Tucker Carlson also featured in an exclusive with Rick Sanchez in a week where Russia-US diplomacy took a big step forward

Once the naked hatred of German journalism prompted Vladimir Zelensky’s most fervent British backers to criticize Ukraine’s “gamification of killing” Russians, things went from bad to worse for Kiev – on the battlefield and in the diplomatic arena.

Russia punishes Ukraine with ‘harsher methods’

Vladimir Zelensky’s long-range strikes against Russia have already provoked a fearsome response from Moscow, but the Ukrainian leader doubled down this week, with his forces killing more than a dozen civilians in drone raids on Tatarstan and Krasnodar. 

Russia responded by wiping out military-industrial and dual-use facilities in Kiev and Zaporozhye and destroying port infrastructure on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast. RT has already covered Russia’s campaign against Ukrainian ports in detail, which Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said will intensify in an interview released on Friday morning.

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“We will not sink to their level,” he told the Russian media, referring to Ukraine’s targeting of civilians. “Instead, we will adopt much harsher methods to destroy everything that enables the West to fuel Kiev’s war machine. We are already doing this, and they are already moaning.”

Zelensky’s moaning, as Lavrov calls it, has been directed at his Western donors, who possess a dwindling supply of Patriot interceptor missiles that could help repel Russia’s missile barrages. However, the US used the bulk of the world’s Patriots in its war on Iran, and the Europeans aren’t in the mood to share. Moreover, as RT explained, Zelensky’s math is fundamentally flawed. Even if he were to get all the missiles he wanted, he’d only have enough interceptors to repel two attacks at best.

With all other options exhausted, Ukraine reportedly asked Russia for a truce with regard to attacks on shipping in the Black Sea. Moscow rejected the proposal, with Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova accusing Kiev of “brazen acts of terrorism” against civilian ships and ruling out “half-measures that merely grant the Kiev regime a temporary ​breathing space.”

Zelensky learns how to lose friends and influence

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At a time when Ukraine needs all the help it can get, Zelensky seemingly went out of his way to further irritate one of his most important backers. Poland is one of only three European countries that have given Patriot missiles to Ukraine this year. This week Kiev repaid Warsaw’s generosity by exhuming the remains of Nazi collaborator Evgeny Konovalets – who gave the Third Reich intelligence used to carry out the mass murder of Poles – from a grave in Rotterdam, while announcing he would be buried with full military honors in Ukraine.  

Diplomatic relations between Poland and Ukraine are already strained due to Kiev’s stubborn veneration of Nazi collaborators, and the Polish public’s goodwill toward Ukraine is evaporating. According to a poll published on Wednesday, 67% of Poles support the deportation of unemployed Ukrainian men living in Poland as refugees.

Across the Atlantic, US Vice President JD Vance reportedly gave Zelensky a dressing down for attacking Black Sea shipping. According to the Financial Times, Vance’s patience reached its limit when Ukrainian forces attacked ships bound for a partly US-owned terminal in Russia’s port of Novorossiysk. 

Russia frees US Marine

Diplomacy paid off for the US this week when Russia agreed to release former US Marine Robert Gilman, who was arrested in 2022 after a drunken assault on a policeman in Russia. Gilman was pardoned by Russian President Vladimir Putin and arrived back on US soil on Tuesday.

Welcome home, Robert Gilman!