The protracted, prolonged stalemates and (the small) prospects for breakthroughs on the front lines of the Russia-Ukraine War

Tim Judah opened an article on the conflict between Ukraine and Russia in 2015 as follows:

Last September [2014], a few weeks before Ukraine's general election, Arseniy Yatsenyuk, then as now prime minister, issued a pamphlet listing his aims. One was stark: "To get through the winter." Given that rebel soldiers in the eastern part of the country paint "To Kiev!" on their tanks, that Ukraine relies on Russia for much of its energy, and that its economy is in dire straits, it is nonetheless safe to say that he has succeeded. The rebels, despite inflicting two major recent defeats on the government forces, have not advanced significantly. Winter power cuts in regions unaffected by the war were short and survivable. Also, while the current cease-fire, agreed to on February 12, is not expected to last, Ukraine and its government have not collapsed, nor do they show any signs of being on the brink of doing so, as some of the Russian media keep saying hopefully. (1)

Suspicions that Moscow has in mind taking over the capital. Ukraine is economically weak. The pro-Moscow rebel advance is going very slowly, though their patron country Russia has a much bigger economy and military than Ukraine. The Ukrainians are bearing up under war-related hardships. The Russian media are exaggerating the progress of their partisans.

That part of the story sounds very familiar here in 2026, over a decade later.

A map accompanying the article shows Crimea marked to show that Russia had occupied and formally annexed, with the pro-Russian rebels controlling significant parts of the oblasts (provinces) of Donetsk and Luhansk. Since the war expanded with the overt Russian invasion of February 2022, Russia currently holds around 20% of Ukrainian territory, including large parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.

Russia still claims Crimea as part of its own territory, although Ukraine has been very successful in drastically limiting the usefulness of the Russian Black Sea fleet that has based out of Crimea. They have also done some serious damage to oil refineries in Crimea, which is strategically significant in damaging Russia’s wartimes economy. Whether physically reoccupying Crimea would be a meaningful strategic top priority at the moment is another question. But Ukraine after more four years of an active Russian invasion still maintains control of the “fortress belt” in Donetsk (2), which is a major strategic defensive priority for them. Which is a sign of determination on both sides of the war of attrition.

As of Tim Judah’s 2015 report, Russia was pursuing a less aggressive advance than they adopted in 2022, seven years later:

On January 24 a salvo of missiles lasting less than a minute hit Mariupol, killing thirty. Then nothing happened. In theory the rebel forces could isolate and surround the city if they moved westward to link up to Russian soldiers moving out from Crimea; but this would leave the rebels and the Russians with lang supply lines and lang lines to defend. None of this is impossible, but it would be very difficult and for Putin a huge gamble. If they have not done it until now, then maybe they will never do it.

Whether legal or not, whether NATO countries accepted it or not, there is every reason to believe that their aim at that point to ensure that Ukraine did not become a NATO member state. NATO in 2008 had recklessly declared that both Ukraine and Georgia would eventually become members of NATO, even though neither at the time were even close to meeting the criteria for NATO membership. Russia staged a military conflict in Georgia in 2008, which left them in control of part of what Georgia rightly claimed as its sovereign territory. The Russian occupation of Crimea in 2014 and its illegal annexation as part of Russia, also put Russia in control of an important piece of Ukrainian territory, too. That in itself complicated any prospect of Ukraine becoming a NATO member, since it was not in de facto control of all of its territory.

There were other options available to Washington and to Moscow on how to proceed from there. The US could have recognized that Russia for the immediate future would not allow Ukraine to join NATO. Russia could have undertaken intensified preparations for a military conflict without annexing Crimea. That could have also made a reasonable call after they had annexed the peninsula that Russian control of Ukraine would limit indefinitely Ukraine’s ability to join NATO and foregone the at-first informal and later-official declaration that they considered parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson to be Russian territory.

Judah reported in 2015, “In Kiev, the mood is gloomy. Most people realize that they are in for a long conflict.” Sadly, we can still say that today. He continued, “Mykola Kapitonenko, an adviser to parliament's foreign affairs committee, said that suing for peace now would be tantamount to accepting a deal ‘in which Putin is offering, 'I stop the war and you come under my control’."

The most likely prospect here in 2026 looks very similar: an eventual armistice of some kind in which the lines of the current war of attrition are frozen in place. The formal resolution of the borders would then be punted to some unspecified future time. The Korean Peninsula is a reminder of how long such lines of demarcation can endure. But how long it will take for both sides in the current war to reach such a conclusion would be very hard to estimate at the current moment.

And this observation from Judah’s piece is a sobering reminder:

So Ukraine is in a race against time. If Putin's goal is simply to destabilize the country, rather than actually take more territory from it, then its angry people [i.e., keeping Ukrainian unhappy] suit his aim. His problem is that the longer the war drags on, the worse it is for Russia's economy and future too. Will he react by discreetly moving to help the rebels even more or by moving to delicately extricate Russia from the conflict? Only zealots who see Putin as some sort of messiah still believe that he is not fueling it. For the rebels themselves and their supporters, the reality is that militarily the campaign has stalled, at least for now.

(Also, how many Russians ever actually saw Vladimir Putin “as some sort of messiah”?)

That reminder of how both Ukrainian and Russian public morale had been holding up during the year after Russia’s seizure of Crimea is a caution about whether “morale bombing” on both sides is likely to bring any sudden resolution of the conflict here over 10 years later.

It’s worth noting that the philanthropist and democracy advocate George Soros (a major bogeyman for the far right) wrote about optimistically about sanctions, also in 2015:

The sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and Europe for its interventions in Ukraine have worked much faster and inflicted much more damage on the Russian economy than anybody could have expected. The sanctions sought to deny Russian banks and companies access to the international capital markets. The increased damage is largely due to a sharp decline in the price of oil, without which the sanctions would have been much less effective. Russia needs oil prices to be around $100 a barrel in order to balance its budget. (It is now around $55 a barrel.) The combination of lower oil prices and sanctions has pushed Russia into a financial crisis that is by some measures already comparable to the one in 1998. [my emphasis] (3)

That’s an important reminder that sanctions can cause real pain for the sanctioned country. But when the sanctioned parties see a particular conflict (rightly or wrongly) as critical to their national security and even their survival, sanctions often prove disappointing in the effects on the countries being targeted.

In the prolonged stalemate, the Russia-Ukraine War is starting to look like an excerpt from the 1993 film Groundhog Day, in which the same day keeps replaying itself over and over and over.

This is a worthwhile discussion of the war with the economist and former Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and a leading economic journalist, Wolfgang Münchau who was also a co-editor of the Financial Times Deutschland. Varoufakis brings up the Turkish attack on Cyprus in 1974 and the prolonged frozen conflict that followed as a relevant example to help understand the current situation in Ukraine. (4)

Varoufakis has been keeping an eye on the European trends with military industries in the current international situation which is creating strong pressures for European rearmament. We need to be hearing commentaries along this line. It’s another case that multiple things can be true at the same time. In this case, it can be true that Europeans have a realistic need to restructure and their militaries due to the distancing of the US from NATO; and that it will doing so will be expensive; and that shifting money from domestic programs could free up funding for more military spending; and that doing the latter instead of raising income and wealth taxes on billionaires is a really bad idea.

The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) posts weekly updates on the battlefield situation. Here are their eight relatively granular “key takeaways” for Saturday, July 11. (5)

1. The recent, intensified Ukrainian strikes against Russian seaborne gasoline tankers in the Sea of Azov have reportedly forced Russia to close some maritime routes.
2. Starboard Maritime Intelligence data indicates a possible 55 percent decline in vessels with active automatic identification system (AIS) transponders in the Sea of Azov between June 30 and July 11.
3. Intensified Ukrainian strikes against seaborne vessels may have prompted Russian vessels to alter their behavior in the Sea of Azov in any of several ways consistent with the Starboard data and AIS signal anomalies.
4. Russian consumer gasoline prices are skyrocketing amid Ukraine’s intensifying long-range strike campaign against Russian oil refineries and gasoline producers.
5. Russia appears to have been engaged in a hacking operation that targeted civilian cameras across NATO countries and in Ukraine.
6. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky authorized the creation of two new commands within the Ukrainian Armed Forces on July 10.
7. Russian forces launched six Iskander-M and S-400 ballistic missiles, four Kh-59/69 guided cruise missiles, two Kh-31 anti-radar missiles, and 121 drones against Ukraine overnight.
8.  Russian forces recently advanced in the Kostyantynivka-Druzhkivka tactical area, and Ukrainian forces recently advanced in the Novopavlivka direction. [my emphasis]

For anyone not already familiar with considerable detail about the military actions in the war, perceiving the implications of these items is pretty difficult. It’s helpful to be alert for phrases like “have reportedly,” “indicates,” “may have prompted,” and “appears to have been engaged in.” I’m not criticizing ISW for using such phrases; on the contrary, it’s good practice to indicate what is well-established and what has not been clearly confirmed. And their website includes more detailed daily information than the daily “key takeaways.”

Their eighth point doesn’t try to flag the Russian and Ukrainian advances as game changing observations. But it is consistent with the Groundhog Day nature of the war of attrition right now: small advances and retreats by both countries with heavy casualties.

