IRGC Targets US Command Center In Syria In Unprecedented Attack
Iran’s large-scale ‘retaliation’ on US bases and Gulf states overnight included a rare first if confirmed. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it conducted a missile or drone attack on an American special operations command center at al-Tanf in Syria on Friday.
The action came after the US bombed Iran for a sixth consecutive night, and while Iranian targets have on several occasions reached into Jordan, it is unprecedented that the Iranians take active aim at sites within Syria.
The IRGC stated the attack was in retaliation for the killing of Iranian soldiers in Iranshahr, in southern Iran.
While the hit on Syria was reported in Reuters based on state media claims, the alleged Tanf strike hasn’t been independently verified:
A Syrian military source told Reuters that Iran carried out an attack near al-Tanf, but it had not hit the base itself. There were no casualties or material damage, the source added.
The episode is the first reported attack on Syria since the US-Israeli war on Iran began in late February.
And more: “The IRGC statement claimed that a radar system, multiple helicopters, and several US personnel were destroyed in the strike. Reuters reported that it has not yet been able to independently verify these claims.”
While it is unprecedented or at least unusual for US bases in Syria to come under direct attack by Iran, Tanf base has on multiple occasions come under attack from Iran-aligned Iraqi paramilitaries, and other hostile actors both within Syria and Iraq.
US troops had long operated out of Tanf to pressure the Assad government as part of the long-running US-backed regime change project.
The US primarily trained the Syrian Free Army (FSA) in that remote desert area – which was an umbrella group of various factions, likely among them jihadists, armed and funded by Washington.
But when Assad was finally ousted in December 2024, replaced by an Al-Qaeda group founder (Jolani/Sharaa), this also put Iranian forces in rapid retreat from the country after an over decade-long proxy war.
Syria’s new AQ-linked government has been trying to impress its backers by claiming to bust up Iran-Hezbollah axis arms shipments:
🇸🇾🇮🇷🇱🇧 Here’s footage of the massive weapons cache that was hidden inside an oil tanker by Iran and bound for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Until Syria intercepted it along the way.
Inside were hundreds of drones, missiles, and components…
Iran, alongside Russia, had been a close military supporter of the Syrian army, but the Syrian government’s collapse – along with the weaking of Hezbollah with the recent Israeli assassination of much of its leadership in Lebanon, caused most Russian and Iranian troops into a hasty and forced withdrawal.
Zelensky’s Cabinet Reshuffle Backfiring As He Names New Defense Minister
Amid a continuing status of martial law in Ukraine, one European headline underscores that President Zelensky’s significant cabinet and defense ministry reshuffling has ‘backfired’.
Public outrage and rare protests have ensued in the capital and across various cities after he sacked popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who many Ukrainians see as having turned the tide of the war with Russia, implementing an ambitious tech-focused drone strategy.
Zelensky has now confirmed the dismissal by appointing Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) chief Yevhen Khmara as acting defense minister.
“Once the necessary legal procedures are completed, I will ask lawmakers to support Yevhen Khmara’s appointment as defense minister,” Zelensky announced.
None of this is being received very well among the public, also days after the forced resignation of Prime Minister Yulia Svyrydenko, who was merely six months into the job:
The removal of Svyrydenko and swift appointment of Sergii Koretskyi as Ukraine’s new prime minister barely registered in the public debate, but there was uproar around the defence portfolio.
On Thursday lawmakers approved almost an entirely new wartime cabinet and Koretskyi’s nomination – a move largely seen as logical given his track record as chief executive of state energy giant Naftogaz and his crisis‑management roles at Ukrnafta and Ukrtatnafta.
Inside parliament, Koretskyi vowed to focus on defense, economic stability and EU integration. Outside, thousands of demonstrators made it clear that the real battle who controls the armed forces – and how – had only just started.
Zelensky seemed on the defensive in a Thursday night address explaining his choice for new acting defense chief.
“Yevhen Khmara will serve as acting Minister of Defence of Ukraine. He headed the SSU’s Centre of Special Operations Alpha, which has achieved the most effective results in eliminating the occupiers on the front. Alpha consistently ranks number one in the monthly results,” he said.
