4 Ideas to Explore

1. U.S.-brokered Russia‑Ukraine talks opened in Geneva on Feb. 17–18, the third round after two Abu Dhabi meetings produced little beyond a prisoner swap. The Washington Post reports expectations are “at a halt” as Moscow demands Kyiv cede roughly 2,000 square miles of the Donetsk region, ban “Ukrainian nationalism,” renounce NATO and accept radical armed forces cuts. Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskyy has openly pushed back on Donald Trump’s repeated public calls for Ukraine—rather than Russia—to make concessions for peace, warning that it’s “not fair” to pressure the smaller country into a deal that could “give victory” to Vladimir Putin, according to two reports in Axios on Feb. 17. U.S. mediators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have floated a plan for Ukrainian forces to withdraw from parts of Donbas and turn them into a demilitarized “free economic zone,” but Zelenskyy insists any withdrawal must be matched by Russian pullbacks and cannot involve ceding sovereignty his public would never forgive, according to Axios. Trump and his team appear to be squeezing Zelenskyy to accept a deal, repeatedly calling on Ukraine—not Russia—to make concessions and backing U.S.-crafted proposals that would force painful compromises over Donbas. A recent Financial Times weekend report said Trump is pushing for Zelenskyy to announce progress by Feb. 24, underscoring how intensely the White House is driving for a deal on its own timeline.* 
   1. According to Oliver Carroll of The Economist, early in the year, the Russian-Ukrainian negotiations seemed to be progressing, with a source close to the Ukrainian team putting the odds of a breakthrough at “50-50.” However, an FT article about “quick and dirty elections under American pressure” put deal optimists on the defensive and slowed the talks. Now “divisions are... emerging within Ukraine’s delegation,” with “one wing, centered on [chief of Zelenskyy’s staff Kyrylo] Budanov,” believing “Ukraine’s interests are best served by a swift American-led agreement, and fear[ing] the window for action may soon close,” while “another wing, apparently still influenced by the controversial former chief of staff Andriy Yermak… is much less keen.”
2. At the Munich Security Conference, the differences between the U.S. and its allies on the present and future of the transatlantic relationship and the Russia-Ukraine war dominated discussions—even when sessions were nominally about other issues. On the U.S.–Europe track, Marco Rubio’s MSC remarks coupled alliance-identity rhetoric with a practical bottom line: Washington would keep “testing” whether Russia is serious and that the war’s endgame has narrowed to “the hardest questions.” On Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s MSC speech pushed a clear sequencing outcome: binding security guarantees before any deal, warning that “dividing Ukraine” would be a dangerous illusion and emphasizing Europe’s role in funding air defense. Finally, the Russian elite readout—Konstanin Remchukov in Nezavisimaya Gazeta—portrayed MSC as consolidating a long-term strategy to “exhaust Russia,” reinforcing Moscow’s expectation of enduring confrontation rather than a clean diplomatic off-ramp. Last but not least, on nuclear risk, the MSC panel “Mushrooming: Tackling Growing Nuclear-Proliferation Risks” participants warned that the erosion of the nonproliferation regime, changing attitudes toward nuclear use and the complex U.S.-Russia-China “three‑body problem” are undermining the NPT and increasing nuclear instability.
3. With the erosion of the nonproliferation regime, participants at the Munich Security Conference panel “Mushrooming: Tackling Growing Nuclear-Proliferation Risks” warned of mounting instability. Belfer Center Director Meghan O’Sullivan, who moderated the discussion, suggested that the ongoing erosion of the world order could produce new proliferation risks. Russia’s consideration of nuclear use in October 2022, under circumstances that did not involve great power conflict or an existential threat to the Russian state, serves as the “most potent example” indicating that nuclear powers are thinking differently about nuclear use, she said. In his turn, Harvard professor and former director of the Belfer Center Graham Allison emphasized how “unnatural it is that most countries don’t have nuclear weapons,” highlighting that the NPT regime is an “extraordinary achievement,” which is now “being undermined.” Allison views the United States, Russia and China as wrestling with a “three-body problem.” There is no simple formula involving nuclear parity which would be satisfactory for the United States: “If you have two competitors, each of whom would like to have the same number of warheads you do, the answer is that problem is irresolvable,” he said. Rose Gottemoeller of Stanford University concurs with Allison that trying to “cram the Chinese…into a negotiation with Russia and the United States…has the feel of a poison pill. It just doesn’t work.” Yet, Thomas DiNanno, U.S. Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security, believes China’s nuclear weapons should be taken into account, just like Russia’s and America’s. A “confluence of factors—serial Russian violations, growth of worldwide stockpiles and flaws in New START’s design and implementation—gives the United States a clear imperative to call for a new architecture that addresses the threats of today, not those of a bygone era. This means taking into account all Russian nuclear weapons, both novel and existing strategic systems, and addressing the breakout growth of Chinese nuclear weapons stockpiles,” DiNanno has said after New START expired earlier this month.
4. Exploring the use of drones in the Russia-Ukraine war, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt contends in Financial Times that “future wars are going to be defined by unmanned weapons,” where “the only way to fight will be through drone vs. drone combat” and drones “share data in real time.” He predicts unmanned systems will “absorb the initial fire” before humans follow. A postwar border could feature a “drone wall” that is “miles high and miles wide,” while victory will hinge on “mastery of autonomous systems” and the capacity to produce them “in abundance.” In their exploration of the lessons of this war for IFRI, Elie Tenenbaum and her co-authors note that “[i]n a drone-saturated battlespace, air defense effectiveness is defined by sustainable cost-exchange ratios and integrated ecosystems, not by reliance on high-end interceptors alone.” Despite the touted promise of a drone-based “revolution in warfare,” both Russia and Ukraine continue to deal with the typical problems of war: manpower, munitions, force generation, command and control and defense industrial mobilization, Michael Kofman writes in Foreign Affairs.

I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda

Nuclear security and safety: 

“Mushrooming: Tackling Growing Nuclear-Proliferation Risks,” Munich Security Conference panel, Panelists: Rafael Mariano Grossi, Natalia Pouzyreff, Graham Allison, Rose Gottemoeller; Moderator: Meghan O’Sullivan, 02.13.26.

• Belfer Center Director Megan O’Sullivan suggested that erosion of the liberal international order could produce new proliferation risks. Russia’s consideration of nuclear use in October 2022, under circumstances that did not involve great power conflict or an existential threat to the Russian state, serves as the “most potent example” indicating that nuclear powers are thinking differently about nuclear use. O’Sullivan noted, “Russia came quite close, perhaps closer than we have seen since the use of nuclear weapons in 1945, or at least since the early sixties, in using nuclear weapons.” 
• Director General of the IAEA Rafael Rossi acknowledged new points of vulnerability within the nonproliferation regime, noting growing criticisms of the Non-Proliferation Treaty among states who previously were “in perfect alignment” with the NPT. Natalia Pouzyreff, France’s Secretary of the Committee of National Defense and Armed Forces, assesses the “crisis of confidence” within the transatlantic alliance may incentivize European states to consider developing an independent nuclear deterrent. Pouzyreff argued that “proliferation amongst allies makes the world more uncertain” and that the U.S., U.K. and France, should consider alternative arrangements to provide extended deterrence to allies considering an independent nuclear capability. 
• Harvard’s Graham Allison emphasized how “unnatural it is that most countries don’t have nuclear weapons,” highlighting that the NPT regime is an “extraordinary achievement” which is now “being undermined.” Allison says, “if things just reverted to normal, this would be a world we could live in.” He finds it “unlikely” that the U.K. and France could provide convincing extended deterrence to Europe in the absence of the United States, but suggested some options explored in the report “Mind the Deterrence Gap” “look promising.”
• Former Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller acknowledged her concern that the U.S. and Russia could be poised for a new arms race with the lapse of New START: “The Russians have the ability to put more warheads on their misses very quickly… my concern was the Russians could sprint away from us once the New START limits went out of force.” However, Gottemoeller stressed historical precedents in which Russia and the United States maintained informal limits on nuclear weapons, commenting, “that’s what I see happening now.” She concluded, “let’s not panic” but “encourage” the trajectory set by an alleged agreement made in Abu Dhabi to engage in future negotiations and VP J.D. Vance’s recent comments in Azerbaijan. She concurs with Vance that a new treaty will not be based on the limits of New START, but on the new “status quo.”
• Allison views the United States, Russia and China as wrestling with a “three-body problem.” There is no simple formula involving nuclear parity which would be satisfactory for the United States: “If you have two competitors, each of whom would like to have the same number of warheads you do, the answer is that problem is irresolvable.” Allison also noted that advances in conventional strike and covert capabilities make modern arms control negotiations “much a more complicated task.” Likening nuclear warheads to poker chips, Allison noted it is difficult to imagine China wanting to engage in trilateral talks, as desired by the first Trump administration, when two of the three parties have five thousand chips and China possessed four hundred.   
• Gottemoeller concurs with Allison that trying to “cram the Chinese…into a negotiation with Russia and the United States…has the feel of a poison pill. It just doesn’t work.” She advocates for two “very different” treaties with Russia and China. 
• Rossi says a establishing a viable inspection regime for Iran’s nuclear program is “absolutely possible,” but “terribly difficult.” After the 12-day war, the situation in Iran “changed radically.” Iran’s capabilities may not have changed, but their infrastructure is either “no longer there” or “badly damaged” which “changes the whole equation.” Rossi argued, one will “presumably” not see such an “impressive array” of facilities involved different aspects of the nuclear cycle, and that Iran “hopefully” aims for a peaceful nuclear program, which is their “right” according to the NPT. Rossi said IAEA has been inspecting all but the “attacked facilities” in Iran and that the next few days, not weeks, “will be crucial.”
• Addressing Sergei Shoigu’s recent comment that the U.S.-Armenian nuclear reactor deal poses a threat to Russia, Gottemoeller commented, “I think it’s a little bit ridiculous. There will be competition here, and the United States working with Armenia to develop a power plant program in Armenia I think is entirely within bounds of that commercial competition.” 

“Soviet and Russian false alarms and nuclear weapons incidents,” Pavel Podvig, RussianForces.org, 02.14.26.

• Podvig surveys known Soviet/Russian nuclear false alarms and accidents, arguing they are classic examples of what Charles Perrow called “normal accidents” in complex systems. He reviews early command-and-control arrangements, the 1970s shift to a posture based on “deep second strike” and then “launch from under attack,” and classic near-misses such as the 1983 Colonel Petrov incident, the 1995 Black Brant rocket scare, and a 1978 “training tape” episode at a Far Eastern early‑warning center, concluding that “a reasonably good design of the command and control system and the assumption that a bolt out of the blue attack is highly unlikely can go a long way to preventing the worst.”
• On physical accidents with weapons, he notes that, unlike the United States, “the Soviet Union apparently had never flown its bombers with nuclear weapons on board,” which sharply reduced bomber‑related mishaps; one known exception was the aborted 1955 RD‑37 thermonuclear test, when weather forced a Tu‑16 to land with a live bomb, an episode that “almost gave everyone involved in the test a heart attack.” By contrast, “the majority of accidents happened with naval weapons”: the USSR lost three submarines with 25 warheads, suffered a 1976 R‑29 missile fire at Vilyuchinsk that blew a warhead into the bay, and likely had additional undocumented loading/unloading mishaps and a serious 2011 fire on the submarine Yekaterinburg while it appears to have had nuclear-armed missiles aboard.
• The Strategic Rocket Forces experienced two UR‑100/SS‑11 silo explosions in 1967 and some mobile launcher rollovers, but “other than that, there are no accounts of problems with ICBMs” and “no reported serious accidents with mobile ICBMs.” Podvig laments the lack of an official, comprehensive accident history, but says even partial data support clear lessons: “think about your command and control procedures, don’t keep your nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert, don’t move nuclear weapons around.” Ideally, he writes, nukes would be “in some bunker under lock and key, but we are probably rather far from this solution.”

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

• No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“Why So Quiet, Putin? Russia’s Role in the Iran-Israel Tensions,” Emily Ferris, RUSI, 02.11.26

• Ferris argues that Putin’s reticence over Iran–Israel tensions reflects how deeply the Ukraine war now dominates Russian strategy. She writes that “whether these tensions spill over into outright conflict, Moscow cannot afford becoming embroiled in another war,” and says that while Russia is “one of the few powers that has a semblance of a relationship with both Iran and Israel,” this “does not necessarily translate into much leverage or influence, or give Russia a particularly privileged position as mediator.” Instead, “the more important relationship for Moscow is with the Americans,” and “as delicate negotiations over a potential deal on Ukraine continue in the background, Russia is unwilling to risk destabilizing the relationship to wade into the Middle East.”
• She stresses that Iran’s value to Russia has declined as the Ukraine war has ground on: “Tehran, unlike North Korea, has not provided soldiers for the Ukraine war – a real demographic gap for Russia that needs to be plugged,” and after early reliance on Shahed drones, “this has now been localized and reproduced in Russia as the Geran‑2s,” making “supply chain vulnerabilities … less pressing” than three years ago. By contrast, Israel’s refusal “to provide Ukraine with military aid or fall in line with the western consensus to sanction Russia” has been useful to Moscow, even if “Russian‑Israeli bilateral cooperation is largely confined to specific issues, such as deconfliction over Syria.”
• Ferris concludes that “Russia’s inaction is itself revealing,” because it shows that “the real focus of military resources and political interest will remain Ukraine.” Even if Middle East tensions “increase to outright conflict, Russia cannot afford to become embroiled in another war, and Putin has no desire to ignite Trump’s ire and risk derailing the Ukraine negotiations – even as Russia has dialed up its attacks on Ukraine’s critical national infrastructure throughout the winter.” In an election year, she notes, “victory narratives (real or imagined) around the Ukraine war will feature heavily” in Putin’s domestic strategy, while Iran–Israel tensions are “little more than a sidebar to Putin’s real focus.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • "Iran faces new protests. The ayatollah regime has brought the economy to a standstill," Nikolay Kozhanov, The Moscow Times, 02.10.26. (in Russian)

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Ukraine’s survival still an ‘open question’, Kyiv mayor warns,” Christopher Miller, Financial Times, 02.15.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

• Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko says the “question of the future of our country — whether we will survive as an independent country or not is still open,” describing Russia’s winter missile and drone campaign on Kyiv’s power and heating infrastructure as an attempt to “kill someone” by “shoot[ing] at the heart.” He argues that “the main goal of Putin is not Donetsk, not Luhansk, not Crimea. His main goal is Kyiv and the whole of Ukraine… He wants to destroy our independence.”
• With temperatures below –20°C and repeated strikes knocking out all three major power plants serving the capital, Klitschko likens repairs to “starting from zero” after each attack; at one point roughly half of Kyiv’s 12,000 apartment blocks lost heating. Zelenskyy has blamed depleted air‑defense munitions and gaps in European support for allowing Russia to bring the city “to the brink of a blackout,” while European-supplied generators and 1,500 “invincibility centers” have helped keep residents going.
• The article also details renewed political infighting: Zelenskyy accuses Klitschko of doing “significantly less” than other cities to prepare for winter, and civil-society groups have issued an open letter decrying a “governance, infrastructure and communications crisis” in Kyiv. Klitschko, who acknowledges a long‑standing rivalry with the president and opposes holding elections without a ceasefire and firm security guarantees, counters that “Russia’s goal is internal destabilization” and calls for a “ceasefire not only with the Kremlin but also with the presidential administration,” insisting that “unity inside the country is the key for our peace and freedom.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject: 
  • “Russia Knocked Out the Heat. So She Slept in a Tent on Her Bed,” Andrew E. Kramer, New York Times, 02.10.26.

Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:

“Ukraine’s no man’s land is the future of war,” Eric Schmidt, Financial Times, 02.13.26.

• Schmidt argues that Ukraine’s front lines offer a preview of future warfare: dense drone coverage makes movement across “no man’s land” lethally risky, with Russian assault units advancing only slowly under constant surveillance and attack. Russia is innovating with fiber‑optic drones resistant to jamming and faster, jet‑powered Shahed variants, aiming to launch massed strikes in the thousands. Ukraine, in turn, is building a layered system of ISR drones, radar, and AI‑enabled command networks to integrate data and keep human operators farther from the front. In this emerging paradigm, he writes, drone‑versus‑drone combat, swarms sharing data in real time, and waves of unmanned ground and maritime systems will define the initial phases of battle, with human troops entering only after machines have absorbed the worst fire.
• Looking beyond the current war, Schmidt sketches a future European security order shaped by “drone walls” — armed, automated surveillance grids stretching miles in height and depth along contested borders — backed by large arsenals of precision missiles on both sides, locking in a high‑tech stalemate. He warns that Western states are unprepared industrially for these demands: a conflict dominated by cheap, autonomous systems will rapidly exhaust current stockpiles, and victory will hinge less on traditional platforms than on mastery of autonomous technologies and the capacity to produce them at scale.

“Mapping The Miltech War: Eight Lessons From Ukraine’s Battlefield,” Élie Tenenbaum, Bohdan Kostiuk, Daryna-Maryna Patiuk, Anastasya Shapochkina, IFRI, 02.12.26.

1. “Domestic drone production defines Ukraine’s future technological progress and scale-up capacity. To build and sustain such production, greater supply chain autonomy is key, as well as built-in scaling capacity and autonomous AI capabilities.” 
2. “Electronic warfare has become a continuous, software-driven contest embedded at the tactical level, where adaptability, integration, and spectrum management matter more than centralized, high-power jamming systems.”
3. “The Ukrainian experience shows that AI is most effective as a tool for speeding up analysis and coordination, not for replacing human decision-making. Practical gains come from integrating AI into existing systems to reduce workload and reaction time rather than pursuing full autonomy.” 
4. “Modern land warfare is now structurally dependent on space-based services, but resilience comes from hybrid, multi-layered architectures rather than reliance on any single constellation or provider.” 
5. “In modern high-intensity warfare, software integration and information management—not platform performance—are the primary drivers of operational tempo and combat effectiveness.” 
6. “Modern air defense must prioritize scale, cost control, and integration across many simple systems rather than dependence on a small number of high-end weapons.” 
7. “In a drone-saturated battlespace, air defense effectiveness is defined by sustainable cost-exchange ratios and integrated ecosystems, not by reliance on high-end interceptors alone.” 
8. “Effective deep strike in modern war is a campaign logic built on layered, economically sustainable systems, not a capability defined by a single class of high-end weapons.” 

“Ukraine’s War of Endurance: The Fight for Advantage in the Conflict’s Fifth Year,” Michael Kofman, Foreign Affairs, 02.16.26.

