Conor here: Reality is collapsing the Western narrative:
An additional Russian advance made in western Kostyantynivka with the city 90% captured and no remaining stable Ukrainian positions.
The remaining 10% is grey or unconsolidated.
Ukrainian zone of control moved west towards Osykove. pic.twitter.com/DRYo1l8R4M
— KalibratedMaps (@Kalibrated_Maps) July 4, 2026
Konstantinovka is the largest city taken by Russia since Mariupol in 2022.
Despite all the distractions the story remains the same, which leads to one question: where will the attacks to “weaken and divide” Russia come from once Ukraine is defeated? There are plenty of options. Will the Azovs stay behind and fight a guerilla campaign, or will they bring their ‘expertise’ to neighboring countries in the Baltics and elsewhere in Europe? Or to put it another way, when do the false flags start in earnest:
Yesterday’s headlines around the world based on Onet reporting suggested Russia is preparing to attack Poland to test NATO’s Article 5. I’m trying to work out what, if anything, was actually new.
The key point in the reporting is not that Russia could carry out a limited… pic.twitter.com/ywPG3LFDlU
— Stuart Dowell (@StuartDowell_) July 4, 2026
By Andrew Korybko, a Moscow-based American political analyst who specializes in the global systemic transition to multipolarity in the New Cold War. He has a PhD from MGIMO, which is under the umbrella of the Russian Foreign Ministry. Originally published at his website.
Putting it all together, Ukraine’s new three-pronged infowar campaign about the battlefield sees it downplaying Russia’s on-the-ground gains as expanding the “gray zone”, potentially plotting more terrorist attacks and symbolic incursions as distractions, and outright lying about its own successes.
Putin visited a forward command post on Friday for a briefing with top military officials about the latest developments in the special operation. The most widely reported takeaway was the confirmation that Konstantinovka, which is a crucial part of the Northern Donbass fortress agglomeration, was captured from Ukraine. By contrast, much less attention was paid to Ukraine’s new three-pronged infowar campaign about the battlefield that Russia just exposed, which this piece will review and then analyze.
Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov began by talking about how “the Kiev regime is seeking to convince its Western sponsors that it has seized the initiative from us and made significant advances on the battlefield. To this end, it is conducting an information campaign, in which it demonstrates the supposed successes of Ukrainian Armed Forces formations, while concealing the territories liberated by Russian troops under the neutral formulation that ‘they have moved into the gray zone.’”
This was later followed by two related warnings from Putin. As for the first, he said that, “Now, regarding the enemy’s supposed successes on the battlefield, we must, firstly, bear in mind that, to bolster their legends and lies, their false claims, the enemy may undertake certain sabotage and terrorist actions, launching sorties, albeit with small forces, but with great propaganda fanfare, in order to confirm their claims about supposed achievements. We must be prepared for these possible sorties.”
He then segued into the second by talking about how “the bravura statements by the leaders of the Kiev regime about successes we know to be nonexistent are, in principle, to our advantage, since they are actors, and they truly know nothing else, and have never been taught anything else. Yet, with their actions and statements, they undoubtedly disorganize both themselves and their sponsors. I repeat: this is to our advantage.”
Putting it all together, Ukraine’s new three-pronged infowar campaign about the battlefield sees it downplaying Russia’s on-the-ground gains as expanding the “gray zone”, potentially plotting more terrorist attacks and symbolic incursions as distractions, and outright lying about its own successes. The first was already evident among those who closely study the maps produced by pro-Kiev accounts, while the second’s terrorist dimension is already in progress with Ukraine’s spree of strikes against Russia.
The incursion aspect could take the form of another Kursk-like cross-border campaign against Russia and/or Belarus, the latter of which was recently in Ukraine’s crosshairs, while outright lies about Ukraine’s own on-the-ground successes are already commonplace but could become more frequent. The larger context within which this new infowar campaign is being waged concerns Zelensky’s explicitly declared 40-day influence operation against Russia aimed at forcing it to freeze the conflict.