“Khmara was responsible for the long-range operations of the Security Service of Ukraine,” Zelensky added. “We agreed that Khmara will also oversee the long-range operations of the Security Forces – this is a priority.”
Seeking to put a positive spin on a move which is proving deeply unpopular, Zelensky continued: “He knows exactly what Ukraine needs and is also capable of maintaining control over the internal situation across the components of the defense forces. He has sufficient security experience to prevent disgraceful incidents.”
⚡️🇺🇦 BREAKING: Zelenskyy confirms tensions between Fedorov and Syrskyi: “Without me, they won’t sit down together”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has confirmed tensions between former Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov and Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, saying he… pic.twitter.com/olt7DuSalu
Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of the WSJ, Yaroslav Trofimov, has pointed out that “Many Ukrainians (and not just Ukrainians) see this as Zelensky putting petty politics ahead of winning the war.” If the protests grow rapidly, it could cause Zelensky’s external supporters to sour on him.
UMich Sentiment Extends Bounce From Record 46-Year-Lows As Gas Prices Ease
Having rebounded from record (46 year) lows in June, University of Michigan’s preliminary July Sentiment survey was expected to show further improvement as gas prices fell since the US-Iran ‘peace’ MoU signing (before rising modestly in the last few days of the reignited conflict).
And indeed it did, headline Consumer Sentiment jumped from 49.5 to 54.4 (51.0 exp) – its highest since February…
“With the second straight month of 10% jumps,” said UMich Dirctor of Surveys, Joanne Hsu, pointing out that “consumer sentiment climbed to its highest reading since February of this year on the basis of easing price pressures at the pump in recent weeks.”
All five index components improved, led by significant 20% increases in buying conditions for durables as well as year-ahead business conditions.
This month’s rise in sentiment was pervasive across the population, seen across groups by age, income, wealth, and political party.
Particularly strong increases were seen among consumers without a bachelor’s degree.
Year-ahead inflation expectations ticked down from 4.6% in June to a still-elevated 4.2% this month.
However, Hsu concludes by pouring cold water on the bounce by noting that sentiment’s upward momentum may prove difficult to sustain if recent declines in gas prices continue to reverse course.
Interviews for this release spanned June 23 to July 13, with more than 70% completed before the resumption of US strikes against Iran on July 7 and the subsequent increase in gas prices.
Burnham Is Facing The Same Dilemma That Has Trapped British Politics Over The Past Decade
By Stefan Koopman, senior macro strategist at Rabobank
To Govern Is To Choose
Today, Andy Burnham will formally be confirmed as Labour leader. Barring any last-minute surprises, he will become prime minister on Monday. The UK will then have had seven prime ministers in a decade, with five taking office without a general election: May in 2016, Johnson in 2019, Truss and Sunak in 2022, and now Burnham in 2026.
We have often used these mid-term transfers to make the point that Brexit is like a monster devouring its babies. While we do think that this analogy is becoming increasingly stretched ten years after the vote, Brexit remains an important part of the UK’s story. It has contributed to weak productivity growth, subdued gains in real incomes and stagnant living standards, despite the explicit promise of sunlit uplands. The result is even more disappointment than before, and a never-ending search for a messiah who promises to restore rising prosperity.
The macroeconomic backdrop helps explain why this search keeps ending in disappointment. The UK’s problem increasingly appears to be one of supply rather than demand. In our forecasts for 2024-29, consumption growth never exceeds a paltry 1.2% per year, while per capita spending is broadly flat. Yet inflation remains above target in five of those six years. Weak demand alongside persistent inflation points at persistent supply-side constraints.
This leaves Burnham facing a dilemma that has trapped much of British politics over the past decade. He inherits high public debt, elevated borrowing costs and weak growth, while demands on the state continue to rise from defence, net-zero and an ageing population. At the same time, investors are increasingly reluctant to finance ever-higher levels of current spending, fearing persistent inflation. That limits the scope for the traditional political response of boosting demand to generate a short-term feel-good factor. If Burnham wants to change the UK’s economic trajectory in the run-up to the 2029 election, he will have to focus on expanding supply sooner than later.
