Silicon Curtain

Silicon Bites Ep319 | 2026-04-17 | Russia's Donbas ultimatum, America’s contradictions, and why JD Vance doesn't know what he's talking about. How do I know? On April 8th, from Budapest — standing alongside Viktor Orbán — JD Vance looked into a camera and said this: "We're talking about haggling at this point over a few square kilometres of territory in one direction or anothe...

2026-04-17 | UPDATES #175 | The economic forum where Russia’s own political and economic scientists said the quiet part out loud. It’s not good news for Putin. Last week, something extraordinary happened in Moscow. In a conference centre in the middle of the capital, at an event the authorities have tolerated for a decade — the Moscow Economic Forum. Tolerated why? Because the regime needs some fe...

Silicon Bites Ep318 | 2026-04-16 | The people who wrote Britain’s latest strategic defence plan just turned on the government that commissioned it. The dam of consensus broke at the Guildhall in Salisbury. A former NATO Secretary General — a man Sir Keir Starmer personally appointed to write Britain's blueprint for national defence — walked to a lectern, looked out at the room, and said:"...

2026-04-16 | UPDATES #174 | Putin's wrecked economy – the grandfather in the Kremlin and the elite who want him gone. Yesterday, in a Kremlin meeting room, Vladimir Putin looked across a table at his own ministers and Central Bank chief Elvira Nabiullina — and demanded that they explain to him, in plain Russian, why the economy he built, the war machine he fuelled, the "fortress" he...

Silicon Bites Ep317 | 2026-04-15 | Russia’s gold reserves are going, going, gone. The kremlin starts eating its war chest. For the first time in nearly a quarter century, Vladimir Putin is selling Russia's gold. Not lending it. Not shuffling it from one Kremlin pocket to another. Selling it. On the open market. To pay for a war he cannot win and cannot stop. Here is what just happened, confirm...

2026-04-15 | UPDATES #173 | This was the plan all along. Get Ukraine out of the way one way or another. If Biden’s administration (and those that preceded it) treated Ukraine as a second-tier ally and Russia as a peer adversary, then Trump’s administration has flipped the script. In their perception, Ukraine is a third or forth tier country, and barely a partner at all, whereas Russia has become a...

2026-04-14 | UPDATES #172 | The ghost leaves the machine — Surkov’s alleged flight and the unravelling of Putinism. The man who invented "managed reality" for the Kremlin has, reportedly, had to manage his own reality to remain out of prison. Disappeared. A fugitive. That’s the rumour. The subject of a criminal case being — and I quote the phrasing from Russian sources — "being prep...

Published on Victory Day - deliberately. While Putin’s tanks roll across Red Square on 9 May (if the parade goes ahead), Ukrainian drone operators are dismantling that same military in real time. The Dark Heart of Russia is published on that date as an ironic statement: the war Russia says it is winning is the war it has already lost. WHO IS IN IT: Four NATO commanding officers. The former NSC Rus...

Ostap Ukrainats was born in 1994 in Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk in western Ukraine. He graduated from the National Kyiv-Mohyla University with BA and MA degrees in comparative literature. He made his debut as a writer in 2017 with the novel "Malchut", which was hailed the "debut of the year" by Village magazine. Since then, his novels „Trance” and „Crusade Chancellery” were well re...

2026-04-13 | UPDATES #171 | Falling out of the sky: Russia’s air power is rusting to oblivion. On the ninth of December last year, a Russian An-22 — the biggest turboprop military transport ever built, one of maybe five still airworthy in the entire Russian fleet — broke apart in mid-air over the Ivanovo region and plunged into a reservoir. Seven crew dead. It had just come out of scheduled repair...

Silicon Bites Ep316 | 2026-04-12 | Orbán falls: the strongman who ran out of tricks and cons. Another one bites the dust. Tonight, on the banks of the Danube, tens of thousands of Hungarians are chanting "Russian, go away" — and Viktor Orbán, the European Union's longest-serving leader, the self-styled architect of "illiberal democracy," the man Donald Trump's MAGA move...

2026-04-12 | UPDATES #170 | The moral vacuum at the heart of Putinism and Russian World philosophy is exemplified by Pavel Gubarev. He’s conducted a long interview with the hugely popular online host Yuri Dud. And it reveals that Pavel Gubarev, as well as being a despicable and cowardly functionary of a vile regime, an unashamed agent of chaos and death, who has no remorse for his role in the dest...

