TWO ALLEGED SUPERPOWERS, BOTH ABOUT AS USEFUL AS TITS ON A BULL

Vladimir Putin is shitting himself in fear. Trump's too thick to be scared, but is literally shitting himself anyway.

Not figuratively. Not in the way blokes get nervous before a job interview. We’re talking full-blown, knee-trembling, voiding-himself-into-a-Krasnodar-toilet terror. The bloke who’s spent 25 years selling himself as a shirtless tiger-wrestling alpha patriot is right now cowering in a reinforced concrete hole 30 feet under the dirt, eating beetroot soup that’s been chemically tested for poison by a roster of food tasters whose families are being filmed in surveilled apartments. While he’s choking that down, a 50,000-strong protection detail is sweeping the Moskva River for hostile drones being flown by people who used to drink vodka with him at the Kremlin canteen.

That’s the hard man. That’s the strongman. That’s the bloke whose photo Donald Trump keeps on his desk like a trophy ex-girlfriend.

And here’s the kicker. He’s not scared of Ukraine.

He’s scared of his own fucken oligarchs. The same well-tailored cunts he personally turned into billionaires by handing them entire state industries in exchange for loyalty are now, allegedly, lining up to feed him through his bedroom window via a 400-dollar quadcopter from AliExpress.

A European intelligence service report leaked through Russian outlet Important Stories, then corroborated by the Financial Times and CNN, lays it out in detail. Since the start of March 2026, the Kremlin has been on full coup alert. The Federal Protective Service, the FSO, has rewritten Putin’s life from the studs up. Visitors to the Presidential Administration now get two-tier body searches before they’re allowed near him. Cooks, bodyguards, and photographers can’t ride public transport. They can’t carry phones with internet.

Surveillance cameras have been installed in their fucking homes.

Read that one twice. The bloke who’s pissed his pants over what the chef might whisper to her sister has gone full panopticon on the people whose only job is keeping him fed and photographed. If you’re a Kremlin photographer right now, your missus is shagging on a state-monitored livestream and there’s an FSB officer somewhere in Lubyanka taking notes on the head movement. Welcome to Russia. Hope you like beetroot.

The president and his family have stopped going to their dachas in the Moscow region and Valdai entirely. He’s working from a hardened bunker in Krasnodar for weeks at a time. State media is filming him in advance and pumping out pre-recorded footage to keep up the illusion that the bloke still leaves the basement.

Why?

Drones. Specifically, drones being flown at his head by members of his own political class.

The extreme level of Putin’s fear of an assassination attempt or conspiracy is also indirectly indicated by the fact that this year not a single deputy of the State Duma received an invitation to the Victory Day parade on Red Square.

Read that again. The man cannot even invite his own rubber-stamp parliament to the country’s most sacred annual military spectacle. The Duma. His Duma. The kept performing seals whose entire job is voting yes whenever Vlad farts. He doesn’t trust them in the same postcode. Because he doesn’t know which one of those well-fed bastards has just spent $40,000 on a Chinese drone with a Putin-shaped homing setting.

Don’t take my word for it. Take it from Vladimir Kara-Murza, vice president of the Free Russia Foundation. A bloke poisoned, deliberately, twice, by Putin’s mob. Most of us would be dead. Kara-Murza, two organ transplants and half a lung later, is still vertical and still talking. And he spoke this week, and he didn’t dress it up.

He’s afraid of Ukrainian drones. He’s afraid of a potential coup. He’s afraid of attempts on his life. He’s afraid of everything.

That’s a man who’s been tubed twice by the regime telling us the bloke giving the orders is a quivering wreck. And while he was at it, Kara-Murza pointed out the bit nobody in Washington wants to admit. The Trump White House, in his words, has its sympathies with Vladimir Putin. Not in spite of all this. Because of all this.

The pickled Christmas ham doesn’t admire Putin despite the muzzled press, the murdered dissidents, the rigged elections. He admires him precisely for those things. Wants the same setup at home. No parliament. No media. No elections. No consequences. He looks at a man who has assembled a country where opposition leaders die at convenient times and where journalists fall out of windows on the second day of summer, and he thinks, that bloke knows how to live.

▶ Vladimir Kara-Murza on Putin’s paranoia and where the Trump White House actually stands

Worth remembering, since Trump keeps calling Putin a great friend, what great friend means in Putinland. Boris Nemtsov, opposition leader, shot four times in the back on a bridge in plain view of the Kremlin walls in 2015. Alexei Navalny, opposition leader, beaten, starved, and frozen to death in an Arctic penal colony last year. Over 2000 known political prisoners in Russia right now. More than the entire Soviet Union held across 15 republics in the mid-1980s.

