Russia Analytical Report, June 29–July 6, 2026

3 Ideas to Explore

  1. “If Ukraine can continue to disrupt Crimea, strike more targets in the heart of Russia, frustrate Russia’s frontline forces and pile more pressure on Russia’s hobbled economy, an isolated, aging and frustrated Putin may decide he needs a game-changing attack,” Ian Bremmer warns in a commentary for Project Syndicate. For now, however, “the use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, a direct frontal assault on the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Estonia and major cyberattacks on European or American targets remain extremely unlikely,” Bremmer writes.
  2. “Western decision makers believe that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has warned [Vladimir] Putin against the use of nuclear weapons. And they think that the Kremlin understands the risk that the West could intervene directly in the [Ukraine] war, if Russia went nuclear,” according to FT columnist Gideon Rachman. “The sheer frequency of nuclear saber-rattling by Putin and his circle has diminished its intimidatory power. As one Western official puts it: ‘He’s devalued the currency,’” Rachman explains his July 7 column. A separate July 7 FT article quoted Finland’s President Alexander Stubb as saying he met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi this weekend “and when the nuclear escalation issue came up, the answer was very firm from the Chinese side and involved plenty of red flags.” While Putin may have put nuclear saber rattling on hold, one of his long-time aides, Nikolai Patrushev, has not. Speaking in an interview for Russian-government media last month, he said that either Europe will rely on pragmatists to deal with Russia, or Europe will “face catastrophe.” “So far, events are unfolding according to the second scenario—and some European countries seem positively itching for trouble. I may be putting this rather bluntly, but when I watch the Baltic mice tugging at the whiskers of a cat with nuclear claws, that is precisely the impression I get,” he said.

  3. Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe argue in a CSIS report that Russia has lost the military initiative in Ukraine as costs continue to mount. They assert that “the war in Ukraine heavily favors the defender,” that Russia’s progress has been “historically poor,” yet “despite high losses…Russia continues to fight.” On the battlefield, Jones and McCabe claim, Russia’s offensive has “largely stalled,” with average advances of “approximately 50 meters per day around Kostiantynivka, 70 meters per day around Pokrovsk and 90 meters per day around Sloviansk,” according to their July 1, 2026, report. On July 3, Russia's military told President Vladimir Putin that its forces had taken control of Kostiantynivka, according to MT. But on July 6, Volodymyr Zelenskyy denied this claim. Meanwhile, Ukrainian OSINT group DeepState showed much of Kostiantynivka in the gray zone on its map of the conflict, with Russian forces trying to execute a pincer movement to encircle the key city as of July 4, 2026.

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

Nuclear security and safety:

  • No significant developments.

North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:

  • No significant developments.

Iran and its nuclear program:

“The Consequences of the Iran–US War for Greater Eurasia,” Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club, 07.06.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Ivan Timofeev argues that “the failure of the US and Israeli aggression against Iran has become the most important event in international and regional life,” and that it has “created a large part of the reality of a multipolar world order whose formation we are now observing.” In his view, many in the West saw Iran as “the ‘weak link’” of the revisionist camp, but instead “the armed forces, people and political leadership of Iran demonstrated remarkable resilience,” while Tehran’s decision to close the Strait of Hormuz became “an important factor in its political success,” the author writes.
  • For Timofeev, one key lesson is that the war “showed the limitations of the coercive capabilities even of the most powerful military states of our time.” He notes that US interests in attacking Iran were “insufficiently large‑scale and vital” for Washington to “use all its resources” once it became clear that “with the available forces and means they could not win,” which raises doubts about “the future of any alliance commitments” and should give small states hosting US bases pause.
  • He also contends that this is “the first war lost by the West in the last fifty years,” contrasting it with earlier campaigns where Western powers at least enjoyed “the appearance of achieving their goals.” Iran’s success, he argues, adds a new factor to Eurasian stability: a medium‑sized state that is “confident in itself and, most importantly, has proved this confidence in practice,” whose future role in the security architecture of Greater Eurasia will be crucial.

