Ukraine vs Russia IV - The Betrayal

Just saw this on thread and have not looked for further confirmation yet but I would not be shocked if true.


“INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION LEAKED TO PUTIN: French intelligence, working with Ukraine, deliberately fed false high-level intelligence to Trump’s regime to test whether it would leak. That information quickly surfaced in Russian channels, confirming their worst fears. As a result, France and other European services have effectively cut the United States out of critical intelligence flows related to Ukraine and broader security matters."
Ben Meiselas meidasplus

 

The Dutch already did that after Trump 1.0 derailed their hacking of a Russian hackers compound. We (our intelligence) literally could see what those guys were doing, because we had access to their camera's inside the building.

 

The German startup Helsing was supposed to be a big part of the dronification of Europe's militaries. Originally a pure AI company, they started making drones in 2022 and were putting AI piloting in drones and aircraft for various purposes. They sent a bunch of their HX-1 and HX-2 loitering munitions to Ukraine. Now Bloomberg is reporting that Ukraine has stopped their contract with them. The drones simply don't work - they are easily jammed and suffer many flight issues.

 

Russia's budget situation at the end of the year is confused and might take a while for us to figure out. At almost the end of the year they had a 7 trillion ruble deficit. Not squaring that means lots of companies simply didn't get paid at the right time. But Russia also reduced their spending by 20%(!) in December. That means anything non-military was cut to the bone and then some. But we might see a big spending January to make up for it.

They did sell 13 tons of gold from their Welfare Reserve, but that isn't used for budgets any more and probably went to banks or other too-important-to-fail companies.

 

Ukraine's recent attacks include the oil loading port at Tuapse and a oil storage yard where Ukraine turned one large tank of oil into a large plume of smoke. Don't know why Ukraine has (apparently) stopped attacking refineries.

Ukraine is attacking powerplants, and combined with typical Russian maintenance of their power grid a lot of Russians are very cold right now. It's not all bad news - apparently streets of the cities in Irkutsk are littered with rat corpses as they flee non-heated buildings and freeze to death on the roads.

 

Is it possible that they are ttacking but those are getting better defenses?

 

That's certainly possible. Around the time attacks tapered off, Russia activated large numbers of reservists to man heavy machineguns around sensitive areas. I didn't think this would help, but maybe it did.

Whatever is going on, it's the kind of thing both sides would want to keep secret, so we are in the dark.

 

Renault is converting two auto plants in France into drone production. They will be making a drone based on a Ukrainian design which is based on the Russian version of the Iranian Shahed drone which is based on a Israeli design which is based on a German design. Car workers can volunteer to join the drone production line. The first are expected to roll off the line around June.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/technolog...r-french-forces/ar-AA1UAsjg?ocid=BingNewsSerp

 

On the other hand, dumps closer to the front are easier targets, and two decent sized ones in occupied territory have been hit in the last week. They can't be hidden for long because they invariably have many trucks visiting them, and at that distance they can be hit with bigger booms, either from glide bombs or GMLRS missiles.

The one that was hit today:

https://bsky.app/profile/militarynewsua.bsky.social/post/3mcv6nmibik2q

Nice.

 

An important note about Russia's Welfare Fund: while the amount of gold in it has been fairly stable, that is the amount in dollar terms. The thing is, gold has been gaining in value for quite a while, and Russia sells it as the price increases. So while the dollar amount is similar, Russia actually has half the gold it did two years ago.

 

This raises the question of what's happening with the much-vaunted Flamingo cruise missile. Its entire logic was that it's cheap and could be produced in bulk quantities.

In which case, why not use it on the Moscow power grid in retaliation and force the Russians to back off Kiev?

That it hasn't been used in this way - or many others that anyone has noticed - suggests the sceptics who noted its maker's opaque ownership and connections to Zelensky's less savoury backers.

 

I think that the Flamingo is just not that effective. It is too big and too visible for enemies' air defences.

Yeah, it is cheap compared to a tomahawk for its payload. But it is not that effective.

 

Gold is a bad investment in stable times. Trump is doing favors for Putin that he doesn’t even understand.

 

The DGSE is a very serious intel agency. The French don't have great SIGINT capacities but, among Western agencies, they excel at cultivating sources and agents.

The problem is that the US has SIGINT and satellite capacities that Europe doesn't have and take time to replace; 3-5 years according to some. Europe's finally moving/ Let's hope it's not too late

 

I mean in this particular case Ukraine has plenty of that covered

They seem to be deeply infiltrated with the Russians

 

I heard someone on TV yesterday (was it a former DGSE agent ? I can't remember) saying that the DGSE mostly used its SIGINT capacities, sensors and satellites, as human intelligence was very limited in Russia/Ukraine. I don't know much about it, as we generally only hear about the DGSE when it botches a mission, as it happens from time to time (the Rainbow Warrior, the failed operation to free its agent Denis Alex in Somalia)

 

They seem to have improved their capabilities the last few years. They have launched the CSO (Composante Spatiale Optique) constellation for high-resolution optical reconnaissance.

 

I'm not too aware of that to be honest. All I know comes from the excellent (and quite realistic) TV series "Le bureau des légendes"

 

We finally have some 2025 Russian budget numbers which were delayed by Russian Christmas and the time it takes to massage the numbers. They ended last year with a 5.6 trillion ruble deficit. If that sounds better than you might have expected, it's because they post-dated some of those bills. The deficit for 2026 is already 1.3 trillion rubles.

 

There are starting to be videos of Russian complaining about food costs. For many Russian they've doubled after New Year. While VAT only went up 2%, it is being applied to many more items than it did before because small store exemptions are gone.

 

In the Mediterranean, the French navy intercepted a cargo ship suspected of belonging to the Russian shadow fleet. The operation involved a French navy vessel, two helicopters, and a team of naval commandos. It was conducted in cooperation with France's allies, including the British.

https://www.lemonde.fr/internationa...nee-annonce-emmanuel-macron_6663670_3210.html

 

If this continues and speeds up, this would destroy Russia's shadow fleet and decimate their oil revenue. Current estimates are that as much as 70% of Russia's oil exports are being transported by oil and it is all on the shadow fleet. If the shadow fleet disappears, there goes Russia's oil exports, which absolutely tanks the countries economy.

 

Zelenskyy announced that there will be a tri-lateral meeting between Ukraine-US-Russia tomorrow in the UAE. This will be the first time that Ukraine and Russia will meet face to face in a long time. Since Trump appointed Witless as his envoy for this, all interactions between Ukraine and Russia peace envoys have been through the US. Witless has been running to Moscow, getting filled up with Russian propaganda, running back to the White House and regurgitating the Russian propaganda on Trump, who laps it up like some secret sauce. Europe and Ukraine then have to spend several weeks convincing Trump that everything Witless says is a lie and that he shouldn't trust him. Rinse and repeat.

https://euromaidanpress.com/2026/01...trilateral-meeting-with-us-and-russia-in-uae/

 

As part of the tri-lateral meeting, the US and Ukraine are reportedly going to offer Russia an energy truce that would see Ukraine and US stopping the attacks/seizure of Russia's oil refineries, export ports, and shadow fleet in exchange for Russia stopping its attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure.

https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/01/22/8017435/