June 1: E-Stories
InUkraine CombatSitRep BehindLines Russia-China InEurope InOtherNews
Catching up…
For a general view of news from various geopolitical threatres, Scott’s EA Worldview is always superb.
Zarina Zabrisky: The UN concluded the Russian human safari in Kherson is a crime against humanity and a war crime. Kherson: Human Safari, a frontline documentary, tells the story: Invasion. Occupation. Liberation. Flood. Human safari.
Live on Substack Sunday June 1 at 4 pm Rome time.
Stories we’re following…
Russian attacks against Ukraine kill 10, injure 32 over past day. Ukrainian defenses shot down 69 drones and three Kh-59/69 guided missiles using aviation units, air defense systems, electronic warfare, and mobile fire teams.
Five Russian UAVs struck a farm in one of the villages of the Romny hromada in Sumy Oblast on the night of 30-31 May.
The attack set fire to farm buildings, killed hundreds of domestic animals and destroyed dozens of tonnes of grain. [A hromada is an administrative unit designating a village, several villages, or a town, and their adjacent territories – ed.] as reported by Sumy Oblast Military Administration.
Given the constant threat to the lives of civilians due to attacks, the local authorities have ordered the mandatory evacuation of residents from 11 more settlements in the Sumy district.
Zelensky doubts June 2 talks will yield results as Russia withholds ceasefire plan. "The Russians have been unable to present the so-called 'memorandum' for over a week, which they promised to prepare immediately after the 1,000-for-1,000 exchange," Zelensky wrote on Telegram. "Ukraine has not received any documents from them."
Mo: News alerts are filled with he said and he said about the ‘possibility’ of ceasefire talks and related issues. The Russians are stringing Trump along in the best of cases, or Trump is fully aware and has decided to abet the Russian strategy. Kellogg’s comments are highly disappointing, but revelatory as to what extent the US administration is willing to uphold Russian so-called grievances to the detriment to security in Ukraine and NATO member states. I won’t be posting each exchange because it’s a waste of your time and mine.
The focus at this time should be on what can be done by the US and NATO member states in Europe to curtail Russia’s ability to continue funding and arming its war of aggression against Ukraine.
The Daily Beast: A group funded by Ben & Jerry’s founder Ben Cohen is running a media campaign against U.S. military support for Ukraine.
The organization—Eisenhower Media Network (EMN)—has been reaching out to reporters to push claims that the U.S. is spending too much money trying to help Ukraine fight off Vladimir Putin’s invasion.
EMN is a project run by the People’s Power Initiative, a group that counts Cohen as its president and a major backer. The ice-cream mogul and long-time Bernie Sanders campaigner has given more than $1 million to the People’s Power Initiative via the Ben Cohen Charitable Trust, according to public records.
Combat Situation
Russia has launched offensive actions in the Zaporizhzhia direction — Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi. "Russian activity has intensified. Main efforts are focused on Pokrovsk, Toretsk, Lyman, and Novopavlivka axes, as well as border areas of Sumy region," he said.
Deep State: DeepState has reported that Russian forces have advanced near the village of Oleksandriia in Sumy Oblast.
Ukraine attacks elite Russian unit base nearly 7,000km away in Vladivostok, source claims; Ukraine ready for 2nd round of Istanbul talks but seeks Russian draft memo in advance, Yermak says; and more. Ukrainian Intelligence (GUR) this morning reportedly set off two explosions, at a training base for Russia`s 155th Marine Brigade in Bukhta Desantnaya, Vladivostok. This is Russia`s FAR EAST over 5000km from Ukraine. No Russian soldier is safe in Russia.
Ukrainian and NATO aircraft will now coordinate in a unified digital system. Ukraine has signed a license for NATO’s CRC System Interface (CSI) — key software for Link-16 “military Wi-Fi,” enabling real-time coordination between F-16s, Mirage 2000s, and air defense systems like Patriot.
In occupied Melitopol district, Ukrainian partisans reportedly successfully blew up a train carrying freight and fuel tankers, according to preliminary reports. The train was headed toward occupied Crimea.
