Extreme Commanders

Ukraine imposes sanctions on Russian 'shadow fleet' captains, cultural heritage looters

President Volodymyr Zelensky has approved sanctions against 57 captains of Russia’s "shadow fleet"—a network of tankers used to evade sanctions on Russia's oil trade—and 55 individuals involved in looting Ukraine’s cultural heritage in occupied Crimea.

The measure, adopted by Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council on Feb. 5, targets 56 Russian citizens and one Iranian national engaged in illicit oil exports through ship-to-ship transfers and other methods to bypass price caps.

These sanctions mark the first instance of individual accountability for shadow fleet captains aiding Russia’s oil trade. The list includes captains of sanctioned tankers operated by Sovcomflot, a company already blacklisted by the U.S. and U.K.

By restricting experienced captains from participating in these operations, Ukraine aims to disrupt Russia’s oil trade and increase operational costs for its shadow fleet.

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Key Russian Drone Launch Site Targeted in Overnight Ukrainian Strike


Ukraine launched a drone strike on a Russian military airfield in Primorsko-Akhtarsk, Krasnodar Krai, early in the morning on Thursday, Feb. 6, targeting a site used for launching attacks on Ukrainian territory.

According to Ukraine’s General Staff, the airfield serves as a base for Russian Shahed drones and aircraft operating over Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. Reports confirm explosions, fires, and damage, though the full extent is still to be assessed.

Footage shared by Ukrainian sources and officials, including Andriy Kovalenko, the head of the Center for Countering Disinformation at the National Security and Defense Council, shows smoke rising from the area. Local residents also reported the attack, according to the Astra Telegram channel.

Maxim Bondarenko, head of the local municipal district, confirmed that air defense systems were activated but provided no further details.

The strike comes just a day after another drone attack on an oil refinery in the region, which also led to a fire. Russia’s Defense Ministry claims to have intercepted 28 drones overnight, including 13 over the Sea of Azov.

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Russia Is Running Out of Tanks to Feed Into Ukrainian Meat Grinder

The Russian army isn’t making big armored attacks any more and evidence is strong it’s because the Kremlin is losing tanks far faster than it can replace them.

The official Kremlin line contradicts that. The state-run news platform Pravda, for instance, in a November article profiling national tank production, asserted Russia’s armed forces are well-supplied with tanks and more steel behemoths are rolling off production lines every day.

Dmitriy Medvedev, deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council, during a Nov. 22 visit of the country’s main tank factory, Uralvagonzavod, said: “ In three years, the supply of tanks to Russian troops has increased almost eight times…The Uralvagonzavod enterprise works like clockwork, a lot and sometimes around the clock.”

But battlefield accounts from frontline Ukrainian soldiers and combat units tell of a different opponent – a Russian army chronically short of armored vehicles and either running out of tanks, or unwilling to commit the tanks that it has to battle.

In the eastern Pokrovsk sector – the focus of Russian assaults for months as the Kremlin has focused on conquering more territory in Ukraine’s Donetsk region – Russian tanks are almost invisible, with Russian infantry attacking on foot or riding light vehicles and even motorcycles. Monthly battle results data published by Ukraine’s 414th Unmanned Aircraft Brigade said that the unit’s FPV and bomber drones operating in that sector in January had damaged or destroyed 79 tanks, while other air strikes, in the same battles, put out of action 151 light armored vehicles and 519 civilian cars, trucks, golf carts, 4WD buggies or motorcycles used by Russian troops.

The open-source analytical group WarSpotting, a gold standard analytical platform reviewing confirmed Russian and Ukrainian combat losses across the 1,000-kilometer (621-mile) fighting front, found that Russian tanks were confirmed burnt, destroyed or knocked in early 2025 at about half the pace of peaks in Summer and Fall 2025. The researcher Cyrus, said of those loss figures: “MBT (main battle tanks) numbers (are trending) downwards, not because they (Russian combat units) are battling better. They decrease because Ru running out of tanks.”

The OSINT researchers Jompy, HighMarsed, and Covert Cabal found that over the course of 2024, confirmed Russian tank losses fell from as many as 90 in a week in June and September to an average 40 a week in January 2025.

Russia has lost at least half of its available tanks since the beginning of the war, staggering figure of at least 3,700 tanks (visually confirmed) and possibly as many as 9,700 tanks (claimed by the Ukrainian military) – each costing Russian taxpayers between $1-3 million each, the group reported.

January research by the Ukrainian military information magazine Defense Express found that Russia’s capacity to replace those losses is only a fraction of what the Kremlin needs, with Russian industry over 2024 manufacturing 60-80 new tanks and refurbishing and modernizing another 200 tanks, some dating back to the early Cold War era.

That effective Russian tank replacement rate of 20-25 tanks/month is less than half of confirmed Russian tank losses during periods of relatively low-intensity fighting and between one quarter and one fifth of what Russian troops would need to make up losses during heavy battles, Kyiv Post research found.

