US Overestimates Capacity to Wage War on Iran While Supporting Ukraine
Sputnik – 06.08.2026
Ukraine believed it could outsmart Russia by placing its most advanced drone facilities under the protection of Patriot air defenses around the capital, military historian Yury Knutov tells Sputnik, adding that the calculation proved wrong — American interceptor missiles ran dry.
“Germany, Norway, the Baltic states, and the Gulf monarchies that purchased Patriot systems are now confronted with the fact that the American shield has holes in it – and can no longer be fully relied upon,” says the pundit.
Reports say the Trump administration discovered its interceptor stockpiles had been drastically depleted, forcing it to scale back plans for large-scale strikes on Iran and deny Ukraine’s request for additional Patriot missiles. The Iran war was identified as a key driver of the shortages.
“For the next 3-5 years, the US will be forced to operate under strict constraints, unable to simultaneously protect all of its assets in the Middle East and continue supporting Ukraine,” Knutov says, commenting on reports that US missile stockpiles may not recover until 2029-2031.
The US may also scale back protection of its allies, the pundit suggests:
- Ukraine is only the first warning sign – other allies could be next to face reduced US air-defense support
- Many Iranian missiles aimed at the Gulf now go unchallenged as US troops conserves scarce interceptors for defending their own bases in the region
- A number of US units not directly involved in air operations or air defense have been withdrawn from the Middle East
The Imbalance in the Iran War is Critical
“Even if the US multiplies production several times over, it will never match Iran in terms of cost or production speed,” Knutov says. “Iran can manufacture missiles and drones at a fraction of the cost, while its facilities are dispersed and protected.”
A war of attrition against Iran would be a losing strategy for the US from the outset, the expert concludes.
Ceuta and immigration as a hybrid warfare weapon
By Raphael Machado | Strategic Culture Foundation | August 6, 2026
In the past week, images of tens of thousands of Moroccans—at least 60,000—invading the Spanish city of Ceuta, breaking through the border barriers with Morocco, took over social media. The autonomous city, which has only 80,000 inhabitants, had to deal with attempted home invasions and various other crimes by the invaders, who were then confronted by security forces and some self-organized groups of citizens.
These 60,000 invaded Ceuta all together, and some images and videos on social media show trucks dumping immigrants near the Spanish border. Photos revealed Moroccan police officers trying to prevent some invaders from returning to their own country. Still, thanks to the action of Spanish security forces and citizens, most of the invaders appear to have already returned to Morocco—and many of them did so voluntarily shortly after entering Ceuta.
The case had a great global impact, especially in Europe, with several governments reinforcing their own borders and Italy recommending that Spain be removed from the Schengen Area.
Several aspects of this event are noteworthy, however.
First, to lay the groundwork: contrary to the many “progressives” who sympathized with the invasion under the argument of “decolonizing” Ceuta, the reality is that Ceuta is not a colony. The city was conquered by Portugal in 1415, passed to Spain in 1580, and since then it has been an uninterrupted Spanish possession. But even the period before 1415 is linked to Europe. Let us recall that from the year 40 to the year 709, Ceuta was governed, in succession, by the Romans, the Vandals, the Byzantines, and the Visigoths, until it was conquered by the Arabs—who, let us also remember, are also foreign invaders in North Africa. After that, Ceuta changed hands several times between Arab and Berber kingdoms until, as already mentioned, it was conquered by Portugal in the context of the reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula after 700 years of Moorish military occupation and to put an end to Mediterranean piracy.
To speak of returning Ceuta to its “true owners,” therefore, makes no sense. If Spanish rule over Ceuta is illegitimate, then all territorial changes, expansions, conquests, and occupations on the planet over the last 600 years are illegitimate.
Nevertheless, Morocco claims Ceuta (as well as Melilla) on rather dubious grounds. First, for the reasons already pointed out. Second, because Morocco as a state is quite recent, being less than 100 years old, and has never owned Ceuta or Melilla. This is not Morocco’s only dubious territorial claim; after all, its government also claims Western Sahara, which has been fighting for its independence for decades. Western Sahara is supported by Algeria against Morocco, while Spain defends the completion of the territory’s decolonization and the granting of at least autonomy to the region.
Only two countries in the world, however, recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over Western Sahara unconditionally: the USA and Israel.
It is difficult, therefore, not to start connecting the dots between the recent events in Ceuta and the entire recent panorama of tensions between Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish government and the governments of the USA and Israel. Spain, under Sánchez, has been the most vocally critical country of Israel, especially during the ethnic cleansing in Gaza. Furthermore, the country did not allow the U.S. to use its territory to carry out attacks against Iran. As a result, Spain earned the enmity of both countries, which have been making veiled threats for some time now.
A few years ago, even Benjamin Netanyahu’s son made a social media post recommending that Muslims take Ceuta and Melilla.
Another factor that may have influenced this crisis is the fact that in July of this year, Spain and Algeria resumed normal diplomatic relations after several years of rupture. Moreover, Spain decided to increase imports of Algerian gas, as well as putting other possible joint projects on paper. Algeria, as we have pointed out, is a geopolitical enemy of Morocco, just as Spain is.
