Data, Drones & Disinfo Details by a Dutch Dude Independent analysis of AI, drones, information warfare and European security. I explain how technology is reshaping war and conflict – and why it matters for our Europe.
As a data scientist, Marijn builds data-driven solutions to real-world problems at scale
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Marijn combines technical expertise with a strong foundation in social science to design solutions that don’t just work in theory, but in practice. His work focuses on turning complex data and optimization models into actionable insights for decision-makers.
Nov 10, 2026
To everyone who says “Russia just wants security” ☝️ Georgia wasn’t in NATO in 2008. It had no army that could threaten Moscow. Russia invaded anyway, and it still occupies a fifth of Georgia’s land to this day.
Security was never the point. Land and control was.
21.02.2008: Saakashvili offered to abandon Georgia’s NATO ambitions in exchange for Russia supporting the restoration of Georgia’s territorial integrity.
Putin laughed off the proposal and warned that the situation for Georgia would only get significantly worse in the future.
Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 & 2022.
Moscow wants to strip its neighbors of sovereignty and rebuild its sphere of influence across Europe.
“Security” is the pretext. Empire is the objective 👇
https://nl.linkedin.com/in/marijnmarkus
………..
Roman Sheremeta :
Former CIA Director David Petraeus:
With Budanov now heading the Presidential Office, Zelenskyy has someone close to him who deeply understands the military situation and ongoing operations.
I know Budanov well. He is very direct in his assessments. We first spoke by video when he was near the russian border, commanding one of the first operations on russian territory.
Petraeus in an interview with SpyCast:
Ukraine has the largest and most innovative army in Europe. It is doing what NATO armies would otherwise have to do themselves if russia achieved its objectives in Ukraine. Moldova would be next, and possibly Lithuania after that.
During my recent visit to Ukraine, a russian jet-powered drone struck the locomotive of a train on the track next to ours. The passengers on trains leaving Ukraine are mostly women and children. It was terrifying for them.
Russia has suffered 1.5 million killed and wounded, more than the United States suffered during the entire Second World War. Last month alone, Ukraine estimated approximately 46,000 russian casualties, while russia recruited only around 30,000 soldiers.
New recruits receive very little training. Ukrainian forces have captured russian soldiers who had been in the army for less than two weeks. They are practically cannon fodder.
Ukraine has struck every russian oil refinery within 3,000 kilometers of its border, many of them multiple times. Russian oil production has fallen below 9 million barrels per day for the first time since 2009.
Russians now use smartphone apps to find gas stations that still have fuel. The National Welfare Fund has been redirected toward the military-industrial complex and is expected to run out by the end of the year.
It is time for Europe and the United States to seize frozen russian reserves and provide them to Ukraine.
We tend to assume that Ukrainians are far ahead in military innovation, just as we assume the United States leads in artificial intelligence. But when you look closely, the gap is not always that large. In some areas, the russians have developed capabilities before the Ukrainians.
China, North Korea, and Iran are carefully studying what is happening in Ukraine.
The West needs to learn from Ukraine much faster. Simply buying drones for existing tank units is not enough. We need to fundamentally rethink our military structures because many traditional Western weapons systems would no longer survive on the Ukrainian battlefield. And we need to do this immediately.
The Ukrainian people have demonstrated extraordinary resilience. They have been absolutely unbreakable despite enormous pressure. But they are also exhausted, and another difficult winter lies ahead.
Source: SpyCast
Marijn Markus :
Where 𝗥𝘂𝘀𝘀𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗶𝗲𝗱, according to Russia’s own dєатh register.
Almost every dєатh act in the Rosstat register names a place of dєатh. Vitaly (@M0nstas) matched those places to settlements and put them on a map.
Of the 438,228 war-related dєатh acts:
– 389,719 (89%) name a place in Ukraine or in Russia’s Kursk, Belgorod and Bryansk oblasts.
– 10,007 diєd elsewhere in Russia, mostly in hospitals.
– 36,485 give no place of dєатh, most of them from 2022 and 2023.
📍 Donetsk oblast alone accounts for 248,686 dєатhs, or 64% of those with a recorded location.
Pokrovsk raion: 127,931. Almost a third of all geographically identified dєатhs.
Pokrovsk hromada alone: 44,951, of which 36,525 diєd in 2025.
No other hromada comes close:
Ocheretyne: 15,982
Velyka Novosilka: 15,608
Hrodivka: 15,081
Bakhmut: 14,167
📍 Kursk oblast: 19,476 dєатhs, including 8,825 in 2024 and 9,951 in 2025. Of those, 12,479 were recorded in Sudzha raion.
The deadliest hromadas each year follow the main Russian offensives.
2023:
Bakhmut: 6,336
Marinka: 2,905
2024:
Ocheretyne: 11,141
Marinka: 7,435
Avdiivka: 6,484
2025:
Pokrovsk: 36,525
Velyka Novosilka: 11,164
Hrodivka: 9,360
2026, through August:
Pokrovsk: 4,266
Huliaipole: 3,846
Lyman: 2,433
At the settlement level, the highest numbers are:
Avdiivka: 8,757
Kreminna: 7,937
Robotyne: 6,244
Makiivka (the village near Kreminna in Luhansk oblast): 6,120
Klishchiivka: 5,552
Bakhmut: 5,307
In total, dєатhs are recorded across 2,903 settlements. And these numbers come with an important caveat.
The early years are thin on the map, not in the register. 87% of 2022 acts and 28% of 2023 acts give no place of dєатh.
2026 is still filling in, as only about a third of dєатhs reach the register within three months.
These are recorded dєатhs, not necessarily the full number of Russian soldiers кillеd.
Hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers, thousands of settlements, and an extraordinary concentration of losses around Pokrovsk.
All according to Russia’s own records.
PS: Pokrovsk is 3x Bakhmut and yet Bakhmut still regularly comes up as the bl00diest battle of the war.
Joni Askola :
Ukraine’s willingness to halt fighting along current lines while Russia refuses proves that Moscow is vastly further from its objectives than Ukraine, and is therefore losing the unprovoked war it started.
Marijn Markus :
🔥 Russians warn that if Ukraine is not restrained by the US, they wipe out Russia’s entire refinery sector, completely collapsing the Kremlin’s war effort.
Russian economist Vyacheslav Shiryaev explains that Ukraine needs only 2-3 weeks to get this job done.
The National fund is gone and the gold is gone. The regime is struggling with the massive costs of this war.
This is the time to step foot on the peddle and blow out the money making centers of this regime. ALL refineries, ALL wildberries/ozon, ALL datacenters.
As without fuel or money, russia will not be able to threaten anyone.
While ignorant westerners argue about whether Moscow can be defeated (historically, it loses wars all the time) russians themselves are admitting the weakness of their position.
And the fragility of their colonial empire.