Mr. Master

Władimir Putin ma domagać się od Ukrainy nie tylko rezygnacji z nieokupowanej części Donbasu, ale także kolejnych ustępstw terytorialnych w ramach przyszłego porozumienia kończącego wojnę – podał „Financial Times”. Według źródeł gazety przekazanie Donbasu ma być dla Moskwy jedynie warunkiem wstępnym ewentualnego zawieszenia broni.

Putin does not have a veto over European security. Any agreement to end the war must prevent Russia from re-arming and re-attacking. This is why earlier this year, I put forward a paper with core demands towards Moscow, which was discussed by EU Foreign Ministers. This should be the basis for any negotiations. Concessions should be on the aggressor, not on the victim. My press remarks in Warsaw alongside @sikorskiradek and @andrii_sybiha ↓

President Trump today advanced an important discussion with several European leaders about the need for a broader European security architecture that can help establish the conditions for lasting peace. Building on his leadership and the substantive work undertaken this week in Brussels with Ukraine, NATO, and our European partners, @SEPeaceMissions and I wanted to share some of the objectives guiding our ongoing discussions. For more than 30 years, Europe and Russia have struggled to establish a sustainable security framework. Decades of mistrust, competing security concerns, and the devastating consequences of this war make this an extraordinarily difficult challenge, but one that is essential to lasting peace. Our objective is to develop practical arrangements that address the security concerns of all sides, reduce the risk of future conflict, and create a more stable and predictable security environment. We are exploring five principal goals: permanent security consultations, reliable crisis communications, greater military transparency, reciprocal measures to reduce escalation risks, and an enduring framework for long-term European security and stability. Any arrangements must fully respect the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independent decision-making of every nation. Each country will retain authority over its own security and alliances, and no country would have a veto over another’s sovereign choices. NATO will remain central to European collective defense, and this initiative would build upon existing institutions and commitments. We will continue consultations through the Shell Bay format with Ukraine, NATO, the EU, and our European partners, expanding engagement to ensure that all relevant perspectives and ideas are considered. We will also engage Russia as part of the peace negotiations. Next week in Abu Dhabi, the United States will convene the first trilateral peace discussions with Ukraine and Russia since February. All parties remain intensely engaged in preparing for substantive and productive negotiations. We will consult closely with our European partners on the sidelines and, if progress is made, aim to move toward a broader multilateral format with their direct participation. These ideas continue to evolve, and we welcome thoughtful input. Creating the right structure will be critical to ending this war and transitioning from conflict toward conditions that make possible a durable peace. This is difficult, detailed work. There are no easy solutions. But the opportunity to help end this devastating war and build a foundation for a more peaceful, secure, and prosperous Europe for generations to come makes it a challenge well worth undertaking. We will see how these discussions develop and continue working intensively with all parties toward President Trump’s objective of a comprehensive and lasting peace.

Prezydent USA Donald Trump zapowiedział „wielką, wspaniałą umowę” dla Ukrainy, która „może mieć wpływ na całą Europę”. Zięć amerykańskiej głowy państwa Jared Kushner zapowiedział zaangażowanie Rosji do „konsultacji”. rp.pl/polityka/art45454731-t…

Jego istotą było stworzenie faktycznej buforowej strefy bezpieczeństwa, obszaru częściowo zdemilitaryzowanego na wschodniej flance NATO i cofnięcie większości wojskowych konsekwencji jego rozszerzenia w 1999 i 2004 r. Moskwa będzie domagać się obecnie podobnych ustępstw,a m. in.:

Izba Reprezentantów przegrana, Senat przegrany. A gdyby Waszyngton trzymał się własnych założeń strategicznych (ktoś pamięta jeszcze hucznie ogłaszaną strategię bezpieczeństwa narodowego z grudnia '25?), zamiast ładować się w kolejną wojnę na Bliskim Wschodzie, mogłoby to dzisiaj wyglądać mniej więcej tak: - do wojny z Iranem nigdy nie dochodzi - po usunięciu Maduro, USA rozpoczyna morską blokadę Kuby, doprowadzając do obalenia rządu w Hawanie - Trump nadal grzeje narrację o pełnej dominacji USA na "zachodniej półkuli" - ceny paliw na amerykańskich stacjach pozostają w normie - politykę zagraniczną USA nadal dominują okazjonalne spięcia prezydenta z Zełenskim, UE, Kanadą i Chinami.

