“Achilles Shield” (Ασπίδα του Αχιλλέα) is Greece’s name for a multi-layered national defense architecture, the byproduct of a deal signed in Tel Aviv on 31 August 2026, is an Israeli-built air, missile, and counter-drone system costing about $3.5 billion), representing one of Israel’s largest-ever defense exports.

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"You know that flag flying over the courthouse.
Means certain things are set in stone.
Who we are, what we'll do and what we won't"

What does it mean to you?

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On February 28, 2026, the United States joined with Israel to launch an illegal war of aggression against Iran. In the months that have followed, not only has the United States failed to achieve any of its articulated military and political objectives, but is forced to confront the reality that for the first time in its history, it has suffered strategic military defeat at the hands of an armed foe. This defeat has resonated globally, where the conventional military weakness exhibited by US forces, demonstrated by their failure to accomplish their military objectives in Iran and their inability to adequately defend the Gulf Arab nations, Jordan and Israel from Iran retaliation, has left nations who had once staked their security—individually and collectively—on the notion of viable US security guarantees struggling to find an alternative arrangement.

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In late April, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized US President Donald Trump’s handling of the war in Iran, saying the US is being “humiliated” by the Iranian leadership and calling out the Trump administration’s lack of anything passing for a coherent strategy when it came to conflict termination. President Trump responded by ordering the Pentagon to US combat troops from Germany. In May 2026 the Pentagon announced the withdrawal of about 5,000 troops from Germany over 6–12 months (roughly 14% of the US presence there at the time). Some planned rotational deployments were also canceled or delayed, including an armored brigade to Poland (later partially offset by a Trump announcement of additional troops to Poland) and a long-range fires unit slated for Germany. The bulk of the troops slated for withdrawal would come from the 2^nd Cavalry Brigade, a light armored Brigade equipped with Stryker infantry fighting vehicles. While the Stryker has a mixed combat record from seeing action in both Iraq and Afghanistan, its performance in support of the Ukrainian military in combat operations against Russia has been disappointing, especially when it comes to surviving in a drone-intensive environment.

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Last week, Israeli aircraft bombed the Abu al-Duhur airbase in northern Syria, claiming it had intelligence of an imminent Turkish military buildup. Turkey denied any deployment plans and Syrian officials declared the site was being rehabilitated for Syrian use and that no Turkish base was intended. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu publicly warned that Israel would not tolerate an expanded Turkish military presence in Syria.

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Mykhailo Albertovych Fedorov is a young, ambitious man who clearly has his eyes set on playing a significant role in leading Ukraine out of the current conflict with Russia. The former head of social media marketing for Volodymyr Zelensky’s victorious 2019 presidential campaign has built a career on that success, serving as a Minister for Digital Transformation responsible for digitizing Ukrainian governmental services (overseeing implementation of the so-called “state in a smartphone” project) and, starting in January 2026, as Minister of Defense, where he embarked on an ambitious defense strategy called “Air Land Economy”, centered on air defense against, and ground attrition and economic exhaustion of the Russian enemy. Federov was fired as Minister of Defense by President Zelensky on July 15, 2026, as part of a general shakeup of Ukrainian defense priorities undertaken by President Zelensky. Since that time, the former social media manager has been using his skill as a digital communicator to lobby for his reappointment as Minister of Defense and, barring that, a potential replacement for Zelensky as Ukraine’s next leader.

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The Madonna of Gorlovka

“Kristina was a smart girl. She graduated from Gorlovka Institute of Foreign Languages, and wanted to achieve a lot in life. She loved her little girl Kirochka very much; she wanted a child so much, and eagerly awaited her birth. Even when she was pregnant, all the time, she said: ‘When will Kirochka come?’ She knew exactly what the baby would be called, who she would be.”

These are the words of Natalya Zhuk, the mother of Kristina Zhuk. The timeframe of which she spoke was in July, 2014.

“When Kirochka was born, Kristina did not let her go. Kira sang songs endlessly—she woke up in the morning and screamed from the bedroom: ‘Bah! Bah!’ and began to sing songs. Our neighbors all laughed, because from the first day we constantly sang songs to her. Neighbors asked, they say, who sings there? I sang, Kristina sang. She put on French songs and Kirochka was already humming something.”

Kristina was a citizen of Ukraine, a resident of Kiev. When she became pregnant with Kira, Kristina travelled back to her childhood home of Gorlovka, to be with Natalya and her younger sister, Daria, when the baby was born.

Gorlovka is located 50 kilometers north of Donetsk. The city is named after Pyotr Nikolayevich Gorlov, a Russian geologist and engineer who explored coal deposits in the Donets Basin. In 1867 a village was constructed to house railroad workers involved in the construction of the Kursk-Kharkov-Azov railroad. It was named in honor of Gorlov.

In 1871 the coal mine “Korsun Kop #1” was established, and it quickly became the largest coal mine in Donbass region. By 2014, the coal mining industry in and around Gorlovka was largely concentrated in the Kalinin Mine, which produced around 300,000 tons of bituminous coal per year. Joining the Kalinin mine as a major regional employer was the Styrol chemical concern, a key ammonia and urea producer and the only polystyrene manufacturer in Ukraine. By July 2014 some 240,000 people called Gorlovka home.

“There is still a feeling that they just went out for a walk,” Natalya reminisced later, “and will soon come back, and I will grumble at them—say, ‘you returned so late, it’s time for Kirochka’s bath!’ Every time they were delayed, they came back and shouted: ‘Hurray! Grandma, Kira learned to crawl!’ or ‘Hurray! Grandma, Kira has learned to walk!’, ‘Hurray! We made her first word!’”

Kristina and Kira lived in the home of their mother, Natalya, in an apartment located on the eight floor of a building located on Rudadovka Street, across from a park. “Kirochka just learned to walk,” Natalya reclaeed. “In this park, they strolled 2-3 times a day; they almost never left. There, in this grass, Kira learned how to crawl and walk. They lived in this park,” Natalya said

“And died there.”

War came suddenly to Gorlovka. The events of the Maidan in Kiev that transpired in January and February 2014 seemed distant from the Donbas, where life centered around the factory and work. Even the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March appeared to be an event that was taking place in another world. Protests against the Ukrainian government of interim president Olexandr Turchynov grew in scope and size as the population of the Donetsk region, which had seen some 90.4% of its vote go to the former president Viktor Yanukovych in the 2010 Presidential election, expressed its opposition to the new Ukrainian government.

On April 12, 2014, a heavily armed detachment of some 50 Russian “volunteers” entered Donetsk and moved on the cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk. A detachment from this unit made its way to Gorlovka, where it rallied support from the local residents and attempted to seize the local police station. This effort was rebuffed.

On April 13, 2014, Turchynov announced the beginning of an Anti-Terrorist Operation in Donbas, clearing the way for the involvement of the Ukrainian army in putting down the demonstrations. Undeterred, the Gorlovka protesters regrouped, and on April 14 succeeded in taking control of the City Council and the Department of Internal Affairs. At this time the bulk of the police serving in Gorlovka went over to the side of the protesters, who were calling for the independence on the Donbas from Ukraine.

Gorlovka was effectively under the control of the rebellion.

On April 17, a local city councilman, Volodymyr Rybak, was arrested by the rebels when he tried to raise the Ukrainian flag in Gorlovka. His body was later dumped in a local river, along with the bodies of two local activists who had been active at the Maidan demonstrations in Kiev that brought down Yanukovych.

Gorlovka escaped the violence that raged elsewhere in the Donbas in late April and the month of May. On May 11, the citizens of Gorlovka overwhelmingly participated in a referendum calling for independence from Ukraine—more than 75% turned out for the vote, which saw 90% vote in favor. On May 12 the rebels in Donetsk formally declared the independence of the Donetsk Peoples Republic from Ukraine.

Gorlovka was considered to be part of this new republic.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces launched assaults aimed recapturing Gorlovka in early May, prior to the referendum, but were repelled. Fierce resistance from local rebel fighters resulted in heavy Ukrainian casualties, compelling the Ukrainian armed forces to withdraw from their positions around the city in late May.

June found Gorlovka relatively quiet. Daria Zhuk, who was studying in Kiev, joined her mother and older sister in Gorlovka, where they all basked in the joy of baby Kira. The situation, however, deteriorated rapidly starting in early July. On July 5, the Ukrainian military drove Donetsk rebel forces out of Slovyansk. Many of the defenders withdrew toward Gorlovka, determined to make a stand there.

On July 21, the Ukrainian army made a push to capture Gorlovka, sending an armored detachment into the northern suburb of Mayorsk. Sporadic firefights broke over the course of the next two days, before the Ukrainians broke off their attack after a SU-25 ground attack aircraft was shot down while flying over Gorlovka on July 23.

For the Zhuk family, the situation in Gorlovka was becoming intolerable. Daria was sent back to Kiev on July 23, and Natalya was trying her best to arrange safe passage out of Gorlovka for her, Kristina and baby Kira. By the morning of July 27—a Sunday—Natalya was at her wits end.

