quickly, and we are starting to worry about our own security and are hoarding instead, but too little.
A very long chain of bad decisions over 4.5 years has brought us to today – no roses for today and lots of thorns.
Elon Musk refuses to let Ukraine use Starlink inside Russian territory, which they probably could use to take out the ballistic weapon platforms since it would give them real-time navigation capabilities they do not currently have for long-range weapons – I guess?
Another thing that would probably work well against the launch platforms is Taurus if they got Germany’s entire stock immediately – just guessing there too.
Turkey has recently promised a huge load of long-range ammunition, so maybe that will solve it?
It’s still exciting that we are putting our hopes in Turkey 4.5 years into the war.
Others highlighted as the West’s saviors are South Korea and Japan and that they will manufacture for us – not exactly a glowing endorsement for Europe at all.
Probably our production problems also have to do with China starting to impose export bans on key components and raw materials designed to slow down our critical manufacturing.
You can quickly translate this to civilian production and finance as well; if China slows exports we need for our own production, it will be 99% finished products that no one buys.
If Russia causes our electricity prices to skyrocket, all production becomes more expensive, and we sell nothing on the competitive market.
The US just sold EUR without warning to defend the USD, by the way. That may not sound so dramatic, but it is a departure from a 40-50 year established procedure.
The US has been working overtime for a while now to become as self-sufficient as possible, Russia has had its steel bath and even though they are in bad shape, they are standing with crutches. China has a central dictatorship that can more decisively implement tough measures, whereas we are 27 democracies with our own wills. In addition, we have a few countries, political parties, and individuals working inside the union for foreign powers with the aim to undermine.
For me, it is clear that we have everyone against us in everything and that it will be a biblical trial for us in the coming years – if we just see the light, everything will be resolved; soon the posts about Bible studies will come.
The US will defend its petrodollar with beak and claw, Russia wants to retaliate for old Ukrainian cheese, and China preferably wants us as weak consumers and absolutely not producers who compete with them.
Until a few years ago, we were defenders of the petrodollar and did everything the US asked, we bought all our products from China, and Russia was allowed to do as they pleased until 2022 – then everyone was happy.
A new European sheriff has definitely moved into Aborrträsk, but it is important that we can live up to the somewhat short mantle we have now taken on, and there will be no shortage of backstabs from everyone else starting now. We have entered an active phase in the hybrid war fought on all levels, and if we do not manage to defend ourselves, Russia will go to war where the Baltics are the first stop.
One thing we know – empires that have stepped out into the daylight and gone full bananas do not stop until they are stopped, so we can probably assume that either Russia collapses or they continue to escalate.
Ukraine is currently between us and them; the faster Ukraine can collapse Russia, the sooner calm will settle over Europe – they are doing everything they can and a little more.
In the near term, we will probably see increased crisis for Spain through Ceuta, in Ireland there will be unrest that may spill over to mainland England, and drone war/sabotage against Europe will increase exponentially.
Then follows a financial crisis with LNG/oil shortages this fall and sabotage against our electricity production/electricity transmission.
The curve is constantly rising, and at some point, if we do not put our foot down, Russia will test-run the Baltics on our behalf.
Since you read yesterday’s post, you know what it entails to put your foot down four times.
Many thanks to the one who took the step to a paid subscription on my Substack yesterday.
If anyone feels that you want a nobler purpose beyond all the texts, you get it – we have a major commitment in Angola where we directly help people in distress every month out of our own pocket. I was in the country for 10 years and that remains. We have scaled it down a bit over the years as it simply became too much and the need is endless, but it is still considerable, so you can also feel that you are donating to those in need in Angola through a subscription since the fund is shared. I have long thought about starting to alternate with posts about Angola, especially if I manage to find a job there again and go back, but there is too much else to write about right now. I have also thought about trying to attract Swedish companies to the country because it will become an enormously attractive market in the future, so it will be a rare win-win, but that is also on the to-do list.
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