#RadioMoskva Shock and awe vs the Command of the Reload On paper Russia spends a fifth as much on defence as America does. On the battlefield, Russia would probably run rings around the US as it has the right weapons. Just counting the cash is not enough when judging which military is more powerful. Russia’s 2027 budget has military spending up and accounting for 41% of all spending with a nominal value of $210bn. That is a fifth of the US spending of just under a trillion dollars, (and Trump wants to hike to $1.5 trillion next year). However, obviously, you need to convert this to PPP adjusted spending as Russia literally gets more bang for its buck and then the total is $574bn – about 60% of what the US spends. But if you dig into it even more deeply, even the PPP adjustment is flawed as it is an aggregate for the entire economy. If you look very specifically at what weapons a dollar can buy in Russia, then the multiple is even higher than the 2.7-times more that the PPP adjustment suggests. So, I tried to calculate the spending not in terms of adjusted dollars, but in terms of like-for-like military production units. For example, in the US it costs $4,000 to make a standard 155mm artillery shell, but in Russia the same 152mm shell costs $1,000 a pop – four-time less, not 2.7-times less. In artillery shell-units, Russia’s defence spending is about 90% of America’s so the gap is actually much smaller. I went on to compare with other units: tank-units, jet fighter-units, etc, but the really interesting one was drone- and missile-units. Here the difference between the cost was not so big, but in both two other factors come into play: production capacity and technology. On production you can’t compare as the US doesn’t make drones in the way that Russia does. It does have the MQ-9 Reaper drones, which cost about $30mn each, vs the new Russian Geran-5 which cost about $150,000 to make, so there is no real comparison there as the ratio is well over 200-times. The real comparison should be between the Geran-5 and the US’ new LUCAS (Low-cost Uncrewed Combat Attack System) drone – a copy of Iran’s low-cost, one-way Shahed drones, which cost the same as their Russian equivalent – except the US doesn’t actually make them. There a few proto-types knocking about, but Russia is now making 7mn drones of all sorts a year. The production gap is mindboggling huge. The same is true for missiles where again the costs are about the same in both countries, but not only is Russia massively outproducing the US it has a whole class of hypersonic missiles which can’t be stopped, even by the fabled Patriot PAC-3 interceptors (as has been amply demonstrated in the Iran war). The US version of this missile is also still on the drawing board. So, the ratio here is infinite as that is what you get if you divide anything by zero. This production gap between Russia and the US radically skews the whole picture of the “defence spending”. It not just about how much you are spending, but what you are spending it on. Explosives is another example. The Holston Army Ammunition Plant in Kingsport, Tennessee, operated by BAE Systems, is America’s sole domestic producer of RDX and HMX - two powerful explosives used in pretty much all its missiles. The (aptly named) Ministry of War invested over $1bn into modernising the factory but saw only a 3% gain in output. This failure could turn out to be a major bottleneck for any large-scale US war effort. The details are understandably vague, but Russia appears to have substantially greater domestic production capacity for conventional military explosives than the US, although there is no reliable, directly comparable figures. The biggest differences are in TNT production, where the US has effectively lost its domestic manufacturing base, and the sheer scale of Russian production of explosives and artillery propellants. Russia has substantially expanded its explosives and gunpowder industry since invading Ukraine in 2022, which have tripled from pre-war levels and continue to grow. Worryingly, the Kremlin just banned the export of four key chemicals needed to make explosives (toluene, orthoxylene, paraxylene and phenol), so it’s still going up in scale despite the talk of peace. The chink in Russia’s armour is technology. A Russian artillery shell is so cheap as everything that goes into making it is Russian: labour, metal and gunpowder. That is not true of missiles: while China is steadily replacing western components, over 90% of the electronics in a Russian missile is still Western-made. The Integral chip factory in Belarus plays a surprisingly important role here, but all the chips it makes are made using Western technology too. This is driving Zelenskiy potty as he keeps calling for the West to tighten its technology sanctions on Russia as that would cut Russian missile production off at the knees – and it’s just not happening. In the meantime, the residents of Kyiv are sitting under a hail of Russian missiles. Kyiv has already been blacked out after all four of its power stations have been destroyed in the tit-for-tat missile war and now Putin is systematically targeting power substations to cut off even the power from the NPPs. Winston Churchill quipped that generals are always preparing for the last war. And that is the big difference: Putin isn’t preparing for anything; he is in the middle of a real war. That is what he is spending his money on: things he needs yesterday to beat his opponent. The speed of his innovations is extraordinary. Just the increase in speed of the Geran-4 and Geran-5 drones since the summer has doubled, according to my reconning. Both sides seem to have got the design-to-production cycle down to a few months. Hitler did this too, throwing cash at a Wunderwaffen, and failed. Amazingly, Zelenskiy is investing billions into his Wunderwaffen and some of them actually work. From here, Trump looks like he is in the same boat as Hitler and has refused Zelenskiy’s mega drones-for-weapons deal which could have solved his problems. Which brings me to my last point. The US has been, and still is, following the “Command of the Commons” doctrine - the deployment