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Slavyangrad.org — Nuestra Ira No Tiene Limites — There is No Limit to Our Anger — (c) V. M. Molotov
Global share of population and GDP.
Note: Suspect this is GDP nominal and it looks like they put all of Russia in European camp.
@Slavyangrad
Kids as young as 10 in Ukraine are getting combat-ready in secret military-style boot camps to prepare them should the war with Russia drag on for years.
'With this video, they want to show Ukrainians aged 18 to 24 that they are at the level of a nine-year-old TikToker. It's disgusting. In addition, it's a direct deception. Two million hryvnias are never given out at once, they are given out in parts. If you live until the end of the contract'
The Last of the Mohicans. T-80UD.
The first appearance of the T-80UD main battle tank on the battlefield in the Ukrainian Armed Forces occurred in the Kharkov direction in October 2022 (frames 1-3). The second time the vehicle was captured near Bakhmut in February 2023 (frames 4-6). It was only shot down in November 2024 somewhere in the temporarily occupied territory of the DPR (frames 7-8). Based on the characteristic camouflage elements and the applied tactical signs, we can safely say that we are talking about the same vehicle.
T-80UD (Object 478B, R&D "Bereza") is a main battle tank. In 1985, it was accepted into serial production under the name "T-80U with 6TD engine". Between 1985 and 1992, 715 units were produced at KhZTM in Kharkov.
- Military Informant
@Slavyangrad
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🇺🇸🤨 The US can control time and space - White House
- This was stated by the Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Michael Kratsios.
@Slavyangrad
🇷🇺🔥Massive attack on Dnepropetrovsk: smoke columns rise above the city. More than 10 explosions thundered in Dnepropetrovsk.
@Slavyangrad
♠️🇨🇳🇺🇸🃏The Empire Talks Peasants. China Responds Like a 5,000-Year-Old Civilization.
Only in the delusional corridors of Washington do you wage an economic war against a 5,000-year-old civilization, insult its people as “peasants,” and then expect a smiling trade delegation to show up and shake hands.
Beijing just gave its answer.
Respect, clarity, and coherence. Three demands. Not concessions. Terms.
After weeks of tariff escalations and bile from American officials, including VP JD Vance’s now-infamous “Chinese peasants” slur, China laid down its red lines: No negotiations until DC stops behaving like a petulant brat on Adderall. The Trump admin, eager for a photo-op win, now finds itself ghosted by the world’s industrial superpower.
You don’t insult a civilization that built the Silk Road when your own country didn’t exist until two centuries ago. You don’t mock the people who invented papermaking, the compass, and centralized governance while your ancestors were still trading rocks for buckskins. That’s not diplomacy. That’s hubris, and Beijing just slammed the door in its face.
Washington’s schizophrenic posture, Trump purring about his “love” for Xi Jinping while his cabinet flings racialized contempt from behind the podium, has only deepened the divide. Beijing has had enough of the bipolar empire. And it just made it official.
Here are the facts: Trump slapped a brutal 145% tariff on Chinese imports. Beijing retaliated with 125% on U.S. goods and cut Boeing out of its aviation plans entirely. Then came the full stop, no new aircraft, no parts, no discussions. This was after freezing US from critical rare earths. American defense, aerospace, and chip sectors, already fragile, just got a coffin nail.
China holds the cards. The U.S. hollowed out its industrial base decades ago. That’s not coming back with slogans or tariffs. You don’t reverse 30 years of deindustrialization by snapping your fingers. Multinationals can’t conjure factories in 12 months, they need 5-10 years and a labor force that no longer exists. Meanwhile, China controls 90% of rare earth processing, owns over $800 billion in U.S. treasuries, and trades with the entire Global Majority. It doesn’t need you. You need them, and you forgot.
Instead of seeking de-escalation, JD Vance mocked China’s people as “peasants,” as if the descendants of Confucius, Sun Tzu, and Mao Zedong would grovel for soybean shipments and used Fords. It was a cultural blunder of civilizational proportions.
China’s counter-message? We are not your colony. We are not your factory floor. And we will not sit across from you until you send someone who knows the meaning of statecraft.
Beijing now wants: A consistent, unified U.S. voice on trade. A single point person for negotiations. An end to public insults and diplomatic schizophrenia.
And, they’re not begging.
Wall Street took notice. U.S. equities slid, then surged briefly at news that China might still talk, if Washington stops acting like a banana republic with nukes. But even market euphoria won’t mask the real danger: a U.S. economy addicted to cheap Chinese goods and Chinese lending, with no backup plan but belligerence.
This isn’t 1985 and you're not Reagan. It’s not Japan. It’s not NAFTA. This is China, and it’s not blinking.