Seeing as how Gerasimov also claimed that recent strikes by Russia degraded Ukraine’s long-range strike capabilities, the only real threat posed by Ukraine’s new infowar campaign is terrorist strikes against border areas and another Kursk-like incursion. It’s impossible to preemptively thwart either with perfection, so it’s possible that these threats might materialize in the coming future, but observers should remember that they’re more showmanship than strategy and that Ukraine isn’t really winning.
It is difficult to get a complete, objective view of the situation, but it looks as if the Ukrainian attacks against Russian refineries had some effect, at least regionally (esp. Crimea).
On the other hand:
“Will the Azovs stay behind and fight a guerilla campaign, or will they bring their ‘expertise’ to neighboring countries in the Baltics and elsewhere in Europe?”
From their track record, I presume their curriculum after an Ukrainian defeat will be as follows:
1) Many will move to Western countries and form the battalions of a reinvigorated Ukrainian maffia. This is already a part of their activity in Ukraine, and it is a less dangerous and more lucrative occupation than keeping the flame of Ukrainian nationalism alive as guerrilleros.
2) Others will join mercenary outfits operating in Africa or Latin America. Ukrainians are already particularly active in the Sahel and Sudan.
3) On the other hand, I do not expect any (or very very few) of them being integrated in Western intelligence service. SBU “refugees”, with their connections and experience, will be more appreciated than Azov / Aidar / Sich / … goons. And the few who will be recruited will instead be employed to repress NATO citizens and their grassroots organizations, as the Western population gets increasingly restless because of the economic consequences of the Ukraine war with attendant sanctions against Russia, and the injustifiable support for the genocidal Israel.
4) I doubt any will want to stay behind. They have made too many enemies amongst the Ukrainian population itself.
5) Those ready to be involved in attacks on Russia from NATO countries will also be the most fervent banderists. This also means they will not hesitate to turn their weapons against Europeans, accused of being traitors, not having supported Ukraine enough and not doing enough again to overthrow the Russian occupation / protectorate — i.e. Dolchstosslegende.
All in all: a pretty dire perspective for NATO — which means that this is exactly the path that those brilliant European and North American elites will follow.
I agree with all that you have written. I will however add one or two facts showing that the Azov guys & gals are unlikely to stay behind and fight. Twice now in the past year I have read reports how the Azov guys were ordered into a region that was falling apart and needed experienced troops – and the Azov guys up and refused to go. Too dangerous I guess. The second how it is the ultra-nationalists that are stationed behind regular troop formations and it is their job to shoot and kill any who seem to be retreating and I even saw a video of this happening to a group of Ukrainians trying to evacuate their wounded. Just a bunch of REMFs.
These thugs will beat a fast retreat and as you said be mafiosas whose main money will come from selling drugs and weapons plus being hitmen
I
Am
An
American
And in no Party
AKA independent and we should have never got involved in this
Note a lot of the ukrainian nazis and ukranian fascists will be arriving here in America
Which Is
Outrageously bad
Organized criminals
Regarding false flags. I believe that a false flag event is something that a military (country, organization, alliance) might pursue to declare casus belli when such institution knows it has clear military supremacy and capacity to achieve it’s strategic goals. I might be wrong but I don’t see NATO, Germany, France etc or any coalition of the willing having vis a vis with Russia any kind of supremacy (not even in the PR battlefield), so a false flag event would be quite a stupid move to pursue.
But who am I to have an informed opinion.
I think you miss the possible separation between the author of the false flag and the military institution to be given the casus belli. Both Ukraine/Europe and Israel attempt false flag attacks to draw the US further in to the conflict. Further, when I say Ukraine/Europe or Israel, I am talking about the embattled and desperate leaders of these nominally democratic regions, making decisions to provoke US public opinion and the political leadership to action based on headlines, rather than legalistic considerations of causes of war.
Merz and Macron know they’ve lost, so increasing long-odds gambles, even with nuclear war, become rational career choices.
