https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcdB3guCaFk

Russian President Vladimir Putin did not mince his words on Wednesday, June 4th, as he addressed the Russian public after the recent wave of Ukrainian attacks on Russian soil. J-Speak's Rick Sanchez breaks down the speech and the possibility that the Ukrainian conflict could expand beyond Kiev's borders.

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.

SEE ALSO: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRr4Rpb0m1Q

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The Deep State’s Drone Attack Was Aimed To Escalate The Ukraine War And Deny Trump His Nobel Peace Prize
by David Stockman

POTUS better wake up. Quick. The Deep State is in the midst of f#cking him yet again.

We are referring, of course, to Sunday’s utterly reckless attack on Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent, allegedly by the Ukrainian military. Yes, the one that’s so feeble and incompetent that thus far it has lost one-fifth of its territory—despite upwards 150,000 dead soldiers according to Col. Douglas Macgregor and more than $200 billion of US and European military and economic aid.

That is to say, the Sunday drone attack according to Zelensky himself was nearly 20 months in the making. So it was surely hatched, kitted, trained and pre-positioned with heavy duty support from US covert operations and then actually triggered, launched and guided by US intelligence assets.

Stated inversely, it appears that forces which were most surely not the bedraggled Ukrainian military operating in rogue fashion attacked the heart of Russia’s nuclear deterrent. And yet and yet: It is likely that the Donald was also not honestly informed ahead of time!

After all, when Trump had his “Putin’s gone crazy” outburst a few days ago he didn’t even know—by his own public admission—that a swarm of Ukrainian drones had attacked Putin’s helicopter while the latter was being transported inside it. And again, given the in-depth layers of protection around Putin, there is not a snowball’s chance in the hot place that the Ukrainian military pulled off this near-miss on Russia’s demonized dictator without heavy duty intelligence support from the US.

Therefore, we are strongly inclined to believe that the Deep State is once again sabotaging the Donald while keeping him in the dark about crucial operations that bear heavily on the risk of escalation and war with Russia. To be sure, in connection with his outburst at Putin, Trump did warn that something “VERY BAD” could happen to Russia without him, but when you see all caps you know it’s just regular Trumpian bluster of the kind that is now being emitted from the man’s social media accounts on nearly a daily basis.

Besides, we believe Trump is attempting to function as an honest peace-maker on the Ukraine front because he suffers badly from NPPE (Nobel Peace Prize Envy). In turn, the latter is due to Obama’s surely undeserved snaring of the award within months of taking office. Accordingly, the Donald may well be playing an amateur “art of the deal” game with Putin on Ukraine, but we don’t think for a moment that he would have been knowingly reckless enough to put his prize in jeopardy by authorizing attacks on four or five of Russia’s strategic bomber airfields.

And we do mean “knowing” in the sense of comprehending as opposed to the wild ass bluster Trump frequently emits—even when he doesn’t vaguely appreciate the stakes, such as was evident in his 72-hour threat to put a 50% tariff on $600 billion of imports from the EU. So it needs be understood that what is reported to be the destruction or serious impairment of between 20 and 40 of Russia’s heavy intercontinental strategic bombers at at least four different Russian bases thousands of miles from both Ukraine’s borders and from each other constitutes a drastic escalation of the proxy war on Russia, veering toward the precipice of nuclear confrontation.

These hits on Russia’s strategic bombers by the nominally “Ukrainian” drone swarms—about 120 devices in total—account for upwards of 20-25% of the bomber leg of Russia’s triad nuclear deterrent. Yet these long range heavy bombers have had almost no role in Russia’s attacks on Ukraine because in the actual war theater it primarily uses intermediate range bombers to launch cruise missile assaults, and, if need be, could use ground based launching pads, as well.

So the Sunday drone attack had no resemblance whatsoever to a militarily-relevant knock-out blow. Instead, it amounted to an order of magnitude escalation toward nuclear confrontation designed to prolong and intensify Washington’s proxy war on Russia and throw immense new roadblocks in the path of a negotiated peace agreement.

Most especially, these reckless attacks were irrelevant to Ukraine’s rapidly deteriorating position on the battle front at the line of contact in eastern Ukraine. In fact, just during the last week of May the Russian forces captured another 18 settlements and villages and over 200 square kilometers of territory, meaning that the Ukrainian army is no longer capable to hold its defense lines and that the end is near.

