Editor’s Note: The original headline sent to me was “This Is Why The Bitter Feud Between President Trump And ‘President Z’ Has Just Brought Us Even Closer To Nuclear War.” This makes it sound as if President Trump is somehow to blame for the escalation in Europe, which he is not.
The problems in Ukraine, including the prolonging of the war, fall squarely on the collective shoulders of Volodymyr Zelensky, his disciples in European Union leadership, NATO, and the previous administration in the United States. Also, I edited the story that kept referencing Zelensky as “President Z,” replacing those with his actual name for clarity. Here’s the post…
(The Economic Collapse Blog)—All of a sudden, sending European ground troops into Ukraine has become a very hot topic. In fact, the British are openly discussing the possibility of doing this quite soon. Of course the Russians have already warned that if the British send ground troops into Ukraine, military targets inside the UK will become legitimate targets. Needless to say, the moment the Russians start conducting military strikes inside the UK, the U.S. would be forced to intervene and we would be right on the brink of nuclear war.
The British must not do this. But they are so determined to demonstrate which side that they support in the feud between President Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky that they might do it anyway.
Global events are moving so rapidly that it is really difficult to keep up with everything that is happening. Early on Wednesday, Zelensky accused President Trump of living in a “disinformation space” during a discussion with reporters…
“Unfortunately, President Trump, I have great respect for him as a leader of a nation that we have great respect for, the American people who always support us, unfortunately lives in this disinformation space,” Zelensky told reporters early Wednesday.
Zelensky went on to explain why Trump is supposedly wrong about a number of things.
Did he not understand how Trump would react? If you want to get Trump on your side, you don’t say bad things about Trump.
Anyone that has been paying any attention for the past eight years should know this by now.
President Trump responded by absolutely shredding Zelensky on Truth Social…
Think of it, a modestly successful comedian, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, talked the United States of America into spending $350 Billion Dollars, to go into a War that couldn’t be won, that never had to start, but a War that he, without the U.S. and “TRUMP,” will never be able to settle. The United States has spent $200 Billion Dollars more than Europe, and Europe’s money is guaranteed, while the United States will get nothing back. Why didn’t Sleepy Joe Biden demand Equalization, in that this War is far more important to Europe than it is to us — We have a big, beautiful Ocean as separation. On top of this, Zelenskyy admits that half of the money we sent him is “MISSING.” He refuses to have Elections, is very low in Ukrainian Polls, and the only thing he was good at was playing Biden “like a fiddle.” A Dictator without Elections, Zelenskyy better move fast or he is not going to have a Country left. In the meantime, we are successfully negotiating an end to the War with Russia, something all admit only “TRUMP,” and the Trump Administration, can do. Biden never tried, Europe has failed to bring Peace, and Zelenskyy probably wants to keep the “gravy train” going. I love Ukraine, but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died – And so it continues…..
This single social media post immediately caused a firestorm of controversy to erupt all over the globe.
And I don’t think that the damage that has been done will be easily repaired.
Zelensky can forget about having President Trump in his corner from this point forward. Vice-President Vance just told the press that President Z has chosen “an atrocious way to deal with this administration”…
‘The idea that Zelensky is going to change the president’s mind by badmouthing him in public media … everyone who knows the president will tell you that is an atrocious way to deal with this administration,’ said Vance during an exclusive interview in his West Wing office.
And many of President Trump’s most ardent supporters on social media are gleefully pointing out some of the ways that Zelensky has abused human rights over the past several years. For example, the following was posted by the DC_Draino account on Twitter…
He’s in year 6 of his 5 year term
Declared martial law Feb 2022 and has banned elections since then
Banned 11 political parties
Passed law in 2022 to censor journalists and combined all news into 1 gov’t station
Journalists investigating his corruption get conscripted and thrown on the front lines to die
Even Saddam Hussein held elections!
On the other side, the corporate media in the United States has responded extremely negatively to Trump’s call for an election in Ukraine because they are concerned that “President Z” could be voted out of office…
Much more alarming is how the Europeans are responding to Trump’s comments.
I think that the British government hates Trump so much that they might be willing to deploy ground troops to Ukraine just to spite him.