“Our suitcases stood packed on the doorstep for several days, but for several days we could not leave Gorlovka,” she later recalled. “Wherever we call, in boarding houses or other places, everywhere with a small child they were not accepted. And the last two days and trains did not go. I was ready to run out of the house onto the road, catch some car and arrange for us to be taken away from the city at least somewhere. But suddenly I got a call from a man who was taking people out of Gorlovka and said that he would pick us up the next morning.”

It was two in the afternoon.

“I went to the open window, from which, as if on the palm of your hand, you can see the square, and immediately called my daughter, Kristina, to share the news. At that time she was walking on the street with my granddaughter Kirochka. ‘Kristyusha!’—I shout to her on the phone—‘that’s it, tomorrow at 9 am we leave!’ She is in the phone with joy: ‘Hurrah!’—shouts—‘Kirill, we’re leaving tomorrow! Hurray, grandmother, we’re leaving!’”

Natalya looked out the window. “Kristina, where are you?” she cried. “In the square,” Kristina answered. “Stay where you are,” Natalia said.

It was at that moment that a salvo of 122mm artillery rockets exploded in the square.

To the north, the Ukrainian army was beginning to make another push on Gorlovka, this time from the direction of Zaitseve. At 2 pm, the Ukrainians opened fire on Gorlovka with several batteries of Grad 122mm rockets.

It was these rockets that exploded in the park below Natalya’s apartment.

The park where Kristina was walking with baby Kira.

The first explosions did not kill Kristina and baby Kira. The young mother, wearing denim shorts and a sleeveless black t-shirt emblazoned with the name “Paris”, had time to pick up baby Kira, who was wearing a bright yellow print dress and, holding the baby in her arms, start running across the grass toward her mother’s apartment.

It was a subsequent shell that killed her and the baby, severing one of Kristina’s legs and knocking her to the ground, still holding baby Kira in her arms.

A Ukrainian blogger who had travelled to Gorlovka to report on the escalating conflict took pictures of Kristina and Kira’s lifeless bodies, and immediately posted them on his social media page for the whole world to see.

Shortly thereafter, one of Natalya’s neighbors passed by the bodies, and took them to the morgue.

“Explosion after explosion, fire, smoke and all,” Natalya later recalled. “My world swam before my eyes. I ran out of the apartment to the street shouting ‘Kira! Kristina! Kira! Kristina!’ By the time I got there, the park was already quiet. I didn’t find my children. Falling through the shell craters, I sorted the grass with my hands, looking for toys, but, not finding them, I thought that everything was in order. My only thought was that they were in a bomb shelter.”

Natalya went to the bomb shelter. She didn’t find her daughter and granddaughter, but was precluded from her search by the continued bombardment of Gorlovka by the Ukrainian army. When the shelling stopped, a few hours later, Natalya went to the children’s clinic to see if Kira and her daughter had been brought there. It was in the clinic that she received a phone call from her friends. They had seen the photographs of Kristina and Kira’s bodies on the internet, and told Natalya she must go to the morgue.

Natalya did, and that’s where she found her two missing loved ones.

Natalya tried to bring her girls home the next day, so she could prepare their bodies for burial. The morgue refused to release the bodies due to continued Ukrainian shelling. On the 29th the shelling let up just enough for a quick funeral.

“My girls were buried very quickly,” Natalya remembered. “They hurried me all the time: ‘Faster, faster’—they were afraid that they would bomb again.”

“The politicians decided that I could not be a mother or a grandmother,” Natalya said, ‘that we could no longer rejoice or laugh. We have been deprived of all this. I howled, howled. All night after the funeral, I slept on their grave. After all, what difference does it make, they bomb everywhere anyway.”

July 27 became known as “Bloody Sunday.”

The Ukrainian artillery attacks that day killed 30 citizens of Gorlovka, including five children. More than 100 others were wounded.

Thanks to the photographs of Kristina and Kira’s torn, lifeless bodies laying on the ground, the world’s attention was captured for at least a moment, and soon Kristina was introduced to the world as “The Madonna of Gorlovka.”

The citizens of Gorlovka painted a mural of Kristina and Kira on the side of a building overlooking the park where they were killed.

The Donetsk People’s Republic has declared July 27 as the “Day of Remembrance for Children Victims of the Donbass War.”

More than 250 children have been killed in the territory encompassing the Donetsk People’s Republic since 2014.

Twelve long years of war.

The first child killed was Kira Zhuk.

Today hardly anyone remembers her name.

The Mayor of Gorlovka

When I first approached “Iskander” with my proposal regarding a visit to the Special Military Operation, back in March 2026, I had envisioned visiting some former battlefields where I would walk the grounds with soldiers who had fought there, getting a first-hand look at the true nature of the conflict. I brought up Bakhmut, Sievierodonetsk, and Adviika as possibilities—all three had been the scene of major battles. As soon as I mentioned Bakhmut, “Iskander” smiled and shook his head. “It’s still too dangerous”, he said. “Too many drones.” But he said he would look into the other two places, and come up with other possibilities.

As the calendar drew nearer to my date of departure, “Iskander” started giving me warnings. “It is becoming more difficult here,” he wrote, referring to the zone of the Special Military Operation. “The Ukrainian drones are becoming very active.” I was advised that the plan would have to be adjusted based upon security realities. “We will do our best to have a good program for you,” “Iskander” said. “But your security is our top priority. And right now it is very dangerous.”

When I arrived in the Donbas, the Ukrainian drone offensive was in full swing. The goal of the Ukrainians was to bring the war home to the citizens of Russia, and their drone operators attacked civilian targets with a vengeance.

The attack on Starobelsk College stands out as an example of this terrorism.

My visit to Sievierodonetsk was cancelled—too dangerous.

And then my visit to Adviika was cancelled as well—too dangerous.

The roads leading to both towns had become virtually impassible due to Ukrainian drone attacks.

I was scheduled to visit the city of Gorlovka on June 10. To get to Gorlovka from Donetsk, one has to take the R-150 Donetsk-Yasinovataya-Gorlovka federal highway. On May 20—ten days before I was scheduled to depart for Russia—the authorities of the Donetsk People’s Republic closed the R-150 Donetsk-Yasinovataya-Gorlovka federal highway due to incessant Ukrainian drone attacks—more than 19 along the highway in one 24-hour period, including one which destroyed a truck outside Yasinovataya, killing the driver.

The highway was still closed when I arrived in Donetsk on June 10.

On the morning of June 11 my visit to Gorlovka was still up in the air. I was taken to the Alley of the Angels in the morning, where I laid flowers at the memorial to the children that had been killed in the fighting since 2014.

10-month old Kira Zhuk has been widely recognized as the first child victim of the conflict in the Donbas, but there have been hundreds of children who have died since.

While I visited the Alley of the Angels, the word came down from “above”—I had been cleared to make the drive to Gorlovka.

We would be going in a single vehicle—“Angor” would drive, I would be in the front passenger seat, and Alexandra, Luba, and Artyom would sit in the back.

The protocol was the same as the drive to Starobelsk—scan the horizon for drones, and call them out once seen. “Angor” would make a decision as to try to outrun the drone, or to pull over and have the passengers abandon the vehicle before the drone struck.

As we reached the outskirts of Donetsk, we found the highway covered by anti-drone netting, designed to prevent attacks from FPV drones operated by the Ukrainians. There were road repair crews at work, trying to fix the damage done to the highway by years of Ukrainian artillery fire. The vehicles of the repair crews were sitting ducks for the Ukrainian drone operators, hence the need for the nets.

The burnt out husk of Russian trucks were visible on the side of the road, as well as the blackened patches of asphalt where other vehicles had burned after being struck by Ukrainian drones.

The R-150 was practically empty as we made our way toward Gorlovka. One of the main bridges had been destroyed, and was in the process of being repaired, requiring “Angor” to take a detour that had us meandering on a windy paved road.

“Keep an eye out for drones”, “Angor” warned. “We have to slow down here, and we are very exposed.”

The sight of a car gutted by fire that had crashed into the trees on the right hand side of the road underscored “Angor’s” words. This was not a relic from times past—the car had just been attacked a few days ago.

The fate of its passengers was unknown.

We got back on the main road, and “Angor” pressed down on the accelerator. “Stay alert””, he said. “This is the most dangerous stretch.”

The R150 highway, like the city of Donetsk and its surrounding environs, including Gorlovka, was protected by what was known as the Kupol Donbassa (“Donbas Dome”) air defense system, operated by servicemen of the regional Directorate of the FSB of Russia.

The Donbas Dome is comprised of several overlapping electronic warfare systems designed to either detect, track, and destroy incoming drones, or disrupt their signals to the extent that the drones are no longer able to operate. The Dome is supplemented by mobile fire support teams—basically trucks with machine guns that roam the area of operations picking off drones that somehow evade the wall of electrons generated by the Dome.