It is necessary, however, to point out that Sánchez and the Spanish judiciary are also partially responsible for the migration chaos. A few months ago, Sánchez legalized more than 1 million illegal immigrants, in practice demonstrating that invading Spain pays off. Spain’s Supreme Court, in turn, prohibited authorities from carrying out summary expulsions of immigrants who arrived in the country by boat. For all intents and purposes, the decisions of the Executive and the Judiciary facilitated the work of agencies that promote migration.
By embracing cosmopolitanism, Sánchez and the Spanish elite have made the country an easy target for the use of migratory flows as hybrid warfare weapons—because that is what this is about. It is time to overcome the humanist naivety that sees mass immigration as a humanitarian phenomenon in which victims of imperialism flee desperately in search of a better life.
In fact, migratory flows as seen in Europe over the last 20 years are clearly artificial, and considering Israel’s role in promoting “diversity” and even the action of Israeli NGOs helping immigrants reach Europe, it is difficult to ignore the agents who wield this instrument.
Another Strange Week in Trumpland
By Philip Giraldi | Unz Review | August 5, 2026
Some weeks it is difficult to pick out the most shocking stories symptomatic of decline and fall of American governmental integrity both in Washington and often at state levels. The White House and Congress frequently lead in that reckoning given the complete abandonment of any United States government’s effort to make its policies and legislation responsive to actual national interests. Wars are being fought without any reason to do so and domestic policies are derived from “feelings” that President Donald Trump has when he gets up on the morning. The result is chaos when the policies are actually developed and implemented.
Last week we long suffering Americans were forced to witness pure Trumpean flip-flops on major pronouncements relating to foreign policy. First came the pronouncements that Iran had more-or-less reached out to Trump and sought a return to negotiations for a ceasefire and peace agreement. The claim was immediately denied by Tehran and nearly all observers agreed that the Iranians would have to be crazy to trust Washington and its “word” over any issue given Trump’s history of subsequently disregarding documents signed and agreements reached. Trump then responded to the Iranian denial by threating to unleash hellfire in his usual fashion, replete with obscenities and threats of obliteration for the Persian people in a holocaust more devastating than World War 2.
Some observers have noted that Trump’s threats of annihilation are clearly unachievable in practical terms given the rundown of US munitions stocks and the difficulty in manufacturing replacements due to Chinese refusal to sell exotic metals to the Americans and the loss of Saudi and Emirate refineries that produced high grade aluminum for fuselages of warplanes. So if Trump really seeks to act out his schoolboy fantasies of death and destruction he will have to go nuclear. It is ironic that he has based the war against Iran on his oft repeated stated intention to prevent Iranian development of a nuclear weapon, a program which US intelligence has insisted does not exist. Only the US both possesses and has used nukes to kill civilians and that was in 1945.
Given all the mixed signals coming out of Washington, it is perhaps unnecessary to point out that a war that was pointless and unnecessary in the first place is still sputtering along with Israel and its Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu pushing for its expansion from the sidelines using lies crafted to convince a clueless Trump. “Far better at this point,” says Netanyahu, “to see American soldiers die to destroy Iran rather than waste any of our wonderful Jewish boys, each of whom is worth 1,000 goyim.” Actually, we Americans are lucky to be only 1/1,000th times in terms of Jewish relative value. One Israeli Lawyer calculates that each Jewish life is worth 10 million Palestinians!
That Trump is deep into a war that is destroying his presidency and only benefiting Israel is the ultimate tragedy for the American public and also vis-à-vis the other nations in the world that once looked up to the United States for its commitment to democracy and rule of law. Israel is now rightly the most hated nation in the world, but the US is number two! And the rot regarding who is doing what to whom runs particularly deep if one regards the confusion in the US military role that the Trump Administration has clearly encouraged.
One story that appeared in the Washington Post last week was particularly painful, describing the concerns of the US General Alexus Grynkewich, who is head of the US European Command. He described in a memo his concerns over his insufficient stock of defensive-capable Naval destroyers. The article elaborated how Grynkewich “… sent written notification to senior Pentagon officials saying that without another Navy destroyer he will be forced to choose defense of the United States ‘homeland’ over that of Israel, …” My reading of this is that the general is personally perplexed over whether his orders emanating from the White House would prioritize his defending the United States rather than Israel. That he is apparently unable to clearly understand that defending his own country is and must always be his top priority is both incomprehensible and a clear sign how the unconscionable love of the Jewish state by the Joe Biden and Donald Trump regimes has destroyed any sense of the actual raison d’etre for having any military at all!
Indeed, Donald Trump and his friends in power are quick to play soldiers whenever it suits them. I love watching Trump the draft dodger standing to attention and saluting without taking his funky red hat off, a military posture he once upon a time chose to avoid in Vietnam by way of fraudulent medical claims of bone spurs when his draft board called him up for service after he graduated from college in 1968. To add to the irony, Trump has a number of times stated that he should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (CMH) for his largely fictional “peacemaking role,” a medal that in actuality is the highest award for soldiers who demonstrated valor in combat, which does not include Donald Trump.
