Quick preface to this video - so i am filming this while on vacation with my family and it's devastating that the people of ukraine do not have the opportunity to enjoy what we get to enjoy on a daily basis. But i'm taking time from my vacation to make sure that we bring attention to these issues, and i wish that everybody has this opportunity, and i cannot wait for this war in ukraine to end as soon as possible. We have to stop the loss of life. Hey everyone meet kevin here, it's time for an update on what's going on in ukraine, and then, of course, we're also towards the end of the video going to talk about how this is affecting our market and expectations.

In terms of when this is actually finally going to end, let's go through all of this okay. First, we need to talk about how russia is continuing. Their push into southeast ukraine. Residents are fleeing.

We just had a train station where individuals, civilians were trying to evacuate and a missile hit the train station uh, killing at least 52.. So far, russia's advance has stalled throughout russia. However, they're focusing their attention on southeast ukraine and still cities outside of kiev, including one city 40 miles west of kiev, which is on the other side of the eastern attack right 40 miles to the west of kiev. Russians are coming from belarus, where 40 percent of the city is estimated to be destroyed.

That's four out of every single 10 buildings, estimated to be destroyed and 132 bodies were just found in a mass grave. This is all on top of what we saw last week. Going on in buca with burned bodies, civilians, children, men, women, everyone with hands tied behind their backs, shot, tortured, you name it absolutely disgusting, but beyond that, we've also got the russians just doing straight up stupid things in, for example, the chernobyl exclusion zone. So, what's really important to remember is that after the chernobyl nuclear incident, the meltdown there are a lot of radioactive material was spread throughout the area around chernobyl.

That's why there's a chernobyl exclusion zone. The reason it's an exclusion zone is because there's a lot of radiation. That's actually sitting just a few inches to up to a foot underneath the ground, the surface level, and when that gets disturbed, very high levels of radiation go in the air that can cause cancer, that's very bad, and so, apparently what russians are doing in the chernobyl Exclusion zone, despite scientists and security engineers who work at chernobyl, telling them not to do this. Russians are digging trenches and building bunkers now exposing themselves to the radiation.

Lingering beneath the surface, by digging in this area, they're exposing themselves to up to 1 000 times the normal levels of radiation. This is really bad, especially since that radiation could also spread beyond ukraine's borders, especially if electricity stays off too long at the chernobyl site. Because then, hydrogen generated by spent fuels that are stored there could end up accumulating leading to an explosion, and some experts believe that within 15 days, we could be at risk of a minor to larger explosions at chernobyl, which would then send a lot of radioactive materials. Throughout the air, this is why a lot of people are starting to stock up on iodine potassium pills, although that only helps prevent you from having radiation attached to your thyroid, which is only one way that radiation can affect you.

A lot of folks in europe are quite nervous about this, especially since russians appear to be so dumb that one russian soldier reportedly picked up a source of cobalt 60 with his bare hands, exposing him to so much radiation within just a few seconds that, when his Hands were measured with a geiger counter, the geiger counter maxed out now you might be wondering why is chernobyl important to the russians? Well, it's really their conduit to go from belarus to kiev and their surrounding cities, so they're fortifying themselves in the chernobyl area, and there are even reports that, as russians are retreating from the towns that they've sieged around kiev they're, throwing appliances that they looted from stores And homes like washing machines and microwaves and refrigerators, just onto the side of the freeways, as for some reason, apparently they've changed their mind on stealing the stuff. Of course, we imagine a lot more has been stolen, actually kept now. Another thing to keep in mind is that russia is really trying to refocus their attack in the east potentially recruiting as many as 60 000 reservists now trying to completely capture cities like marupo would be a massive blow to the morale of ukrainians, though they are so Strong under the leadership of zelinski, i expect they will still stay. Strong.

Zielinski, though, is calling this eastern battle crucial, because he realizes the last thing he wants us to start losing more of the eastern region. At the same time, china is now accelerating its nuclear arsenal because of how it views threats from the united states. Now the united states, on one hand, is saying: we've got to be concerned here, because this could lead to surprise nuclear attacks from china, though most folks with intelligence from china expect that china is really just trying to build up an arsenal equal or greater to the Size of the united states, so that way they could use just having that much of a nuclear arsenal as a deterrent or leverage point for negotiations on trade or conflicts such as even taiwan. The united states has also been training ukrainian troops since the start of the war, including recently training them on switchblade armed drones, which ukraine now has 100 of those delivered directly from the united states.

Youtube has blocked the russian duma tv channel. Now this is a channel. That's kind of like c-span in america, where they share parliamentary debates and other political news. It also now looks inevitable that russia is going to default for the first time on some of their bonds, though this has not happened.

Yet. This is an expectation, england's boris johnson. The prime minister did meet with zielinski in kiev, and the eu and italy have re-opened their embassies in kiev, as keef seems to be much more under control. Now the ukrainian air force has about 70 percent of its air force still up but they're, not using the air force as much as they could, because they fear that if they lose their airships their warplanes, they might not be able to get replacement airplanes.

So they're keeping them for more crucial parts within ukraine, though this also makes a lot of people question: hey, aren't the lives in eastern ukraine crucial and worth fighting for with those jets, but then the question comes. We know that the ukrainians are launching these warplanes from airfields that are still active in western ukraine, and these planes are able to be launched from western ukraine to help in areas such as keith, but potentially not as far as the eastern area of ukraine, the red Cross has also negotiated multiple safe corridors. Russia and ukraine have agreed to humanitarian corridors to allow civilians to escape fighting in these regions. So far, so good thanks to the work of the red cross, which is awesome now in exchange, the united states has provided slovakia.

A patriot anti-aircraft defense system, which is a newer model, one that ukrainians aren't experienced in, but it's kind of interesting how you're seeing countries in eastern ukraine provide weapons to ukraine and them sort of get reimbursed by the united states. I kind of honestly wish the u.s would just you know, grow some balls and provide these weapons directly to ukraine. However, i do understand the potential implications here of is that then sort of like creating world war iii, it's sort of blurry, because, as we mentioned earlier, the united states is already training ukrainian troops and providing them drones. So, what's the difference now we got to talk about the length of this conflict.

So there's a big day coming up and it's may 9th may 9th is a really big day, because this is what putin has set for, what's known, as quote victory day. Putin plans to announce victory day on may 9th, which means we could see a lot of increased aggression in eastern ukraine leading up to may 9th and then hopefully, after may, 9th putin ends up using this claim to victory. Even though we know it's been a complete failure as a way to justify withdrawing troops from ukraine, this is a big hope. Now i personally have been believing that this war would come to a resolution by the end of may.

I'm hoping that this ends up being now by the middle of may, because of this quote-unquote victory day, scam or whatever that they're going to perpetuate in russia. But if that makes them feel good and we can end the war and the killing in this disaster, that would be absolutely wonderful, because this is terrible now. What does this mean for markets? Well, the problem is may 9th is after the next fomc meeting, which means between now at the beginning of april and may 9th we've got cpi coming up on tuesday. We've got earnings season to get through again we're back to earnings season now for q1 and then we've got the fed's fomc meeting which ends on the fourth.

So you've got these endless amounts of uncertainty that are going to lead to reduced buying pressure in markets and what happens well, probably, the next month is gon na suck. If we do get little periods of green shoots personally, i would take advantage of those to either take some potential profits on more risky trades. On calls that you have and maybe open up some hedges like selling some calls or selling some puts, but just be prepared. May 9th is going to be a very big day.

There's your update on ukraine.