Russia paid Iran $104M in gold for Shahed drones to avoid dollar transactions under sanctions, according to research group C4ADS. Payments were also made in UAE dirhams via a Dubai bank, and Iranian entities may have used crypto as well.
Behind the Lines
BBC News: Russia has continued to make billions from fossil fuel exports to the West, data shows, helping to finance its full-scale invasion of Ukraine – now in its fourth year. (Makes me want to cry…we keep funding Russia’s war effort.)
How much is Russia still making?
Proceeds made from selling oil and gas are key to keeping Russia's war machine going. Oil and gas account for almost a third of Russia's state revenue and more than 60% of its exports.
In the wake of the February 2022 invasion, Ukraine's allies imposed sanctions on Russian hydrocarbons. The US and UK banned Russian oil and gas, while the EU banned Russian seaborne crude imports, but not gas.
Despite this, by 29 May, Russia had made more than €883bn ($973bn; £740bn) in revenue from fossil fuel exports since the start of the full-scale invasion, including €228bn from the sanctioning countries, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). The lion's share of that amount, €209bn, came from EU member states.
EU states continued importing pipeline gas directly from Russia until Ukraine cut the transit in January 2025, and Russian crude oil is still piped to Hungary and Slovakia. Russian gas is still piped to Europe in increasing quantities via Turkey: CREA's data shows that its volume rose by 26.77% in January and February 2025 over the same period in 2024. Hungary and Slovakia are also still receiving Russian pipeline gas via Turkey.
The EU's foreign policy chief, Kaja Kallas, says the alliance has not imposed "the strongest sanctions" on Russian oil and gas because some member states fear an escalation in the conflict and because buying them is "cheaper in the short term".
LNG imports have not been included in the latest, 17th package of sanctions on Russia approved by the EU, but it has adopted a road map towards ending all Russian gas imports by the end of 2027. (Keep reading…it gets worse…)
The Trump administration set to have the next top U.S. general in Europe stay in the traditional role of NATO’s military chief. The Western official said President Trump privately told NATO Secretary General Rutte of the plan. The U.S. officials added that Trump is expected to nominate Air Force Lieutenant General Alexus Grynkewich to serve as the next Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) and Commander of U.S. European Command (EUCOM). The current SACEUR and EUCOM Commander, General Cavoli, is set to retire this summer.
Since 31 March, 2025 Romania and Poland are jointly protecting Baltic skies as part of NATO's Baltic Air Policing mission. Together, we help secure the airspace of our friends from Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.
Poland is building fortifications along its borders with Kaliningrad and Belarus — digging trenches and installing anti-tank obstacles. This is part of East Shield, a national defense initiative launched by the Polish government to fortify its eastern borders.
Decode39: India and the European Union will conduct a joint naval exercise from June 1 to 3, 2025, in the Indian Ocean, marking a new chapter in maritime security cooperation.
The exercise highlights the EU’s increasing strategic presence in the Indo-Pacific—but more significantly, it reflects India’s emergence as the key security provider in the broader Indo-Mediterranean space. The drill follows high-level diplomatic activity, including the February visit of the European Commission to India and the March EU-India Maritime Security Dialogue.
Ukraine's Defense Minister Umerov, intelligence chief Budanov, and Commander-in-Chief Syrskyi held talks in Kyiv with Turkish FM Hakan Fidan.
Ukraine outlined key defense needs: Investment in defense industry, air defense systems and equipment, ammunition for air defense and main calibers and long-range strike capabilities. Syrskyi briefed on frontline conditions, while intelligence officials informed the Turkish side on the overall security situation.
NATO expansion 'fair' concern for Putin, Kellogg says. "And that's one of the issues Russia will bring up... They're also talking about Georgia, they're talking about Moldova, they're talking — obviously — about Ukraine. And we're saying, 'Okay, let's address this comprehensively,'" U.S. President Donald Trump's Special Envoy Keith Kellogg said.
