Here is a quick round-up of the things which I believe our community should be most focused on today, although not necessarily in any clear order of priority.

Ukraine

I notice, first of all, that Larry Johnson told Judge Napolitano yesterday that British, French, Polish and Australian (!) troops were already moving into Odessa. I guess the Germans were too busy trying to raise the trillion dollars they need to rearm in time to take on Russia. In recent weeks, I have noted many reports of heavy Russian drone and missile attacks on targets in Odessa (not to mention across Ukraine generally), so Johnson’s seemingly casusal quip that he expected to hear of Russia killing European troops in Odessa over the next week or so may not be so far fetched.

Although there are expectations that negotiations between Russia and the Ukraine may continue in the coming weeks (arranged, courtesy of slippery Erd, in Istanbul), I suspect these will mainly be about such things as prisoner exchanges and swaps of dead fallen troops. In the meantime, Russia continues its advances across most of the front lines; it has experienced set-backs in Sumy in response to Ukrainian counter-offensives, but these counter-offensives are rarely sustained for long.

Of particular interest, perhaps, is Russia’s seizure of a major lithium field at Shevachenko in west Donetsk. This has implications for the US-Ukraine mineral rights deal.

The more of these assets that Russia seizes, the less useful is the mineral rights deal. It was originally mooted that the US might count US arms provision to Ukraine as the equivalent of an investment in mineral extraction that would pay the US off for its supply of arms. Otherwise, the flow of arms is slowing, and is due to be cut by half by the end of this year. Congress certainly does not seem to be in the mood for voting for more. However, we have to watch Trump’s BBB, which contains provision for what I seem to remember was a further $60 billion worth of aid for Ukraine, although I dare say there are many other hurdles between something being included in such an omnibus bill and executive action being taken on the basis of it. Ukraine has other lithium deposits, of course, which are currently situated far from front lines, and these include the Dobra field which has just been opened for private investment.

Generally, assessments of the recent NATO summit conclude that the summit showed that Trump is weary of Ukraine, that his insistence on NATO requiring its members to dedicate 5% of their GDPs to NATO expenditure (allowing for 1.5% of this to be spent on infrastructure) - while exempting the US itself from this requirement - is a measure of Trump’s handing over responsibility for the conflict in Ukraine to a Europe that doesn’t seem to know quite what to do with its new “freedom” or responsibility other than to talk about big Euros and big Dollars (whose immediate impact will be to inflate the price of arms, to the great satisfaction of US arms suppliers).

NATO seems to be setting aside its earlier enthusiasm for an accelerated route for Ukraine to NATO membership while Russia is firmly closing the door to its willingness even to see Ukraine join the EU (now that the two entities seem joined at the hip under the autocratic leaderships of Mark Rutte - son of Donald Trump, apparently, whom he calls “Daddy” - and Ursula vondermentally Lying, whose goal is a more centralized, more censorious European regime with its own ability to raise money and build armies.

My own assessment, the weakness of European armies notwithstanding, is that Ukraine is not going to fade away as a major destabilizing factor. Absent any sense from Kiev, Russia will be compelled to continue to press ahead towards Central Ukraine; Russia will likely face major provocations from the Coalition of the Brain-Dead as I have already mentioned with respect to Odessa - which Putin has always regarded as Russian; the US will be jealous of whatever access to Ukrainian wealth it thinks it has negotiated and will be increasingly upset if it sees these assets fall to Russia; Trump will be under ever greater Congressional pressure to “do something” if an when Ukraine acutally does collapse; European intelligence, especially M16 doesn’t know what else it should be doing other than playing at being James Bond, given the absence of sensible political leadership across the continent; there are clear indications of Mossad involvment in Ukraine as in Iran and we can expect Mossad involvement in what are otherwise European games of espionage and covert warfare.

Iran

I listened with interest to what Ray McGovern had to say to Judge Napolitano yesterday about his conversation with nuclear expert Ted Postol concerning the strike on Fordow, which is that satellite infra-red footage of the site did not indicate the US strike had penetrated deeply enough to impact the centrifuges or enriched uranium. Postol also confirmed his expectation that Iran would have moved both the centrifuges (or at least some of them) and the enriched uranium, before the strikes took place, and that Iran would have placed (almost) indestructible concrete blocks in the appropriate position in order to protect the entrances and exits. I was amazed to hear Gilbert Doctorow condemn gossip as to the effectiveness of the US strikes and equate this to “sedition,” an extremely strange choice of terminology which in any case cannot possibly change the inevitable and informed Israeli calculus that the strikes will not have achieved their purpose and that there is plenty of mileage for Israel to rabbit on about Iran the nuclear “threat” and to beg the brain-dead war hawks of the US Congress to support another illegal Israeli strike against Iran (in pursuit, of course, of Israel’s and the US’ real ambition which has nothing to do with enriched uranium and everything to do with regime change). The Senate has blocked an effort to prevent Trump from taking further military action against Iran without authorization from Congress.

I have previously argued, and I still maintain, that there would have been good grounds for Iran to have pressed ahead and to have ignored pressure for a ceasefire, no matter the damage that Israel and the US had inflicted on Iran. This is because and as it now increasingly clear, Iran inflicted far more pain on Israel than most analysts suspected might be possible. This included major damage to Israel’s two major ports at Haifa and Ashdod (these are Israel’s largest; there is a handful of others), the oil refineries at these two points, many military installations, and many western-backed enterprises, some of them military, along Israel’s coastal areas.

Just the basic cost of the war itself to Israel amounts to $12 billion according to an Israeli Cabinet source, and I don't believe that begins to cover the actual cost of damage inflicted. A senior Israeli tax authority has been quoted as saying there has never been this amount of damage in Israel’s history.”

There ae some reports but I dont know what weight to give them, that Trump did a deal with Iran, in order to protect Israel from taking further pain from Iran at the very moment that Israel was running out of missiles and about to go under, whereby in return for Iran agreeing a ceasefire, Trump would orchestrate a $30 billion investment in Iran’s civilian nuclear program and remove US sanctions on Iran’s oil trade, while simultaneously expanding the Abraham Accords, ending the seige of Gaza and handing control over Gaza to Egypt, the UAE and two other states. Additionally, there are other reports but, again, I don't know what weight to give them, that Iran is turning more to China and away from Russia.