These aren’t policy disagreements.

These are the bodies.

And the bronzer-soaked weather vane in the Oval Office wants Putin’s cologne.

And here is the symmetry that should chill anyone still calling these blokes leaders.

Both of them are physically running from cameras.

Putin’s hiding 30 feet underground in Krasnodar.

The Florida fugitive in Washington this week literally hoofed it off the stage mid-sentence at his own Mother’s Day press conference. The footage exists. You can watch the hands trembling as he reads the autocue. You can watch the blotchy patches of bronze and Sharpie that pass for skin these days. You can watch the staffer whisper in his ear. And you can watch him bolt for the door like a bloke who’s just been told the bailiffs are at the front gate and they’ve brought a film crew.

The actual reason he legged it was that news had just broken. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have banned the United States from using their military bases and their airspace. The two largest hosts of American military infrastructure in the entire Persian Gulf. Both saying no. Both at once.

That’s why Project Freedom, the bloke’s so-called “most successful military operation in American military history,” lasted exactly 24 hours before being quietly drowned in a bathtub. Not because it succeeded. Because the basing rights for the planes meant to escort those ships had just been pulled out from under it by the same Gulf monarchies that were supposed to be cheering him on.

The man stood at a podium, learned in real time that his Iran adventure had just lost the airspace it needed, and hoofed it out of the room before anyone could ask him about it.

While he was running, Howard Lutnick, his Commerce Secretary and another name from the Epstein flight log, was also running. Not metaphorically. Lutnick was scheduled to give a deposition on the Epstein matter that morning. He showed up, looked at the camera, and somehow, through whatever black magic these blokes are pulling out of their tailored arseholes these days, got the whole thing downgraded to a transcribed interview. Not under oath. No video. Just a chat. Then he ran.

Different building. Same instinct. These people will go on regime media to lie all day. The second a question gets asked under conditions where lying has consequences, they’re out the back door faster than a publican at last call.

▶ Ben Meiselas (MeidasTouch): Trump rushes away from podium as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait ban US bases, Project Freedom collapses inside 24 hours

Iran’s parliament leader Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has already named what just happened. He posted that “Operation Trust Me Bro failed.” That’s how a foreign legislature now describes the strategic posture of the United States of America. As a fucking meme. A punchline. A LinkedIn motivational poster gone wrong.

And it tracks. Because Iran scored, and America didn’t.

That’s the football scoreline. Iran controls the Strait of Hormuz. Iran kept its nuclear material. Iran kept its ballistic missiles, kept the Shahed drones, kept the proxies intact. The regime is still standing. Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi was greeted as a conquering hero in Beijing this week by his Chinese counterpart Wang Yi, complete with a red carpet, a brass band, and the kind of welcome usually reserved for the bloke who killed your nemesis. And satellite imagery from this week shows three tankers simultaneously loading Iranian crude at Kharg Island, while the Trump administration is still insisting publicly that Iran’s oil infrastructure is on the verge of catastrophic collapse.

It’s not. It’s pumping and pumping and pumping. Like nothing fucking happened.

And while Iran’s pumping, America’s bracing.

Six US states are now paying over five bucks a gallon at the pump. California, the largest state economy in the entire union, is sitting at well over six dollars on average. Hawaii’s at $5.65. Washington at $5.39. Oregon, Nevada, and Alaska are all over the line. The national average has climbed from $3.16 a year ago to $4.45 today, and it’s still going up like a teenager’s blood pressure at a job interview.

This week, California’s Energy Commission vice chairman Siva Gunda told a state Capitol hearing that California has, give or take, six weeks of fuel supply left if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed. Six. Weeks. After that, in his exact words, “pricing will move molecules to California, but it will come at a price.”

UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein, who’s been studying this market for decades, told the same hearing crude could climb another $40 to $80 a barrel from here, which translates to another buck or two on top of every gallon at the pump. He called it a crisis “completely out of control of the state of California.”

“UC Berkeley economist Severin Borenstein, who’s been studying this market for decades, told the same hearing crude could climb another $40 to $80 a barrel from here, which translates to another buck or two on top of every gallon at the pump. He called it a crisis ‘completely out of control of the state of California.’”

▶ KCRA 3: California’s Energy Commission warns the state has six weeks of fuel supply if the Strait of Hormuz stays closed

And here is why California’s so exposed. The state imports about three-quarters of its oil. Roughly 30 per cent of that comes from the Middle East, especially Iraq and Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, you’ll recall, being one of the two countries that just told American military aircraft to fuck off out of its airspace this week.

