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Introduction

The modern nation-state is not natural nor permanent. It’s a technological product of the industrial era’s logic of mass warfare, bureaucracy, and centralized taxation. That logic is breaking down. In a world of cyberspace, mobile capital, and digital commerce and geography, brute force lose much of their leverage. You cannot conquer the internet with tanks, nor can a government easily tax a truly digital wallet whose private keys are hidden in someone’s mind. The Information Revolution is a shift in the logic of power as fundamental as gunpowder was to medieval knighthood. Every institution built on yesterday’s logic of violence will either adapt or crumble. This was the original thesis of the 1997 book The Sovereign Individual (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). And in 2026—with the rise of China, the regional military conflicts now underway, and the polarization of politics both within nations and between them—that shift is no longer speculatory. It is existential.

What matters now is what kind of order will emerge from it. The battle is no longer between rival “-isms” competing for control of the same nation-state, but between two fundamentally different civilizational logics: an empowering future that facilitates progress and an authoritarian one that dooms humanity.

A civilization can survive poverty. It can survive corruption. It can survive decadence for a time. What it cannot survive indefinitely is the slow freezing of criticism, the politicization of truth, the administrative management of thought, and the suppression of the independent mind. If centralized authoritarian models become the dominant operating system of the twenty-first century, then the danger is that humanity becomes less capable of discovering what is true, building what is new, and expanding beyond its present limits. In other words, stagnation. And stagnation necessarily leads to extinction.

This manifesto therefore renews the sovereign individual thesis under harsher conditions. The survival argument is simple: decentralization is the only civilizational trajectory that does not end in extinction. The individual mandate follows. Do science. Build technology. Start or fund companies at the frontier—AI, DeFi, fintech, data science, space, neurotechnology, anything that compounds intelligence and autonomy.

For every unit of wealth created, disperse it: into offshore jurisdictions that compete for your presence rather than conscript you, and into cryptographic infrastructure that answers to mathematics rather than to ministers.

Sections I through IV establish the theory. Sections V through VIII show how to live it.

I. Progress Only Happens Where Criticism Is Free and Error Is Correctable

Human progress has a habitat.

Modern science became cumulative, self-correcting, and civilization-transforming within a moral and institutional ecology shaped by the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment: criticism over dogma, experiment over inherited authority, open dispute over enforced orthodoxy, and a growing recognition that no claim is final simply because it is backed by rank or power (Deutsch, 2011). What mattered was a method that can be stated plainly as: reality must answer, error must be corrigible, and no authority may permanently close inquiry.

Decentralization is the political expression of that humility. It begins from the recognition that no ruler, committee, ministry, or expert class knows enough to centrally design the future. Discovery is distributed. Knowledge is local before it is general. Progress emerges through criticism, variation, risk, and recombination, not through administrative command (Deutsch, 1997, 2011).

Where thought is free, error can be exposed. Where error can be exposed, knowledge can compound. Where knowledge compounds, civilization advances.

Where criticism becomes dangerous, speech is narrowed, capital is trapped, and individuals are reduced to manageable units inside a bureaucratic machine, the range of possible futures contracts. Centralization misallocates resources. It narrows the imagination.

II. Every Decisive Breakthrough Has Come From Free Civilizations First

The United States achieved the first controlled fusion experiment in history to produce more fusion energy than the laser energy used to drive it at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s National Ignition Facility in December 2022 (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory 2022).

Europe’s Joint European Torus then set a record of 69 megajoules in its final 2023 deuterium-tritium campaign, announced in 2024 (UK Atomic Energy Authority, 2024).

China has simultaneously pressed forward with its own fusion program. Its Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST)—built on a tokamak architecture first conceptualized by Soviet physicists Andrei Sakharov and Igor Tamm and further refined across Western laboratories—set a world plasma confinement record of 403 seconds in 2023, then broke it again with 1,066 seconds in January 2025 (Chinese Academy of Sciences, 2025). EAST itself is described by its own engineers as a testbed for ITER technologies. China is now constructing the China Fusion Engineering Test Reactor (CFETR), a demonstration-scale plant expected to break ground by the late 2020s, explicitly designed as the next step after ITER, the Western-led international megaproject under construction in France. China’s flagship fusion facility is, by its own characterization, an implementation vehicle for a scientific framework established elsewhere.

Each of China’s fusion milestones is a record in plasma confinement duration—engineering feats of operational endurance within a device architecture invented and theorized outside China. The NIF’s December 2022 result was a foundational physics threshold: the first time in history that a fusion experiment produced more energy than the laser energy used to initiate it. China has not attempted that category of result.

The modern West’s greatest contribution was the creation of environments in which invention could become self-sustaining.

The atomic bomb emerged from the Manhattan Project in the United States, culminating in the Trinity test on July 16, 1945.

The Soviet Union detonated its first atomic bomb in 1949—four years after Trinity. China followed in 1964, nineteen years behind.

The first full-scale thermonuclear device, Ivy Mike, was detonated by the United States on November 1, 1952. Russia followed on August 12, 1953. China on December 28, 1966.

The first practical transistor was invented at Bell Labs in New Jersey in December 1947.

The first programmable general-purpose electronic digital computer, ENIAC, was built in the United States during the Second World War and unveiled in 1946.

The Apple II in 1977 and the IBM PC in 1981—both products of the American free market—first transformed computing from a state and corporate instrument into a mass-market personal tool.

In quantum theory, David Deutsch, working in Britain, published the foundational paper on the universal quantum computer in 1985, establishing the modern theory of quantum computation.

The first cloud-accessible quantum processor was made online in 2016, and the first integrated commercial quantum system was unveiled in 2019, both by IBM in the United States.

China, on the other hand, launched the Micius quantum satellite in 2016 and achieved major quantum-communication and quantum-computational milestones by 2017, 2020, and 2021.

The record is consistent: authoritarian systems can mobilize labor, direct capital, and scale what already works with systematic, disciplined execution—but always within frameworks that open scientific civilization originated. As we can observe, “China is copying at terrifying speed everything the free world originates.” That strength is real. But it is downstream. What such systems cannot reliably reproduce is the civilizational ecology—tolerant of eccentricity, dissent, and unplanned combinations of ideas—from which those originals emerged. The decisive breakthroughs—first fission, first thermonuclear device, the transistor, the personal computer, net-energy fusion ignition—emerged first in civilizations that made criticism productive rather than obedient.