The Russians don’t talk too much about the exact composition of the electronic warfare systems that comprise the Donbas Dome, for obvious reasons. At the time of my visit, the greatest threat seemed to be in the form of the US-made “Hornet”/”Martian-2” drone, which used Starlink satellite connectivity to get around the defenses of the Donbas Dome. According to press reports at the time, Russia had begun deploying specialized electronic warfare capability that could block Starlink signals in specific areas. But the coverage provided by these systems was too narrow for any blanket protection, meaning that windows of vulnerability existed within the Dome that were exploited by the Ukrainians on a daily basis.

The stretch of R-150 between Yasinovataya and Gorlovka was particularly dangerous, since it seems to coincide with a gap in the Donbas Dome’s otherwise impressive defensive capabilities. The drive seemed scenic enough—I always enjoy taking in the Russian countryside wherever I travel. But I missed out on whatever that 20-kilometer stretch of road had to offer, instead finding myself focused on the horizon, looking for any evidence of an incoming enemy drone.

We reached the outskirts of Gorlovka without incident, and “Angor” visibly relaxed as we passed the white, eponymous blue and red painted sign announcing entry into the town.

Our destination was the Gorlovka administration offices, located at 67 Pobedy (Victory) street, in downtown Gorlovka. But because this was wartime, we did not take the most direct route. And when we finally ended up in the vicinity of the building we were to enter, we remained parked in the parking lot, waiting for someone else to decide if the meeting was going to take place or not.

“The meeting” was an interview I was hoping to have with Ivan Prikhodko, the Mayor of Gorlovka.

Ivan wasn’t just any mayor. He was a man with a target on his head, put there by a vengeful Ukrainian government that could not forgive him for joining with the rebels early on in the Donbas’ struggle for independence. Ivan joined the Ukrainian civil service in 2006, and in 2012, he received a Master’s degree in Organizational Management from the Donetsk State University of Management.

In February 2013 Ivan Prikhodko worked as deputy head of the council for the activities of executive bodies of the council in the Voroshilovsky district of Donetsk. This was the position he held when the Maidan coup transpired in February 2014.

On April 12 Ivan Prikhodko found himself embedded with a group of Donbas citizens who were outraged over the behavior of the new Ukrainian government and, as such, decided to take matters into their own hands by storming the Gorlovka city hall. And when Ukrainian troops began their active repressions against the people of the Donbas, Ivan volunteered for military service and was assigned a leadership position in an artillery unit.

After the formation of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and once the situation on the frontline stabilized after the initiation of the Minsk agreement, Ivan served as a district administrator for the city of Donetsk until July 14, 2016, when he was appointed the the acting Mayor of Gorlovka. Nearly two years later, on June 4, 2018, Ivan was appointed the Mayor of Gorlovka.

He was serving in this capacity when the Special Military Operation began on February 24, 2022.

Early the next day, February 25, Ukrainian forces bombarded Gorlovka with artillery, killing one civilian and wounding five others. The bombardment continued over the course of the next three days, killing four more civilians and wounding 10 others.

Over the course of the next year, Gorlovka was struck by more than 9,000 artillery shells, killing 95 people and injuring another 351.

Gorlovka was but one of many locations throughout the Donetsk People’s Republic that were attacked relentlessly by the Ukrainian military. By early 2026, these attacks had resulted in some 5520 civilians being killed in the DPR since the start of the Special Military Operation, including 159 children. More hat 8630 others had been wounded, including 579 children.

Ivan Prikhodko was not immune to these attacks. On December 22, 2022, Ivan was attending a lunch meeting together with Dmitry Rogozin, the former Russian deputy prime minister and former head of ROSCOSMOS who at the time was heading up a volunteer group fighting on behalf of the DP known as the “Tsar’s Wolves.” Also present was Vitaly Khotsenko, the head of the DPR.

The meeting took place in the restaurant of the Shesh-Besh, in the city of Donetsk. Khotsenko’s bodyguard was killed, and four people injured, including Prikhoko, Rogozin, and Khotsenko.

Rogozhin had been staying at the hotel for more than a week, and was regularly conducting meetings in the restaurant, a stylish place popular among the Donetsk elite. The weapon that was used for the attack was a US-made “Excalibur” 155mm GPS-guided artillery shell fired from a French-made Caesar self-propelled artillery system.

The “Excalibur” shell is used when there is a high value target which needs to be struck with great precision. Using a combination of GPS and intertidal guidance, the “Excalibur” has an accuracy measured in terms of centimeters. All that is required is that someone load the precise coordinates of the target into the nose of the artillery shell using what is known as the Enhanced Portable Inductive Artillery Fuse Setter.

The “Exclaibur” round that struck the Shesh-Besh hotel on December 22, 2022, landed exactly where it was intended to land.

There is no doubt in the minds of those who were attacked that day that they were the intended targets of the artillery strike.

Somebody told the Ukrainians where the three men would be at the precise time the shell struck the target.

Meeting the Mayor of Gorlovka was no simple task. He was—literally—a hunted man.

Although a career civil servant, Ivan Prikhodko carries himself with the confidence of a combat-hardened soldier. This could be attributed to a number of factors, first and foremost being that he was, indeed, at one time a combat-hardened soldier (he displays as a trophy a Ukrainian flag he captured from a Ukrainian brigade he helped defeat during the critical battles around Debaltsevo in 2014-2015.)

But the main reason he carries himself like someone who has been staring death in the face for the past dozen years is because he has, in fact, been staring death in the face for the past dozen years.

Ivan not only fought in battle to help free the people of the DPR from the tyranny of Ukrainian nationalism, but he has served as the chief civil officer of a city which literally served as the front line between the Ukrainian army and the DPR militia.

This makes him one of the highest priority targets of the regime in Kiev that illegally seized power back in February 2014.

Ivan Prikhodko was a witness to their crimes from the very beginning. He is in possession of a memory the Ukrainian war criminals who have stalked him and the citizens of Gorlovka for these past twelve years would like to erase.

A Point of Interest

Two months after the Russian military began its Special Military Operation to liberate the Donbas from Ukrainian occupation, a Ukrainian military delegation arrived at the US Army Garrison, Wiesbaden, Germany, where they were taken to the Tony Bass Auditorium. Recently upgraded in 2020, the auditorium normally played host to a wide variety of military and civilian functions. At the time of the Ukrainian visit, however, it had been converted into a temporary headquarters for a newly formed US military organization known as Task Force Dragon. Named after the mascot of the US Army 18th Airborne Corps (a dragon), and commanded by the Commander of the 18th Airborne Corps, Lieutenant General Christopher Donahue, Task Force Dragon was tasked with overseeing logistical support being provided by the United States to the Ukrainian military. With the arrival of the Ukrainian generals, however, Task Force Dragon saw its mission transform from simple logistical facilitation to a warfighting headquarters that would process intelligence information about Russian troop locations into targets that could be precisely and rapidly struck using precision-guided munitions provided by the United States.

The “Excalibur” artillery shell that struck the Shesh-Besh restaurant on December 22, 2022 was directed to its target by Task Force Dragon.

Coordination between Task Force Dragon and the Ukrainian military about the operational tasking of the “Excalibur”-equipped 155mm artillery systems (M777 towed howitzers) began in May 2022. Task Force Dragon’s intelligence fusion cell, located in the basement of the Tony Bass Auditorium, would review the flow of data being collected by the various US intelligence collection platforms directed at the Russian forces operating against Ukraine, and select targets that fell into the priority categories that had been worked out between Task Force Dragon operators and their Ukrainian counterparts.

Command and control was considered a priority one target.

Once an appropriate target had been selected, then Task Force Dragon would find a Ukrainian “Excalibur”-equipped M777 howitzer capable of reaching the target, and forward the coordinates, via a Ukrainian liaison officer, to the unit involved (in the first few months of the operation this mean that that General Donahue and a few aides would be relaying the target data over a secure phone link to General Sirsky, the Commander of Ukrainian ground forces, and his staff.)

Some officers in the US European Command became nervous about the US providing targets to the Ukrainians, given the reality that in doing so the US was becoming a critical part of the “kill chain” when it came to killing Russian soldiers and their commanders.

In the end, Major General Timothy D. Brown, European Command’s chief of intelligence, determined that the location of Russian forces would be a “point of interest.”

In order to reduce the risk of Russian retaliation NATO, all “points of interest” transmitted to Ukraine had to comply with certain intelligence-sharing rules. First and foremost was the underlying principle that when it came to the use of US weapons and US intelligence, the targets that could be struck could not be on what was considered to be uncontested Russian territory.

If Ukraine wanted to strike “Mother Russia”, it would have to do so using its own weapons and intelligence.

Likewise, Task Force Dragon was not permitted to divulge the location of “senior” Russian military targets, such as armed forces chief General Valery Gerasimov

The success of Task Force Dragon was measured in Russian blood. In one particular battle, involving a Russian attempt to build a pontoon bridge across a river near the northern Donetsk city of Sieverodonetsk, an estimated 400 Russian soldiers were killed by precision “Excalibur” fires directed by Task Force Dragon.

Both the Ukrainian army and their American facilitators wanted more. By May Task Force Dragon was openly advocating for the provision of the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), a light multiple rocket launcher developed in the late 1990s which has seen service with both the US Army and US Marines.