The problem is that expanding supply requires investment long before it delivers results. The UK needs more electricity generation and grid capacity if it wants to electrify industry, housing and transport. It needs more housing, infrastructure and business investment, which means overcoming planning constraints and local opposition. It needs greater labour supply in an economy still characterized by high inactivity and politically toxic immigration. And it needs both public and private capital directed to physical production after years of underinvestment. None of these bottlenecks can be removed quickly.
For now, markets appear reassured by the expected composition of Burnham’s government. The appointment investors feared most, Ed Miliband as Chancellor, appears to have been avoided. Shabana Mahmood is now reported to be the frontrunner for the Treasury. She is widely viewed as closer to Rachel Reeves in her approach to fiscal policy than Miliband is.
At the same time, she has signalled support for a more active state where investment generates clear economic returns. That matters. If the UK’s binding constraint is supply, then it will have to increase public investment. Expanding energy capacity, building housing, upgrading infrastructure and crowding in private capital all require the state to play a role. But higher investment spending cannot easily be layered on top of existing commitments in an environment of limited fiscal space. To create room for supply-enhancing investment, other areas of spending may ultimately face greater scrutiny.
Markets welcomed this week the absence of a sharp turn to the left, but that alone does not solve the underlying growth problem. A supply-side agenda requires money, political capital, and time. Money remains scarce, with gilt yields near 5%. Political capital depreciates quickly. And recent British prime ministers have rarely been granted much time. If Burnham wants even a remote chance of changing the economic narrative before the 2029 election, he will have to make difficult decisions sooner rather than later. This may also mean testing his popularity with markets once the honeymoon period is over. To govern is to choose.
SpaceX’s highly anticipated Starship test flight never made it off the pad Thursday evening. Instead, the launch was scrubbed after what appeared to be an automatic abort during engine startup, marking the first major operational disappointment since the company became publicly traded just weeks ago.
As of this writing, the company has not released a detailed explanation for what happened. SpaceX has only said there will be no launch today, that engineers will review the issue, determine the cause, and announce the next launch opportunity after completing their analysis. Until then, everything circulating online should be treated as speculation, not fact.
That hasn’t stopped launch watchers from dissecting the video frame by frame.
Several engineers and enthusiasts posting on X believe the booster triggered the abort after multiple Raptor engines failed to ignite properly. One widely shared theory suggests four engines in the center ring never achieved a successful startup sequence, while others have speculated that the new Raptor V3 engines may have a more demanding ignition process than previous versions. Those observations may ultimately prove correct, or they may prove completely wrong. At this point, nobody outside SpaceX knows.
But here’s what I know. What makes this different from every previous Starship launch is that SpaceX is no longer just a private engineering experiment. This is the company’s first Starship campaign as a publicly traded company, and that changes some things.
Before the IPO, a scrubbed launch was simply another engineering milestone…on the way to the company’s valuation doing this:
Investors weren’t watching every second because there were no public shareholders marking billions of dollars in value to market every afternoon. Now there are. Every countdown, every static fire, every launch, every anomaly and every explosion is effectively a public earnings report.
That’s simply the reality of being a public company.
I’ve argued repeatedly over the last several weeks that SpaceX’s valuation made very little sense. At one point investors briefly valued the company at well over $2 trillion before the shares gave back a substantial portion of those gains. The stock has now fallen below its $135 IPO price after peaking above $225 shortly after listing, leaving it down roughly one-third from its highs while still carrying an enormous valuation. It’s down another -3.8% after hours as of the time of this writing.
And look…my argument hasn’t been that SpaceX isn’t an extraordinary company, despite what some people argue when I’m being skeptical about valuation. It clearly is. My argument has been that no company deserves a valuation that assumes near perfection forever.
Operational execution has always been the foundation of SpaceX’s story, but now it’s also the foundation of the stock. To be clear, one launch scrub means almost nothing by itself. Launch scrubs happen across the industry and are often the result of systems doing exactly what they’re supposed to do by preventing a launch under questionable conditions.