That inheritance can be lost. A civilization can live for a long time on imitation. But if every civilization becomes too centralized to permit genuine criticism, eventually there is nothing left to copy. When that happens, decline is inevitable, and eventually leads to extinction—as all resources available to the static world are exhausted.

III. The Free Market Is the Only System That Actually Discovers Solutions

Socialism mistakes compassion for intelligence and assumes that visible suffering is evidence that command must be superior to emergence.

The free market is superior because it is a discovery process. Prices encode information about supply and demand that no planner can fully aggregate. Profit and loss expose reality faster than administrative committees. Hayek’s Knowledge Problem overwhelms any centralized economic system: all actual knowledge is on the edges, in the hands of the people closest to the transaction. Decentralization harnesses that complexity; centralization will starve you to death.

Markets lift people out of poverty—by far the most effective mechanism in history for doing so. Even under totalitarian regimes, an incremental relaxation of state control over production and trade produces rapidly rising incomes.

William Nordhaus showed that innovators capture roughly two percent of the economic value created by their technology—the other ninety-eight percent flows to society as surplus. Technological innovation in a market system is inherently philanthropic. A static morality says: solve the suffering directly in front of you. A civilizational morality says: build the engines that make fewer people poor, sick, and trapped across generations.

Nassim Taleb’s framework reaches the same conclusion from a different direction. Decentralized systems grow on volatility, error, and disorder—they are antifragile. Centralized systems suppress volatility, accumulate hidden fragility, and eventually shatter. A market economy processes errors continuously through profit and loss, killing bad ideas cheaply and at small scale. A planned economy suppresses error signals until failures compound invisibly and collapse catastrophically. The Soviet collapse was a fragility event—the accumulated cost of suppressed error, finally clearing (Taleb, 2012). That is what a decentralized system does: it processes failure continuously and cheaply, so collapse never has to be total. The free market is that system.

IV. Humanity Is Doomed on One Planet—and a Multiplanetary Civilization Cannot Be Centrally Governed

Fact: Humanity is doomed unless it becomes multiplanetary.

Solve every resource problem. End every war. Cure every disease. Feed every child. The sun still expands into a red giant in roughly five billion years, incinerating the Earth and everything on it. No redistribution policy, no sustainability framework, no amount of earthly justice changes that sentence. The only exit from it is leaving. As Deutsch observed, our history, science, art, philosophy, and moral values are, from the cosmos’s vantage point, “tiny side effects of a supernova explosion a few billion years ago, which could be extinguished tomorrow by another such explosion”—unless intelligence spreads far enough to prevent it (Deutsch, 2011). Stephen Hawking stated the nearer-term version with characteristic bluntness: humanity has “no future if it doesn’t go into space” (Hawking, 2014, 2016).

The objection—how can anyone spend capital becoming multiplanetary when we have the poor still here in front of us—is a false dilemma. Injustice always exists. The decel doomers who make this argument often also believe humans on Earth will probably go extinct within a thousand years anyway—through war, environmental collapse, or some other catastrophe. There is no substantial difference between extinction in a thousand years and five billion due to the sun’s expansion. Either way, we have to deal with it. We need to be on our way to escape velocity.

Another fact: Space civilization is necessarily decentralized. NASA analyses show one-way communications delays to Mars can reach roughly 21 to 23 minutes, with further disruption and blackout periods (McBrayer et al., 2022; NASA, 2024a). That already makes management harder. The principle becomes far more severe as humanity moves outward.

Alpha Centauri is 4.3 light-years away—a round-trip exchange takes 8.6 years (NASA, 2018). Kepler-452b is 1,400 light-years away—a round-trip takes 2,800 years (NASA, 2015, 2025). Andromeda is 2.5 million light-years away—communication crosses out of politics and into geological time (NASA, 2024b).

A civilization spread across stars cannot be governed like one compressed onto a single planet. Delayed feedback, local scarcity, environmental hostility, and divergent adaptation all destroy the fantasy of centralized control. Multiplanetary humanity decentralizes by physics as astronomical distance enforces autonomy.

V. Accumulating and Dispersing Wealth Away From Predatory States Is a Moral Imperative

Wealth is stored optionality—the capacity to migrate, fund research, defend speech, exit failing systems, and act without pleading for permission. Davidson and Rees-Mogg predicted that individuals would “achieve increasing autonomy over territorial nationstates through market mechanisms” (1997). Mobile capital is the mechanism.

Davidson and Rees-Mogg warned in 1997 that as wealth became more mobile, states would turn against their most productive citizens with increasing desperation: “like an angry farmer, the state will no doubt take desperate measures at first to tether and hobble its escaping herd. It will employ covert and even violent means to restrict access to liberating technologies” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). We are living that future right now.

In November 2020, the Chinese Government cancelled the Ant Group IPO overnight—what would have been the world’s largest, at a $37 billion valuation—after founder Jack Ma gave a speech mildly critical of financial regulators. Beijing’s regulatory crackdown that followed wiped more than a combined $1 trillion from China’s biggest tech companies. Alibaba was fined $2.8 billion; Didi, valued at $70 billion at its U.S. IPO, was forced to delist; the entrepreneurial business model that had driven China’s tech boom was, in the assessment of analysts, permanently extinguished. Ma himself disappeared from public view for months. The message was unambiguous: private wealth that grows too autonomous will be brought to heel. The state does not negotiate with capital it can still reach.

This is the coercive nature of the centralized nation-state in its full honesty. The accumulated capacity to relocate, fund research, exit failing institutions, and act without permission is precisely what Beijing’s model cannot tolerate.

We believe David Deutsch when he said that wealth is the set of all physical transformations that you are capable of bringing about. Accumulating that wealth and dispersing it into offshore jurisdictions and cryptographic cyberspace is therefore morally just. Every dollar removed from the reach of predatory institutions is a dollar withdrawn from the machine that kills the only process by which genuine knowledge grows. Left unchecked, it forecloses that growth. To starve that institution of capital is to fight for the survival of the species. Cryptographic infrastructure is the most powerful tool in this fight to date.

VI. Cryptography Is the Technical Instrument of Individual Sovereignty

Davidson and Rees-Mogg predicted in 1997 that cybermoney would become “the new money of the Information Age, replacing the paper money of Industrialism”—and that it would “substantially free you from the power of the state” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). The mechanism they described was Hayek’s: competitive private currencies, freed from legal-tender requirements, would force issuers to preserve value or lose customers—eradicating inflation by market discipline alone. Physical offshore jurisdictions had long allowed the wealthy to escape predatory taxation. Cybermoney would complete what geography had only partially achieved: an economy with no territorial jurisdiction, where “cyberspace is the ultimate offshore jurisdiction” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). The cows, as they put it, would have wings.