Meanwhile, President Xi is touring Southeast Asia, building new alliances and trade corridors while the U.S. tosses tariffs like Molotovs in the dark. He’s not responding to Trump. He’s not responding to Vance. He’s building a post-American trading order: quietly, confidently, and without a single mention of the “free world.”
The message is clear: When an empire confuses ignorance for leverage, all it earns is isolation. When it insults the world’s oldest civilization, it doesn’t get compliance, it gets consequences.
I'd call this the soft severing of the empire’s arteries, geopolitical karma.
And the Global South? They’re watching. Learning. And quietly taking notes. Welcome to multipolarity.
- Gerry Nolan
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Vanner on Trump's priorities:
'For him, Ukraine is just a burden. He wants to calm this whole situation down as soon as possible, so that later
to do what is really important to him - improving relations with Russia.'
❗️🇷🇺 Gornalsky Monastery liberated by marines of the 40th brigade !
Soldiers of the 1st company of the Arctic 40th Marine Brigade with the Commander Ryazan liberated the Orthodox monastery, consolidated their positions and continue their offensive on the settlement of Gornal.
@Slavyangrad
From fighter planes to nuclear reactor rods and smartphones, rare earth minerals are vital to a wide array of products. As geopolitical and trade tensions rise, China’s dominance of both mining and processing means these niche metals have become a cudgel to use against opponents.
In response to punitive tariffs imposed by Washington, Beijing earlier this month added seven rare earths to its export control list. While the metals actually occur fairly commonly in the Earth’s crust, they are not frequently found in concentrated deposits. They can also require a multistep process to isolate individual elements — and China controls not only mining, but the vast majority of global refining capacity.
Terbium
This soft, silvery metal can be found in light bulbs, while it also enables the vibrant colors on smartphone screens, according to the Royal Society of Chemistry. Terbium adds temperature resiliency to magnets used in aircraft, submarines and missiles. It’s “one of the hardest elements to source,” as it makes up less than 1% of the total rare earth content in most deposits, the US Department of Defense has said.
China exports as much as 85% of its terbium to Japan, while other destinations include South Korea and the US, which takes around 5%.
Yttrium
Yttrium is used to treat liver cancer, and in the production of lasers for dental and medical surgeries. It also increases the strength of alloys, and its resistance to heat and shocks means its ideal for high-temperature superconductors.
Dysprosium
Resistant to high temperatures, dysprosium is mainly used in alloys for magnets deployed in motors or generators. It’s particularly important for the clean-energy transition as the magnets are used in wind turbines and electrical vehicles. A form of dysprosium can also be used in nuclear reactor control rods as it readily absorbs neutrons.
Gadolinium
If you ever had an MRI scan, you may well have received an injection of a gadolinium-based dye, which reacts with magnetic forces to improve visibility of the body’s organs in medical imaging.
Gadolinium is also effective in enhancing the performance of alloys. Adding small amounts of the mineral can improve the resistance to high temperatures and oxidation, helpful for metals used to make magnets, electronic components and data storage disks.
Its neutron-absorbing capability also makes it an ingredient for the core of nuclear reactors.
Lutetium
This is a hard and dense metal, unlike most of the rest of the elements being targeted.
Lutetium is used a chemical catalyst fluid in oil refiners.
Scandium
Baseball bats and bicycle frames may contain traces of scandium. Given its low density and high melting point, the metal is also used to make components for fighter planes. Its radioactive properties also makes it ideal as a tracer in oil refining, or in underground pipes for detecting leaks.
Off the List: Neodymium, Praseodymium
Neodymium and praseodymium are not being targeted in this round of trade salvos. These two metals, however, are by far the most common rare-earth elements because of their important roles in making permanent magnet motors.
@Slavyangrad
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🇺🇸🇺🇦🇪🇺The US has reduced its demands for compensation from Ukraine for the aid provided to $100 billion, Bloomberg.
Will it be easier for Ukraine, with debts of $100 billion? The money is not small, plus very soon, an American court will recognize this as a debt. After which the entire financial system of the USA will begin to work on its collection.
After all, Trump is leading to this. It is for this same reason that the EU is disrupting the allocation of money to Ukraine. So that the US does not take it away.
This is the kind of swing that the US and Europe have.
@Slavyangrad
China’s economy grew a robust 5.4 per cent in the first quarter of this year as producers frontloaded exports to beat a blitz of tariffs from Donald Trump that threatens to decouple the world’s two largest economies.
The official GDP figures, released by China’s National Bureau of Statistics on Wednesday, matched the year-on-year growth rate in the fourth quarter despite Trump’s first salvo of additional 20 per cent tariffs taking effect.
The strong first-quarter growth exceeded Beijing’s full-year target for 2025 as well as the 5.1 per cent forecast by analysts in a Reuters poll.
