By Boris Johnson
Sept 14, 2026
There is only one reason why Vladimir Putin is launching his vicious attacks on Ukrainian railways – including the otherwise pointless destruction of a stationary civilian shunting locomotive yesterday, only a mile or so from the Polish border.
The reason is that after four and a half years of a cruel and unnecessary war, in which he has lost 1.5million men, the Russian leader is getting absolutely desperate.
He is posting record losses every month – more than 40,000 men either killed or wounded so seriously that they cannot fight again, in both July and August.
Russia has not sustained losses like this since the Second World War. In the ten-year Afghan conflict, the Russians lost 15,000 men – and that was enough to help trigger the collapse of communism.
Putin cannot go on like this, and he knows it. He is killing more Russians (and assorted tragic North Koreans) than he can possibly recruit – not without a general mobilisation.
And he knows that Russian mothers will not allow that to happen. They will not send a whole generation to be slaughtered in the trenches of the Donbas, chased to death by the Ukrainian drones with the inevitability of wounded deer in flight before the wolves.
Putin knows the mood is even starting to change among Moscow military commentators, with some of his most bloviating and bombastic supporters now calling for talks. They have been appalled by the success of the Ukrainian drones. They have watched the roofs of their mighty oil refineries blown off like biscuit tins.
They have queued for hours for petrol – in one of the great oil and gas exporting countries in the world; and then found that 28 per cent of Russian stations supply fuel of such poor quality that you risk damaging your car’s engine.
There is a limit to the credulity of the Russian public, and the willingness of the Russian media to keep up the pretence that the war is going well.
This was supposed to be the decisive fighting season, and yet the gains have been trivial, and in some cases Putin’s forces have even been going backwards. The Russian leader is never going to take the Fortress Belt of the Donbas, not without sacrificing millions. He is never going to take the city of Zaporizhiyya. That is why he has been stepping up his attacks on the railways, sending more and more missiles at passenger trains in what can only be described as terroristic attacks. There have been more attacks on passenger trains in the past six months than in the whole of the preceding four years.
It will not work. I know the Ukrainian railway company, Ukrzaliznytsia, very well. I have travelled in great comfort on their network for thousands of miles and indeed I passed through that border station shortly before yesterday’s explosion.
The company has already lost 1,700 employees to Putin’s utterly criminal attacks. They are heroes. They will not give in now. They are capable of rebuilding track and bridges with prodigious speed, and the civilian population of passengers continues to show a phlegmatic ability to endure Putin’s blitz. As one Ukrainian woman put it to me at the weekend: ‘It’s terrible to admit this, but we just learn to adapt and get on with our lives.’
The only way to get this foul war over is to show Putin the truth – that he has no chance of winning. That means doing much more to help the Ukrainians.
This weekend I visited the astonishing Ukrainian drone and missile start-up, Firepoint. They are now world leaders. They make the world’s best cruise missile – the Flamingo, that has been so devastating against Putin’s oil and gas industry.
But now they need to defend the trains and the cities, against Putin’s ballistic missiles, and against the new jet-powered Shaheeds. The Ukrainians desperately need better air defences, and with so many US Patriots being used up in the Gulf region, they have to be helped to make their own.
We need to give them the ‘seeker’ tracking systems to help them to take out Putin’s fast drones and neutralise his intercontinental ballistic missiles. It can be done, but it needs to be done fast.
Ukraine faces a grim winter, in which Putin is plainly going to step up his attempts to kill and terrify civilians – at work, at home, and on their way to work.
In the face of his new cruelty, and his new ruthlessness, we need a new seriousness from the West.
We need to help them to open the Black Sea ports, and get Ukrainian grain and other produce moving again.
We need to give them Starlink access to the skies above Russia, so they can take out the missile sites and bases that are being used to attack their populations.
We need to unfreeze the hundreds of billions of Russian cash – in Brussels and other Western capitals – and allow the Ukrainians to use it to fund their effort.
Putin will squeal. He will accuse the West of escalation – as he has at every stage in this conflict, of which he was the sole author, and which he could end tomorrow.
He will squeal because he is increasingly desperate. In the attacks on passenger trains, we see the bared teeth of a cornered rat. Sooner or later, he knows he will have to desist, and the more pressure we apply now, the sooner that moment will come.
Original article, with more content, here :
Darth Putin KGB :
Donald: “can you please stop striking Russian diesel refineries?”
Zelensky: “Sorry, but you don’t have any cards”
Garry Kasparov :
Trump points a gun at American economy, says he’ll pull the trigger unless everyone cooperates with destroying that same economy. Attacks Iran, causing oil prices to skyrocket, blames Ukraine. GOP, had enough winning yet?
Joe Thomas :
JD Vance: “Rumors swirling that the EU commission will fine X hundreds of millions of dollars for not engaging in censorship. The EU should be supporting free speech not attacking American companies over garbage.”