Many false flags these days are for propaganda purposes. The Skripal poisoning, the Litvinenko polonium green tea, both with as many holes in the narrative as a sieve but doggedly reported as the truth by western media. The Skripals were expendable, and the drug addict woman who also died unrelatedly a couple of months later was another useful tool. The Bucha massacres were designed to win support to continue the war, all with the aim of painting Russia/Putin as bad. And if you go against this narrative you are accused of being a Putinbot, useful idiot or worse. The BBC is nothing but a propaganda outfit these days, especially when it comes to Russia.
During the latter part of 2024, it struck me that Russia’s military leaders had decided that war with the NATO countries had become had become a high probability eventuality and the European branch of NATO would get little help from the US, outside of satellite information, targeting assistance, and arms.
It would certainly not be in US interests to be directly involved because Russia would be forced to understand that to constitute an existential threat, and both Russia and the US would be loathe to walk up the nuclear ladder. The pace of the SMO set by an economically growing Russia, on the back of EU and US sanctions, made Ukraine a plug in and play training ground to buildup a bloodied, combat resilient military capable, test new weapons in live conditions, and when the time comes, to impose her will on the rest of a debt-laden Europe slowly committing economic suicide because of the sanctions the European dumbocracy had chosen to place on Russia.
This style of warfare, a moving wall of attrition, with an ever more belligerent Europe sending weapons and members of their intelligence services and spooks to the Ukraine and incessantly telling Russia and the world Europe will go to war against her in 2030 will, in time, be the casus belli justifying a series of deadly strikes and deep incursions into Europe on a much greater scale than any seen in Ukraine thus far. If the inept and inconsequential Euro techocrats will not treat with Russia, I am pretty sure the ordinary, unrepresented, and falling behind citizens of the member states will find those who will treat with Russia and develop a new European security architecture and devise a economic architecture and financial systems which will be fruitful to both Russia and Europe.
I know some have described what is happening now as akin to the way Europe, pushed by Britain, sleepwalked ignorantly into the Great War, but that may describe the current approach of the Western idiocracy, but it does not describe the Russian government and its military forces. It may be that the most effective interlocutor for the West could have been a fresh-faced Andy Burnham representing a UK which is crying out for the economic growth and shared prosperity that deep economic relations with Russia will provide, but given the people he has chosen to surround himself with this now seems unlikely, and the railroads to a new conflict and the re-shaping of the UK and Europe by Russia are still there, ready for the trains to start rolling once again.
I very much agree!
“I know some have described what is happening now as akin to the way Europe, pushed by Britain, sleepwalked ignorantly into the Great War, but that may describe the current approach of the Western idiocracy,”
I view this differently. The West is gunning full speed for a full war with Russia via numerous direct acts of war (has the UN imposed sanctions on Russia such that its tankers can be seized?). World War 1 was an escalatory spiral where certain generals (e.g., Moltke and the Russian general staff) seemed to want a large-scale war, but the heads of state, other than Poincare and arguably Asquith, were more circumspect. Now, Macron, Merz, and whoever is in charge of the UK in any given week seem to want a war.
I think Russia realized in 2014 (Maybe Putin in 2008 with his indivisibility of security speech – essentially a modern Peace of Westphalia in response to NATO move eastward immediately after promising it wouldn’t in exchange for allowing German reunification), which is why Russia has focused heavily on the development of so many weapons systems, including hypersonics, but also penicillin, and integrated air defense, which have decadal time scales, and largely neutralized most NATO weapons systems.
Glenn Diesen’s “The Ukraine War & the Eurasian World Order” covers these events in well-cited detail – I am almost finished reading it.
Few things.
1. I just want to point out that the effect on refinery strikes at this point seems to be not so much supply-based, but rather logistics-based.
In other words, before the strikes, Russia’s refineries produced roughly 110% of their internal gasoline requirements and 200% of their internal diesel requirements (not counting increased army usage due to the war). So they have spare capacity to trip offline, not to mention reserves. The problem is distribution of product. If your gas station has a delivery contract with refinery A, and refinery A trips offline, you have to find a new source, which may be in a different geographic region, or may be fully booked “today”, or what have you. If at the same time you also have a rush of people panic-buying gasoline, then your stock dries up and your resupply ends up being hours or days later than usual.
