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  • 6/11/2025
In this explosive Forbidden News update ๐Ÿ“ฐ๐Ÿ”ฅ, geopolitical analyst Mark Sleboda joins Rachel Blevins to break down Russiaโ€™s record-breaking strikes on Ukraine ๐Ÿ‡ท๐Ÿ‡บ. According to Sleboda, these are just the opening moves in a broader retaliation campaign against Kyiv, with even more powerful options on the table ๐ŸŽฏโš ๏ธ. As tensions rise and the West watches closely, will the conflict escalate beyond what weโ€™ve seen so far? Get expert insights, bold truths, and unfiltered analysis the mainstream refuses to air ๐Ÿšซ๐Ÿ“บ. Stay informed โ€” the real story starts here. #MarkSleboda #RachelBlevins #RussiaStrikes #UkraineWar #ForbiddenNews #Geopolitics #Retaliation #Kyiv #RussiaUkraineConflict #WorldNews #DeepStateExposed #UncensoredNews #MilitaryEscalation #RealNews #TruthMatters #WesternMedia #Putin #NATOTensions #WakeUpWorld #GlobalCrisis
Transcript
00:00It is June 10th, 2025, and Russia continues to carry out massive waves of attack targeting
00:08various locations in Ukraine, including one of its largest attacks yet on Kiev on Monday night.
00:15But as it's doing this, there are a lot of questions. Is this the response that Putin
00:21was promising to the latest attacks that we've seen carried out by Kiev targeting not only
00:27military airfields in Russia, but also specifically Russian civilians? Or is this just the latest
00:34increase in the ongoing war? And will we see tensions escalate further when it comes to Russia's
00:41increase in targeted attacks? All of this as we have Zelensky also complaining very loudly
00:47about how unhappy he is with the U.S. right now, claiming that he wants to see action from America
00:55as Trump is in a position of continuing to supply the weapons and the military intelligence for
01:01Kiev and its military, but publicly acting like he's taking a bit of a step back and that, oh,
01:08Russia and Ukraine need to just fight it out for a while. So where does that leave us with the
01:14ongoing war and where are things headed? Well, we got into all of the latest with a special guest
01:19earlier. So let's take a listen to that conversation now. Joining me now to discuss is
01:25international relations and security analyst Mark Sloboda. Mark, thanks so much for taking the time
01:32to join me. Rachel, thanks for having me. It's always an honor and a pleasure to be on the show.
01:38Always good to have you. Now, I want to get your take on the latest here. As reports noted and Russia
01:44confirmed that they carried out a new wave of overnight strikes on Monday night, marking one
01:50of the largest attacks yet on Kiev. And now it has been a little over a week since the Ukrainian drone
01:58attack targeting military airfields across five Russian regions. And we know that Putin did tell
02:04Trump on the phone, hey, Russia has got to respond to this, right, as a way to say, hey, you knew that this
02:10was happening. Even if you claim that you didn't, there has to be a response. So are we seeing that
02:16response now? And what do you make of the increased attacks coming from Russia? Okay, so over the past
02:23week, essentially, a little over a week, Russia has fired drones and missiles nearly every night.
02:32And it has to be said that Russian, from what we know of Russian missile production numbers,
02:39which are quite high compared to their Western counterparts. And from what we know from statements
02:45by the German defense minister, Pistorius, Russia is producing far more than it has been using and in
02:54general using in special military operations, such that the German defense minister expressed alarm
03:00that Russia is essentially stockpiling. They're producing far more than they're using. And one of
03:07those is with missiles. Russia now certainly has quite a stockpile of missiles built up because of a
03:17relative paucity of use over the last two or three months. So we can expect that at, you know, the
03:27current rate of missiles and now drones, long range strike drones like the Garan that we're seeing,
03:35that this type of pressure can continue on a nightly basis for some time, for quite some time. In fact,
03:44there's room for it to escalate. We are very close to seeing, according to Zelensky himself,
03:55Russia producing and launching about 500 Garan strike drones a night, producing every day, 500 Garans.