Czech FM Jan Lipavský replies: “NATO enlargement serves Russia’s security interests. Where Russia borders NATO, there is peace. Where it doesn’t — there is war.”
Trump says he’s “not sure yet” if he’ll support the new bill to tighten sanctions on Russia. “I don’t know. I have to see it. We’ll take a look,” he told reporters.
NATO is not discussing Russia’s demand for written guarantees to halt the alliance’s eastward expansion, according to multiple informed NATO officials and diplomats cited by Radio Svoboda. One source emphasized that such a written commitment is “not something Russia can simply obtain,” as the right to freely choose alliances is protected by international agreements.
Christiane Amanpour: Donald Trump’s former Russia advisor Fiona Hill suggests his approach to foreign policy is empowering Putin’s Russia: “Trump's made things a lot worse by hyper personalizing all of this,” she tells me.
To be verified: It seems the US may lift sanctions on Rostekh's head Sergei Chemezov, according to Kommersant. The man responsible for the bulk of Russia weapon procurement. The state corporation told the agency that it welcomes the actions of the United States against Mr. Chemezov.
"We discovered this today. This is an initiative of the American side, which launched the process of reviewing and making a decision on sanctions measures against the corporation's management," a source close to Rostec told RIA Novosti.
"We have seen the documents," Rostec told the agency, "we cannot comment on procedural actions that were not initiated by us. In general, we welcome the fact that the American side is making efforts to lift the restrictions. Perhaps this will allow us to continue the business dialogue that was suspended."
Meanwhile in Russia & China…
Russian Tourists Defy a Toxic Black Sea Oil Spill as Summer Season Begins. Authorities have banned swimming off the coast of Anapa due to December's disastrous oil spill. Tourists have been seen enjoying the waters anyway.
How police backing and support helped Russkaya Obshchina become Russia’s largest far-right group. Emboldened by support from senior law enforcement officials and a political climate more hospitable to xenophobic violence, far-right activists from “Russkaya Obshchina” (Russian Community) are increasingly involved in attacks, vigilante raids, and coordinated harassment. They typically target migrants from nations to the south or even compatriots from Russia's North Caucasus. With cells active in regions across the country, the group is now Russia’s largest far-right organization. (Mo: None of this is possible without the active direction of one of Russia’s intelligence services.)
The volume of overdue debt on mortgage loans increased by 9.6% in a month, the growth for the year is +96% As of May 1, the volume of overdue debt amounted to 125.5 billion rubles (+11 billion in a month).
When Vladimir Putin visited the Kursk region for the first time since the fighting began, his helicopter came under fire from Ukrainian drones, state media reported earlier this week. But this was not a combat incident, but a carefully orchestrated set-up.
As four sources in the government and the Kremlin told The Moscow Times, the security forces hyped up this shocking “risky” episode in the media to convince Russians that the president is not hiding behind his back, but is also supposedly taking risks and making sacrifices. All the interlocutors spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic.
"Using gold allowed the parties to avoid dollar transactions, which could be complicated or subject to sanctions by the US Treasury Department"
The Asahi Shinbun: Russian President Vladimir Putin brought Akie Abe, the widow of former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, to tears with his words as they met in Moscow on May 29. The Kremlin announced the meeting that day. During the meeting, Putin said that he is “very grateful” to her late husband and will “remember his contribution to the development of Russian-Japanese cooperation.”
According to the Russian state-run TASS news agency, Putin recommended that Akie see a ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre, one of Russia’s most famous theaters. He even allowed Akie to use his personal limousine to travel to the theater.
The unusually favorable treatment can be seen as Putin’s move aimed at improving relations with Japan. It is also believed that the charm offensive is intended to bring Japan closer to Russia, which is under severe economic sanctions from the United States and Europe.
China has allegedly developed a new artificial intelligence (AI) system to distinguish between real nuclear warheads from decoys. If confirmed, it would be the world’s first AI-driven solution for nuclear arms control — a breakthrough far beyond the Chinese chatbots which have recently captured the world’s attention. The system, also known as “Verification Technical Scheme for Deep Learning Algorithm Based on Interactive Zero Knowledge Protocol”, combines encryption with nuclear science.