Bitcoin is that prediction realized.

Cryptocurrency altered a balance that had held for all of recorded history: for the first time, individuals could store value, communicate, and coordinate across borders in systems that do not require the permission of any institution to operate.

In the foreword to the 2020 reprint of The Sovereign Individual, Peter Thiel described the technology conflict of the Information Age as running on two poles: “Artificial Intelligence holds out the prospect of finally solving what economists call the ‘calculation problem’—AI could theoretically make it possible to centrally control an entire economy. It is no coincidence that AI is the favorite technology of the Communist Party of China. Strong cryptography, at the other pole, holds out the prospect of a decentralized and individualized world. If AI is communist, crypto is libertarian” (Thiel, 2020).

The reason Satoshi Nakamoto, the founder of Bitcoin, kept his identity unknown is integral to Bitcoin’s history: had the creator been identified, “our too powerful central government would probably do some very unpleasant things to that person” (Thiel). Bitcoin’s founding anonymity was a design principle. An act of decentralized, individual liberty from the start.

Bitcoin’s implementation has been far from clean. Short-sighted cash-grabbers have hijacked the category and turned swaths of it into speculation and outright fraud. Governments and major institutions have moved to integrate cryptocurrency into regulated platforms rather than displace them—BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust accumulated over $91 billion in assets under management by 2025, making the world’s largest asset manager the second-largest known holder of Bitcoin, its ETF structure reintroducing the very centralized custody and intermediary dependence the protocol was designed to eliminate (Bitget Academy, 2025; TRM Labs, 2026). The subcultures that formed around crypto are often ideologically shallow, speculative, and corrosive to its founding purpose.

None of this refutes the underlying architecture. The potential of sovereign cybermoney remains infinitely worth pursuing because no better instrument for individual financial autonomy and exit optionality has been invented. The protocol itself is structurally resistant in ways its capture by institutions cannot undo. A Bitcoin transaction is a signed string of text. It can be transmitted by email, by radio, by any communications medium that exists. It does not require a Bitcoin node inside any particular jurisdiction. As one technical analysis put it: “a protocol cannot be blocked. Ports can be blocked but software quickly learns how to port-hop—see torrents for example. Impossible without shutting down all internet communications. If there’s a communications medium, there’s nothing stopping bitcoin blocks and transactions from being transferred over it” (Stack Exchange, n.d.). Gavin Andresen, one of Bitcoin’s earliest core developers, demonstrated the point at the MIT Bitcoin Expo by blinking a transaction in morse code. China cannot block Bitcoin. No government can. It can be built better, made to serve its true purpose more faithfully, and freed from the institutions that have tried to domesticate it. That is the work.

VII. Decentralization Is Not Inevitable—It Must Be Actively Fought For

Davidson and Rees-Mogg wrote in 1997 as if decentralization were a tide—inevitable, irresistible, beyond the capacity of any state to reverse. They were only partially correct. The Chinese Communist Party read the same trends and built a counter-architecture: a digital panopticon that captured the Information Age’s tools and turned them toward total surveillance and nationalist control. Populist movements across the democratic world are closing jurisdictional exits, weaponizing tax law, and criminalizing the financial privacy that sovereign individuals require. The technology arc bends toward decentralization. It can be bent back.

This is the existential update to the 1997 thesis. The sovereign individual is the force that determines which direction history moves. Centralization wins through atmosphere: caution, exhaustion, guilt, and managed decline. That outcome must be actively refused.

VIII. What You Must Do

Depending on your circumstances, each of the following points may or may not apply to you. The more you can check, the better.

Obtain additional passports. Reside primarily in a country other than the one from which you hold your first passport. Keep the bulk of your money in a third jurisdiction—preferably a tax haven. Never leave your money in any jurisdiction that claims the right to conscript you or your descendants (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997).

Travel widely. Select alternative residences in attractive locales where you will have right of entry in an emergency.

Domicile your businesses offshore where possible. Structure corporations as virtual entities—“bundles of contracting relations without any material reality” held through offshore trusts—to minimize political surface area (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997).

Hold sovereign assets. A meaningful share of wealth in Bitcoin or equivalent seizure-resistant, inflation-proof, borderless instruments—not as speculation, as infrastructure. Cybermoney is the offshore tax haven that fits in your mind. Aggressive governments will attempt to bar effective encryption and fail—just as the medieval Church failed to ban printing, the technology will retreat to wherever authority is weakest and resurface more subversively (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997).

Avoid debt. Pursue savings with urgency. Structure compensation flexibly. “Debt should be avoided; savings and cost reductions should be pursued with greater urgency” as entitlement programs collapse and deflation accompanies the reordering of power (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). The sovereign individual does not depend on the system he is routing around.

Get equity. Invest in, co-found, or build companies, as salary is becoming less stable and trustworthy. “Jobs will increasingly become tasks or piece work rather than positions within an organization” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). Hold equity, not just a role.

Play long-term, iterated games with long-term people. All returns in life—wealth, relationships, reputation—come from compound interest. Trust compounds. Knowledge compounds. The growing danger of crime and fraud, Davidson and Rees-Mogg observed, “will make morality and honor among associates more crucial and highly valued” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). Pick people with high intelligence, high energy, and high integrity. Build relationships you can keep for decades.

Guard your mind. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto names the disposition required: “free thought, free speech, and free inquiry” and “an absolute rejection of resentment” (Manifesto, n.d./uploaded text). Do not let institutional credentialism or the political management of information corrupt unimpaired reasoning. “Thinking about the end of the current system is taboo,” Davidson and Rees-Mogg wrote—“you must transcend conventional thinking and conventional information sources” (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997). Ideas are the primary form of wealth in the Information Age.

Get out early. Those who recognize systemic collapse and reposition before the nationalist reaction hardens are consistently better placed than those who wait for social consensus. The window for frictionless departure narrows as the crisis deepens. “The dangers of a nationalist reaction to the crisis of the nationstate make it important not to underestimate the scope for tyranny,” Davidson and Rees-Mogg warned (Davidson & Rees-Mogg, 1997).