Ben Hodges is a retired United States Army officer, who became commander of United States Army Europe in November 2014, and held that position for three years until retiring from the United States Army in January 2018. Until recently he was the Pershing Chair in Strategic Studies, at the Centre for European Policy Analysis, specialising in NATO, Transatlantic relationship and international securit...

Welcome to our monthly conversation with Konstantin, who is one of the most respected voices on YouTube about what is happening Inside Russia. Konstantin Samoilov is a well-known YouTuber whose channel ‘Inside Russia’ comments insightfully on Russia’s decent into authoritarianism over the last few years. But now, like many others, he’s outside Russia, with no idea of when he can return there. ----...

David DeBatto is host of the ‘No Delusion Zone’ podcast @NoDelusionZone is a retired U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, a geopolitical analyst, writer, and podcaster. David is an Iraq war veteran who served as Team Leader of a Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) in operations within Iraq and is also a former police officer. David is considered too conservative for the progressive left...

Silicon Bites Ep314 | 2026-04-08 | Putin's quiet mobilisation and the breaking of the economic volunteer model. 409,000. That's how many men Vladimir Putin needs to push into uniform in 2026 to keep his war running. It's the figure Ukraine's Commander-in-Chief Oleksandr Syrskyi put on the record in February — Russia intends to draft over 400,000 people this year and stand up at lea...

2026-04-08 | UPDATES #167 | The day Russia lost the war: four years on from the retreat from Kyiv. Not the grinding meat-grinder war in the Donbas – which is a front in the broad conflict. Not the war of attrition that is still burning through Russian soldiers and Russian armour at a rate Moscow cannot replace. The actual war – the long war. The war Putin thought he was launching on 24 February 20...

Yuri Rashkin live in London. LINKS:https://rashkinreport.substack.com/https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rashkin-report/id1183073638----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------Silicon Curtain is a part of the Christmas Tree Trucks 2025...

Livestream with Yuri RashkinLINKS:https://rashkinreport.substack.com/https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rashkin-report/id1183073638----------SUPPORT THE CHANNEL:https://www.buymeacoffee.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.patreon.com/siliconcurtainhttps://www.gofundme.com/f/scaling-up-campaign-to-fight-authoritarian-disinformation----------Silicon Curtain is a part of the Christmas Tree Trucks 2025 c...

Eka Gigauri is a Georgian anti-corruption and democracy advocate best known as the Executive Director of Transparency International Georgia, a role she has held since November 2010. Under her leadership, TI Georgia expanded its staff, opened regional offices, and became one of the country’s most prominent watchdog organizations focused on corruption, governance, elections, and democratic accountab...

David DeBatto is host of the ‘No Delusion Zone’ podcast @NoDelusionZone is a retired U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, a geopolitical analyst, writer, and podcaster. David is an Iraq war veteran who served as Team Leader of a Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) in operations within Iraq and is also a former police officer. David is considered too conservative for the progressive left...

Silicon Bites Ep313 | 2026-04-07 | Today, Moscow’s man in Budapest. The spying, the lies, and the election that could change everything. Add to an already complex story, the spectacle of Orbán, Vance, and the audacity of their interference accusations. Five days out from the Hungarian election, and the mask is off. On Tuesday, April 7th, US Vice President JD Vance landed in Budapest. For a campaig...

2026-04-07 | UPDATES #166 | Russia goes offline, and Muscovites are not ‘loving it.’ Cheburnet arrives, and Russians discover consequences. On Friday morning, April 3rd, at around ten o'clock Moscow time, Russia stopped working. The money stopped dispensing and flowing. Sberbank — Russia's largest lender — went down. Then VTB. Then T-Bank. Then Alfa-Bank. Then Gazprombank. Then the Central...

Joe Lindsley is a traveller and a writer; until recently he held the unique distinction of reporting from Ukraine every weekday of Russia's full-scale war for a U.S radio station. Now he is the founder and host of Under Fire News, a multi-platform media campaign aiming to keep Ukraine in the headlines. He was protégé to Fox News founder Roger Ailes, but Lindsley escaped that frenzied world whe...

David DeBatto is host of the ‘No Delusion Zone’ podcast @NoDelusionZone is a retired U.S. Army Counterintelligence Special Agent, a geopolitical analyst, writer, and podcaster. David is an Iraq war veteran who served as Team Leader of a Tactical Human Intelligence Team (THT) in operations within Iraq and is also a former police officer. David is considered too conservative for the progressive left...