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“Underground Births, Under Bombardment: Childbearing in Ukraine,” Lynsey Addario, Maria Varenikova and Oleksandra Mykolyshyn, New York Times, 07.01.26.

  • The reporters write that “the war, which started with Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, is inflicting an additional toll on pregnant women through fear and stress caused by bombings, shelling, displacement, occupation and electrical blackouts.” Maternal mortality “increased by more than a third from 2023 to 2024,” the U.N. says, attributing the rise to “attacks on health care facilities, stress and displacement.” As of December 2025, “more than 80 maternity and neonatal care hospitals in Ukraine had been damaged or destroyed,” and “thousands of births now take place underground” in basement wards and bomb shelters near the front.
  • Russian strikes on power stations have left women like Anastasia Lotkova in Kharkiv enduring “electricity outages and sporadic heat,” with her apartment dipping to “46 degrees Fahrenheit,” while frontline cities such as Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and Dnipro see rising rates of premature births and C‑sections as doctors “try to deliver babies during lulls in shelling rather than risk prolonged labor under fire.” One perinatal center saw preterm births rise from “2.9 percent” in 2021 to “5.5 percent” last year; its deputy director says many are “‘associated with stress, with shelling, with alerts, with insomnia, with anxiety, with blood pressure that rises.’” Yet, despite Russia’s ongoing assaults, some women like army medic Iryna Dolhopolova say “we must bring new life,” seeing childbirth itself as an act of defiance in a war Russia started.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

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

“Russian Blood and Treasure: The Ballooning Costs of Putin’s War,” Seth G. Jones and Riley McCabe, CSIS, 07.01.26.

  • Jones and McCabe write that “Russia has lost the military initiative in Ukraine as costs continue to mount,” estimating that between February 2022 and June 2026 Russian forces suffered “approximately 1.4 million battlefield casualties—including killed, wounded, and missing soldiers” and “between 400,000 and 450,000 fatalities.” They call these numbers “astonishing,” noting that “Russian fatalities in Ukraine are more than four times greater than all U.S. fatalities in all wars combined since World War II” and “more than nine times greater than all Russian and Soviet wars combined since World War II,” with monthly Russian casualties of “between 30,000 and 34,000” in 2026 likely exceeding recruitment of “approximately 27,000 new recruits per month.”
  • On the battlefield, they argue, Russia’s offensive has “largely stalled,” with average advances of “approximately 50 meters per day around Kostiantynivka, 70 meters per day around Pokrovsk, and 90 meters per day around Sloviansk”—“among the slowest rates of advance in any war over the last century.” Defenses saturated with mines, artillery and drones create a “kill zone of approximately 20–40 kilometers,” where “over 90 percent of Russian casualties are from drone attacks” and even successful infiltration tactics “take ground only in small pockets rather than collapsing defensive lines.” As a result, “Russia’s territorial control in Ukraine shrank in the spring of 2026,” with “a net loss of roughly 400 square kilometers” in April and May and Russia’s “footprint stopp[ing] growing for the first time in years.”
  • They conclude that “the war in Ukraine heavily favors the defender,” that Russia’s progress has been “historically poor,” yet “despite high losses…Russia continues to fight—a decision that rests firmly with Putin.” Ukraine “shows no sign of collapsing,” but the same dynamics make retaking all occupied territory difficult, so “Ukraine’s best hope may be a stalemate that leads to a peace agreement or ceasefire.” For Europe and the United States, they argue, “the goal should be to obtain a peace agreement or, at worst, a ceasefire by raising the blood and treasure costs for Moscow,” warning that “Russia’s economy is in distress” and that “without greater costs in blood and treasure, Putin is likely to keep fighting—even as he pushes his country toward an economic, political, and military abyss.”

“Ukraine proves it can hit Russia almost anywhere,” Colin Demarest, Axios, 07.03.26.