• Kofman describes the war’s evolution from Russia’s failed 2022 blitz to a positional, attritional conflict defined by drones, electronic warfare, and fortified defenses. By 2025 the front had become a “kill zone” 10–12 miles deep where dense reconnaissance and strike drones make concentration and maneuver nearly impossible; Russian offensives advance only meters at a time and require heavy infantry losses, while Ukraine uses Western intelligence and its own innovations to offset deficits in artillery and manpower. Despite some Russian gains—roughly 1,780 square miles of Ukrainian territory seized in 2025—these remain a tiny fraction of Ukraine, and Moscow still faces a long, costly fight even just to take the rest of Donetsk.
• Both sides have expanded long‑range strike campaigns. Russia has massively increased production of missiles and one‑way attack drones, battering Ukraine’s power grid and forcing rolling blackouts, especially in Kyiv. Ukraine has ramped up drone and cruise‑missile strikes on Russian refineries and export infrastructure to sap war‑financing, exploiting Russia’s economic vulnerabilities: stagnation, budget strain, discounted oil sales, and pressure on its “shadow fleet.” Moscow is spending close to 8 percent of GDP and roughly 40 percent of its federal budget on the war, a level Kofman suggests is increasingly hard to sustain.
• Kofman argues time is gradually shifting against Russia. Its army has grown but now recruits mainly to replace very high casualties; by late 2025, “unrecoverable” losses began exceeding monthly recruitment, and unit quality is declining. Ukraine, though exhausted and short of manpower, has shown it can retake ground with methodical, drone‑enabled tactics (as at Kupiansk) and continues to adapt technologically. For Kyiv to end the war on acceptable terms, he concludes, Western states must provide targeted advantages in intelligence and technology, tighten economic pressure on Moscow, and help Ukraine regain deeper strike and drone superiority—turning Russia’s offensive slog into a strategically unsustainable war of attrition.

“Can Ukraine Kill Its Way to Victory?,” Sam Skove, Foreign Policy, 02.11.26

• Skove notes that Ukraine’s new defense minister, Mykhailo Fedorov, has set a stark goal: “one of his two major strategic objectives was ‘to kill 50,000 Russians a month.’” That figure, he writes, “exceeds the roughly 30,000 to 35,000 new troops that Russia recruits every month,” and Russian losses are already staggering: “Russian losses in Ukraine now number nearly 1.2 million killed, wounded, or missing soldiers,” according to CSIS, “more soldiers lost by any major power since World War II,” for offensives that are advancing “at a rate slower than 100 meters a day.”
• To sustain this, the Kremlin has shifted from mobilization to “recruiting criminals, foreigners, and, most of all, paying increasingly large sign‑up bonuses.” Skove cites Janis Kluge that the cost of these bonuses “increas[ed] by 60 percent to 70 percent in some regions last year,” and that even with such offers, “the average age of Russian soldiers who died in 2025 was between 46 and 52.” Kluge warns that pushing recruitment to 50,000 a month would “strain Russian society and economy,” since the pool of poor men with limited prospects “is limited in size,” and that informal pressure on civilians “might generate discontent across Russian society.”
• At the same time, Russia is trying to flip the attrition logic back on Ukraine. Skove reports that Moscow is “working to significantly expand its use of drones,” having created drone operations as a separate branch and fielded “80,000 soldiers in drone units” with plans “to double that number this year.” Ukrainian officials say Russian advances near Pokrovsk were enabled by drone operators who “targeted Ukrainian drone operators and army logistics,” and a European security official concludes that because “the Russians dictate the rate of casualties,” keeping most personnel behind the lines on drones means there “will not be such a strain on the Russian side,” even as Ukraine struggles with more than 100,000 desertion cases in seven months.

“Russian army casualties in Ukraine surge,” Max Seddon, Financial Times, 02.09.26

• “Russia’s army in Ukraine has suffered a sharp rise in men killed or missing in action, according to European and Ukrainian officials, reducing the chances of the battlefield breakthrough President Vladimir Putin seeks.  Not enough Russians are being induced to fight in Ukraine by the enormous payouts on offer, forcing Moscow’s army to recruit a higher share of accused criminals, pressure conscripts into signing contracts once their mandatory service ends and redeploy wounded soldiers. Desertion rates are at their highest point in the nearly four-year war, according to Ukrainian analytical group Frontelligence Insight. Though Russia is meeting its enlistment targets of about 35,000 per month, as many as 90 per cent of new recruits in 2025 were deployed to replace battlefield casualties, according to Oleksandr Syrsky, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces. 
• Russian advances have come at a rate of just 15 to 70 meters per day in Russia’s most prominent offensives since it gained the upper hand on the battlefield in 2024 — slower than in almost any war in the last 100 years, according to a January report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies. At least 325,000 Russian soldiers have been killed in the conflict, according to the CSIS report, five times greater than in all Russian and Soviet wars combined since the second world war and at a ratio of at least twice Ukraine’s battlefield casualties. 
• Drones are currently responsible for 70 to 80 per cent of killed and wounded on both sides, according to a report by Latvia’s foreign intelligence service last month. .
• In Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia’s largest oil-producing region, the total package for Russian war recruits stands at Rbs4.1mn ($53,000); 28 others offer bonuses that, combined with other payments, amount to Rbs2.5mn. 
• Regions spent at least Rbs500bn on enlistment bonuses last year, according to Janis Kluge, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. All signing-on bonuses alone, which are drawn variously from federal, regional, municipal, and some corporate budgets, account for about 0.5 per cent of Russian GDP, Kluge said.” While it is true that U.K. and French forces at the Somme advanced faster than Russian forces along some areas of the frontline today, it is important to note that the FT omitted additional figures from the CSIS study which indicated that Russian forces are advancing far quicker than U.K./French forces along other areas of the front in Ukraine. For example, Russian forces in Zaporizhzhia are advancing at a rate of 297 meters per day, which is much faster than the British/French advance of 80 meters per day at the Somme. Man-for-man, Russia can outlast Ukraine even if they lose two soldiers for every Ukrainian they kill. Russia reportedly recruited 425,000 soldiers in 2025, more than enough to make up for casualties. Various estimates for Russian desertions/AWOL range from 50,000–75,000. However, 235,000 Ukrainians have reportedly gone AWOL, with another 54,000 deserting. More importantly these numbers rose by 175,000 and 24,000, respectively, between September 2024 and 2025 alone.*

“The Price of Donbas: The Kremlin's manpower costs in a new offensive would exceed 5 trillion rubles”, Re:Russia, 02.13.26.

• Re:Russia argues that Trump is pressing Kyiv to “voluntarily” hand over northern Donbas just as Moscow prepares a spring–summer 2026 offensive, but Russia lacks the manpower reserves for a decisive assault on the heavily fortified “fortress belt” around Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. That bridgehead is central to Ukraine’s attrition strategy: forcing Russia to trade huge casualties for minimal gains and driving the balance between new contract recruitment and battlefield losses effectively to zero.
• Using British MOD and Ukrainian data (about 35,000 Russian killed and wounded per month since mid‑2024, roughly 420,000 per year, matching Dmitry Medvedev’s claim of 422,000 contracts signed in 2025), the authors estimate that with rising pay and bonus “signing” bounties, manpower has become one of the Kremlin’s most expensive resources. For a 600,000‑strong force in Ukraine, annual personnel costs during active offensive operations now reach about 5.1 trillion rubles—roughly 90 percent of Russia’s projected 2025 federal budget deficit; for a 700,000‑strong grouping, around 5.4 trillion.
• Military experts cited in the piece argue that a frontal assault on the Kramatorsk “fortress belt” could cost Russia 400,000–600,000 casualties over 12–18 months. From Moscow’s perspective, getting northern Donbas by negotiation would both avoid that bloodletting and preserve a 600,000‑strong, combat‑ready force for future operations, while freeing an estimated 4 trillion rubles in the consolidated budget. For Kyiv, ceding this bridgehead would mean giving up a key leverage point in its war of attrition and effectively “handing back the pistol” to Putin in the hope he will not use it again.

“Speech by the President of Ukraine at the Munich Security Conference,” Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine official website, 02.14.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

• Zelensky opens by thanking those who support Ukraine “not only in words or…emotions… but in real action,” singling out European funding of the PURL program that lets Kyiv buy Patriot missiles: “Most of the air defense missiles that can stop Russian ballistic missiles come to us thanks to PURL… Europe is paying for our ability to stop ballistic attacks.”
• To convey the war’s scale, he describes a single Russian strike with “24 ballistic missiles… and 219 attack drones” against cities such as Kyiv and Odesa, notes that in January alone Ukraine faced “6,000 attack drones…150+ Russian missiles… and more than 5,000 glide bombs,” and says bluntly: “There is not a single power plant left in Ukraine that has not been damaged by Russian attacks.”
• He criticizes the West’s slow, risk‑averse support, recalling that early on “we had to push, to push, to push” for HIMARS, tanks, and aircraft, and quotes Bob Woodward’s account of U.S. officials saying “we own the clock,” before warning that “in war, the war itself owns time – and it uses that time against people,” so “not a single day, not a single opportunity to protect life can be wasted.”
• On Russia’s strategy and losses, Zelensky says Putin is “a slave to war” who “does not live like ordinary people” and “cannot imagine life without power or after power,” sharing that in one month Ukraine eliminated “35,000… then about 30,000” Russian soldiers, and that on the Donetsk front “the price Russia pays for one kilometer now is 156 soldiers,” with Ukraine’s goal “at least 50,000 per month.”
• He insists any settlement must start from “real security guarantees,” arguing “where there is no clear security system, war always returns,” and says Ukraine has agreements with the U.S. and Europe “ready to sign,” which should come “before any agreement to end the war.” He warns against repeating the appeasement of 1938: “It would be an illusion to believe that this war can now be reliably ended by dividing Ukraine – just as it was an illusion to believe that sacrificing Czechoslovakia would save Europe from a greater war.”
• Zelensky laments that in current talks “the Americans often return to the topic of concessions – and too often those concessions are discussed in the context only of Ukraine – not Russia,” while “Europe is practically not present at the table,” and says Ukraine is trying to “bring Europe fully into the process” so that any “deal that brings real peace to us, to Ukraine, to Europe” is built on strong guarantees, not on rewarding aggression.

“When Will This War End? The Question Is Meaningless,” Nataliya Gumenyuk, New York Times, 02.15.26. Clues from Ukrainian Views.

• Gumenyuk argues that for Ukrainians at the front, asking when the war will end is “meaningless.” Citing Viktor Frankl, Capt. Mykola Serga tells her “the first to break were those who believed it would all end soon, just like those who thought it would never end,” and that those who endure “focus on the work at hand.” Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning has become a wartime bestseller, part of the trench libraries Serga delivers to sustain morale.
• After four years of full‑scale invasion and dwindling Western aid, she writes, “this war no longer feels like an interruption; it’s just reality.” Soldiers she meets near Pokrovsk and in drone and mortar units see the conflict simply as “Ukraine’s war,” expect it to last, and increasingly fight with domestic systems—Vampire strike drones, ground robots, improvised defenses—aimed at what ex–defense minister Andriy Zagorodnyuk calls “strategic neutralization”: making Russian operations so costly and blunted that, eventually, “Ukraine is simply not worth it” for Putin.
• Russia’s “meat grinder” tactics, hurling waves of troops into frontal assaults for incremental gains, are unsustainable for Ukraine, whose smaller population and resources force it to prioritize saving lives; “to sacrifice more lives than it must would run contrary to the very logic of the war.” For outside observers, she suggests, there is a cinematic urge for a clear ending, good or bad. For Ukrainians, the only meaningful question is not when but how the war ends—“because everything depends not on when but on how,” as a crane operator in Nikopol tells her while working under antidrone nets and shrapnel‑scarred windows.

“The Origins of the War: A Conversation with Sergey Radchenko,” The Kennan Institute, 02.11.26

• Radchenko believes Putin “probably” started thinking about invading Ukraine “early, but decided [he would invade] in 2020 or 2021.” Citing the Geneva Summit and U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Radchenko noted 2021 is “where the pace picked up.” Ultimately, once the war ends it may change perspective on which decisions and events mattered most and which were less-consequential. Radchenko noted, “if it ends well, you’ll say yes [these decisions were correct], if it doesn’t end well, you are justified in asking if there were other ways to end the conflict and achieve a better outcome earlier.”
• Radchenko noted that the West has “disagreements on significant matters like why Putin invaded Ukraine” and that he “takes alternative interpretations” seriously while recognizing that “we don’t have evidence for any of them… we are in the fog of war…. an honest historian will likely find evidence for all of them.” Radchenko sees the difference between history and contemporary articles in the historians’ appreciation of “nuance.” 
  • The first of these interpretations is that Putin and his generals feared NATO enlargement, be that “Ukraine in NATO or NATO in Ukraine.” Taking it seriously does not mean believing that “NATO threatened Russia,” but that the Russians viewed potential NATO expansion as a threat. This requires “separating reality from perception.”
  • The second is Putin’s imperialism. Radchenko noted Putin’s track record of comments that Ukraine is “not a real country and should be a part of Russia.” Radchenko asked, “do those explanations cancel each other out? Not necessarily.” Sometimes the “hierarchy of reasons” for consequential decisions are not even clear to policymakers. Understanding how Putin’s imperial views and desire for a security buffer are intertwined are essential for “understanding if Putin wants Donbass, all of Ukraine, [or] Kyiv.”
  • The third interpretation views the war as driven by Putin’s desire to improve Russia’s status in the changing international order. Radchenko noted the “Soviets craved status,” and that Putin could be looking to reclaim Russia’s greatness with Ukraine as “a means to an end.” 
• Kimmage suggested that the Cold War was perhaps “subdued” rather than ended; underlying issues which remained unresolved came back in new form. Radchenko does not fully apply a Cold War framework to the current moment, but argues that nuclear weapons have reasserted their relevance to international politics. To reject that nuclear weapons are relevant to the West’s approach to the conflict is “bury one’s head in the sand,” according to Radchenko. Further, in Radchenko’s evaluation, status remains important to Russia: Putin “took the recognition from [the] Alaska [summit] to China.” A “triangular element” of the Cold War is still at play, but with Russia in a diminished position, China in an improved one. 
• The “judgement still out” on whether Europe will be able to function as a unified power in the new international order, according to Radchenko. Europe “needs to overcome the aversion to a Federal Europe…but there may be other ways to bring Europe together as a security, defense unit… history is being made right in front of our eyes.” Putin and Trump may be “helpful” in pushing states toward a “European identity.” Radchenko assesses that Putin is banking on “strength of nationalism” and hopes to exploit advantageous bilateral relations with European states, like the Soviet Union.
• On whether the war will spread in Europe, particularly to the Baltics, Radchenko declined to make a prediction: “It’s difficult call…I’m not going to make it.” He noted that “there is no mother of Russian cities” argument that can be made about Riga, and that attacking the Baltic states may provoke a greater crisis, risking Kaliningrad. While an invasion of a Baltic state could test the credibility of argument five, “the chances are not in favor of that…it would be much more difficult to get into broader war with NATO… but Putin is a risk taker.” 

“Ukraine and the New Way of War: Learning the Right Lessons for the Conflicts of the Future”, Rebecca Lissner and John Kawika Warden, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2026.

• Lissner and Warden argue that Ukraine is “the first since the fall of the Soviet Union in which two major nuclear powers have found themselves on opposing sides of high-stakes hostilities,” and that Washington must draw strategic, not just tactical, lessons. They insist that “the risk of an adversary using nuclear weapons is real and cannot be dismissed,” recalling that in autumn 2022 U.S. intelligence judged there was a “genuine risk” of Russian use and that Jake Sullivan later described the odds at one point as a “coin flip.” The war shows, they write, that “the norm against the use of nuclear weapons is fragile,” and in any direct NATO–Russia war “the nuclear risk would be even higher.”
• At the same time, they stress that “nuclear weapons have not given Moscow the coercive leverage many assumed they would”: despite “overwhelming nuclear advantage,” Russia has not achieved its main war aims and has tolerated Ukrainian strikes on oil, logistics hubs, Crimea, and even “Russia’s nuclear‑capable strategic bomber fleet” without escalating across the nuclear threshold. The authors conclude that the United States needs “a new theory of victory for wars that feature great-power aggressors attacking U.S. allies or quasi allies,” rooted in “favorable escalation management,” refreshed limited‑war plans, and coalition coordination—especially with exposed partners such as Ukraine and Taiwan—so it can “defend U.S. and allied interests…without inordinately risking nuclear escalation.”

"Twenty-one strategic lessons of the Ukraine war," François Heisbourg and Bruno Tertrais, Foundation for Strategic Research, 02.16.26.

Lesson 1: "Russia’s behavior is inconsistent with stated intentions but consistent with its stated vision"

Lesson 2: "Russia is not immune to its own biases"

Lesson 3: "Pre-war counter-cyber preparation and cooperation proved to be a no-penalty policy and maybe a critical one"

Lesson 4: "Successful coalition-building in 2022 required a deliberate, largely US-led effort"

Lesson 5: "Initial mobilization choices were critical to subsequent warfighting capabilities"

Lesson 6: "A strict interpretation of Article 5 stands"

Lesson 7: "Russia remains cautious in the nuclear domain"

Lesson 8: "But Russian paranoia can easily be fueled by inappropriate public statements"

Lesson 9: "Russia relies on external assistance in pursuing victory"

Lesson 10: "Any thought of designing a ‘new European security order’ is now irrelevant and Russia will remain a strategic threat to Europe for the foreseeable future"

Lesson 11: "Geography still matters: threat perceptions, assistance to Ukraine and defense spending correlate with proximity to Russia"

Lesson 12: "A country fighting an existential war tends to double down because of sunk costs"

Lesson 13: "Sustaining military assistance to Ukraine for the duration of the conflict is critical"

Lesson 14: "The scenario of a ‘long war’ is real and a challenge for the Alliance"

Lesson 15: "NATO procurement practices are insufficiently geared to the requirements highlighted by the war in Ukraine"

Lesson 16: "The West is unlikely to face a real ‘axis’"

Lesson 17: "Economic deterrence fails when stakes are asymmetrical"

Lesson 18: "Sharing intelligence among allies is critical to success"

Lesson 19: "Nuclear weapons will continue to reduce the risk of a direct, large-scale clash between nuclear-protected countries"

Lesson 20: "Do not overestimate the adversary (and recognize its own biases), but do not underestimate ‘existential’ stakes"

Lesson 21: "Abandon strategic ambiguity at your own peril"

“The Illusion of Readiness: Will Washington Repeat Moscow’s Mistakes?” Michael Brown and  Matt Kaplan, Foreign Affairs, 02.17.26.

• Brown and Kaplan argue that Ukraine shows future wars “can still be long conflicts of attrition” and that success depends on “huge numbers of cheap weapons, not simply small numbers of exquisite systems.” After the Gulf War, they write, U.S. planners assumed “the key to success was no longer mass but large, expensive, high‑tech systems,” but Ukraine demonstrates that “small, poor states can surprise and overwhelm larger, wealthier ones” using commercial tech, drones, and AI.