04:07And these are Russia's long range strike drones that who's already wartime evolutionary ancestor was the
04:16Iranian Shahhead 136. But the newest Garans have jet engines, no more lawnmower noise. They cruise at high
04:27altitude and dive down at extremely sharp, fast angles that are extremely hard to hit them. They carry
04:34a payload that is six times what it originally was. So this is very significant. Now, the Kim regime has also
04:44been returning on a nightly basis with hundreds of drones. These drones are less effective. They carry a much
04:54less payload. And there's a big, huge difference on the two sides between Russia has an enormous integrated,
05:05interconnected, multi-layered air defense and electronic warfare system that protects their cities,
05:15in particular Moscow. But I mean, the entire country to one degree or another, whereas the Kim regime
05:23effectively has no air defense left. And we see that on a nightly basis. We see, we saw just a night ago,
05:32the Kim regime claimed that of some 300 drones that were launched, it managed to take down all but two,
05:39right? It intercepted all but two of them. It's just that those two of them hit 370 some targets.
05:45This is the Baghdad level, Bob level propaganda. The videos that Ukrainians themselves facing the threat
05:57of prosecution are posting on social media channels tells a quite different story about the now nightly
06:06barrage of both drones and missiles. Now, I do not think we have reached the level of what the Russian
06:17government would consider a response for. There's really two events. They both happened on the same
06:24day, right? There was actually three. The first one is, shall we say, less important. Another failed
06:31maritime drone attack on the Crimean Bridge. Okay. But we also saw a destruction of bridges. Okay,
06:39bridges, legitimate military target. However, a bridge with a civilian passenger train moving above
06:46it at the time that it was detonated is not a legitimate military target. That's a war crime
06:52and an act of terror. So that has Russia to some degree more riled up than the other attack that
07:01occurred on the same day, which was the Operation Spiderweb using these drones hidden in cargo trucks
07:09that attacked Russia's bombers that were part of its nuclear triad at several different bases around the
07:16country. So it's not just a response to the Operation Spiderweb we're looking at, but it's also a
07:25response to what the Russian government considers an egregious terrorist attack on Russian civilians,
07:32far from the first one, such incidents. I don't think we've reached the level yet that the Russian
07:41government would consider. I don't think it's going to be just a one-off affair. I think we're going to
07:48see an increasing amount of long-range strike pressure targeting drone facilities, targeting weapon
07:56depots, targeting energy infrastructure to make it harder for their distributed military industrial
08:04systems such as it is to produce more and so forth. But I still think that we're going to see a larger,
08:15more demonstrative strike yet to come. And that could very well involve something a little more,
08:24shall we say, forceful and flashy, like the Ereshnik hypersonic ballistic system. And we had comments from
08:34the Russian chief negotiator once again at Istanbul, Vladimir Medinsky, who in his comments to the
08:42press outright said the Russian people actually expect to see Oreshniks hitting Kiev or Lavov, you know,
08:49hitting the Kiev regime somewhere as a response to those attacks on Russia at some point. And we've heard
08:56lots of chatter, unconfirmed, right? But the Russian war journalists, war bloggers, telegram channels
09:05are talking about reports that the Kremlin has essentially sought permission from secret courts.
09:14Russia has, does have its laws and special military operation does not evidently allow legally for the
09:24specific targeted of political leaders of the opponent, something that the Kiev regime has had no problem
09:30attempting to do, which is one of the reasons why Putin is considering publicly now shifting the designation to a
09:40counter-terror operation, particularly in light of the recent attacks. But that they've requested permission
09:47to go after the Kiev regime's intelligence officials in a way that we haven't seen before.
09:53Maybe not just targeted long-range strikes, but maybe other methods of hunting them down and
10:01taking them out one by one. And this would be seen as, you know, a kind of direct response. If it was,
10:10as has been themselves claimed, the Kiev regime's intelligence, the SPU that carried out these attacks,
10:17then they will be the ones who will pay the brunt of the price. Russia is not going, despite belief, you know,
10:25general and, and the way things are spun in the press, Russia has, is conducting these strikes on a nightly basis,
10:34and you do not see hundreds of civilian casualties, such as you might see with, I don't know, say, U.S. strikes on Yemen,
10:43that just occurred, or Israeli strikes on Gaza, which means that Russia is going, you see, you know,
10:51maybe a dozen injuries and one death from hundreds of strikes, right? That shows that Russia is going
10:59out of their way to avoid collateral damage to, and almost in, in considering what the other side has
11:10done in this conflict to, to, to, to an almost excessive. But I do think we're going to see more,
11:16either long range or other types of targeted attacks, particularly at the Kiev regime's
11:21intelligence, and maybe even some of their political leaders. And that's when we'll know that that is,
11:28you know, shall we say, what Russia would consider evening the scorecard or, or retribution.