And the British media is eagerly rallying public support for such a move. For example, the following comes from a BBC article that was just published entitled “British Army ‘absolutely ready’ if ordered to deploy to Ukraine”…
The British Army has said it is ready to deploy to Ukraine if requested by the government.
This week, 2,500 UK troops from the Army’s high readiness force, the First Division, have been taking part in a large Nato exercise in Romania – on a training area just 16 miles (25km) from the border with Ukraine.
Although mobile phones have been banned on the exercise, most soldiers are aware that there are now initial discussions to send troops to Ukraine itself.
Wow.
And NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander just wrote an article for the Daily Mail in which he boldly declared that it was time for the UK to “make plans for conscription” because “Trump has left us no other choice”…
NATO’s former Deputy Supreme Allied Commander Europe, Sir Richard Shirreff, writing in the Daily Mail, said: “Though many will find it unthinkable, we must be prepared to call up our reservists – and make plans for conscription. Trump has left us no other choice.”
I am speechless.
So because Trump wants peace, the British have to hurry up and escalate the war so that peace won’t be possible?
What kind of madness is this? What do you think will happen if British troops really do get deployed to Ukraine? It won’t be pretty, I can tell you that.
In addition to hitting British military targets inside Ukraine, the Russians have already said that they will hit British military targets outside Ukraine. And then there will be full-blown war between Russia and a member of NATO.
At that point it would be impossible for the U.S. to stay out of the conflict and we would literally be on the verge of nuclear war.
But at this point the British are desperate, because they are absolutely determined to keep the Ukrainians from losing. The Russians have conquered quite a bit more territory within the past ten days, and unless western troops intervene Ukraine’s front lines will continue to crumble…
While the eyes of the world are glued on the US-Russia Peace Process led by Donald J. Trump and Vladimir Putin, the war follows unabated with the same prospects as before: Russian Federation forces steamrolling the Ukrainian defenders.
In the last 10 days, a cursory search shows that Russia has conquered the settlements of Orekhovo-Vasilevka, Dachnoye, Dzerzhinsk, Yasenovoye, Vodyanoye Vtoroye, Zelenoye Pole, Berezovka, Figolevka, Yampolovka and Sverdlikovo.
Everyone just needs to calm down.
But every time Zelensky badmouths our president, Trump is going to hit back even harder.
And that will just give the Europeans more motivation to consider sending in ground forces.
Of course that is exactly what Zelensky has been wanting all this time. He has been searching for a way to get European troops to intervene. So if he realizes that badmouthing Trump will help him achieve that goal, he may just throw all restraint to the wind and really start going for it.
In any event, we are now much closer to nuclear war, and that is certainly not good news for any of us.
Michael’s new book entitled “Why” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com, and you can subscribe to his Substack newsletter at michaeltsnyder.substack.com.
Bypass Big Tech Censors
Two Storms, One Harvest
Every food crisis in living memory has been a one-shock event. The 2008 price spike was a commodity bubble. The 2020 shortages were a logistics failure. The 2022 grain scare was a war on one exporter’s ports. Each time, the system bent, adjusted, and recovered, and each time the experts assured us afterward that global markets are simply too big and too diversified to fail.
What nobody in Washington seems eager to discuss is that 2026 is shaping up to be something the modern food system has never actually faced. Two independent shocks, one climatic and one geopolitical, are converging on the same harvest cycle at the same time. Not sequentially. Simultaneously.
Start with the weather. The Pacific Ocean is currently building toward what forecasters now openly call a record event. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center puts the odds of at least a strong El Niño near 88 percent, with roughly two in three odds it reaches “very strong” status, the tier reserved for perhaps three or four events in the entire satellite era. Every major global model now projects a median peak in Super El Niño territory, and most of them project it exceeding the 2015-16 event, which until now held the modern record. Sea surface anomalies were already brushing the super threshold in mid-July, months before these events normally peak. The atmosphere has already shifted into El Niño mode, and the event is forecast to crest in late fall and early winter.
This is not about “climate change.” It’s about the standard cycles of weather, and the cycle we’re currently in is one that has likely devastated societies in the past. We’re better prepared as a society today, but not all Americans are equally prepared.
Serious households have started doing the quiet math on their own. Grocery bills tell part of the story, and the forecast maps tell the rest, which is why long-term food storage has moved from fringe hobby to mainstream line item in the family budget, with established suppliers like Heaven’s Harvest seeing demand from people who five years ago would have rolled their eyes at the idea. That instinct is not paranoia. It is pattern recognition, and the pattern is worth walking through carefully.