Possessing a greater range than the “Excalibur” artillery shell, and able to deliver more destructive power in greater volumes, many US officers, together with a number of US politicians, including the President of the United States at the time, Joe Biden, viewed HIMARS as representing too big of an escalation, one that might prompt the Russian leadership to significantly escalate the conflict in Ukraine to include attacks against NATO and potential use of nuclear weapons.

But the idea of killing Russians in large numbers was too much temptation, and by June 2022 the decision was made to supply HIMARS to Ukraine.

There were, however, strings attached: the United States, through Task Force Dragon, would control every HIMARS strike. The US would review the targets proposed by Ukraine for attack, and then select both the launcher to be used and the timing of the attack. The US would provide the coordinates, which would be programmed into the launch control system of the HIMARS by Ukrainian soldiers using a special electronic key card which could be deactivated at any time by the Americans through the simple flip of a switch.

Every HIMARS strike was controlled by the United States.

Every single one.

On September 29, 2023, Ukrainian soldiers belonging to the 14th Artillery Brigade fired two HIMARS rockets into central Gorlovka.

The rockets impacted in close proximity to where the Mayor of Gorlovka, Ivan Prikhodko, was working. While the rockets caused significant damage to nearby vehicles and structures, Ivan and those in his party escaped injury.

But there was no doubt in Ivan’s mind that he was the intended target of the strike.

Given the nature of his travels at the time, it is clear that the United States had dedicated specific intelligence resources on identifying, tracking and fixing Ivan’s location, which was then transmitted to a HIMARS launcher dedicated to the task of firing rockets intended to kill the Gorlovka Mayor.

Keep in mind that every HIMARS strike was controlled by the United States.

And in this case, the United States authorized an attempt on the life of a civilian administrator charged with overseeing the day-to-day activities of the city of Gorlovka.

But the United States did not view Ivan as a target per se.

Just a “point of interest.”

How to Become a Russian in one Tragic Lesson

The problem with considering oneself to be Russian back in the summer of 2014 was the reality that one could not turn to Russia for recourse to the law in the case of a horrific crime having been committed by the state against its own citizens.

When Kristina and Kira Zhuk died on the bloodied and torn grass of the park near their home that they so loved to play in, Natalya Zhuk only had one place to turn to: Kiev, and the government of newly-elected President Petro Poroshenko.

“I arrived in Kyiv on August 1 to find those responsible for the murder of my girls,” Natalya recalled. “First of all, I went to the presidential administration, under which stood the mothers of the soldiers. I wanted to talk to them. I brought photos of my girls, I wanted to talk to the mothers, I wanted to say that we have the same mothers in the Donbass, like them, whose sons are going to fight.”

Natalya was denied access, on the grounds that the President was being protected from terrorist attack.

“But why is the President guarded from me, but the President did not save my children?” she asked. “The fact that the President gives orders to kill my children—is this considered normal in our country? Why can’t we just live, raise children, just breathe? People are shot, people are killed, people fill their grief with tears. Some have lost heart after the death of their relatives, they do not know how to act and how to live with it.”

“Many have reconciled,” Natalya observed, before declaring, “I can’t accept.”

Why?

Natalya answers: “Because my children lived in a legal state. Without a declaration of war, some kind of hostilities are going on, and we are being shot. Why are all our rights being violated? Declare war, evacuate the inhabitants and fight. But that doesn’t happen. People are abandoned. Many people think that since we are from the Donbass, since we stayed there, it means that we have some point of view. And no one knows that people just want peace.”

Natalya was looking for answers. “I want to know who was shelling Gorlovka then. I assume that the ATO troops fired, but if this is not the case, let them provide evidence…I want the ATO army to provide evidence that their ‘Grad’ installations did not work on Sunday, July 27 at 14:00 and did not shell our city!”

Natalya took her case to the Ministry of Internal Affairs. She submitted a statement to the Security Services of Ukraine (the SBU), classifying the death of Kristina and Kira “on the fact of a terrorist act.”

“I want them to think about who they are bombing in these cities,” she said. “And what kind of state is this that did not protect my rights and the rights of my children to life? Why such a power, if it does not need people? A state without people? They are killing us! It’s just a shooting.”

Neither the SBU nor the police knew how to handle Natalya’s application. “Even the SBU, when accepting our applications, did not know how to draw them up and how to register them. It was the same in the police—even the higher authorities consulted on how to draw up, because we had no war before and the state had not shot people before. But since the state has taken such liberties as mass murder, let them give an explanation.”

There was no explanation to give.

The violence continued and expanded.

And new weapons were brought to bear against the civilians of Gorlovka.

The Shakhtar Palace of Culture was built in 1951. It was a well known movie theater, frequented by the population of Gorlovka to take in the latest releases. Its spacious halls and rooms were also used by the Gorlovka residents to host concerts and recitals and other cultural events. It played host to the Donetsk philharmonic and, on Saturday nights, would provide space for the children of Gorlovka to take dancing and singing lessons.

On the night of November 12, just before the scheduled time for a ballet class to begin, two HIMARS missiles tore through the roof of the the Shakhtar Palace of Culture. The room where students would have been practicing their ballet moves was destroyed, as was the movie theater.

The Shakhtar Palace of Culture was a purely civilian object, with absolutely zero connectivity to anything affiliated with the military.

On November 12, 2022, it was the policy of the United States to approve every HIMARS target.

This target was nominated by the Ukrainian military.

And it was selected by the US intelligence fusion cell, working in the basement of the Tony Bass Auditorium in Wiesbaden, as a high priority target.

General Christopher Donahue, the commander of Task Force Dragon, signed off on the attack.

Eight years before the HIMARS attack on the Shakhtar Palace of Culture, Natalya Zhuk wrote a letter to President Poroshenko’s wife, Marina.

Dear Mrs Marina!

They killed my kids! They killed my birds, my doves. Ask your husband WHY?

Why, when your children have the opportunity to laugh, learn…my children are deprived of the right to rejoice, to love, the right to breathe, the right to life?

Why? My dear, WHY?

Why are my little birds, my doves, brutally killed, torn to pieces of their bodies, their hearts?

Who gives such orders?!

What animal has no heart, no common sense?! Why is he not afraid of mother’s tears or curses?! Why decides the fate of many people?!

Ask my dear!

Who gives such orders?

General Christopher Donahue, for one.

An American.

What animal has no heart?

Everyone in the Ukrainian chain of command.

In twelve years, nothing has changed. One need only reflect on the words of Petro Poroshenko himself, addressing the citizens of Odessa on November 14, 2014, to drive this point home.

“And we win together by means of peace! Because we have jobs, and they have not. We have pensions, and they have not. We have support of children and pensioners, they have not. Our children would go to kindergartens and schools, theirs would be sitting in cellars. Because they do not know anything how to do! That’s how we are going to win this war. Because wars are won in minds, and not on the combat fields! They do not know this, but I know. And I have your support, I need it very much in order we win this war without perished Ukrainians, without perished inhabitants of Odesa.”

At the Alley of Angels, in Donetsk, I asked the Ombudsman for Children’s Rights of the Donetsk People’s Republic, who had joined me in laying flowers at the monument about what it was like to be attacked by Ukrainian soldiers back in the summer of 2014.

“It was a shock”, she said. “At that time most of the people who lived in Donetsk still considered themselves to be citizens of Ukraine.”

She paused, choking up.

“Once the first rockets hit,” she continued, “and the children lay dead, everyone of us considered ourselves to be Russian.”

The Angels of Gorlovka

All the hopes. And the aspirations collapsed.

At the hour when it is noon for us, suddenly the “hailstones” (Grad missiles)

sank on the roads and peaceful houses.

The heat is suffocating, with the smell of gunpowder.

The moaning of the trees mingled with

the sound of people, sirens wailing, people screaming.

Rustling in the sky, and the breaks

are one after the other.

A poem written by the children of Gorlovka

“I’m saying a prayer,” the child says.

“Do you do this all the time?” a mother asks.

“Yes, every day,” the child responds.

“I want there to be peace.”

Dima Krivosheev was killed in Heroes’ Square on July 27, 2014, just yards away from where Kristina and Kira Zhuk died.

He was scheduled to catch a bus to Odessa within an hour.

Dima was a great sportsman, but on that day he could not outrun death.

He was 16 years old.

Elsewhere in Gorlovka on that same day, Vika Miroshnichenko was killed by a Ukrainian mortar shell.

She was seven years old.

Nadezhda Korczak was making her way home from school. She was at a bus stop when the Grad missiles fell, killing her.

She was 17 years old.

The slaughter continued into the next month.

On August 7, Victoria Beregovaya took shelter in her family’s cottage.

A Ukrainian shell took her life.

She was 14 years old.

Also at the cottage was Nastenka Podlipskaya, and her mother, Lara.

They both perished.

Nastenka was not yet one year old.

The roll call of the dead goes on and on and on and on.

One child, one mother, one father, sister, brother.

Civilians all, killed for the crime of living in Gorlovka.

The world may have forgotten these names, but the children of Gorlovka will never allow themselves to blunder down the path of collective amnesia regarding the crimes that have been inflicted on them by the Ukrainian government.