Some analysts are pointing to national resolve to keep fighting and take losses, rather than raw numbers, as the critical predictor for the Russian tank’s future.

Germany-based analyst Caleb Larson, in a Feb. 1 situation estimate, wrote: “Despite the massive losses that Russia has sustained in soldiers, tanks, armored vehicles — and really, by any other metric — they are making steady, if not slow, gains on the battlefield in Ukraine. Though the numbers paint a dire picture of the situation, Russia is far from defeated.”

He said that high confirmed Russian tank losses may imply more loss of Russian fighting capacity than there actually is, because Russian forces might be repairing knocked out tanks and returning them to service.

But granular research into Russia’s tank storage and repair bases (seven big and 17 smaller) – at the outset of the war containing about 7,300 in various states of repair, is pointing towards bottom of the barrel Russian tank replacement.

By the end of 2024, 11 of those bases had been emptied completely, and the rest had reduced stocks to around half capacity, a three-year analysis of satellite imagery of those tank storage bases found.

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Ukraine Strikes ‘Like a Bolt From the Blue’ in New Kursk Offensive, Russian Reports Say

Ukraine has launched a new offensive in the Kursk oblast, according to reports from the Russian Ministry of Defense and Russian milbloggers on Telegram.

Russian sources say Ukrainian troops attacked southeast of Sudzha, moving toward the settlements of Fanaseyevka and Ulanok.

The Zapiski Veterana Telegram channel estimated that the advancing Ukrainian units include around 500 personnel and 50 armored vehicles.

Meanwhile, fighting in the Rylsk region has damaged a gas pipeline, triggering a fire and forcing a shutdown that left two settlements without gas, Kursk Oblast governor Alexander Khinshtein reported.

Russian troops have reportedly lost control over Cherkasskaya Konopelka, while milblogger Alex Parker Returns said that Ukrainian forces captured Ulanok. He described the offensive as beginning “like a bolt from the blue.”

According to the “War correspondents of the Russian Spring” Telegram channel, Ukrainian forces started the operation early in the morning Thursday with demining efforts, followed by armored groups advancing from the Makhnovka side, flanking Cherkasskaya Konopelka, and moving toward Ulanok.

After 2 p.m. Kyiv time, the Russian Defense Ministry responded, stating: “Since the morning of Feb. 6, Ukrainian armed formations have been launching counteroffensive actions toward the settlements of Cherkasskaya Konopelka and Ulanok in Kursk Oblast.”

The report claimed that the AFU deployed up to two mechanized battalions on armored vehicles, and assault groups launched several waves of attacks in the area.

The Russian Defense Ministry said that its “North” group of troops identified the Ukrainian forces, and with aviation support, inflicted fire damage on the assault groups.

By 2 p.m., the ministry claimed that Ukrainian attacks had been repelled and that the settlements were back under Russian control.

The Russian ministry also reported that Ukraine had lost six tanks, three obstacle clearance vehicles, three infantry fighting vehicles, and 14 armored combat vehicles.

However, the Ukrainian General Staff did not mention counteroffensive actions in the Kursk region in its report at 4 p.m. Kyiv time, stating instead that Ukrainian defenders had repelled three Russian attacks.

The report added that, since the morning, the Russians had carried out 26 airstrikes, dropped a total of 40 guided aerial bombs on Ukrainian positions and populated areas, and launched 287 artillery attacks.

As of the end of January, Ukrainian forces controlled 442 square kilometers (170 square miles) of the Kursk region—almost three times less than at the peak of the offensive that began in August, when they occupied 1,300 square kilometers (503 square miles) within two weeks.

During January, experts from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reported that the Russian army had managed to recapture approximately 40 square kilometers (15 square miles).

Russian forces have suffered nearly 40,000 casualties, including over 16,000 killed, in the six months since Ukraine launched its Kursk offensive on Aug. 6, 2024, according to the Ukrainian General Staff.

The operation aimed to prevent a new Russian assault on Ukraine’s Sumy and Kharkiv regions, and has forced Russia to divert significant resources to the area, weakening its other frontlines.

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I see the puppetmaster is pulling Trump's strings:

Trump’s pivot toward Putin’s Russia upends generations of U.S. policy.

For more than a decade, the West has faced off against the East again in what was widely called a new cold war. But with President Trump back in office, America is giving the impression that it could be switching sides.

Even as American and Russian negotiators sat down together on Tuesday for the first time since Moscow’s full-fledged invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago, Mr. Trump has signaled that he is willing to abandon America’s allies to make common cause with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

As far as Mr. Trump is concerned, Russia is not responsible for the war that has devastated its neighbor. Instead, he suggests that Ukraine is to blame for Russia’s invasion of it. To listen to Mr. Trump talk with reporters on Tuesday about the conflict was to hear a version of reality that would be unrecognizable on the ground in Ukraine and certainly would never have been heard from any other American president of either party.