11:34Yeah, it's been interesting to watch as, you know, Russia unveiled the
11:38Oreshnik and was like, hey, don't make us use this. And then it seems like Kiev and the West have been
11:44trying to push them to that point ever since, right?
11:48Oh, oh, oh. Yeah, yeah. And they've got to respond at some point. It's also been interesting to see some of
11:55the commentary that we've heard from Zelensky in recent days. He's accusing Russia of using at least two
12:03North Korean-made ballistic missiles in the latest attack. I guess he's got to throw North Korea in
12:09there. And he's demanding, quote, action from America, which has the power to force Russia into
12:16peace, so he says. Now this is, he also is accusing the U.S. of diverting 20,000 missiles that Biden
12:24promised to Ukraine to the Middle East. So how do you view Zelensky's comments, kind of the
12:30position that he's in? I know he's trying to get something out of Trump, but it almost kind of seems
12:36like Trump is like, oh, you know, I'm even just with his phone call with Putin. He's like,
12:41Putin said he had to respond. Well, we know that the U.S. is still very involved in this conflict,
12:46but Trump himself is trying to not make it seem as though he is at least publicly.
12:52Okay, so I think we're definitely seeing Zelensky, you know, desperation on his part. The
12:58Russian response, having what I consider not even reached its peak, you know, such as it is,
13:05is still having them sweating. And their air defense at this point, their Western-provided air
13:11defense is either non-existent and or non-effective, right? And that's perfectly clear. So he has a
13:20reason, of course, to be demanding more from his Western patron. The question is, do they even have
13:25it to give without stripping their own militaries to the bone, which they do not appear willing to do
13:33to a degree further than they already have? So with regards to complaints about Korean ballistic
13:43missiles, just so we understand the rules of the game, the Kiev regime, you know, the U.S. is proxy
13:48regime in Ukraine, that they can use the weapons of the United States and all of NATO and the collective
13:55West and whatever other countries, Pakistan, South Korea, you know, Israel, Serbia, you know,
14:04whatever weapons they can rope in, the Kiev regime can use. But Russia is only allowed to use its own
14:11weapons or not even those and they can't get it from its own allies. Okay. Right. Okay. Well, you know,
14:17I mean, that's a really interesting rules of the game, but unfortunately, Russia is not playing by
14:22those rules. And the conflict has already become a collective coalition proxy war on Russia. If Russia
14:33has aid from one or two specific allies, I think the Western media and Zelenskyy are just going to have
14:40to suck that fact up. With regards to this recent episode, yeah, obviously the Trump administration
14:50is still divided. We hear contradictory statements coming out of different figures within the
14:57administration. Trump leans one way one day, one way the other day. And obviously, you know, he hasn't
15:05made a firm decision. He doesn't know what he's doing. There does not seem to be a plan. He seems
15:14to be waffling between sanctioning Russia, sanctioning both countries, providing more weapons or walking
15:21away. And right now things are just they're not consistent and no one really seems to understand
15:31what Trump is going to do. I doubt very much that Trump understands what Trump is going to do at the
15:37moment, which is is leading to some some chaos and confusion. But there's a reason I called Trump the
15:43chaos bomb because that's that's what we're seeing here. What Zelenskyy is crying about most particular
15:50is about a few thousand small kind of ad hoc air defense missiles. These are not like Patriot
16:03interceptors. These are smaller, old dumb bombs that supposedly have been upgraded with a guidance kit.