At the same time, this drone attack hugely implicated the core strategic nuclear equation between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. To wit, the attack broke the rules of the strategic deterrence game and what remains of the 2010 New Start arms control agreements that nominally remains in effect through February 2026.

Although New Start was suspended by Russia in response to the US sanctions and NATO seizure of $300 billion of Russian assets in the global banking system, the limits and enforcement protocols have been largely observed by both sides. This included retaining the limit of 700 deployed strategic nuclear delivery vehicles.

Moreover, New Start’s inspection regime had provided for substantial transparency as to the locations and operational particulars of each land, sea and air-based delivery vehicle that had been declared under the 700 deployed vehicle limit. So to now use this New Start based compliance information to unilaterally attack and destroy previously declared weapons systems was a blatant breach of the entire arms control confidence building regime that had evolved over the decades since the 1970s and Soviet times.

In Russia’s case, it had chosen to list and have inspected 300-400 land-based ICBMs, 200-300 sea-based ballistic missiles and 50-60 heavy bombers. Among the latter was 40-50 Tu-95MS bombers and @15 Tu-160 bombers of the type that were destroyed in Sunday’s attack and about which the US has abundant detailed knowledge. That’s because the inspection and enforcement protocols with respect to these disclosed delivery vehicles included biannual data exchanges, notifications of changes in status (e.g., silo activation/deactivation), and up to 18 annual inspections.

In Russia’s case it generally kept its heavy bombers—which were subject to this comprehensive inspection regime—visible on open airfields per the illustrative photo shown below. There was nothing to hide, anyway.

So to repeat: the wanton attack on the known locations and regularly inspected strategic bombers in Russia’s nuclear deterrent like those depicted here was a radical breach of the whole arms control regime itself.

Equally importantly, it is damn obvious that Washington was in full cahoots with the Ukrainian military. The 120 or so drones used to attack the Russian bombers in the vastly scattered locations shown in the map above were surreptitiously smuggled into Russia in the covered containers shown in this photo. They were then secretly transported to near the Russian airfield locations and prepped for the eventual simultaneous launches.

Again, the odds that no one in the US military or the upper rungs of the Deep State in Washington was involved in this extensive and daring operation are somewhere between slim, none and hideously impossible.

'At length, of course, after being pre-positioned near the target airfields, the crates shown above were opened, revealing that attack drones inside. We long ago gave up wearing our tinfoil hats, but are damn sure that the simultaneous launch of 120 of these little buggers at the same moment across thousands of miles of Russian territory was indeed the result of an intricate Washington-driven plot and conspiracy.

No Ukrainian cowboys could have pulled this off on their own steam.

At the very same moment, therefore, heavy Russian bombers spread across the Eurasian continent met the fate depicted below. And while this feat has the Washington and NATO warhawks and neocons gloating over the alleged brilliance of the scheme, that’s not even the half of it.

The real purpose of the attack was to destroy any vestige of trust that remains between the Donald and Putin, and leave the latter with no choice except to retaliate in kind. But further escalation into the zone of MAD (mutually assured destruction) that has kept the nuclear era peace for 60 years is surely the most dangerous thing that has happened since October 1962 when the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the world to the brink of annihilation.

So the hour is late indeed. The Warfare State and the MIC (military-industrial complex) are about to establish dominance over the Donald once again. This time with virtually existential implications.

So man up, POTUS, and cut off Zelensky and his Deep State puppeteers at the knees. That is, shut off the spigot of all aid, all weapons delivery, all intelligence and all other operational support, demand a cease fire and invite both Zelensky and Putin to Camp David.

Then, keep them there until they agree to dismantle the handiwork of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev. After all, the latter were the actual bloody authors of today’s dubious borders and a Ukrainian state that had never existed before in all of history prior to 1922.

It shouldn’t take long to partition the map and allow Crimea and the four provinces of the Donbas and south to go their separate ways back to Mother Russia. And the only “guarantees” that would be needed would be a Russian pledge to not allow the partitioned provinces to attack the rump of Ukraine, and for the US to guarantee that the shrunken state of Ukraine will not join NATO or attack the lost provinces.

As it happens, that’s all that Putin has ever wanted. And for the US it would mean not only closing another hideously stupid chapter in the Forever Wars, but also the chance start down a new path toward global peace and disarmament that might actually offer the Donald a real chance to get his Nobel Prize.