But now-public investors should not forget that Starship’s development has been marked by a number of high-profile setbacks. The first integrated flight test in April 2023 lost control after failing to achieve stage separation and was intentionally destroyed by SpaceX’s flight termination system. The second integrated test in November 2023 successfully achieved hot-stage separation for the first time, but both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage were ultimately lost before completing their planned objectives.
Flight 7 in January 2025 ended with the loss of the Starship upper stage during ascent, and Flight 8 in March 2025 also resulted in the loss of the upper stage following another propulsion-system failure. More recently, Flight 12 in May 2026 suffered a significant setback when the Super Heavy booster failed during its return after multiple Raptor engines did not successfully relight. The Starship upper stage, however, continued its mission, deployed its test payloads, survived reentry and completed a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.
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Every one of these flights produced valuable engineering data and moved the program forward, but they also served as reminders that developing the world’s largest and most powerful launch system remains one of the most technically demanding challenges in aerospace. The difference now is that every one of those outcomes has immediate consequences for shareholders.
For years, SpaceX always had another exciting story to tell. Another funding round. Another valuation increase. Another government contract. Another Starlink milestone. Another private market markup.
Now the company has entered a different phase. It’s put up or shut up time. Public investors will increasingly want to see successful launches, expanding cash flow, continued Starlink execution and tangible evidence that the next phase of growth is materializing.
With the stock now trading below its offering price after a sharp post-IPO reversal, there’s still plenty of optimism embedded in the valuation despite the recent decline. The market may start to demand (at least some) demand execution instead of simply rewarding potential.
None of this means today’s scrub is the beginning of a larger problem. It may wind up being nothing more than a minor startup issue that engineers resolve in a matter of days.
But that’s precisely why it’s worth watching. From this point forward, every Starship launch is no longer just a rocket launch. It’s also a referendum on one of the largest and most expensive public companies in the world.
That dynamic didn’t exist a month ago. Now it does.
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US Industrial Production Disappoints (Again) In June
US Industrial Production rose just 0.1% MoM in June (less than the 0.2% MoM rise expected), after also disappointing in May. That slowed the annual growth in production from 1.6% YoY to +1.1% YoY…
The recent blip higher in Capacity Utilization faded last month (76.1% vs 76.2% exp) with the down-trend seemingly still in tact…
If ‘soft’ survey data is in any way predictive of reality, then we should be seeing a sizable trend higher in industrial production…
…or maybe it’s just another useless sentiment signal.
For years, scientists have hypothesized that safe, cheap, generic drugs like metformin and rapamycin could slow aging, based on promising findings in animal models. But despite the evidenced hope, little has been done to see if these drugs actually slow aging in humans. There have been no rigorous clinical trials exploring whether metformin or rapamycin prolong life and and boost health.
How is it possible that metformin and rapamycin, long used to respectively treat diabetes and prevent organ transplant rejection, have had their anti-aging potential ignored for so long? To conspiracy-minded critics of ‘Big Pharma’, the answer is obvious: there’s no money in it. In this case, they seem to be correct. Speaking at the 12th Aging Research and Drug Discovery (ARDD) meeting convened at the University of Copenhagen last summer, industry leaders conceded the point.
“Repurposing cheap, off-patent drugs like metformin fails mathematically. Phase 3 clinical trials cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Companies cannot recover this money without a patent monopoly. Therefore, the industry tests new, patented drugs for specific diseases.”
Rapamycin costs between $40 and $150 per month out of pocket. Metformin is even cheaper, between $4 and $20 per month. To pharmaceutical companies, this meager revenue simply doesn’t justify an expensive clinical trial to treat a nebulous medical condition like “aging,” which insurers don’t even consider reimbursable. To put it bluntly, treating aging with generic drugs may be economical and worthwhile for humans and society as a whole, but it isn’t commercially viable for pharmaceutical companies.
The industry leaders speaking at ARDD explained a strategy that makes more financial sense.
“Industry tests new, patented drugs for specific diseases. During these trials, researchers simultaneously measure aging biomarkers like epigenetic clocks. This secondary strategy generates the hard numbers of regulators demand. The goal is to force regulators to classify aging as a reimbursable medical condition. This mirrors how objective data transformed obesity from a lifestyle choice into a treated disease.”
So it’s possible that what recently happened with obesity and GLP-1s will one day happen with aging.