16:12And they are to be used to take down drones. Right. That that's what these are for. These are
16:21essentially a small anti drone missiles. We don't know much about their effectivity. I would guess
16:29that it's probably not incredibly high. But anyway, the Biden evidently ordered their their construction,
16:38right? They're they're upgrading from old dumb bombs, turning them into anti drone, small anti drone
16:45missiles. And they were to be provided to the Kiev regime. But now that they've been produced and Biden
16:51is gone, Trump decided actually that US forces actually need them more in the Middle East. And
16:56he's ordered them sent to US troops in the Middle East rather than to the Kiev regime, which has Zelenskyy
17:03wailing. It's really hard to see. You know, I mean, if Trump is expecting conflict in the Middle East,
17:10you know, then you could understand why. And considering how well the United States did
17:17not against the Houthis, against the our onslaught movement. Right. Then if there is a further conflict
17:25about the breakout with a much more significant power like Iran, you could see why Trump might be
17:32wanting to provide some type of anti drone protection for US forces and bases in the Middle
17:39East. And it is actually a pretty easy decision for a US president to make to prioritize the defense of
17:47his troops, no matter what the context of their situation and whether they should be or not. That's
17:53another that's a whole nother story. But over a proxy regime that that that Trump only cares about
18:00evidently on every other day. So that's Zelenskyy can can gnash his teeth and wail and pull out his
18:09hair. But he's obviously not going to get those anti drone missiles. Yeah. Unfortunately for Zelenskyy,
18:14Trump made that decision on a Monday instead of a Tuesday. If it would have been Tuesday, maybe he
18:19would have said, hey, Kiev, you can have whatever you want. But alas, here we are. Now, as all of this is
18:25going on, you have Russia's defense ministry confirming on Sunday that Russian forces have
18:31advanced to the edge of the East Central Ukrainian region of Nepropetrovsk for the first time amid other
18:38advances in the Donetsk and Sumy regions. So will you take us through kind of what is the situation
18:44like on the battlefield right now and just how significant is the movement that we're seeing?
18:49Okay, so Russia is advancing pretty much all along the ridiculously large contact line, right? In the
18:58south, the Donbass area, Harukov, and then up across the north, Harukov, the Sumy region, so everywhere.
19:08But one of, shall we say, the most dramatic advances continues to be
19:13in the direction of southwestern Donbass, west of Pokrovsk, where Russian forces have just been
19:24trundling along and have now reached the border and crossed into, for the first time, the Dnipropetrovsk
19:34region, which, you know, the capital city there is Dnipro, the way the Kiev regime calls it now,
19:41or Dnipropetrovsk, which is one of Ukraine's major cities. The terrain in the Dnipropetrovsk region is
19:51quite different than in the Donbass, whereas in the Donbass, the terrain was hilly, valleys, forested,
20:02with lots of small urban settlements, towns, all kind of agglomerated together, where fortifications
20:10were built up over eight years of civil conflict in the country. The Dnipropetrovsk region looks more
20:19like the rest of Ukraine than that. It's open, flat, steppe. There are no geographical barriers,
20:26there are geographical problems, there are little to no fortifications built. It's a completely
20:32different geographical battlefield there, that when an opponent like Russia has clear air power,
20:42artillery, drone, all these long-strike advantages means that Russia will move much faster through this
20:50terrain than they had in the three years of this conflict that has taken them to battle through
20:57the Donbass in a war of attrition. Actually, some DRG groups, Diversion and Reconnaissance groups,
21:05moved into Dnipropetrovsk already two or three weeks ago, but now the Russia military is there in force
21:13officially. And what's more, they're obviously giving signals they're not stopping at the border,
21:18that they're moving in force into the Dnipropetrovsk region. And that is going to cause huge logistical
21:25problems for basically the Kiev regime's entire position east of the Dnipropetrovsk, if Russia looks
21:36to expand rapidly in that region and perhaps move towards the city of Dnipropetrovsk eventually,
21:45the way it looks like what they're doing now. But it has to be said that at the same time as Russia's
21:50moving west there, Russian forces are also moving from the south north in the direction of the Dnipropetrovsk
21:59river towards Arayhoff and eventually Zaporozhia city as well. So it's not only one direction that
22:05Russian forces are essentially moving towards the Dnipropetrovsk river. And we hear comments now
22:12coming out of the Kiev regime about what are supposedly Russian plans for the future. And
22:19according to those comments that we've seen that the Russian forces are now set on taking everything
