- 6/11/2025
In this explosive Forbidden News update ๐ฐ๐ฅ, geopolitical analyst Mark Sleboda joins Rachel Blevins to break down Russiaโs record-breaking strikes on Ukraine ๐ท๐บ. According to Sleboda, these are just the opening moves in a broader retaliation campaign against Kyiv, with even more powerful options on the table ๐ฏโ ๏ธ. As tensions rise and the West watches closely, will the conflict escalate beyond what weโve seen so far? Get expert insights, bold truths, and unfiltered analysis the mainstream refuses to air ๐ซ๐บ. 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
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NewsTranscript
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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