In the meantime, independent institutions are trying to launch efforts to explore metformin and rapamycin’s anti-aging potential in humans. The American Federation for Aging Research has – for a decade now – sought “visionary donors” to begin their Targeting Aging with Metformin (TAME) Trial, a six-year study testing whether metformin can delay development or progression of age-related chronic diseases in 3,000 adults aged 65-79. Earlier this year, scientists at The University of Texas at San Antonio secured funding from the National Institute on Aging to carry out a including a “randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial involving approximately 84 older adults who will receive either daily rapamycin, intermittent dosing or a placebo” for six months, while monitoring the treatment’s effects.
“One Step Closer To Extradition”: Cox Media Heir Faces Reckoning Over Funding Marxist Revolution
Sovereign Media, a far-left media outlet funded by the Babochki Collective, a nonprofit run by Jim “Fergie” Chambers, the communist centi-millionaire and heir to the Cox Media fortune, reports that Fergie, who was arrested in Ibiza last week at the request of the US Justice Department, “has been transferred to a maximum-security facility in Madrid.”
“BREAKING: James “Fergie” Chambers has been transferred to a maximum security facility in Madrid – one step closer to extradition to the US,” Sovereign Media wrote on X earlier Thursday.
BREAKING: James “Fergie” Chambers has been transferred to a maximum security facility in Madrid – one step closer to extradition to the US.
Chambers faces dubious charges by Trump’s Department of Justice. Federal charges of “international money laundering… with the intent to… pic.twitter.com/W1E8CNDevy
Chambers was arrested last week and is awaiting extradition on federal charges linked to “international money laundering… with the intent to provide material support and resources to foreign terrorist organizations.”
The indictment alleges that Chambers transferred funds from U.S. banks to accounts in Tunisia with the intent to support foreign terrorist organizations.
Chambers is the founder of the Babochki Collective and a major backer of Stop Cop City, Palestine Action U.S. (later renamed Unity of Fields), and related legal defense efforts. He allegedly funded bail, legal fees, and direct-action campaigns targeting police training projects and Israeli-linked defense firms, while also building networks with far-left activists.
City Journal’s Stu Smith wrote in a recent report, “Chambers is one of the main funders of America’s radical Left. His money has flowed to a host of projects in the “anti-imperialism” organizing space,” adding, “Chambers claims that he and Singham are effectively the two primary financiers of the US radical left.” Despite this, the two have apparently been at loggerheads—a conflict that has now gone public.”
Chambers’ arrest came ahead of today’s meeting in Washington, where Secretary of State Marco Rubio, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent addressed delegations from 65 countries about the action phase against Marxist groups seeking revolution across the West.
Rubio said, “In the United States, the share of left-wing terrorist attacks and plots has risen to levels not seen in DECADES. In Germany, far-left violence has jumped by more than 40% in just the last year alone.”
🚨 JUST IN: Marco Rubio is throwing Democrats into a frenzy by dropping this truth nuke that terrorism is COMING FROM THE LEFT
“In all-out assault on our immigration officers, sniper attacks, explosives, armed ambushes, a transgender shooter opening fire on Catholic elementary… pic.twitter.com/jENXMAqe1U
Rubio added that Antifa is being directly aided by Iran and Cuba through a massive international network that seeks to attack the West with terrorism and propaganda.
Marco Rubio says Antifa is being directly aided by Iran and Cuba through a massive international network that seeks to attack the West with terrorism and propaganda.
The British government is preparing to tell ordinary people a blunt message: the state is not coming to save you. Households will be urged to stockpile long-life food, bottled water, essential medicines and even wind-up radios as part of a new national resilience campaign launching later this year.
At the same time, ministers have confirmed Operation Albiston Shadow – the largest home defence wargame exercise in decades – will take place in 2027, testing responses to ‘hybrid’ attacks alongside a major NATO drill.
Officials frame it all around Russian cyber threats, sabotage risks and the need to update the old Government War Book. Yet the timing and language raise a sharper question about what Whitehall is actually preparing for.
