Benjamin Reed

Watching Pokrovsk ground to dust meter by meter, I see Washington and Budapest flirting with an alliance of convenience that would codify the stalemate into Western policy and rename exhaustion as realism.

We’re not waging a war on drugs so much as carpet-bombing our own reflection—sanctifying punishment while mainlining denial—drones humming like church organs as we tithe to the same appetite we pretend to exorcise.

In Rio, where rainforest meets surf and glass balconies overlook stacked mosaics of tin and prayer, I learned that the state, the narcos, and the civilians breathe the same air while fighting different wars that end at dawn and begin again by night.

Russia’s war in Kherson has descended into a sport of civilian hunting; a moral collapse broadcast online for the world to ignore.

When Russian armor crossed the border and the drones began their ragged buzz over Kyiv, I learned that heartbreak and geopolitics break you in the same place, and the only answer was to hold the line long enough for principle to matter.

While we served beside Ukrainians under fire, Charlie Kirk framed disengagement as “peace” and treated their struggle like a talking point.

When the guns pause and the ash settles, the men who learned to live at the zero line will drift outward like sparks on the wind, carrying paid skills, unpaid debts, and a quiet promise that the war is not finished with us yet.

As the steppe turns to mud and the skies to low cloud, Russia trades men for meters while Ukraine adapts, holds its hubs, and waits for the freeze.

Mamdani’s refusal to address Ukraine isn’t neutrality—it’s a calculated silence that exposes the limits of his moral consistency.

America did not stumble into this moment of political violence by accident; it was led here by years of manufactured crises that traded real solutions for spectacle and left trust in ashes.

Russia will not break me, and I will carry the fight against its lies and brutality wherever I can.

Nightmares follow veterans home. We survive the war, but the aftermath—the trauma, the memories—stays with us every day.