Refuse the moral vocabulary of stagnation. Wealth creation is not extraction. Jurisdictional optimization is not evasion. Ambition is not greed. Privacy is not criminality. Building technology is not exploitation. These framings exist to keep productive individuals legible, taxable, and stationary. The Techno-Optimist Manifesto identifies the source: a “mass demoralization campaign” run under names like sustainability, de-growth, stakeholder capitalism, and the precautionary principle (Manifesto, n.d./uploaded text). Reject every version of it.

Build foundational leverage. Skills that apply leverage to any domain: logic, computers, arithmetics, probability, statistics, and microeconomics—the tools that allow you to reason about systems, incentives, and price signals rather than just memorize facts. Add persuasion and communication, because selling—in the broadest sense of conveying ideas—is the other half of building. These are the foundations. Everything else compounds on top of them.

Build, or invest in, the technologies that widen human agency. AI systems that decentralize intelligence rather than concentrate it. DeFi protocols that remove institutional gatekeepers from finance. Cryptographic infrastructure that makes individual sovereignty technically enforceable. Fintech that routes around the rent-extracting intermediaries of the old banking stack. Every product that empowers the individual at the expense of the administrative machine is a contribution to the civilizational project this manifesto describes.

Build, or invest in, the technologies that extend human reach. Nuclear fusion—the only energy source capable of powering both a post-scarcity Earth and an interplanetary civilization. Neurotechnology that expands cognitive capacity and ultimately may permit the transport of mind beyond the biological substrate. Hibernation and long-duration life support systems that make deep space survivable. Cheaper launch, reusable propulsion, orbital manufacturing. These are the literal instruments of the transition from a single-planet species to a multiplanetary one. Andreessen’s challenge stands: “our forefathers built roads and trains, farms and factories, then the computer, the microchip, the smartphone”—the only way to honor that legacy is to build the next layer (Andreessen, 2020).

Every one of these imperatives serves the same end. The sovereign individual who holds seizure-resistant assets, operates transnationally, invests in the companies that widen human agency, and builds the frontier technologies is tending the decentralized ecology—of open inquiry, corrigible error, unimpeded conjecture, and free exchange—that David Deutsch identifies as the only habitat in which genuine progress has ever occurred. He is starving the institutions that would freeze that ecology. He is planting the seeds of a civilization capable of reaching the stars, rather than one that kills growth and shall live out its days in stagnation.

The stakes are high. It’s time to act.

One week ago, when fears that the Strait of Hormuz blockade would mean a permanent collapse in oil supply (we have since seen that Iran is allowing “friendly” ships to cross the strait, especially if they grease the toll-keeper with $2 million per crossing) hit a fever pitch and pushed the price of Brent to $120, we said that “Saudi Arabia Has Already Revived More Than Half Its Oil Exports Via Hormuz Bypass.”  

With Iran blocking Saudi ships from cross Hormuz for the time being, the Kingdom had drastically ramped up its oil exports to more than half of normal levels despite the disruptions from the Iran war, a successful sign for the kingdom’s ambitious contingency plan to bypass the Strait of Hormuz. To do this, Saudi Arabia has ramped up crude shipments from Yanbu export terminals on the Red Sea coast as it diverted supplies away from the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz via the East-West pipeline.

Saudi Arabia, along with the UAE, is one of only two countries in the region that can divert significant amounts of oil to bypass Hormuz, providing a crucial lifeline for supply. And since the start of the war, the Saudis had been rerouting oil through the 1,200 kilometer (746 mile) East-West pipeline to the western port of Yanbu. At the same time, it’s quickly amassed a huge armada of tankers that have streamed toward the Red Sea to load the oil and are now piling up around the port. 

Fast forward to today when Bloomberg reported that Riyadh now aims to boost export shipments from its Red Sea ports to 5 million barrels a day, a target within reach. The East-West pipeline, linking the Abqaiq processing hub to Yanbu, has a nominal capacity of 7 million barrels a day. But 2 million of those are required to supply refineries in Riyadh and on the Red Sea coast at Yanbu and Jizan, near the Yemen border, as well as power generation and desalination plants.

Crude shipments for export from the Yanbu South and Yanbu North terminals averaged 4.4 million barrels a day in the five days to Tuesday, according to vessel tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. Flows through Yanbu have been rising steadily after the kingdom moved quickly to pump crude through the 746-mile conduit to the Red Sea.

Remarkably, the kingdom’s rerouting efforts have seen it double crude exports from Yanbu in just over two weeks. Even so, the diversions will only be enough to offset about half the lost Persian Gulf shipments this month. Even at target levels, Yanbu exports would still leave Saudi Arabia’s crude exports roughly 2 million barrels per day below pre-war levels, which however is a far cry from some of the worst case scenarios contemplated just days ago. 

According to Bloomberg calculations, there are about 56 million barrels of Saudi crude held on tankers that are stuck in the Gulf. Those cargoes loaded in late February and early March, but have been unable to transit the Strait of Hormuz to the open seas.

At least 40 oil tankers, most of them very large and capable of hauling about 2 million barrels of crude each, are now anchored near Yanbu waiting to take on cargoes, the tracking data show. 

Additionally, several ships stopped transmitting automated position signals in the Arabian Sea while en route to the Saudi port and may not reappear on tracking systems until they are well clear of the region. This could result in upward revisions to export figures.

Tankers that have loaded since the diversions began have mostly headed to Asia, with shipments to China and India dominating the flow. Cargoes are also bound for South Korea, Pakistan and Thailand. Customers in Japan have been supplied from storage tanks on the island of Okinawa, where the Saudi national oil company Aramco leases storage tanks that can hold 8.2 million barrels of crude.

In the early days of the conflict, shipments from Yanbu mostly went north to the Sumed pipeline that crosses Egypt to bypass the Suez Canal. Saudi Arabia typically loads crude for its customers in Europe and along the east coast of North America from a terminal at Sidi Kerir on Egypt’s Mediterranean coast.

There is perhaps nothing more revealing about the desperate state of Hollywood than its obsession with digging up old franchises in a futile race to capitalize on audeince nostalgia.  In fact, it has been widely understood in the film industry for the past decade that almost no project will be greenlit unless it is a reboot, remake or “re-imagining” of a previously popular story property.

The problem, which everyone except Hollywood executives understands, is that you cannot recapture the magic of older hit movies, especially when your stable of writing talent is populated by an army of left-wing, pill popping ideological lunatics with no moral standards to speak of.  These kinds of people are simply incapable of relating to the common moviegoer.

This dynamic has led Hollywood down a path of financial destruction, with dozens of big budget films bombing at the box office in the past year alone.  Some projects have lost hundreds of millions of dollars and the smell of napalm is heavy in the air. 