IISS: China’s presence in the Indian Ocean spans the diplomatic, economic, military and political realms. Explore and download this month’s Charting China post on China’s economic presence in the Indian Ocean.
Rand: Political Discourse, Debate, and Decisionmaking in the Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) employs a system of coded speech to communicate policy directives to its implementing bureaucracy. This coded speech is governed by rules and exists in a specific cultural context, potentially confounding those unfamiliar with that context. CCP leaders deploy these codes through the party propaganda system to issue policy directives, and the codes take the form of slogans, linguistic formulations, or key phrases, collectively called tifa.
In this report, the author analyzes tifa by providing an overview of the role and relative authority of the information systems the CCP uses to develop, build consensus around, and promulgate tifa. He also identifies four essential characteristics of tifa. The author concludes that, although tifa analysis has specific limitations, it can produce authoritative determinations of what the CCP tells itself it is doing and why and could yield valuable insights into CCP leader perceptions.
Key Findings
Tifa have four identifying characteristics: (1) They are politically laden and stated verbatim, (2) they extend along a clear line of authority, (3) they are distributed to official party organs, and (4) they characterize or resolve a dialectical contradiction between competing ideas in the CCP.
CCP leaders speak in a code of tifa that is distinct from daily speech to announce collective assessments and new policy determinations. Although this coded speech follows rules specific to the CCP’s cultural context and might not be straightforward to outside observers, it is not secret. Tifa are openly announced to an audience of CCP bureaucrats who are responsible for implementing new policies.
CCP leaders discuss and debate tifa in the internal-only neibu system, and they publicly present policies that have achieved ostensible consensus, characterized as tifa, in the gongkai public information sphere through the CCP’s propaganda system.
CCP bureaucrats and officials demonstrate loyalty to party leaders by publicly repeating tifa verbatim in a practice called biaotai. A party leadership announcement of a new tifa and bureaucrats’ repetition of the tifa become a call-and-response cycle, and foreign analysts can identify disruptions in that cycle to infer the existence of intraparty disputes.
Georgian Railway’s new Director met with the new head of China Railway 23rd Bureau Group to discuss the railway modernization project and future cooperation. CR23 has a global track record, though controversies in Georgia and other projects have raised oversight concerns.
Mo: China is on its way to develop the ‘Middle Corridor’, which runs from Central Asia, and into the South Caucasus, terminating in Hungary and beyond. In July 2024, the Georgian Dream-led government signed a protocol with the Chinese government to increase their footprint in Georgia, including the introduction of Chinese language courses in high schools. While the US and Western allies use soft power (what’s left of American soft power), the Chinese prefer to use economic enticements and coercion. Besides enhancing connectivity, the Chinese also provide surveillance technology, which we know was installed in the main square to identify protestors.
Scabolz Panyi: Tried crossing Budapest’s Andrássy Blvd when Slovak PM Robert Fico’s motorcade showed up. He was basically the top foreign guest—an EU prime minister from a neighboring country—at today’s CPAC Hungary. Tells you all you need to know about how “important” the event really is.
In Europe…
The EU views the Sino-Russian alliance as the world’s “biggest challenge.” EU leaders, including Kaja Kallas and Emmanuel Macron, stressed the need to defend the rules-based order amid growing China-Russia cooperation. Kallas warned that 80% of dual-use goods aiding Russia’s war in Ukraine come from China.
Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul says Berlin isn’t aiming for Russia’s complete military defeat in Ukraine. The main goal is to help Ukraine defend itself against further aggression. He believes the war will likely end through negotiations, not total Russian surrender.
Mo: German business interests are funning the German position vis-a-vis Russia and their war of aggression against Ukraine. It’s a problem for Europe and within it, Ukraine. Sources in the EU have confirmed Wadephul’s position to me.