BREAKING: The UK will hold its largest home defence exercise in decades next year
Dubbed ‘Operation Albiston Shadow’ Sky’s @haynesdeborah says it will play out over a number of days and will be testing the UK’s responses to ‘hybrid’ threats under the threshold of conventional… pic.twitter.com/HZTqjNlVvl
Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister Darren Jones stated “The government will do all it can and we are well prepared – but we can all play our part to keep ourselves and our loved ones safe. This campaign will help the public to take small but important steps to be prepared in case of emergencies and disruption – be that severe weather or a cyber-attack, which can impact access to power, water, or phone signal.”
Armed Forces minister Louise Sandher-Jones was more explicit about the external threat: “Russia is not only a threat to NATO’s eastern flank. It is a direct threat to the UK homeland and these exercises, together with important measures like updating our ‘War Books’, will help prepare us to meet that threat, as well as showing the British public how seriously we are taking it.”
The Cabinet Office has updated the National Risk Register with new scenarios including cyber attacks on data, water and police systems, digital resilience failures modelled on the 2024 CrowdStrike outage, and foreign interference in democracy.
BREAKING: The UK will hold its largest home defence exercise in decades next year to better prepare the country for the possibility of war.
Dubbed “Operation Albiston Shadow”, it will likely involve ministers as well as hundreds of officials from across government and the public…
Operation Albiston Shadow will involve hundreds of officials, ministers and agencies role-playing a multi-day national crisis focused on hybrid attacks below the threshold of conventional war. It is designed to test current assumptions and ensure readiness “should the worst ever happen.”
The government is also quietly reviving elements of the old War Book – the detailed Cold War-era plan that once covered everything from industrial mobilisation and food stockpiles to mass casualty management and the survival of government itself. That document was largely abandoned after the Cold War; updating it now signals a serious shift.
On the surface this looks like prudent planning against a hostile foreign power. Russia has been accused of cyber operations, espionage and probing NATO airspace. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has previously cited Western intelligence assessments that Russia could attack a NATO member as soon as 2030.
Yet the distance between the United Kingdom and any realistic Russian ground threat is vast, and the emphasis on household stockpiles, critical infrastructure protection and whole-of-society mobilisation sits uneasily with pure external-defence rhetoric.
This is where the deeper context becomes impossible to ignore. In 2025, Professor David Betz of King’s College London, a specialist in modern war and unconventional conflict, publicly argued that the British government is preparing for the possibility of civil conflict at home while using the Russian threat as a politically convenient cover.
Speaking about the 2025 National Security Strategy – which stated “For the first time in many years, we have to actively prepare for the possibility of the UK homeland coming under direct threat” and prioritised protection of undersea cables, energy pipelines and logistics hubs – Betz observed: “there is growing apprehension about the security of Britain, the security of its infrastructure specifically, and about the potential for active conflict at home in a very direct manner, effecting people in a very direct manner.”
He continued: “But that’s not external in origin, that’s internal, and that has to do with the way our society is now configured, it is highly fractured.” Betz described a society marked by “Low trust, highly fractured, and highly politically factionalised which is leading us increasingly inevitably into civil conflict.”
On the Russian narrative he was blunt: “The fact of the matter is there is a great distance between us and Russia… we are not militarily threatened in a direct way on the ground by any obvious external enemy, even Russia… one of those is not occupying the village green with Russian soldiers, that simply, frankly, is a rather bizarre assertion.”
The real concern, he argued, is domestic: “What they’re concerned about is domestic conflict, and they perfectly understand this, but that’s completely politically toxic for them to say so publicly, hence the convenience of saying ‘we need to develop… a citizen’s militia for the protection of critical infrastructure’. To say that we’re doing this against the potential of Russian attack, which is frankly a logically absurd proposition, but it is convenient as a pretext.”
Betz has repeatedly warned that Europe faces a statistically significant chance of civil war in a major country within five years, with spillover risks, and that governments may only be able to prepare rather than prevent the deterioration. His advice to individuals has been practical: reduce exposure to big cities if possible.
Betz’s analysis tracks the same societal fractures – low social trust, political factionalism, rapid demographic change and collapsing faith in institutions – that successive governments have accelerated through mass immigration policies while denying their consequences.
