The Russian Transport Ministry is blaming the Ukrainian military for the massive explosion that sent the 93,000-ton liquid natural gas tanker Arctic Metagaz to the bottom of the Mediterranean. The Arctic Metagaz, a sanctioned Russian-flagged LNG tanker, was en route from Tieshan, China, to Port Said, Egypt with a cargo of 61,000 tons of LNG. When she was about 150 miles off Sirte, Libya, she lit up the Mediterranean sky.

Secretary Marco Rubio @SecRubio
·
On February 5, 2026, the New START Treaty expired. Negotiated at a different time to meet a different challenge, New START no longer serves its purpose. Our desire to reduce global nuclear threats is genuine, but we will not accept terms that harm the United States or ignore Show more
7:01 AM · Feb 6, 2026 //

This treaty, in today's current environment, has the sole purpose of limiting the U.S. nuclear arsenal. It controls the number of ballistic missile submarines, strategic bombers, and silo-based ICBMs we have. We can't test new nuclear weapons designs or validate the quality of our existing stockpile. Most importantly, it ignores the existence of China. It really makes no sense for us to make a treaty with what amounts to a failed state simply to boost Putin's ego, when our real threat, China, is free to build nuclear weapons and delivery systems and test them at will.

The damage will therefore test the current leaders of Russia. How committed are they to the International Space Station partnership with NASA? Before, they were willing to play out the string to 2030 and the end of the station’s lifetime, but that required minimal investment in new capabilities. In fact, Russia recently cut the number of crewed Soyuz missions to the station from four every two years down to three, to save money. Now they must devote significant resources to the Soyuz program critical to the ISS.

“This is a real-life test of their resilience,” Jeff Manber, a senior Voyager official and former Nanoracks chief executive with long-time expertise in Russia’s space program, told Ars. “We are going to learn just how important the ISS is to leadership there.” //

The at least temporary loss of Site 31 will only place further pressure on SpaceX. The company currently flies NASA’s only operational crewed vehicle capable of reaching the space station, and the space agency recently announced that Boeing’s Starliner vehicle needs to fly an uncrewed mission before potentially carrying crew again. Moreover, due to rocket issues, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 vehicle is the only rocket currently available to launch both Dragon and Cygnus supply missions to the space station. For a time, SpaceX may also now be called upon to backstop Russia as well.

The drones sent into Poland were sent by the route an air attack against Poland would follow. They were mostly decoy drones, and the exercise was calculated to map Polish air defense radar systems, test their ranges, and test the reaction time of the Polish Air Force. Friday's expedition had the same objectives. The MiGs were equipped to be non-threatening so as not to escalate the interception into a dogfight.

Plus, the Russians sent in one of their most radar-visible aircraft. //

Again, they were mapping air defense radar coverage of the Gulf of Finland and the eastern Baltic and testing NATO reaction and reaction times.

This was also a political move to further isolate Europe, as President Trump sends repeated signals that the Europeans had better learn to fend for themselves.

Not only were the Russians out to rattle cages in Tallinn, they were sending a message to the Finns. //

A new round of sanctions seems sure to be imposed on Russia in the very near future; EU hammers Putin and charms Trump by targeting China, India in new Russia sanctions.

There is also the possibility that Russian aircraft in NATO airspace may be met with deadly force.

In 2015, Turkey reacted to a Russian violation of its airspace by shooting down a Russian strike fighter.

While Russia frequently accuses the West of escalation, we look at all the times Russia has made nuclear threats against the West. //

... [List from 6/2024 -- 10/1999] ...

Practically, if Russia wanted to launch a nuclear attack, it wouldn't send a geriatric alcoholic out to make an announcement, and if we were going to attack Russia, we wouldn't announce submarine deployments in advance. With Russia's record in engineering and maintenance, there is a non-zero chance that its nuclear arsenal has been disabled by mice nesting in the controls. The fact is that Russia uses the threat of nuclear war as a frequent tactic to increase the sales of Depends in some parts of the West.

This is a list of Russia's threats to use nukes since the beginning of the Ukraine war and ending in June 2024.

... [List of 74 instances between 2/2022 - 6/2024] ...

