Ukraine daily update July 18, 2025

Watched (again) The Big Short and this time apparently I was a bit more receptive to the black magic that some call economics – it helped that Boudain and Selena Gomez explained with food and playing cards what CDS was 😶

What did I take away – timing is everything, you can know something and act on it but if the timing isn’t right, you still end up wrong.

And the other thing is how many were willing to sink an entire economy for personal gain, and how many engage in all sorts of things beyond their job description.

Both of these I have experienced myself so apparently I was experienced enough to understand the message 😀

In projects, there are always those who are willing to torpedo an entire project for a relatively small personal gain (in my opinion) or just power.

You never know who you can trust and have to assume that everyone has other loyalties, often it’s the entrepreneur with the money who pays off people in your own organization.

One can then guess that the US financial industry is not a wonder of loyalty and honesty towards the employer, or towards the customers.

I’ve also been caught being too early and late when the air went out but at least could say – I was right. And discovered that no one cares.

It’s quite common that we in the West have a brilliant plan that we act upon and that everything we do is correct, and that Ukraine has full control of the situation.

I’ve faced this an infinite number of times since the start of the war, often with “leave it to the professionals who know their job unlike the amateurs.”

Despite having a thousand examples over three years of the complete opposite and those of us who have followed this for three years have a pretty good idea of the level of incompetence.

Just as they discovered in the Big Short about the financial industry – never underestimate incompetence, greed, cowardice, and stupidity.

We have retreated to our little swimming pool in one of the world’s best-functioning countries.

Northvolt, Stegra, Swedish domestic politics, that the government is at least Nazis, that by 2030 we will train 10,000 conscripts per year – and will address the drone weapon in a few years.

Yes, Ukraine has been forced into more activity but they also started from much worse conditions AND have Russian subversive activities to deal with.

Do you think they are like another planet compared to Sweden which is still considered among the world’s best?

There are some harsh truths unfortunately –

-There are strong forces that believe conflicts are good periods to make money.

-Very few care before it affects oneself and making difficult decisions is rarely attractive for one’s career.

-The West is full of traitors who serve China’s or Russia’s interests and it is still completely risk-free.

-The USA is not our friend.

-A war can become a black swan for economic decline and there is money to be made. Just look at Trump’s “pump-and-dump” of the stock markets. Knowing when different countries will be attacked provides valuable insider information to act upon.

-For most of the 20th century, the USA has been crashing countries in every possible way to suck out their wealth.

-Europe colonized most of the world, and during the 20th century, we behaved terribly in Africa.

-Europe didn’t do very well in WW2, there was an abundance of material and personnel, but there was a lack of morale, leadership (military and political), and political will.

-Ukraine has had timing against them throughout the war, they are too early with everything but they are too early because they are under existential threat and cannot afford to wait.

-Europe still welcomes Fico and Orban into the EU’s inner circle despite Orban now wanting to impose sanctions against Ukraine (😡😡😡).

The Ukraine war has been allowed to continue for too long to believe that the West wants to end it as soon as possible – especially since we had to stop Ukraine several times when things were going too well. We have been through this many times and won’t repeat a scratched record, but I’m a bit extra bitter about VDV in Kherson because it could have potentially ended the war in 2022.

We have now reached the point where the West is opening the coffers (our taxes) and pouring funds into its arms industry, and there is great gratitude to cash in on this. The second half of 2024 – today was probably when the floodgates truly began to open?

Ukraine is a mosaic of power struggles fueled by Russian subversive activities on a scale far beyond what we have to deal with, and no one knows who they can trust even though three years of full war have started to clean up the ranks a bit. Many have suspected Sirsky, for example.

Zelensky has been lucky as GUR has been on his side and if I understand this correctly, Budanov has been a key player.

That hasn’t stopped many attempts to remove Budanov and it seems like the USA always stands by his side in the cockfights.