“The Sunny Circle” is a museum room created by the staff of the Gorlovka Tourism Center. It was inspired by the work and vision of the Children’s Search Team, students from Gorlovka who made it their mission never to forget the memory of those who have fallen.

The museum is dedicated to all who have fallen in the Donbas.

I visited the “Sunny Circle” as my last stop in Gorlovka.

It is not an easy visit to make.

Too often we who have not been directly involved in the tragedies of others are inclined to pay lip service to their loss.

A token bow of the head, some minor gesticulation of the hands, and then off we go, disappearing into the cocoon of our own existence.

But I had made a promise to the victims of Starobelsk, and to the students of Lugansk, and now to the curators of “The Sunny Circle”, that I would not forget their experiences.

But my commitment went beyond a simple memory exercise.

By listening to their stories, I had committed myself to educating others about this horrible reality, this inconvenient truth that lay before us, naked to the world, if we just had the courage to see.

I watched the movie “The Angels of Gorlovka.”

It is not an easy movie to watch.

But it is mandatory viewing if one is serious about comprehending the root cause of the conflict raging between Ukraine and Russia today.

There is a right and wrong.

It is not up to me to set the moral compass of my fellow humans.

But I can make sure that they are oriented to True North when they finally muster the courage and conviction to undertake this most necessary journey of discovery.

This Trail of Tears, of which Gorlovka is a necessary stop.

“I’ll face death and sternly wave my finger,” the girl’s voice sings. “‘Go away! Go away! I want to live!’”

We drove out Gorlovka the same way we drove in—on Highway R150, the Highway of Death.

As we approached Donetsk, there was a sign welcoming us to the northern limits of the city.

The sign had been battered and heavily damaged by Ukrainian shell fire, and was still considered too exposed for any repairs to be made.

I asked if it would be possible to take a photograph of the sign.

“Angor” looked around nervously. We were still in Indian country as far as drones went—we had just passed a burnt out truck, and the destroyed car we passed on the way in was just a few hundred meters down the bypass road that took us around the destroyed bridge.

“Ok,” he sighed. “But be quick!”

We all disembarked from the vehicle, and took the requisite photos.

Even “Angor” posed for a picture.

As we made our way back to our vehicle, a car pulled up on the shoulder of the road, the window rolled down.

“Are you ok?” the driver asked. “Can I give you a ride?”

“No,” “Angor” said. “We just stopped for a picture.”

“You fools!” the man shouted, before driving away.

“To die for a photograph! There are drones around. Leave now!”

He sped off, gravel tumbling out from behind his tires.

We climbed into our car, and “Angor” drove away, sheepishly reminding me to scan for drones.

On the road to Gorlovka, there is never a moment of peace.

This was a harsh lesson, but one we fortunately were able to learn while driving away in safety.

(This article is the fourth in a series I am doing about my recent travels to the Donbas and Zaporozhia. This trip was made possible through the generous donations of readers and supporters. Future visits to Russia intended to capture the reality of that land and its people and bring it back to an American audience are being planned. Please consider donating so this important work can continue.)

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In statements made in June 2025, at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum, and later in July 2025 at a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization held in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Russian President Vladimir Putin laid out the conditions under which Russia would agree to end a conflict with Ukraine which had, at that time, entered its fourth year. Putin explicitly rejected any ceasefire agreement that wasn’t predicated on Ukraine’s “irreversible demilitarization” as a precondition.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the newest buzz phrase making its way around military circles. Some are dismissive of what they view is little more than a gimmick. Others treat AI as if it represented a revolution in military affairs. But the fact is few understand what AI means from the perspective of warfare, and as such are ill-prepared to discuss it in any meaningful fashion.

What is AI? The textbook definition is “the application of computer systems able to perform tasks or produce output normally requiring human intelligence, especially by applying machine learning techniques to large collections of data”—in short, computerized thinking.

Before we get too far carried away here, let’s be clear—computers cannot “think”, nor are they capable of human-like reasoning.

A computer can be programmed, that’s it. And one of the programs a computer can be programmed to run is to modify its own program by adapting patterns detected while processing data in accordance with structured algorithms that then can be cast as “analysis.”

But a computer does not “analyze” anything. It simply subjects a given data set to a series of preprogrammed processes that mimic the structure of analysis without truly being able to discern actual meaning—a prerequisite for true analysis.

Meaning is a uniquely human trait, defined as is thing one intends to convey especially by language.

The key word here is intends, meaning to have in mind a purpose or goal. Purpose means the reason for which something is done or created or for which something exists.

A computer cannot reason (i.e., the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic), and therefore cannot have a purpose, and as such lacks intent, and with it, meaning.

A computer simply does what it is programmed to do.

The major mistake, therefore, when it comes to assessing the role AI plays in determining the nature of warfare today is giving the computer human-like qualities, which leads to an overreliance upon the data produced as part of any AI process.

It is just data that was generated by a program prepared by humans—fallible humans. The output is, logically, not infallible.

It is not the byproduct of any self-aware intelligent processing of data.

Now the proponents of AI will claim that they have mastered certain algorithmic-driven data processing programs in such a way that allows for more data to be assessed using pre-determined structured “logic”, providing potential users with more options on how to interpret the data in a timeframe that is exponentially faster than that which could be achieved using old-school human analytical techniques.

When one looks at the basic principles of decision-making during wartime, John Boyd’s classic “OODA-loop”, comes to mind. Boyd was a US Air Force fighter pilot known for his ability to shoot down (in training) any opposing pilot within 40 seconds of their initial pass. Boyd went on to distill the decision making processes involved in his actions into what he called the OODA Loop.

The popular perception of the OODA Loop is a circular thought process involving four sequential steps: Observe, Orient, Decide, Act, which are then repeated.

The loop begins with the act of Observation—to observe. This involves absorbing information—data—from the environment one is operating in. Many believe this represents a passive act, but it is anything but. To truly observe one must constantly be taking in information from the operating environment, inclusive of that data derived from unfolding (i.e., unprogrammed) circumstances, and one’s interaction with the various processes. It is a uniquely individual proposition—two people can observe the same thing and yet interpret it in completely different ways.

The key to observation is orientation. Boyd viewed observation as the intellectual center of gravity of the OODA loop. Orientation is a decidedly individual trait, considering as it does the shared assumptions of an organization as it relates to innate cognitive tendencies and temperament of the individual, past experiences (organizational and individual), the ability to collect new data based upon the current situation, and the ability to disregard old mental models while constructing new ones.

Orientation determines the quality of everything that follows. Two analysts examining the same data will inevitably reach different conclusions depending on their experience, their assumptions, and how willing they are to update their mental models.

One cannot “teach” a computer how to orient—the computer will simply be programmed based upon the experience of the programmer and the assumptions the programmer builds into the model. The computer becomes a prisoner of this model, unable to disregard it for a new model constructed upon newly observed data sets.

This shortfall manifests itself in the next step of the OODA loop—decide.

Decisions are made based upon hypothesis or plans of action that arise from observation. But John Boyd didn’t view decision-making as a closed loop process. Indeed, in his original diagram of the OODA loop, Boyd drew a line directly from Orient to Act, bypassing Decide entirely. Boyd called this “Implicit Guidance and Control” (IG&C), something that arises when someone possesses deep expertise that permits rapid pattern recognition and the ability to act upon it without conscious deliberation. When someone has deep expertise in a domain, they can recognize a pattern and act on it without conscious deliberation; in short, trained intuition flowing from deep orientation.

You cannot program a computer to behave in this way.

Act is the most basic element of the OODA loop, the process of testing a derived hypothesis against reality. Action will inevitably generate new information which will then be fed back into the observation cycle, and the loop repeats itself.

Someone unfamiliar with the reality of Boyd’s OODA loop theory would program a computer to process the loop as a clean sequence—observe, orient, decide, and act, and then repeat,

But the true OODA loop operates in multiple directions simultaneously, with orientation shaping observation, and action generating new observations, some of which can be acted upon without going through a formal decision-making process. A fully functioning OODA loop operates in a continuous and overlapping manner and is not sequential. It also centers on the act of orientation—the ability to ascertain patterns one’s enemy has not recognized, and then acting in ways that generates confusion by behaving in ways the enemy’s mental model could not predict.

The US Marine Corps incorporated John Boyd’s “Patterns of Conflict” briefing (a 196-slide presentation assembled in 1976) which followed the history of conflict, developing patterns of behavior that translated into modern times. General Al Gray, the Marine Corps Commandant from 1987 through 1991, took Boyd’s briefing and transformed it into operational principles known as Maneuver Warfare, which became official Marine Corps doctrine in 1989. Gray emphasized the principle of commander’s intent, and the ability of subordinated units to act based upon commander’s intent without checking back into the loop for approval. The Marine Corps model of Maneuver Warfare was the ideal weaponization of the IG&C aspect of the OODA Loop, where an organization and its component parts were so finely attuned to each other as to collapse the OODA loop into an observe-act sequence that enabled the Marines to make battlefield decisions in a manner which far outstripped their opponent’s ability to respond.

