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"A Geopolitical Insult And A Warning Sign"

Portfolio Armor's Photo
by Portfolio Armor
Monday, Jun 02, 2025 - 4:27
A Tupolev TU-95
A Tupolev TU-95, one of the types of Russian strategic bombers damaged or destroyed during Sunday's Ukrainian drone attack. 

Damaging One Leg Of Russia's Nuclear Triad 

Like the U.S., Russia has a "nuclear triad" for deterrence: a combo of air-launched, ground-launched, and submarine-launched nuclear missiles. This level of redundancy reduces the risk of nuclear war because no opponent can be confident of destroying all of Russia's (our America's) nuclear weapons in a first strike. As former National Security Advisor Lieutenant General Mike Flynn (U.S. Army, Retired) notes in the post below, that makes Sunday's Ukrainian strike on Russia's strategic bombers potentially destabilizing. It also may present a buying opportunity today, so we'll close with a brief market note related to that. 

Authored by General Mike Flynn on X

A Geopolitical Insult And Warning Sign

So, it appears Zelenskyy gave the go ahead to attack parked Russian nuclear capable bombers without informing President Trump (if true that our President was not consulted nor informed, this isn’t simply a breach of protocol. It’s a geopolitical insult and a warning sign. If Ukraine is willing to conduct strikes with strategic consequences without notifying the White House, we are no longer allies with coordination issues—we are co-belligerents flying blind).

Also given Senator “warmonger” Lindsey Graham’s and Senator “Da Nang Dick” Blumenthal’s recent visit [to Ukraine], this attack could appear as though it was sanctioned. I pray the Russians have better intelligence than that. IMHO, these two don’t have the sense or common sense to pull something like this off (there will have to be denials though).

 

FYI, Those bombers that were hit HAVE to be out in full view due to nuclear treaty obligations [So we can see whether they are armed with nuclear or conventional weapons]. Zelenskyy took advantage of that. For instance, they appear to have hidden the drones in containers and were driven on trucks near the airbase. Smart use of deception (see photos below).

However, imagine any one of our big bomber bases having the exact same thing done to them. Very costly U.S. Strategic Bombers can be taken out in the same way by anyone with access to inexpensive drones, delivery trucks, explosives, and a bit of technical knowledge (not good and new tactics will now have to be developed).

People, and especially world leaders, need to realize the global implications to such an operation as Ukraine just pulled off.

Russia will respond. Action, reaction, counteraction. Those are the shifting tides of warfare.

This wasn’t a bold action, it was brash. Ukraine’s short-term win could be the world’s long-term loss.

Despite what is a complete mess right now in Europe, there are still solutions to achieving peace. They are narrowing however and time, as it often does, becomes an enemy instead of a useful friend.

Taking Advantage Of A Market Drop 

It's possible the combo of the Ukrainian drone strike yesterday and the new tariffs Trump announced Friday could lead to a market pullback today. If so, we plan to place an options trade on one of Portfolio Armor's top ten names from Friday's close. 

Our top ten names from six months ago crushed the market (you can see how all of them have done here). 

If you'd like a heads up when we place that trade, you can sign up for our trading Substack/occasional email list below. And if you don't want to wait for that, you can see our top names via our website or iPhone app. 

 

If you'd like to stay in touch

You can scan for optimal hedges for individual securities, find our current top ten names, and create hedged portfolios on our website. You can also follow Portfolio Armor on X here, or become a free subscriber to our trading Substack using the link below (we're using that for our occasional emails now).

Contributor posts published on Zero Hedge do not necessarily represent the views and opinions of Zero Hedge, and are not selected, edited or screened by Zero Hedge editors.
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