But even given that bit of regular play acting, Trump’s AI posting on his Truth Social last week exceeds all decency in the eyes of those of us, including myself, who went into the army after college instead of Trump, who had the both the money and lack of patriotism to pay a doctor for his fake medical report. In the posting, Trump portrayed himself in full dress uniform flanked by World War 2 Generals Douglas MacArthur and George S Patton. He is standing in front of the two men and has four general stars on his shoulders plus a chest full of medal ribbons, a higher rank and more awards that either MacArthur or Patton in the AI photoshop. One medal on Trump appears to be a CMH. It is an insult to the memories of those two brave men depicted and to describe the imposture as both disgraceful and obscene would not be going too far!
One more tale out of last week demonstrates the president’s continuing willingness to enrich his family and supporters out of behavior that is generally conceded to be illegal “insider trading.” It has frequently been observed how the president has a tendency to make pronouncements of a political or economic nature on Mondays and Fridays, i.e. to impact on the opening and closing of Wall Street and other investment markets. Investors armed with that advanced information can and have benefited financially greatly by playing the predictable surges caused by White House actions. Those with prior knowledge of what is going to happen benefit particularly, to include Trump personally and his family.
In the latest version of that reality, Trump is selling through his family company Trump Media & Technology Group early access to premium data product released on its new subscription service to his Truth Social posts, where the pronouncements will appear. The cost is $100,000 per month to investors, who will then be able to benefit substantially from the shifts in the stock market. So far five investor firms have signed up and its is already expected that Trump personally will benefit directly from his ownership share of Truth Social distribution to the tune of 41% of the $6 million of existing committed revenue. Critics have observed that Trump “must have invented a new theory of ‘insider trading’ based on publicly available information.”
In conclusion and ironically, Trump sometimes boasts how he accepts no government salary as president but in 2025 he declared “more than $2 billion in personal income last year—nearly quadruple his 2024 total—with the bulk flowing from ventures that sit directly at the intersection of his office and his balance sheet. He earned roughly $1.4 billion from cryptocurrency alone, including $635 million in royalties from his $TRUMP meme coin and more than $500 million from World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture run by his sons.”
Want to corruptly earn a couple of billion dollars while killing a whole bunch of people in fighting wars and supporting genocides that didn’t need to happen? Ask US President Donald Trump how it is done!
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is https://councilforthenationalinterest.org address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is inform@cnionline.org.
Trump returns to talking on Ukraine but war must mature first
By M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | Indian Punchline | August 6, 2026
Russian President Vladimir Putin fired the political equivalent of an Oroshnik hypersonic missile Wednesday to scatter the recent pot shots by hawkish factions at the Russian ‘power vertical’, never a unified construct actually, over the future directions of Ukraine war.
Putin coolly announced at a Kremlin meeting Wednesday with the Defense Ministry leadership a major reshuffle of Russian commanders in the special military operation zone asserting that he has his own mind about tactic and strategy and intends to continue with the special military operation to its logical conclusion, while retaining the structural patterns.
Simply put, Russia’s Bismarck does not want to be remembered in posterity as someone who wantonly sacrificed the lives of his country’s youth to conquer foreign lands for self-glorification.
It is a noble decision — pragmatic and tactical but also strategic. This will mean Russia’s attritional war will continue but a paradigm shift to put maximum pressure on the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is to be expected. Indeed, the massive missile strikes at Kyiv in recent days are no longer meeting with missile interceptors, as Americans do not have surplus stocks to spare.
Put differently, there has been a paradigm shift as Russian forces gain ground all across the frontline while there are growing signs of demoralisation within the Ukrainian army whose command and control system has become shaky following the recent dismissal of Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, and the replacement of Defence Minister Mykhailo Federov.
Putin has reposed confidence in the military commanders who worked as a team in advancing the special military operation. From the political perspective too, Putin is pleased with the return of the US administration — and President Donald Trump personally — to the Ukraine settlement process.
The big picture also needs to be factored in, as Washington’s high-level contacts with Beijing are intensifying and Moscow cannot afford to lag behind. Russia’s sherpa to the APEC summit at Shenzhen Ambassador-at-Large Marat Berdyev told Izvestia recently, “It’s premature to discuss specific meetings. However, in my opinion, such a trilateral contact [US-Russia-China] would be very useful. In practical terms, it’s entirely feasible, as three leaders of the leading powers are expected at the designated venue.”
Certainly, the first in-person meeting in Manila on May 25 between foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and Marco Rubio since September of last year was a defining moment. Ukraine was largely the focus of the meeting. Rubio told the media there was a need to seek “new proposals and new ideas,” adding that Washington was prepared to present “some of them in the appropriate context and format.”
This marked a departure from the Anchorage agreements of last August. But Moscow decided not to make an issue of it and instead signalled appreciation that after a lengthy pause, the US was renewing efforts to restart the Ukraine negotiation process.
In a subsequent interview with Fox News on August 1, Rubio announced that Washington was once again ready to work with Moscow and Kyiv to achieve peace, despite the two countries’ existing “strict red lines.” Rubio stated that Moscow and Kyiv have “some pretty strong red lines. Until we can bring these red lines closer together, we won’t achieve our goal. But we are ready to act.”
Rubio also touched on how Washington envisioned the main goal of its diplomacy in the new phase: “The dynamics of the conflict have changed somewhat in recent months, with the Ukrainian side now capable of striking deep into Russian territory and making the Russians feel the effects of this war. Therefore, we want to explore whether this new dynamic can lead to some kind of negotiated settlement.”