I was a direct byproduct of the Marine Corps’ embrace of Maneuver Warfare, having been schooled upon it in 1984 when it was first formally introduced into the training cycle of Marine Corps officers.

I firmly believe that a military organization properly indoctrinated into the principles of John Boyd’s OODA loop will outperform an organization which has an over-reliance upon AI-driven data processing.

In short, the process is far more important than the data, since the only data that counts is that produced by the process itself.

Organizations like Palantir like to portray their ability to process massive quantities of data in a timely fashion as representing a radical new development in warfare.

But the reality is that computer-driven data processing cannot replicate the analytical processes associated with observations made by adequately oriented individuals. The AI will provide data summaries derived from algorithms which, because they have been pre-programmed, lack the ability to break mental models and adopt new models obtained from new data sets.

Nor can a computer be programmed to implement the IG&C ‘collapse” of the OODA loop into a simple observe-act sequence.

In modern warfare, an adequate human opponent would be able to exploit AI in a manner which led to the AI-guided party being defeated.

Any party that treated AI as anything more than a data processing tool by using AI to influence military decision making would be setting themselves up for failure when fighting an opponent fully conversant in the intricacies of Boyd’s OODA loop.

The concept of Information superiority is an intellectual trap derived from the notion that AI can collect and process data faster than humans.

There are benefits to being able to process information more rapidly than your opponent, of this there can be no doubt.

By AI doesn’t “process” information in a manner conducive to adequate functioning of the OODA loop. At best, AI summarizes data using algorithms written before the data is captured. The algorithm drives the summaries, not the data itself.

The key to information superiority isn’t the quantity of data being processed, but the adequacy of the quality of the analysis being conducted on the data most relevant to the immediacy of the military decision being made. The most important information to any given task is that derived because of actions taking place at the time of the decision being made.

AI’s ability to collect and summarize massive quantities of data becomes a behavioral characteristic which results in the construct of a discernable pattern which then drives both the orientation and observe aspects of the OODA loop. Data sets can be easily manipulated to achieve a desired result, enabling a competent opponent to confuse the AI into producing predictable outcomes which can lead to defeat.

This applies to information operations and psychological warfare as much as it does to classic military maneuvers.

AI represents the greatest danger to the practitioner of modern warfare. It makes the user intellectually weak, as it encourages mental subordination to an algorithm, and as such a lack of flexibility when it comes to dropping existing mental models in favor of newly developed models. The OODA loop is most effective when wielded by a well-trained human mind capable of discerning patterns based upon adequate orientation to the task at hand. While one might believe that AI would be able to perform a similar function, this simply is not the case.

Words like meaning, intent, purpose, and reason all have meanings that are exclusively linked to the human condition, and not able to be replicated by any computer program or algorithm.

The greatest opportunity afforded by AI, therefore, is the recognition that it cannot replace humans when it comes to decisions regarding the military tasks associated with international peace, military strategy, and global security. The sooner AI is removed from critical decision-making processes, the better.

Current events are replete with examples of the failures associated with an over-reliance upon AI. Israel has paved the way with the integration of AI programs into every aspect of the so-called “kill chain” associated with its genocidal behaviors regarding Gaza and the Palestinian civilians living there. One AI program—Lavender—is used to identify a target for destruction. Another AI program—Gospel—is used to locate the target in question, and a third—Fire Factory—helps pick to specific weapon that would be used to neutralize—kill—the target. But the most disturbing AI program used by Israel is the one called “Where’s Daddy”, which determines when an identified target has returned home, enabling Israel to strike and kill the entire family associated with the target.

The AI-directed “kill chain” used by Israel in Gaza has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.

It has not, however, enabled Israel to defeat Hamas.

Not has a similar kill-chain AI model used in Lebanon enabled Israel to defeat Hezbollah.

The United States uses an AI platform named the Maven Smart System. Officials from Palantir, the company that built and programmed Maven, claim that the system can transmit targeting data to a particular weapons system with a simple click of a mouse button. Retired US Army General Christopher Donahue, who formerly commanded US forces in Europe, has likened Maven to a weapons system. But this definition is problematic, since such a classification brings with it legal requirements associated with oversight, something Palantir and their US military customers are seeking to avoid.

With good reason, too—Palantir’s Maven Smart System is currently being used to direct the military strikes being carried out on Iran by US forces. These strikes have resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iranians—including 168 school children in Minab—due to target misidentification on the part of the Maven system.

One of the reasons the US military performed so abysmally poor during the US-Iran conflict was the inadequacy of the targeting done by Maven. The US exhausted its supply of precision-guided standoff weapons striking thousands of targets nominated by the Maven AI model. Not only did the US strikes fail to reduce Iran’s ability to survive and sustain its military retaliatory capacity, but they also ended up depleting the arsenal of the United States when it came to these specific types of interceptor missiles capable of intercepting incoming Russian missiles.

In short, the US lost its war of choice with Iran, and one of the principal reasons behind this defeat was the absolute inadequacy of Maven as a target generating AI tool.

It should also be noted that General Donahue was relying upon Maven to be a tool capable of overcoming Russia’s anti-missile defenses in the Kaliningrad region.

A failure with Iran is embarrassing.

A failure with Russian over Kaliningrad could prove to be fatal.

In the nuclear age, one simply cannot leave critical decision making in the hands of an AI tool.

Maven was intended to protect American lives.

Its inadequacies have, in fact, place American lives at risk.

The United States also used AI in Afghanistan. Known as “Raven Sentry”, this program used open-source information to predict Taliban attacks with a high degree of reliability.

But Raven Sentry couldn’t forestall the defeat of the United States in Afghanistan.

Ukraine uses AI to target Russian vehicles in the Donbas region.

But this cannot change the fact that the Ukrainians are losing on the battlefield.

The Ukrainians used innovative AI prediction tools to help direct their invasion of Kursk in August 2024, predicting gaps in Russian defenses that could rapidly be exploited.

The Ukrainian invading force was eventually annihilated.

The historical data suggests that when AI is incorporated into classic military planning, it only leads to failure.

It might be time for modern military organizations to get back to the basics—develop the human aspect of war, the individual and collective brain power of their respective soldiers/sailors/airmen/Marines, so that military decision making is optimized along the lines of John Boyd’s OODA loop, at least as it was originally intended to operate. Having troops capable of adequately implementing the IG&C “collapse” of the OODA loop into a simple observe-act dynamic is far more conducive to achieving victory on the battlefield than fielding inadequate AI models.

Such training emphasizes the quality of human thought processes over the quantity of data, thereby neutering the need for AI altogether.

And if this could be done in totality, it truly would represent a revolution in military affairs.

Because in this day and age, rational human thought processes would determine that war is never the solution.

No AI program constructed to support war will ever reach that conclusion.

(This article is a free preview of the kind of analytical articles that will be published monthly as part of the paid subscription content under the “Special for Cool Guys & Gals” section of my Substack page.)

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Back in April of this year, Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Armenia that it won’t be able to be part of both the European Union (EU) and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) a Moscow-led economic alliance. Putin’s warning came three months prior to critical Armenia parliamentary elections being held where the future path of Armenia was on the ballot. In the end, Armenian voters went to the polls on June 7 and gave the incumbent Prime Minister, Nikol Pashinyan, a decisive victory, with his Civil Contract Party pulling in just shy of 50% of the overall vote.

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China has launched its first-ever scheduled weekly container service between China and Europe using the Northeast Passage. The Northeast Passage, which skirts the Russian Arctic coastline, is the shortest shipping route from Europe to Asia. At a length of 7,500 nautical miles (13,900 kilometers), the Northeast Passage is almost twice as fast as the traditional Suez Canal route, which typically takes 40 to 50 days and covers 11,000 nautical miles (20,400 kilometers).

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This was an interview conducted in wartime conditions, and as such is shorter than it would have been under normal circumstances.

The interview is shortened further by the fact that specific security protocols that should have been suspended during the recording were left on for the first few minutes of the interview, making the recording unusable from a broadcast perspective.
Such are the hazards of wartime journalism in the modern age.

What we lost was some discussion about the personal background of the man who has led Lugansk since 2017, and who was part of the Lugansk independence movement from the very beginning, in 2014.

What we got was fascinating insight into the thinking of Lugansk’s leader about what drives the people of Lugansk in their struggle to be independent from Ukraine, the nature of the threat posed to the Russian people collectively by Ukrainian nationalism,and the harsh realities of war.

The interview closes with words of hope regarding the prospects of peace and friendship between Russia and the United States.

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President Donald Trump appears to be positioning himself to find an offramp from the war with Iran by claiming that the US has complete control of the Strait of Hormuz, and that Iran’s nuclear program has been destroyed to the point that recovery is impossible. By embracing this narrative, Trump seeks to resolve the two critical issues that have left him struggling to find a politically acceptable path toward conflict resolution with Iran.