  • Demarest writes that “the Ukrainian military is proving it can blow up pretty much whatever it wants,” noting that “fewer and fewer places feel safe inside Russia, as oil facilities, weapons factories, convoys and bombers burn.” Russia is “facing fuel shortages due to repeated refinery strikes, at least one of which sent Muscovites scrambling for cover amid explosions and ‘black rain,’” and Zelensky has claimed Moscow has had to “relocate the bulk of its air defenses to cover key areas, like central Moscow and a presidential residence, leaving other targets exposed.” Putin has admitted “problems” and “certain shortages” but tried to downplay them, even as Russian forces “hammered Kyiv in overnight strikes that killed at least 21 people” and “are still attempting to push forward along the front lines in Donetsk, despite heavy casualties.”
  • Zelensky has jokingly dubbed these deep attacks “long-range sanctions,” and Axios notes that “Ukraine’s tools and tactics have grown increasingly sophisticated over years of war,” with Fire Point–made Flamingo missiles slamming into facilities such as the Titan‑Barrikady artillery plant and operations like “Spiderweb” in which “small drones, smuggled over the border and strapped with explosives, zipp[ed] into parked and unsheltered warplanes.” In a major shift from early in the war, “Ukraine is relying largely on domestically produced drones and modified missiles” to pepper Moscow, St. Petersburg and other distant targets. Citing a CSIS report, Demarest adds that Kyiv has “dramatically taken the war to Russian territory in 2026 by orchestrating a series of short-, medium-, and long-range strikes to disrupt and destroy Russian logistics and supplies,” calling it “classic air interdiction, though with drones and missiles — not airplanes,” and noting the same report estimates Russia has suffered “a massive 1.4 million battlefield casualties” since 2022. Zelensky says this is part of a “40-day operation” to force Russia to the negotiating table, but Demarest concludes that “for now, there are few signs of diplomatic momentum.”

“The Strategy Behind the Battle for Crimea,” Paul Hockenos, Foreign Policy, 07.02.26.

  • Hockenos describes how Ukraine has turned Russia’s main southern supply artery into the “Highway of Death,” writing that “hundreds of burned-out and charred wrecks of tractor trailers, tanker trucks, and assorted military transports line the shoulders of Russia’s chief supply route to Crimea and occupied southern Ukraine,” a 390‑mile road from Rostov‑on‑Don that “has earned itself the moniker ‘Highway of Death’.” Since early April, “wave after wave of Ukrainian drones have incapacitated the critical coastal route along the Sea of Azov and taken out Crimea’s northern bridges across the Chongar Strait,” leaving “the only practical route to Crimea the Kerch Bridge,” which “now handles a fraction of previous traffic—most of which is exiting Crimea.” Ukraine’s “stranglehold on Crimea,” he writes, has “triggered critical fuel and ammunition shortages in Russian-occupied territories in the south,” with a single strike on June 11 torching “ammunition and fuel bound for positions in Zaporizhzhia—along with up to 50 military vehicles,” and forcing the occupation governor to suspend gasoline sales so that “only state and government agencies would receive fuel.”
  • Quoting Ukrainian analysts, Hockenos notes that “Ukraine halting fuel supplies to the southern front…‘paralyzes Russian military logistics and isolates Russian forces’,” and that Kyiv’s declared “logistics lockdown” aims to “turn Crimea from a peninsula into an island isolated from mainland Russia” so the occupation “withers on the vine.” He highlights that the campaign relies on cheap, domestically produced drones such as the FP‑2 and Behemoth, whose “range extends Russian supply lines by forcing military logistics to bypass the most cost-efficient routes within the strike zone,” and that earlier efforts to “degrade Russian air defenses in Crimea…enabled the deeper drone strikes.” The resulting fuel and power outages have “exhaust[ed] Crimea” and “exacerbate[d] ‘the already serious public discontent in occupied Crimea’,” he writes, tying down ever more Russian resources and sending a message at home that Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea “did not deliver the security that he promised,” even as Ukraine “shap[es] the battlefield” for a future counteroffensive.