A high-profile, public reaction to Russian threats has been needed for years. While we may not take Russia's bluster all that seriously, what we ignore is that Russia's threat messages aren't aimed at us. They are aimed at our allies or unaligned nations who see Russia threatening us while we do nothing. Hopefully, this will also be a sign to Russian President Vladimir Putin that the stories he read about Russia's influence over President Trump in the Washington Post were fake news and a warning to the Russian simps who have been invited into the Defense Department in large numbers that it's time to choose a side. //

KJSpeed
3 days ago
It should be interesting watching Trump's enemies try to accuse him of being "Putin's Puppet" while simultaneously shrieking that he's pushing us headlong into WWIII by standing up to Putin. Cognitive dissonance overload!!!

This is a story about an accidental activist. Bill Browder started out his adult life as the Wall Street maverick whose instincts led him to Russia just after the breakup of the Soviet Union, where he made his fortune.

Along the way he exposed corruption, and when he did, he barely escaped with his life. His Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky wasn’t so lucky: he ended up in jail, where he was tortured to death. That changed Browder forever. He saw the murderous heart of the Putin regime and has spent the last half decade on a campaign to expose it. Because of that, he became Putin’s number one enemy, especially after Browder succeeded in having a law passed in the United States—The Magnitsky Act—that punishes a list of Russians implicated in the lawyer’s murder. Putin famously retaliated with a law that bans Americans from adopting Russian orphans.

A financial caper, a crime thriller, and a political crusade, Red Notice is the story of one man taking on overpowering odds to change the world, and also the story of how, without intending to, he found meaning in his life.

GBenton
3 hours ago
I really don't see a peace deal happening here. Two many confounding factors. Too many incentives on both sides to continue. Trump should step away from this until they show signs they're serious.

Putin is evil but Zelensky is a fool. No need to make a terrible situation worse by diminishing US prestige further.

These people have fought for centuries. So long as they don't expand the aggression, it's in God's hands.

wish it were otherwise but Putin is a monster and Zelensky is a selfish goon.

The targets were:

Olenya Air Base in the Murmansk Region
Belaya Air Base in the Irkutsk Region
Ivanovo Air Base in the Ivanovo Region
Dyagilevo Air Base in the Ryazan Region
Severomorsk (Main Administrative Base of the Russian Northern Fleet) in the Murmansk Region //

The airbases are the home to Russia's fleet of Tu-22, Tu-95M, and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers as well as AS-50 battle management aircraft. They were located from the Siberian Far East to the Arctic Circle. The furthest target, Belaya Airbase in Irkutsk, is over 2700 miles from Ukraine.

Reports indicate that at least 41 aircraft were hit. The unofficial tally indicates 24 Tu-22, 8 Tu-95MS, and 5 Tu-16 were hit. MiG-31 fighters and Il-76 transports were also hit. To put this in context, open-source data says Russia's bomber inventory is about 58 Tu-22, 47 Tu-95MS, and 15 Tu-160. These planes are the ones used to launch most of the missiles fired at Ukrainian cities. //

When you consider the operational readiness rate, Russia probably has less than 50 aircraft capable of flying...on the bright side, they have plenty of aircraft to cannibalize for parts. The Tu-22 and Tu-95MS production lines are closed, and the Tu-160 production is one, yes, one per year. For all intents and purposes, this represents a permanent decrease in the size of the Russian strategic bomber fleet.

How did this come to be? The special forces operated by Ukraine's intelligence directorate, the SBU, used semi-trucks hauling trailers that were drone launch pods. //

This was a fire-and-forget attack. There was no need for Ukrainian drone operators to remain on the scene to manage the attacks. An autonomously targeted drone swarm hit each target. SBU operatives placed the trucks, and the rest of the operation, from first launch to the self-destruct of the transport, appears to have been carried out without a man in the loop. //

According to online reporting, the Russians were prepared for a night attack by large drones and got a daylight attack by quadcopters instead. China has access to some 43,000 container ships registered in either the People's Republic of China or Hong Kong (which is basically the same thing). Imagine a few hundred of them carrying containers modified for launching drones. I would submit that a similar attack by China on US Naval and Air Force bases throughout the world would render a crippling blow that would force us to either acknowledge a possible Chinese conquest of Taiwan as a fait accompli or go nuclear.

Force, Fracture, or Fatigue. What Will It Take to Break Putin? //

After two years of crippling sanctions, sweeping NATO expansion, financial isolation, and relentless diplomacy, Putin still hasn’t blinked. As the front lines harden and global patience wears thin, one question remains: What will it take to break his will to fight? China remains silent, quietly enabling the Kremlin. If peace is to be forced, Trump must make Beijing understand there will be a price for helping Putin hold the line.