But to be sure, Rubio would also have been aware that the emergent reality included sustained and massive Russian missile strikes on Kyiv, and that a major drone production facility belonging to the American company Terminal Autonomy was destroyed last week. According to the Guardian, this company manufactured high-precision drones for “deep strikes” in Ukraine, with guidance systems resistant to Russian electronic countermeasures. Of course, Russians were making a point.
On the other hand, Trump retracted from an earlier offer during the NATO summit in Ankara on July 8 to allow Ukraine to manufacture Patriot missile; and he also failed to respond to a request from Zelenskyy for an “emergency winter package of 300 Patriot missiles” without waiting for licensed production to begin.
The White House and SpaceX are also non-committal apropos of Zelenskyy’s proposal to Trump on July 28 to lift Starlink’s geographic restrictions over Russian territory that would enable Ukraine to use Starlink’s real-time connection to steer long-range drones against mobile Russian ballistic missile launchers positioned deep inside Russia.
Furthermore, it transpires that the new scheme by the US’ European allies for American arms supplies to Ukraine under the Prioritised Ukraine Requirements List (PURL) programme is stalling. Despite $4.5 billion flowing into the US Treasury under PURL as of March, no contracts have been signed so far.
Finally, the ‘Graham bill’ imposing oil sanctions on Russia may not after all pass before the legislative recess which begins on August 10, as it has become part of a bargaining chip between the Democratic and Republican parties. If consideration of the bill drags on and if the Congress comes under Democratic Party control, the ‘bipartisan consensus’ over the bill may well wither away even as Lindsey Graham becomes a distant memory. The White House is in no hurry to pass the bill.
However, such ‘feel good’ signalling notwithstanding, fundamental disagreements over key terms of a peace settlement continue to prevent Moscow and Kyiv from resuming full-fledged dialogue. Due to the escalating conflict over Iran, Washington is currently unable to exert the necessary pressure on Kyiv. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to visit Kyiv in the second half of August.
Meanwhile, Ukraine’s attacks on civilian infrastructure within Russia are only intensifying, against the backdrop of Russia’s Duma elections. Russia’s retaliatory missile strikes have reached a massive scale.
The bottom line is that the chances of Moscow agreeing to Kyiv and Washington’s new terms are low. So, the nascent negotiation process would inevitably return to square one, which in turn will trigger another round of escalation. Perhaps, Russia anticipates such an eventuality.
One positive factor is that Trump himself would seek to achieve at least interim results in the negotiations before the mid-term congressional elections. But then, a powerful lobby representing the US military-industrial complex advocates a continuation of the conflict.
The Kremlin meeting on Wednesday and the reshuffle of army commanders steering the special military operation in Ukraine messages that negotiations can only become feasible when the parties are willing to make mutual concessions, and for that to happen, two pre-requisites of the situation are needed, namely, Russia’s battlefield victory and regime change in Kyiv.
60-DAY HORMUZ ARRANGEMENT CONFIRMED BY TEHRAN & OMAN — w/ Prof. Seyed Mohammad Marandi
Mario Nawfal | August 5, 2026
Did the US military take down a civilian plane?
RT | August 5, 2026
The US military’s GPS jamming exercises have been directly implicated in a fatal plane crash for the first time, after an air ambulance flew into a mountain range in New Mexico while its guidance system was scrambled.
Details of the crash, which took place in May, were revealed in a recent preliminary report by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). The report explains how the jamming exercises interfered with multiple aircraft, pushing air traffic controllers to the breaking point as they attempted to reroute flights using traditional means of navigation. Amid the confusion, a medevac flight with four people on board strayed miles off course, crashing into mountains at full speed on a moonless night.
What happened to the plane?
Shortly after 11 PM on May 13, the crew of a Beechcraft King Air 90 air ambulance were given a straightforward mission: fly for roughly 20 minutes from Roswell to Sierra Blanca Regional Airport, pick up a patient, and transport them to Albuquerque for treatment. Two pilots and two nurses boarded the turboprop aircraft and took off, flying west.
Within minutes, controllers noticed that the plane was flying 1,000 feet above its assigned altitude. The plane’s captain informed controllers that he had lost GPS signal, and controllers responded by ordering him to correct his altitude, fly north, and await alternate directions to Sierra Blanca, where he would perform an instrument landing – using radio beacons to line up with the runway and descend at the correct angle.
Meanwhile, controllers got in touch with the military and requested that the jamming exercise be paused.
What was the military doing?
Some 40 miles away, at the White Sands Missile Range, the US Air Force’s 746th Test Squadron was holding its annual NAVFEST drills. These exercises bring together electronic warfare (EW) units from multiple branches of the armed forces, engineers from the defense industry, and teams from other NATO states to practice GPS interference, navigation, and drone defense on a desert plain once used to test atomic bombs.
Prior to the crash, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) warned aircraft operators that GPS could be affected up to 400 miles from the exercises between May 12 and May 18.
A map showing GPS interference around White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico on the night of the crash © GPSJAM
How did the plane crash?
As the plane continued north, controllers informed the captain that they would send vectors – a series of compass headings – to align the plane for landing “in a couple minutes.” However, the controllers were busy redirecting four other aircraft that had lost their GPS, and the vectors never came.