Editor’s Note: Heaven’s Harvest IS a sponsor, but the warnings of this article are real and would be written even if we didn’t have a survival food sponsor. With that said, those who take advantage of what they offer can use promo code “Patriot” for 15% off.
The Fertilizer Clock Is Already Running
While the Pacific warms, the second shock has been unfolding in the Strait of Hormuz. The conflict with Iran turned the world’s most important energy chokepoint into a contested waterway, and the consequences reach far beyond the gas pump. Roughly a third of global fertilizer trade moves through Hormuz, and the disruption sent urea prices up 86 percent year over year by March, with a 53 percent jump in a single month.
The World Bank projects energy prices rising about 24 percent in 2026 and fertilizer about 31 percent. By its own accounting, fertilizer prices ran 35 percent higher in the first five months of this year than the same period last year.
Here is the mechanism the nightly news will not explain. Fertilizer is not a grocery item. It is a time-delayed input. The nitrogen a farmer in Iowa or Punjab could not afford to apply this spring does not show up as a problem this spring. It shows up as a thinner harvest six to twelve months later.
The World Bank’s own food security brief concedes that the effects of reduced applications earlier this season “are likely to become visible only later in harvest outcomes.” Translate that from institutional language into plain English and it means this. The damage is already done, it is already in the ground, and we are simply waiting for it to arrive on the shelf.
Now check the calendar. Six to twelve months from the spring planting season lands us squarely in late 2026 and early 2027. Which is precisely when the strongest El Niño in the instrumental record is forecast to peak, bringing its signature droughts to Southeast Asia, Australia, southern Africa, northern Brazil, and South Asia, the very regions that grow the world’s rice, sugar, and oilseeds.
The World Bank warns openly that a strong El Niño “could disrupt multiple crop belts simultaneously” on top of the conflict-driven input costs. Their baseline projection assumes the Middle East disruptions ease by autumn. What in the last two years of Middle East history suggests that assumption is safe?
The System Has No Slack Left
The comfortable answer is that global markets always adjust. But adjustment requires slack, and the slack is gone. Global cereal production is expected to decline from last year’s records even before El Niño does its work. The UN World Food Programme, hardly a den of right-wing preppers, is calling this the most significant disruption to its supply chains since Covid and the invasion of Ukraine, and its supply chain director put the stakes bluntly.
Today’s supply chain challenges are tomorrow’s hunger crisis.
There is also a political dimension that markets cannot price. When food gets scarce, governments do not behave like economists. They behave like politicians. Export bans, hoarding mandates, and panic buying at the national level turned the modest rice shortfall of 2008 into a global crisis, and analysts are already warning that import-dependent nations are the first dominoes.
The 2015-16 Super El Niño, a far weaker event than what is now forecast, threw tens of millions into food stress across Africa and Asia. This one is projected to be stronger, and it arrives with fertilizer already rationed by price and shipping lanes already contested by missiles.
What Joseph Knew
Scripture does not treat preparation for lean years as faithlessness. It treats it as wisdom delivered in advance to those willing to act on it.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty throughout all the land of Egypt: And there shall arise after them seven years of famine; and all the plenty shall be forgotten in the land of Egypt.
Joseph did not respond to that warning with a hashtag or a committee. He stored grain during the years of abundance, and when the famine came, Egypt stood while its neighbors begged. The lesson is not that famine is certain. It is that the time to prepare is precisely when preparation still looks optional.
Nobody who filled a pantry in a year of plenty has ever regretted it, and nobody standing in an empty aisle has ever been glad he waited for certainty.
None of this calls for panic, and panic is the enemy of sound judgment anyway. It calls for the same unglamorous prudence our grandparents considered ordinary. Keep some cash margin, know your local growers, and put real food in deep storage while it is cheap and available, because the entire arc of this story is that cheap and available is a closing window.
Families looking for a straightforward place to start can visit Heaven’s Harvest and use promo code Patriot for 15 percent off long-term storable food. The forecasts may yet soften, the strait may yet reopen, and we should pray they do. But hope is a fine thing to hold and a foolish thing to eat.