Many Americans, bathed in the myth of Zelensky as Ukraine’s George Washington, would be surprised to know that unlike Washington, who rejected the monarch’s crown at the end of the American Revolution, and who on his own accord returned to his farm after two terms as president, is now entering his second year after his term was supposed to expire.

Zelensky was sworn in on May 20, 2019, for a five-year term that should have expired 12 months ago. He signed a 90-day martial order Feb. 24, 2022, after it was passed by the Rada, our parliament, with provisions for almost automatic renewals. After Zelensky’s term expired, the Rada is now voting to renew martial law every 90 days.

We have had war in Ukraine since 2014, but there was never martial law until Zelensky and his crew took a chance and got away with it. //

Americans are told Zelensky’s term was extended by the Ukrainian Constitution because the country was at war, but the record shows that martial law is a legislative action, renewed every quarter with Zelensky’s signature.

In addition to suspending elections, subsequent amendments to the martial order have put all media under the Kiev government’s control and the outlawing of nearly a dozen opposition parties, including the Opposition Platform-For Life Party, the second largest bloc in the Rada.
American presidents never suspended elections during war

The contrast with the American experience is instructive here. In the War of 1812, President James Madison saw the British burn the White House, among other humiliations, but he did not suspend elections, seize the printing presses or outlaw the Federalist Party.

Presidents Abraham Lincoln, fighting the Civil War; Woodrow Wilson, fighting World War I; and Franklin Roosevelt, fighting World War II, all curtailed civil rights and restricted the media.

Yet, the elections went forward, even with the government facilitating the ballots for millions of soldiers mobilized far away from home. //

The Ukrainian Civil War has brought death and destruction to my country, but for one man alone, it has brought glory and power.

Every day, Zelensky keeps the war going to preserve that glory and power, the suffering continues, and he mocks Washington as a fool for peacefully returning to Mount Vernon.

Sergii Nosenko was a 2019 candidate for Ukrainian president. He lives in the United States with his author wife Daria and their children to avoid the clampdown on President Volodymyr Zelensky's political critics. //

mdavt 3 minutes ago

And that election will be fraught with danger for Ukraine and Europe. Putin will be working hard to ensure that someone friendly to him gets elected. If that happens Ukraine will go right back to where it was headed before the Orange Revolution. Perhaps the near-inevitable removal of Donbass from the electorate will tilt things strongly to an independence-minded candidate, but I wouldn't count on it.

"The thing [Trump] was determined to do was to talk to Zelensky face to face, and talk about how we're going to get the largest land war in Europe to an end. Both sides have to want that," Waltz said. //

Waltz also elaborated on one of the administration's biggest frustrations while untangling the Russia-Ukraine mess--the truly disastrous and inept way the Biden national security team went about it:

If you go back--we're 100 days in...just 100 days ago, Biden and his team had no end in sight. This was an endless war. This was a meat-grinder of men and material and national treasure...He had never defined victory.

Miles Smith IV
@IVMiles
A whole generation of people dont understand why this photo was so significant, and it shows...
8:42 PM · Apr 6, 2025

Samaritan Prime
@SamaritanPrime
·
3h
Context: that’s Boris Yeltsin, and he poked his head into a random supermarket in America while on a visit. Dude could not compute that the shelves were full. Soviet Russia didn’t have that.

Demetri D Williams
@DemetriDeshone
·
32m
This was before the fall of USSR and before he was President. He went from a communist to a capitalist because of this.

Woodrow Call
@WoodrowCall1
·
2h
iirc this was in Houston. He was there touring NASA, I believe. At first he assumed it was fake, that they had stocked it for his visit to make it look like the US was prosperous, cuz that's what the Soviet Union would do. He had to be convinced this was normal life here.

Russia does not provide medical assistance at the front to its own soldiers. So, if you get seriously wounded, too bad for you and your family.

I've seen drone videos of such Russian men writhing on the ground in filthy trenches littered with dead bodies. And they end up killing themselves with a rifle or grenade rather than die slowly alone in agony.

The thinking in news media is often that graphically detailed news coverage of such conflicts is too gruesome for viewers or readers back home. Often, they don't even show or describe dead bodies.