At eight minutes past midnight, the pilots spotted the runway lights at Sierra Blanca, roughly 31 miles to their southwest. They decided to navigate visually to the airport, informed controllers, and turned towards their destination. Apparently, they never intended to approach from this direction, and didn’t notice the 10,000-foot Capitan Mountains between them and the runway.
Controllers informed the military that it could resume jamming, and the plane descended towards Sierra Blanca, its altimeter still reading 600 feet higher than the plane’s actual altitude. As the mountains rose out of the darkness and obscured the distant runway, the pilots attempted to pull up, but were unable to avert disaster.
The plane slammed into the mountainside, instantly killing everyone on board and igniting a forest fire that took almost a month to extinguish.
What has the US military said?
The US Army did not respond to questions from the Associated Press, and has not released a public statement on the crash in the almost two months since the NTSB’s report was published.
Much about the incident is still unknown. It is unclear whether the pilots were aware that the FAA had warned about potential GPS interference, whether their ground proximity warning system – which should have told them to climb to avoid the crash – was affected by the jamming, and why they were unaware of a large mountain range in the area.
The NTSB’s report is preliminary, and the board will not identify the precise cause of the crash until its investigation concludes next year.
Are more flights at risk?
The crash marked the first time that GPS jamming by the US military has been implicated in a fatal accident. However, civilian aircraft have been affected by jamming exercises before. In March of last year, airliners approaching Washington DC’s Reagan International Airport received warnings from their planes’ Traffic Collision Avoidance System, instructing them to immediately descend to avoid hitting non-existent traffic in their paths. It later emerged that electronic warfare testing by the US Secret Service caused the false alerts.
Such incidents will likely become more common, as the Pentagon increases its spending on, and testing of, EW equipment. Since at least 2020, the US has been aware that its military trails Russia and China in developing and integrating EW systems, and lawmakers have pushed the Pentagon to close the gap.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict has demonstrated just how wide that gap is, even between the US and its own client regime in Kiev. In a conflict where every Ukrainian advance in drone technology is countered by Russian EW specialists within weeks, and vice versa, US weapons systems – including GPS-guided shells and missiles – were rendered “useless” by mid-2023, according to media reports.
Since then, the Pentagon has asked Congress to fund more electronic warfare experiments in the US, and last year, the Army published its first ever Comprehensive Electromagnetic Warfare Strategy, promising to embed EW systems into every unit of the branch by 2028.
The US has the world’s busiest airspace, with more than 44,000 flights handled by the FAA every day. It is inevitable that a growing number of these flights will be affected by electronic warfare in the future, and that the risk to civilians will increase as the Pentagon tries to catch up with its adversaries.
The West is Winning the Information War While Russia Prevails on the Battlefield
By Larry C. Johnson | SONAR21 | August 5, 2026
I stumbled across something pretty bizarre today when I queried one of the AI-search engines about Russia’s capture of territory in Ukraine in 2026. Here is what the Chinese KIMI claimed:
The evidence from multiple sources — including Ukrainian official claims, Western think tanks, and Ukrainian independent trackers — suggests that Ukraine recaptured substantially more territory than Russia captured during the first half of 2026, driven by the southern counteroffensive. However, the pace of Ukrainian gains has slowed since spring, and Russia has made small net gains in recent months (June–July). The overall net for the full year so far appears to still favor Ukraine, but the margin and the exact numbers depend heavily on whose methodology you use.
There you have it… Ukraine is winning the war on the ground according to AI. Let me emphasize that you will find this same propaganda on GROK or Claude. The Western propaganda effort is paying dividends on the information operation side of the house. Even the Chinese-coders who created KIMI are pushing Western propaganda.
So let me give you the actual rundown for 2026. Russia started 2026 with Gerasimov’s report to Putin announcing the liberation of Pokrovsk (Krasnoarmeysk) — the Donetsk logistics hub under siege for nearly two years — and of Vovchansk in Kharkiv. Through November of 2025 the MoD had reported a steady run of captures, including Petrovskoye in the DPR and Tikhoye and Otradnoye in Dnepropetrovsk.
Moving into the spring of 2026, TASS reported that Russian forces liberated 63 settlements from March through May 2026 — 20 in March, 16 in April, and 27 in May, the strongest month. The regional breakdown was 21 in Kharkiv Region, 19 in the DPR, 14 in Sumy, six in Zaporozhye, and three in Dnepropetrovsk. The Sumy and Kharkiv gains are framed by Moscow as building a “security zone” along the Russian border.
By early summer (June), Gerasimov reported that Russian forces were continuing the liberation of “Donbass and Novorossiya,” advancing on all fronts. The 3rd Army was advancing toward Slavyansk and Kramatorsk — liberating Piskunovka, reaching the outskirts of Nikolayevka, and reported to be less than 5 km from the eastern edge of Kramatorsk, with the capture of Krasny Liman (Lyman) said to be due soon.
Battlegroup West advanced on a broad front; in the Kupyansk area, having repelled Ukrainian attempts to break through to western Kupyansk, with assault units pushing west toward Shevchenkovo. In the Dobropolye area north of Krasnoarmeysk, fighting in Dobropolye and Annovka, with Lenina (Ukrainian name Mirnoye) taken and Shevchenko, Krasnoyarskoye, and Svetloye reported as liberated.