Do you remember the movie when Zalizhny was removed which they solved with a grand medal ceremony and Zelensky looked terrified when he gave Budanov his medal. It’s not very often that Zelensky’s face completely loses color and he looks terrified, but we saw that then. When he was scolded by Trump and JD Vance, he was just angry for example.

Now the above is a reality we have to deal with and we can also argue that we have no obligations to help Ukraine as a country for example.

I don’t really oppose any of this, especially not after I understood Selena Gomez’s explanation of the Big Short 👍

What I always complain about in my eternal tirades is the following, and then it’s self-preservation and laziness that are driving forces –

We have embarked on the journey towards a global conflict, at some point no sitting head of state can control the development anymore – it becomes like a whirlpool where country after country is sucked in and joins the war without being able to prevent it.

During this journey towards full global conflict, one can stamp out the grass fire early and if the West’s arms factories have started to glow red-hot, it is not unlikely that calm will settle again as acts of war are always preceded by a cost-benefit analysis and ten Nagasaki bombs in the capital the next morning seem deterrent.

Since it is Russia we are dealing with, they are actively working to suck in country after country to avoid standing alone in a resounding empty global escalation – they are driving this as a state-prioritized activity and have succeeded well with October 7, 2023, and India-Pakistan.

We are not yet at the turning point, when we get there no living person today knows (except me).

The Baltics are preparing for a war with Russia, and they are actually already at war with Russia, but they are waiting for an invasion war.

Japan has just named China as the biggest threat since World War II, it is not entirely clear if they consider themselves the major threat when it happened in 1941 or if the war in general was the big threat, it wasn’t completely clear 😀

But for Japan to come out with this is absolutely sensational – yes, they obviously have their priorities, so for us in Europe, it is instead Russia that is the biggest threat closely followed by China.

And for Al Jalani, it’s Israel, they got tired of him pretty quickly 😶

There seems to be some kind of consensus that Europe is not ready?

So what would be a smart policy?

Well, to fully utilize the world’s perhaps deadliest viper as a defense force to try to reduce the future Russian threat to Europe so we don’t end up unprepared with old Mausers.

Ukraine has presented this proposal on seashell paper dozens of times since the start of the war, and we never bite on it, to their great disappointment.

By letting Ukraine do what they want, we would also get an extra bonus in that we wouldn’t have to go to war at all. We could send smaller volunteer expeditionary forces instead of forcing the population into mob depots and trenches.

This is the so-called crux of the matter, and now I have tried to explain it with Zelena Gomez and Anthony Boudain, so I hope it can be understood?

Most serious OSINT analysts are not very hopeful about the fronts right now, and UA actual warns of an intensified Russian offensive.

I believe Ukraine has offensive capacity, but it must be combined with full asymmetric warfare to succeed, and I think that’s where the problem lies – after three years 😐

I will entertain myself with some wild scenarios about how Ukraine will win the war in the future, but unfortunately, this is how it looks – we in the West will likely determine this year.

Just as the guys in the Big Short discovered that everything was rigged when they were proven right, this war has been rigged in Russia’s favor.

The West has been holding Putin’s hand and talking him through every step, revealing all UA battle plans they were aware of.

The war has been predictable for Putin, and the times when the West didn’t leak – Vodka Run and Kursk 2024, then he panicked completely and started cascading tears.

Perhaps the clearest example in the whole war that Ukraine is not allowed to fight on equal terms was that they were not allowed to liberate Putin in a small drone strike on May 9, 2025.

After Putin tried to assassinate Zelensky 10 times…

Or when Putin says – we will conquer these oblasts and then we will stop, Trump provides the time, and Ukraine absolutely must not undertake anything devastating during this period, and Ukraine has been building its new defense line outside these oblasts in a wide unnatural arc since last spring.

But just like in the Big Short, Ukraine’s payday is coming soon 👍

The Ukrainians have a very special spirit, and to do this for over three years takes its toll on men, women, non-binary individuals, and other gender identities.

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