In Mr. Trump’s telling, Ukrainian leaders were at fault for the war for not agreeing to surrender territory and therefore, he suggested, they do not deserve a seat at the table for the peace talks that he has just initiated with Mr. Putin. “You should have never started it,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Ukrainian leaders who, in fact, did not start it. “You could have made a deal.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Saudi officials and Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov in the Saudi capital. No Ukrainian representatives were present.

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Macron, Starmer to visit Washington next week as they reaffirm support for Ukraine in calls with Zelensky

French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will visit Washington next week to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, Fox News reported on Feb. 19.

The three leaders will discuss peace negotiations prospects to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said on Fox News. He described recent talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia as a "positive step” and mentioned the ongoing discussions in Kyiv and at the Munich Security Conference.

Waltz also urged European nations to take a more “active role” in ensuring Ukraine’s security.

“We welcome Europe. We’ve been asking for years for Europe to step up and contribute more to not only their own defense but Ukraine’s defense,” he said.

Ahead of their trip, both leaders spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who highlighted the need for strong security guarantees to ensure lasting peace in Europe.

Zelensky discussed Macron’s recent talks with world leaders and reaffirmed Ukraine’s aligned position with France.

"I had a great conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron. He shared details of his recent talks with world leaders. Europe needs a reliable and lasting peace—one that can only be ensured and built on strong security guarantees. France values freedom just as much as we do. Thank you for your support," Zelensky wrote on X.

In a separate conversation, the Ukrainian president emphasized the U.K.’s crucial role in strengthening European security, expressing gratitude for London's continued support.

"I spoke with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The United Kingdom’s role in fortifying Europe’s defense and security is important for us. We discussed upcoming plans and opportunities. The U.K.’s support matters indeed, and we will never forget the respect the British people have shown for Ukraine and our citizens," Zelensky wrote.

European leaders gathered in Paris on Feb. 17 for an emergency summit amid concerns that the U.S. is advancing peace talks with Russia without Europe’s involvement. A broader meeting was held on Feb. 19, after which Macron reaffirmed the "united" stance of France and its allies on Ukraine.

China wrote: Thu Feb 20, 2025 2:25 pm

Macron, Starmer to visit Washington next week as they reaffirm support for Ukraine in calls with Zelensky

French President Emmanuel Macron and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer will visit Washington next week to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump, Fox News reported on Feb. 19.

The three leaders will discuss peace negotiations prospects to end Russia’s war in Ukraine, U.S. National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said on Fox News. He described recent talks with Russian officials in Saudi Arabia as a "positive step” and mentioned the ongoing discussions in Kyiv and at the Munich Security Conference.

Waltz also urged European nations to take a more “active role” in ensuring Ukraine’s security.

“We welcome Europe. We’ve been asking for years for Europe to step up and contribute more to not only their own defense but Ukraine’s defense,” he said.

Ahead of their trip, both leaders spoke with President Volodymyr Zelensky, who highlighted the need for strong security guarantees to ensure lasting peace in Europe.

Zelensky discussed Macron’s recent talks with world leaders and reaffirmed Ukraine’s aligned position with France.

"I had a great conversation with French President Emmanuel Macron. He shared details of his recent talks with world leaders. Europe needs a reliable and lasting peace—one that can only be ensured and built on strong security guarantees. France values freedom just as much as we do. Thank you for your support," Zelensky wrote on X.

In a separate conversation, the Ukrainian president emphasized the U.K.’s crucial role in strengthening European security, expressing gratitude for London's continued support.

"I spoke with U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer. The United Kingdom’s role in fortifying Europe’s defense and security is important for us. We discussed upcoming plans and opportunities. The U.K.’s support matters indeed, and we will never forget the respect the British people have shown for Ukraine and our citizens," Zelensky wrote.

European leaders gathered in Paris on Feb. 17 for an emergency summit amid concerns that the U.S. is advancing peace talks with Russia without Europe’s involvement. A broader meeting was held on Feb. 19, after which Macron reaffirmed the "united" stance of France and its allies on Ukraine.

Well, as Bruce Willis once famously said, "welcome to the party pal". The fact of the matter is ukraine was always going to lost this war without boots on the ground. And they don't have boots. Hell, a good portion of their own male military aged population bailed to Europe when the war started. It was only a matter of time.

This is how badly our NATO "allies" have fallen behind. And people whine when Trump wants them to pay more

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/ ... ps-ukraine

"The Times reported on Wednesday that European military chiefs have proposed a plan to deploy 30,000 troops to Ukraine to provide security guarantees as part of a potential future peace deal.

The report said the UK and France are leading the discussions about deploying a "reassurance" force to Ukraine, an idea that’s been firmly rejected by Moscow. In response to the report, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reiterated Russia’s opposition to the deployment of NATO troops to Ukraine."

And this little gem from the British Defense Minister

"Our military is so run down at the present moment, numerically and as far as capability and equipment is concerned, it would potentially be quite embarrassing," Danatt said.

"If we were to deploy 10,000 troops each rotation for six months, that would effectively tie up 30,000 or 40,000 troops, and we just haven’t got that number available."