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I have decided to create a new section in my SubStack page where I would publish special analytical reports for paid subscribers only. This section, "Special for Cool Guys & Gals", will consist of two-three short unique analytical articles published weekly that touch upon the critical issues of the day, and a larger substantive report of a more strategic perspective published every month. This is my way of giving back to my paid subscribers, and providing an incentive for those who currently enjoy the access given to free subscribers to change their status. All subscribers can find this new section in the tab section at the top of my SubStack page.

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The German Journalist Michael Martens recently made headlines by asking Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky how Europe can help Ukraine kill more Russians soldiers. I caution Mr. Martens and anyone else in Germany and Europe who thinks such a quest is somehow virtuous and viable—be careful what you ask for.

Michael Martens was born in 1973, in the city of Hamburg, in what was then West Germany. Hamburg was one of the major cities of Nazi Germany, and paid the price for this status in the form of heavy allied bombing, including the infamous firebombing attack that transpired in late July-early August 1943 that killed an estimated 37,000 people. Today Hamburg is Germany’s second largest city, after Berlin. The devastation caused by the firebombing of Hamburg is commemorated in the form of the St. Nikolai Memorial, which serves as a haunting reminder of the destruction caused by the war. Hamburg also has maintained several bomb shelters from that time, likewise as a means of remembering the horrors of war.

Martens today serves as the Balkans correspondent for the German tabloid Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), and it was in this status that he attended a press conference this past Sunday convened for the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to Serbia. There, Martens asked Zelensky the following question: “Can you tell us Europeans what specifically we can do to help you kill more Russians?” Martens then amended his question, noting “More Russian soldiers, of course,” as if the original intent was not clear enough.

Martens’ question invoked justifiable rage amongst people of conscious everywhere. His own editors at FAZ sought to distance themselves from Martens’ question, noting in a statement released following widespread demands for the newspaper to fire Martens that “the question was worded ambiguously, which we regret. It is not the editorial position of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that as many Russian soldiers as possible should be killed.” Instead, the editors at FAZ opined that the real issue was “how the Russian army could be placed under such pressure in terms of manpower that Russia would be compelled to enter peace negotiations.”

Martens himself expressed “surprise” over the public backlash to his question, noting that “Outside Barbieworld, this is how wars are fought,” and adding in an additional commentary of the controversy “Because killing Russian as many Russian soldiers as possible is what is important to end the war.”

Martens is a man possessing zero experience when it comes to the art of war, and the taking of life necessitated by such. The closest brush with anything resembling actual military death is the myth of Josef Schulz, a German soldier serving with the 714th Infantry Division who, according to legend, refused to participate in the execution of 16 partisans on July 20, 1941, in the town of Smederevska Palanka in Yugoslavia. For this act of moral clarity, Schultz was himself sentenced to die by the same firing squad. Martens helped promulgate this myth in his 2011 book In Search of Heroes. The Story of the Soldier Who Didn’t Want to Kill.

The story, however, was a lie; Schultz had been killed in fighting with the partisans the day prior to the execution. The manufacturing of a myth of noble sacrifice in the face of evil that grew around Schultz was promulgated by those who sought to create and sustain the corresponding mythology of the noble German soldier who was not programmed to kill but rather was confronted with the horrible choice of either obeying the horrific orders he was given or face the certainty of death.

The rehabilitative nature of such fiction has become ingrained in the German DNA, if for no other reason that the reality of collective guilt in the crimes of Nazi Germany on the part of those who participated in the war was manifested so clearly that Germany could not build itself back up unless done so in the image of a hero that simply did not exist, and could not have, in any case, existed, given the reality that virtually all of Germany was stained with the sin of the Nazi crimes—especially the Wehrmacht.

Martens himself has had to wrestle with such demons. He himself is the progeny of a grandfather, Hans-Hermann Martens, who was not only a member of the Nazi Party, whom he served as a prosecutor in the pre-war years, but also was an officer of the Wehrmacht Operations Staff during the war, where he served as a military judge who is said to have sentenced German soldiers to death for the crime of desertion. Hans-Hermann went on to serve as a lawyer and politician in post-war West Germany—another Nazi war criminal rehabilitated by a people subjected to voluntarily self-induced amnesia.

This amnesia carried over through successive generations, so much so that Germans like Michael Martens have “forgotten” the role their country played in not only committing mass murder against the Russian people, but also in reviving and sustaining the malignancy of Banderism—the odious western Ukrainian ideology so closely linked to the Nazi roots Germans have whitewashed and forgotten.

Unlike Martens, I know a few things about war and the concept of killing Russians. From 1984 through 1988, I spent nearly every waking moment training in the art of modern military conflict with a singular focus on the Soviet (i.e., Russian) threat. I had steeped myself in Russian history, culture, literature and language at the college level in preparation for this mission, which became all consuming. I was furthered in this regard by the propaganda being promulgated by the US Defense Department, which had begun publishing an annual threat review entitled “Soviet Military Power.” Not only was this publication considered mandatory reading, a select number of Myrmidon such as me were dispatched to the Defense Intelligence College for a week-long immersion program on—you guessed it—Soviet military power. Through lectures, briefings, tours and discussions, we were exposed to the doctrine, strategy, ideology, and actual weapons which, in the aggregate, comprised “Soviet Military Power.”

But these experiences fell into the category of “why we fight”, not “how we fight.” That only came with my assignment to the Fleet Marine Force and, more specifically, to the 5^th Battalion, 11^th Marines, a self-propelled field artillery unit which served as the direct fore support battalion for the 7^th Marine Amphibious Brigade—the Marine component of the Rapid Deployment Force.

When I arrived at the battalion, I was confronted with the fact that Marine Corps doctrine regarding artillery fire support at the time had not meaningfully progressed since the Vietnam War. If my immersion into the concepts that made up “Soviet Military Power” taught me anything, it was that the Soviets enjoyed massive superiority in artillery, meaning that if we sought to engage them in traditional linear fashion, we would lose the resulting war of attrition—decisively.

How does a junior Second Lieutenant, with zero combat experience and virtually zero experience in the nuances of war, convince officers (and enlisted) possessing decades of experience in both that what they are doing not only is wrong, but will get them killed if we were actually square off against the Soviet enemy. The Department of Defense had published an outstanding three-volume series of publications—FM 100-2—on the Soviet Army, its operations, tactics, doctrine, and equipment. These publications were the definitive source of unclassified information on Soviet ground forces and the Soviet model of combined arms warfare.

And yet while they were readily available to all Marines, they were rarely read and even more rarely acted upon.

The US Army had what it called the OPFOR—”opposing forces” organized, trained and equipped to fight as the Soviets did—who operated from the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, just north of where I was stationed in 29 Palms, California. The US Army would rotate brigade-sized formations through the NTC, where they would be put through a series of force-on-force exercises where they would face off against two regiments of OPFOR. The exercises always ended with a massed armored attack by the OPFOR which almost always resulted in a decisive defeat of the US Army forces involved. The entire event was designed to be a giant wake-up call for the units involved—either adapt to confront and defeat the Soviet way of war—or die.

I contacted the OPFOR at Fort Irwin and arranged to have my battalion commander ride along with the OPFOR during their final assault on the US Army positions. The end result was everything I hoped would be—the OPFOR rolled through the Army like a hot knife through butter.

Killing Russians—even simulated ones—wasn’t an easy thing at all.

My battalion commander walked away knowing that if we went to war against the Soviet threat based upon the tactics and operational art we were currently trained to employ, we would be similarly destroyed.

I was given virtual carte blanche to re-do the battalion training plan, incorporating more realistic training which emphasized shooting, moving, and communicating faster—much faster—than our Soviet enemy. We were David fighting Goliath, and we had to remain nimble enough to avoid being caught in the destructive power of the enemy’s fire potential, and yet skilled enough to deliver our own fires at the right place and time so as to weaken the enemy and create opportunities for Marine maneuver units to locate and destroy through firepower and maneuver.

To help with the exercises, I created a battalion-level Tactical Training & Exercise Control Group (TTECG)—basically a war game system—where I was able to develop scenarios using enemy forces that employed doctrinally correct Soviet tactics and operations. Using this TEEGC system, I ran the battalion through the paces, using increasingly complex scenarios designed to stress the importance of maneuver and speed when fighting the Russians.

The TEECG was so successful that I was asked to support the training of other Marine units at 29 Palms, including the infantry and armor battalions.

5/11 was a nuclear-capable battalion and was tasked with being prepared with delivering nuclear artillery fires using its 155mm and 203mm self-propelled guns. This made us a prime target for any Soviet forces we may have gone up against. To better prepare for the reality of fighting the Russians, I created my own OPFOR unit, designed after Soviet special forces, or Spetznaz. When my battalion took to the field, I would insert my Spetznaz unit into their area of operation using helicopters and offroad vehicle infiltration and then hunt them down and kill them. We ambushed the batteries as they moved, we attacked them at night when they set in, and we harassed them throughout the operation. In short, we killed them far more than they killed us.

Killing Russians—even simulated ones—was no simple thing.

When the Marines held a major division-sized exercise in 29 Palms, I was tasked with working with a US Army battalion from the 7^th Light Infantry Division to prepare a Soviet-style defense that the Marines would then attack.