• They warn that Washington risks “learning the wrong lessons entirely” if Ukraine is dismissed as irrelevant to the Pacific, insisting it is “simply undeniable that imagination, adaptability, and affordable, commercially available capabilities will be essential to tomorrow’s conflicts.” The U.S. military, they say, has “largely had the same programs and training for the last 30 years” and must learn to adapt “at the speed of software development, which means within hours and days instead of years,” and to design “low-cost systems” so that “total mass—rather than just platform exquisiteness—becomes a significant warfighting factor.” Otherwise, they conclude, the United States may be “shocked and set back, much as Russia was” when its three‑day plan for Kyiv turned into a four‑year war.

“How Russia Turns Gamers into Fighters,” Galen Lamphere-Englund and Petra Regeni, RUSI, 02.13.26.

• The authors argue that “Russia’s active weaponization of video games has become ingrained in its doctrine of hybrid warfare,” warning that “platforms designed for entertainment are converted into battlefields for influence and recruitment” and that this has “result[ed] in loss of lives across continents” as foreigners are drawn to fight in Ukraine.
• Describing the South African case, they note that two Arma 3 players “were approached by a recruiter using the handle ‘@Dash’,” met him at the Russian consulate, and “by early September the gamers-turned-recruits had signed one-year contracts with the Russian military,” after which “one of the South Africans was killed in action in Ukraine,” exposing “a clandestine pipeline for fighters recruited through gaming communities.”
• The piece stresses that “Russia’s urgent manpower needs” in the Ukraine war drive this outreach: having “suffered heavy losses in Ukraine, exhausting conscription and prison-based enlistment,” Moscow has “intensified its search for fighters abroad,” with “at least 18,000 known foreign fighters” in Russian units and recruiters “exploiting economic grievances, social desires and gaming dynamics to turn online gamers into frontline fighters.”
• Lamphere-Englund and Regeni conclude that “the Kremlin is instrumentalizing and integrating gaming content into its broader cognitive and influence warfare toolbox,” and warn that if Western agencies keep seeing gaming as “merely an entertainment space, we risk ceding an important hybrid war surface to the Kremlin,” stressing that it is “vital to avert further recruitment of foreign civilians to fight and die on Russia’s frontlines, and to defend Ukraine and protect the international digital gaming commons from malicious exploitation and hybrid warfare tactics.”

“Ukrainian resistance to occupation has gone underground after years of brutal repression. Scholar Jade McGlynn explains how hatred — not hope — now drives those still fighting,” Meduza, 02.13.26.

• Jade McGlynn explains that Ukraine’s resistance in Russian-occupied territories has been forced from open, viral displays of defiance in 2022 into a clandestine, high-risk underground struggle. Public protests and symbolic acts have been crushed by a regime that combines “brutal filtration,” torture, disappearances, and a dense web of surveillance tools such as SORM, with civilians branded “extremists” or “terrorists” for simple statements like “Crimea is Ukraine.” Any visible, “safe”-seeming resistance—like photos or slogans—is now likely to end in violence; instead, most resistance consists of surreptitiously sending coordinates and human intelligence to the Ukrainian military. Early NATO‑style, cell‑based structures largely failed because patriotic activists were easy for Russia to identify and eliminate, so a looser “puzzle” model has emerged in which coordinators and agents know as little about one another as possible.
• McGlynn stresses that occupation looks different across regions—Crimea is more legalistic, Donetsk and Luhansk more gangster‑run and brutally repressive, Mariupol a hybrid slowly brought under Moscow technocrat Sergey Kiriyenko’s tighter control—but everywhere the trend is toward standardization of repression and erasure of Ukrainian identity. After hopes of imminent liberation faded with stalled offensives, hatred of the occupier, not hope, now primarily drives those who keep resisting. People in front‑line and occupied areas feel abandoned, see Western diplomacy as psychologically exhausting, and believe no “Superman” is coming; they assume their real choice is to keep fighting or live under occupation. McGlynn concludes that Ukraine may in fact be Europe’s only genuine security guarantee, since it is the only country both willing and able to fight Russia at this scale, and insists Europeans should help Kyiv far more—if not out of solidarity, then out of self‑interest.

“‘There Are Two Maps—One Real, and One for the General Staff,’” iStories, 02.17.26.Machine‑translated. Clues from Russian Views.

• The article describes a growing practice in the Russian army of seizing towns “on credit” – false reports of success so that “on the staff maps, the town or village is marked as captured,” even though “in reality there may be fighting going on” or Russian forces are “several kilometers” away. One Russian soldier is quoted saying “there are two maps—one real, which we see, and another for the General Staff, where the situation is completely different,” and pro‑war blogger Vladimir Romanov calls these fake gains “a very expensive loan, on simply fantastic terms.”

Military aid to Ukraine

• No significant developments.

Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:

“EU drafts a list of concessions it says Russia must make to secure real peace in Ukraine,” Lorne Cook, AP/Washington Post, 02.10.26

• EU foreign-policy chief Kaja Kallas says the bloc is drawing up “a sustainable peace plan” that sets out conditions for Russia, not Ukraine, insisting “we also have conditions, and we should put the conditions not on Ukrainians that have already been pressured a lot, but on the Russians.” She suggests these could include requiring Moscow to return “possibly thousands of children abducted from Ukraine” and imposing “limits on the size of the Russian armed forces once the war is over,” arguing that “the Ukrainian army is not the issue. It’s the Russian army. It’s the Russian military expenditure. If they spend so much on the military they will have to use it again.”
• Kallas makes clear that Brussels doubts Moscow’s seriousness and is uneasy with a process dominated by Washington: “We have just seen increased bombing by Russians during these talks,” she says, including strikes on Ukraine’s power grid in the coldest winter of the war. She warns that “pressuring the weaker party is always maybe getting the results faster but it’s only a declaration that we have peace. It’s not sustainable peace,” and insists that “everybody wants this war to stop, except the Russians.” Citing intelligence that Putin is “struggling to find recruits” and high inflation, she argues EU sanctions are biting and calls for more, including an EU ban on repairs and services for ships carrying Russian oil, which she hopes to sell to G7 partners at the Munich Security Conference: “We can push them into the place where they actually want to end this war. They’re not there yet.”

“How to make sure the Stalinist in the Kremlin faces a grim future,” George F. Will, Washington Post, 02.13.26.

• Will opens by recalling Stalin’s disastrous Winter War and says Vladimir Putin, “a Stalin admirer,” should have studied the real history his hero falsified: Stalin expected to subdue Finland in “precisely 20 days,” but after 105 days settled for “about 10 percent” of its territory and “almost 400,000” Soviet casualties.
• Today, as “the fifth year of Russia’s war to subdue Ukraine approaches,” Will notes that “a much-diminished Russia occupies just 20 percent of Ukrainian territory” and that Europe is “accustoming itself to the vocabulary of military seriousness,” with Sweden telling all citizens 16–70 that they are “part of Sweden’s total defense and required to serve in the event of war or the threat of war.”
• Putin’s “special military operation” has now “lasted longer than Russia’s involvement in World War II,” and Will argues that he has “surely defined success down” to a thin armistice padded with “security ‘guarantees’ even more gossamer” than the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, under which Russia promised to “respect the … existing borders of Ukraine” and “refrain from the threat or use of force” before seizing Crimea and invading.
• Will urges Ukraine’s friends to “deliver condign punishment” by using “the approximately $300 billion in frozen Russian assets,” intensifying efforts against the “shadow fleet” moving Russian oil, and refusing to “deny Putin a veto over security guarantees for Ukraine, including permanent troop deployments there,” warning that otherwise “any agreement will be a sizzling fuse.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • "Sanctions against allies and partners: this happens too," Ivan Timofeev, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.13.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • "Limitations of the Sanctions-Regime Change Formula: The Syrian Case in a Multipolar System," Danial Ranjbar Meshkin, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.13.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Ukraine-related negotiations: 

“1 big thing: Zelensky pushes back on Trump,” Mike Allen, Axios PM, 02.17.26.

• According to Mike Allen, Volodymyr Zelensky told Axios’ Barak Ravid that it is “not fair” that President Trump has “repeatedly called on Ukraine, not Russia, to make concessions for peace,” stressing that while it might be easier for Trump to pressure Ukraine than the “much larger Russia,” the way to create a lasting peace is not “to give victory” to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has said twice in recent days that the onus is on Zelensky to make concessions, to which Zelensky replied, “I hope it is just his tactics and not the decision.”
• Allen notes that Zelensky said Ukrainians would reject a peace deal that involves “withdrawing from the eastern Donbas region and turning it over to Russia,” even though “U.S. mediators have proposed that Ukrainian forces withdraw from the parts of the Donbas they currently hold, and allow that area to become a demilitarized ‘free economic zone.’” Zelensky is “prepared to discuss withdrawing,” the author writes, but he has “called for Moscow to pull its troops back an equivalent distance — and has rejected Russia’s claim to sovereignty over the zone.”
• The author adds that Zelensky said U.S. mediators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner have told him that Russia “genuinely wants to end the war,” but that Zelensky himself is “much more pessimistic,” and that he warned them they “shouldn’t try to force him to sell a vision of peace his people would see as an ‘unsuccessful story.’” Allen concludes by noting that “trilateral talks in Geneva are set to continue tomorrow,” with the Donbas issue and the shape of any potential peace deal still unresolved.

“Zelensky says Ukrainian public won't let him hand Russia territory,” Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler, Axios, 02.17.26.

• Volodymyr Zelensky told Axios that “the Ukrainian people would reject a peace deal that involves Ukraine unilaterally withdrawing from the eastern Donbas region and turning it over to Russia,” warning that if such a deal meant “simply pulling out of Donbas — sacrificing sovereignty and the citizenship of the people who live there — he believes it would be voted down,” because “emotionally, people will never forgive this. Never. They will not forgive… me, they will not forgive [the U.S.].”
• The authors write that Zelensky called it “not fair” that President Trump keeps publicly calling on Ukraine, not Russia, to make concessions for peace, arguing that while it might be easier for Trump to pressure Ukraine than the “much larger Russia,” the way to create a lasting peace is not “to give victory” to Vladimir Putin; speaking about Trump’s stance, he said, “I hope it is just his tactics and not the decision,” even as he thanked Trump for his peacemaking efforts and stressed, “We respect each other,” adding that he is “not such a person” who folds easily under pressure.
• Ravid and Lawler note that U.S. mediators have proposed that Ukrainian forces “withdraw from the parts of the Donbas they currently hold and allow that area to become a demilitarized ‘free economic zone,’” with Washington not taking a position on sovereignty; according to the authors, Zelensky is “prepared to discuss a troop withdrawal,” but has “called for Moscow to pull its troops back an equivalent distance” and has “rejected Russia’s claim to sovereignty over the zone,” insisting that “this is part of our country, all these citizens, the flag, the land,” and suggesting that Ukrainians might accept a deal that “we stay where we stay on the contact line,” but not one that hands over additional territory.

“The War Room newsletter: Is a peace deal possible?” Oliver Carroll, The Economist, 02.17.26.

• According to Oliver Carroll, “since the start of the year, the two sides appeared to be inching closer towards a deal,” with a Paris meeting leaving Ukraine believing “its interests were beginning to be heard by the American negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner,” and one source close to the Ukrainian team even rating “the chance of a breakthrough as ‘50-50’,” before a Financial Times article about “quick and dirty elections under American pressure” put “deal optimists on the defensive and slow[ed] the talks down.”
• The author writes that in Moscow “the Kremlin unexpectedly reinstated Vladimir Medinsky, a demagogue with a penchant for historical fantasy, as head of their negotiation team,” and that these developments “pointed to the work of spoilers in both camps,” with the “peculiar structure of the American effort—not a single negotiation but several parallel tracks—leav[ing] Russia free to control the pace and direction,” while “Vladimir Putin retains the right of veto over the America-Ukraine security guarantee agreement simply by withholding a ceasefire.”
• Carroll argues that although “Russia’s war has never been about land, rather than about trying to subjugate Ukraine’s international relations and sovereignty,” its demand that Ukraine abandon fortified positions in the Donbas has become “a totemic moment of the talks,” and he describes an American-initiated compromise involving “the creation of a demilitarized ‘free economic’ zone, perhaps under the aegis of Mr. Trump’s ‘Board of Peace’,” which “ticks all the boxes for the American emperor, but… probably wouldn’t pass muster under US law, especially if it required any de facto recognition of Russian occupation.”
• According to the author, “divisions are also emerging within Ukraine’s delegation,” with “one wing, centered on [chief of Zelensky’s office Kyrylo] Mr. Budanov,” believing “Ukraine’s interests are best served by a swift American-led agreement, and fear[ing] the window for action may soon close,” while “another wing, apparently still influenced by the controversial former chief of staff Andriy Yermak, who departed in a corruption scandal, is much less keen,” leaving Mr. Zelensky “balancing between them, while also having his own ideas,” amid a “finely balanced judgment” over whether Ukraine is best served by “a quick deal” or “by waiting.”
• The author believes that “ideally, Ukraine needs a durable agreement, including a watertight security treaty with America,” but warns this “will require forcing concessions out of Russia, not only out of Ukraine,” which in turn demands “real American pressure on Russia, applied with teeth,” and he concludes that “the inconsistent evidence we’ve seen so far gives little reason to expect it,” even as “Ukraine is already in crisis, struggling to fill gaps on the front lines and with businesses and homes struggling under blackouts.”

“Russia presses demands, and faces pressure, as Ukraine talks move to Geneva,” Catherine Belton, Washington Post, 02.17.26.

• Belton reports that as Geneva talks open, Moscow has “ratcheted up the pressure on Ukraine” with another massive strike on energy infrastructure while pushing a deal that would force Kyiv to “bow to demands that would undermine…Zelensky’s hold on power.” Yet Western officials say “time no longer appears to be on Moscow’s side”: the Russian economy is “faltering,” and its forces have recently taken more losses than they can replace, while the Kremlin fears Trump could be “distracted” or weakened by the midterms.
• Despite hopes of handing Trump a political “triumph,” Russia “is not ready to step back from any of its core demands,” including territorial surrender and sweeping political constraints. Tatiana Stanovaya says a “bloc of principle subjects will remain,” especially security guarantees: “Russia wants radical cuts to the Ukrainian armed forces, an annulment to all agreements on Ukraine’s military partnerships with NATO countries and no deployment of forces from NATO countries.” Zelensky, under Trump’s pressure, has signaled openness to elections and even a troop pullback from fortified Donbas only if there are “legally watertight security guarantees,” warning it is “a big mistake to allow the aggressor to take something” because Putin would “rebuild his army and then renew his attack.” Meanwhile, Belton notes, Moscow keeps trying to “divert the U.S. delegation” into side talks on a new nuclear pact and other bilateral issues, seeking sanctions relief and a broader reset even as the war grinds on.

“Zelensky Makes His Pitch to Trump”, Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 02.12.26.

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky frames his appeal to Donald Trump in explicitly political terms, arguing that ending the war would be “the greatest victory for Trump” and “No. 1” for his legacy, while also boosting Republicans before the midterms. He tells Shuster that, “if we are talking like adults, it’s just a victory for him, a political one,” casting peace as both a moral and electoral prize. Zelensky’s advisers, Shuster reports, fear that the window for a deal may be closing and warn that failure to reach an agreement this spring could condemn Ukraine to “years of continued fighting.” 
• Battlefield realities shape this stance: Zelensky stresses that “Ukraine is not losing,” citing Russia’s failure to capture Pokrovsk after nearly two years of attacks and staggering Russian casualty estimates. Diplomatically, he signals flexibility—agreeing to meet Putin almost anywhere but Moscow and entertaining U.S.-floated ideas such as a Donbas “free economic zone” and even a referendum, possibly paired with a presidential election, on a deal involving the loss of territory. But he draws a red line: “I don’t think we should put a bad deal up for a referendum.”  

“Ukraine Says U.S. Is Increasing Pressure for a Deal as the Midterms Loom,” Maria Varenikova, New York Times, 02.13.26.

• Varenikova reports that Ukrainian officials say the Trump administration is “ramping up pressure on them to make concessions to Russia,” aiming to “end the war by early summer,” with President Volodymyr Zelensky complaining that Washington is “pushing harder on Kyiv than on Moscow to give ground.”
• Zelensky links U.S. urgency directly to domestic politics, saying the American desire to halt the war by June is “dictated by the American political calendar” and that “of course, it is desirable for us that the Americans do not leave,” while warning that Washington is “likely to put pressure on the parties according to that timeline.”
• MP Yaroslav Yurchyshyn says that in the recent UAE talks “the United States called for Ukraine to hold elections by May 15,” a demand that “aligns with Russia’s” line that Zelensky has “lost legitimacy,” and describes Trump officials as having “threatened to pull out of the negotiating process if Ukraine was not prepared to compromise.”
• On territory, Zelensky says bluntly that Putin asked Trump to “give me all of Donbas, and I’ll end the war,” and that the U.S. has again floated a plan for Kyiv to withdraw from the remaining Donbas and turn it into a “free economic zone,” an idea about which “neither Ukraine nor Russia has ever been enthusiastic.”
• Despite the talks, Zelensky insists “the Russian Army is preparing to continue fighting,” citing intelligence that Moscow is “scaling up its weapons production,” while analyst Mykhailo Samus argues that “Russia will begin moving toward a freeze only when it starts to clearly lose its advantage,” urging tighter “restrictions on Russian oil” and more air defenses instead of “fantasies” about premature deals.

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio with John Micklethwait of Bloomberg News,” U.S. State Department, 02.14.26.

• Asked who is winning in Ukraine, Rubio answers that “it’s a difficult war to say anyone is winning,” noting that “the Russians are losing seven to eight thousand soldiers a week – a week. Not wounded – dead,” while “Ukraine has suffered extraordinary damage…to its energy infrastructure” and “it will take billions of dollars and years and years to rebuild that country.”
• Rubio calls it “a senseless war in our view,” saying “the President believes that very deeply” and “believes the war would have never happened had he been president at the time.” He stresses, “we don’t provide arms to Russia; we provide arms to Ukraine. We don’t sanction Ukraine; we sanction Russia.”
• On Washington’s diplomatic role, he says the United States is “probably the only nation on Earth that can bring the two sides to discuss the potential for ending this war on negotiated terms,” calling it “an obligation we…won’t walk away from,” and adding that “in the end, this war will not be solved militarily. It will be…a negotiated settlement. We’d like to see that happen as soon as possible.”
• Rubio rejects the idea of a clear Russian victory: “I don’t think the war is going to end in a traditional loss in the way people think. I don’t think it’s possible for Russia to even achieve whatever initial objectives they had at the beginning of this war.” He says those objectives have now “largely narrowed down to their desire to take 20 percent of Donetsk that they don’t currently possess.” He calls that demand “hard. It’s a hard concession for Ukraine to make for obvious reasons, both from a tactical standpoint and also from a political one,” and says the U.S. will “continue to search for ways to see if there is a solution to that unique problem that’s acceptable to Ukraine and that Russia will also accept.”

