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Show notes
There is a moment in every dying empire when the people at the top stop trying to make the math work and the people at the bottom realize they are going to freeze in the dark. This week on The Eastern Border, we stare into the abyss of the Russian state. The true believers have figured out the Kremlin's religion is just a PR interface. A retired Spetsnaz colonel draws up plans to breed a billion white Russians and mandate a "celibacy tax," while the actual Ministry of Defence is so loaned up to its eyeballs that regional governments are quietly slashing the price of a dead husband to $600. Meanwhile, the imperial army fights on cheap Chinese walkie-talkies, the airfields sit naked against drone swarms, and the one thing Moscow was waiting for—a Donald Trump who would hand them Ukraine on a silver platter—just lost both houses of Congress in a massive midterm blue wave. From the FSB crime syndicates in Donetsk to the Sberbank gold trap and the bitter truth of the Oleshky evacuation, we look at the gap between the imperial delusion and the dirt-level reality. The view from the edge is spectacular. Become our patron: https://www.patreon.com/theeasternborder Merch store + another option for memberships: https://theeasternborder-shop.fourthwall.com/ Follow what's going on here in the very border of Eastern Europe: https://bsky.app/profile/theeasternborder.lv Download all episodes for free on our website; pictures accompanying certain episodes can be found there as well! http://theeasternborder.lv/ Car4Ukraine Eastern Border Autumn Harvest Campaign! https://car4ukraine.com/campaigns/autumn-harvest-2026-the-eastern-border Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/theeasternborder. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.