of powerful ‘bunker-buster-bombs” or “smart missiles” to bases scattered around the world so it can respond to any crisis quickly with overwhelming force – better known as “shock & awe.” But hat tip to Zelenskiy, who out of necessity, has changed the nature of war out of all recognition to the Command of the Reload: it is now the side that can build more cheap, "good-enough," weapons wins. Whatever happens to him politically (it doesn’t look good), the history books are going to name him as the man who revolutionised modern warfare, (with Azerbaijan as an important footnote for demonstrating the overwhelming power of offensive drones in its short war with Armenia in 2020). Zelenskiy had no choice. He was hoping for those “awesome” weapons from the West. I recommend you watch his “close the skies” appeal, recorded in the first week of the current conflict. He looked terrified, as you would if Russia had just invaded your country, and he appealed to his allies for exactly this: the Western treasure trove of powerful weapons. They didn’t come. What was offered after the first Ramstein meeting a few months later was always “some, but not enough” as we have been complaining about for four years. What is so amazing is that Zelenskiy has pioneered a technique where, as former commander-in-chief General Valerii Zaluzhnyi said, a smaller country (and Ukraine was also the most dysfunctional of all 15 former Soviet Republics in 2021 to boot) can take on a much larger military power and drag it into a protracted war of attrition for years. The difference between shock & awe and the asymmetrical war now being fought, is the death toll. The whole point of overwhelming force is to bring the conflict to an end really fast to minimise the casualty count. In the Yugoslav war the US pulled their punches flying US sorties over enemy territory as President Bill Clinton was not prepared to lose a single US soldier. I made a table of the major wars since USSR-Afghanistan detailing the estimated dead. You’ll note in several – Bonia, Kosovo, Libya – not a single Western soldier was killed and even in the US-Afghan and Iraq wars, the US death tolls were 3,500 and 4,800 respectively in campaigns that went on for 20 and 8 years respectively. That works out to be an average US death per day of 0.34 and 1.39 respectively. The one war that is off the chart is – Russia-Ukraine. It is not clear at all how many people died in this war but on the estimates below it’s already somewhere between 500,000 and 600,000: that is an average daily death toll of 252–283 (Russians), 79–94 (Ukrainians) and 331–378 (combined). Only the two world wars are worse, but a lot more people were involved in those wars than this one. And the real death toll is almost certainly higher; I have seen reports recently suggesting its over one million – by far the worst since WWI and WWII, which were both total wars, not like everything since which were campaigns rather than all-out war. War death tolls WarDatesUS/NATO/USSR/Russian military killedOpposing military/fighters killed World War I1914–19185.5–6mn Allied4–4.5mn Central Powers World War II1939–194516–21mn Allied8–11mn Axis Soviet–Afghan War1979–198914,453 Soviet75,000–90,000 mujahideen Gulf War (Iraq/Kuwait)1990–1991~400 US-led coalition20,000–35,000 Iraqi First Chechen War1994–19965,000–14,000 RussianSeveral thousand Chechen fighters Bosnian War – NATO intervention1994–19950 NATO combat deaths in air campaignNo reliable NATO-attributable total Second Chechen War1999–20096,000–11,000 Russian10,000–20,000 Chechen fighters Kosovo War – NATO bombing19990 NATO combat deaths269 Yugoslav soldiers/police killed in NATO strikes Afghanistan War2001–2021~3,500 US/NATO/allied foreign troops~51,000 Taliban and other fighters Iraq War2003–2011~4,800 US-led coalition~30,000 Iraqi soldiers and insurgents Russia–Georgia WarAugust 200867 Russian170 Georgian soldiers Libya – NATO intervention20110 NATO combat deathsNo reliable NATO-attributable total Russia–Ukraine, Donbas2014–2021~6,500 pro-Russian fighters; Russian regulars uncertain~4,400 Ukrainian military US-led war against ISIS2014–2019~76 US personnel, including non-combat deathsTens of thousands of ISIS fighters Russia’s intervention in Syria2015–2024~200 Russian regulars; several hundred contractors~12,500 ISIS and rebel fighters reportedly killed in Russian operations Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine2022–present400,000–450,000 Russian125,000–150,000 Ukrainian US–Iran WarFebruary 2026–present23 US personnel, including non-combat deathsAt least ~1,250 Iranian military deaths documented; total uncertain Ukraine figures are CSIS estimates to June 2026, not November totals. Iran figures are from October 2026 reporting. War dates and fatality estimates are rounded where necessary. The table covers selected major interventions, rather than every conflict involving these countries But I'm afraid this war is in its end game now. WWII showed that in the late stages it is industrial production that takes the buscuit. At the end of WWII the Allies were simply pumping out more materiel than the Nazis. In particular, once the Luffwaffer had been cleared from the skies and Bomber Harris began carpet bombing Germany there was little hope left. That is where we are in Ukraine now: the air defence ammo has run out and Putin, who as we all know is a history buff, is carpet bombing Ukraine. The big difference between now and then is that neither Europe or the US has not ramped up its investment into defence – something else we have been complaining about for over four years. On paper the US is spending more than Russia, but it’s spending on the wrong things. The EU is now trying to ramp up both its spending and improve what it spends it on, under the Danish model, but it is already almost bankrupt and has been unable to offset the departure of the US, as weapons supplies to Ukraine actully fell for the first time last year. This article originally appeared in Editor’s Picks, a free daily email digest of bne IntelliNews’ best stories from the last 24 hours. Sign up for free here. to989.infusionsoft.com/app/f… bneeditor.substack.com/p/sho…