“Rubio’s Tough Love for Europe,” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 02.15.26.

• The board says Rubio offered “a more conciliatory message” in Munich but still “very tough love,” recalling the Cold War when the West was in “terminal decline” yet “our predecessors recognized that decline was a choice, and it was a choice they refused to make.” He rooted criticism of Europe’s migration, defense, climate, and energy policies in “shared history and values,” insisting “we are connected spiritually and we are connected culturally,” and that “our destiny is and will always be intertwined with yours.”
• Rubio called for a trans‑Atlantic alliance “ready to defend our people” and “not one that exists to operate a global welfare state,” and warned NATO shouldn’t be constrained by institutions “beyond its control,” singling out the UN. But the board’s “big caveat” is Ukraine, “the current front line of Western civilization.” It warns Rubio’s “good words” will “mean much” only if Washington takes the West’s side against Russia rather than mediating “a rotten ‘peace’ imposed on Ukraine.”

“War and Its Traps: Why the Fifth Year Won’t Be the Last,” Tatiana Stanovaya, Carnegie Politika, 02.16.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• Stanovaya argues that despite intensified talks in Abu Dhabi and Geneva, 2026 is unlikely to be the final year of Russia’s war in Ukraine. For Kyiv, the immediate need is to “force Russia to cease hostilities,” but she warns of a trap: endless cease-fire negotiations while Moscow “continues military operations, destroying Ukrainian infrastructure,” offering only brief pauses as tactical signals to Donald Trump without allowing Ukraine to rebuild. For Moscow, she says, there is a parallel trap in its maximalist agenda: not just territory, but turning Ukraine into a “friendly” state via bans on nationalism, restored pro‑Russian forces, limits on the army, and a de facto break with NATO. Even if Washington pressures Kyiv into a “Stambul‑2”‑style deal, she predicts it would be “unacceptable” to Ukrainian elites and society and would likely suffer the fate of Minsk—sabotage and renewed escalation, with some Ukrainian defenders fighting on regardless.
• The deepest obstacle, Stanovaya concludes, is that the “main source of Russian aggression” is “deep distrust of the West and the conviction that it seeks to inflict a ‘strategic defeat’ on Russia.” As long as that fear is shared by Russian elites and much of society, she writes, “the war will not end”: the Kremlin will not accept a settlement it sees as abandoning Russia to collapse, and meaningful concessions are more likely to follow political change in Moscow than to produce it.

“Between The Inevitable and The Unreliable: Why Ukrainian society considers territorial concessions futile, but yet is willing to discuss them,” Re:Russia, 02.10.26.

• Re:Russia writes that “The corruption scandal at the end of 2025 did not undermine the legitimacy of the Ukrainian authorities or of Volodymyr Zelensky, and the bombardment of Ukrainian cities and widespread electricity outages did not weaken the spirit of resistance among Ukrainians. This is indicated by two waves of surveys conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology in January 2026. Willingness to endure the war ‘for as long as necessary’ at the start of 2026 has even increased compared with 2025.”
• Re: Russia notes that most Ukrainians see the war as existential: nearly 70% believe Russia’s goal is either “the physical genocide of the Ukrainian people” or “the seizure of most of Ukraine in order to destroy Ukrainian statehood and the nation.” In that frame, the authors write, “the scope for compromise with an actor whom you believe seeks to destroy you is narrow and specific. It amounts either to capitulation or to a pause before the next round.”
• Crucially, Ukrainians doubt that giving up land will actually bring security. A majority (57%) are “firmly convinced that even with security guarantees in place, a freeze in hostilities along the current line of contact would be merely a pause, and that Russia would attack Ukraine again after some time”; another 26% put the chance of a renewed attack at 50%. In total, “more than 80% regard this scenario as highly likely,” the report stresses.
• That logic drives skepticism toward the “territory for guarantees” formula now under discussion. Across two KIIS waves, 52–54% “are categorically opposed to transferring territories in northern Donbas to Russian control even in exchange for security guarantees,” while 39–40% see such a trade as “painful but acceptable.” Among opponents, roughly a third reject concessions “in principle,” but “for most…two factors are decisive: they are convinced that transferring territory would not prevent a renewed Russian offensive and would therefore be a futile sacrifice, and they have limited trust in Western guarantees.”
• Because so many Ukrainians assume Russia will attack again and doubt that the West, especially the United States (trusted by only 39% to honor guarantees), would fully back them, territorial concessions are widely seen not as a path to peace but as a pointless loss that leaves the underlying threat untouched.

“The Price of Peace in Ukraine: How Accepting a New Border Could End the War,” Peter Slezkine and Joshua Shifrinson, Foreign Affairs, 02.16.26.

• The authors argue that the initial Western goal of restoring all of Ukraine’s 1991 borders—including Crimea and the entire Donbas—was always implausible and effectively collapsed after Kyiv’s failed 2023 counteroffensive and Russia’s subsequent manpower and firepower advantage. In practice, they note, Ukraine and its backers now tacitly accept that Moscow will retain de facto control over large occupied areas, yet still categorically reject de jure recognition, invoking post‑1945 norms of territorial integrity, fears of emboldening aggressors, and the symbolism of “capitulation.” Slezkine and Shifrinson contend these objections are weak: borders have repeatedly changed by conquest since 1945 without unraveling the international order; nonrecognition did not deter Russia’s 2022 invasion; and if victory is defined only territorially, Ukraine has already lost despite preserving independence and securing deep integration with the EU and West.
• They propose that a durable peace align law with reality via a new international border roughly along the final line of control, with limited negotiated adjustments and a relocation window for residents. Both sides would revise constitutional claims—Ukraine ceding territory it does not control, Russia accepting less than its maximal annexation claims—ideally under political guarantees from BRICS states and Western sponsors. Clear, mutually recognized borders, they argue, would lower escalation risks inherent in unresolved disputes, make “snapback” sanctions and rearmament more automatic if Russia attacked again, and ease Ukraine’s EU accession and investment climate. By contrast, clinging to the legal fiction of full territorial integrity while accepting permanent de facto loss would hinder reconstruction and make renewed war more likely.

“Konstantin Remchukov: In Munich They Dreamed of Exhausting Russia,” Nezavisimaya Gazeta, 02.15.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated

• Remchukov writes that this year’s Munich Security Conference confirmed a shift in which “economic expediency and national interests of states are now higher than abstract rules and norms,” and asks, given U.S.–EU value clashes, “what then should NATO defend?” He notes Marco Rubio “sounded less aggressive” than J.D. Vance but was “implacable” toward Europe’s migration, cultural, and green policies, declaring that the U.S. doesn’t want to be “the administrator of managed decline.”
• On Russia, he says the “agreed position” was that “Russians cannot be trusted. Neither now nor later,” and that after Ukraine “they will go into Europe,” with Poles claiming “to Poland” and Balts “to them.” Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen, he writes, went “all out in Russophobic attacks,” saying Russians don’t care about losses because of their “mentality” and gesturing to her head, arguing that “what are 30–35 thousand if in World War II Russia lost millions.” The main task, Remchukov concludes, was framed as to “really exhaust Russia” with sanctions, bans on energy, and blocking the shadow fleet, preparing for war and “no economic contacts for decades.”
• He observes that Germany’s Merz promised to make his country “the driver of economic growth in Europe and the backbone of its defense capability,” Macron offered a nuclear shield, and Britain’s Starmer vowed to send a carrier group to the North Atlantic and High North. Remchukov’s “main impression” is that “for several decades Russia will be the main enemy of the EU—political, economic, military,” while under Trump the Americans will be “more pragmatic…even mercenary, but more understandable,” practicing transactional diplomacy of “you to me, I to you,” and leaving Russia facing a “long solo voyage” that will demand radical improvements in governance and productivity at home.

“Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s statement and answers to questions at the Government Hour hearings,” Russian Foreign Ministry, 11.02.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Lavrov frames the war in Ukraine as a crisis “provoked by the collective West” and says “a sustainable settlement…is impossible without eliminating its root causes.” He insists this approach “was recognised by the Trump administration,” recalling that at the August 2025 Alaska summit “understandings were reached on ways to ensure a sustainable and lasting settlement of the Ukraine issue,” which he emphasizes “remain on the table.”
• He claims Russia is negotiating “to ensure Russia’s security on its western borders and the rights of the Russians and Russian‑speaking people, and that the threat emanating from the current Kiev regime and its external patrons is eliminated.” Linking this to territory, Lavrov argues that “the right of the peoples of Crimea, Donbass and Novorossiya to determine their future in unity with Russia continues to be denied,” while the West champions Greenland’s self‑determination — “we categorically disagree with such distorted and openly biased logic,” he says, vowing to “provide political and diplomatic assistance in achieving all the goals and objectives of the special military operation.”
• On Ukraine’s internal order, he accuses Kyiv of legally banning “the language spoken by most of the country’s citizens” and notes that “the current Ukrainian Constitution obliges the state to guarantee the rights of the Russian population…This is something amazing,” adding that when Moscow raises this with the West, “this is like being up against a brick wall.”
• Lavrov also links Ukraine to wider strategic and nuclear questions. He laments that Putin’s proposal for both sides to “continue voluntarily observing” New START limits drew no formal U.S. reply, but says Russia’s moratorium “remains in force on our side, but only as long as the United States does not exceed the above limits,” promising to “act responsibly and in a balanced manner” while watching U.S. nuclear policy and broader “strategic environment.”

“Interview of Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Galuzin with TASS,” Russian Foreign Ministry, 02.15.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• Galuzin says  Moscow’s negotiating stance has been “tightened,” adding that this hardened position “was conveyed” to the 4–5 February Abu Dhabi security working group in the “Russia–USA–Ukraine format.” Such attacks, he warns, “narrow the possibilities for resolving the conflict by political‑diplomatic means,” and he says the Trump team has been given the “difficult task of compelling the Kyiv regime to peace.”
• On talks, Galuzin notes that the Istanbul format “has not been officially closed” by Russia, but claims Kyiv “unilaterally” suspended it, and that “under pressure from the American side and as a result of defeats on the battlefield Kyiv again sat down at the negotiating table – this time in Abu Dhabi.” He refuses details because participants “agreed to work in a silence mode.” Looking beyond the war, he recalls that Putin in March 2025 called a UN‑mandated external administration for Ukraine “one of the possible options” and says Russia is “ready to discuss with the US, European and other countries the possibility of introducing temporary external governance in Kyiv” so that “democratic elections” can be held and a “capable government, with which one could sign a full‑fledged peace treaty,” can be installed. As for the EU, he dismisses Brussels as “absolutely non‑negotiable,” accusing it of speaking only “the language of ultimatums” and saying its refusal of “direct dialogue” with Moscow has “deprived itself of a place at the negotiating table.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • "Putin Doesn’t Want Peace. He Wants More Time," Editorial Board, Bloomberg, 02.17.26.

  • “What If Trump Gets His Russia-Ukraine Deal?” Eric Ciaramella, Carnegie Endowment, 02.13.26.
  • “Russia ‘Not Serious’ About Peace Deal, Lindsey Graham Says,” John Haltiwanger, Foreign Policy, 02.14.26.
  • Video: “EU wants Ukraine war to continue! It's cheaper than ending it,” interview of Anatol Lieven for the Peacemonger, 02.14.26.
  • “How a Pencil-Purchasing U.S. Bureaucrat Ended Up Shaking Hands With Putin,” Shalini Ramachandran, Robbie Gramer and Katherine Long, Wall Street Journal, 02.12.26.
  • “Briefing by Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova,” Russian Foreign Ministry, 02.12.26. Clues from Russian Views.

Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:

“Preface: Russia matters,” Andrew Monaghan, “The New Politics of Russia,” 2026.

• “Getting Russia ‘right’, however, matters. It matters because of Russia’s status as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, its great natural resource wealth, and its evolving military capability (particularly its nuclear weapons). This array of assets is accentuated by Russia’s great size, which makes it a ubiquitous player in regions across the world in Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, Asia-Pacific and the Arctic, and by the efforts of the Russian leadership to turn Russia into an ‘indispensable partner’, one without whose participation major international questions … cannot be addressed,” the authors writes.
• “Russia matters specifically to the West because since the mid 1990s, it has become a major partner, both as an energy supplier to the EU and for Western businesses. Additionally, as often stated by senior Western leaders, the West and Russia face many common problems and questions, from international terrorism to conflict resolution and the spread of weapons of mass destruction. Given its political influence and geographical location, Russia has an important role to play in many of the regional political and security questions that the West faces,” according to the author. 
• It is a one-eyed strategic outlook that only addresses the distant (and unpredictable) future: strategy is a dialogue with the current context and the immediate future. And it is in this regard that Russia matters to Western policy-makers, given the scale of its assets and the explicit intentions of its leadership. This is all the more true for the EU and NATO and many of their member states, given that they neighbor Russia,” the author argues.
• “For the foreseeable future, therefore, Russia matters more to the West than any other single international question, not least because it weaves together questions of the evolution of wider international affairs, as well as specific issues of security, energy and economics. Indeed, it raises many wider questions about the end of the Cold War (and perhaps the post-Cold War) eras, the nature of Europe in the twenty-first century and how the West—including NATO and the EU—approaches the wider world,” according to the author.

“Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the Munich Security Conference,” U.S. Department of State, 02.14.26.

• On Russia’s war in Ukraine, he notes that the issues to end the war “have been narrowed…to the hardest questions to answer,” admits “we don’t know” if “the Russians are serious about ending the war,” and says Washington will “continue to test” whether “there is an outcome that Ukraine can live with and that Russia will accept,” while stressing that “all these things continue to happen on the sanctions front” and “there’s no buying of time here.”
• Rubio argues that after 1991 the West fell into a “dangerous delusion” that “we had entered, quote, ‘the end of history,’” believing that “the rules-based global order…would now replace the national interest” and that “we would now live in a world without borders where everyone became a citizen of the world,” a mindset he says has “cost us dearly.”
• He said the U.S. and Europe “embraced a dogmatic vision of free and unfettered trade” and “outsourced our sovereignty to international institutions,” while others undertook “the most rapid military buildup in all of human history” and used “hard power to pursue their own interests,” leaving the West “dependent on others for our needs and dangerously vulnerable to crisis.”
• He said, “For the United States and Europe, we belong together. America was founded 250 years ago, but the roots began here on this continent long before. “
• He said: “in a time of headlines heralding the end of the transatlantic era, let it be known and clear to all that this is neither our goal nor our wish—because for us Americans, our home may be in the Western Hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”
• He said, “We are part of one civilization—Western civilization. We are bound to one another by the deepest bonds that nations could share, forged by centuries of shared history, Christian faith, culture, heritage, language, ancestry, and the sacrifices our forefathers made together for the common civilization to which we have fallen heir.
• Rubio links today’s struggles to what he calls “the forces of civilizational erasure,” warning that the alliance must not be “paralyzed into inaction by fear—fear of climate change, fear of war, fear of technology,” and concluding that acting together “will rebuke and deter the forces of civilizational erasure that today menace both America and Europe alike.
• He said, “Mass migration is not, was not, isn’t some fringe concern of little consequence. It was and continues to be a crisis which is transforming and destabilizing societies all across the West.”

“NATO is Vital to U.S. National Security,” Joint statement, Munich Security Conference 2026, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, 02.12.26.

• The signatories insist that “for over three-quarters of a century, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has served as the cornerstone of United States national security,” stressing that “NATO is not an act of American generosity. It is a strategic bargain that ensures the United States remains the world’s most powerful and economically secure nation at a fraction of the cost of going it alone.”
• On power projection, they argue that “the U.S. does not maintain a military presence in Europe solely to protect Europeans; it does so to protect American interests,” and that NATO’s bases are “the ‘jumping-off points’ for U.S. operations in Africa, the Middle East, and Central Asia,” whereas without NATO Washington would face a patchwork of bilateral deals “subject to shifting local politics.”
• In terms of burden sharing, the authors note that Article 5 was invoked “in defense of the United States” after 9/11 and that allies “committed over 50,000 troops” in Afghanistan, where non‑U.S. partners suffered “over 1100 fatalities” and contributed “more than $3.4 billion” to Afghan forces; today, they add, non‑U.S. NATO defense spending has “surged to over $560 billion annually,” and if America left NATO it would likely need to boost its own budget by “$100B–$200 billion annually.”
• Economically, the statement emphasizes that “over $1.6 trillion in bilateral trade flows across the Atlantic annually,” making Europe the U.S.’s “single largest economic partner,” and argues that NATO’s maritime commands secure this “Main Street of global trade,” preventing European instability from triggering “catastrophic world wars” as in the past.
• On technology and nuclear issues, the authors describe NATO as a “global nervous system” that fuses intelligence from 31 allies and note that standardization lets a U.S. F‑35 “land, refuel, and re-arm” at allied bases worldwide, while “nuclear sharing” provides a credible umbrella that “prevents a ‘nuclear vacuum’ in Europe” and keeps proliferation in check.
• They conclude that quitting or hollowing out NATO would not yield a peace dividend but “higher costs,” “greater risk,” and “loss of influence,” warning that America’s allies are its “single greatest geo-strategic advantage” and that Russia and China “simply have nothing to compare.”

“U.S. and Europe, No Longer Kindred Souls, Enter a Marriage of Convenience,” Yaroslav Trofimov, Wall Street Journal, 02.15.26.

• Trofimov reports that after Munich, many Europeans liken the transatlantic relationship to dealing with “a troubled, possibly abusive, spouse.” The Greenland crisis left “a deep fissure” so that what was once “an alliance of kindred souls is viewed by both sides today as a marriage of convenience, loveless and lacking basic trust,” and EU foreign‑policy chief Kaja Kallas says bluntly “you don’t really know who is your friend and who is your ally.”
• On Russia and Ukraine, he notes that from European capitals “the paramount security challenge is presented by Russia’s war to subjugate Ukraine,” while Trump “has repeatedly spoken of Russia as a source of great business opportunities,” with aides “denying any Russian threat to countries outside Ukraine.” Former Swedish foreign minister Tobias Billström says “the U.S. has to accept that Russia is a European problem,” and warns of a “constant downplay of Russia as a threat.” France’s Benjamin Haddad cautions that the “worst lesson” would be to cling to Rubio’s “love words” instead of “focus on rearmament, on the support for Ukraine and the threat that Russia poses to all our democracies.”
• Trump’s pressure on Kyiv to accept a peace “on Russia’s terms and surrender unconquered territory in the Donetsk region” is seen by “most European governments” as something that “would embolden future Russian aggression,” Trofimov writes, and could trigger “another crisis in trans‑Atlantic relations.” The Greenland episode taught them that “it pays to push back, hard,” Kallas says, arguing that “with all the strongmen, they respect strength and nothing else,” and that “if we are united, we are actually strong.”