ISW’s more expanded explanation of Point 5 about the hacking tells us the following:

The Telegraph reported on July 10, citing the Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) and Military Intelligence and Security Service (MIVD) that Kremlin-based hackers have been spying on NATO military bases in Europe by hacking into civilian cameras pointing at military equipment transportation routes to identify the types of weapons Ukraine received. The Dutch intelligence services reported that the Russian operation targeted European NATO members states, including the Netherlands, and Ukraine. The Telegraph speculated that hackers likely accessed civilian doorbell systems to monitor weapons transportation routes.

That all sounds plausible to me. But there is no indication how different that situation on July 11 may have been from what NATO and Russia are doing all the time. Of course, intelligence agencies try to hack each other. And sometimes the hacks may be very significant. But without more detail or collaborating reports, it’s hard to tell how serious they are.

Notes:

(1) Judah, Tim (2015): Ukraine: Inside the Deadlock, 18-20. New York Review of Books 05/07/2015.

(2) Beaumont, Peter et. al. (2026): Kill zones and drone nets: a journey through Ukraine’s fortress belt. Guardian 07/03/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2026/jul/03/kill-zones-drone-nets-journey-ukraine-fortress-belt> (Accessed: 2026-11-07).

(3) Soros, George (2015): A New Policy to Rescue Ukraine, 22-24. New York Review of Books 02/05/2015.

(4) The Ukraine comeback isn't what they're telling you. Econoclasts and UnHerd YouTube channel 07/10/2026. <https://youtu.be/BTix_mCIiWg?si=tGu5AfsYrgBtpdj_> (Accessed: 2026-11-07).

(5) Key Takeaways. Institute for the Study of War 07/11/2026. <https://understandingwar.org/research/russia-ukraine/russian-offensive-campaign-assessment-july-11-2026/> (Accessed: 2026-12-07).

Trying to decipher major Western reporting on Vladimir Putin

Marie Jégo reports in a new article for Le Monde English on Vladimir Putin’s wartime leadership. (1) It provides a good example of why critical reading is called for with such pieces.

Like other dictators before him, Vladimir Putin has his own television news programs. Every evening, after the 8 pm broadcast, teams from the official channel Rossiya 1 stay at their workplace and re-edit the news segments to deliver a carefully filtered version, stripped of any news likely to displease the Russian president.

This system was described by Dmitri Skorobutov, former editor-in-chief of the channel's nightly news broadcast who has been living in exile in Europe since 2020, in an interview in June to The Moscow Times, an opposition media outlet in exile. Introduced in 2011, at the time of the major Russian protests against electoral fraud, the practice intensified after the invasion of Ukraine in 2022, to the point that Putin is now said to be "completely cut off from the reality on the front lines," according to Skorobutov.

The fact that Le Monde is calling the Moscow Times “an opposition media outlet in exile” lends the latter credibility, though of course critical reading is always in order. AP News reported in 2024: “The Russian prosecutor general’s office on Wednesday declared The Moscow Times, an online newspaper popular among Russia’s expatriate community, as an ‘undesirable organization’.” (2)

But when we ask what those two paragraphs from Le Monde tell us, I would say it’s entirely likely that Putin has his own news summaries prepared. As presumably many other heads of government also do. (Trump’s practice of watching FOX News in the wee ours is not likely to the standard practice in most countries!) Are the news summaries for Putin “stripped of any news likely to displease the Russian president”? That’s entirely possible. And Dmitri Skorobutov as former editor-in-chief at Rossiya 1 presumably has better sources for such reporting than most of us do.

But it’s also worth noting that not all actual and aspiring dictators insist on hearing only opinions and factual reports that fit their preferences. The British historian in his 1991 book Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives argued that Joseph Stalin, not renowned for his patience with internal political opposition, actually made a practice of seeking out alternative opinions from his advisers on major decisions. He contrasted that with Hitler’s practice of much preferring advice that fitted his own self-presumed genius assessments of situations.

Is Putin "completely cut off from the reality on the front lines"? Who knows? He’s been the de facto head of the Russian government for over a quarter of a century, so it’s possible that he has an isolated bubble of his own, as Skorobutov describes. I’m not so convinced that the situation is as extreme as Jégo depicts it:

His own lies may have ended up convincing him. Stuck in the past, he is wary of the internet and new communication technologies. The president has never sent an email in his life and does not own a cell phone. His sources of information are limited to television news programs tailored to his point of view and reports from generals and advisers who are careful not to contradict him. "Those close to him tell him what he wants to hear," summarized Grantseva. "He has in fact indoctrinated those around him, who in turn indoctrinate him. It's a vicious circle that no one can escape." (3)

Putin is a former KGB officer, of course he’s wary of spying on his communications. Most government officials involved with national security issues tend to be. Although the US Secretary of “War” Peter Hegseth and his collaborators on Signal may not be. Trump himself has obviously not been as careful of operational security as one might expect of a President, e.g., classified documents stored in unsecured boxes in Mar-a-Lago bathrooms.

Putin’s government decided in May to release this obviously carefully-produced four-minute propaganda video – which in this version runs twice - to counter rumors that he was hiding in a bunker. So his government is sensitive to such claims: (3)

Le Monde also reports, “Russian forces lost ground in May, for the second month in a row, according to analysis by the Institute for the Study of War [ISW], an American think tank.”

May is a key word there. Jégo’s article was published on July 5. As I noted in a post just a few days ago, the ISW’s daily updates in June indicated that the Russian were advancing on the front lines, but very slowly. There have been massive laying of landmines on both sides of the lines of engagement, and drone attacks (especially from Ukraine’s side) are making advances to seize more territory very difficult. And I referenced the academic journal Osteuropa’s war blog and John Mearsheimer’s very recent assessments that both indicated the same thing.

This is primarily a war of attrition, despite all the publicity the drone war is generating. Ukraine at the moment has been successful in neutralizing much of the Russian fleet’s operations in the Black Sea, which depend on Russia’s use of ports in the illegally-annexed Crimea. And they may be able to isolate Russia from direct access to the Crimean peninsula. Ukrainian attacks on Crimea have been important in a strategic sense because it has impeded Russia’s access to Ukrainian oil. How much it would benefit Ukraine in the current war to completely retake control of Crimea while the provinces (oblasts) of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson remain mostly under Russian occupation is another question.

Jégo writes, “Isolated in this curated information bubble, the Russian president continually claims that his army is advancing ‘every day in all directions’ in Ukraine.” Making inflated claims is not the same as actually being self-deceived or isolated from uncomfortable information. Putin was a well-trained KGB agent, after all, so he has ideas about the kind of public propaganda he wants to express. And, we should give him credit: even his most dubious propaganda claims are normally much better crafted than the babble that Donald Trump spits out on a daily basis.

Jégo stresses similarities between Putin’s regime and the pre-1989 Soviet system. That there are some to be found isn’t terribly surprising since, you know, Russia is the largest and most powerful of the successor states of the former Soviet Union. Today’s capitalist, plutocratic, Mafia-like state is not politically organized like the Communist government of the USSR was. And his system looks pretty good to the Peter Thiels and Elon Musks and Donald Trumps of the world.

Warning, you may experience reflexive eye-rolling at the next thing:

Could Ukraine become Putin's Afghanistan? The comparison needs to be nuanced. "In Ukraine, the consequences of the war go beyond those of Afghanistan, especially in human terms," recalled Kastouéva-Jean. "Russia is now losing more men there in a single month than the Soviet Union did in a decade of conflict in Afghanistan [1979-1989, between 15,000 and 26,000 according to Russian sources]."

It’s remarkable how many Western neocons and assorted commentators take it for granted that the Soviet war in Afghanistan was the primary cause of the fall of the Soviet Union.

While no one seems to doubt that the war was unpopular among the public, the actual evidence for such an effect is fairly slim. Particularly compared to the very consequential effects of the USSR having become a petrostate and all that entailed, and of the challenges of modernizing Soviet industry in the 1980s. But this idea became a key part of neocon dogma to justify inciting insurrections in countries they see as having unfriendly, uncooperative governments, like Saddam Hussein’s in Iraq or the long-stand clerical regime in Iran. Now it’s a zombie trope that is obviously still stalking around the minds of interventionist-minded commentators. And we still hear it being used to argue that the current Russia-Ukraine War will have the same effect in Moscow. We see that reflected in Jégo’s report, as well.

Here it’s worth noting an anonymous article from the current Moscow Times on Russian experience with hardship in recent decades:

Two things we mustn’t forget tell us a lot. First, a number of major cities have faced high-profile attacks or tragedies in recent decades: the Crocus City Hall attack, the Volgograd train station suicide bombing, the St. Petersburg metro bombing, the Kemerovo shopping mall fire, not to mention the 1999 apartment bombings shortly before then-Prime Minister Vladimir Putin became president. Since 2022, many smaller cities and regions have been hit by drones, notably in the largely forgotten Operation Spider’s Web attacks.

Second, most ordinary Russians are accustomed to chugging along through economic difficulties in modern history. A shrug at the economy and an instinct to hunker down without fuss in tough times were expected. ...

I remember waking up on the morning opposition politician Boris Nemtsov was killed and feeling how tense it was. My spouse told me to be careful with what I posted online. I remember Putin disappearing from public view for a while and all the rumors people had heard. I remember getting emails from my employer in 2019-21 urging us to avoid certain weekend protests. My salary was briefly cut during Covid. As for February 2022, I just couldn’t believe it.