22:27in Ukraine east of the Dnipropetrovsk by the end of next year. So which, depending on how things go on
22:38mopping up the last defensive lines in Donbass this late summer and the autumn, that is not an unrealistic
22:47goal. Considering the slow crumbling of the Kiev regime forces, their mass force conscription, unable to
22:57meet their losses, not only on the battlefield, but the Kiev regime is now reporting that they're losing
23:03almost 20,000 troops a month, more than they're bringing in through desertion, right? And this is
23:12according to Ukraine's own numbers. In the first five months of this year, 91,000 Ukrainian troops, you know,
23:22many of them probably forced conscripts that didn't want to fight in the first place, have abandoned
23:27their positions and just, and that comes on top of more than 100,000 before. And those numbers are
23:33official. They are almost certainly a severe underestimate. Because a lot of the Kiev regime
23:43military commanders, the pay for their troops often comes to them and is then distributed. And if their
23:51troops disappear, they just keep collecting the money. It's a known phenomenon. The Kiev regime's
23:59own media has quietly been reporting about this whole conflict, these ghost soldiers and so forth,
24:06which would mean there's probably maybe up to double the official desertion rate that is not being
24:13counted. It's really easy to do the math and it doesn't look good for the Kiev regime in that position,
24:19especially with Russia opening up whole new fronts in completely new regions when there hasn't been
24:25fighting before. They already have overstretched manpower issues and they're bleeding troops while the
24:32Russian military is gaining size and strength and combat efficacy every month. The writing is on the
24:43wall. The only question is how much longer until the Kiev regime's military starts crumbling at a faster
24:51rate that might lead to some type of contact line collapse. Yeah, goodness. That's so interesting too,
24:58to think about just how it's mind-boggling to think of the sheer number that, yeah, if that's
25:04the official number coming from Ukraine, then it's likely much, much higher. Now, while I have you
25:11here, I also want to ask about the latest coming out of Europe because I know that they are a factor
25:16as well. You have the European Commission working on their 18th package of sanctions against Russia,
25:23which reports say will propose lowering the Russian oil price cap and banning the use of Nord Stream
25:30infrastructure. So things that I think are really gonna hit Russia where it hurts. You also have NATO
25:37Secretary General Mark Rudow warning that Russia could be ready to attack NATO in the next five years. So
25:45whatever they can say at these war rallies to get things going and get support for Ukraine. But how do you
25:51view the position that Europe is in right now and kind of this mounting conflict that is continuing to
26:01increase? Because it seems like even as Russia keeps advancing, Europe still, the rest of the EU,
26:07the UK, they're not figuring it out and seeing the writing on the wall and realizing where things are
26:13actually headed. It's funny how all of this scaremongering that, oh, if Russia wins in Ukraine,
26:20they'll be in Poland the week after that, and then Lisbon two weeks after that, and three weeks after
26:27that, they'll be in Peoria. You know, all that type of scaremongering still hasn't convinced many, if any,
26:35European countries to substantially increase their defense spending or to start mobilizing troops or
26:43anything like that, if they really believe that they might really be doing. So we're gonna have to
26:49classify that as unsubstantiated scaremongering to try to coerce, browbeat European countries into
27:02providing more military assistance to the Kiev regime. When they're all, I mean, we've heard
27:09France say, we're tapped out, we can't give any more. We've heard the UK say, we're tapped, we give
27:14out, we can't give any more. A previous German administration has said the same. The new German
27:20administration seems convinced they can scrape the bottom of the barrel a bit more and provide some
27:26more. And we're all waiting to see if Meritz delivers the Taurus cruise missiles, even if they
27:32are transferred with a made in Ukraine stamp on them, that's not Taurus cruise missiles.
27:40We'll see going forward. But, you know, when you say that, you know, the Europeans are still
27:47important in what goes on. I gotta say, I mean, to a degree, but the words impotent and irrelevant
27:59are just two of them that spring to mind. And this latest sanctions package, because the first
28:0528,000 sanctions weren't enough to do the job, but surely this is going to be the one that breaks,
28:12the straw that breaks the camel's back. So we're going to sanction a pipeline that is non-functioning
28:19that our hegemonic master, the United States, already blew up all but one pipeline. But
28:28why they're really sanctioning it, this is actually maneuvering by the new government in Germany.