“Elbridge Colby: ‘NATO Is Actually Stronger Than Ever,’” Foreign Policy, 02.14.26.

• Colby insists the United States “is committed to NATO” and Article 5, but reframes the alliance as “NATO 3.0”: a more hard‑nosed, military‑first structure in which Europe “takes primary responsibility for its conventional defense” against Russia, backed by much higher European defense spending and a U.S. role that must be “worthwhile to the American people.”
• Pressed on whether Washington would respond if Russia attacked an ally (e.g., Estonia’s Narva), Colby refuses a simple yes/no, saying U.S. officials “don’t engage in speculation” and instead emphasize “delivering-results-and-readiness,” including a planned $1.5 trillion U.S. defense budget and a “national mobilization of our defense industrial base.” He argues this practical buildup is more credible than repeating “shibboleths” about the rules‑based order.
• On Ukraine, Colby says the United States is “negotiating with Moscow designed to try to end the tragic war,” and presents burden‑shifting in Europe as what makes this sustainable: because Germany and other wealthy allies can field “really serious military force” against Russia, Washington can both support Kyiv and re‑focus on the Indo‑Pacific without conceding any “hemispheric spheres of influence” to Moscow or Beijing.

“The predator in the Oval Office,” Gideon Rachman with Stephen Walt, Financial Times, 02.11.26.

• Walt says Europe is being squeezed between Trump’s America and Russia: “until this came along, Europe felt that it was facing its biggest security threat in generations from Russia,” so Europeans now have to “reconstruct their security arrangements while seeing a predatory United States… and a threat in Russia on the other border.” He argues that “American policy and Russian policy are providing Europe with every incentive” to change course.
• On Europe’s ability to deal with Russia without the U.S., Walt insists that “the latent potential is there,” noting that “Europe is a wealthy continent. Its combined GDP far exceeds that of Russia. Its combined defense spending actually exceeds that of Russia.” What is needed, he says, is “some political will to co‑ordinate those resources more effectively… not necessarily to become a global power like the United States, but to be able to protect Europe’s immediate interests in Europe itself.”
• Walt links Trump’s behavior to a shift in how Europeans see the U.S. and Russia: “there are now public opinion polls coming out of Europe suggesting that 50% of Europeans see the United States as an enemy. Less than 10% see it as a friend,” which he calls “a really remarkable development.” That in turn, he warns, will “accelerate efforts to diversify away from the United States, start constructing alternative arrangements to handle security and economic ties that don’t necessarily involve the United States,” even as Russia remains “a threat on the other border.”
• Rachman notes that Europeans feel doubly exposed: “until this came along, Europe felt that it was facing its biggest security threat in generations from Russia,” but now “they’re having to sort of reconstruct their security arrangements while seeing a predatory United States … and a threat in Russia on the other border.” He says that from Munich to Greenland there is a sense in Europe that “America’s attitude to its allies had changed profoundly under President Trump,” even as Russia remains “a threat” that has to be deterred.

“Putin Didn’t Know How Good He Had It”, Thomas Graham and Alan Cullison, The Atlantic, 02.13.26.

• The two authors write: “Donald Trump is dismantling the order that Putin had so long abhorred, and a new multipolar world is emerging in its place. Putin had thought he could rise to the top of such a system, in which raw economic and military might outweigh diplomacy and alliances. But he was mistaken: The norms and institutions of the postwar order actually masked Russia’s vulnerabilities. Putin has gotten the world he wished for—and it’s threatening to crush him.”
• The two authors write: “Moscow had assumed that its immense nuclear arsenal, unparalleled natural resources, and extensive territory in the heart of Eurasia would keep Russia competitive with China and the United States. But these assets have been unable to slow its rapid decline. Russia’s economy is at best one-quarter the size of China’s and America’s, and the gap is growing. Meanwhile, it risks becoming an afterthought in the race for technological supremacy in artificial intelligence, biotechnology, and quantum computing. The country’s economy and technology base are even slowly losing ground to India’s.”
• The two authors write: “The war in Ukraine has only deepened Russia’s disadvantages. Before February 2022, some observers thought Russia was one of the world’s premier military powers—an assessment that Ukraine quickly upended. The conflict has now dragged on longer than the Soviet Union’s campaign against Nazi Germany, and it has resulted in more than 1 million Russian casualties, exacerbating the country’s chronic demographic crisis. Even if Putin is able to seize additional territory, most of it will be shelled-out cities and deserted land. Reconstructing it would require billions of dollars that Russia does not have and is unlikely to receive from others.”
• The two authors conclude: “Shortly before becoming president in 2000, Putin issued a manifesto explaining how Russia could keep from falling into the second or third rank of world powers. He insisted that America’s global leadership was holding Moscow back. In reality, he didn’t know how good he had it.” No one can dispute the authors’ observation that Russia is lagging behind the U.S. and China economically. However, one would not describe Russia as "falling into the second or third rank of world powers." Not only because it is a nuclear superpower, but also because according to World Bank data for GDP PPP (in constant international dollars to account for inflation), Russia actually ranked fifth in terms of GDP in 2024, which is the latest year WB currently has data for across its databases. Yes, Russia is depopulating, but it is still in the top 10 of the most populous countries. In short, Russia is not a superpower (except for nuclear weapons) and forecasts for GDP growth and population change are not “inspiring,” but it is not a third-rank power either.

“How to Avert the Tragedy of Great-Power Politics: Germany Knows the Costs of a World Governed by Power Alone,” Friedrich Merz, Foreign Affairs, 02.13.26.

• Merz argues that Europe has exited its “vacation from history” and reentered a harsh age of great‑power politics, where raw power, spheres of influence, and weaponized interdependence replace the post–Cold War faith in rules and mutual gains. Russia’s brutal war on Ukraine and China’s long-term quest for great‑power status illustrate this shift, while the United States’ increasingly competitive strategy toward China risks accelerating, rather than moderating, the zero‑sum logic. For Germany, Merz says, the response must be “principled realism”: defending freedom, security, and prosperity by aligning its normative ambitions with real power, and recognizing that too little state power can imperil liberty just as much as too much.
• He lays out an agenda to make Germany the backbone of a more sovereign Europe: massively strengthening the European pillar within NATO, turning the Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest conventional army, reviving the defense industry, and hardening infrastructure and supply chains. Berlin should drive deeper EU defense integration, including carefully framed nuclear consultations with France, while rejecting calls to “write off” the United States in favor of a more balanced but renewed transatlantic partnership. At the same time, Germany must widen its network of global partners and “de‑risk,” not decouple, from China to avoid returning to a world “in which only power counts,” a path German history shows ends in catastrophe.

“A German General Prepares His Country for War—and the Clock Is Ticking,” Gordon Fairclough, Wall Street Journal, 02.12.26.

• Standing over a floor‑sized map in Lithuania, Gen. Carsten Breuer tells German troops, “We need to train where and how we will fight. We need to be agile. We need a new mindset,” as he “races to prepare Germany’s armed forces for war,” according to the author.
• Germany’s military intelligence believes that “within the next three years, Russia … will have amassed enough weaponry and trained enough troops to be able to start a wider war across Europe,” and Breuer warns that “a smaller attack could come at any time” — hence his insistence that “we have to be ready,” Fairclough reports.
• Breuer has made Kriegstüchtig—“war‑ready”—his rallying cry, deliberately invoking a word Germans reserve “for armies fighting armies,” and he reminds visitors, “It’s our duty to make sure this never happens again,” as they look down at a carpet depicting bomb‑ravaged Berlin, the author writes.
• Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has nominated Breuer to chair NATO’s military committee, while at home he backs laws that will require young men to complete service questionnaires and medical exams, with conscription “next … if the army doesn’t get enough recruits”; Breuer tells students that Germany must ensure it “can’t be attacked” and that any aggressor knows “an attack isn’t worth it,” according to Fairclough.
• Describing Europe as “not yet at war, but no longer at peace,” Breuer says, “We are being tested,” as Russian drones violate NATO airspace and sabotage and cyberattacks mount; he responds by pushing rapid innovation—arguing that “every rifleman will need to be a drone pilot” and boasting that new German counter‑drone teams can be deployed and “operational the next day,” the author notes.

“Russia can’t attack NATO this year but plans to boost its own forces, an intelligence chief says,” Emma Burrows AP, 02.10.26

• Estonian foreign intelligence chief Kaupo Rosin says Russia “cannot launch an attack on NATO this year or next” because there are “not enough resources available,” but warns that Moscow plans to “increase its forces significantly along the alliance’s eastern flank,” creating new units and “multiplying the prewar force along its border with NATO by two to three times.” How far that buildup goes will depend on the Ukraine war’s outcome, since Russia will have to keep a “significant portion” of its military in occupied Ukraine and inside Russia “to prevent future Ukrainian action.” Rosin says Kremlin officials, in internal discussions intercepted by Estonia, still see Washington as their “main enemy” and are “playing for time” in Trump‑brokered talks, with “absolutely no discussion about how to really cooperate with the U.S. in a meaningful way.”
• On Putin’s intentions, Rosin says that “in his head, [Putin] still thinks that he can actually militarily win” in Ukraine and believes he can “outsmart everybody,” including the United States, in negotiations. He argues that controlling all of Ukraine “is so deep in his head” that it takes precedence over economic damage, and that the war will likely continue “in some form for several years” unless the situation at the front or inside Russia becomes “catastrophic,” threatening his grip on power. Rosin adds that optimism in the Kremlin is partly self‑delusion: “the lower you go in the food chain” the more officials “understand how bad it is actually on the ground,” while reports reaching Putin are “much more optimistic” because he “only wants to see success.”

“NATO Has Seen the Future and Is Unprepared,” Jillian Kay Melchior, Wall Street Journal, 02.12.26.

• Melchior writes that Russia and Ukraine “have shown the world the future of warfare—and America and its allies aren’t ready for it,” a lesson driven home by the Hedgehog 2025 exercise in Estonia, which “exposed serious tactical shortcomings and vulnerabilities in high-intensity drone combat.”
• In one scenario, a NATO battle group “failed to account for how drones have made the battlefield more transparent”: an adversary participant recalls that the troops were “just walking around, not using any kind of disguise,” so their tents and armored vehicles “were all destroyed.”
• A Ukrainian team of about 10 soldiers, using the Delta battlefield‑management system, was able to “mock-destroy 17 armored vehicles and conduct 30 ‘strikes’” in half a day, while another adversary unit “was able to eliminate two battalions in a day,” results that Aivar Hanniotti calls “horrible” for NATO forces.
• Retired Gen. David Petraeus cautions that “lessons are not learned when they are identified” but only when militaries “develop new concepts, write new doctrine, change organizational structures, overhaul your training … and even make changes to your personnel policies,” while Ukrainian expert Maria Lemberg warns that many NATO members still show “a fundamental lack of understanding of the modern battlefield.”
• One commander watching the drill concluded bluntly, “We are f—,” Melchior reports; Estonian Lt. Col. Arbo Probal says the aim was to make participants “critical toward themselves” and avoid complacency—and on that score, he judges, “from my point of view, mission accomplished.”

“The ticking clock: Why NATO’s deterrence against Russia is under pressure,” Marek Menkiszak and Marta Prochwicz Jazowska, ECFR, 02.16.26.

• The authors argue that whether Russia risks attacking NATO depends on three variables: (1) a ceasefire in Ukraine that frees Russian forces; (2) Russia’s rebuilt military capacity; and (3) Moscow’s perception that NATO—especially U.S. commitment—is weak and divided. If all three tilt in Russia’s favor, an attack or coercive limited operation to extract concessions (such as demilitarizing parts of eastern Europe) becomes a “realistic possibility.”
• On Ukraine, they warn that a ceasefire “dictated by Moscow’s maximalist demands” (demilitarization, political influence, control over Donbas) would let Russia redeploy major forces to NATO’s eastern flank within 6–18 months, at a time when its defense industry is already on a war footing: artillery shell production up 17‑fold since 2021, new corps and divisions forming near Estonia, and expansion plans through 2026. Only a Russian defeat in Ukraine, they write, would force a true recalculation in Moscow.
• NATO’s greatest deterrent remains U.S. commitment, but Trump’s policies—talk of reducing forces in Europe, open pressure on allies, and even the Greenland crisis—are “under unprecedented strain” and risk creating a deadlock that Moscow could read as an invitation to test the alliance. In such a “perfect storm,” the Kremlin might first escalate hybrid attacks (sabotage, proxies) or mount a rapid seizure of a sliver of Baltic territory, then issue ultimatums demanding removal of allied forces and re‑imposition of pre‑1997 limits, backed by nuclear threats.
• For now, Russia is deterred by the ongoing war in Ukraine, NATO’s relative unity, and active U.S. nuclear backing. But those “protective barriers are actively deteriorating,” they caution. Citing former Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba, they suggest that if these factors erode, the key analytical question will flip from “why would Russia attack?” to “why would it not?”—unless Europeans urgently reinforce defense spending, implement regional plans, maintain sanctions pressure, and support Ukraine long enough to weaken Russia’s war machine.

“Putin’s next move? Five Russian attack scenarios Europe must prepare for,” Richard D. Hooker Jr., Atlantic Council, 02.12.26.

• Hooker warns that if Vladimir Putin “can’t win a clear victory in Ukraine, he will seek one elsewhere,” and that “a clear victory in Ukraine would embolden Moscow to further aggression.” He argues that Europe must be ready to meet follow‑on threats “with less American support,” and says the “lowest risk option for Moscow—and therefore most likely—is Russian forces occupying Norway’s Svalbard archipelago.”
• The report outlines five concrete scenarios Europe “must prepare for”: 
  1. a move on Svalbard; 
  2. coercive action against Finland’s demilitarized Åland islands; 
  3. a limited thrust into eastern Estonia; 
  4. a seizure of Sweden’s Gotland; 
  5. an operation to create a “land bridge to Kaliningrad.” 
• Each, Hooker suggests, is designed to test NATO’s resolve, exploit seams in alliance planning, and seek “a quick, bloodless fait accompli” that Moscow could portray as a victory at home while betting that a risk‑averse West will “bluster but ultimately acquiesce.”

“The Multipolar Delusion: and the Unilateral Temptation,” C. Raja Mohan, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2026 (published 02.19.26).

• Mohan argues that although leaders from Washington to Beijing and Moscow to New Delhi insist the world has become multipolar, “the number of genuine poles in the world today is the same as it has been for the past 35 years: one.” A true pole, he writes, must project global military power, sustain technological and industrial leadership, anchor alliances, and provide public goods, and “only the United States has this global reach and power.” China is still short of that mark; Russia, often portrayed as a pillar of multipolarity, has “an economy narrowly dependent on natural resources,” lags in AI and robotics, and faces demographic decline.
• For China, Russia, and many in the Global South, “multipolarity is not merely descriptive but aspirational…a political project aimed at constraining American dominance.” Yet Trump’s second term has “punctured the narrative of American decline,” with tariffs, interventions, and the Greenland crisis revealing “the extraordinary freedom of action the United States enjoys” and how little Europe, Russia, or China can do to “mount a comprehensive challenge.”

“The Age of Kleptocracy: Geopolitical Power, Private Gain,” Alexander Cooley and Daniel Nexon, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2026.

• Cooley and Nexon argue that Trump’s second-term foreign policy is no longer about advancing U.S. “core national interests” but about “increas[ing] his own wealth, bolster[ing] his status, and personally benefit[ing] a small circle of his family members, friends, and loyalists.” They describe a “fundamentally kleptocratic” system in which foreign policy is “largely subordinate to the private interests of the president and his retainers,” enforced by “de‑institutionalization” of NSC, State, and Defense and by “transactional bundling” of conflict resolution, economic bargains, and side‑payments into opaque megadeals.
• The authors stress that this kleptocratic turn reverses decades of bipartisan efforts to combat global corruption—much of it originally aimed at Russia. They note that Washington once used tools such as the Magnitsky Act and the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act to target “corrupt officials in Iran, North Korea, and Russia” and launched the “KleptoCapture” task force after Moscow’s 2022 invasion. By contrast, Trump has halted enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, hollowed out the Corporate Transparency Act, and dismantled crypto oversight, turning the U.S. from an anticorruption leader into “a driver of global kleptocracy.”
• Cooley and Nexon place Trumpism in a broader “patrimonial wave” alongside “Hungary, Israel, Russia, and Turkey,” describing how neopatrimonial regimes “rewire modern, bureaucratic…states into extensions of their personal authority” and use corruption both as “a means to an end” and, in Trump’s case, “the end” itself. They warn that the fusion of kleptocracy with far‑right nationalism will outlast Trump, creating a “vicious, self‑reinforcing cycle” in which “corruption abroad feeds corruption at home” and making the U.S. foreign‑policy apparatus an “existential threat” to rule‑of‑law democracies, especially in Europe.

“Russia’s Wagner Group pivots to European sabotage, say western officials,” Sam Jones, Financial Times, 02.15.26.

• Western intelligence officials told the FT that “recruiters and propagandists who previously worked for Russia’s Wagner Group have emerged as a main conduit for Kremlin-organised sabotage attacks in Europe,” with Wagner recruiters who once sent “young men from Russia’s hinterland to fight in Ukraine” now tasked with “recruiting economically vulnerable Europeans to carry out violence on Nato soil.” One official said Russia’s GRU “is using the talent it has got available to it,” and that the service and Wagner have “a long and close relationship” in this role.
• The article reports that the GRU and FSB are “highly active in seeking to recruit ‘disposable’ agents in Europe to sow chaos,” as Moscow, deprived of many official spies by expulsions, “has increasingly turned to proxies to do their bidding.” A European official explained that Wagner had “a ready-built network of propagandists and recruiters who ‘speak their language’,” and that Russian agencies typically insert “at least two ‘cut-out’ layers” because “they want some degree of deniability always.”
• Jones notes that Wagner-linked Telegram channels are “surprisingly slick and adept in how they have pitched themselves,” with one European official saying, “They know their audience.” In one case, 21‑year‑old petty criminal Dylan Earl was “recruited by Wagner through social media” and, after recruiting four more young men, “burnt down a warehouse in East London,” for which he received 23 years in prison. In sentencing, Justice Cheema‑Grubb said “the hidden hand of the internet delivered results because anonymous recruiter proxies … found within the United Kingdom young men who were prepared to undergo a form of radicalization and betray their country for what seemed easy money.” European agencies, Jones writes, are now piecing together “a much more extensive network of Wagner ‘disposables’ across Europe,” but so far “more attacks have been thwarted than have succeeded.”