One disastrous reboot attempt that set Hollywood on the path of total defeat is Amazon’s ludicrous Lord Of The Rings project, “The Rings Of Power”.  A non-canonical adaptation of limited parts of The Silmarillion, the show turns Galadriel, the personification of the pure feminine, into a spitting, angry feminist girl-boss that slaughters orcs by the barrel.  The show’s writing was saturated with sad approximations of Tolkien-style dialogue written by people with no life experience or wisdom.   

Tolkien was a historical linguistics professor who fought in some of the bloodiest battles of WWI.  His insight into mythology and the human condition was deep and compelling.  The idea that anyone in current-day Hollywood could hold a candle to him is absurd. 

The series was meant to exploit the pre-existing fanbase of the Peter Jackson trilogy.  Amazon execs bragged that the franchise was a sure thing, suggesting that the fans were a “captive audience” that would rush consume whatever drivel Amazon produced.

It was also clearly designed with the illusory left-wing “modern audience” in mind, and of course, that audience never showed up to watch.  Rings of Power is now considered a critical failure and a huge money-loser for Amazon.  But, one celebrity who jumped on the Amazon bandwagon early in the game was leftist propagandist Stephen Colbert, a self proclaimed Lord of the Rings “superfan”. 

Colbert was a primary promoter for the Rings Of Power series launch and at no point did he ever question the validity of the story or its major deviations from the spirit of the source material.  What better person to co-write the next installment of the Lord Of The Rings film series? 

New Line has recruited an aging Peter Jackson to helm a series of film spinoffs, but it’s hard to say yet how much freedom his team will have in the production.  The idea to include Colbert could very well bury the effort before it begins.

The announcement is bizarre, given The Colbert Show’s collapsing audience numbers and his dwindling popularity.  He is a largely hated figure in the world of entertainment and in politics.  But, the decision does make perfect sense if you consider the possibility that Hollywood’s only goal at this point is to destroy every single beloved franchise of the past and give a big middle finger to fans. 

The Amazon series proved that LOTR audiences could not be suckered or controlled, so, instead, it appears the industry is bent on petty revenge instead.  The tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set to be written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee.  Colbert revealed that the film will be based on “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring  

The notion that a woke pariah and Big Pharma shill with no moral compass could ever write an adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, a story based on the honor and inherent goodness in the hearts of men, is rather insulting.  But, maybe that’s the point.     

There is perhaps nothing more revealing about the desperate state of Hollywood than its obsession with digging up old franchises in a futile race to capitalize on audeince nostalgia.  In fact, it has been widely understood in the film industry for the past decade that almost no project will be greenlit unless it is a reboot, remake or “re-imagining” of a previously popular story property.

The problem, which everyone except Hollywood executives understands, is that you cannot recapture the magic of older hit movies, especially when your stable of writing talent is populated by an army of left-wing, pill popping ideological lunatics with no moral standards to speak of.  These kinds of people are simply incapable of relating to the common moviegoer.

This dynamic has led Hollywood down a path of financial destruction, with dozens of big budget films bombing at the box office in the past year alone.  Some projects have lost hundreds of millions of dollars and the smell of napalm is heavy in the air. 

One disastrous reboot attempt that set Hollywood on the path of total defeat is Amazon’s ludicrous Lord Of The Rings project, “The Rings Of Power”.  A non-canonical adaptation of limited parts of The Silmarillion, the show turns Galadriel, the personification of the pure feminine, into a spitting, angry feminist girl-boss that slaughters orcs by the barrel.  The show’s writing was saturated with sad approximations of Tolkien-style dialogue written by people with no life experience or wisdom.   

Tolkien was a historical linguistics professor who fought in some of the bloodiest battles of WWI.  His insight into mythology and the human condition was deep and compelling.  The idea that anyone in current-day Hollywood could hold a candle to him is absurd. 

The series was meant to exploit the pre-existing fanbase of the Peter Jackson trilogy.  Amazon execs bragged that the franchise was a sure thing, suggesting that the fans were a “captive audience” that would rush consume whatever drivel Amazon produced.

It was also clearly designed with the illusory left-wing “modern audience” in mind, and of course, that audience never showed up to watch.  Rings of Power is now considered a critical failure and a huge money-loser for Amazon.  But, one celebrity who jumped on the Amazon bandwagon early in the game was leftist propagandist Stephen Colbert, a self proclaimed Lord of the Rings “superfan”. 

Colbert was a primary promoter for the Rings Of Power series launch and at no point did he ever question the validity of the story or its major deviations from the spirit of the source material.  What better person to co-write the next installment of the Lord Of The Rings film series? 

New Line has recruited an aging Peter Jackson to helm a series of film spinoffs, but it’s hard to say yet how much freedom his team will have in the production.  The idea to include Colbert could very well bury the effort before it begins.

The announcement is bizarre, given The Colbert Show’s collapsing audience numbers and his dwindling popularity.  He is a largely hated figure in the world of entertainment and in politics.  But, the decision does make perfect sense if you consider the possibility that Hollywood’s only goal at this point is to destroy every single beloved franchise of the past and give a big middle finger to fans. 

The Amazon series proved that LOTR audiences could not be suckered or controlled, so, instead, it appears the industry is bent on petty revenge instead.  The tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set to be written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee.  Colbert revealed that the film will be based on “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring  

The notion that a woke pariah and Big Pharma shill with no moral compass could ever write an adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, a story based on the honor and inherent goodness in the hearts of men, is rather insulting.  But, maybe that’s the point.     

There is perhaps nothing more revealing about the desperate state of Hollywood than its obsession with digging up old franchises in a futile race to capitalize on audeince nostalgia.  In fact, it has been widely understood in the film industry for the past decade that almost no project will be greenlit unless it is a reboot, remake or “re-imagining” of a previously popular story property.

The problem, which everyone except Hollywood executives understands, is that you cannot recapture the magic of older hit movies, especially when your stable of writing talent is populated by an army of left-wing, pill popping ideological lunatics with no moral standards to speak of.  These kinds of people are simply incapable of relating to the common moviegoer.

This dynamic has led Hollywood down a path of financial destruction, with dozens of big budget films bombing at the box office in the past year alone.  Some projects have lost hundreds of millions of dollars and the smell of napalm is heavy in the air. 