But each time, the country carried on. Friends told me repeatedly that this was a small crisis. Not because they were brainwashed by state propaganda about the 1990s, but because they had actually lived through harder times and come out the other side with a decent quality of life. Colleagues took great delight in explaining something about the Russian character: we’re good in tough times. (4)

This is related to the mistaken idea that bombing civilian areas will break the war morale of population being bombed and therefore push them to demand their government give up their war against, uh, the side that’s bombing them. We see a similar phenomenon with economic sanctions, which can be strategically useful in depriving a hostile country of very specific militarily-relevant goods. But sanctions that cause hunger or deprivation of critical medications don’t successfully convey a message to the affected civilians of, “We’re not against you, only against your government.”

Jégo’s article concludes with a factual observation about other “hybrid operations” by Russia against the West. I prefer the term “hybrid operations” to the often-used term “hybrid warfare.” Because it’s important to distinguish between annoyance and provocations on the one hand, and actual warfare on the other. It’s also common for xenophobic politicians to complain that asylum seekers and other irregular migration are tantamount to a military invasion. Immigrants may be inconvenient. But unless they are coming as part of an actual military operation, they are not an invasion. And immigration is not warfare, “hybrid” or otherwise.

Jégo puts it this way:

Western intelligence agencies are warning of an intensification of hybrid operations. "They relentlessly target critical infrastructure, democratic processes, supply chains and public trust," warned Anne Keast-Butler, director of the British government's intelligence, cybersecurity, and security agency, in May. Aerial incursions, GPS signal jamming, sabotage of infrastructure in the Baltic Sea, repeated provocations at European borders: With no victory in Ukraine in sight, Moscow is relying more than ever on its capacity to cause disruption. [my emphasis]

Notes:

(1) Jégo, Marie (2026): Vladimir Putin, or the loneliness of 'Homo Sovieticus'. Le Monde English 07/06/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/07/05/vladimir-putin-or-the-loneliness-of-homo-sovieticus_6755172_4.html> (Accessed: 2026-06-07).

(2) Russia declares newspaper The Moscow Times ‘undesirable’ amid crackdown on criticism. AP News 07/11/2024. <https://apnews.com/article/russia-media-newspaper-crackdown-moscow-times-9f6713ac4a880a57946ee9b7214b78f1> (Accessed: 2026-06-07).

(3) Putin Appears In Moscow As Russia Rejects Reports Of Underground War Bunker Isolation. The Financial Express [India] YouTube channel 05/13/2026. <https://youtu.be/FZHIoU0F0cw?si=syh1WSQfuDUNUiev> (Accessed: 2026-06-07). The description on YouTube notes, “The video shows Putin casually driving a Russian-made SUV through central Moscow before meeting his former school teacher, Vera Gurevich, in what many see as a direct response to growing speculation about his security situation and isolation during the Ukraine war.”

(4) The World Shouldn’t Be Confused When Russians Shrug Off a Crisis. The Moscow Times 06/29/2026. <https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2026/06/29/the-world-shouldnt-be-confused-when-russians-shrug-off-a-crisis-a93120> (Accessed: 2026-06-07).

The Ukrainian Fortress Belt and why it is a major focus in the forever war there

Michael McFaul is a Democrat, a former US Ambassador to Russia and still a leading Establishment foreign policy figure. He has been very hawkish in his enthusiasm for the Ukrainian side in the Russia-Ukraine War. Several points from a Substack article of his from June are worth noticing. (1)

He discusses his view of the Russian war aims: “First, Putin aimed to unite Russians and Ukrainians, whom he considers to be ‘one people.’ Ukrainians, in his view, are just Russians with accents. Regarding this war objective, Putin has failed miserably.” It’s true that Putin’s government has advocated a kind of Panslavic concept that sees Russia and Ukraine as somehow spiritually united. A conservative Orthodox Christianity heavily influences Putin’s rhetoric. And a popular narrative of Russia’s historical origins traces it back to the establishment of the “Kyivan Rus,” traditionally dated to the 9th century.

As far as I’ve seen, Russia has never officially and explicitly stated that they intend to conquer all of Ukraine. That would be an enormous undertaking and would create a chronic headache for a Ukraine that was formally absorbed as part of Russia. As we have seen for decades and especially since 2022, there are certainly plenty of Ukrainians who would really prefer not to be part of Russia.

McFaul also observes:

... Putin did not achieve his second war objective—regime change or what he oddly calls “denazification.” (Nazis do not rule Ukraine.) Zelenskyy, his security detail, and all Ukrainian warriors have prevented Putin from overthrowing the democratically elected president and parliament. In the first days of the full-scale invasion, Zelenskyy evaded multiple assassination attempts. Putin’s original dream of installing a pro-Kremlin puppet to rule Ukraine seems more fantastical today than ever before.

This is a far more plausible claim. There are actual neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine. They don’t control the government, but they exist and are intensely anti-Russia. Volodymyr Zelensky’s government created an unnecessary headache for itself in pandering to admirers of that marginal but real trend:

Poland and Ukraine have a common enemy — Russia — but a dispute over massacres eight decades ago is increasingly being weaponized in domestic politics on both sides.

The historical feud began in May when Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy named a Ukrainian military unit after the “Heroes of UPA,” which outraged Poland. The Ukrainian Insurgent Army, known as UPA, killed tens of thousands of Poles in World War II in an ethnic cleansing campaign in what is now western Ukraine.

On the Polish side, the heated debate about Zelenskyy’s move is already threatening to weigh on next year’s crucial general election — with the nationalist camp seeing an opportunity to score points against pro-EU centrists. [my emphasis] (2)

This was an “own goal” on Ukraine’s part. Especially since Poland, which has the biggest active-service army in the EU, shares and border with Ukraine, and has hosted millions of Ukrainian refugees.

McFaul notes that “democracy is still Ukraine’s form of government,” as the US expects its allies to at least pretend to be. The 2026 edition of the widely used Democracy Report from the V-Dem Institute notes, “There are many populous countries in the region undergoing autocratization during the last two decades, such as Romania, Russia, Ukraine, and until recently Poland.”

McFaul’s third main point is on firmer ground with his point that “after more than four years of fighting, Ukrainians have continued to deny Putin his revised, more limited war aim of annexing major chunks of Ukrainian territory.” In its categorization for 2025 rating countries in the four large categories of Liberal Democracies, Electoral Democracies, Electoral Autocracies, and Closed Autocracies, both Russia and Ukraine are included in the Electoral Autocracies slot, with Ukraine having moved more toward more authoritarian governance in 2025. (The US and the UK both fall into their Electoral Democracies category.)

Relations between nations can be facilitated by similar types of governance. But other factors drive international alliances. And international law on national sovereignty does not depend on the type of their internal governments. And that is also true of any ethical or religious version of the just war concept.

McFaul observes, plausibly, that the “Ukrainians thwarted Putin’s plan to kill Zelenskyy and install a Kremlin-friendly puppet.” The idea that Putin’s government would want a friendly and/subordinate regime in Kiev is far more likely than the assumption their intention was to annex the entire country. He also makes the sensible argument that Russia’s current goal is the “more limited war aim of annexing major chunks of Ukrainian territory.” Having Russia in de facto control of provinces of the Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson would make it in practice much more difficult if not impossible for Ukraine to join with the EU or NATO. And it actually is reasonable to assume, despite the protests of Ukraine’s political partisans, that Russia’s concern, repeated consistently for years over NATO membership for Ukraine, was the main reason for its current war of aggression.

This is a brief explainer from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) of an important element of Ukraine’s defense called the “fortress belt” in the Donetsk province. (3) This is a militarily critical element in Ukraine’s defense, because Ukraine has successfully used it to block Russian advances. And if Moscow undertakes another effort to directly attack the capital Kiev, the fortress belt area would be crucial in blocking a ground invasion aimed at Kiev.

Notes:

(1) McFaul, Michael (2026): Ukraine is Winning. McFaul’s World 06/12/2026. <https://michaelmcfaul.substack.com/p/ukraine-is-winning> (Accessed: 2026-07-05).

(2) Kość, Wojciech (2026): How a bloody past is reshaping politics in Poland and Ukraine. Politico EU 06/30/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/poland-ukraine-pis-party-volodymyr-zelenskyy-donald-tusk-karol-nawrocki-bloody-past/> (Accessed: 2026-07-05).

(3) Ukraine’s Fortress Belt: The Key to Sustaining the Frontline. Institute for the Study of War YouTube channel 05/22/2026. <https://youtu.be/7pDakmv6gaQ?si=AcxC76p_r70uEIuZ> (Accessed: 2026-07-05).

Two wars with no obvious quick ends in sight

The US is facing huge risks from two current wars, one of whose risks are more immediate and acute for Europe. Both the Russia-Ukraine War and especially the US-Israel War on Iran would require at a very minimum competent diplomacy from Washington to resolve. And that factor is very much in short supply at the moment.

The Iran disaster

There is obviously a good chance that the negotiations with Iran will not lead to a permanent settlement or even an end to the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz oil traffic. The clock is ticking and it sounds like in three or four weeks, much more devastating economic effects of the oil blockade will be making themselves felt.

Klye Kulinski takes an 18-minute look at what the White House is putting forward this week on the US-Israel War on Iran. (Note: Kyle often uses not-appropriate-for-the-office language, though not so much in this segment.) And gives us a disturbing glimpse at what a train wreck the Trump 2.0 regime is on war policy. (1)

This war is certainly a joint folly of the Trump Administration and the Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. It is also the case that Israel has been pushing for the war. And Netanyahu himself has been doing so for decades. But Donald Trump is the President, and he bears full responsibility for his bad decisions. Kyle speculates plausibly that Israel, among other things, is exercising blackmail against Trump.