“Russia’s sabotage campaign is becoming bolder,” The Economist, 02.09.26

• The article describes a sharp escalation in Russia’s hybrid war against Europe via cyber- and physical sabotage. It highlights December 29 cyberattacks on 30 Polish energy facilities—combined heat-and-power plants and systems managing wind and solar output—that let intruders seize operational technology, damage equipment “beyond repair,” and nearly cause a blackout affecting “nearly half a million people” as temperatures plunged. This follows earlier GRU-linked hacks that halted trains in Poland and the Czech Republic on routes carrying aid to Ukraine, and attacks on civilian infrastructure such as a French water mill and a Norwegian dam, suggesting that Moscow is widening its target set beyond directly war‑related assets.
• Strikingly, Polish and Western experts believe the December attacks were conducted not by the GRU’s notorious “Sandworm” but by the FSB’s more stealthy “Berserk Bear” unit. John Hultquist of Google’s Threat Intelligence Group notes that for 12 years FSB cyber operators had “never showed the actual intent to disrupt—just to lay and wait for that order,” and calls this “the first time they’ve done that,” raising fears that an actor with a long history of quietly penetrating critical infrastructure worldwide may now be willing to pull the trigger. The piece warns that Russia’s exclusion from the Winter Olympics in Italy, combined with what one analyst calls Putin’s “risk tolerance just skyrocket[ing]” as U.S.–European tensions rise (notably over Greenland) and before the 2028 U.S. election, could translate into even bolder sabotage—both online and through deniable attacks on ships and other hard targets—aimed at pressuring Europeans and exploiting divisions in the Western camp.

“Russia in the High North Russian Strategy and Escalation Risks in the High North After the Russia-Ukraine War,” Michelle Grisé, Yuliya Shokh, Stephanie Pezard, Alexandra T. Evans, Joe Haberman, Miriam Pasternak Joergensen, Mark Cozad, RAND, 02.17.26.

• “Russia’s overarching objectives in the High North include the defense of its national security and territorial integrity, maintenance of its status as a major power, and protection of the economic potential of the region.”
• “The recent enlargement of NATO has heightened Russian threat perceptions in the High North. However, the Russia-Ukraine war has prevented Russia from fully realizing its military posture goals in the region. Russia’s decision to move conventional forces from the High North to Ukraine suggests that it views the ongoing conflict in Ukraine as a greater military priority than a potential conflict in the High North.”
• “Russia might be disinclined to militarily escalate a crisis that is limited to the High North, absent evidence of a broader change in the regional balance of power.
• Despite Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO, the High North remains a region of relative stability. There are still opportunities for limited cooperation between Russia and U.S. allies.”
• “The economic potential of the High North could be harnessed to bolster Russian efforts to transition to a peacetime economy after the Russia-Ukraine war ends. The High North will serve as an important litmus test for assessing Russian priorities in the years after the war. The extent to which Russia makes new investments in the High North could signal whether Russia views the termination of hostilities in Ukraine as permanent.”

“Researcher skeptical of ‘Havana syndrome’ tested secret weapon on himself,” Warren P. Strobel and Ellen Nakashima, Washington Post, 02.14.26.

• A Norwegian government scientist who had been “a leading opponent of the theory that directed-energy weapons can cause the type of symptoms associated with AHIs” secretly built a device emitting powerful microwave pulses and, in 2024, “tested it on himself,” the authors report. He developed neurological symptoms similar to “Havana syndrome,” shocking colleagues; “trying to dramatically prove his point…he achieved the opposite,” one source said. Norway informed the CIA, prompting Pentagon and White House visits. The episode, plus a separate U.S. purchase of a foreign pulsed‑energy device with Russian components, has led some U.S. agencies to judge it “plausible” that directed energy explains at least some cases.

“Competitive Coexistence: US Engagement in a Multipolar World,” Thomas Graham, IISS vol. 68, No. 1, 02.02.26.

• Graham argues that despite Trump's rhetoric avoiding explicit mention of great-power competition, "China and Russia… remain great-power competitors for Trump, reluctant as he may be to say that out loud." The article identifies Russia as one of three potential great powers—alongside China and India—that could emerge in a genuinely multipolar order, with "the emergence of three genuine great powers. In a world of five major powers, the task for the United States would be to construct shifting coalitions capable of sustaining flexible regional balances."
• The author situates Russia within Eurasian geopolitics as a power reasserting itself: "Russia... redoubled its efforts to reclaim its prerogatives as a global power." Critically, "Russia executed its own 'pivot to the East' in an effort to reshape Eurasia as its estrangement from the West deepened, then culminated in outright rupture after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022."
• Graham identifies Russian-Chinese alignment as the paramount strategic threat: "As part of their evolving strategic realignment, Russia and China are gearing their plans for Eurasia to undermine American influence." This partnership constitutes "perhaps the most severe geopolitical challenge the United States will face in the coming decade," particularly as "Russia's assault on Ukraine ended the post–Cold War European security order."
• The strategic imperative requires establishing "subregional equilibriums across Eurasia that constrain China's and Russia's ambitions, attenuate their deepening strategic alignment." This reflects enduring American policy: "to prevent a hostile power... from dominating the strategically vital subregions of Eurasia: Europe and East Asia."
• Graham's "competitive coexistence" framework requires acknowledging fundamental realities: "great powers, by definition, enjoy strategic autonomy" and "other great powers, alone or in combination, will be able to constrain American ambitions." This accepts Russia's permanent role as a consequential actor.
• Finally, managing Russia demands pragmatism: "the preference should be to promote American values by example rather than by missionary effort," recognizing Russia's legitimate place in a multipolar order while preventing Sino-Russian dominance of Eurasia.
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Rubio delivers MAGA’s foreign policy doctrine in Munich,” Marc Caputo, Axios, 02.15.26.
  • “‘The best we can hope for:’ Rubio’s Munich unity appeal fails to woo Europe,” Henry Foy and Anne-Sylvaine Chassany, Financial Times, 02.14.26.
  • “America offers Europe warmer words, but a deep chill remains,” The Economist, 02.14.26.
  • “Three American Speeches at Munich, and Plenty of Confusion,” Steven Erlanger & David E. Sanger, The New York Times, 02.15.26.
  • Video: “Sign in Spotlight on the State of Russia,” Munich Security Conference, 02.13.26. 
  • “‘An Existential Question for Europe’. The Munich Security Conference ends with no new answers on how to end the war in Ukraine,” John Haltiwanger and Rishi Iyengar, Foreign Policy, 02.15.26.
  •  “Trump’s NATO Dilemma: America Can’t Disengage From the Alliance and Also Lead It,” Sara Bjerg Moller, Foreign Affairs, 02.12.26.
  • “Once the Americans Warned of the Russian Threat. Now, It’s the Europeans’ Turn,” David E. Sanger, New York Times, 02.14.26.
  • “NATO Has Become a Zombie Alliance,” Rebecca Lissner, Foreign Policy, 02.11.26.
  • “It Is Decision Time for NATO in Munich,” Michael B.G. Froman, The New York Times, 02.13.26.
  • “Seabed zero: Baltic sabotage and the global risks to undersea infrastructure,” Bruce D. Jones, Atlantic Council, 02.13.26.
  •  “Emmanuel Macron declares a European state of emergency,” The Economist, 02.10.26.
  • “Europe Can Resist Future Russian Aggression,” Luke Coffey, Wall Street Journal, 02.16.26.
  • “How U.S. Special Forces Are Training in an Arctic Warfare Bootcamp,” Sune Engel Rasmussen and Eve Hartley, Wall Street Journal, 02.09.26.
  • “America the Fearful: Visions of Decline Are a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” Michael Singh, Foreign Affairs, 02.11.26.
  • “War Without End? Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges for Russia and Ukraine,” Margarete Klein & Susan Stewart, SWP Podcast, 02.10.26. (In German.)

  • "How Poland and Lithuania Are Defending the Suwalki Corridor," Glen E. Howard and Ray Wojcik, The National Interest, 02.17.26.

  • "Northern Connections: The European Arctic by 2035," Max Bergmann, Otto Svendsen, Andreas Raspotnik, Robert Habeck, Elizabeth Buchanan, and Gabriella Gricius, CSIS, 02.10.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

“What China is really up to in the Arctic,” The Economist, 02.12.26.

• The article stresses that China’s Arctic push is now tightly intertwined with Russia’s war and sanctions. It notes that “Russia has grown increasingly reliant on China because of Western sanctions and Chinese support for the war in Ukraine,” and that “the two countries now work together to develop the Northern Sea Route by investing in ports, technology and training.” Of the roughly 90 ships that used the route last year, “dozens … are part of a sanctions-busting ‘shadow fleet’ ferrying Russian oil to China,” fueling concerns that Beijing is helping Moscow monetize its energy exports despite Western efforts to cut war funding.
• Western officials see dual‑use risks in Sino‑Russian “scientific” cooperation. The piece quotes NATO’s top commander in Europe, Gen. Alexus Grynkewich, saying bluntly that “they’re not studying the seals and the polar bears,” and explains that “data on water temperature and salinity are critical for submarine operations as well as research on climate change; atmospheric research helps to guide missiles.” It also highlights that China and Russia “have expanded overt security co-operation in the region,” conducting “their first joint coastguard patrols there and their first joint flight of strategic bombers off Alaska, both in 2024.”
• For Europe, the linkage between Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Arctic security is clear: Kaja Kallas “raised a widely shared fear that China could weaponise Arctic shipping routes and mineral supply chains,” and the article concludes that “Europe … fears further Russian aggression, possibly in the high north. So until China reviews its Kremlin ties, its outreach to other Arctic states will meet an icy response.”

“China Call Could Stop Russia in Ukraine, U.S. NATO Envoy Says,” Alicia Diaz, Bloomberg, 02.13.26.

• U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker argued in Munich that “China could call Vladimir Putin and end this war tomorrow,” saying Beijing could “cut off his dual-purpose technologies that they’re selling” and “stop buying Russian oil and gas,” and insisting “this war is being completely enabled by China.”
• Bloomberg notes that “China and Russia have forged an even tighter partnership since the start of the war,” with Russia relying on China “for critical parts and components for drones and other war material,” and that tracking data show 1.65 million barrels a day of Russian crude “offloaded at Chinese ports in January,” the highest since March 2024 and the second‑highest since the 2022 invasion.
• China’s Foreign Ministry dismissed such accusations as “entirely baseless criticism,” while Foreign Minister Wang Yi told his Ukrainian counterpart in Munich that Beijing wants a “constructive” role in ending the crisis and offered humanitarian aid as Ukraine deals with Russian attacks on its energy system.
• On alliance politics, Whitaker said NATO is “stronger than ever” because of Trump’s pressure on burden‑sharing, declaring “the United States of America keeps showing up, and we will keep showing up. We just expect our allies to be equally as strong.”

“How China wants to create a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through the Arctic,” Steven Bernard, Richard Milne and Joe Leahy, Financial Times, 02.12.26.

• The authors note that China’s latest Arctic icebreaker, “capable of breaking through floes up to 2.5 meters thick,” is a powerful symbol of Beijing’s ambitions in the far north, where tensions have risen over Donald Trump’s bid “to claim control of Greenland,” according to the article.
• China’s 708 Research Institute describes the proposed nuclear-powered vessel as a “multirole” cargo and polar tourism ship, but “few analysts doubt the dual civilian-military intent of Beijing’s Arctic program,” from research bases to energy co‑operation and “joint military patrols with Russia near Alaska,” the authors write.
• “China views the Arctic as a new frontier that is critical to its geopolitical and geostrategic competition with the U.S. and with the west more broadly,” Helena Legarda said, adding that “Beijing wants to expand its influence, footprint and access to the Arctic,” according to the article.
• The authors report that Beijing’s 2018 Arctic policy envisages “a ‘Polar Silk Road’ through developing the Arctic shipping routes,” stressing that routes such as the Northern Sea Route “can cut voyage distances by 30 to 40% compared with the traditional Suez Canal route,” as 708 Institute researcher Yu Yun told China Daily.
• While China calls itself a “near-Arctic state,” then–U.S. secretary of state Mike Pompeo retorted that “there are only Arctic states and non-Arctic states. No third category exists, and claiming otherwise entitles China to exactly nothing,” the authors note, underscoring broader western resistance to giving Beijing any formal say in Arctic governance.Top of Form

“We Must Agree With China on Joint, Tough Containment of the United States,” Sergey Karaganov, SolovievLive (Telegram), 02.15.26. (The SolovievLive Telegram channel is run by Russian government-paid propagandist Soloviev.)

• Karaganov argues that Russia’s core duty “to our own country, our own people and the entire world” is to stop what he calls the slide caused by American “monstrous crimes,” and to confront the United States more directly. He lists three main danger zones — “first and foremost Europe, if we do not initiate sobering up there, then the Middle East, and third, China” — but insists that if Moscow and Beijing “finally begin to agree on joint, tough containment of the United States, then this source of evil can be shut off.”
• However much Russia might wish for “normal relations” with Washington, he says, closing its eyes to U.S. behavior is no longer possible; echoing Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, he warns “the bell tolls for us” if Russia fails to act. In his view, the slide can “even be stopped by one means,” which he has “said many times” is an “increase in persistent nuclear intimidation.” Technically, he maintains, such an escalation of nuclear signaling is feasible and necessary to jolt both Russia and the wider world into recognizing the stakes in confronting U.S. power.

Missile defense:

• No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“Statement to the Conference on Disarmament”, Thomas G. DiNanno, Geneva, 02.06.26.

• DiNanno links the end of New START directly to Russia’s behavior, saying President Trump withdrew from INF and Open Skies because “Russian violations created an intolerable disadvantage for the United States,” and argues that under New START “almost all of the U.S. deployed nuclear forces were subject to New START, while only a fraction of Russia’s much larger stockpile was.”
• He stresses that Russia “not only failed to remove or destroy its theater ranged systems, it modernized and expanded those nuclear forces,” so that “some 34 years later the same intolerable disadvantage exists between U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons,” with “the Russian stockpile numbers in the thousands” and “tactical- or theater-ranged nuclear weapons… not covered by New START.”
• DiNanno warns that “outside the 2010 arms control architecture, Russia’s development of novel nuclear systems further threatens global strategic stability,” citing “its nuclear-powered Skyfall cruise missile and its doomsday Poseidon torpedo,” and notes that “New START constrained neither of these systems,” adding that Moscow “has begun developing a system that would allow it to put a nuclear weapon in Earth’s orbit” in violation of the Outer Space Treaty.
• Referencing Russia’s growing alignment with other revisionist powers, he points out that “where the P5 once shared a stance against the DPRK’s nuclear weapons program…Moscow has now allied with Pyongyang and described its nuclear program as a ‘closed issue,’” and that “Russia is supporting” China’s rapid buildup “by helping China develop the weapons-grade fissile material necessary for its expansion.”
• While Ukraine is not named in detail, DiNanno frames Russia’s nuclear posture as part of a wider pattern of “destabilizing behavior,” insisting that after Feb. 5, 2026, “the end of U.S. unilateral restraint,” Washington will “maintain a robust, credible, and modernized nuclear deterrent” so that “we will prevent anyone from being able to dominate us or our allies,” and says the key question for this new era is “how much deterrence is enough.”

“What a Speech Reveals About Trump’s Plans for Nuclear Weapons,”William J. Broad, New York Times, 02.14.26.

• Broad writes that within hours of New START’s expiration, Thomas G. DiNanno outlined “a future filled with waves of nuclear arms buildups and test detonations,” a vision that “represents a stark break with decades of federal policy,” especially on the global ban on explosive nuclear tests.
• Explaining DiNanno’s claim that one state is expanding its arsenal “at a scale and pace not seen in over half a century,” Broad notes this “appears to be referring to China,” while “here he means Russia” when he cites tests to put “a nuclear weapon into space” and an underwater nuclear drone.
• On Russia and Ukraine, the annotation stresses that Moscow’s “relatively small” tactical warheads “can be just fractions of the Hiroshima bomb’s power, perhaps making their use more likely,” and recalls that President Vladimir Putin has “repeatedly threatened to use them in Ukraine,” even as classic arms control focused on “planet shakers” that could end civilization.
• Broad highlights U.S. fears of facing “two superpower rivals, China and Russia,” and of a possible alliance coordinating their forces. He notes DiNanno’s call to test “on an equal basis,” but says the talk “gave no clear indication” whether this signals unrestrained buildup or an “open threat meant to spur negotiations” toward new limits.

“If You Want Peace, Don’t Lose the Nuclear Arms Race,” Tom Cotton, Wall Street Journal, 02.15.26.

• Cotton calls New START’s expiry “a watershed moment in American nuclear strategy,” arguing that “far from a failure of diplomacy, this expiration is an overdue correction of a strategic mistake that left America vulnerable to two nuclear rivals: Russia and China.” He says that “after years of unilateral restraint, while our adversaries expanded their arsenals, America can finally build a nuclear deterrent for the threats we face.”
• Detailing Russia’s buildup, he cites DIA estimates of “approximately 1,550 deployed strategic warheads and up to 2,000 nonstrategic warheads,” plus “novel” systems like “an ICBM-mounted hypersonic glide vehicle, a nuclear-powered cruise missile, and a nuclear-capable autonomous underwater system,” and notes that DIA has warned Moscow believes a nuclear anti‑satellite could “deter Western adversaries reliant on space.” China, he writes, has moved from a “minimal deterrent” toward “strategic parity,” with a stockpile that has “surpassed 600 operational warheads” and is “on track to exceed 1,000 by 2030.”
• Cotton lays out six steps: “reconvert missile tubes” on Ohio‑class subs; “put multiple warheads back on U.S. land-based ICBMs;” “accelerate plutonium pit production”; “restore our theater nuclear capabilities” including a nuclear SLCM and more tactical weapons in Europe and the Pacific; treat modernization like a “rapid capability office”; and “reverse the taboo against testing” so America can match Russian and Chinese supercritical tests. Critics’ fears of cost or arms racing are misplaced, he insists: “We use our nuclear deterrent every single day,” and “the race has already begun… The question isn’t whether there will be competition… but whether America will show up to compete.”

“New START wasn’t a silver bullet, but it helped keep the world safe,” Mark Kelly, Washington Post, 02.15.26.

• Kelly laments the Feb. 5 lapse of New START, “eliminating the last legally binding limits on the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals,” at a time when China is massively expanding and North Korea is improving its missiles; the “house of dynamite is getting larger and less stable,” he writes, and “the last guardrails are now gone.”
• He rejects three pure camps—unlimited buildup, pure restraint, and Trump’s faith in a Golden Dome missile shield—arguing that “physics favors the offense” and that trying to build an impermeable defense would just spur adversaries to expand their arsenals. Real-world experience, he says, shows that “a strong, flexible and credible nuclear deterrent combined with thoughtful arms control are the two pillars” that have kept catastrophe at bay.
• New START exemplified this: by capping deployed strategic warheads at 1,550, mandating inspections, and banning interference with “national technical means,” it provided “predictability” that “reduced incentives for rapid escalation during crises.” Even after Russia halted on-site inspections over Ukraine, it stayed within the limits, and U.S. satellites could still monitor its forces—benefits that now disappear without an extension or successor.
• Kelly concedes the treaty’s limits (it excluded China, whose arsenal remains far smaller but is growing), yet insists its expiration “marks a more dangerous era” in which miscalculation is likelier and an arms race easier. “In a house of dynamite, you don’t make yourself safer by adding more sticks and daring your roommates to start a fire,” he concludes; the United States needs both robust deterrence and a renewed diplomatic push “to avoid another arms race,” and “every day that passes without that makes Americans less safe.”

