In just two days, September 22nd and 23rd, President Donald Trump’s perception of the Russian war against Ukraine changed dramatically.
After speaking at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, President Trump met Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy and left with a whole new view of the Ukraine war.
Remember February 28th, 2025, just seven months ago, President Trump invited Zelenskyy into the Oval Office with six cabinet members and a gaggle of reporters and TV cameras, and Mr. Trump and his Vice President, J.D. Vance, ganged up on Zelensky and verbally pummeled him without mercy. Implying that Zelensky was losing the war with Russia and should hand a big chunk of Ukraine to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
So it was a massive surprise on Tuesday, September 23, when President Trump left his meeting with Zelensky and said the very opposite–that Ukraine could win the war with Russia and take back all of its old territory.
Why the change? “Putin and Russia,” President Trump said, “are in BIG Economic trouble.”
Was there any truth to what President Trump said? Yes. Russia’s troops depend on oil. So do Russia’s civilians. Almost 20% of Russia’s oil refining capability has been destroyed. Twenty Russian oil refineries have been crippled. By what? By Ukrainian drones.
Including an innovative Ukrainian super drone we talked about a few weeks ago, the Flamingo, an autonomous long-range airplane-style drone conceived and built in Ukraine that can allegedly travel 1,800 miles, carry a bunker-buster size explosive, and is designed to evade Russia’s defenses.
Oil is how Putin gets the money to make war. Ukraine is cutting his oil income.
What’s worse, Ukraine is spreading Russian discontent, the discontent that comes from waiting in long lines for hours for gas.
Then there’s another Ukrainian innovation that is likely to change the balance of power between Ukraine and Russia—a magic bullet that can destroy drones. It’s called the Horoshok, the pea. A bullet that can be shot from the barrel of a standard CZ Bren military rifle. A bullet that breaks up in mid-air into five lethal pieces and maximizes your chance of taking down a drone even if you are the world’s worst shot.
If you are a Ukrainian soldier, today’s Russian kamikaze drones can find you, can hover over your head, and can dive down and kill you with their explosive charges.
Up until now, if a kamikaze drone spotted you, you were dead. But the new Ukrainian Horoshok bullet can save you.
And it can be useful against drones attacking cities. Remember, ever since Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin met in Alaska to discuss peace, Putin has been scaling up his war, attacking Ukrainian cities with up to 579 drones and 31 missiles per night. Ukraine intercepts up to 90% of these flying bombs, but 10% get through and destroy buildings and Ukrainian citizens.
The Horoshok bullet could increase the number of Russian drones destroyed in mid-flight. But there’s more, Ukraine has remote controlled robot trucks loaded with explosives that seek out Russian soldiers in trenches and bunkers and kill them. Or that force them to surrender.
Yes, the first surrender of human soldiers to a robot vehicle took place in July. The troops giving up the fight were Russian.
Then there’s one more thing. One pro-Ukrainian podcast, Business Basics, says that Ukraine has Moscow “under siege”. Yesterday, September 23, alone, according to the Moscow Times, Moscow’s Mayor Sergei Sobyanin reported 44 drones shot down near the capital, prompting airport closures and emergency responses to falling debris. And that’s just one of Ukraine’s drone attacks on Russia’s capital.
So why does President Donald Trump think Russia is a “paper tiger”? Why does he imply that Russia is no longer a “Real Military Power”? For the moment, Trump is registering Zelensky’s story of Ukraine’s strengths. And of Russia’s weaknesses.
But remember what insiders say about the president. He believes what he’s been told by the person he’s just spoken to. Which means that what he believes today may be the opposite of what he will believe tomorrow.
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About the author: Howard Bloom of the Howard Bloom Institute has been called the Einstein, Newton, Darwin, and Freud of the 21st century by Britain’s Channel 4 TV. Bloom’s new book is The Case of the Sexual Cosmos: Everything You Know About Nature is Wrong. Says Harvard’s Ellen Langer of The Case of the Sexual Cosmos, Bloom “argues that we are not savaging the earth as some would have it, but instead are growing the cosmos. A fascinating read.” One of Bloom’s eight previous books–Global Brain—was the subject of a symposium thrown by the Office of the Secretary of Defense including representatives from the State Department, the Energy Department, DARPA, IBM, and MIT. Bloom’s work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, Psychology Today, and the Scientific American. Not to mention in scientific journals like Biosystems, New Ideas in Psychology, and PhysicaPlus. Says Joseph Chilton Pearce, author of Evolution’s End and The Crack in the Cosmic Egg, “I have finished Howard Bloom’s [first two] books, The Lucifer Principle and Global Brain, in that order, and am seriously awed, near overwhelmed by the magnitude of what he has done. I never expected to see, in any form, from any sector, such an accomplishment. I doubt there is a stronger intellect than Bloom’s on the planet.” For more, see http://howardbloom.net or http://howardbloom.institute
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