“Ukraine’s Plan to Unnerve Putin,” Phillips Payson O’Brien, The Atlantic, 06.30.26.

  • Phillips Payson O’Brien writes that over two weeks “Ukraine has launched a series of drone attacks on targets deep inside Russian territory—most consequentially in and near Moscow,” including repeated strikes on the Dubna Space Communications Center, which Russia uses “to collect intelligence and coordinate operations.” Zelensky “taunted” Putin by saying that “relevant actions are also being prepared against other similar enemy facilities,” and Kyiv pointedly describes these raids as “long‑range sanctions” to signal that “the drone campaign… is nowhere near plateauing,” the author notes.
  • The attack on a major Moscow oil refinery, which supplies “about 40 percent of the Moscow region’s fuel market,” was designed to “create… a massive fire that released a thick plume of black smoke that was visible across Moscow,” O’Brien argues, sending the message: “Ukraine is here and can hit even the most important economic targets. Muscovites, your days of pretending the war is far away… are over.” With Russia’s economy “approaching its ‘endgame’” and “almost entirely dependent on selling oil,” Ukrainian strikes on refineries and fuel infrastructure both deepen gas shortages and “threaten Putin’s access to the money that he needs to keep on fighting.”
  • Parallel attacks on Dubna “speak loudly to the Russian military,” coming as Russia has suffered “more than 1.3 million casualties” and already faces badly disrupted logistics, O’Brien writes. By hitting core command‑and‑control nodes and forcing air defenses to be pulled into Moscow, Ukraine is signaling that “not even your most important facilities deep in Russia are safe.” The author concludes that, even if these strikes don’t quickly end the war, they have “dispelled the idea that Putin can defend Moscow, protect the Russian economy, and look after the Russian military,” exposing “the limits of Putin’s power” and making “his allies and flatterers very nervous.”

"The Putin Escalation Risk," Ian Bremmer, Project Syndicate, 07.03.26.

  • “Putin’s first problem is that his war in Ukraine has no momentum. Recent territorial gains have come slowly and at the cost of enormous loss of life (some 450,000 killed, almost eight times the US body count in Vietnam) and economic damage. After four years and four months, Russian forces control about 20% of Ukraine’s territory—the same percentage they held three years ago,” according to Bremmer.
  • “Despite the setbacks and embarrassments, there is scant evidence that Putin is in trouble at home. Some Russian media have hinted at growing public frustration with the war, but there remains no alternative to Putin’s leadership, and he still appears uninterested in peace talks,” Bremmer writes. “Thus, Europeans and Russia’s nearest neighbors worry about what Putin might do were he genuinely backed into a corner.”
  • “If Ukraine can continue to disrupt Crimea, strike more targets in the heart of Russia, frustrate Russia’s frontline forces, and pile more pressure on Russia’s hobbled economy, an isolated, aging, and frustrated Putin may decide he needs a game-changing attack,” Bremmer argues. 
  • “The use of a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine, a direct frontal assault on the former Soviet republics of Latvia and Estonia (now NATO members), and major cyberattacks on European or American targets remain extremely unlikely for now,” Bremmer writes.

“Has the Russian-Ukraine War Reached a Turning Point Favoring Ukraine?” Simon Saradzhyan, Russia Matters, 07.06.26.