Netanyahu's Israel is following an aggressive policy against its Middle Eastern neighbors with the goal of making and maintaining itself the unquestioned regional hegemon there, with Syria, Lebanon, and Iran reduced to failed states. They are currently pushing to have the Sunni Islamist government in Damascus fight on Israel’s behalf inside Lebanon against the Iran-allied Hizbollah. in It is also pursuing an expansionist policy in line with the explicit from-the-river-to-the-sea policy of Netanyahu’s Likud Party and his current governing coalition, including a continuation of the overtly genocidal policies against Palestinians Israel has pursued since the October 7 attack in 2023.

But, reckless and illegal as much of that policy is, at least Israel is pursuing a goal that is in their perceived national interest. That doesn’t mean that it fully rational. It’s not. The Netanyahu version of Zionism is highly ideological and religious. It also has huge inherent risks for Israel itself, not least of which that its prospects are dependent on the military and diplomatic support of the United States.

But the current US-Israel war against Iran carries huge risks for America, as we see in the current blocking of the Strait of Hormuz. And the economic damage to the US and the whole world is already serious (2) and may very well get much worse. Whatever substantive benefit the US might in some ways take from this is very hard to perceive at the moment.

The Trump regime’s current stance is looking awfully like a deer-in-the-headlights paralysis. That’s a better metaphor than, say, “sleepwalking.” Because everyone can see the train running full speed down the tracks directly in front of us.

The Russia-Ukraine Forever War

The war that began with the direct Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has gone on for over four years. By all accounts, the lines of conflict between the Russian occupiers and Ukrainian forces have not shifted in really significant way since the failure of the Ukrainian counteroffensive in 2023. It’s still a war of attrition with Russian forces deeply entrenched in the four provinces (oblasts) of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. The province of Crimea that Russia seized in 2014 has been subject to heavy and effective Ukrainian attacks. But the success of the Ukraine’s drone-based warfare against the Russian fleet in the Black Sea, Crimea’s significant as the main base for that fleet is largely nullified for the moment. Even in the unlikely event that Ukraine establishes full control of Crimea while the other four provinces are still largely under Russian control, it’s hard to see how that would much improve Ukraine’s position in the war over the other occupied provinces.

John Mearsheimer, who has been often-depressingly correct about Ukraine’s position in the war since 2022, has also been pointing to signals that Russia has been signaling that it may stage a direct attack on a NATO country to pressure Europe (and the US, which is still providing some support for Ukraine) to limit its support for Ukraine.) How serious are they about the hinted threats? It’s hard for the public to know. But it’s not an entirely frivolous one. And though the Europeans are generally pretty hawkish in their rhetoric and have been hailing the Ukrainian strikes deeper into Russian territory, we have to hope and assume that they are paying close attention to their options for response in such a case. Because Ukraine is not part of NATO. Poland, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are. As overused as the word “credibility” is in foreign policy debates, any direct Russian military attack on a target inside the territory of a NATO ally really would mean that the Western response would provide an important test of the alliance’s credibility.

Mearsheimer has recently been emphasizing that the US position in relation to Iran is remarkably weak. But he has also been saying that the Russians have been very slowly advancing on the front lines inside Ukraine recently. (3) The Institute for the Study of War (ISW) has been doing daily updates on the military situation in the war.

And their recent updates seem consistent with Mearsheimer’s, like that he gives toward the end of this recent interview, which also discusses the Iran War. (4)

The German academic journal Osteuropa has also been keeping a war diary of the Russia-Ukraine War. While it tends to put an optimistic face on Ukraine’s prospects, they also reflect the view that of Russia making very slow progress in the war of attrition in Ukraine in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. A July 1 update finds:

Overall, the Russian army is thus continuing its summer offensive despite Ukraine's successful air strikes on the supply lines in the rear area. This is certainly possible because it has set up camps in the area close to the front that Ukraine has not yet discovered. Ukraine has also not yet succeeded in eliminating Russia's strategic bomber fleet, which continues to cover the Ukrainian army's offshore positions with a carpet of heavy glide bombs. The situation at the front remains tense. Ukraine has not yet outdone all of Russia's trump cards.

Russia's military bloggers are showing themselves to be extremely concerned about the situation of Moscow's troops in this area [in the Zaporizhzhia oblast]. They fear that they could not only have to give up the positions they took in January 2025 at the price of thousands of soldiers killed, but also lose Vasylivka [also in Zaporizhzhia], which has been controlled [by the Russians] since March 2022. (5)

There has also been a confusing spate of discussion recently about the supposed success of Ukraine’s drone strikes deeper inside Russia and the alleged weakness of the Russian economy. It’s generally true of humanity, despite our long history of armed conflict, that most people would really prefer not to have wars. And that ordinary people gripe about the deaths and lesser inconveniences that come with wars. There are exceptions, of course, like our Secretary of “War” Pete Hegseth. But fortunately, most people are not drooling warmongers, despite the reflexive support that people tend to give wars being waged by their own country, at least in the early weeks of a conflict. (The majority disapproval in the US of the Iran War from its beginning on February 28 on is a dramatic exception. Maybe even an anthropological exception.)

But Russia is also having a military-Keynesianism moment, with boosted military production contributing to generally low unemployment. There are reports of shortages and hardships, but I find it hard to evaluate their significance for the Russian war effort. And Russia does have a far larger population and economy than Ukraine’s. Ukraine has understandably touted its success in striking targets in Moscow and St. Petersburg, including war-related infrastructure like oil refineries. And Ukraine’s partisans in the West seem to be convinced that those attacks are increasing public discontent against Putin’s government.

Of course, Russia is also bombing civilian centers in Ukraine, too. And Ukraine is still carrying on the war into its fifth year.

It’s really a remarkable thing how much faith so many pundits and people who generally should know better have in ability of attacks on civilian areas to “break the will” of the civilian population. Bombing from airplanes began in 1912 during the First Balkan War and was practiced by both Germany and Britain in the First World War.

After the war, an Italian named Giulio Douhet wrote a book called Command of the Air (1921), which was extremely influential on airwar theorists in the interwar period, in which he expressed faith in the effectiveness of deliberately bombing civilian targets on breaking the will to resist of the enemy’s civilian population. One could even say a religious faith:

A people who are bombed today as they were bombed yesterday, who know they will be bombed again tomorrow and see no end to their martyrdom, are bound to call for peace at length. It may be two weeks, two months, or six months, depending upon the intensity of the offensive and the stoutness of the people’s hearts. [my emphasis] (6)

Bombing to destroy the morale of enemy civilians was known as “morale” bombing during the Second World War. Now it is more commonly described as a “punishment campaign.”

The effect predicted by Douhet of such campaigns has never happened. (7) There was even experience already from the First World War to indicate that was a false hope. British and German civilians did make demands on their government after such attacks: demands to provide better protection from such attacks and to retaliate in kind on the enemy side. Seeing one’s neighbor wrecked and your neighbors and family members killed and wounded by enemy bombing doesn’t tend to make people eager to surrender to the side that dropped the bombs, even if they hate their own government for whatever reason. They also have maximum incentive to cooperate actively with their neighbors and their own government for civil defense purposes.

Without pretending to be thoroughly familiar with the war reports, it’s hard for me to imagine that the long-range Ukrainian bombing inside Russia is substantively affecting Russia abilities to fight along the front lines of the war of attrition.

Notes:

(1) Iran GHOSTS TRUMP As White House PANICS In War Briefing To Congress! Secular Talk YouTube channel 07/01/2026. <https://youtu.be/2yh4r8BFQsM?si=5zgMEY7aCxCM7Oug> (Accessed: 2026-07-02).

(2) The Iran War Broke The American Empire. Owen Jones YouTube channel 06/21/2026. <https://youtu.be/L_ucoGhwxCs?si=-XBHH9iemS_af2Q6> (Accessed: 2026-07-02).

(3) Mearsheimer DIRE WARNING On Russia/Ukraine. Breaking Points YouTube channel 06/23/2026. <https://youtu.be/Q-AiLUd4E8Q?si=ZnwQ1uclV1etSkD1> (Accessed: 2026-07-02).

(4) Prof. John Mearsheimer: Making Sense of Iran’s Victory Judge Napolitano - Judging Freedom YouTube channel 06/30/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/XtINoZon8as?si=HGHWeDztZIcr-xA3> (Accessed: 2026-07-02).

(5) Mitrokhin, Nikolay (2026): Wechsel der strategischen Initiative. Osteuropa 07/01/2026. <https://zeitschrift-osteuropa.de/blog/wechsel-der-strategischen-initiative/> (Accessed: 2026-07-02). My translation to English.

(6) Douhet, Giulio (2019 [1921]): Command of the Air, 245. Maxwell Air Force Base: Air University Press. (1921 Reprint of 1921 edition)

(7) See: Pape, Robert (1996): Bombing to Win: Air Power and Coercion in War. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

Davis Biddle, Tami (2002): Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing 1914-1945. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Keeping our heads about war enthusiasm, Russia-Ukraine version

I’m genuinely surprised at some of the outspoken optimism of some of Ukraine’s most eager supporters in the commentariat.

The real issue practical issue right now as I understand it is, are Ukraine and Russia willing and able to make a long-term ceasefire agreement that freezes the current lines of occupation in place and addresses issues like prisoner-of-war exchanges and return of Ukrainian children kidnapped and sent into Russia?

