Roman Sheremeta

Aug 12, 2026

Please don’t start with: “stay strong” if you want to support someone living through war.

I know those words come from kindness. But after another night of ballistic missiles… After another night of waking up to explosions… after another morning of checking who replied and who didn’t… What was hit..

Strength is the last thing many of us have left.

We’re simply exhausted. And not just physically.
It’s the kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot fix.
The kind that quietly settles somewhere deeper and slowly takes pieces of you while the world keeps calling it resilience.

When someone says – “Stay strong.” it quietly sounds like:
“Keep carrying it.”
“Keep surviving.”
“You’re so good at this.”

It doesn’t feel supportive. It feels like another reminder that we’re expected to carry this well.

What if, just for one day… we don’t want to survive gracefully?

What if we’re simply tired… and don’t want to be strong anymore?

Not because we’ve given up. But because we’ve been carrying this for years.

Support is not reminding us how strong we are.
Support can sound like:
“I can’t imagine how exhausting this must be.”
“I don’t know what to say, but I want to understand.”
“What would actually help you right now?”
“Do you want to talk or would silence be better?”
“How can I be useful, not just present?”

This is not about saying the perfect words. Not about giving advice. No expectations. No reminders about resilience.

Just permission to be human.

Because being strong all the time comes at a cost that very few people ever get to see.

And the truth is…

The people who seem the strongest are often the ones who are the most exhausted from being strong.

Source: text of Yulia Kulyk

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Last night, Ukraine’s Defense Forces carried out a unique operation targeting the naval base in Novorossiysk – the last major stronghold of the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, more than 300 kilometers from the front line.

Palianytsia jet-powered drones, Neptune missiles, and unmanned naval systems successfully struck the designated targets. Hits on air defense positions, piers, and seaport infrastructure have been confirmed.

Source: President Zelenskyy

Video and text :

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/19RDySS2xX/?mibextid=wwXIfr

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This is a brilliant explanation by the Vice-President of the European Commission, Kaja Kallas on why it is senseless to “negotiate” with russia.

There is a clear pattern to russian negotiations and it was best summed up by the former Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko:

• First, demand the maximum, do not meekly ask but demand.
• Second, present ultimatums.
• Third, do not give one inch of ground because there will always be someone in the west that will offer you something maybe half that you did not previously have.

If we allow russia to get something from the war against Ukraine, that would mean that aggression pays off and that others should do the same what russia did.

Video :

https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1ErRM9hQeq/?mibextid=wwXIfr

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In Kramatorsk, the russians destroyed another church. Since the beginning of the war, russia has destroyed over 700 churches in Ukraine.

I said this before – russia is a satanic country. It is the antithesis of Jesus and His teachings. Instead of life, russia brings death. Instead of peace, russia brings war.

“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full!’ – John 10:10

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What is the russian plan for Ukraine?

Erase Ukrainian identity. Replace it with a russian one. Reeducate and brainwash the population. Then use these people as tools for future russian expansion. It’s not new – it’s a pattern.

Just 35 years ago, Soviet troops, including Ukrainians, were stationed in East Germany as part of Moscow’s imperial military machine.

In the 1990s, Chechens fought bravely for their independence from russia. Today, after years of repression and indoctrination, many are forced to serve in russia’s army, including in the invasion of Ukraine.

Similarly, Ukrainians from territories occupied since 2014 have been conscripted into the russian military and thrown into brutal “meat assaults” against their own country.

The Kremlin’s strategy is simple: conquer, erase, reprogram, and redeploy.

And if the world allows it to succeed in Ukraine, it will do the same to others – again and again.

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Russia will launch a new wave of mobilization this fall – without calling it mobilization – aimed at recruiting up to 800,000 people.

Men will be detained under any pretext on the streets, at work, and in educational institutions, and then forced to sign a contract. There will be no medical examination (there is already a law allowing this). There will be no training either – essentially, they will be cannon fodder.

Russia is becoming increasingly less successful at recruiting people under contract. In the fourth quarter of 2025, recruitment fell by approximately one and a half times compared with the previous year. In the first quarter of 2026, around 800-1,000 people per day were signing contracts, 20% fewer than a year earlier.

The russian authorities are responding with increasingly aggressive recruitment. By August, 56 russian regions were already paying rewards to people who bring in a new contract soldier; a year earlier, there were 31 such regions. In some places, hundreds of thousands of rubles are paid for each recruited candidate, while in Smolensk region the reward has increased to one million rubles.

At the same time, administrative pressure on businesses and educational institutions is growing. In Ryazan region, employers are required to look for candidates for military contracts; in Orenburg region, there are targets for the share of employees sent to the military; at universities, recruitment targets are set for students to sign military contracts.

The russian authorities are gradually exhausting the cheap categories of recruits. People are increasingly being recruited from among detainees, convicted individuals, people with serious illnesses, and socially vulnerable groups.

There is another important signal: on July 27, Putin increased the authorized strength of the russian army for the third time in six months, to 1.535 million servicemen. In the past, increases in the authorized strength of the military have already preceded major recruitment campaigns, including the 2022 mobilization.

At the same time, over the past few years russia has built a much more effective administrative conscription system: an electronic military registration database, electronic summonses, the ability to automatically impose restrictions after a person is entered into the database, and year-round conscription procedures.

Thanks to this system, a future wave of mobilization in russia may look different from the outside than the 2022 mobilization. It may not be announced in one major decree accompanied by a televised address. It may consist of several parallel mechanisms: coercive contract recruitment, summonses to military enlistment offices, the use of reservists, electronic summonses, work through employers, the police, the Federal Penitentiary Service, and local administrations.

Source: based on the text of Anton Gerashchenko