France intends to increase its defence spending to 3.5% of GDP, or even 5% in the event of American disengagement, but the President of the Republic believes that this may need to be increased even further and more quickly.
President Macron spoke at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore Friday, delivering a message to Asian and European nations: protect the rules-based international order, and don’t get dragged into the competition between the U.S. and China. Macron called on like-minded Asian countries to join European nations in finding “a third way.”
“We want to act. We want to preserve our stability, our peace and our prosperity, and so let’s work together. Let’s build a positive new alliance between Europe and Asia, based on our common norms, on our common principles,” Macron said. “Our shared responsibility is to ensure with others that our countries are not collateral victims of the imbalances linked to the choices made by the superpowers.”
DFRLab: Four truths from Poland’s presidential election ahead of today’s vote
What happened during Poland’s 2025 election is a warning for every democracy facing digital era threats.
In the run up to the 2025 election, Poland faced a coordinated interference attempt through digital political ad campaign involving foreign groups, cyberattacks from Russian hackers, and both overt and covert influence operations from Russian and Belarusian actors. These tactics exposed weaknesses in Poland’s political, legal, and digital systems and provide lessons that matter for any democracy facing similar threats.
The Polish legal framework is not built for today’s threats. There are inadequate safeguards around transparent funding of online campaigns, no effective verification systems for sponsored digital campaigns, and weak enforcement of cross-border influence activity. This creates a regulatory vacuum that hostile actors can exploit.
Digital platforms are still easy to exploit - despite years of warnings and regulations, the mainstream platforms still can’t stop foreign and domestic interference effectively. They remain open to fast, well-funded influence operations by state and non-state actors and are failing to restrict access to the content broadcasted by foreign sanctioned entities on the territory of the EU.
As foreign and domestic threats merging ahead of the 2025 election, attribution of hostile campaigns becomes more complicated. Moreover, it shows that election interference can be a hybrid effort to achieve political objectives. A smart response should address both internal and external threats and connections between them at once.
Transparency and public awareness are critical. When people don’t know who’s behind the sponsored campaigns, the lack of clarity fuels public mistrust. Even if interference is stopped, the damage to public trust is done. Just knowing it happened (and not knowing who was behind it) feeds cynicism and conspiracy theories.
In other news…
In one of the most bizarre pressers to date, Trump made a surprise announcement doubling tariffs on imported steel and aluminum from 25% to 50% during a speech in Pittsburgh celebrating a deal between US Steel and Japan’s Nippon Steel Corporation.
The exact nature of the US Steel deal Trump blessed remained unclear. Although the president insists that it is “a partnership”, Nippon Steel has never withdrawn its bid to buy and control US Steel as a wholly owned subsidiary. The US Steel website still describes the deal as “US Steel’s agreement to be acquired by NSC”.
Trump says he wants to see bigger tax cuts in the budget bill (which passed the House by the skin of its teeth). “I’d like to see a bigger cut in taxes,” Trump says. “ The bill is a great bill. It’s going to be jiggered around a little bit, it’s going to be negotiated with the Senate.”
The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration can, for now, revoke the temporary protected status of more than 500,000 refugees fleeing violence or persecution in Haiti, Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua. Those legal immigrants are now subject to deportation if they choose not to leave their new homes in communities like Springfield, Ohio, where they were falsely accused by the president of eating pets.
AFP: US President Donald Trump signaled renewed trade tensions with China on Friday, arguing that Beijing had "totally violated" a deal to de-escalate tariffs, at a time when the two sides appeared deadlocked in negotiations.
A U.S. judge ruled that a Russian scientist at Harvard University’s detention by immigration authorities for failing to declare research samples was unjustified. Ksenia Petrova feared that she would face persecution for opposing the invasion of Ukraine if she returned to Russia.
Next week, the U.S. Senate will begin reviewing a sanctions bill against Russia, including 500% tariffs on its allies.
“If Russia shows no desire for peace, the U.S. will strike hard,” — Senator Lindsey Graham.