We should have provocative discussions about such unofficial censorship that sanitizes the horrors of war. Because that reduces the awful ongoing events basically to an imaginary game far away. Who's going to oppose war — or support it, for that matter — if they never see how bad it really is? I ran into some of this editorial opposition at the end of the Vietnam War. //

While Russian forces are killing Ukrainian men in combat at the front lines (and thousands of civilians in indiscriminate artillery, bombing, and missile attacks on cities), other Russians are kidnapping children from Ukrainian homes behind the front lines. They are simply seizing them from their families — I call that kidnapping — and shipping them off to Russia, never to be seen again.

There, they are punished if they don't speak Russian. The goal is to erase from the minds of these Ukrainian youngsters the national identity that Putin maintains does not exist. Hundreds of thousands of children stolen from their families.

anon-maty
an hour ago
Culturally, Russia and Russians are much more akin to Europeans than Asians. The royal families of all of old Europe were intermarried. Russians can arguably be said to have a penchant for strong rulers, sometimes to their detriment, see Stalin, Josef.
Putin is one as well. He and Russia may not be our friends. Yet. But they are not the enemy.
The enemy are the globalists. The EU. The UN. The WHO. The World Bank. Every central bank in the world.
These are the enemies of people everywhere.
Perpetual war.
Perpetual debt.
Perpetual suffering, poverty and death.
There are two teams. But they are not liberal (modern sense of the word) and conservative.
They are free and slave.
Think about who wants 15 minute cities. Think about who wants you disarmed.
Think about who wants your speech censored or prohibited altogether.
Think about who wants to erase family, God, country and tradition.
If you do you'll realize it isn't the big bad Russians. It's the financiers and governments dependent upon them, puppets on strings.

EU member states bought €21.9bn (£18.1bn) of Russian oil and gas in the third year of the war, according to estimates from the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (Crea), despite the efforts under way to kick the continent’s addiction to the fuels that fund Vladimir Putin’s war chest.

The amount is one-sixth greater than the €18.7bn the EU allocated to Ukraine in financial aid in 2024, according to a tracker from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel).

The basic gist of Trump's remarks was this: The U.S. wants to broker peace, but Zelensky wants to keep fighting with assistance from the U.S.

High-ranking White House officials confirmed to CBS News that President Trump is unwilling to talk to Zelensky at this point because of Zelensky's disinterest in peace. //

High-level Trump sources tell me the White House is now uncertain if they can get the Russians and Ukrainians to stop fighting because this episode with @ZelenskyyUa raised questions about whether he can move forward toward a peace deal. It also raises questions about whether US will pause aid to Ukraine. But Trump is NOT seeking regime change in Ukraine. No discussions about who in Ukraine might be a better leader than Zelenskyy.

Ukrainian officials have reached out this afternoon to senior White House officials desperate to get the deal back on track. But that will not happen today, I'm told. Trump is unwilling to talk to Zelenskyy further today.

When Rubio and Waltz went into the Roosevelt Room to ask Zelenskyy to leave, Rubio made it clear that any further engagements today would be counterproductive. Waltz told Zelenskyy he had made a tremendous mistake, and it was a grave disservice to Ukraine and to Americans, both.

No phone calls between Trump and Putin have been scheduled. But multiple European officials have called top Trump officials since Zelenskyy left asking how the minerals deal can be salvaged.

Trump fully intended to sign the minerals deal today. Two official binders were prepared -- Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and his Ukrainian counterpart and the two presidents were going to sit at a conference table in the East Room and then trumpet their success at podiums.

But there were suspicions before Zelenskyy arrived today that it might fall apart. Because the Trump admin had been pushing for weeks for a minerals deal signing at the ministerial level, and Ukraine had refused. Zelenskyy wanted security guarantees.

US officials thought negotiations would be much harder with Putin so today have been been in disbelief that it has been Zelenskyy who has been more difficult, making maximalist demands, sources told me. //

Greg Price
@greg_price11
·
Follow
Zelenskyy declares that he won't negotiate an end to the war without security guarantees from the United States -- And then admits that he doesn't have enough weapons to push Russia out of Ukraine -- And then demands more money from the U.S.

Last edited
11:56 PM · Feb 28, 2025. //

RedDog_FLA
an hour ago
Zelesky forgot the he's dealing with the Producer of the Apprentice.

Zelensky thought he could manage an on-camera negotiation with the dealmaker. 🤔

He might not get another chance... it's possible he has been FIRED.