In July TASS counted 32 settlements liberated, with 22 of them — over 68 percent — in Kharkiv Region and the DPR. By battlegroup: North took ten, Center eight, West six, East five, and South three, and the month’s most significant developments were the liberation of Konstantinovka in the DPR by Battlegroup East and the capture of Belitskoye by Battlegroup Center. Konstantinovka is one of the four Donetsk fortress belt cities.
At present the Russians are driving on the last major Ukrainian-held Donetsk agglomeration — the Konstantinovka–Druzhkovka–Kramatorsk–Slavyansk belt — alongside the Sumy/Kharkiv border zone and consolidation in Zaporozhye and Dnepropetrovsk.
Along with the ground operations in eastern Ukraine, Russia has ended Ukraine’s ability to conduct maritime and trade operations from Odessa and Nikolaev since July 22nd. Ukrainian farmers will not be able to export products via the Black Sea ports and western supplies, which once flowed freely through Odessa. Ukraine’s maritime lifeline is severed and will not be in operation until after the war with Ukraine is over.
Finally, there is the daily Russian missile and drone attacks on Kiev and other key Ukrainian logistics and military hubs. The destruction of factories and warehouses is effectively bleeding Ukraine dry. The West persists in painting the war in Ukraine as a crusade that sits on the threshold of victory, but the realities on the ground tell a dramatically different, grim story… Ukraine is losing.
AIPAC spends $30m but fails to stop El-Sayed in Michigan
MEMO | August 5, 2026
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has suffered a major electoral defeat after Dr Abdul El-Sayed won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, crushing pro-Israel congresswoman Haley Stevens despite an unprecedented spending campaign on her behalf.
AIPAC’s super political action committee, the United Democracy Project, spent more than $30 million promoting Stevens and attacking El-Sayed, according to Federal Election Commission filings analysed by the New York Times. NBC News projected El-Sayed as the winner on Wednesday, dealing a major blow to the pro-Israel lobby’s efforts to determine the outcome of one of the most closely watched Democratic contests in the country.
El-Sayed campaigned against US military assistance to Israel and repeatedly highlighted AIPAC’s intervention in the race. Stevens, by contrast, received the backing of AIPAC and the Democratic Party establishment.
The result is seen as providing some of the clearest evidence yet that association with Israel and its powerful lobby groups is becoming a political liability among Democratic voters as opposition grows to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the unconditional support it receives from Washington.
A New York Times investigation published before the primary result was announced revealed the scale of AIPAC’s transformation from a traditional lobbying organisation into one of the largest spenders in US elections.
Spending by AIPAC-affiliated political action committees on campaign advertising and voter outreach has more than doubled in less than five years, rising from $29.3 million to $67.2 million. Much of the money has been directed towards Democratic primaries, where the lobby has sought to defeat candidates who criticise Israel or question US military assistance to the occupation state.
However, the investigation uncovered a striking feature of AIPAC’s campaign strategy: it rarely reveals its connection to Israel.
Between April 2022 and the end of July, AIPAC-funded groups produced 109 television and digital adverts. Only six mentioned Israel. Instead, the adverts focused on issues such as abortion rights, the economy and the cost of living, despite being financed specifically to elect politicians who support Israel.
AIPAC’s reluctance to mention Israel is seen as a reflection of a deeper political problem: open association with the Israeli government has become increasingly toxic following the mass killing, displacement and starvation of Palestinians in Gaza.
The lobby is effectively asking voters to support Israel’s preferred candidates without making Israel itself part of the public argument.
AIPAC has also channelled approximately $22 million into five smaller super PACs with innocuous names that make no reference to Israel. These include Elect Chicago Women, Affordable Chicago Now!, Voters for Responsive Government and Blue Wave Action.
The Michigan contest became the lobby’s largest gamble. United Democracy Project spent more than $10 million promoting Stevens and over $20 million attacking El-Sayed through advertising and voter outreach.
Nevertheless, El-Sayed prevailed.
El-Sayed’s victory is thought to be particularly significant because Michigan is home to one of the largest Arab-American populations in the US and became the centre of the “Uncommitted” movement, which challenged former President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Signs of the political backlash were already visible in April when Stevens and another AIPAC-backed politician were booed during the Michigan Democratic Party Convention. El-Sayed and his former primary rival, Mallory McMorrow, had both pledged to reject AIPAC funding.
AIPAC has previously succeeded in removing several prominent critics of Israel, spending millions of dollars to defeat former Democratic representatives Jamaal Bowman and Cori Bush. It has also targeted Republicans who questioned US military support for Israel.
However, the lobby has faced a growing number of defeats. Summer Lee survived repeated AIPAC-funded attempts to remove her, while candidates in Illinois and New Jersey successfully used their opponents’ links to the lobby against them.
Polls have also documented a rapid decline in support for Israel. A majority of Americans now oppose providing economic and military assistance to Israel, while Democratic voters have become increasingly critical of both Israel’s conduct in Gaza and the influence of pro-Israel lobbying organisations.
Abdul el-Sayed defeats AIPAC-backed rival in Michigan primary, defying millions in lobby spending
The Cradle | August 5, 2026
Abdul el-Sayed, a former public health official, has won Michigan’s Democratic Senate primary, defeating AIPAC-backed Representative Haley Stevens in a close race, NBC News reported on 5 August.