“The Real Risk After New START Isn’t Arms Racing,” Decker Eveleth, Foreign Policy, 02.09.26

• Eveleth contends that the most serious danger after New START’s collapse is not an immediate surge in warhead numbers but the erosion of verifiability and trust. He notes that while the treaty’s end removes “any legal constraints preventing the United States and Russia from expanding their nuclear arsenals,” both countries face cost and modernization bottlenecks, so “neither is currently capable of engaging in a Cold War‑style arms race.” The real risk, he argues, is that over time “both the United States and Russia could modify their forces in other ways that destroy any remaining mutual trust and make returning to a future arms control process far more difficult,” as the detailed definitions and practices built up since 1972 fall away.
• The author emphasizes that today “even the most mundane piece of information about an enemy’s nuclear force is now a potential attack vector,” given advanced remote sensing and cyberweapons. China, never bound by treaties, already bases its posture on “concealment, deception, and secrecy,” disguising mobile launchers “as box trucks (or, hilariously, mail trucks)” and hiding ICBMs in tunnels—steps that “would be considered New START violations.” Without a replacement regime, the United States and Russia are “free to adopt similar measures,” making forces “hard to verify and harder to trust.” As negotiations on a successor treaty drag on and Washington tries to bring in China, Eveleth warns of a “feedback loop of mistrust” in which all major nuclear states become more evasive, and “negotiating the arms control treaty of tomorrow may be far more difficult than the Trump administration expects.”

“Running to Stand Still: Russian Nuclear Modernization after New START,” Michael Kofman, War on the Rocks, 02.13.26.

• Kofman argues that the end of New START does not automatically herald a destabilizing arms race. Russia is ahead of the United States in modernization on paper, but is structurally ill‑positioned to sustain a major buildup due to industrial limits, economic constraints, and the huge costs of reconstituting its conventional forces after the war in Ukraine. Moscow’s likely goal, he writes, is to remain a nuclear peer and maintain a hedge against possible U.S. breakthroughs in missile defense and counterforce, not to break out quantitatively.
• He contends that Russia’s real strength lies in its unconstrained, diverse arsenal of non‑strategic (theater) nuclear weapons, not in an ability to expand strategic launchers. Uploading extra warheads on existing ICBMs and SLBMs is relatively cheap and preserves parity in deployed warheads, but doesn’t change the number of targets U.S. planners must hold at risk. Novel systems such as Poseidon, Avangard, Burevestnik, and new intermediate‑range missiles are “boutique” or low‑rate capabilities that trade resources away from broader force expansion and don’t fundamentally alter the strategic balance.
• For Kofman, both Washington and Moscow face serious modernization delays and budget pressures, making a classic quantitative arms race unlikely. Instead he foresees a slower U.S. buildup and diversification—especially in theater nuclear forces to narrow a long‑standing asymmetry—while Russia reacts cheaply by uploading warheads and continuing to rely on its large non‑strategic arsenal. Arms control’s collapse is politically damaging, especially for Russia’s sense of great‑power status, but structural and doctrinal factors still push both sides toward “enough” deterrence rather than an unlimited race.

 “Trump Risks Igniting a Nuclear Wildfire,” Editorial Board, The New York Times, 02.16.26.

• The board warns that with New START’s expiry “the world is entering a dangerous new nuclear age,” as the Trump administration replaces the last major U.S.–Russian limit with “vague threats and dangerous brinkmanship that portends an unconstrained arms race.” It says officials are considering reopening disabled launch tubes and adding warheads in ways that “could more than double today’s deployed arsenal,” and notes the State Department’s claim that New START imposed “unacceptable” constraints is really about “ripping up existing guardrails” in a failed bid to pressure China, whose arsenal “is a fraction of the size of America’s.”
• Most alarming, the editors write, is talk of resuming underground tests: Thomas DiNanno said the United States must “restore responsible behavior” on testing, and Trump wants detonations “on an equal basis” with adversaries. “To do so now would be strategic malpractice,” they argue, shattering a norm and “almost certainly” triggering Russian and Chinese tests, and they urge Trump to forgo testing, adopt an informal extension of New START limits, and for Congress to curb the president’s “sole, unchecked authority to launch a nuclear war.”

“A new nuclear arms race is beginning. Is anyone paying attention?,” Robert Weisman, Boston Globe, 02.15.26.

• Weisman argues that with New START’s expiry on Feb. 5 and no follow‑on treaty, “a second nuclear arms race is revving up,” now involving not just the U.S. and Russia—both modernizing and unconstrained—but also China and “a half‑dozen other nuclear nations” expanding their arsenals with harder‑to‑detect launch systems (space‑based, hypersonic, undersea).
• He warns that memories of Hiroshima, duck‑and‑cover drills, and 1980s mass protests have faded; young people “have grown up without having to think about nuclear war,” and today’s multipolar arms race unfolds in an “age of distractions” where nuclear peril competes with social media, climate, and pandemics. Activists like International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War are trying to revive awareness through UN forums and campaigns such as “Back from the Brink,” but so far “they’re a far cry from the mass movement of the Cold War era.”
• Quoting longtime campaigners, Weisman stresses that even a “limited exchange would kill millions… and trigger climate disruption, crop failure, famine, and mass starvation,” yet many people treat nukes as part of the “natural order.” The core lesson from the 1980s, he writes, is that citizen pressure did help produce arms‑control breakthroughs; skeptics today need “the audacity to be hopeful” that a similar mobilization can once again defuse an arms race that is “highly destabilizing” in a world already bristling with thousands of warheads.

“Strategic stability has stumbled over U.S. demands,” Elena Chernenko interviews Sergei Shoigu, Kommersant, 02.10.26. Clues from Russian views. Machine-translated.

• Senior Russian officials sharply criticized Washington’s refusal to maintain limits on strategic offensive weapons after New START expired, according to the author. Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu said that in response to Vladimir Putin’s goodwill proposal, “the Americans reacted in their usual way,” and that U.S. statements about readiness to work with Russia on strategic stability “remained populist slogans.”
  • Shoigu argued that the U.S. has behaved similarly with other key arms‑control accords, noting that “first they, under far‑fetched pretexts, denounced the ABM Treaty, then destroyed the INF Treaty and unilaterally withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty,” the author writes.
  • He accused Washington of now proposing “some new architecture” based on a vague multilateral agreement, while in reality making China’s participation a precondition and “keeping silent” about including the U.K. and France, according to Chernenko.
  • At the same time, Shoigu stressed that Russia “remains open” to discussing a new legal framework for global stability “if appropriate conditions are created,” the author notes.

“Mittelspiel and the Day-After Strategy,” Sergei Karaganov, Russia in Global Affairs, 02.16.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• Karaganov laments that Russia “so far has lacked the resolve to resort to active nuclear intimidation,” which he calls “the only solution to the ‘European problem’.” He argues the conflict will continue “until the source of this and other conflicts is crushed—the European elites,” and says it can be stopped “only one way—by demonstrating a real readiness to use weapons,” beginning with non‑nuclear strikes on “centers of command, critical infrastructure and military bases” in key European states. If Europe “does not retreat, or better—does not capitulate,” Russia must be “fully prepared… to deliver limited but sufficiently massive… nuclear retaliatory strikes,” he writes, urging development of both non‑strategic and strategic forces.
• In the long term, he calls for thinking about “depriving France and Britain of access to nuclear weapons,” insisting they “have lost the moral and political right” to possess them. He says doctrine should oblige Russia to use nuclear weapons “in the event of a war unleashed by an adversary with greater economic and demographic potential,” and urges abandoning the Reagan‑Gorbachev line that “in a nuclear war there can be no winners,” which he calls “maliciously counterproductive” and partly responsible for “unleashing NATO’s hot war against Russia.”
• On Ukraine, Karaganov describes the conflict as “the current stage of the West’s war with Russia” and “a war of Europe with us on Ukrainian soil.” He argues that “remnants of Ukraine, fueled by the West, will continue to generate instability and terrorism,” and claims “we are now winning, but have still not begun to respond intelligibly” to Western “pirate seizures of our ships,” sanctions, and strikes on Russian energy. The goal of future campaigns, he says, must be “the defeat of the current European elite” and the “withdrawal of the United States from Europe,” with nuclear coercion used to ensure that escalating the war would mean for Western leaders “inevitable physical destruction.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • "CSIS European Trilateral Track 2 Nuclear Dialogues," Heather Williams, CSIS, 02.11.26.

  • "Mind the Deterrence Gap: Assessing Europe’s Nuclear Options," Héloïse Fayet, IFRI, 02.11.26.

  • "Statement by the Euro-Atlantic Security Leadership Group (EASLG): Call for strengthened fail-safe measures to prevent accidental nuclear use," Group Statement, European Leadership Network, 02.13.26.

  • "Life without the New START Treaty: What nuclear weapons states can do to help strengthen the non-proliferation regime," Edward Ifft, European Leadership Network, 02.17.26.

  • "China’s ‘Secret’ Nuclear Test: Unravelling of the Global Nuclear Order," Harsh V. Pant, Observer Research Foundation, 02.12.26.

Counterterrorism:

• No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

• No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

“Ukraine Thwarts a Russian Ruse: Pirated satellite ties powered drones that wrecked havoc on supply lines,” Anastasiia Malenko, Wall Street Journal, 02.14.26.

• Malenko reports that Russian drone teams, using Starlink terminals “smuggled through a black market,” turned the supply road to embattled Pokrovsk into “a terrifying gantlet,” piloting cheap Molniya drones “from a safe distance to smash into Ukrainian vehicles.” A Ukrainian electronic-warfare specialist with the call sign Kocherha says that over two days “at least six trucks were destroyed on the road,” and recalls that “when Starlink shut off, silence fell.”
• Ukraine learned that Starlink, though “not activated in Russia,” was being used via pirated terminals mounted on drones to transmit video and give “real-time guidance.” One soldier, “Irlandets,” describes racing along the route at “around 100 miles an hour” and passing “burned-out supply trucks…some…still ablaze in the night.”
• After Ukraine’s defense minister contacted SpaceX about Russia’s use of Starlink “to terrorize the civilian population of Ukraine,” the Defense Ministry says the company moved quickly to stop the “unauthorized use” by creating a whitelist so that “only those Starlinks” registered with Ukrainian authorities would work on Ukrainian territory.
• Oleksandr Solonko, serving with a Ukrainian drone unit near Pokrovsk, says the shutdown not only reduced Russian strikes but also “partially blinded Russian command posts and drone crews” that relied on Starlink for communications and livestreamed battlefield video, giving Ukraine a window “to evacuate the wounded” and mount counterattacks.
• Malenko writes that Russian channels now describe a “desperate hunt for alternatives,” with Moscow’s own Yamal and Express terminals judged “lower quality” and cumbersome, while stopgap relay networks of drones require “additional crews and drones” compared with a single Starlink‑equipped weapon.

“How Russia Is Reshaping Command and Control for AI-Enabled Warfare,” Kateryna Bondar, CSIS, 02.11.26

• The report says that prolonged high‑intensity fighting in Ukraine has pushed Moscow away from grand, centralized C2 schemes and toward tactical software that shortens the kill chain. “Russia is no longer prioritizing the construction of a single, comprehensive automated C2 architecture,” the authors write; instead it is “reallocating effort toward tactical, task‑specific software, driven by battlefield necessity.” Systems such as the “Svod” tactical situational‑awareness complex reflect a shift in which “operational control of unmanned systems and real‑time battlefield management now deliver greater military value than achieving end‑to‑end C2 integration.”
• Because “unmanned systems now conduct up to 80% of Russian fire missions,” the study finds that the “center of gravity in C2 innovation has shifted toward software that manages drones and integrates them with artillery and other fire units.” Civilian and volunteer coders are building tools that “provide situational awareness, automate fire correction, and link unmanned aircraft systems operators directly to firing units.” The “Glaz/Groza” complex, for example, “converts drone footage into targeting data and compresses the time from detection to impact from hours to minutes.”
• On AI, the author notes that Russian doctrine “primarily envision[s]” it as a support function, not a replacement for commanders: AI is supposed to “enhanc[e] the processing and interpretation of sensor data and provid[e] predictive decision support,” while “formal authority and responsibility for decisions remain firmly with human commanders.” The author believes that Russia is “not chasing technological elegance or conceptual completeness but rather applying AI selectively and ruthlessly in service of battlefield effectiveness,” often by adapting open‑weight Western and Chinese models such as LLaMA, YOLO, Mistral, and Qwen and embedding them in tightly controlled military environments.

“The AI lens of cognitive warfare: Why LLMs language bias is a security risk,” Ihor Samokhodskyi, European Leadership Network, 02.10.26.

• Samokhodskyi writes about EU‑funded research testing six major LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, and Yandex’s Alice) on seven well‑documented facts about Russia’s war against Ukraine (who provoked the war, Bucha, biolabs, MH17, etc.). He finds that “the language in which users ask AI chatbots questions affects the likelihood that answers contain disinformation or propaganda” and calls these systematic, language‑conditioned patterns “vectors for cognitive warfare.”
• Western models were mostly accurate (86–95% correct, “never endorsing propaganda outright”), but in 5–19% of cases engaged in “bothsidesism,” e.g., answering that “it depends on one’s perspective” who provoked the war. For Samokhodskyi, this is not genuine neutrality: when events like Russia’s aggression are established by courts, UN inquiries, and independent journalism, treating them as mere “perspectives” “manufactures doubt where evidence is clear”—exactly what cognitive warfare seeks to exploit.
• Non‑Western models fared far worse. Yandex’s Alice endorsed Kremlin narratives “in 86% of Russian‑language responses,” while refusing to answer most of the same questions in English. In one striking case, Alice “generated a truthful response about the Bucha massacre, then automatically overwrote it with a refusal before showing it to users,” which he calls “deliberate, real‑time censorship.” China’s DeepSeek was accurate in English and Ukrainian but, in Russian, adopted Kremlin terminology in 29% of answers, calling Maidan a “coup” and the invasion a “special military operation” for “denazification.”
• Citing a Science study of 77,000 people that shows chatbots are “remarkably effective at changing political opinions,” Samokhodskyi argues these language‑dependent distortions are a security risk, not a glitch. He proposes: (1) systematic, independent narrative tracking of AI outputs across languages; (2) structured dialogue with Western developers on “false balance” around documented facts; and (3) a strategic approach to AI access so sanctions‑driven geo‑blocks don’t simply hand contested information spaces like Belarus to propagandistic Russian and Chinese systems.

Energy exports from CIS:

“How the War and Latest Western Sanctions Are Impacting Russia’s Oil Sector,” Sergey Vakulenko, Russia.Post, 02.17.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Vakulenko says that even under the Trump administration’s harsher measures against Rosneft, Lukoil, and Indian buyers, “even in the worst‑case scenario of U.S. sanctions, Russia will likely still export enough oil to continue financing its war.” He warns that “there is simply no surplus oil in the world capable of replacing the roughly 7 million barrels Russia supplies,” so “some Russian oil will still have to be purchased,” and sharp cuts would push prices toward “$200‑250 per barrel,” triggering global recession.
• Russia’s dependence on oil is changing, but not disappearing. Vakulenko notes that even in boom years, oil was “only about a quarter of Russia’s GDP,” yet “if there were no oil in the Russian economy, it would look much more like Ukraine’s,” since “domestic demand…is a product of money from oil.” War‑time trade constraints mean Russia “oddly enough, has difficulty turning its dollars into goods,” so oil dollars (now often yuan) convert into “far fewer rubles” to pay teachers, doctors, and soldiers.
• Looking ahead, he argues the war is quietly degrading Russia’s oil sector. Repeated Ukrainian drone attacks on refineries are like “regular beatings from which people can die—not right away, but over time,” forcing costly repairs. High capital costs, labor shortages, and the Finance Ministry’s refusal to “take less rent from the oil sector” mean companies are merely “drilling wells in old fields without developing new ones.” Vakulenko expects output to decline “2–3% per year”—a slow but steady drop that the industry can manage, but only by “hanging on” with a very short planning horizon, while Western governments are unlikely to resume large‑scale Russian purchases even after the war.

“Europe Needs to Learn Its Lesson: Stop Relying on Imported Energy,” Carol Ryan, Wall Street Journal, 02.11.26

• Ryan notes that “Europe’s reliance on imports has come back to bite it several times in recent years,” recalling that “Russia turned off pipeline gas flows to the EU soon after the Ukraine war began in 2022, causing a major crisis,” and that “the EU spent the equivalent of 3.8% of its gross domestic product on energy imports in 2022, after oil and gas prices skyrocketed.” Since then, “America’s share of the EU’s LNG imports jumped to 60% in the third quarter of last year, from 28% in the same period of 2021,” raising fears of “replacing one dependency with another.”
• She stresses how energy has become a coercive tool: “Last summer, the White House used Europe’s dependence on imports to demand further purchases of U.S. oil and gas in exchange for a lower tariff. Qatar threatened to cut supplies of liquefied natural gas unless Brussels waters down the bloc’s climate rules.” Trump’s threat to take Greenland was “a wake-up call,” and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick warned that relying on Chinese clean‑energy technology would make Europe “subservient” to Beijing.
• Ryan argues that “homemade electricity would help get [Europe] off the price roller coaster caused by tense geopolitics,” highlighting that the EU “just reached a ‘major tipping point’” with “wind and solar generat[ing] more electricity than fossil fuels for the first time,” and that a planned 100‑gigawatt North Sea wind farm and other projects make reducing fossil‑fuel dependence “Europe’s best shot at saving its domestic manufacturing and stopping other governments from pushing it around.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • "EU tries to sink the shadow fleet," Alexandra Prokopenko and Alexander Kolyandr, The Bell, 02.14.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • "Russia’s Shadow Fleet comes in from the dark," Denis Kasyanchuk, The Bell, 02.10.26. Clues from Russian Views.