If not, the most likely outcome is that the current war of attrition continues indefinitely. Russia’s occupation of one-fifth or so of Ukraine’s territory, Russia’s presumed (and clearly stated) goal of keeping Ukraine out of NATO is achieved for now. Since Trump has radically – and almost certainly permanently - undercut NATO’s reliability and Europe is scrambling to make collective-defense plans that do not rely on US participation, it’s understandable that European politicians and governments are stressing potential security issues with Russia. And, of course, companies that make huge profit margins on armaments have their own narrow incentives to promote a bogeyman of Russia as much as possible.

But neither unrealistic Russophobia or Russophilia – the latter at the moment most common among far-right parties (and some of them like Georgia Meloni’s ruling party in Italy are anti-Russia) – are conducive to realistic understanding of actual threats and opportunities. Reality does matter.

Ironically, the USSR and its Communist ideology are long gone, but the Western powers’ emphasis on ideology in its Cold War standoffs (and bouts of détente) with Moscow. Now Russia has a capitalist system with an authoritarian government based on rule through billionaire oligarchs – and Russia is still a favorite bogeyman. Trump’s weird admiration for Russia and Putin, whether it’s based on incompetence, corruption and/or blackmail – has not led to some more stable security arrangements or a resolution of the war with Ukraine. In fact, the last formal nuclear-arms-control agreement between the US and Russia expired under Trump 2.0. With no replacement, of course.

But when commentary and analysis become simple war boosterism, that can and often lead to real-world consequences. The Guardian’s Simon Tisdall often provides good analysis. But in a current column on the Russia-Ukraine war, he seems to get carried away by boosterism. (1)

Here’s a sample from just one paragraph:

“For Ukraine, the latest news is mostly good. Using sophisticated Ukrainian-made drones and missiles, it has forced the invaders on to the back foot.”

The front lines haven’t moved much from what it was by the end of 2023. But there does seem to be little question that Ukraine has been able to drone warfare with a notable measure of effectiveness.

“Russia’s tally of dead and wounded is said to be running to 30,000 each month.”

But the lines of engagement are largely unchanged. Russia also still has a volunteer army while Ukraine has been relying on draftees and is apparently having series difficulties with desertions. Russia does have large advantages in personnel and industrial capacity. However, Ukraine is fighting for what presumably most of its citizens consider to be its own territory and even its own national survival.

Ukrainian airstrikes deep into Russian territory are bringing the war home to a misled, disillusioned public.”

Yes, being bombed by an enemy country creates mass demands from the public of the country being bombed to immediately give up its war aims as has been shown by many examples since wartime bombing from airplanes began in the First Balkan War of 1912 including, uh, well … no examples. Because that has never happened.

“St Petersburg burns.“

Or, more precisely, Ukraine has made some attacks in Russia well behind the front lines. Whether those attacks have significantly reduced Russia’s warmaking capacity is very questionable. Also, this makes the limited strikes on Petersburg sound like the American firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945, which killed 80-100 thousand people. This is just silly.

“Fuel shortages cause panic buying. Prices and taxes are rising.“

Isn’t this happening pretty much everywhere thanks to the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz?

“Putin’s 2022 ‘special military operation’, which was supposed to bring swift victory, has now lasted longer than the first world war.”

The First World War was a good deal bigger than the current Ukraine war, though it was also heavily a war of attrition.

Tisdall does give examples of he presents likely Russian provocations in NATO countries:

Russia’s offensive is becoming more physically aggressive, too. Armed drone and combat jet incursions into Nato airspace are multiplying. Thousands of GPS interference incidents, disrupting civilian aviation and maritime navigation, are blamed on Russia. Poland’s rail network, which supplies Ukraine, has been sabotaged. Germany and the UK have suffered similar attacks. Baltic undersea pipelines and internet cables have been cut. In this undeclared war, Norway’s land border with Russia, the North Sea and the North Atlantic approaches are emerging fronts.

The big problem with claims like this is that they are often based on partial information that is often not independently verifiable. The sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines in 2022, for instance, has still not been definitively clarified in the public record. And it’s very possible that the US and/or Ukraine sabotaged them, although the story involving Ukraine doing it has also struck me as dubious. (2)

Scott Lucas, who is a good political analyst and one I follow regularly, also seems to fall into boosterism in this clip title, “Can Ukraine Cut Off Russian-Occupied Crimea?” (3)

The podcast episode is titled, “Can Ukraine Cut Off Russian-Occupied Crimea?” Which also raises the question: Given Ukraine’s success with drone warfare, how much does “cutting off” Crimea do for Ukraine’s side in the current war of attrition? If Ukraine were able to take back their Kherson province, they would cut off Russia’s land access to Crimea through Kherson it currently has. It’s not clear what the advantage of prioritizing isolating the Crimean Peninsula would be at this time if that doesn’t directly include re-securing Ukrainian land connection to Crimea.

The hawkish-leaning Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) did a report in early 2025 about Russia sabotage in Europe that I wouldn’t dismiss out of hand. (Welcome to international politics!) Its opening paragraph claims:

Russia is engaged in an aggressive campaign of subversion and sabotage against European and U.S. targets, which complement Russia’s brutal conventional war in Ukraine. The number of Russian attacks in Europe nearly tripled between 2023 and 2024, after quadrupling between 2022 and 2023. Russia’s military intelligence service, the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation (or GRU), was likely responsible for many of these attacks, either directly by their own officers or indirectly through recruited agents. The GRU and other Russian intelligence agencies frequently recruited local assets to plan and execute sabotage and subversion missions. Other operations relied on Russia’s “shadow fleet,” commercial ships used to circumvent Western sanctions, for undersea attacks. [my emphasis] (4)

Not to be overly cynical, but this kind of stuff goes at various levels between adversary powers all the time. It’s still very important to evaluate the specificity and reliability of reporting on such incidents, from Russia or any other international actors including the US.

It’s also important to be mindful of what is being described as “hybrid war.” For instance, one of the Russian “active measures” is “Undermining the democratic norms and values that underpin the West.” Against, welcome to international politics. And, yes, Trump and J.D. Vance engage in doing exactly that with their political allies in the anti-democracy “Nationalist International.”

Notes:

(1) Tisdall, Simon (2026): Russia is losing the war in Ukraine, and Putin is desperate. But that’s when he’s at his most dangerous. Guardian 06/14/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jun/14/vladimir-putin-ukraine-war-borders-russian-president> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

(2) Walker, Shun & Cole, Deborah (2026): The Nord Stream riddle: echoes of mistrust ripple through Europe. Guardian 11/03/2025. <https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/nov/03/the-nord-stream-riddle-echoes-of-mistrust-ripple-through-europe> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

(3) Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 06/14/2026. <https://youtu.be/izJkqpZC5Co?si=RwF_lHhnWQqV_GU4> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

(4) Jones, Seth (2026): Russia’s Shadow War Against the West. CSIS 03/18/2025. <https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/2025-03/250318_Jones_Russia_Shadow.pdf?VersionId=LHamL2L7HJwLgZ7a_wq6xkTIwMh3TFpk> (Accessed: 2026-14-06).

Navigating the Ukraine War narratives

John Mearsheimer talked about Russia and Europe in this interview with Tom Switzer. (1)

And among other things, he talks about how stereotypical Western images of Russia may be tempting some Western countries to indulge in threat inflation in thinking about the actual possible challenges from Russia, which also can fall prey to misleading stereotypes. And the temptation to start believing one’s own side’s hype about wars. As the investigative journalist Izzy Stone famously put it, “All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”

In my previous post, I included a video of a lecture giving a staunchly conservative account of the Russian Civil war of 1918-20 by British historian Antony Beevor. It provides a good example of the kind of Western Russophobia that Mearsheimer often mentions.

At one point, Beevor refers to the “Asiatic savagery” displayed by both sides in the Civil War. Presumably this “Asiatic” quality includes Russians from both the European and Asian parts of the country. And I would guess that’s supposed to apply to Ukrainians. It’s less clear whether he’s suggesting that the British, French, American, Polish, Czech, and Slovakian participants involved also count as Asians in that characterization.

European leaders are stepping up try to fill the diplomatic space on the Russia-Ukraine War left by what has been essentially the collapse of normal diplomacy with Russia that we’re seen under the Trump 2.0 regime:

British, French and German ambassadors to Russia held talks Thursday in Russia's Foreign Ministry, several days after a London summit with Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky. The United Kingdom hosted Zelensky and the leaders of France and Germany earlier this week, supporting Kyiv's call for direct talks with Russia to end more than four years of war. The envoys met with Russia's deputy foreign minister, Mikhail Galuzin. …

Russian President Vladimir Putin this month rejected Zelensky's offer for a face-to-face meeting to end the fighting. In London, the UK's Keir Starmer, France's Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Friedrich Merz said they supported Zelensky's proposal and that the current frontline should be a "starting point for negotiations." (2)

Ukraine’s supporters understandably indulge in some combination of optimism and standard war propaganda to make it sound like Russia’s willingness and/or ability to keep the war going is failing. But the front lines have scarcely changed in a long time. Part of the confusion is that Western governments and commentators tend to talk about Russia’s aim as being to conquer all of Ukraine. In fact, it looks like Russia right now is continuing to focus on holding the one-fifth or so of the Ukrainian territory they currently occupy. That gives them enormous leverage in blocking Ukraine from entering NATO or any other kind of formal military alliance with the current European NATO members.