There was a semi-comedic report from the local press in St. Petersburg this week, where the reporter literally went to around nine different gas stations in the center of town to check availability. On some chains, plentiful gas, no queues. On other chains, literally blocks away, there is gas, but there is also a queue. On others still, there is a 2-3 hour wait for the next resupply, because the thing ran out by 11 in the morning. The reporter believed that this was because people tend to be brand-loyal rather than rational, but whatever.
So my point is that the gasoline is in the system in general, but the distribution mess has to be untangled. Supposedly, this is what minister Novak and his team are doing, and one prominent energy analyst (Marcinkevich) mentioned they literally have to do it “by hand” in some regions. And again, panic buying and resales by speculators are not helping the short term.
The distinction is pretty important, because – absent some highly effective Ukrainian strike – logistics messes tend to be easier to sort out than physical damage to complex machinery, some of which cannot be easily replaced due to the sanctions regime. But also, because it’s a logistics rather than a supply issue, all the “Russia fuel crisis” headlines tend to, shall we say, misrepresent the rather more complex overall picture, as in the city of St. Petersburg, apparently.
2. I always dislike the “sleepwalkers” theory of how Europe “stumbled” into World War I. Everyone in Europe (I mean the governments) wanted that war, and enough contradictions have piled up between the various empires to make that war inevitable. What everyone didn’t know was exactly how the war is going to go, tactically and operationally – but if they had, they still would have done it, because of said contradictions! It’s not the political leaders or the generals or the financial elites dying in the trenches, after all.
So the Europeans today – I don’t think they’re sleepwalking at all. They have a plan. It’s a stupid plan. It’s not going to work as they think it will – or at all. But it is one which a) suits Washington’s strategic objectives, and b) fits the story the Euros tell themselves about how they can cling to power in spite of deteriorating economic and social conditions. But I would not confuse having a stupid plan (e.g. the US attack on Iran) with having no plan at all (“sleepwalking”).
3. The whole “Azov insurgency” thing…
…I do not think it is going to be anything like the 1945-1951 insurgency in Western Ukraine. I think it’s going to be more like the campaign being presently conducted in Russia – where you use social media to find some sap who, for the promise of a few bucks, or a European passport or whatnot, will set a railroad switch on fire, or deliver a package with explosives from point A to point B. We are not talking an “organized insurgency” or even Azov fighters or anything of the sort. Frankly, I think the moment stuff starts collapsing, every Azov member will be running for the EU, where some of them will end up as mercs, others as criminals, others still spend the rest of their lives collecting wellfare as “refugees” or some such.
Rather, you’re going to have low-level amateur hour stuff, most of which will not be particularly effective, but on the bright side you’ll always find said disposable amateurs by going wide on social media. Which may well lead to the Russians finally going the Great-Firewall-of-China way for their population – something their corporate sector seems very unwilling to do, at least based on the few conversations that I’ve personally had – but the overall point is, I’d be worried, if I were the FSB, much less about a few remaining Azov members hiding in the woods somewhere, and much more about the principle that out of a million social media users, you can always find one dumb teenager or one crazy grandma to try and set a random ATM on fire (an actual thing a year or two ago)……..
Thanks for nr. 1. I was perusing the Russian media myself and reached pretty much the same conclusion. Ukrainian strikes probably have more effect on the panic-buying than in the actual production. And even then it’s not very pronounced.
I think the latest Levada polls showed that 66% of Russians don’t really follow news about the SMO anymore, which sort of proves that the recent Ukrainian “deep strike” campaign is aimed more to the Ukrainian and western audience than actually achieving anything relevant.
Well, neither is Russia. Taking the Donbas in 10 years with immeasurable loss of life does not really count as winning in my book.
Well, if that was the case perhaps.
But seeing as it is not….
How much of the Donbas remains to be taken? I suspect rather less than 5 years worth …
Ron Unz suggests that Russia give Europe a warning and then level NATO headquarters in Brussels, and then say, the list of 500 drone manufacturers in Europe, warning before they get leveled too. Now, if I were running Russia, I would level Ramstein with no warning so as to make the point, US, you too, you kill 100k, of ours, we will return the favor 10 fold in the near future. But unless Russia re-establishes MAD (deterrence), this is not going to end well for the human species.
