Trump Is Refilling Russia's War Chest As Kremlin Prepares For General Mobilization
The Narativ | Know Sooner
🛢️ THE OIL LEVER
Iran has pulled out of negotiations scheduled to begin on Wednesday in Islamabad. JD Vance, Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner are scheduled to land in Pakistan for those talks this evening. Brent crude opened Monday up more than 7% at $94.69 a barrel, rising from just under $90.40 Friday after a weekend that saw America seize an Iranian vessel and the Strait of Hormuz was again blocked by Iran.
Each turn of the war-and-ceasefire cycle lifts the price. Iran’s oil exports — still flowing around the sanctions — book roughly $45 billion a year at these levels, about 13% of Iranian GDP. Russia sells its barrels to Indian refiners at a premium of $5 to $15 above Brent. True to form, Trump’s foreign policy misadventure in Iran serves only one master: Russia.
🪖 THE RUSSIAN DRAFT
Volodymyr Zelenskyy warned the Baltic states Monday that Russia is preparing its largest general mobilization of the war. The draft, he said, will reach Moscow and St. Petersburg — not only the peripheral regions that absorbed the 2022 call-up. He pointed to Russia’s new blocks on social-media platforms as the tell: a regime that expects domestic unrest cuts its citizens off from coordinating it first. To drive the point, Trump is manipulating oil markets to help fund a coming Russian invasion in the Baltic states.
🌍 BULGARIA TURNS EAST
Bulgaria voted Sunday in its eighth parliamentary election in five years, and by Monday morning ex-president Rumen Radev had won the landslide pollsters had not predicted: 44.7 percent and roughly 130 of the 240 seats, while Boyko Borisov’s GERB collapsed to 13.4, its worst result in two decades.
Radev, a 62-year-old former air force commander, has pledged to reopen the Russian oil imports the EU was preparing to phase out by 2027, and to reject the ten-year defense pact Sofia signed with Ukraine in March. The Kremlin congratulated him by name Monday. A week after Hungary closed Orbán’s book, Bulgaria opened its own.
🚔 PATEL SUES THE ATLANTIC
FBI Director Kash Patel sued The Atlantic Monday morning for $250 million over an April 17 report on his alleged drinking. More than two dozen sources described intoxication at a DC private club and in Las Vegas, meetings rescheduled around alcohol-fueled nights, and a security detail that struggled to wake him. The Atlantic stands by the reporting.
Meanwhile, Patel says arrests are coming in the 2020 election manipulation case, and DOJ cooperating witnesses in the John Brennan probe were subpoenaed over the weekend to testify before a DC grand jury this week.
📱 MUSK, SUMMONED IN PARIS
Paris prosecutors summoned Elon Musk Monday for a voluntary interview in the investigation of X and the Grok chatbot. Scope: algorithmic manipulation of French politics, Holocaust-denial content, sexually explicit deepfakes including child sexual abuse material. The US Justice Department said it will not cooperate.
🎯 THE PATTERN
The Trump insider trading of oil futures on ceasefire stops and starts is a refilling of Russia’s war chest ahead of an expected Russian invasion of a Baltic state. Kash Patel is so desperate to keep his job following an Atlantic piece revealing he has a raging drinking problem that puts him in step with a regime full of drunks. Trump’s alcoholic personality, notorious drinker Peter Hegseth, and now Kash Patel, are willing to do anything but admit they have a problem.
🔴 WATCH LIVE
TODAY AT 3 PM:
FiveStack: Top five breaking news stories with Dean Blundell
TONIGHT AT 8 PM:
Putin knows general mobilization including Moscow and St. Petersburg would be extremely unpopular. But currently they can’t get enough recruits to even equal the numbers dying every day on the battlefield.
Oil price hikes will not benefit Russia that much because every day Ukraine destroys more of Russia’s oil refineries, depot, and ports, deep within Russia. Ukraine has bombed ports in the Black Sea and the Baltic.
Russia is losing not just the war but the stability of the entire country.
Trump is Putin’s handmaiden and will serve Putin no matter what it costs, including the lives of US servicemen and women. Sad. One can only hope that an increased draft will make some Russians think about what’s really good for their country.