Using Soviet defense tactics and doctrine, this battalion stopped the Marines in their tracks before they even reached the forward defensive positions.

On three separate occasions, the exercise controllers stopped the exercise and brought all the dead Marines back to life so they could restart the scenario. Each time the results were the same: the Marine attack was defeated before it even had a chance to begin.

The attack was supposed to represent the first phase of a three-phase scenario that saw the Marines breakthrough the defense and maneuver to surround the Soviet defenders.

Finally, the commanding general stopped the exercise and assembled his staff and the commanders and staff of the subordinated units, chastising them on their inability to defeat a Soviet-style threat. Everyone was sent back to the drawing board to rethink their approach toward training.

The commanders of the tank and infantry unit that had used the OPFOR TEECG in their training had repeatedly tried to persuade the regimental and division staff that the plans they proposed would not succeed. Each time they were overruled and rode out to their death.

It turned out Russians—even simulated ones—were pretty good at killing Marines.

But the biggest wake up call came during a separate division exercise where we were tasked with opposing a simulated Soviet incursion into Iran. In the end, the superior Soviet forces broke through the blocking positions that had been set up by the Marines, and 5/11 was tasked with firing a nuclear artillery round to halt the Soviet advance. We did so, and then suddenly the exercise came to an end—the Soviets, upon having a nuclear weapon used against them, responded with overwhelming nuclear retaliation, killing everyone.

The Russians—even simulated ones—were better at mass death than we were.

I was fortunate that I never had the opportunity to test my anti-Soviet military acumen in the real world. Instead, I was dispatched to the Soviet Union as part of an arms control team tasked with eliminating the very weapons that had killed us in the Iranian exercise—the SS-20 intermediate range missile.

In the end, learning to live in peace with the Russians proved far more conducive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that training to kill them.

This should have been a universal lesson of the ages, one that would motivate future generations to avoid the pitfalls associated with war—especially war with Russia.

Michael Martens did not heed this lesson, even after four years of conflict between Russia and Ukraine proved the futility of trying to kill Russians on the field of battle.

Lessons the Mongols, Swedes, French and Germans had learned previously.

A lesson the Marines learned in simulated fashion back in the 1980’s.

According to Martens, “There is nothing ‘scandalous’ about the question of how Europe can help Ukraine kill more Russians. That’s exactly what we need.”

Martens has been preparing for this moment for months now, having invested considerable time and effort in drafting an essay titled “Killing Russians: What Europe Must Do.”

Martens’ muse for this project was Sir Fitzroy Hew Royle Maclean, 1st Baronet, whose memoirs, Eastern Approaches, in which he details his time working with Tito’s partisans in Yugoslavia, inspired Martens so—the title of Martens’ essay is drawn from a conversation Winston Churchill had with Maclean notifying him that his job was “simply to find out who was killing the most Germans and suggest means by which we could help them to kill more.”

This is where Martens lost himself in his self-induced blood lust.

The target of Maclean’s mission was German Nazis, and the tool he was seeking to employ consisted of partisans drawn from the ranks of a civilian population that had been terrorized by these same Nazis.

Motivation means everything.

Especially when it comes to the people being asked to do the killing.

Martens would have benefitted from perusing David Grossman’s classic work, On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society, which described the inherent resistance on the part of most soldiers during World War 2 to killing—most soldiers did not fire their weapons, and those that did, often did so without aiming.

Killing a man is no easy thing, a fact Martens—who has never served in the military—would do well to reflect on.

Even when improved training techniques designed to breakthrough the psychological barrier that exists in most humans to taking life succeeds, there is a huge cost that is paid for this “success”—the psychological ruination of a man who has done what no man should ever be asked to do—kill his fellow man.

There is nothing glorious about war, since war in its most basic form is simply about mankind killing itself.

Sometime, however, the cause is such that a society embraces war as the only means of collective survival.

Tito’s Yugoslavian partisans were engaged in such a conflict.

So, too, were the Russians and other nationalities of the Soviet Union.

Their collective enemy were the German Nazis and their allies, who were killed in great numbers.

And each year the Russians of today celebrate their victory of Nazi Germany, not to glorify killing, but to honor the dead.

27 million of them.

Martens would benefit from a course in Russian history of that time.

Or perhaps he could turn to Soviet cinema. I would recommend he watch four movies: Ballad of a Soldier, The Cranes are Flying, Fate of a Man, and Come and See.

Killing is the easy part of war.

Dealing with the consequences of killing is the hard part.

A nation collectively pays this price, and it is a cost that carries over generations.

Killing should never be so glibly embraced, as Martens has done.

But the most damning part of Martens’ ignorance-laced effort to recast himself as some sort of modern-day Fitzroy Maclean is the side Martens has opted to align himself with while glibly espousing the death of others.

The cause of Zelensky’s Ukraine, a literal modern-day manifestation of the German Nazis Maclean was tasked with killing.

The same Nazis the ancestors of the Russian soldiers fighting today sacrificed their lives in defeating.

Martens should ask himself if he truly has what it takes to kill Russians.

Of course, he won’t—cowards never do the actual killing themselves but stand on the sidelines while others engage in this blood sport on their behalf.

The Marines I served with were not cowards—they were prepared to engage the Soviet “threat” in mortal combat, even when empowered with the knowledge that to do so would invite almost certain death.

Martens lacks such moral fiber.

But, more importantly in this regard, so, too, his fellow Europeans.

Let’s take Martens’ own Germany, which is currently leading the way in pounding the drums of war when it comes to Russia.

Skip over the part where the German economy cannot bear the costs associated with building a military machine worthy of a Fourth Reich.

Let’s talk about the mettle of the German men who would be called upon to kill Russians in such a war.

It is a short conversation—there simply isn’t a will to fight.

After embarking on a massive propaganda campaign designed to motivate hundreds of thousands of German men to rally to the cause of the Fourth Reich, German manhood produced only 530 such souls.

There is no will to fight the war Martens and his ilk so gleefully embrace.

And if the German government were so foolhardy as to implement forced conscription, it would collapse in the face of massive public protest.

All of Europe is infected with this lack of desire to serve a cause that no one believes is worth dying for—the European political and economic elite may want to kill Russians, but the populations of the constituent nations of Europe do not.

Which means when erstwhile heroes like Martens speaks of killing Russians, he speaks of Ukrainians doing the killing.

Let me remind Martens of two harsh realities in this regard: every month, tens of thousands of Russian men volunteer to sign contracts with the Russian Ministry of Defense so they can fight in the Special Military Operation, the term used by the Russian government to describe its ongoing conflict with the collective west.

And every month, gangs of Ukrainian “recruiters” forcefully kidnap Ukrainian men by the thousands to serve in the Ukrainian military.

There is no comparison.

Martens’ call for “killing Russians” exposes everything that is wrong about Europe today. This ugly reality has been operating in the open for some time. In 1993 it was given voice by George Soros, who postulated a new US-European “partnership” where “the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the Partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act.”

Let others die for the causes you espouse—this is the mantra of Martens and his ilk.

And what cause does Martens espouse? Here we need only delve back into the Nazi roots of his family tree.

Generalplan Ost was Nazi Germany’s vision for the creation of Germanized Lebensraum carved from captured territory in Eastern Europe involving the large-scale ethnic cleansing of Slavs, including Russians and Ukrainians.

German lawyers like Hans-Hermann Martens, Michael Martens Nazi grandfather, were responsible for envisioning and implementing this plan.

The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, it seems.

Martens pretends to support the Ukrainians, and claims all he wants to do is “kill Russians.”

But the war he supports is, by design, intended to send Ukrainian troops to the slaughterhouse as well.

To transform Ukraine into a Kamikaze nation hell bent on suicide.

By pitting Slav against Slav, Martens and all those erstwhile “friends” of Ukraine have exposed themselves as nothing more than the modern-day versions of the Nazi scourge the world defeated back in 1945.

But the Nazis were never eradicated, as the fate of Martens’ grandfather proves.

Instead, they were rehabilitated and honored, their horrific crimes whitewashed and put in an intellectual limbo until which time the ideology of hatred that facilitated the commission of those crimes took root in a new generation of German Nazis who dream of the fulfilment of their sick fantasies of “Lebensraum” predicated on the extermination of the Slavic people.

One day this war will end, and when it does people like Michael Martens need to be held accountable for the role they played in seeking the modern-day genocide of the Slavic peoples of Europe.

Until then, anyone possessing a moral compass must call out Martens and those like him who advocate “killing Russians.”

Because what they really mean is the genocide of Slavs, and the promotion of a European master race (one only need recall Josep Borrell, the European Union’s former foreign policy chief, who likened Europe to a “garden” and the rest of the world a “jungle”).

“Killing Russians” is a sick metaphor for all that is wrong with Europe and the collective West today—a perverse vision of cultural supremacy that can only exist from the sacrifice of the Slavic people.

Martens and his fellow caste of European (and American) “gardners” should take heed of history, however: beware what you ask for.

History has shown that those who promote the “killing of Russians” quickly find out that not only are Russians hard to kill, but they are also adept at killing those who present an existential threat to their survival as a people and culture.

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