Ukraine is still far from meeting the conditions to immediately become a full EU member. Ukraine benefits from the EU’s “Eastern Partnership” without becoming a full EU member. The EU Treaty also contains an explicit mutual-defense commitment. This hasn’t received a lot of attention, especially before 2025, because NATO had been the key (mostly) defensive alliance before Trump started making explicit threats to attack US allies like Denmark (Greenland) and Canada. But the Russians are unlikely in the foreseeable future to accept Ukrainian membership in an alliance with potential adversary European powers.

The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) – a reliably “establishment” group like its American counterpart – sponsored a poll among EU nations that “confirms the collapse in European faith in the US. Only 11% of respondents now consider it an ally, down from 16% half a year ago and 22% in November 2024. Meanwhile fully 25% see it as either a rival or an adversary.” (3)

Scott Lucas has been a good analyst on the Russia-Ukraine War and the US-Israeli War on Iran. But he sometimes seems to get a bit too enthusiastic about symbolic events, like the Russian cutback of its Victory Day Parade last month, which Lucas sees as a particularly important symbolic victory. He again cites that in this discussion with two Ukrainian journalists: (4)

I’m very skeptical about the usefulness from the Ukrainian attempts to use strikes deep inside Russia. It’s hard to imagine that Ukraine is seriously damaging Russia ability to wage war with those “strategic” attacks. My nonspecialist assumption is that concentrating on tactical strikes at the Russian forces occupying Ukrainian territory and those immediately near the Ukrainian border would be a more effective use of firepower.

In the real existing game of power politics in Europe, the EU countries and Britain do have to make calculations about potential military threats from Russia. That’s just a standard power-political consideration. John Feffer argues that Russia is not likely in practice to attempt any serious military aggression against current NATO countries like Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. That doesn’t mean their won’t be the occasional (non-combat) testing of air space defenses – which is pretty routine procedure – or sometimes a case where a drone “accidentally” crashes in one of those countries. As Feffer puts it:

Putin is not so dumb as to double down on his Ukrainian blunder by sending military forces into Poland or even the Baltic states. Cyberattacks and clandestine operations can be more effective since they don’t cross the threshold that mandates a NATO counterattack. Meanwhile, influence operations - disinformation campaigns, strategic political alliances, and the marketing of illiberalism - are even more effective in undermining the ideological underpinnings of the EU.

This latter campaign has more than double the impact when it’s mirrored on the Atlantic side by the actions of Trump, Vance, and Hegseth. (5)

Feffer’s article does not use the concept of “hybrid warfare” for those attempts at political interventions. It’s inevitable that terms like “propaganda war” pop up. But it is also very important to remember warfare is military conflict. It’s a current part of the politics of the parties and activist groups that are part of the Trumpist Nationalist International to claim that immigration is a type of hybrid warfare and an invasion. Democratic parties should be encouraging the use of that rhetoric, which is clearly xenophobic hate- and fear-mongering.

Notes:

(1) Why the war is not over - John Mearsheimer. Switzerland with Tom Switzer YouTube channel 06/12/2026. <https://www.youtube.com/live/xAspI4jxvWI?si=YFnX4Grk6tl2wYbz> (Accessed: 2026-12-06).

(2) Le Monde/AFP (2026): British, French and German envoys hold talks in Russian Foreign Ministry. 06/11/2026. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2026/06/11/british-french-and-german-envoys-hold-talks-in-russian-foreign-ministry_6754349_4.html> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

(3) Kobzová, Jana & Zerka, Pawel (2026): Home alone: Europeans are ready to defend themselves. ECFR 06/10/2026. <https://ecfr.eu/publication/home-alone-europeans-are-ready-to-defend-themselves/> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

(4) Crimea CUT OFF — Putin’s bridges ON FIRE! No FUEL at all. War & Politics 24 and Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 06/12/2026. <https://youtu.be/P18bRWDUnyQ?si=eWYRE6GwPlbZMHBn> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

(5) Feffer, John (2026): Pete Hegseth’s Invasions. Foreign Policy in Focus 06/10/2026. <https://fpif.org/pete-hegseths-invasions/> (Accessed: 2026-13-06).

Zelenskyy’s new proposals for ceasefire talks with Russia

In the long and continuing Russia-Ukraine War, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy recently issued a new proposal for negotiations, proposing a face-to-face meeting with Vladimir Putin. (“Volodymyr” is the Ukrainian version of the “Russian Vladimir”.)

It’s not hard to imagine that both Vladimir’s are sick of the clown-show diplomacy of Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff. Although it seems to have worked better for Putin’s purposes than for Zelenskyy’s. Still, ultra-amateur diplomacy is the last thing this situation needed. (Which is even more true for the current Iran War!)

The BBC summarizes the current position of the two countries on territorial issues:

Putin's longstanding position has been that Ukraine should withdraw from four regions largely occupied by Russia - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - and give up its efforts to join Nato.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding territory, saying it would embolden Russia to invade again, as it had in 2022 when it launched its full-scale war eight years after illegally annexing Crimea. (1)

And the BBC report notes:

Putin's longstanding position has been that Ukraine should withdraw from four regions largely occupied by Russia - Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia - and give up its efforts to join Nato.

Ukraine has ruled out ceding territory, saying it would embolden Russia to invade again, as it had in 2022 when it launched its full-scale war eight years after illegally annexing Crimea.

Ceasefire negotiations have stalled in recent months, while previous peace talks in Geneva, Abu Dhabi and Istanbul have failed.

It’s a bit surprising that the BBC report didn’t mention Crimea there. In current international law, Crimea (seized by Russia in 2014), Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are Ukraine’s territory. The Russia position that they have officially incorporated Crimea and parts of the other four oblasts into Russia proper is not valid in international law and has never been recognized by Ukraine as valid.

Oleksandr Kyselov, a left-leaning Ukrainian from the Donetsk oblast (province) and currently of Uppsala University in Sweden, provided a helpful context this past December for what geographical issues that would be involved in a settlement of the current war. He was reacting to a particular peace proposal put forward by Russia last November 21.

Precedents exist for lasting ceasefires even when underlying territorial claims remained unresolved - Cyprus since 1974, Korea since 1953, Kashmir since 1972. But Cyprus has United Nations peacekeepers and foreign troops on both sides. Korea has one of the world’s most militarized borders. Kashmir sees regular outbreaks of violence, prevented from full war only by nuclear deterrence. None offers templates for sustainable peace in Ukraine fitting the deals discussed. [my emphasis] (2)

The Crimea problem(s)

Crimea has the most important port for the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Russia’s involvement in Crimea is also not new. Russia officially annexed the peninsula 1783. The Crimean War of 1853-1856 was, as the name suggests, was a war with Britian and France against Russia over control of Crimea. Two Ukrainian experts, Alina Frolova and Stepan Yakymiak, write for the Carnegie Institute:

Moscow’s determination to dominate the Black Sea runs deep in its strategic culture.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of 2022 aimed not only to seize Ukrainian land but also to reimpose its dominance at sea. Its initial war plans foresaw a rapid occupation of Ukraine’s coastline, including the critical port cities of Odesa and Mykolaiv. If it had succeeded in that, Moscow would have been able to restore much of its Cold War-era control over the Black Sea, strangle Ukraine’s economy, and use control over the flow of food and energy for coercion. The world learned in 2022 that Ukraine is vital to global food security. Russia’s blockade of Ukrainian ports triggered a surge in grain prices, placing millions—particularly in Africa and the Middle East—at risk of hunger until a UN-brokered agreement, and later Ukraine’s military power, prompted Moscow to retreat. [my emphasis] (3)

But Russia’s ability to use Crimea to produce a military advantage in the Black Sea has also been inhibited by Ukrainian drones and missiles in the current war. So at the moment, Crimea is not a critical to Russia’s power position as it seemed before the war. But that does not mean that Russia is inclined to cede it back to Ukraine. The current state of drone technology may have far-reaching effects on naval strategies and types of vessels used.

Frolova’s and Yakymiak’s position doesn’t seem to anticipate a harmonious resolution of the Crimea issue anytime soon:

The only way to achieve lasting peace and security in the Black Sea, therefore, is to ensure that Russia’s naval capabilities are not just degraded temporarily but kept structurally paralyzed. …

Ukraine’s primary objective in the Black Sea, working alongside its partners, should be the preservation of the current balance of power. But consolidating this achievement demands long-term commitment: scaling up Ukraine’s maritime strike capacity, institutionalizing the support of its coalition of partners, and integrating Black Sea security into NATO and EU frameworks. In other words, the Black Sea will remain insecure until Russia’s fleet ceases to be able to function as an offensive force. That is the starting point from which any serious strategy must proceed.

I think it’s safe to say that if Russia’s leaders think that is the goal Western powers include Ukraine are pursuing, it could be a very long time before the control of Crimea is resolved in any way acceptable to both Ukraine and to Russia!

Türkiye is also a key player on Black Sea security matters and has also focused on restricting Russia naval power there. Countries bordering on the Black Sea include Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine (even without Crimea) Russia, Georgia, and Türkiye. So the Crimea issues involves much more than just Ukraine and Russia agreeing on new boundary markers.

2014 Black Sea Map from Encyclopedia Britannica:

The occupied eastern Ukrainian oblasts

Zelenskyy’s new offer for talks at least hints that there could be a longterm ceasefire like those Oleksandr Kyselov cites for Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. On the surface, there seems to be a lot to be said for such an arrangement. Although the three examples Kyselov cites involve frozen conflicts that have lasted since 1953, 1972 and 1974. So a settlement along those lines could mean in practice something that would look to those directly affected a lot like a permanent settlement. The example of China and Taiwan, divided since the end of the Second World War, is on an even longer timeline.