28:35And they want to make sure that Nord Stream isn't revisited in the future by future administrations.
28:46That's why they're putting this in. They're also worried by, let's say, suggestions coming out of
28:54some people in the Trump administration that Nord Stream could be restarted as long as the Americans
29:01were given control of the pipelines to profit off of Russian gas coming through them to Europe.
29:11I don't think that's going to happen at all. But it's interesting to note that these, in particular,
29:17this sanction is more meant at heading off future German governments from turning back to the one
29:25pipeline that is still undestroyed and at least theoretically capable of functioning,
29:32and against the Trump administration from thinking that they could muscle in and somehow coerce
29:44an unwilling German government to taking the energy it needs back from Russia as long as America can
29:50scrape a profit off of it. I don't see Russia ever agreeing to that to begin with. It sounds really
29:57weird. But I think they're heading it off. The other things that they're, you know, they're sanctioning
30:02an oil price cap that the headlines of nearly every major paper, including the Wall Street Journal and
30:11the Financial Times have admitted previously has not been having an effect anyway. Let's lower it, though,
30:21then it will really have an effect. I don't think so, because the rest of the world is not concerned
30:26with what Europe thinks the global market should be paying for Russian energy. They want energy and
30:35they'll buy it, yes, at the cheapest they can get it from Russia, but that is not a price that's going
30:40to be dictated by Europe or the United States or anyone else. And it must be said that the other
30:47major oil producing countries in the world, like, I don't know, say Saudi Arabia and the rest of the
30:55OPEC countries are really unhappy with such measures by the US and the Europeans just setting a precedent
31:05that the Western powers, the consumers think that they can dictate the price of oil on the global
31:14market. That just really rubs them the wrong way because, you know, that's weapons, you know,
31:21financial weapons, however ineffective that could be turned on them at some point in the future. They
31:26just don't like that precedent at all. So I haven't seen, they're going to sanction another 77 ships of
31:34Russia's quote unquote shadow fleet, Babylon 5 or whatever, which simply means ships that aren't
31:43insured by London, which is a growing number of ships around the world to be perfectly honest. But
31:52that hasn't stopped the oil trade between Russia and China. It hasn't stopped the oil trade between
31:57Russia and India. Workarounds are always found. Ships are sold. They're renamed. They're, you know,
32:03all of this. It's a game that's going on. Russia and, you know, the countries in Eurasia that
32:13continue to buy Russian energy have long since adapted to this game of not even defying sanctions,
32:21simply almost immediately and having workarounds. In fact, workarounds that are often planned out
32:27before the sanctions are officially announced. So I don't expect that these sanctions to have any more
32:34effect on Russia's trade and economy with its, you know, the rest of the world that doesn't follow
32:39Western sanctions on Russia than has been seen previously. In fact, the only one at the end of
32:45the day that's likely to hurt from these sanctions is the Europeans once again, as Viktor Orban so eloquently
32:52put it with these sanctions. It's not so much that we're shooting ourselves in the foot. It's that
32:58we're shooting ourselves in the lung. I was literally just sitting there thinking no one
33:06hurts the European people more than the European politicians. Like it's as if they get in a room and
33:11they go, okay, what can we come up with that is so bad for the public? And I guess if the 18th sanctions
33:18package doesn't do it, they're probably going to do a 19th and a 20th. They're already, they're already
33:22working on the 19th and the 20th package somehow. So it's interesting that this is being rolled out
33:28without us support at the vocal support, at least at the moment, which will make it even less effective
33:36than it already was going. Yeah. Very telling. They, they just keep going. Like that's all that they
33:42know how to do, but I guess Russia also just keeps going on its end. Certainly a lot at stake here all
33:50around. And I'm very curious to see what their response looks like when we really start seeing
33:55things ramp up. And I'm looking forward to having you back on to talk about it. International relations
34:01and security analyst, Mark Sloboda. Thanks so much for your time and insight. Thanks for having me.
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