Lusec

Many academics, think tank analysts, and policy advisors are, in my experience, deeply reluctant to talk openly about Trump's lack of knowledge and understanding and his obvious competence problems. But we need to talk about them if we want to understand what's happening.

On the Alaska talks:

Trump’s leverage over Ukraine, Russia and Europe has decreased since the spring and Ukraine is in a better position than back then, given their improved own industrial output thanks to the Danish model that many European countries are now implementing

The Shahed blitz: can Russian drone onslaught break Ukraine’s resolve? Civilian casualties on rise as Moscow launches salvoes of hundreds of missiles after ramping up production

No, because no arial campaign has done. I recommend Laurence Freedman’s ‘The Future of War: a history’ www.theguardian.com/world/2025/j...

To understand what triggered the protests and the unexpected reaction in Ukraine, it’s essential to know the context - especially for those who don’t follow Ukraine’s internal politics.

🧵Thread:

1/ First, the protest isn’t aimed at the President personally, but at a specific law passed yesterday.

Every statement in this tweet is wrong except the caveat "if media reports are accurate" (they aren't). It's an extraordinary work of misinformation.🧵

Artificial intelligence doesn’t yet exist, optimised search does Artificial intelligence does not exist. What is commonly referred to as AI is optimized search algorithms based on large datasets.

The most unhelpful thing is the name itself. There is no artificial intelligence, and unless we stop pretending that there is then the belief that this is all a crock will persist. It makes it hard to differentiate between what is a real technological leap and what is BS.

Hong Kong

The Escalation Debate Strikes Back In this week’s Europe Dispatch, Minna Ålander reviews the nuclear escalation debate that has been warmed up again after Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb.

Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb was bound to give the escalation debate a boost. In this week’s Europe Dispatch with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social, I argue that we’ve consistently been far from any real nuclear threshold. Russia could have made moves to force the West into concessions - but it hasn’t.

YouTube video by Anders Puck Nielsen How is the war going? — June 2025

In this video I give an overview of the front line situation in Ukraine.

A Region in the Making: The Nordic-Baltic Alignment - ICDS In the past three years, the Nordic-Baltic group has reached unprecedented levels of coherence and prominence. The main drivers of the alignment are the shared threat assessment that Russia poses an e...

For @icds-tallinn.bsky.social, I wrote that the whole Nordic-Baltic region is a potential frontline in a conflict with Russia - not only the Baltic states and Finland but also Norwegian High North and even Denmark together with Sweden as gatekeepers of the Baltic Sea and Iceland along the GIUK gap.

Such a major blow to Russia’s strategic bomber fleet could have been avoided if Moscow had chosen to engage in peace talks, rather than escalating the war and undermining diplomatic efforts initiated by Kyiv, Washington, and Brussels.

In the coming months, Russia will execute a series of campaigns in #Ukraine to exploit western political discord and achieve a decisive outcome before the end of 2025. What might this look like and what are Putin's goals? 1/5

YouTube video by Anders Puck Nielsen Why Putin believes the war is defensive

We need to consider Putin's ideological reasons for fighting in Ukraine if we want to understand why he is so reluctant to engage in peace negotiations. That is my topic in this video.

Ukraine’s Integration Into the European Defence Industrial Base In this week’s Europe Dispatch, Minna Ålander takes stock of the latest developments in European and Ukrainian defence industry.

A lot of good things are happening in Europe: the EU is implementing more sanctions (I won a bet on this) and Ukraine is being integrated into the European defence industrial and technological base.

Some Europtimism on this week’s Europe Dispatch with @phillipspobrien.bsky.social

YouTube video by Anders Puck Nielsen Russia plays Trump with Istanbul talks

It's hard to tell if the most agonizing thing about the Istanbul negotiations was Russia's blatant delay tactics, which seemingly worked on Donald Trump, or the excessive media hype about a possible meeting between Putin and Zelensky. In this video, I take a look at the diplomatic theater.

What a surprise. 🙄
Can we now stop talking about this spectacle in Istanbul?

I haven't seen the first or second season, but maybe I should.

Trial by Fire: The crash of Aeroflot flight 1492 Six years after 41 people died aboard a Sukhoi Superjet on a Moscow runway, the full story of that horrible day can finally be told.

After six years of investigating and over a month of research and writing, it's finally time to tell the story of Aeroflot flight 1492, and the plane, pilot, and airline that came together to cause it. admiralcloudberg.medium.com/trial-by-fir...

From VE / Liberation Day in Scalloway, Shetland.

Shetland was the hub of the Shetland Bus operation, bringing refugees out and agents and supplies into occupied Norway, and also the base of a Norwegian MTB Flotilla that operated against the occupied coast from Nov '42 onwards.

1/
Since this part of history isn't that widely known:

At the outbreak of WW2, the Norwegian merchant fleet was the 4th largest in the world, including 19% of the world's tanker tonnage, with overall a high share of new and modern ships.

The Telegraph launched a bold ad campaign across the UK.

Social media users noticed this eye-catching banner in Kent.

The proposed deal sounds like the US exit from the negotiations that Rubio announced last week. The demands are likely not meant to be acceptable to Ukraine and there doesn’t seem to be even a concept of a plan how to implement and enforce the deal.

Term 2 Trump foreign policy - from tariffs to NATO to soft power to China and Russia - is an epic mess. One reason seems to be that the administration is operating with two conflicting, equally flawed, views of the world and the US's place in it. 🧵

This is more or less the point in my latest video on YouTube. For a ceasefire is to be productive in terms of bringing peace closer, it must stop the killing of civilians and ease the pressure on the frontline. The limited ceasefire on energy infrastructure is counterproductive.

Capybara! 😍

Absolutely agree with Amb. Fried that this is very damaging - to the US's credibility and national interest. But the idea that this will damage the US position in talks with Russia suggests that these are genuine negotiations. I really don't think they are. 🧵

My problem generally with these narrowly focused Baltic scenarios is that they don’t take into account anything that has happened since 2022.

Russia can do nothing that remains confined to the Baltics. One has to consider (esp if you’re a Russian planner) the 2000+km long total border with NATO+🇺🇦

I think many are applying too much ambiguity on situations that would be much more black and white.

If Russia at some point moves much beyond what they are already doing with their unconventional campaign, it means war.

This also influences their planning, to a large degree I suspect.

Hitting Russian oil facilities is a cornerstone in Ukraine’s strategy for winning the war. It’s not surprising that Putin is in favor of a limited ceasefire on those types of objects.

The level of hype about today's phone call between Trump and Putin is ridiculous. They will discuss all kinds of concessions that they think Ukraine should make, and the 30 days unconditional ceasefire that Ukraine has actually offered will almost certainly not be on the agenda.