At the very least, a stable and protracted ceasefire could give both sides a chance to begin removing the massive number of landmines and other unexploded ordinance on both sides of the conflict lines there. It could also offer a chance to resolve the heartbreaking issues of the many Ukrainian children illegally deported by Russia, many of them given to Russian families for adoption. And it would allow war refugees to return to their homes if they want to do so – although in many cases their actual homes may no longer exist.

A key issue for Ukraine of their 50-meter-long “fortress belt” in Donetsk. A 2025 analysis from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) describes the importance of that part of Donetsk – still controlled by Ukraine – as a key defensive position for any new military drive on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv by Russian forces. The ISW report discusses them in the context of proposals Russia had on the table at the time of the report:

The surrender of the rest of Donetsk Oblast as the prerequisite of a ceasefire with no commitment to a final peace settlement ending the war would force Ukraine to abandon its "fortress belt," the main fortified defensive line in Donetsk Oblast since 2014, with no guarantee that fighting will not resume. Putin's reported proposal reportedly demands that Ukraine concede this critical defensive position, which Russian forces currently have no means of rapidly enveloping or penetrating, apparently in exchange for nothing. (4)

John Mearsheimer describes the current context of the war is that Russia is winning in the war of attrition and advancing slowly, but advancing. He doesn’t see much credibility in claims that Putin is facing critical challenges politically because of the Russian economy or claims that the occasional drone attacks by Ukraine deep inside Russia are putting huge new political pressure on Putin to end the war. (5)

Scott Lucas is a good analyst of American diplomacy and on Trump’s regime generally. But He’s a bit too starry-eyed on things like the Ukrainian strikes inside Russia. It’s not that Ukraine isn’t successful in hitting some strategic economic infrastructure targets. But it’s hard to imagine that those are having any large economic effect on Russia’s industrial capabilities, especially in comparison to using those attacks for tactical operations on the Russian forces on the border. But Lucas also comments that he thinks Zelenskyy is seeking a ceasefire in place now. (6)

At this stage, a prolonged ceasefire along the current front lines is likely the very best Ukraine can do. There’s a good argument that it also makes sense for Russia, and Mearsheimer gives the impression that there is some possibility to Putin’s government will see it that way. He recent suggest that Zelenskyy’s current optimistic rhetoric would be a good way for Zelenskyy to spin the results if Russia should agree to a stable ceasefire-in-place. But that would be a best-we-can-do type settlement from Ukraine’s viewpoint. And the Russian government may decide that maintaining something like the current position with sporadic rounds of fighting without a ceasefire is a preferable position.

The Ukraine-can’t-join-NATO demand is sounding a little obsolescent these days, since the European allies and even Canada are scrambling to find alternative military-defense commitments and arrangement now that they can no longer count on the US in anything like the way they could pre-2025. But if Putin wants to do a deal, he probably could convince Trump to make some kind of pledge that the US would veto any Ukrainian bid for membership.

Still, a firm agreement with he US on sanctions relief would be a likely thing for Russia to demand in a major ceasefire agreement. And that would require the US to conduct something more like actual diplomacy than the current Kushner-Witkoff Laurel-and-Hardy act.

Jared and Steve prepare for their next round of negotiations with Russia

Notes:

(1) Shevchenko, Mann, Toby (2026): Zelensky proposes face-to-face talks in open letter to Putin. BBC News 2026-05-06). <https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cwy2ypyp4x4o> Accessed: 2026-09-04).

(2) Kyselov, Oleksandr (2025): Ukraine Faces an Imperial Carve-Up. Jacobin 2025-04-12. <https://jacobin.com/2025/12/ukraine-russia-war-concessions-trump> (Accessed : 2026-09-06).

(3) Frolova, Alina & Yakymiak, Stepan (2026): The Changing Military Balance in the Black Sea: A Ukrainian Perspective. Carnegie Institute 04/02/2026. <https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/research/2026/04/the-changing-military-balance-in-the-black-sea-a-ukrainian-perspective> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

(4) Ukraine’s Fortress Belt in Donetsk Oblast ISW 12-Aug-2025. <https://understandingwar.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/08/The20Critical20Importance20of20UkraineE28099s20Fortress20Belt20in20Donetsk2C20August20122C2020252C20final20PDF.pdf> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

(5) Prof. John Mearsheimer: Why Ukraine Will Lose. Judge Napolitano YouTube channel 06/09/2026. (5) <https://www.youtube.com/live/XtINoZon8as?si=4labuv1wjoCc5u4g> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

(6) Why Ukraine's Show of Strength in St. Petersburg Matters. Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel06/09/2026. <https://youtu.be/iFOfGT-f1iQ?si=ZjJh0c90Qh4pTjnX> (Accessed: 2026-09-06).

Confusingly multiple truths on the Ukraine-Russia War (Includinng Ukrainian Nazis and Russia's war economy)

The Russia-Ukraine War that’s been going on since 2022 has often been a reminder of the banal observation that “multiple things can be true at once.”

It can be true (and is) that the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 by Russia, Ukraine, the UK and the US that committed Ukraine to give up its legacy nuclear weapons included a pledge by the parties to respect Ukraine’s national sovereignty. It can also be true (and is) that there were no mutual defense commitments by the parties in the event that one party did violate Ukraine’s national sovereignty. (1)

It can be true (and is) that when Russia seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014 and incorporated it into Russia it was violating the 1994 Budapest Memorandum and international law against invading another country. It can also be true (and is) that Crimea was the key base for the Russian Black Sea fleet and Russia considers control of it critical to their national security as they understand it.

Nazis in Ukraine

It can be true (and is) that there are Nazis in Ukraine. It can also be true (and is) that Russian propaganda has grossly exaggerated the influence of Ukrainian Nazis on the current government’s policies and goals.

Marta Havryshko recently provided some current analysis of the “brown” (Nazi) part of the Ukrainian political spectrum. First, the bad news:

Neo-Nazi networks are deeply embedded in parts of Ukraine’s military structure. Their presence is visible in units such as Azov, the Third Assault Brigade, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Bratstvo, the German Volunteer Corps, Karpatska Sich, and others. Yet Ukraine’s Western backers continue to arm, fund, and train these units without meaningful scrutiny.

Even more striking is the normalization of Nazi imagery itself. Official Ukrainian military channels and mainstream media regularly publish images of soldiers wearing swastikas, Waffen-SS insignia, and patches linked to neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Misanthropic Division. This is no longer treated as scandalous. It has been normalized. (2)

She writes that the de-politicization of the Azov unit of the Ukrainian army was over-emphasized in Western reporting to the point of whitewashing the “brown” influence in the Ukrainian forces. While it may be based on a pragmatic consideration, the continuing influence she describes of far-right ideologues in the military is a potentially serious problem for Ukraine’s future.

Some far-right parties and factions in Europe more generally are pro-Russian in their orientation. Ukrainian Nazis tend to be anti-Russian.

Without getting too deeply into these particular toxic weeds, the far-right, authoritarian parties in the EU Parliament – the main democracy-hating Nationalist International parties - are mainly organized into two groups: the Patriots for Europe and the Europe of Sovereign Nations Group.

Overt neo-Nazis are (currently!) much fringier that the more clean-shaven aspiring fascists.

Of course, the turn to [supporting] Russia was not adopted by the entire extreme right. Rather, the war against Ukraine, which has been going on since 2014 and entered a new phase in 2022, led to a marked formation of camps. While pro-Russian positions prevail in the FPÖ [Austrian Freedom Party], in the "alternative media" landscape, in conspiracy-inclined groups and in parts of the "New Right," or at least a strategic equidistance is insisted on, in the neo-Nazi spectrum partisanship for Ukraine on the basis of a racist reading of the conflict and revisionist historical analogies dominates.

Russia appears [to them] as a revenant of the Soviet Union, which - as it had already happened in the Second World War - unleashed the "hordes of Inner and East Asia" to subjugate "Europe and the white world". The Austrian neo-Nazi milieu shares this view with like-minded people in Ukraine itself as well as in other European countries, which is also reflected in corresponding networking activities. On August 24, 2024 - Ukraine's Independence Day - the pan-European alliance "Nation Europe" was founded at a meeting in Lviv in western Ukraine. This sees itself as a networking platform against Russian expansionism and unites organizations from all over Europe. [my emphasis] (3)

So, yes, there are neo-Nazis in Ukraine and Zelenskyy’s government probably is too tolerant of their presence in the military. Neo-Nazis are not running the government.

Is the war overwhelming Russia’s economy?

It can be true that the war is putting real strains on Russia’s economy. It can also be true that Western hopes that Russia’s economic weaknesses will undercut their war effort have been overblown.

Michael Krätke, in a new article on the damage the war is doing to the Russian economy. wrestles with the multiple-things-can-be-true challenge in a recent short (four pages) article on Russia’s wartime economy.

He asserts the claim that seems to be pretty generally accepted that Russia has cut back on the publication of much of its economic data and what they do publish tends to be less than accurate. On the other hand, he cites the Russian Ministry of Development figures reporting that in early 2026 by 0.3 to 0.4 percent. And he notes, “All government forecasts for the coming years claim no more than growth of around one percent.”