The bloke shouting from the Oval Office about American energy independence runs a country whose largest state economy is six weeks away from a fuel emergency the state government has openly admitted it cannot fix.

And here’s the kick in the dick none of them saw coming. The states that voted hardest for drill baby drill are now the ones getting the bloodiest noses. Kentucky, gas prices up 42.5 per cent year on year. Tennessee, up 42.2 per cent. New Hampshire, up 38.8 per cent. The bloke they elected to make their petrol cheap has just handed Iran the keys to the Persian Gulf and bought Russia a fertilizer empire on their dime. And the cheap gas? Six dollars a gallon if you live in California. Five and change in five other states. Coming for the rest of you next, mate. Hope you stocked up.

Mike Sommers, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, summed it up in a single line.

The playbook is pretty bare at this point.

That is not Greenpeace talking. That is the head lobbyist for the entire US oil and gas industry telling the public there is no rabbit left in the hat. The largest emergency oil reserve release in IEA history is already underway. The IEA’s own executive director called this whole shitshow “the greatest threat to global energy security in history.”

Drill baby drill, mate. Drill where? With what? Nobody’s built a new refinery on the West Coast since Carter was in the White House and your prized presidential candidate was getting sued for not renting flats to black tenants in Queens.

Meanwhile, NATO has reportedly stopped scheduling leader-level meetings until the current US president is out of office. Not delayed. Not deferred. Stopped. The verdict from the Atlantic alliance founded by the Americans themselves is that nothing useful can happen in any room while that man is in it. The military pact built specifically to keep Russian tanks out of Western Europe has now formally decided the Russian-friendliest US president in living memory needs to be waited out like a bad case of food poisoning.

And here is the absolute clincher. The bit that should end any remaining debate about whose side Trump is actually on.

While the European Union and the United Kingdom have refused to buy Russian fertilizer because doing so directly funds Putin’s war machine, the United States, under the alleged great negotiator, has just set an all-time record. In March alone, America imported $240 million worth of Russian fertilizer. The quarterly total hit $564 million. A 37 per cent jump on the year.

Russia’s envoy to Washington, Kirill Dmitriev, openly bragged about it. He thanked the United States for the contribution and sneered at Europe and the UK for their, his word, “Russophobic” positions.

Run that back. While Trump publicly attacks NATO and shouts about European freeloaders, while Marco Rubio sneers that it’s “their fertilizer that’s stranded, not ours,” the actual policy is that America is now the single biggest Western cash injection into Russia’s war chest.

Trump is not just on Putin’s side rhetorically.

He’s on Putin’s side commercially. He’s a fucking corporate sponsor. American farmers, in their MAGA caps and their F-150s, are now the single biggest Western customer of Russia’s war machine. Every bag of fertilizer they spread on their wheat field is a brick in the wall going up around another captured Ukrainian village. Every cheque the United States sends to Moscow buys another tank shell that lands on a Kharkiv apartment block. The cheque clears every month and the body bags keep coming home to Kyiv.

And the great friend in the Krasnodar bunker takes the cash, signs the cheque on the back, and uses it to buy more cameras to install in his fucking chef’s kitchen.

Two so-called superpowers. One led by a former KGB colonel so paranoid he’s had cameras installed in his own chef’s house. The other led by a Florida fugitive who flees his own press conferences while signing the cheques that fund the war his great friend can’t win.

Both presented to the world as strongmen.

Both, on inspection, about as useful as a backpack on a kangaroo.

The Russian detail keeps getting better. After Lieutenant General Fanil Sarvarov got cooked in Moscow on December 22 last year, Putin convened a closed Security Council meeting on Christmas Day. Bortnikov from the FSB and Gerasimov from the General Staff spent the whole meeting blaming each other in front of the boss like two kids caught with their hands in the same biscuit tin. Zolotov, head of the National Guard and Putin’s old bodyguard, refused to lend out a single one of his men. Putin had to step in like a primary school teacher breaking up a kindy biff and order the FSO to start personally protecting 10 senior generals, because no other agency would take the bloody job.

That’s not a superpower. That’s a Tony Soprano episode where everyone’s lost their nerve and the boss is doing his own dishes.

Meanwhile, the 2026 Victory Day parade on May 9 will roll down Red Square without a single tank. First time in nearly two decades. The official line is that the heavy gear is needed at the front. The actual reason is that Russia has burned through so many tanks in Ukraine they can’t find enough working ones to roll past Lenin’s tomb without one breaking down on camera in front of half the world’s news bureaus. They’ll be lucky to scrape together a colour guard, a lawnmower, and one of those plastic horses they roll out at country fairs.

