Alexander Vershbow

As Russian missiles breach Polish airspace, former U.S. envoy Kurt Volker tells @RFERL that NATO needs to stop playing defense. His fix? A joint 200km air-defense "exclusion zone" inside Ukraine -- and an immediate order to shoot down anything that crosses the border. 👇 rferl.org/a/ukraine-war-russ…

⚡ Renowned Russian military figure, Colonel General Leonid Ivashov, assessed the results of the so-called “Special Military Operation” (SMO). (He chaired the All-Russian Officers’ Assembly for many years and retired after 2022.) 📌 These days mark the anniversary of the Pristina dash. That was a real special operation. Under Yeltsin, in a single day, the whole world began to respect us. There was NOT A SINGLE CASUALTY (!) Now, under Putin (with the war entering its fifth year), Russia has achieved NOT A SINGLE GOAL! Nearly one million Russians have been killed. And the entire world has stopped respecting us. 📌 How pitiful is the jester sitting on the King’s throne. (Generals have never spoken about Putin like this before. The whole country says it, but for generals, this is a first.) 📌 Armenia is a nation of high culture. Moscow has lost Russia’s last stronghold in the Caucasus. EVERYONE is moving away from Russia. Everyone is striving to join the EU and NATO. 📌 “Foreign agents” are being created simply for having an opinion or telling the truth. 📌 Even the international event #SPIEF could not protect itself — the Ukrainian Armed Forces repeatedly and easily targeted Saint Petersburg. 📌 We have no successes at the operational-tactical level, and at the strategic level we have suffered defeat in EVERY direction. 📌 EVERY sector of industry has been devastated. 📌 Science is in critical condition, and education has simply collapsed. 📌 Let me remind you that 98% of major corruption offenders belong to the ruling United Russia party. 📌 The wild rise in prices is alarming; the Russian people are becoming poorer before our eyes. 📌 Healthcare is being destroyed. ALL regions are cutting healthcare spending. 📌 If not for the SMO, Trump would not have “taken Maduro away” and would not have attacked Iran, I am convinced. International law has been in profound crisis since 2022. 📌 The quality of food keeps getting worse, palm oil is everywhere, and food in Russia is becoming toxic. 📌 The ONLY area where Russia is a world leader is demographics. We lead in population decline. Even without the war, and the war is simply wiping out men. 📌 Our leadership boasts that no one has weapons like ours. A more accurate statement would be that nowhere else in the military sphere is there as much corruption as there is here. 📌 Our only allies left are North Korea and Belarus, but they will not help us. They can only drain our resources, and soon we may not have any left ourselves. I worked with the Chinese for many years. China is not our ally — that is a myth and Kremlin propaganda. 📌 Failures exist in every sphere: from the economy to the SMO. 📌 Russia’s nuclear weapons will not help; they are harmful to everyone. We should not even be talking about them. 📌 A strategic defeat in the war with Ukraine will most likely lead to the collapse of Russia. #General #Ivashov opposed the start of military action in Ukraine from the very beginning in 2022 and urged Putin not to take what he called a catastrophic step. “This war will threaten the very existence of Russia,” Ivashov wrote at the time. ❗