Russia

Russia strikes Kyiv, Germany boosts arms, NATO spending rises. Welcome to your SOFREP Morning Brief for Thursday, August 28, 2025.

I came home from Bucha with the faces of the dead fixed in my mind and a single, stubborn question riding shotgun: how do we make Putin and his enablers answer for what they did?

Ceding Ukrainian land to Russia would not only violate Ukraine’s sovereignty and international law, but also reward aggression, embolden further expansionism, and undermine the global order the U.S. and its allies are bound to defend.

A 22-year-old tank crewman with a top-secret clearance allegedly tried to trade America’s most guarded armor secrets for a Russian passport, proving the deadliest threats can come from within.

In a world where Russia bellows bravado and breaks treaties, the U.S. answers with silent, deep-sea patience—four to five Ohio-class submarines are lurking in the shadows, each armed with dozens of warheads, holding the still-fragile threads of deterrence tight as New START’s expiration looms next year.

From Beijing locking down passports and punishing foreign ties, to Moscow brushing off Trump’s submarine flex, India thumbing its nose at U.S. oil sanctions, and Ukrainians longing for home but waiting for peace, the global chessboard is lit up—and nobody’s playing by the old rules anymore. Welcome to Sunday Morning, August 3rd, 2025. This is your SOFREP Brief.

They came with badges, not handcuffs—a reminder that in this new kind of war, the lines between warning, watching, and silencing have blurred beyond recognition.

Tulsi Gabbard doesn’t need to be a Kremlin agent to be dangerous—she’s already a megaphone for their disinformation, wrapped in the uniform of patriotism and amplified by platforms that should know better.

Derek Huffman thought he was trading rainbow flags for red-blooded tradition, but instead found himself neck-deep in mud, bullets, and a language he couldn’t understand, courtesy of Mother Russia’s ultimate bait-and-switch.

Victory isn’t flags on rooftops or borders redrawn—it’s the stubborn act of existing, of speaking your mother tongue in defiance, while the sky falls and the world debates your worth.

On July 18, the world saw Israel and Syria shake hands after a week of bloodletting, the EU slam Russia with its harshest sanctions yet, and Trump’s DOJ crack open the Epstein vault—three headlines that read like a geopolitical fever dream, but here we are on Saturday morning, July 19, 2025. This is your SOFREP morning brief.

As U.S. troops recover flood victims in Texas, Russia cozies up to North Korea with nuclear winks, and the PKK drops its guns after 40 years, one thing’s clear—conflict’s shifting, but the uniforms never really leave the picture. Welcome to SOFREP’s Evening Brief for Saturday, July 12, 2025.