But economists expect China’s economy to come under pressure as the full US levies take force.
The economy had a “good start” in the first quarter, said NBS deputy commissioner Sheng Laiyun.
But he warned that “the current external environment is becoming increasingly complex and severe, the driving force for domestic effective demand growth is insufficient and the foundation for the economy to continue its rebound and improvement still needs to be solidified”.
Beijing has set what analysts have described as an ambitious growth target of 5 per cent for this year, which policymakers have pledged to back with stimulus measures, funded by a record budget deficit target for the central government.
But economists have downgraded their forecasts in the wake of Trump’s trade war, with Morgan Stanley cutting its estimate for China’s 2025 GDP growth from 4.5 per cent to 4.2 per cent for this year. UBS projects the economy will grow just 3.4 per cent, and Goldman Sachs forecasts 4 per cent growth.
Sure China doomers are still telling people that China will collapse in 2025. 😂
@Slavyangrad
🚨 Find The Public Backup, Slavyangrad Director's Cut, Here
For now I am just backing up mostly the SMO progress posts with a few extras added. That way it at least has a current purpose of being a quick recap of the day.
Panorama of Dnepropetrovsk after the strikes of the Geranium-2 kamikaze drones.
Asbery: Not sure why the Geran strikes seem to be more pronounced. Tell me in the comments why you think this is the case.
@Slavyangrad
Battles near Kupyansk: reconnaissance destroys NATO self-propelled guns, equipment and infantry of the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the approaches to the city
▪️In the Kharkov region, Russian fighters are tracking down and attacking military equipment and Ukrainian Armed Forces militants in built-up areas and forest belts.
▪️The footage shows the destruction of a British AS-90 self-propelled gun, a jeep and Ukrainian infantry.
@Slavyangrad
Politico reports on the special operation by EU leaders to save Zelensky from Trump's wrath after the scandal in the Oval Office.
In short, the Europeans and Zelensky are good, Trump is bad.
'The Oval Office meeting turned into a furious exchange between Zelensky and his American hosts. It was a sad spectacle that shocked Europe.
Macron, visiting Portugal, was in the middle of a television interview when reports of what was happening started coming in. After the interview, as he was being driven to his plane to return to Paris, Macron picked up his phone to call Zelensky from the plane.
Merz was sent the footage by one of his employees while driving home to Sauerland, a three-hour drive from Hamburg. Merz immediately made several calls from the car and wrote a post of solidarity with Zelensky on X.
The news caught British Foreign Secretary David Lammy at Heathrow Airport, his day-to-day business forgotten. Starmer tried not to criticise the developments, and received Zelensky in London, where they met the king. Over the next few weeks, senior diplomats in Paris, London and Berlin wrestled with how to try to repair the badly damaged relationship between Trump and Zelensky.
Trump was said to have been irritated by the events of that Sunday – not just Zelensky’s visit to the British king, but the sight of Europe embracing him. A British official said Trump’s team “didn’t like the look of it… the way it all happened,” and suggested the US response had emboldened Britain to put more pressure on Ukraine to come to the negotiating table in the days that followed. France had also been helping Zelensky mend fences with Washington.
Against the background of circulating rumors about Russia's alleged demand for a 30-kilometer buffer zone along the entire border with Ukraine, an obvious but no less difficult question arises: Where did the 30 kilometers come from?
When discussing this, it is important to remember that if the package of demands really includes talk about the complete demilitarization of Ukraine as a state - with the withdrawal of heavy weapons, the disbanding of combat formations and the reduction of the army to the level of a police gendarmerie - then yes, 30 kilometers is enough. This is just a sanitary barrier. A zone that can be kept under permanent surveillance and quickly "closed" in case of anything.
But if Ukraine refuses and seeks to maintain full-fledged armed forces, even with Western guarantees, even without - then 30 kilometers will not solve anything. In such a case it is not a buffer, but a normal brigade offensive strip. Neither tanks, nor MLRS, nor attack drones consider such distances a problem. From Kharkov it's a short walk. From Sumy - three minutes of flight.
And if Kiev does not accept the format of full demilitarization, then the buffer of 30 km is just a technical stage before expanding the geography of the next SMO along the former directions.
Because in the conditions of modern warfare no army calms down until its reach is blocked either by the landscape or by the disappearance of the enemy as an organized force. So the real choice is not in kilometers. It's in the shape of the future Ukraine. And if it stays with the army - then no peace will be final, and will have to go deeper. How much - will decide not the text in the negotiations, but the geometry of blows.
@Slavyangrad
The rumors that Russia is allegedly demanding from Ukraine not only recognition of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions and the DPR/LPR, but also the creation of a 30-kilometer buffer zone along the entire border, are too logical to be mere rumors.