  • “To hear multiple Western and some Ukrainian commentators say it, the Russian-Ukrainian war has reached a turning point in the past month or so, and it favors Kyiv,” writes Saradzhyan.
  • “One obvious characteristic of a war’s turning point is significant alteration in the rate of changes in territorial control in a short period of time. … [However,] triangulation of territorial control data yielded inconclusive results with regard to whether changes on the ground constituted a turning point anytime in the first half of this year. DS [DeepState] shows monthly gains by Russia every month in 2026 so far, while ISW shows gains in two months and losses in three months in 2026,” Saradzhyan observes.
  • “Having failed to change the overall direction of the ground war in its favor this year, perhaps Ukraine has prevailed over Russia in the air? … I found that while Russia has generally lagged behind Ukraine in procuring drones (Table 3), Russia has had numerical advantage over Ukraine in using attack drones,” Saradzhyan writes. 
  • “Per the definition of the turning point, the Russia-Ukraine air war (use of airborne platforms and munitions) does not appear to have shifted ‘the overall direction or balance’ of the war, or marked ‘the beginning of a decisive new phase’ that favors Ukraine,” according to Saradzhyan.
  • “Casualties in all domains: When it comes to personnel losses incurred from fighting, Russian military ranks have bled significantly more than the Ukrainian ranks, according to most estimates of casualties reviewed by Russia Matters in its weekly Russia-Ukraine war card,” Saradzhyan writes. Additionally, the “Russian economy [is] suffering, but not imploding … Internal support for [the] regime and its war persists,” and Russia’s “external semi-isolation is shrinking,” he observes.
  • “Even if this were a turning point, it may be too soon to tell: Based on the evidence presented above, the Russia–Ukraine war does not appear to have reached a turning point in Ukraine's favor. While Ukraine has achieved important successes … these developments have not produced a decisive, durable shift in the overall direction or balance of the war of the kind we arguably saw during the battle for Kyiv in Spring 2022.” Saradzhyan concludes. “Moreover, … history too suggests that genuine turning points tend (though not always) to be recognized in retrospect.”

“Russian forces advance on key Donbas ‘Fortress Belt’ cities,” Ben Aris, Intellinews, 07.03.26.

  • Ben Aris reports that Russian forces are “steadily tightening their grip on Ukraine's eastern defenses,” advancing toward the strategic city of Kostiantynivka and “making progress towards Sloviansk,” as Ukrainian officials and analysts warn the battlefield situation is worsening despite Western talk of a “turning point.” Kostiantynivka, “the southern anchor of Ukraine's so‑called ‘fortress belt’—a line of heavily fortified cities including Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk,” has seen Russian infiltration attempts on its outskirts; Ukrainian commanders say these are contained, but analyst Emil Kastehelmi argues “the city's fall seems to be more of a question of time,” since Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian logistics “haven't been so great that it would have forced the Russians to suspend their offensive.”
  • According to Aris, the Institute for the Study of War judges Russian infiltration insufficient for a rapid breakthrough, but Moscow is “squeez[ing] the city through gradual pincer movements,” forcing Kyiv toward a choice to “either raise the stakes or withdraw,” as DeepState co‑founder Ruslan Mykula puts it. Russian troops now operate “within roughly 10km of Sumy, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia,” exposing them to more strikes while Russia pursues “slow, attritional advances backed by overwhelming firepower,” with gains “measured in hundreds of meters” yet “steadily eroding Ukraine's defensive positions” and stretching scarce manpower along a front from Sumy to Zaporizhzhia.

“Ukraine Remade Air Defense, but Russia Has Changed Its Attacks,” Siobhán O’Grady and Liubov Sholudko, The New York Times, 07.06.26.

  • Ukrainian crews operating Patriot air defense systems “initially used the tactics and the knowledge that we had been taught in America,” commander Viacheslav Aheiev recalls, but “once combat use began… Ukrainians realized they had to introduce some of our own experience and skills, and slightly change the tactics of employment.” According to the authors, they now often fire “just one interceptor” instead of two, run Patriots in manual so they don’t waste rounds on “slow-moving, inexpensive drones,” and use “shoot and scoot” moves and $30,000 decoys to protect systems “worth roughly $1 billion.”
  • The reporters stress that “clever adaptations cannot overcome a shortage of interceptors”: Russia has already launched “521 ballistic missiles at Ukraine” this year, and in one attack “none of the 23 ballistic missiles were intercepted.” With launchers sometimes “half‑empty,” Aheiev says, “you realize the cost of every decision and every action,” and laments that “civilians are dying — entire families are being killed. We need more missiles. We need these missiles as much as we need air.”