One disastrous reboot attempt that set Hollywood on the path of total defeat is Amazon’s ludicrous Lord Of The Rings project, “The Rings Of Power”.  A non-canonical adaptation of limited parts of The Silmarillion, the show turns Galadriel, the personification of the pure feminine, into a spitting, angry feminist girl-boss that slaughters orcs by the barrel.  The show’s writing was saturated with sad approximations of Tolkien-style dialogue written by people with no life experience or wisdom.   

Tolkien was a historical linguistics professor who fought in some of the bloodiest battles of WWI.  His insight into mythology and the human condition was deep and compelling.  The idea that anyone in current-day Hollywood could hold a candle to him is absurd. 

The series was meant to exploit the pre-existing fanbase of the Peter Jackson trilogy.  Amazon execs bragged that the franchise was a sure thing, suggesting that the fans were a “captive audience” that would rush consume whatever drivel Amazon produced.

It was also clearly designed with the illusory left-wing “modern audience” in mind, and of course, that audience never showed up to watch.  Rings of Power is now considered a critical failure and a huge money-loser for Amazon.  But, one celebrity who jumped on the Amazon bandwagon early in the game was leftist propagandist Stephen Colbert, a self proclaimed Lord of the Rings “superfan”. 

Colbert was a primary promoter for the Rings Of Power series launch and at no point did he ever question the validity of the story or its major deviations from the spirit of the source material.  What better person to co-write the next installment of the Lord Of The Rings film series? 

New Line has recruited an aging Peter Jackson to helm a series of film spinoffs, but it’s hard to say yet how much freedom his team will have in the production.  The idea to include Colbert could very well bury the effort before it begins.

The announcement is bizarre, given The Colbert Show’s collapsing audience numbers and his dwindling popularity.  He is a largely hated figure in the world of entertainment and in politics.  But, the decision does make perfect sense if you consider the possibility that Hollywood’s only goal at this point is to destroy every single beloved franchise of the past and give a big middle finger to fans. 

The Amazon series proved that LOTR audiences could not be suckered or controlled, so, instead, it appears the industry is bent on petty revenge instead.  The tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set to be written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee.  Colbert revealed that the film will be based on “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring  

The notion that a woke pariah and Big Pharma shill with no moral compass could ever write an adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, a story based on the honor and inherent goodness in the hearts of men, is rather insulting.  But, maybe that’s the point.     

There is perhaps nothing more revealing about the desperate state of Hollywood than its obsession with digging up old franchises in a futile race to capitalize on audeince nostalgia.  In fact, it has been widely understood in the film industry for the past decade that almost no project will be greenlit unless it is a reboot, remake or “re-imagining” of a previously popular story property.

The problem, which everyone except Hollywood executives understands, is that you cannot recapture the magic of older hit movies, especially when your stable of writing talent is populated by an army of left-wing, pill popping ideological lunatics with no moral standards to speak of.  These kinds of people are simply incapable of relating to the common moviegoer.

This dynamic has led Hollywood down a path of financial destruction, with dozens of big budget films bombing at the box office in the past year alone.  Some projects have lost hundreds of millions of dollars and the smell of napalm is heavy in the air. 

One disastrous reboot attempt that set Hollywood on the path of total defeat is Amazon’s ludicrous Lord Of The Rings project, “The Rings Of Power”.  A non-canonical adaptation of limited parts of The Silmarillion, the show turns Galadriel, the personification of the pure feminine, into a spitting, angry feminist girl-boss that slaughters orcs by the barrel.  The show’s writing was saturated with sad approximations of Tolkien-style dialogue written by people with no life experience or wisdom.   

Tolkien was a historical linguistics professor who fought in some of the bloodiest battles of WWI.  His insight into mythology and the human condition was deep and compelling.  The idea that anyone in current-day Hollywood could hold a candle to him is absurd. 

The series was meant to exploit the pre-existing fanbase of the Peter Jackson trilogy.  Amazon execs bragged that the franchise was a sure thing, suggesting that the fans were a “captive audience” that would rush consume whatever drivel Amazon produced.

It was also clearly designed with the illusory left-wing “modern audience” in mind, and of course, that audience never showed up to watch.  Rings of Power is now considered a critical failure and a huge money-loser for Amazon.  But, one celebrity who jumped on the Amazon bandwagon early in the game was leftist propagandist Stephen Colbert, a self proclaimed Lord of the Rings “superfan”. 

Colbert was a primary promoter for the Rings Of Power series launch and at no point did he ever question the validity of the story or its major deviations from the spirit of the source material.  What better person to co-write the next installment of the Lord Of The Rings film series? 

New Line has recruited an aging Peter Jackson to helm a series of film spinoffs, but it’s hard to say yet how much freedom his team will have in the production.  The idea to include Colbert could very well bury the effort before it begins.

The announcement is bizarre, given The Colbert Show’s collapsing audience numbers and his dwindling popularity.  He is a largely hated figure in the world of entertainment and in politics.  But, the decision does make perfect sense if you consider the possibility that Hollywood’s only goal at this point is to destroy every single beloved franchise of the past and give a big middle finger to fans. 

The Amazon series proved that LOTR audiences could not be suckered or controlled, so, instead, it appears the industry is bent on petty revenge instead.  The tentatively titled The Lord of the Rings: Shadow of the Past is set to be written by Colbert, Philippa Boyens and Peter McGee.  Colbert revealed that the film will be based on “Fogs on the Barrow-downs,” the eighth chapter of The Fellowship of the Ring  

The notion that a woke pariah and Big Pharma shill with no moral compass could ever write an adaptation of The Lord Of The Rings, a story based on the honor and inherent goodness in the hearts of men, is rather insulting.  But, maybe that’s the point.     

Just days after we reported that trilateral peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the Trump administration had been suspended –  likely indefinitely – thanks to Washington’s escalating involvement in the Iran war, Reuters is now confirming the inevitable: Moscow is pressing ahead with a fresh springtime offensive while Kiev scrambles to hold the line.

As we reported before, from the collapse of talks in Geneva and Miami to Putin’s envoy shuttling back for what turned out to be fruitless charades, the Iran war has not only sucked up U.S. attention and air-defense munitions Ukraine desperately needs, but has also juiced Russian oil revenues at the worst possible moment for Kremlin planners. 

