The Snitz Ukraine Report

For the past year I've predicted that Putin will not back off and has effectively won this thing. By that I mean, he's taken the valuable strategic land he wants (the Donbas) which provides a security barrier and more important constitutes the valuable mineral and fossil fuel reserves of Ukraine.

He's not giving that back and can keep the war going indefinitely. Nobody is going to vote him out of office while he continues to hum along selling oil and natural gas to China. He could care less about Russian casualties. Eventually he'll wear NATO down.

Voldemort sees an op to broker a peace agreement that opens Ukraine's mineral assets to purchase by the US (a massive win for Putin and the US). He also understands that the longer this war continues the more likely it is that Putin will gain sufficient ground to install a Russian leaning regime in Kiev. That was the case until the Clinton's help engineer a coup in 2014.

BTW: Once this thing is over, the EU will continue buying fossil fuel from Vlad because it's in their mutual interest. Things we return to normal except for the millions forced to flee their homes or dead in Ukraine. No fun being a pawn in a larger conflict.

Ukraine’s fate

By Adam Pasick, NY Times

Aug 15, 2025

I’m a deputy international editor.

Trump and Putin meet today in Alaska to discuss the future of the Ukraine war. Not present: anyone from Ukraine.

The facts are not in flux. The battle lines have barely shifted over the last few years. The objectives of Russia and Ukraine haven’t changed, either.

And yet anything could happen — because nobody knows what Trump will do. In the last seven months, his positions on the war have swung wildly. He humiliated the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in the Oval Office. Then he questioned Putin’s honesty and threatened to place harsher sanctions on Moscow; he seemed to have changed his tune.

Then last week, Trump abruptly gave the Russian president his long-desired one-on-one meeting — and left Zelensky off the guest list. Ukraine and its European allies fear that Trump will cut a deal with Putin.

What should we expect from today’s meeting? David Sanger, a White House and national security reporter, explains some possibilities:

• A cease-fire. Ukraine and Europe say this must precede negotiations. Putin has resisted.

• Land swaps. Trump and Putin may try to redraw Ukraine’s borders, solidifying some of Russia’s battlefield gains. Ukraine strongly opposes this idea.

• Security guarantees. A deal could include a promise that Western nations will protect Ukraine from future Russian aggression.

• NATO repudiation. The alliance says Ukraine can join eventually. Putin would prefer never, and Trump appears sympathetic to his view.

• A grand bargain. Putin is bringing a business delegation, possibly to talk about access to minerals. He also mentioned a possible replacement for the New START nuclear treaty.

What to know

It’s hard to remember the important milestones on the road to Alaska. Here are some ways to understand the war:

Who’s winning? It’s not quite a stalemate. Russia has captured large tracts of Ukraine — but not nearly as much as Putin wants. After Ukraine decimated Russia’s underequipped forces in 2022, the Russian president re-engineered his country to serve the war. Russia has paid huge sums to recruit new soldiers and invested heavily in Iranian-designed drones. Putin has been willing to sacrifice his own soldiers, incurring about twice as many casualties as Ukraine. This multimedia story by Times journalists in Europe shows how the grinding war of attrition favors Russia.

A map of eastern Ukraine. The territory held by Russia is highlighted, with the smaller areas Russia has gained since Jan. 1 colored in a dark red.

Source: Institute for the Study of War with American Enterprise Institute’s Critical Threats Project (extent of Russia-controlled areas). As of Aug. 13. | By The New York Times

Ukraine can still hurt Russia. It has shown how drone warfare can make up for having less money and fewer soldiers. Consider Operation Spider’s Web, Ukraine’s sneak attack that caused billions of dollars in damage deep inside Russia. The drones it used cost as little as $600 each. Listen to this fascinating episode of “The Daily” about the operation.

The Trump-Putin relationship. Trump seems to hold Russia’s president in high esteem, reflecting his general admiration for strongmen. He’s still annoyed about accusations that Russian interference in 2016 helped him get elected. As Mark Mazzetti, an investigative reporter in Washington, D.C., put it, “Mr. Trump’s anger about what he calls the ‘Russia hoax’ has festered for years, a grievance so deep he now sees Mr. Putin as his ally in victimhood.”

The war that changed war. Thousands of drones have turned the skies over Ukraine (and sometimes Russia) into a lethal laboratory. It has spurred a Darwinian contest to see who can dominate the conflict — and perhaps every conflict thereafter. Read this mind-blowing story by C.J. Chivers, a former Marine who documented the drone arms race.