Sayed won despite being heavily outfunded, with outside groups pouring close to $65 million into the race to stop him.
More than $30 million of the television advertising behind Stevens came from a group affiliated with the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC.
Taken together, Stevens and her allies outspent Sayed and the groups supporting him on advertising by a factor of nine to one, according to the ad-tracking firm AdImpact.
Sayed pointed to the imbalance in his closing argument, saying during a debate, “If you need a $60 million crutch, you probably can’t be elected on your own terms.”
He also went after Stevens’ support for aid to Israel, and stated outright that Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, a position that carries particular weight in Michigan, home to large Muslim and Arab communities.
Sayed made Stevens’ backing from AIPAC and corporate political action committees a central charge against her, attacking both the funds she accepted directly and the advertising her big-spending allies bought on her behalf.
Stevens, a four-term congresswoman, ran with the backing of the Democratic establishment, positioning her campaign squarely within the party leadership alongside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer.
Governor Gretchen Whitmer endorsed her on 24 July in a late move seen as an attempt to stifle Sayed’s rise. Outgoing Senator Gary Peters, whose seat is at stake, also endorsed her after deciding not to seek a third term.
Despite the cumulative hurdles, Sayed’s victory follows a run of defeats for AIPAC-funded candidates in Democratic primaries this cycle.
On 30 June, Democratic socialist Melat Kiros unseated Diana DeGette in Colorado’s 1st congressional district by nearly 10 percentage points, ending a 30-year congressional career built in part on well over $1.6 million from AIPAC.
A week earlier, in New York, Brad Lander defeated Dan Goldman after attacking his refusal to call the assault on Gaza a genocide or to back restrictions on arms sales to Israel, while Darializa Avila Chevalier unseated Adriano Espaillat in a campaign centered on his acceptance of AIPAC money.
A senior House Democrat called the Colorado result a wake-up call, with support for Israel turning from an asset into a liability. Strategist Jon Paul Lupo told POLITICO that candidates opposing the war on Gaza held a massive political advantage this cycle.
Pew Research Center polling released in April found 60 percent of US citizens now view Israel unfavorably, with very unfavorable sentiment nearly tripling since 2022, while a Gallup poll in February recorded more US citizens sympathizing with Palestinians, at 41 percent, than with Israelis, at 36 percent – the first such result in US history.
El-Sayed Wins Michigan Democratic Primary for Senate
Al-Manar – August 5, 2026
Abdul El-Sayed, a progressive public health advocate, has won the Democratic nomination for the United States Senate, overcoming more than $60m in campaign spending, mostly from pro-Israel groups, NBC has projected.
The result on Tuesday represents an enormous blow to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which led the way in the effort to defeat El-Sayed, backing his opponent, US Congresswoman Haley Stevens, with more than $30m.
El-Sayed will face former Republican Congressman Mike Rogers in November. The race is considered one of a handful of competitive Senate contests in the November midterms and could determine which party controls the chamber for the rest of President Donald Trump’s term.
If El-Sayed – who is of Egyptian descent – wins in November, he would become the first Muslim senator in US history.
Tuesday’s result in Michigan – a swing state that voted for Trump in 2024 – will have major implications for the Democrats’ policies on conflicts in the Middle East.
El-Sayed recognizes Israel’s atrocities in Gaza as a genocide and argues that money spent on conflicts that benefit ‘Israel’ should be invested in local communities in the US to address healthcare, housing and infrastructure problems.
Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute, a non-partisan advocacy group that does not endorse candidates, called El-Sayed’s victory a “big deal”.
She said voters “did not buy” the avalanche of ads that did not talk about policies and only launched negative attacks “about an Arab American Muslim man named Abdul”.
When Palestinian injuries are dubbed “fake”
By Eva Karene Bartlett | August 5, 2026
I followed up on this story, because some were sceptical and didn’t believe it was real or possible, and loudly insisted it was fake. One man who fancied himself an expert because he likes to shoot a gun now or then claimed this was fake, impossible.
First, I will say that Palestinians don’t need to create fake stories, Israel is doing the impossible to them every day and has been doing so for not only the last 3 years—even when I lived in Gaza, we’d see injured Palestinians and situations that didn’t seem possible but were very real—but certainly in the last three years of Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, we’ve seen things that seemed impossible but were very, brutally, bloodily, real for Palestinians.
Second, a good friend of mine from Jabaliya told me he knew the man who filmed the video. I have no reason to believe he lied to me.
But for clarity on logistics of the situation— how this youth came to have a bullet in his hand when others said his hand would have been blown off (though I already guessed the answer)—I reached out to a couple of others I knew in Gaza. Dr. Ihab replied to me:
“This is a fallen shot, that is, it was fired from a long distance and fell. These shots caused the killing of many people: when the bullet settled in their neck and chest, it may be fatal. But in this case, it is easily removed by a short surgery. We hope that it has not caused fractures in the palm of the hand or tears in the tissues and nerves.”
He went on to say that his own friend was killed by such a stray bullet fired by an Israeli soldier, hitting the friend in his neck as he sat in a chair, killing him. “These may be from the Zionist machine gun or from drones, or the launches carried out by the army randomly.”
