So Vlad the Bad’s Victory Parade, featuring a solitary 83-year-old tank without any shiny new tanks to support it, looked frankly pathetic. Combine this with the possibility that the recent drone attack on the Kremlin was carried out by Russian resistance and you start thinking, are we beginning to see the end of Vlad the Bad’s reign?
So Vlad the Bad’s Victory Parade, featuring a solitary 83-year-old tank without any shiny new tanks to support it, looked frankly pathetic. Combine this with the possibility that the recent drone attack on the Kremlin was carried out by Russian resistance and you start thinking, are we beginning to see the end of Vlad the Bad’s reign? Is he starting to lose control of the narrative? One fascinating piece of information to emerge this week was how the West’s Five Eyes Alliance in a multi-national swoop code-named Operation Medusa managed to knock a malicious software network called The Snake off-line. This had been used by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) for all manner of spying and disruption. This cooperation between Australia, the UK, Canada, New Zealand and the US is a really big deal and following it they have effectively left Russia blind. The malware took many years to develop and doubtless bad actors will in time come up with a replacement. However, it can only be of serious benefit to Ukraine in the forthcoming offensive. Knowledge is king. So are we finally seeing an end to the long and bloody conflict over the City of Bahmut. Russian soldiers have been seen fleeing and one Ukrainian battalion claims to have recaptured approximately 9 sq. miles of territory. It seems to me that the counter offensive has begun but I assume that the Ukrainians won’t admit to anything until they have gained sufficient momentum. In the meantime, the British have continued their support by pledging Storm Shadow missiles which have a range of 250 km. Let us just hope that other countries live up to their commitments. In particular it would be beneficial if President Biden dropped his resistance to supplying Zelensky with the fighter jets he so desperately needs. We may be a neutral nation but the naked aggression of Vlad the Bad threatens us all. The operation of Russian ships in some of our waters is unsettling and I have been asking for years what tasks are all those people attached to the Russian Embassy in Dublin performing.
It is to me fundamentally shocking that a serial abuser like Donald Trump still looks likely to be the Republican candidate for President in 2024. Let’s start with the war. He is asked on CNN on Wednesday night if Vlad the Bad was a war criminal. He responded by saying: “That’s something to be discussed at a later date.” Chris Christie, the former New Jersey Governor got it right when he tweeted: “Donald Trump said he would end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours tonight on CNN – despite how ridiculous that is to say, I suspect he would try to do it by turning Ukraine over to Putin and Russia.” Yet another reason why Trump is far too dangerous to have back in the White House. Imagine for just one moment if the Chinese invaded Taiwan, the world would face a crisis and a megalomaniac is not the right person to handle it. Jean E Carroll, the lady who finally nailed Trump as the abuser he was and cost him $5-million is to be applauded. Maybe, just maybe, enough Americans will say: “The abuser is a loser.”