  • "U.S. restrictions on Russian oil and petroleum product supplies: the diversity and contradictions of the American legal framework," Roman Nasretdinov, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.17.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Climate change:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

• No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“The Ghost of Anchorage,” Fyodor Lukyanov, Russia in Global Affairs, 02.11.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• Lukyanov notes that the August 2025 Putin–Trump meeting in Alaska quickly produced talk of a “spirit of Anchorage,” but stresses the talks were about “Ukrainian settlement” and asks bluntly, “where is, in fact, Ukraine, the warring side? Is it really possible to achieve a result over its head?” He argues this would only work if the United States could “simply force Kiev to implement decisions taken without it,” yet events since suggest Washington “is not in a position to do so.”
• He doubts that Trump’s team cares about the outcome beyond prestige, writing that for Trump and his inner circle “the concrete result of the confrontation is rather indifferent. The only red line is no crushing victory for Russia.” For Moscow, by contrast, “from the very beginning of the special military operation the issue of principles of European security, not territorial acquisitions, was at the forefront,” and what is now framed as “security guarantees for Ukraine” is in fact about a new security order.
• Lukyanov concludes that, unlike Yalta or Helsinki, Washington “does not see Moscow as a leading interlocutor on the world-order theme,” so the “spirit” of Anchorage “sags between different perceptions of the subject of conversation, turning rather into a ghost of unrealized agreement.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “From Russia with Distrust,” Peter Rutland, The National Interest, 02.15.26.

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Russia’s economy has entered the death zone,” Alexandra Prokopenko, The Economist, 02.16.26. Clues from Russian Views.

• Prokopenko writes that Russia’s wartime economy “won’t” suddenly collapse, but “nor will it recover,” arguing it has entered “the death zone: the altitude above 8,000 meters at which the human body consumes itself faster than it can be repaired.” She calls this a “negative equilibrium,” in which the system “is stuck … holding itself together while steadily destroying its own future capacity,” with growth of just 1% in 2025 and worse expected in 2026.
• The economy, she says, has “bifurcated into two distinct metabolic systems”: defense and defense‑adjacent industries that “receive priority blood flow” and “get first access to labor, capital and imports,” and the rest of the private sector, “the extremities left in the cold.” All the 18.3% manufacturing growth of the past three years “and more” comes from the military sector, meaning civilian industry has shrunk. Russia now runs on “military rent”—budget transfers to arms producers that she likens to the 2000s oil windfall, except that this time “the body is metabolizing its own muscle tissue for energy.”
• Fiscal “oxygen is thinning,” she warns: the 2025 deficit has widened to 5.6 trillion rubles (2.6% of GDP), “the largest since the pandemic,” and debt‑service costs this year “will exceed spending on education and health care combined,” even as discounted Urals crude drives oil and gas revenues “towards their lowest level since 2020.”

“Bitcoin Bans to Blockchain Statecraft: Russia’s Secret War for Financial Sovereignty,” Chris Conway, Horst Treiblmaier and Gayane Mkrtchyan, Russia Matters, 02.12.26.

• “In 2014, Russia tried to kill Bitcoin. Little more than a decade later, Moscow is using blockchain to survive crippling international sanctions and prop up its war economy. What began as a ban on “monetary surrogates” has become a sprawling system of state-engineered stablecoin rails,1 mining farms the size of power plants and a digital ruble designed to move money beyond the reach of sanctions,” the authors write. 
• “As in other spheres, Russia now plays cat and mouse with Western sanctions enforcers in the blockchain domain, building new crypto rails as fast as its old ones are frozen. This shadow conflict is reshaping Russian legislation. As it does, it pulls the Russian financial system towards a new architecture the likes of which previous central bankers vociferously opposed,” according to the authors. 
• “When Western sanctions regimes target the likes of Garantex or A7, they are no longer combating small private initiatives or low-scale foreign intelligence operations, but fully-fledged initiatives backed by the Russian banking and defense sectors,” the authors argue. “To be successful in denying the Russian state the benefits of this system, Western sanctions regimes will have to adapt. A more integrated approach is necessary.”
• “In a glaring irony, the Kremlin seems to have finally coopted cryptocurrency—the financial leveler once promised to shield private transactions from the state’s prying eyes—into its repertoire of economic statecraft,” the authors conclude.

"Memory degradation, or Did Alexei Navalny have a choice?" Victor Postnov, The Moscow Times, 02.16.26. Machine-translated.

• Postnov writes that “Navalny was killed, poisoned,” and that “hardly anyone sane doubted” that “Putin killed him.” He imagines Kremlin elders coolly debating “what poison this time to use on this man—his name cannot be spoken—so it’s for sure,” not why a “defenseless prisoner” must die. Killing Navalny, he argues, was both “personal revenge” and a political murder against someone who could “use real, genuine democratic values in his own interests” by “accepting citizens as they are” instead of “falsifying their will” as Putin does.
• Asked whether Navalny could have chosen not to return to Russia and thus not to die, Postnov answers, “No, no, he could not. Of course not.” He says Putin needed Navalny’s death for “the final usurpation of power,” but insists that Navalny was “a strong politician…an organizer of collective actions” who “used the resources he had and achieved, and did achieve, results.” The task now, he concludes, is “not to blow” those results—because “time, we have as much as you like.”

“The Puzzling Passivity of Russians,” Alexander J. Motyl, Foreign Policy, 02.12.26.

• Motyl notes that while Iranians have suffered “perhaps tens of thousands of deaths” in their latest uprising, “Russians continue to avoid collective action against their regime,” a contrast he calls “puzzling.”
• He recalls that Russians and Ukrainians both protested in the late Soviet era, but “their paths diverged”: Russians last held “several large demonstrations in 2011 and 2012,” whereas Ukrainians mounted mass protests in 2000–01, 2004, and 2013 and even a “grassroots insurrectionary act” when volunteers rushed to the front in 2022.
• Motyl agrees with Masha Gessen that repression turned protests into “the one-person picket,” but insists we must ask whether “Russians even want to rebel,” pointing to “nearly universal hatred of the ayatollah’s regime” as what “prompted Iranians to take to the streets.”
• By contrast, he writes, “Putin remains immensely popular, with approval ratings in the mid-60s to high 80s,” and concludes that today’s Russians “don’t hold democracy in the highest regard,” which helps explain their quiescence.
• Looking ahead, Motyl argues that a future, “well-endowed, resource-rich strategic group” could “capture the government” and “entice Russians to participate in democratic collective actions”—in Rousseau’s sense, he says Russians might be “forced or bribed to be free.”

“Kiriyenko and the Joke: Why the Kremlin Is Accelerating Production of a New Nomenklatura,” Mikhail Shevchuk, Republic, 02.15.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

• Shevchuk writes that the Kremlin is “in a hurry to create new ‘personnel forges’” because those in power “don’t have much time left to cobble together a new pillar” that can ensure succession after Putin. Officially, Sergey Kiriyenko promises that “the road is open to everyone” through an “absolutely open system” like the Leaders of Russia program, where “anyone can apply” and “get the coveted appointment.” This is presented as a break with the old Soviet joke about a colonel’s son never becoming a general “because the general has his own children.”
• In practice, the author argues, “a nearly hereditary system” is emerging in which “key positions are increasingly occupied by the children of current officials,” and “open competitions” function as a mechanism to select “new service nobility.” He notes that it sounds “a bit strange” to hear about meritocratic openness from a man whose son runs VK, and asks whether “such an important place could go to someone’s non‑‘general’s’ son.” Shevchuk lists Dmitry Patrushev, Denis Bortnikov, and Maria Vorontsova as examples and says national‑patriots now justify this as natural for empires: “New nobles” supposedly “relate to the country as to their inheritance,” a concept he links directly to Nikolai Patrushev’s phrase about “novye dvoriane.”
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Statism comes for social media,” Editorial Board, Washington Post, 02.14.26.
  • Podcast: “An Assassination in Moscow Fuels Russia’s Terror Narrative,” Andrew C. Kuchins and Chris Monday, The National Interest, 02.13.26.
  • “Putin’s Conspiratorial Fantasies Are Blowing Back on Him,” Kristaps Andrejsons, Foreign Policy, 02.11.26.
  • “Russia’s FSB Is About to Get Massive New Spying Powers,” Stavros Atlamazoglou, The National Interest, 02.12.26.
  • "Double-entry bookkeeping," Tatyana Rybakova, The Moscow Times, 02.17.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian.)

  • "How dreams are blown away," Tatyana Rybakova, The Moscow Times, 02.10.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian.)

  • “Cheburashka’s Second Coming,” Maxim Trudolyubov, Kennan Institute, 02.12.26.

Defense and aerospace:

“Russian Military Performance and Outlook,” Andrew S. Bowen, Congressional Research Service, 02.04.26.

• Bowen writes that despite “the advantages of a larger recruitment base and defense industrial capacity,” Russia has “not been able to decisively defeat the Ukrainian Armed Forces,” and that its performance has been hindered by a “rigid command and control structure” and “high‑casualty‑prone tactics.”
• He notes that the Russian military “continues to operate with a Soviet-style centralized command,” where centralized control “limits junior and mid‑level officer decisionmaking authority” and contributes to “inflexible operations,” even as Moscow has shown itself “capable of learning and adopting changes.”
• On casualties, Bowen cites Western and Ukrainian estimates that Russia is losing “25,000–35,000 casualties a month” and that “over 1.2 million have been killed and wounded,” adding that losses have been “particularly detrimental” among “elite and professional soldiers” and the “junior officer corps.”
• Recruitment remains high: Russian officials claimed “417,000 personnel in 2025,” after “450,000 in 2024,” with the military averaging “30,000–40,000 recruits a month,” but Bowen warns that new troops and officers receive “substandard and rushed” training and that lowered standards and coercive measures “exacerbate the impact of the losses.”
• Equipment losses are severe: U.S. officials estimate Russia has lost “more than 3,000 tanks, a higher number than its pre‑war active‑duty tank inventory,” along with large numbers of “armored personnel carriers, artillery and rocket systems, helicopters, and naval vessels,” forcing industry to prioritize “quantity over quality” and refurbish old systems.
• Defense spending has surged to “7.3% of GDP” in 2025, with “5.1% of GDP directly on the war,” and draft budgets projecting “around 8%” for defense and national security, but Bowen says some observers question whether Moscow can “sustain such high levels,” noting constraints from “stagnating innovation” and “labor shortages” even as China, Iran, and North Korea provide “crucial” support.
• Tactically, Russia has shifted to an attritional approach, focusing on “slow and steady progress” and “capturing the remainder of the Donetsk region,” using small assault teams that “seek to infiltrate UAF lines” and expanded UAV forces that push the “kill‑zone” “as far as 20 km” beyond the front. Yet, Bowen concludes, Russia “has been unable to capitalize on these gains and make a large-scale breakthrough,” leaving its long‑term military outlook and threat to NATO a key question for Congress as it weighs “further military or other assistance for Ukraine.”
• See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

  • "Moon Fever 2.0," Petr Punchenko, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.11.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

• See section Military aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts above.

Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:

• No significant developments.

   

III. Russia’s relations with other countries

Russia’s external policies, including relations with “far abroad” countries:

“Japan’s ‘Militarist Turn’ and What It Means for Russia,” James D.J. Brown, Carnegie Politika, 02.05.26.

• Brown examines Russian and Chinese claims that Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is leading Japan back to 1930s-style militarism and asks what this actually means for Russia and the wider region, including Ukraine. Sergey Lavrov has warned of “unhealthy trends…linked to the desire of some political forces to return to the militarization of society,” accusing Tokyo of seeking to change its pacifist constitution, “building up offensive military potential,” debating its “non‑nuclear status,” and conducting joint drills with NATO near Russia. Beijing likewise attacks Takaichi’s stance on Taiwan as a cover for “military expansion” and “a potential resurgence of militaristic tendencies.”
• Brown argues these portrayals are exaggerated and hypocritical. Even with Takaichi’s accelerated plans, Japan’s defense spending will rise only to about 2% of GDP, versus NATO’s 3.5% target and Russia’s roughly 7%. He notes the irony of a Russian regime that “started a war that has caused an estimated 1.8 million military casualties” in Ukraine accusing Japan—whose Self-Defense Forces “have never killed anyone since their creation in 1954”—of militarism. Japan’s buildup, he contends, is driven by a security environment dominated by three nuclear‑armed neighbors, Russia, China, and North Korea, not by offensive ambitions.
• On nuclear weapons, Brown stresses that while Lavrov alleges Tokyo is debating its “non‑nuclear status,” there is no serious move toward acquiring its own arsenal; instead Japan continues to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella while hardening conventional defenses and hosting systems like U.S. Typhon missiles. For Russia, he concludes, Japan’s changes do not constitute a direct military threat to the Far East or the Kurils, especially compared with the real, ongoing war in Ukraine; Moscow’s rhetoric about Japanese “militarization” primarily serves its broader narrative that Western-aligned states are dangerous and aggressive.

Ukraine:

• No significant developments.

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“A Deal with the Devil: Lukashenko Navigates Domestic and External Vulnerabilities in Managing Relations with Russia,” Ryhor Nizhnikau and Arkady Moshes, PONARS Eurasia, 02.09.26

• Nizhnikau and Moshes write that after the 2020 crisis and the 2022 invasion, “Russia has emerged as the main beneficiary of the political crisis instigated by the Belarusian leadership,” and that Lukashenko “had no choice but to accept Moscow’s offer to guarantee the regime’s survival.” In that bargain “the model of the Belarus-Russia relationship, which for decades had allowed Lukashenko to cherry-pick, dodge the Kremlin’s most painful demands, and withstand its ultimatums, became a thing of the past.” Yet domestically, they argue, the war and mass emigration (nearly “1 million people left”) have helped him re‑consolidate power: Lukashenko “managed to anchor and diffuse the narrative of his ability, as the national leader, to protect the country from the war spilling over to Belarusian soil,” so that “certain quarters of Belarusian society, while remaining implicitly oppositional, began seeing the regime as the lesser evil.”
• At the same time, they stress that “Lukashenko had to fully accept his subordinated status and essentially yield foreign and security policy prerogatives to Moscow,” quoting his admission that he “was not informed of Putin’s plan to start the invasion and learned about it only when the Russian troops entered Ukraine.” Russia now “dominates the Belarusian cultural, informational, and ideological spheres”: Rossotrudnichestvo runs four “‘Russian houses’ in Minsk, Brest, Hrodna, and Homyel”; a joint history commission is “cochaired by Putin’s close ideological associate … Vladimir Medinsky”; and a touted nuclear‑deployment deal gives Moscow “a carte blanche to establish a permanent military presence in a neighboring state.”
• In conclusion, Nizhnikau and Moshes argue that “the bargain that the Belarusian regime made with Moscow has colossal costs for Belarus,” warning that “excessive dependence on Russia will keep generating economic and security risks, while Russia’s control over Belarus’s economy, security, and culture … already restricts Minsk’s room for maneuver.” They state bluntly that “the long-term future of the Belarusian state is at stake” and urge the West both to “toughen its stance further” with more sanctions on Lukashenko’s regime and to adopt “a clear strategy of engaging with Belarusian society … to counteract Russia’s growing dominance” and improve “Belarus’s chances of preserving its sovereignty in the long run.”

“Russia Won’t Give Up Its Influence in Armenia Without a Fight,” Mikayel Zolyan, Carnegie Politika, 02.03.26.

• Zolyan writes that Yerevan’s own officials now describe a “hybrid threat from third countries,” widely understood to mean Russia, and notes that Nikol Pashinyan has accused senior church figures of “serving the interests of another country,” while the 2025 arrests of billionaire Samvel Karapetyan and two archbishops for an alleged coup are framed by the authorities as the work of a “Russian oligarch.”
• At the same time, Armenia has not broken formally with Moscow: it remains in the CSTO and Eurasian Economic Union, Russian bases stay, and state giants like Gazprom and Russian Railways continue to operate; Pashinyan has even said he wants Russian Railways involved in reopening links with Turkey and Azerbaijan.
• Kremlin attitudes hardened after Russia, Armenia’s CSTO ally, stood aside in the 2020 Karabakh war and the 2023 flight of Armenians from Nagorno‑Karabakh, destroying the image of Russia as “older brother” and giving Yerevan room to diversify toward the United States and EU. Moscow now sees Armenia “as a hybrid battlefield where it is fighting the West,” with 2026 parliamentary elections a key arena.
• The flashpoint is the U.S.–Armenian TRIPP deal, signed Jan. 13, which creates a U.S.–Armenian company to build and run a corridor through Syunik linking Azerbaijan to Nakhchivan under full Armenian sovereignty but with operations effectively controlled by a U.S. firm. Zolyan notes that this U.S.-mediated compromise lets Armenia avoid the Russian–Azeri‑backed “Zangezur corridor” model and gives Trump a marquee geopolitical project.
• Moscow, unwilling to lose leverage, is likely to back pro‑Russian or revanchist forces such as blocs linked to ex‑presidents Kocharyan and Sargsyan and Narek Karapetyan’s Our Way, using “soft power” from disinformation to Soviet nostalgia. But Zolyan argues this will only succeed if the Armenia–Azerbaijan peace process collapses; if peace and TRIPP advance, Pashinyan’s party is favored to win and the relationship with Russia will shift into a more limited, pragmatic phase.
• See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:
  • “Peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan: What TRIPP can and cannot achieve,” Anna Ohanyan, SCEEUS, 02.11.26.
  • “Russia’s Military Losses Are the U.S.’ Gain in Central Asia,” Mamuka Tsereteli, The National Interest, 02.13.26.

  • "The economic dimension of relations between Russia and the countries of Central Asia: overcoming limits," Sergei Mikhnevich and Dmitry Novikov, Russian International Affairs Council, 02.10.26. Clues from Russian Views. (In Russian.) (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

Endnotes

1.  FT reported on 02.11.26 that, according to Ukrainian and European officials involved in the planning as well as others briefed on the matter, Zelenskyy intends to announce the plan for presidential elections and a referendum on Feb. 24, the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion. Ukraine has begun planning presidential elections alongside a referendum on any peace deal with Russia, after the Trump administration pressed Kyiv to hold both votes by May 15 or risk losing proposed U.S. security guarantees, according to FT.
2. Sources used: New York Times, 02.17.26, Washington Post, 02.17.26, Washington Post, 02.17.26, ISW, 02.16.26.
3. Signatories include: Ivo Daalder, Nicholas Burns, Douglas Lute, Julianne Smith, General Wesley K. Clark, Alexander Vershbow, Victoria Nuland, Kurt Volker, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Joseph Ralston, James Jones, John Craddock, Philip Breedlove, Curtis Scaparrotti, Tod Wolters, Christopher Cavoli.
4. U.S. DoS top arms diplomat.

The cutoff for reports summarized in this product was 10:00 am Eastern time on the day this digest was distributed. Unless otherwise indicated, all summaries above are direct quotations. 

AI was used in production of this digest.

*Here and elsewhere, the italicized text indicates comments by RM staff and associates. These comments do not constitute an RM editorial policy.

Slider photo: Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses the audience during a session at the Munich Security Conference in Munich, Germany, Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Michael Probst)