According to the latest from Kiev, Ukraine’s strategy now boils down to “building on recent tactical successes and battlefield innovations like mid-range strikes” to blunt the assault on the so-called Fortress Belt, the heavily fortified cluster of cities in Donetsk including Sloviansk (northern anchor), Pokrovsk, and Kostiantynivka. Russia, fresh off capturing nearly all of the key logistics hub at Pokrovsk this winter, has already launched a battalion-sized push northeast of Sloviansk and smaller probing attacks around the southern end of the belt. The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Finnish analysts at Black Bird Group are calling it exactly what it is: Moscow creating conditions for a broader offensive now that the ground has thawed.

Sloviansk authorities just ordered the compulsory evacuation of children as Russian forces sit a mere 20 km away — a grim sign the “deteriorating security situation” is no longer hypothetical. Russian General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov boasted last week that the offensive is “underway in all directions,” explicitly naming Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostiantynivka as targets. Over the past four days alone, Ukrainian General Staff data shows Russia conducted more than 600 assaults across the front, with the heaviest concentration (163) near Pokrovsk.

This is precisely the momentum we highlighted in our March 17 piece, “Russia Touts Capture Of A Dozen Ukrainian Settlements In Opening Weeks Of March,” where Gerasimov himself confirmed 12 settlements “liberated” in just two weeks, with street fighting already deep inside Kostiantynivka.

Ukraine’s Counter-Narrative: Drones, Starlink Sabotage, And “Metrics”

Kyiv isn’t exactly waving the white flag. Officials point to modest territorial gains last month – around 400 sq km in Zaporizhzhia, the first net positive since summer 2024 – aided in no small part by Elon Musk’s crackdown on Russian Starlink usage, which reportedly scrambled Moscow’s comms. Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov (the former digital guru) is pushing a “technology-driven, metrics-focused” plan, claiming Ukrainian forces are now eliminating more Russian troops than Moscow can recruit.

New recruits of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attend a military training near a frontline, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine March 21, 2026.

Analysts like Rob Lee at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Vladyslav Urubkov of the Come Back Alive charity acknowledge Russia’s manpower edge but argue improved Ukrainian drone integration and tactical assaults could cap Moscow’s gains at a few hundred square kilometers per month. ISW, for its part, expects “some tactical gains” around the Fortress Belt in 2026, but no major breakthrough.

The Real Story: Manpower, Money, And Distraction

Reality check: Ukraine is still bleeding manpower, struggling to recruit enough bodies for the meat grinder, while its finances teeter after Hungary vetoed a €90 billion EU loan package this month. Russia, meanwhile, watches oil prices soar courtesy of the Iran war, boosting export revenues (earlier we reported that India purchased 60 million barrels of Russian oil courtesy of the recent unsanctioning by the Trump admin). And those U.S. air-defense stocks Ukraine relies on? Now being diverted to the Middle East theater.

President Zelensky himself admitted on Sunday that Russia is exploiting warmer weather to intensify operations, a far cry from the “we’re winning” rhetoric that dominated Western media for years. Commanders on the ground describe the expected Russian playbook: multi-axis pressure to rupture Ukrainian formations at weak points, with armored pushes (now rarer thanks to drone dominance) signaling Moscow’s desire to accelerate.

The “Peace” Theater Was Always a Sideshow

Recall our coverage of the endless cycle: Zelensky exploding under U.S. pressure in February (“no time for unsuccessful decisions”), Putin reportedly floating intel-sharing swaps tied to Ukraine aid, and European meddling that only prolonged the agony while Russian forces kept grinding forward.

The Iran conflict didn’t just pause talks — it exposed the whole farce. Washington can’t mediate while fighting on another front, Europe can’t deliver the cash, and Kyiv can’t hold the line forever against a Russia that has already captured thousands of square kilometers since 2025.

The grinding war of attrition continues. Fortress Belt under assault. Peace talks? Suspended, likely indefinitely, especially with the world’s attention glued to that “other”, far bigger war.

Just days after we reported that trilateral peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the Trump administration had been suspended –  likely indefinitely – thanks to Washington’s escalating involvement in the Iran war, Reuters is now confirming the inevitable: Moscow is pressing ahead with a fresh springtime offensive while Kiev scrambles to hold the line.

As we reported before, from the collapse of talks in Geneva and Miami to Putin’s envoy shuttling back for what turned out to be fruitless charades, the Iran war has not only sucked up U.S. attention and air-defense munitions Ukraine desperately needs, but has also juiced Russian oil revenues at the worst possible moment for Kremlin planners. 

According to the latest from Kiev, Ukraine’s strategy now boils down to “building on recent tactical successes and battlefield innovations like mid-range strikes” to blunt the assault on the so-called Fortress Belt, the heavily fortified cluster of cities in Donetsk including Sloviansk (northern anchor), Pokrovsk, and Kostiantynivka. Russia, fresh off capturing nearly all of the key logistics hub at Pokrovsk this winter, has already launched a battalion-sized push northeast of Sloviansk and smaller probing attacks around the southern end of the belt. The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Finnish analysts at Black Bird Group are calling it exactly what it is: Moscow creating conditions for a broader offensive now that the ground has thawed.

Sloviansk authorities just ordered the compulsory evacuation of children as Russian forces sit a mere 20 km away — a grim sign the “deteriorating security situation” is no longer hypothetical. Russian General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov boasted last week that the offensive is “underway in all directions,” explicitly naming Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostiantynivka as targets. Over the past four days alone, Ukrainian General Staff data shows Russia conducted more than 600 assaults across the front, with the heaviest concentration (163) near Pokrovsk.

This is precisely the momentum we highlighted in our March 17 piece, “Russia Touts Capture Of A Dozen Ukrainian Settlements In Opening Weeks Of March,” where Gerasimov himself confirmed 12 settlements “liberated” in just two weeks, with street fighting already deep inside Kostiantynivka.

Ukraine’s Counter-Narrative: Drones, Starlink Sabotage, And “Metrics”

Kyiv isn’t exactly waving the white flag. Officials point to modest territorial gains last month – around 400 sq km in Zaporizhzhia, the first net positive since summer 2024 – aided in no small part by Elon Musk’s crackdown on Russian Starlink usage, which reportedly scrambled Moscow’s comms. Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov (the former digital guru) is pushing a “technology-driven, metrics-focused” plan, claiming Ukrainian forces are now eliminating more Russian troops than Moscow can recruit.

New recruits of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attend a military training near a frontline, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine March 21, 2026.

Analysts like Rob Lee at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Vladyslav Urubkov of the Come Back Alive charity acknowledge Russia’s manpower edge but argue improved Ukrainian drone integration and tactical assaults could cap Moscow’s gains at a few hundred square kilometers per month. ISW, for its part, expects “some tactical gains” around the Fortress Belt in 2026, but no major breakthrough.