🔴Groźba zbrojnego wtargnięcia z Rosji. Tusk ujawnia raport Otrzymywaliśmy od dłuższego czasu informacje od naszych służb, a także służb sojuszniczych, że w pierwszej połowie listopada może dojść do aktów dywersji i prób prowokacji, w tym do wtargnięcia na teren Rzeczpospolitej uzbrojonych ludzi - ujawnił Donald Tusk. Premier potwierdził skierowanie sił specjalnych w rejon granicy z obwodem królewieckim. Przyznał, że w nocy na granicy polsko-rosyjskiej zaobserwowano niepokojący ruch. wiadomosci.wp.pl/grozba-zbro…

Oświadczenie Centrum Mieroszewskiego Z przykrością informujemy, że red. Łukasz Warzecha @lkwarzecha, jeden z uczestników wizyty studyjnej polskich dziennikarzy na Ukrainie, organizowanej wspólnie przez Centrum Mieroszewskiego i Instytut Ukraiński @UA_Institute – państwową instytucję podlegającą Ministerstwu Spraw Zagranicznych Ukrainy – nie uzyskał zgody na wjazd do Ukrainy i został objęty trzyletnim zakazem wjazdu na jej terytorium. Lista dziennikarzy zaproszonych do udziału w wizycie została wcześniej uzgodniona przez obie instytucje, a następnie przekazana właściwym organom państwowym Ukrainy. Na etapie przygotowań nie zgłoszono wobec niej zastrzeżeń. Przyjęliśmy tę decyzję z zaniepokojeniem. Niezwłocznie po uzyskaniu informacji o trudnościach red. Warzechy z przekroczeniem granicy polsko-ukraińskiej Centrum powiadomiło o sytuacji ministerstwa spraw zagranicznych Ukrainy i Polski oraz ukraińskich współorganizatorów. Pomimo podejmowanych interwencji i sygnałów wskazujących na możliwość pozytywnego rozwiązania sprawy, po siedmiu godzinach oczekiwania należało uznać, iż wysiłki te nie przyniosły  oczekiwanych rezultatów. Centrum organizuje podróż powrotną red. Warzechy do Warszawy. W wyniku konsultacji z pozostałymi uczestnikami wizyty studyjnej, po uwzględnieniu ich opinii, podjęliśmy decyzję o kontynuowaniu wizyty. Nie zmienia to naszego dużego zaniepokojenia odmową wjazdu red. Łukaszowi Warzesze. Celem szóstej już wizyty studyjnej, organizowanej wspólnie przez Centrum Mieroszewskiego i Instytut Ukraiński, jest umożliwienie polskim dziennikarzom bezpośredniego poznania sytuacji na Ukrainie, rozmów z przedstawicielami różnych środowisk oraz lepszego zrozumienia wyzwań, przed którymi stoi ukraińskie społeczeństwo. Od początku zależało nam na udziale dziennikarzy reprezentujących różne redakcje i perspektywy. Miesiąc wcześniej Centrum Mieroszewskiego zorganizowało wizytę studyjną opiniotwórczych dziennikarzy ukraińskich w Polsce. W jej trakcie uczestnicy spotkali się z przedstawicielami najwyższych władz państwowych oraz kierownictwem instytucji publicznych zaangażowanych w kształtowanie relacji polsko-ukraińskich. Szanując suwerenne prawo Ukrainy do decydowania o wjeździe na jej terytorium, zwracamy jednocześnie uwagę, że ograniczenia dotyczące pracy dziennikarzy mogą wywoływać szeroki rezonans medialny i stwarzać przestrzeń dla komentarzy niekorzystnie wpływających na dobrosąsiedzkie relacje polsko-ukraińskie.