And while that’s happening, Moscow is about to lose mobile internet for five straight days. No wi-fi. No phone calls except landlines. Twelve million people getting switched off because the man in charge is too scared one of his billionaire mates is going to fly a hundred-dollar quadcopter through his bedroom window. The largest city in Europe, returned to 1992, because the dictator’s nervous.

But the funniest bit? The crowning jewel of how cooked this regime actually is?

The ceasefire.

Putin’s Defense Ministry posted on Telegram this week announcing a unilateral ceasefire for May 8 and 9. Just announced it. Didn’t ring Kyiv. Didn’t ring Washington. Didn’t ring anyone. Just declared, by edict of the bunker, that nobody would shoot at anyone for two days while Russia rolls a couple of broken-down armoured cars past Lenin’s tomb.

Zelensky’s response was the diplomatic equivalent of pissing yourself laughing. He posted on X that nobody had bothered to talk to Ukraine about any of this. He declared his own ceasefire starting at midnight on May 5. And then he finished with this absolute nuclear strike of a line.

It is time for Russian leaders to take real steps to end their war, especially since Russia’s Defense Ministry believes it cannot hold a parade in Moscow without Ukraine’s goodwill.

Read that twice. The president of a country Vladimir Putin invaded just publicly informed the world that the Russian Defense Ministry has admitted, in writing, that it cannot stage its own national military parade unless the country it’s been bombing for three years agrees not to bomb it back.

That’s not a superpower asking for a ceasefire.

That’s a beaten dog asking permission to eat its own dinner. From a bowl. Off the floor. While being filmed.

So here we are.

The two most powerful blokes on the planet, on paper, are a Russian dictator who hides from his own dinner guests and an American president who flees his own press conferences while writing the cheques that keep his great friend solvent. One needs Ukraine’s goodwill to throw a parade. The other needs Saudi Arabia’s airspace, and Saudi Arabia’s just told him to get rooted.

You want to know what a superpower actually is? It’s a country whose president can walk down a public street without three rings of FSO sniffing the bins for hostile drones. It’s a country whose head of state can hold a press conference about Mother’s Day without legging it from the lectern when the news catches him out. It’s a country whose own military allies still answer the phone. It’s a country whose largest state isn’t six weeks away from a fuel emergency it cannot fix.

By that standard, neither of these clowns runs a superpower. Putin runs a paranoid corpse-state held together with surveillance cameras and pre-recorded footage. The Florida fugitive runs a brand built on bluster that gets walked back the second anyone steps toward him, and a treasury quietly transferring hundreds of millions a quarter to the regime he claims to be tough on.

Kara-Murza, who’s earned the right to be listened to on this, made one more point worth ending on. Russian regimes don’t decline gracefully. They don’t have farewell tours. They don’t write memoirs and retire to a dacha. They detonate. The Tsarist regime collapsed in three days. The Soviet regime collapsed in three days. When this one goes, it’ll go the same way. Fast. Ugly. And from the inside.

Putin knows this. That’s why he’s eating beetroot soup behind ten feet of reinforced concrete in Krasnodar while the FSO frisks his own chef’s grandmother before she’s allowed to bring him a clean towel.

Two old men.

Two big chairs.

Two reputations built entirely on the assumption nobody’s going to look too closely.

Well, mate. We’re looking.

And from where we’re standing in the outskirts of Western Sydney, watching it all unfold with a cup of tea and a working internet connection, both these blokes look exactly as advertised.

Like the appendix of humanity.

Unnecessary, doing fuck-all & might just end the host if left unchecked.

IFLA ~ Texas Mom & Gman

GLOSSARY FOR THE ANYONE WHO MADE IT THIS FAR

Arse-up: backwards, the wrong way around, fucked

Biff: a fight, usually playground or pub level

Bloke: a man

Cooked: dead, killed; also ruined, smashed, finished

Dacha: a Russian country house, the equivalent of a holiday cabin for the well-connected

Kindy: kindergarten

Pissweak: lacking strength, courage, or competence; the universal Australian word for not measuring up

Project Freedom: the name Trump gave to the US naval operation to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz, branded “the most successful military operation in American military history” and shut down within 24 hours after Saudi Arabia and Kuwait pulled airspace and basing rights

Shahed: an Iranian-designed loitering munition (suicide drone) extensively used by Russia in its war on Ukraine, now a fixture of the conflict

Siloviki: the Russian “men of force,” meaning the heads of the security and intelligence agencies, all currently blaming each other in writing

Tick: a moment, a brief period of time