A journalist who had shared the initial photo also replied to me: “This child was sitting in a learning tent west of Gaza City. The bullet fell from the sky after being fired from the eastern part of Gaza City, where Israeli forces were positioned. Although it came from a considerable distance, it struck the tent and hit the child while he was seated at his school desk. Yes, it’s unbelievable, but in Gaza anything is possible.”
I refer back to Dr. Mimi Syed, who I interviewed a year ago. She went twice to Gaza as an emergency doctor, and one of the patients she was able to save, a young girl named Mira, had a bullet lodged in her head. “When I showed the CT image to the world, I was accused of fabricating it.”
Dr. Tarek Loubani, who I’ve known from Canada since before I first went to Gaza in 2008, likewise faced accusations that he had lied or forged an x-ray of one of his patients.
He didn’t lie or manipulate, of course, but people couldn’t accept that what it showed was real.
Israel has long treated Gaza as its testing ground for new weapons and technology and also for how much Israel can get away with while the world watches. If your immediate reaction at seeing an injury or seemingly impossible photo or video from Gaza is to accuse Palestinians (or non-Palestinians who managed to enter Gaza) of fabricating footage or x-rays, etc, then you are the problem. Your life experience shooting a gun in your back yard does not equip you to understand the circumstances in Gaza. Palestinians in Gaza don’t have the luxury of debating this, they’re living in truly unreal circumstances.
Mainstream Western institutions view Jewish lives as more important than Palestinian Lives
By Caitlin Johnstone | August 3, 2026
The BBC recently interviewed an Israeli settler who said that all the Palestinians in four surrounding villages should be exterminated to avenge an Israeli who was killed while terrorizing a Palestinian village last month, adding that just a single Jewish life is worth ten million Palestinian lives.
“I think now after they kill one Israeli people, we need to kill all the people in Tal and Sarra, even Jit and Farata,” lawyer Yehuda Shimon told the BBC.
“It sounds like you’re saying one Jewish life is worth hundreds or thousands of Palestinian lives,” replied the BBC’s Lucy Williamson in the interview.
“Million,” Shimon corrected her. “One Jewish life, it’s ten million, okay?”
“That just sounds racist,” Williamson responded, to which Shimon replied, “Yes, I know, I know. But this is the truth.”
The interaction has been going viral on social media as people react to the blatant display of the extremist ideology held by the settlers who are working to gradually squeeze Palestinians off their land in the West Bank. And while it is true that Shimon’s comments are extremely evil and racist, that’s not what I personally found interesting about the interview. What I found interesting was Williamson’s response.
I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives. After all, the premise that Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives has colored every aspect of Western news media reporting on Israel and Palestine for generations.
[IAK notes: See this]
That’s why the Western press expressed disproportionately more shock and horror at October 7 than the far more egregious Israeli abuses which led up to it and the far more egregious Israeli abuses which followed. It’s why you saw howling outrage at the Bondi shooting in Sydney last year when the same number of Palestinians getting killed on any given day in Gaza never even makes a blip in the news.
On the 26th of March 2025, 15 Palestinians were killed by the IDF during a ceasefire in Gaza. On the 14th of December that same year, 15 people were killed at Bondi Beach in Sydney in a mass shooting by ISIS members directed at Jewish Australians.
Two instances of mass murder. Same exact number of victims. But you only heard about one of them.
Why did you only hear about one of them? Because only one of them made the news.
The mainstream press spent weeks urgently reporting on the Bondi shooting, frenetically working to falsely associate an ISIS terrorist attack with pro-Palestine demonstrations by uniformly repeating the line “This is what globalize the intifada looks like” in news outlets throughout the Western world. Report after report after report was published about how Jews are being attacked, how Jews are feeling unsafe, and what new laws and free speech restrictions must be rolled out in order to stomp out pro-Palestine sentiment to protect the Jews.
Nothing remotely similar happened on the 26th of March, 2025. As far as the Western press were concerned, 15 Palestinians getting killed in Gaza was just another Wednesday.
This is because all mainstream Western media outlets hold the same racist opinions about Palestinians as those that were voiced by Yehuda Shimon. So do all mainstream Western political parties. So do all other mainstream Western institutions. So do all supporters of the state of Israel. They all believe Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives, as evidenced by the policies they support and the news stories they pay attention to.
The BBC has a well-documented history of extensive pro-Israel bias, with its own reporters complaining that they’ve been performing PR for the Israeli government and its own editor losing a libel lawsuit against a journalist who exposed his pro-Israel slant. They spent years running cover for an active genocide with “Hamas-run health ministry says” headlines and passive-language verbal gymnastics to protect Israeli information interests, so you know that when Lucy Williamson objects “That sounds racist!” to an Israeli settler claiming Jewish lives are worth far more than Palestinian lives, she’s not actually upset at his belief system. She just knows you’re not supposed to say such things out loud.
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Exposed: How Anthony Fauci tortured vulnerable children in his obsessive hunt for an HIV vaccine
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… In 2004, investigative journalist Liam Scheff chronicled Dr Fauci’s secretive experiments on hundreds of HIV-positive foster children at Incarnation Children’s Center (ICC) in New York City and numerous sister facilities in New York and six other states between 1988 and 2002. … Read full excerpt
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