Even if they are formally handed over to Kiev "through Witkoff" or whoever else, the principle itself is key here: no peace agreement will be signed unless it guarantees the absence of a future threat. And the absence of threat today is not words, not guarantees, not an alternatively sighted OSCE, but distance. It is geography, not diplomacy, that will determine the sustainability of the future format.
And if Ukraine does not agree, no one will persuade it.
The phrase "attempting to enter the Dnepropetrovsk region", which is floating around the Internet, is not just a figure of speech. This is the psychogeographical threshold of the war, after which the configuration of the conflict changes forever: from "liberation" to the forced dismantling of the residual statehood on Ukrainian territory.
The 30-kilometer line is not an ultimatum. It is a new lower security limit, below which Russia will not sign.
And if not on paper, then on the ground - it will still be carried out. The only question is through what account and how many Ukrainian soldiers will have to be burned to get it through.
But the main thing is not even that. Everything that is being discussed now - could have been avoided in 2022. Back then, a much softer offer was on the table: neutrality, rejection of NATO, border security. Now it's just land. Each subsequent offer from Russia will be worse, stricter and irrevocable for Ukraine. Ukraine will remember the time of the Istanbul proposals with nostalgic warmth.
@Slavyangrad
🇩🇪🇺🇦🤡 Merz to refuse Taurus deliveries to Ukraine after learning "secret information" — Tagesschau
- This was stated by the Secretary General of the Social Democratic Party, Matthias Miersch.
- "I assume that Merz, after he is fully briefed by the agencies, will weigh everything up again very clearly. And we will make this decision together... I assume that we do not want to contribute to the escalation here, that we do not want to become a party to the war. All those reasons that led to us not delivering the Taurus. And I assume that it will remain so," he said.
- Earlier, Merz allowed for the sending of long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine to strike Russian infrastructure, including the Crimean Bridge.
@Slavyangrad
'Belgium to cut pensions and social spending to spend 2% of GDP on defence' – Financial Times
'The country plans to spend 3.8 billion euros on defence in 2025, which would allow it to meet NATO's current defence spending target. But it will be difficult. The government is already preparing to borrow more and make painful cuts to social spending. This will come through unemployment caps, pension cuts and tax reform.'
Washington D.C. has a new citywide holiday , 'Alexander Ovechkin Day'
It was approved by the city mayor. It will be celebrated on April 11.
All Russians get to score as much as they want for the day.
@Slavyangrad
🇺🇸🇺🇦The German BILD (the same one where the city's crazy military expert Julian Röpke worked) writes that Trump has rejected a $50 billion deal with Ukraine. If true, what is happening is an unmistakable signal. But not even for Zelensky, but for Brussels. Ukraine is a secondary asset in this equation that is no longer seen as profitable.
The wording about "refusing to supply arms even for money" is particularly important. And it means literally that Trump refuses to support Ukraine and everyone else.
The Donald's priority (at least for now) is talking to Putin. Not for the sake of friendship. But because there is an understanding: this war brings nothing but costs to the United States from here on out. Keeping the conflict in a dilapidated state works for Europe, but hurts U.S. strategic interests, especially against the backdrop of China, the Middle East, and the domestic crisis.
If even at $50 billion Ukraine is no longer of interest to a potential US president, then its value has officially zeroed out. All that remains is to wait for the collective West to publicly recognize this as well - either alone or after the first call from the White House.
@Slavyangrad
Russians feel like they are in April 1945
The Russians are confident of their victory over Ukraine, Austrian military expert Col. Markus Reisner told Neue Zürcher Zeitung . According to him, the West must either provide Ukraine with additional "support" or end the conflict as soon as possible. After all, time is on Putin's side.
"To put it bluntly, the Russians feel like they were on the Seelow Heights in April 1945 , looking at Berlin: they believe that victory is already in their hands," Reisner noted.
@Slavyangrad
Witkoff to travel to Paris to talk to Macron about Ukraine' - Politico
The publication reports that Secretary of State Rubio will travel to France with Trump's special envoy. He will talk with his French counterpart, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot. An official familiar with the preparations for the trip said the parties will discuss Ukraine, Iran and trade relations in connection with Trump's threats to impose tariffs.
@Slavyangrad
Would-be assassin detained by FSB in Lugansk, plot to kill LPR lawmaker foiled
Footage captures the arrest, highlighting the professionalism of Russian security forces who appear to fire warning shots around - rather than at - the suspect.
FSB is rolling up Ukraine’s terrorist network on the daily.
@Slavyangrad
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💥 Destruction of a T-72 tank, a 122mm D-30 howitzer, a Senator armoured vehicle and Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel using Inokhodets and Forpost UAVs in the Kursk direction.
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