This is the same VP who called for anyone making memes about Charlie Kirk to be fired from their jobs, whose boss has comedians fired for making fun of him. I think I speak on behalf of the rest of the world when I say Vance is a hypocrite with zero credibility.
Roman Sheremeta :
Trump is asking Ukraine not to bomb russian oil refineries. How about a concession – russia gets out of Ukraine and Ukraine stops hitting russian refineries.
I would suggest for Trump to pass this proposal to his boss Putin.
Shaun Pinner :
An unelected American 🇺🇸 with no diplomatic experience is telling me to surrender my home, and telling Ukraine 🇺🇦 to surrender even more land, to an imperialist, fascist dictator committing acts of terrorism every day.
I never thought I’d see the day, but here we are, Jared Kushner, negotiating away somebody else’s country.
Adam Kinzinger :
On my way home from #Ukraine and will say more soon. But let me just say, again, the Ukrainian people are crushing Russia and are amazing people. Trump has taken our boot off the neck of Russia just in time to let it breathe.
The next president needs to commit to ending the war in Ukraine, by giving Ukraine everything they need to finish crushing the evil empire
Marijn Markus :
🎙 In Kyiv, Poland’s FM Sikorski said Poland would beat Russia quickly in case of a Russian attack if Warsaw fought with no constraints. He also said Poland has clear air superiority over Russia.
He added that if Ukraine took half of Russia’s refining capacity offline in six months, Poland could do it in six weeks and then finish the rest. You do help a lot, and maybe that’s how Poland sees it, but it’s not only about weapons or aircraft, it’s about people.
☝ We can debate the merit of his statements, but do not misrepresent them. He clearly meant NATO – not Poland going solo.
If not for any other reason, it’s clear from to the number of airplanes he mentioned.
PS: I would want Poland to win but that’s a lot of bravado for a country without nukes.
Marijn Markus :
🇩🇪 A German journalist posed as a 𝐏𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐧 𝐟𝐚𝐧 blogger and got recruited by 𝐑𝐮𝐬𝐬𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐞𝐧𝐜𝐞.
Through a German politician, no less.
This investigation should give everyone pause.
For several months, journalist Angelique Geray ran a fake channel under the identity of “Katya,” a pro-Russian activist, to investigate Russia’s network of so-called “disposable agents” in Germany.
Very quickly, she began receiving small assignments:
📸 Photograph a location. Pick up a package. Buy a SIM card. Gather information on politicians, arms companies and NGOs. Collect information on their employees.
Small paid tasks first, then increasingly sensitive missions.
And most of it happened through Telegram, of course.
Then it gets even more interesting:
Jovica Jovitch, political director of the BSW party, reportedly contacted “Katya” himself and advised her, among other things, to film herself dancing on a NATO flag.
When asked about links to Russian intelligence services, Jovitch replied that theoretically he knew nothing, but practically he did.
He, of course, now denies it all.
After Geray revealed the infiltration, she received dєатh threats.
☝ This is how Russian intelligence operates in Europe:
They approach people, test them with small assignments, pay them, build trust and gradually move them toward more serious tasks. Sometimes the people involved may barely realize what network they have entered until they are already useful – and compromised.
Pretending to be a Putin fan online was enough for a German journalist to get inside that ecosystem. Imagine how many others do the same.
📣 Certain pro-Russian propagandists across Europe spend their days repeating Kremlin narratives almost word for word. Asking whether some of them have been approached by Russian services is not some wild conspiracy theory but a very realistic question, because this stuff happens all the time.
Our continent, and parts of the European political class, have an infiltration problem.
https://www.rtl.de/news/russische-spionage-rtl-reporter-undercover-als-wegwerfagenten-was-plant-der-russische-geheimdienst-id31210191.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com
URGENT post from Kemil Kerimoglu :
The AfD Leader Alice Weidel on Ukraine:
“We will stop payments to Ukraine and all support for the war, and we will also make substantial repayment demands on Ukraine.”
Seriously, whatever good policy solutions they might have in other areas, in its current form, the AfD, must never be allowed to rule. Their rabidly anti-Ukrainian stance is disgusting and should be a deal-breaker for any decent person. It negates everything else.
They are effectively supporting the greatest white genocide currently. And once in power, they will aid and abet this white genocide. Ukraine’s pedicament is the most urgent and overarching. If one is forced to choose, everything else can, and MUST, wait. Support for Ukraine must be the single most important issue for any decent person – nothing comes even close. Any political movement not realizing this must not be allowed to rule, whatever other good policy solutions they might have.
“They are effectively supporting the greatest white genocide currently. And once in power, they will aid and abet this white genocide.”
Which is exactly what tovarisch Krasnov is doing RIGHT NOW.
Roman Sheremeta :
As a gesture of goodwill – and as Trump doubles down on blaming Ukraine for attacking russian oil refineries – Ukraine should double down on its strikes on russian oil refineries.