Slappy
an hour ago edited
The way Zelenskyy bombed this meeting publically like that, I think he isn't stupid, he did it because he wanted to torpedo any ceasefire deal and he's unwilling to settle for peace. The Europeans are all that's left, so maybe he thinks that's who he played up to here. I wish them and Ukraine luck, because blowing up what's left of the relationship with the U.S. is one hell of a risky move.

Sean Davisb@seanmdav
·
Trump doesn’t bad mouth anyone who comes to the negotiating table in good faith. Ever. It’s a near-cardinal rule of negotiations for him, and a major reason he’s been such a successful dealmaker. 

If you refuse to negotiate, he will trash you. If you lie or negotiate in bad faith, he will trash you. He has zero interest in allowing empty moralizing to get in the way of a deal that he wants.  

He has done this his entire career, in business and in politics, and it’s fascinating to me how many people who think of themselves as smart and savvy are incapable of seeing or understanding this dynamic.

Christian Datoc @TocRadio
TRUMP: "You want me to say really terrible things about Putin and then say, 'hi, Vladimir. How are we doing on the deal?' It doesn't work that way. I'm not aligned with anybody. I'm aligned with the United States of America, and for the good of the world."
8:05 PM · Feb 28, 2025. //

The key here isn't just that Trump is holding the cards and that Zelensky needs him — not the other way around — it's that Trump is negotiating from a fortified position of "America first." Everything at the table is subject to that one point, and if anything drifts away from that, then Trump pushes back and pushes back until he's all the way gone from the table.

Zelensky acted like a petulant child who showed no respect to the country that had given him the money for his war while trying to secure more, and Trump saw no value, not in the war, and not in Zelensky's disrespect. As such, there was no deal. Moreover, Zelensky attempted to pressure Trump into capitulation through our own media, which was a costly mistake. Trump is not beholden to the American media as other leaders are.

But Zelensky's error came from a habit he never should have never been allowed to develop. The Democrats — and too many Republicans — taught Zelensky that he was in charge. They caved to him constantly because the last thing they wanted was for our own media, who fawn and worship the ground Zelensky walks on, to turn on them. That would result in massive blowback from Democrat supporters, including their donors. //

Ultimately, the Democrat at the negotiating table asks, "what's expedient for me politically right now?" When the question that they should be asking themselves — and Trump clearly understands — is "how does this put America and Americans in the best position possible?"

The answer is sometimes not to make a deal at all. It's not sexy to come back and say negotiations fell apart, especially to a bloodthirsty media who makes everything sound like every failed deal moves us closer to doomsday, but again, Trump isn't concerned with the media, he's concerned with America.

And Democrats just can't seem to wrap their heads around that. //

TexasVeteran
3 hours ago edited
"The answer is sometimes not to make a deal at all."

Trump is channeling his inner Ronnie! Remember when Reagan walked away from a nuke deal with Gorbachev in Iceland? It lead to the collapse of the Soviet Union!🤔. //

anon-m0b0
2 hours ago
The war with Putin is a gigantic money-laundering operation that Zelensky and Democrats (and some Republicans) are getting rich from. Trump knows this. He wants to end the war and end the corruption. Zelensky is not ready for peace because a lot of people are getting rich. The mineral rights are some repayment to U.S. taxpayers for tax dollars sitting in oligarchs bank accounts.

Zelensky is counting on the U.S. press to do his dirty work to Trump. He doesn't realize Trump doesn't care.

Zelensky will be back at the table when the money is gone. He made his own bargaining position worse and he still doesn't realize yet.

I don't think talking means that you're weak. I think talking is a tactic in order to get to a goal [...] We need to be able to have these conversations with the Russians.

[...]

Again, I go back to the fact that we had it perfect in terms of peace. We were handed a war, and now we're being criticized of, "well how do you dig us out of a war, and you're not doing it fast enough and you're not doing it fair enough." So we're a little frustrated. //

We articulate very clearly under Donald Trump: We don't do regime change. We are going to deal with the countries that are in front of us. And our criteria is, not how do we make that country better, how do we make America better, stronger, more prosperous for the people here. //

Burns' final question was whether Grenell had plans to run for California Governor in 2026. The audience cheered in approval.

Honestly, it's not in my plans unless Kamala Harris runs for governor. If Kamala runs... If Kamala runs...

You're jumping in? Burns interjected.

I mean, here's the thing: we already know who she is. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to define who Kamala Harris is. If she's going to run, a Republican is going to win and I may not be able to resist trying to run against her.