“Putin is running out of options,” Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 07.06.26.

  • Gideon Rachman argues that Ukraine’s long‑range strikes and Russia’s “biggest fuel crisis in decades” have created “a growing sense that the momentum in the war has changed,” quoting Mark Carney that “the tide has turned … Putin is going to lose.” Yet “few people believe that the Russian leader will simply accept defeat,” so Western policymakers are “braced for a summer of escalation.” He outlines “four main escalation avenues”: “conventional actions on the battlefield,” “nuclear weapons,” “a direct attack on Nato” and “hybrid warfare” against Western infrastructure.
  • “Western decision makers believe that China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has warned Putin against the use of nuclear weapons. And they think that the Kremlin understands the risk that the west could intervene directly in the war, if Russia went nuclear. The sheer frequency of nuclear saber-rattling by Putin and his circle has diminished its intimidatory power. As one western official puts it: ‘He’s devalued the currency’,” according to Rachman.
  • Some in the West are “braced… for a Russian provocation aimed at the Baltic states or Poland,” but “a direct Russian attack seems unlikely” given the dangers of “opening a second front directly on Nato soil,” while hybrid escalation also risks Western retaliation. “Putin certainly has escalation options,” Rachman concludes. “His problem is that they are all bad.”

“In Strike After Strike, Ukraine Is Bringing the War to Crimea,” Marc Santora, Aric Toler and Josh Holder, The New York Times, 07.04.26.

  • Celebrating his 2014 seizure of Crimea, Vladimir Putin called the peninsula an “unsinkable aircraft carrier,” a symbol of “revanchist ambition,” the authors write. Now, “the Ukrainian military is hammering Crimea with swarming drone attacks,” seeking to turn a “Russian-occupied fortress into a nightmare for the Kremlin to manage,” according to the authors, who stress its geography makes it both “an invaluable military prize” and “a vulnerable target.”

Vladimir Putin’s Visit to the Joint Force auxiliary command post, web site of the President of Russia, 07.03.26.

  • “The liberation of the Lugansk People’s Republic has recently been completed in full. Meanwhile, operations to eliminate formations of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Donetsk People’s Republic, as well as in the Zaporozhzhia and Kherson regions, are underway. The establishment of a security zone in the border areas of the Kharkov, Sumy, and Dnepropetrovsk regions of Ukraine is also progressing according to plan.”
  • “Since the beginning of this year, Russian forces have liberated 133 settlements and established control over more than 3,000 square kilometers of our territory in Donbass and Novorossiya.”
  • “The liberation of Krasny Liman, a key administrative center and major railway hub, is approaching completion. Its capture is of significant logistical and operational importance for the continued offensive in this direction.”
  • “Units of the [South] group liberated the town of Konstantinovka, one of the enemy’s principal defensive strongholds within the Slavyansk–Kramatorsk–Konstantinovka fortified area.”
  • “In addition, in accordance with the General Staff’s operational plan, Russian forces have continued to carry out large-scale and coordinated strikes against Ukraine’s military-industrial complex and the energy infrastructure supporting it.”
  • “As a result, the strike has substantially reduced Ukraine’s industrial capacity to manufacture long-range weapons, including cruise and ballistic missiles, which has also increased the Kiev regime’s dependence on Western supplies of components, explosives, and fuel.”
  • “The Russian Armed Forces continue to firmly maintain the strategic initiative in the special military operation zone, and the liberation of Konstantinovka is of major strategic significance.”
  • “The capture of Konstantinovka by the South group of forces opens a direct route for further advances toward Kramatorsk and Slavyansk, as well as other fortified areas in Donbass. It is undoubtedly a key step toward the liberation of the entire Donetsk People’s Republic.”
  • “The more strikes the enemy attempts against our civilian infrastructure … the more such attempts they make, the larger the security zone we will be compelled to establish in the adjacent territory. Especially since this area, like the other territories we have discussed today, is historically Russian land.”
  • “I want to stress that the June 7, 2026, joint statement by some of the EU leaders welcomed the innovative, as they put it, use of pilotless technologies by the Kiev regime… In this respect I should say that massive group strikes must continue at Ukraine’s military industrial complex infrastructure and the facilities ensuring its operation, because those ideas are in the air and being pursued, therefore we must respond correspondingly.”

