All of a sudden…

Alex Krainer:
Yesterday morning I got a surprise call from a friend who lives in Kiev, Ukraine. He’s lived there for many years and he stayed put during the last four years of war. During that time we spoke from time to time and his reports were usually unremarkable. The war was on, the country was in a crisis, but life went on - nothing too far from the ordinary, at least in Kiev.
A few months ago he sent me a video from his apartment showing the firing of anti-air defense missiles from a relatively nearby location. He himself carries a foreign passport so he wasn’t overly concerned that he or any of his kids could be picked up by the hyperactive press gangs hunting for military service volunteers.

Risk of a civil war is 100%
Yesterday’s call was very different, however. He said that the situation in Kiev and in the whole country was beyond dismal and unimaginable, that the people are exhausted an desperate and that you could feel the tension in the air. Many people are walking around Kiev armed with AK-47s. He said that “something will erupt” very soon. I wasn’t sure if he was saying what I thought he was saying, so I asked whether he was talking about a civil war erupting?
His answer: “100 percent! 100 percent!” We spoke for a little bit longer and I asked him when he thought this could happen. He believes that it should happen within the next four weeks. My friend is not close to the government in Kiev, but he does have extensive experience in politics and diplomacy in the region, so his barometer could be accurate.
I then asked him if he was worried about the press gangs and he said he was “dying of fear,” because they no longer care whom they snatch and that his foreign passport wouldn’t exempt him or his children. Apparently, they are now all fair game.
Carlson nukes Kiev
What neither of us knew as we spoke, was that Tucker Carlson was about to publish a bombshell interview with Volodymyr Zelensky’s former press secretary, Yulia Mendel. She served as as his press secretary from 2019 to 2021. I noticed the interview dropping in the social media last night, but didn’t have time to watch it. My friend from Kiev messaged me this morning and said that the interview hit Ukraine like a nuclear bomb, that the whole country is aware of it and talking about it, and that Zelensky’s “in trouble.” He added that, “ending has begun.”
Of course, I immediately went back to the interview and listened to it today. It is truly a hard hitting and painful conversation to hear. Mendel made a number of credible and highly damaging allegations against Zelensky…

…The list goes on, and without a doubt, it will be highly damaging to Zelensky and his government, as well as to their most staunch supporters in the West. The interview is linked below and I highly recommend watching it, at least once…

…Over the coming weeks, Ukraine could displace Iran and the Persian Gulf from the front pages of the press and become the world’s top geopolitical flashpoint. In all likelihood, Zelensky’s government will collapse and Russia will wrest control over Kiev from Zelensky’s western sponsors. I’m not sure if this is related or not, but in this morning’s trading, British gilt opened at the new 30-year low.
Geopolitics and government bonds
One of the long-standing predictions in this newsletter has been that geopolitical defeats would precipitate the collapse of Western bond prices and currencies, especially those of the UK and the European Soviet Union. Since 2021, I’ve maintained that Great Britain would be the first domino to fall. Thus far, the markets have been in agreement and the British gilts have been sinking the fastest. The chart below illustrates the geopolitics - bonds prices dynamic…

…Just as it’s hard to see how Ukraine’s collapse could be reversed, it is hard to see how the “bonds Armageddons” could be averted. As I stated a few months ago, I believe that this could be one of the biggest and most consequential moves in the markets over the coming several years. Unfortunately, it will be very detrimental for the economies of all impacted countries. Bonds will crash and take the currencies with them, central banks will QE, the new money will flow to real assets (equities) and inflation will spin out of control.

https://open.substack.com/pub/trendcompass/p/ukraine-on-the-precipice-of-a-civil?r=nrpb&utm_medium=ios