The Real Story: Manpower, Money, And Distraction

Reality check: Ukraine is still bleeding manpower, struggling to recruit enough bodies for the meat grinder, while its finances teeter after Hungary vetoed a €90 billion EU loan package this month. Russia, meanwhile, watches oil prices soar courtesy of the Iran war, boosting export revenues (earlier we reported that India purchased 60 million barrels of Russian oil courtesy of the recent unsanctioning by the Trump admin). And those U.S. air-defense stocks Ukraine relies on? Now being diverted to the Middle East theater.

President Zelensky himself admitted on Sunday that Russia is exploiting warmer weather to intensify operations, a far cry from the “we’re winning” rhetoric that dominated Western media for years. Commanders on the ground describe the expected Russian playbook: multi-axis pressure to rupture Ukrainian formations at weak points, with armored pushes (now rarer thanks to drone dominance) signaling Moscow’s desire to accelerate.

The “Peace” Theater Was Always a Sideshow

Recall our coverage of the endless cycle: Zelensky exploding under U.S. pressure in February (“no time for unsuccessful decisions”), Putin reportedly floating intel-sharing swaps tied to Ukraine aid, and European meddling that only prolonged the agony while Russian forces kept grinding forward.

The Iran conflict didn’t just pause talks — it exposed the whole farce. Washington can’t mediate while fighting on another front, Europe can’t deliver the cash, and Kyiv can’t hold the line forever against a Russia that has already captured thousands of square kilometers since 2025.

The grinding war of attrition continues. Fortress Belt under assault. Peace talks? Suspended, likely indefinitely, especially with the world’s attention glued to that “other”, far bigger war.

Just days after we reported that trilateral peace negotiations between Russia, Ukraine, and the Trump administration had been suspended –  likely indefinitely – thanks to Washington’s escalating involvement in the Iran war, Reuters is now confirming the inevitable: Moscow is pressing ahead with a fresh springtime offensive while Kiev scrambles to hold the line.

As we reported before, from the collapse of talks in Geneva and Miami to Putin’s envoy shuttling back for what turned out to be fruitless charades, the Iran war has not only sucked up U.S. attention and air-defense munitions Ukraine desperately needs, but has also juiced Russian oil revenues at the worst possible moment for Kremlin planners. 

According to the latest from Kiev, Ukraine’s strategy now boils down to “building on recent tactical successes and battlefield innovations like mid-range strikes” to blunt the assault on the so-called Fortress Belt, the heavily fortified cluster of cities in Donetsk including Sloviansk (northern anchor), Pokrovsk, and Kostiantynivka. Russia, fresh off capturing nearly all of the key logistics hub at Pokrovsk this winter, has already launched a battalion-sized push northeast of Sloviansk and smaller probing attacks around the southern end of the belt. The U.S.-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) and Finnish analysts at Black Bird Group are calling it exactly what it is: Moscow creating conditions for a broader offensive now that the ground has thawed.

Sloviansk authorities just ordered the compulsory evacuation of children as Russian forces sit a mere 20 km away — a grim sign the “deteriorating security situation” is no longer hypothetical. Russian General Staff chief Valery Gerasimov boasted last week that the offensive is “underway in all directions,” explicitly naming Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Kostiantynivka as targets. Over the past four days alone, Ukrainian General Staff data shows Russia conducted more than 600 assaults across the front, with the heaviest concentration (163) near Pokrovsk.

This is precisely the momentum we highlighted in our March 17 piece, “Russia Touts Capture Of A Dozen Ukrainian Settlements In Opening Weeks Of March,” where Gerasimov himself confirmed 12 settlements “liberated” in just two weeks, with street fighting already deep inside Kostiantynivka.

Ukraine’s Counter-Narrative: Drones, Starlink Sabotage, And “Metrics”

Kyiv isn’t exactly waving the white flag. Officials point to modest territorial gains last month – around 400 sq km in Zaporizhzhia, the first net positive since summer 2024 – aided in no small part by Elon Musk’s crackdown on Russian Starlink usage, which reportedly scrambled Moscow’s comms. Ukraine’s new Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov (the former digital guru) is pushing a “technology-driven, metrics-focused” plan, claiming Ukrainian forces are now eliminating more Russian troops than Moscow can recruit.

New recruits of the 65th Separate Mechanized Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces attend a military training near a frontline, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Zaporizhzhia region, Ukraine March 21, 2026.

Analysts like Rob Lee at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Vladyslav Urubkov of the Come Back Alive charity acknowledge Russia’s manpower edge but argue improved Ukrainian drone integration and tactical assaults could cap Moscow’s gains at a few hundred square kilometers per month. ISW, for its part, expects “some tactical gains” around the Fortress Belt in 2026, but no major breakthrough.

The Real Story: Manpower, Money, And Distraction

Reality check: Ukraine is still bleeding manpower, struggling to recruit enough bodies for the meat grinder, while its finances teeter after Hungary vetoed a €90 billion EU loan package this month. Russia, meanwhile, watches oil prices soar courtesy of the Iran war, boosting export revenues (earlier we reported that India purchased 60 million barrels of Russian oil courtesy of the recent unsanctioning by the Trump admin). And those U.S. air-defense stocks Ukraine relies on? Now being diverted to the Middle East theater.

President Zelensky himself admitted on Sunday that Russia is exploiting warmer weather to intensify operations, a far cry from the “we’re winning” rhetoric that dominated Western media for years. Commanders on the ground describe the expected Russian playbook: multi-axis pressure to rupture Ukrainian formations at weak points, with armored pushes (now rarer thanks to drone dominance) signaling Moscow’s desire to accelerate.

The “Peace” Theater Was Always a Sideshow

Recall our coverage of the endless cycle: Zelensky exploding under U.S. pressure in February (“no time for unsuccessful decisions”), Putin reportedly floating intel-sharing swaps tied to Ukraine aid, and European meddling that only prolonged the agony while Russian forces kept grinding forward.

The Iran conflict didn’t just pause talks — it exposed the whole farce. Washington can’t mediate while fighting on another front, Europe can’t deliver the cash, and Kyiv can’t hold the line forever against a Russia that has already captured thousands of square kilometers since 2025.

The grinding war of attrition continues. Fortress Belt under assault. Peace talks? Suspended, likely indefinitely, especially with the world’s attention glued to that “other”, far bigger war.