He writes that “the prices of basic foodstuffs such as bread, potatoes or cucumbers have more than doubled since December 2025 alone, even according to the Russian statistical office Rosstat.” He doesn’t cite the particular source for that claim, but it’s at least consistent with the price rises that the current Iran War has been causing worldwide.

According to him, the economic burdens of the war have only recently become sharply felt in Moscow and St. Petersburg.

But given the assumption that he shares that Russia’s published economic statistics are bad information, he doesn’t make clear where the numbers he’s citing for his own arguments are provided. Which is probably partially due to space constraints. While the multiple-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time consideration applies to the economy as well, it’s hard to evaluate them without some ideas of the sources.

In a backhanded acknowledgement that the economic sanctions on Russia failed to have the hoped-for effect on Russia’s ability to continue the war, he writes: “Ukraine's supporters have been just as inconsistent and hesitant about sanctions as they were about supplying weapons to the invaded country.” He argues they were “much too slow and much too soft.“

But in the multiple-things vein, Krätke reports on the stimulative effect since 2022 of what is called military Keynesianism, in which the increase in government funding for military goods stimulates the economy more generally:

Since 2004, the Putin regime has pursued one rearmament program after another, and in 2022 it converted the entire economy to war [priorities]. The country's military-industrial complex has grown almost explosively in the past four years: at the beginning with emergency measures such as maximum utilization of the existing facilities, the reduction of production times or the introduction of a three-shift system with a six-day working week.

Krätke makes an interesting use of the longtime anti-militarist argument that spending on military production inevitably results in at least a relative short-changing of civilian production. As President Dwight Eisenhower put it in his famous 1953 “Chance for Peace” speech: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” (5) Krätke stresses the damage that higher military spending is doing to the Russian economy, in his view.

Without going into greater detail here, military expenditures generally are less stimulative than equivalent amounts of government spending on civilian projects, not least because of the large and poorly-regulated profit margins on major military contracts. But conservatives generally find military-related spending as more virtuous than civilian spending.

However, it is widely accepted that wartime spending booms can stimulate the economy while also causing potentially serious economic imbalances, even if the overall economy is growing at a healthy pace.

Krätke concludes his article with, “Russia’s war economy is hitting up against its limits.”

So here also we have a multiple-things-can-be-true-at-the-same-time situation. It can be true (and is) that wartime military spending can provide relatively quick economic stimulus. It can also be true (and is) that a lopsided emphasis on rapidly building up the military can also cause real economic problems.

And when it comes to economic sanctions more generally, it can be true (and is) that economic sanctions can create important pressure on a country to change its behavior. But it can also be true (and is) that economic sanctions alone cannot reasonably be expected to produce a rapid change in a country’s existing regime or quickly force a concession on a matter the targeted country considers vital to its national interest or survival. Decades of US experience with sanctions on Iraq and Iran provide substantial evidence for that.

And imposing sanctions on a country is often a prelude to war, which the examples of Iraq and Iran also illustrate.

This discussion from half a year ago from British Channel 4 News addresses issues with the Russian war economy. Elina Ribakova in it discusses the limited effectiveness of the sanctions on Russia and Russia’s continuing disadvantages as a petrostate. (6)

Notes:

(1) Ukraine, Nuclear Weapons, and Security Assurances at a Glance. Arms Control Association March 2022. (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(2) Havryshko, Marta (2026): Ukraine's military has a real Nazi problem. Responsible Statecraft 06/02/2026. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/nazis-in-ukraine-military/> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(3) Pflegerl, Phillip & Weidinger, Bernhard (2026): Globalisierter Antiglobalismus: Internationale Beziehungen des österreichischen Rechtsextremismus, 386. In: Handbuch Rechtsextremismus in Österreich. Vienna: Falter Verlag. My translation to English.

(4) Krätke, Michael (2026): Putins Kriegswirtschaft: Propaganda und Realität. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 6/2026, 9-12.

(5) Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. 04/16/2026. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-chance-for-peace-delivered-before-the-american-society-newspaper-editors> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

(6) Booming or breaking? The truth about Russia’s war economy. Channel 4 News YouTube channel 11/27/2025. <https://youtu.be/qg5PWLfvlJw?si=KQV8YqWs6cfhJFNu> (Accessed: 2026-04-06).

Russia and Europe and the Ukraine War

The Russia-Ukraine War is starting to feel for a lot of us not directly involved like a permanent feature of the world now. I mean, the Korean War is still officially not settled. But it hasn’t been an active shooting war for decades.

There is a new report about a Russian drone strike in Romania. Officially the Russians are denying they had anything to do with it. It’s possible it was part of a group of drones on the way to strike Ukraine and one of them just strayed and accidentally struck a building in Romania. Oopsie! Fog of war, you know. Stuff happens!

The Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte, has said the alliance is “ready to defend every inch” of its territory after a Russian drone hit an apartment building in Romania, a member state, during an overnight attack on neighbouring Ukraine.

The incident in Galați, which injured two people, prompted swift condemnation and the threat of repercussions, even as Russia denied the reports of the involvement of a Russian drone as “groundless”.

The strike in Romania is the latest example of the war in Ukraine spilling beyond the country’s borders, amid growing concern over Russia’s wider campaign of hybrid warfare across Europe.

Gen Gheorghe Maxim, a stand-in commander for the Romanian armed forces’ joint staff, told a news conference on Friday that the strike in Galati was not “an attack from Russia against Romania”, but that “Romanians should understand that Russia is a threat to the security of the countries in the area.” (1)

But given the public signals that Russia has been sending lately, I’m guessing there’s at least an even chance this was intentional. Ukraine has been making drone strikes inside Russia, including on Moscow. And from what military commentators are saying, Ukraine couldn’t conduct those particular kinds of strikes without help from NATO countries. Now, there is a war going on and it was Russia that invaded Ukrainian territory, so it’s totally within the laws of war for Ukraine to attack inside Russia. (Yes, I know “War” Secretary Pete Hegseth thinks all this laws-of-war stuff is just sissy “woke” DEI nonsense, but still.)

Since Russia is pretty bogged down in Ukraine, I’m not especially worried that they intend to launch some full-blown attack on NATO and EU countries. But this kind of thing could also be a way for Russia to say, hey, if you NATO countries are helping Ukraine attack deep inside Russia, we have ways to make things uncomfortable on NATO’s eastern flank. If this stuff starts happening more in Estonia, Latvia, or especially Lithuania, things could get very sticky very quickly. Russia’s only land transportation corridor to its city of Kaliningrad is through the Suwałki Gap, aka the Suwalki Corridor, which is on the border between Poland and Lithuania and is mainly inhabited by Poles. If Russia tried to take control of that corridor, we would be in “NATO Article 5” territory. I would think at least Marco Rubio and maybe even J.D. Vance would know what that means.

There already was a drone incident in Latvia already in May. It even led to a change of government there:

Earlier this month, two drones entering Latvia from Russian territory crashed near oil facilities, intensifying public concern about whether the state could detect aerial threats.

Ukraine has launched an intensive long-range strike campaign against key Russian targets like air defense sites, refineries, pipelines, ports and strategic factories. Kyiv and NATO member countries accuse Russia of redirecting Ukrainian drones into allied airspace; they have also been spotted over Lithuania and Estonia.

The backlash over the Latvian incidents ultimately helped bring down the government of Prime Minister Evika Siliņa. Defense Minister Andris Sprūds resigned under pressure, and coalition tensions escalated into a broader collapse of the administration. (2)

Here we come back to the time-warp feeling that this war has been going on forever. It was true in February 2022 that Ukraine was not a member of NATO and that none of the NATO countries had a formal mutual-defense treaty with Ukraine. The EU Treaty also has a mutual defense clause, though it has never been formally invoked.

All that is still true today. The word “credibility” is probably the most overused word in the politics of international relations – often coupled with a superficial reference to the Munich Analogy. But if Russia did directly attack NATO territory, repelling that attack would have to take priority over supporting Ukraine. Especially now that the European allies can’t count on the US any more to play the role in mutual defense that it played until 2025.

Here is a discussion between Scott Lucas and Gilbert Doctorow, the latter apparently an advocate for Russia’s and Putin’s position on the Russia-Ukraine War. The informational blurb says the clip involves Lucas “[t]aking apart the pro-Kremlin propaganda of Russian-based Gilbert Doctorow, including his promotion of war crimes through targeted assassination of Ukraine’s leaders.” (3)

Lucas notes that Belarus has consistently refused Russian requests to enter the war with Ukraine as an active belligerent. That means, I suppose, that Belarus could somehow play a mediating role. But Belarus is siding with Ukraine.

Lucas sometimes seem to lean into an optimistic take in evaluating Ukraine’s prospects. He probably particularly emphasizes that here as a contrast to Doctorow’s position.

Notes:

(1) Beaumont, Peter (2026): Nato ready to defend ‘every inch’ of territory as Russian drone hits Romania. Guardian 05/29/2026. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/29/russian-drone-romanian-apartments-wounding-two-people-and-starting-fire> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).

(2) Lunday, Chris (2026): No quick fix for Latvia’s drone crisis. Politico EU 05/2/2026. <https://www.politico.eu/article/no-quick-fix-for-latvias-drone-crisis/> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).

(3) Worried Kremlin Threatens to Obliterate Kyiv. Scott Lucas Worldview YouTube channel 05/29/2026. <https://youtu.be/yl6v3sINDfQ?si=h9-r9s8mdsYAqegp> (Accessed: 2026-29-05).