Needless to say, a 11th hour Camp David summit would also give the Donald a chance to reclaim his own presidency, which was clearly usurped when the Senate’s two leading Ukraine warmongers—Graham and Blumenthal—showed up in Kiev last week on the eve of this insane escalation.

And we do mean insane. The Ukraine warhawks led by the despicable Lindsay Graham, in fact, are now so far off the deep-end that they have introduced in the Senate new out-of-this-world sanctions on Russia which would impose a 500% tariff on countries that buy Russian energy, uranium, and other raw materials – measures aimed chiefly at India and China. Can you say, “WWW III here we come!”

Indeed, putting the three stooges of Ukraine’s latest disaster back in the dunce’s corner where they belong would be progress in itself. Self-evidently, Graham and Blumenthal knew what was coming but not the Donald, at least according to a leak to Tanya Noury of NewsNation by a high administration official: Like in the case of the attack on Putin’s helicopter, Trump was not informed of the drone caper, either.

Well, now the Donald surely knows they are coming for him again. So he better get busy taking names, kicking ass and cleaning house or his second Administration will be done before its gets started. And that’s to say nothing of the rest of us, too.

from David Stockman’s Contra Corner.

https://ronpaulinstitute.org/the-deep-states-drone-attack-was-aimed-to-escalate-the-ukraine-war-and-deny-trump-his-nobel-peace-prize/

Ray McGovern

The black eye given Russian security services will eventually heal while the artful destruction of a handful of bombers — like earlier high-profile, but misguided operations — will have zero effect on the war in Ukraine.

Ukraine’s drone attacks on air bases deep inside Russia on Sunday (1 June) were timed to provoke Russia into shunning the Russia-Ukraine talks set for the next day in Istanbul. Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his European puppeteers also may have thought they could provoke Vladimir Putin to escalate attacks on Ukraine to such a degree that the US could not “walk away” from Ukraine without appearing cowardly.

The PR benefits of destroying Russian aircraft far from Ukraine was part of Kyiv’s calculus. It was a huge embarrassment and a tactical victory in a short-lived, narrow sense.

But the black eye given Russian security services will eventually heal. Most important, the artful destruction of a handful of bombers — like earlier high-profile, but misguided operations — will have zero effect on the war in Ukraine.

Doing diplomacy for once

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called US Secretary of State Marco Rubio immediately after the drone attacks on the Russian air bases and the sabotage/destruction of two rail bridges in Russia earlier that day.

The Russian readout said Rubio “conveyed sincere condolences on the civilian casualties from the rail infrastructure blasts in Russia’s Bryansk and Kursk regions”. This is a sign that Lavrov did not come in with accusatory guns blazing, so to speak.

It does seem certain that Lavrov asked Rubio whether he knew of the drone attacks beforehand. And what did President Trump know?

In my view, it is conceivable that neither had prior knowledge. When the drone operation was planned, the geniuses working for Joe Biden were in charge of such things – the ones who destroyed the Nord Stream pipelines.

Most likely the US was kept informed, but the operation itself bears the earmarks of the sabotage the British are so fond of carrying out – with particular lust after bridges.

They did so famously during World War II and they are quite good at it. Then, as now, such sabotage had little to no effect on the war – merely a transitory strengthening of their proverbial upper lip.

The talks went on, and will continue

Putin and Trump wanted the negotiations in Istanbul to proceed, and those were their instructions to Lavrov and Rubio. They did, and with some tangible progress on small, but significant matters like the exchange of bodies. There was a highly important exchange of papers on the terms sought by each side, and a pledge to study them before the next meeting.

Bottom line

The driving issue is bigger than Ukraine. Both Trump and Putin want improved US-Russia relations. Other matters, including Ukraine, are secondary. As of now, at least, both sides seek a negotiated settlement to the war as the primary option.

And each side will do its best to avoid escalation and show a measured flexibility — and even patience — until such time as Ukraine’s army disintegrates.

It appears that this will happen soon. I believe that, at that point, Putin will be happy to supply as much lipstick as may be needed to conceal the pig of defeat for Ukraine and the West.

Ray McGovern’s first portfolio as a CIA analyst was Sino-Soviet relations. In 1963, their total trade was $220 million; in 2023, $227 billion. Do the math.

Republished from Consortium News, 4 June 2025

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a CIA analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2025/06/ukraine-attack-will-have-no-effect-on-outcome-of-war/

READ FROM TOP.

YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.