Day 1588
The big muzzie
It’s been disgusting to learn about the Trumps’ drone and scorched earth raw minerals Dominari gouge, but this takes the cake.
After Mr. Trump returned to the White House, Dominari hired Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump as paid advisers, giving them stock now worth about $7 million, representing about 10 percent of the company’s total shares. The firm launched an explicit effort to invest in companies aligned with the president’s agenda, ranging from military drones to critical minerals. - Trump Cut a Billion-Dollar Mining Deal. His Sons Stand to Profit. An agreement between the U.S. and Kazakhstan has given a group of American investors with ties to the president and the commerce secretary access to one of the world’s largest untapped reserves of tungsten (The New York Times, June 28, 2026)
On June 28, Vladimir Putin addressed the United Russia Party Congress to explain that everything is going very well. Ukraine is retreating along the entire frontline. The West cannot win. Russia is strong, united, and has always been strong and united, which is why it always wins.
Russia is also, simultaneously, going through a “difficult” and “fateful” time. Putin mentioned this too, in the same speech, without apparent embarrassment. The Kremlin is aware of all the problems and responding appropriately. Russia will fulfill all its social obligations. The gasoline shortages — nationwide, visible from space — went unmentioned, as did the Ukrainian drones that have been burning Russian oil infrastructure with the quiet diligence of a very motivated seasonal worker.
The United Russia Party announced that it is officially Putin’s party, the first time it has said so since 2007. Its campaign poster features his face and the slogan: United Russia is the president’s party. Being for Putin is the bare minimum. The letter Z appears in the design, because it would be a shame to waste a good war.
Medvedev unveiled the party’s top five candidates for the September Duma elections: a foreign minister, a mayor, a milblogger, a children’s rights commissioner under ICC indictment, and a seventeen-year-old boy named Vladislav who runs something called Yunarmia. The list, we are told, represents people Russians know for their “strong patriotism.” The bar for the other qualities was not disclosed.
Meanwhile the frontline moved slightly near Kupiansk, which is the military equivalent of adjusting a picture frame during a house fire. Russia launched 142 drones and six ballistic missiles at Ukraine overnight. Ukraine struck Russian oil refineries. Everyone is continuing.
The question everyone is discussing — in think tanks, in cafés, in the kind of Telegram channels that claim to know things — is what Putin does next, now that each thing Europe does goes unanswered, and each non-answer quietly expands what Europe believes is permitted. The Venezuelan tanker precedent. The shadow-fleet seizures. The gradual drift of the frontier of the possible.
The honest answer is: nobody knows. The optimists say the ceiling is real. The pessimists say we are measuring the ceiling while standing on a rising floor. Putin, for his part, is preparing for the September elections by putting his face on a poster with a war symbol and calling it a party.