June 25, 2026
Just off LIVE with Ken Harbaugh — decorated Navy vet, Yale Law, filmmaker behind the #1 Apple TV doc Against All Enemies, host of The Ken Harbaugh Show on MeidasTouch, and author of the most important war piece I’ve read all year in The Atlantic.
Ken’s the rare U.S. voice actually going to Ukraine — embedded with the operators, the partisans, the women in the underground.
👉 thekenharbaughshow.substack.com — go subscribe.
The Miracle: Ukraine’s Turnaround
A year ago every talking head was writing Ukraine’s obituary. Here’s where we actually are this week:
Zelensky confirmed 60,000+ tons of ammunition destroyed at the Baltic Fleet arsenal near St. Petersburg. Not a raid — a strategic-level subtraction from Russia’s ability to wage this war.
Russia’s largest satellite comms complex at Dubna took a precision hit on its 32-meter MARK-IV antenna. Russia’s eyes in the sky lost a chunk of their cornea.
Russia is now pulling air defenses off the front lines to babysit Moscow and the Kerch Bridge. That is the math of a country losing.
The Moscow refinery at Kapotnya is offline through year-end per Reuters. Six months minimum to repair.
Ken’s frame: a kill chain that runs from a refugee in Berlin verifying coordinates, to a partisan in Mariupol confirming a Russian unit hasn’t moved, to a drone operator near the front, to a target on fire 1,100 km behind enemy lines.
Not a flailing army. A machine.
The Warrior-Witches — Ken’s Atlantic Bombshell
Read the piece. I mean it.
It opens with a Chechen commander in occupied Ukraine. For months he’s been trading messages with what he believes is a 35-year-old lonely housewife. Eager to impress, he sends a selfie from his barracks. Behind him on the wall: a classified map with the coordinates of his unit.
The housewife doesn’t exist. “She” is a middle-aged Ukrainian intel officer named Serhiy. Shortly after that photo was sent, the barracks were obliterated by a Ukrainian drone.
Ukrainian commanders call their female agents vidma — “witches” in the old folkloric sense. The kind that knows your village, your warehouses, your supply schedules. One commander told Ken: “They can go places men cannot. Also, they are ruthless.”
From verified coordinates to drone on target: 15 minutes to a few hours. Ken reports operatives have been still chatting with the Russian soldier when the drone landed on his position.
Occupied cities are digital prisons now. Russia has rolled out a mandatory spyware app called Druge — “Friend” — that pipes your texts, photos, and location to Russian intelligence. Having Signal at a checkpoint is a one-way ticket “to the basement.” Ken’s note, and pay attention: this is what Flock license-plate readers in your American hometown grow up to be if nobody is watching.
Ken profiled a woman he calls Roksana — refugee from a clinic near Kherson, now verifying drone targets in her own village from exile. Her line:
“We can rebuild warehouses. But the Russians can’t rebuild Russians.”
That is the war.
The Logistics Lockdown: Crimea Is an Island
In late May, Ukraine’s MoD launched “Logistics Lockdown.” Goal: destroy Russia’s ability to move anything to the front. Weapon: mid-range drones, 200 km range.
One month of results:
The rail bridge over the North Crimean Canal no longer exists — destroyed by SOF on June 22. It was the artery into central and western Crimea.
Petrol sales to civilians are banned on the peninsula. Sevastopol drivers — the home base of the Black Sea Fleet — are on 20-liter coupons.
The Panagia ferry was struck in the Kerch Strait. Port Kavkaz–Kerch ferry ops suspended.
Crimean authorities cancelled all sporting events and summer camps for children through Sept. 1. That’s the tell.
Defense Minister Fedorov, on the record: “It looks like in the nearest time, Crimea will become an island.” The Kerch Bridge itself is on Ukraine’s published strike map. Ken’s read: when, not if.
Meanwhile, in Washington: 1,000 People Showed Up to America’s 250th
We closed on this, because the contrast is the whole point.
While Ukrainian women in their 30s and 60s and 70s are running honey-trap ops against an FSB regime that will torture them to death, the President of the United States kicked off America’s 250th by standing behind bulletproof glass on the National Mall and lying to literally one thousand people.
NBC put the crowd at “more than 1,000.” For the 250th anniversary of the world’s oldest continuous democracy. The Bulwark filmed people streaming toward the exits while Trump was still talking.
Sec. of Transportation Sean Duffy, on a federal stage next to his own kids, called the Americans who didn’t show up “libtards.” Out loud. Into the federal microphone.
Trump ran the usual firehose: Iran “will never have a nuclear weapon” (it’s a 60-day MOU). Hormuz is “fully open” (less than a third of prewar throughput, 80 mines still in the channel). The Reflecting Pool was “vandalized” (algae bloom in a $14M paint job scientists warned about).
Two days earlier, Pew’s 36-country survey landed: the world now expresses greater confidence in Xi and Putin than in Donald Trump. Canadian confidence in the U.S. presidency went from 77% under Biden to 20% today.
That is the man one thousand people showed up for.
The Throughline
The people who actually defend democracy are doing it. Roksana from exile. Sestra from inside Mariupol. Serhiy from a desk in Kyiv, flirting on WhatsApp with a commander he’s about to kill.
Here — in the country that was supposed to be the cathedral of self-government — the President is alone behind bulletproof glass, in front of a half-empty Mall, with people walking out while he’s still talking.
🗓️ Dean’s LIVE with Ken Harbaugh — every Tuesday and Thursday at 10:30 AM EST. Subscribe to Ken at thekenharbaughshow.substack.com and read “The Warrior-Witches of Ukraine’s Resistance” in The Atlantic.
— Dean
Thank you Caro Henry, PJ Schuster, Lori Modafferi, Sandra Steffen, Donna Everett, and many others for tuning into my live video with The Ken Harbaugh Show! Join me for my next live video in the app.