Critical infrastructure hardening, citizen resilience messaging and large-scale home defence exercises make perfect sense if planners believe the primary threat could come from within a polarised population rather than from Russian troops landing on British beaches.
Updating the War Book and running Operation Albiston Shadow allow the state to rehearse command, control and societal mobilisation without ever having to admit the internal drivers.
The pattern is consistent with earlier signals. Promises of a volunteer Home Defence Force to protect infrastructure appear to have been quietly shelved amid budget pressures, yet the broader shift toward treating the homeland as a potential battlespace continues.
Officials stress “whole of society” involvement. That language is not limited to foreign hybrid warfare; it is exactly the vocabulary used when states prepare for internal disorder.
None of this proves an imminent civil war. It does show a government that has spent years denying the reality of social breakdown now scrambling to prepare the public and its own machinery for disruption that could overwhelm normal emergency responses.
Telling people to stockpile food and water is an admission that the state cannot guarantee continuity of basic services. Framing the entire effort around Russia provides political cover while the underlying fractures – created by policy choices that prioritised open borders and demographic engineering over cohesion – continue to deepen.
The British public is being told to get ready. The only remaining question is what exactly they are being prepared for. The official answer is Russian hybrid threats. The deeper reading, supported by serious academic analysis of societal conflict, points to something far closer to home.
Rare Wartime Protests Across Ukraine As Zelensky Moves To Oust Defense Chief
Rare wartime protests have broken out in Ukraine in the wake of President Zelensky sacking his popular Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov – which is reportedly in process but not finalized yet.
The 35-year old defense chief was only six months into his tenure, and is widely hailed as a reformist innovator who has turned the tide of war, having overseen a strategy of punishing wave after wave of devastating drones on Russian energy infrastructure.
The NY Times on Thursday said that “thousands of people took to the streets of cities across Ukraine on Thursday to protest” his dismissal.
This marks only the second time of the war that protests of this size have broken out in the capital and other cities, related to deeply unpopular moves and policies of President Zelensky:
The demonstrations were only the second large street protests in Ukraine during more than four years of war. Rallies also took place last year against a move by President Volodymyr Zelensky to neuter anticorruption agencies.
On Thursday, protesters poured into a square in central Kyiv, the capital. They turned out in Odesa, in the south, and in Lviv, in the west. In the frontline city of Kharkiv, in the northeast, more than 300 protesters with cardboard signs crowded sidewalks, chanting “Shame, shame, shame!” Their numbers grew as the morning wore on.
Ukrainians started venting their anger on social media as soon as Fedorov’s impending dismissal was announced via Ukrainian national media.
Following the dismissal of Ukrainian Defense Minister Fedorov, protests have erupted in Kyiv, Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/LP9BQadzNG
Some of the main protest organizers are actually veterans of the current war with Russia, as one European publication details:
Dmytro Koziatynskyi, a war veteran who was a leading organizer of last summer’s mass protests in support of NABU and SAPO, posted on social media ”The defence minister is being removed in the middle of effective – finally effective! – reforms, replaced by someone under whom any hope of reform can be forgotten,” referring to Interior Minister Ihor Klymenko, who is poised to replace Fedorov.
“I call on all caring people to come out tomorrow at 9:01 a.m. to Franko Square and show the president that we are against constant reshuffles in the government and replacing effective ministers with convenient opportunists.”
“We will never defeat Russia as long as the same total stagnation and corruption rule our army and our ministries,” Koziatynskyi wrote.
Chief Foreign-Affairs Correspondent of the WSJ, Yaroslav Trofimov, has pointed out that “Many Ukrainians (and not just Ukrainians) see this as Zelensky putting petty politics ahead of winning the war.”
If the protests grow rapidly, it could cause Zelensky’s external supporters to sour on him…
Important to note that Zelensky has not yet officially announced that he is replacing Fedorov. He still has room to reconsider before he potentially faces a new Maidan tomorrow. https://t.co/x57ig1ezki
Fedorov’s firing and replacement is not yet fully a done deal. However, Zelensky has been open about a government shake-up and reset, but the motives behind it are unclear and have unleashed confusion across Ukrainian society.