Russia has mostly attrited the West and used the 10 years since 2014 to build a new generation of weapons and weapons production, create the strongest military on the planet (due to warfighting experience and weapons that work), and develop alternative financial systems for the obviously expected SWIFT removal.
So by the attrition warfare approach, it’s soon time to push the West to a culmination point and collapse. I guess even the sale of petroleum products to the West (Russia could insist India not resell oil as the US does) prevented the West from developing effective alternatives, so when they are suddenly withdrawn (Iran has prepped the gas stove pilot light) the shock is much higher.
Not level that HQ, just blow out all of its many windows.
A juicy John Helmer report today:
https://johnhelmer.net/greece-has-declared-drone-war-on-russia-its-as-simple-as-that-on-condition-the-war-doesnt-damage-greek-tourism-and-shipping-business/
A brief excerpt and highlighting some of the players involved (bold highlights are mine):
“…Dokos is the National Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Greece, Kyriakos Mitsotakis. Educated at Cambridge and Harvard, he was an academic, think tanker and advisor to the Greek Defence and Foreign Ministries until 2019 when he became the National Security Advisor. Last year Mitsotakis promoted Dokos to cabinet-level rank as Secretary-General for National Security.
When he was telephoned from Kiev last week, he thought he was talking to Rustem Umerov, now the head of the National Security and Defense Council, formerly Ukraine’s Defense Minister and part-time resident of Florida. They had met before Umerov reminded Dokos at the start of their call, but Dokos didn’t recognize the bogus voice; he thought he recognized Umerov, but never suspected he was looking at an AI-generated image, a deepfake. Dokos also didn’t know that Russia’s intelligence services have his personal telephone number and the security codes in use at the Prime Ministry. Dokos was talking to Russia’s most famous penetration spies – the telephone pranksters Vovan and Lexus.
To them pretending to be Umerov, Dokos revealed that as part of Greece’s long-term war strategy against Russia, it is continuing to implement plans for co-production of Ukrainian drones and Ukrainian drone warfare operations on Greek territory.
The first signal of this scheme was announced last November by Prime Minister Mitsotakis with President Vladimir Zelensky; Dokos was one of the negotiators of that announcement. The Greek shipyard beneficiary of the deal to build Ukrainian naval drones at Skaramangas is Paramount Industries Innovation Systems Greece, a subsidiary of the South African Paramount group. Paramount has announced an aerial and naval drone deal with the Ukrainians two weeks before the Dokos-Umerov conversation, on June 17.
The engagement of a corporation in South Africa — purportedly a BRICS ally of Russia — in the war against Russia has not yet been noticed in the Russian media…”
Kremlin says Russia creating ‘buffer zone’ along Ukraine border
I was following the events in 2015 and the Kremlin just forced Donbass militias to halt their liberation campaign just when they had soundly defeated the demoralized Ukrainian conscription Army and were about to march unopposed onto Mariupol and Slavyansk. Those were the Minsk Accords, which Merkel and Hollande later admitted that were just a lie to gain time for Maidan-Ukraine’s recomposition and mass fortification efforts.
What this war has achieved in over four years could have been done in a matter of weeks back then, yet Putin was beffudled by his own ideological shortcomings (it’s been argued that he “betrayed” Donbass because these were “too socialist”) and his self-delusions about diplomacy with Western actors, later repeated re. Turkey in the Astana accords of 2016 and the Julani blitz against Syria.
I’m anyhow glad that the road to Slavyansk has been opened by two sides and the last bastion of the Maidan fascists in the self-determining republics is about to fall (when?, “soon”, how exactly?, it’ll probably be very costly, as the connurbation is extremely fortified). I don’t think that will be the end of the war anyhow, just the beginning of a new phase in which the formal goal set by Russia (liberation of Donbass) will belong to the past but Ukraine will not budge into acknowledging those conquests and will remain belligerant and a likely conduit for the expansion of the war to the rest of Europe and even Canada.