“Zelenskyy says ‘battle in the sky’ will decide outcome of war with Russia,” Christopher Miller, Financial Times, 07.06.26.

  • “In an interview with the FT on Monday, hours after a massive Russian attack on Kyiv, the Ukrainian president said his country had already succeeded in denying Russia victory on the battlefield and had pushed its fleet from much of the western Black Sea, leaving airspace as the defining theatre.”
  • “In that contest it matters far less whose territory is larger,” he said, noting Russia’s advantages in geography and manpower. “We have moved into the air domain. And in the air, we are already competitive.”
  • “Zelenskyy said US President Donald Trump had told him in a phone call on Saturday that Ukraine “is doing very well” with its long-range drone campaign. Asked whether that was enough to bring Trump firmly on to Ukraine’s side, Zelenskyy said he felt the American leader was viewing the war in a new light.”
  • “Trump told reporters in Washington on Monday that “we’re getting much closer than people realize” to the end of the war. “President [Vladimir] Putin wants it to end. I will tell you that, very strongly,” he said. “And President Zelenskyy actually wants it to end now.”
  • “There remains only one unknown,” Zelensky said. “Unfortunately, it is anti-ballistic defense. That is the major weakness [for Ukraine] in this equation.”
  • “When it is no longer one hundred drones but one thousand flying towards Moscow . . . he will understand,” Zelensky said of Putin.
  • Zelensky “linked that strategic vulnerability to Ukraine’s decision in the 1990s to give up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal.” 

“Ukraine striking Russian energy infrastructure at unprecedented rate,” Christopher Miller, Max Seddon, Alan Smith, Anastasia Stognei, Financial Times, 07.05.26.

  • “Ukraine is striking Russian energy infrastructure at an unprecedented rate, according to an FT data analysis showing that Kyiv’s intensified drone campaign is spurring Russia’s worst fuel crisis in decades. The number of successful Ukrainian strikes against Russian refineries reached an all-time monthly record of 16 in May, data from Rochan Consulting, a Polish analytical group monitoring the war, shows.”
  • “Since the beginning of 2026, Russian refineries have been hit at least 194 times, an 11-fold increase from the same period the previous year.”
  • “Analysts attribute the growing success of Ukraine’s drone campaign to its ability to significantly increase production, as well as improved management. American intelligence assistance has also played a role, aiding Kyiv in charting the best paths for its drones and helping to skirt air defenses, senior Ukrainian officials told the FT.”
  • “At a fundamental level, we can see Putin has made another fatal strategic error in this war, thinking for some reason that time was only on his side. He couldn’t get Ukraine to capitulate, but he gave them enough time to develop mass production of ‘deep strikes,’” said Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies.

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Military aid to Ukraine:

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

“The West Has Let Russia Off the Hook. Time to Tighten the Screws,” French Hill, New York Times, 07.03.26.

  • Hill argues that “for more than four years, NATO has sought to manage the conflict in Ukraine rather than win it decisively,” and that the Ankara summit “should commit to breaking the Russian war economy and ending Moscow’s ability to fight abroad.” He writes that “Western sanctions have constrained Russia, but they have not cut off the fossil fuel revenues that sustain President Vladimir Putin’s war machine,” noting that in May “Russia’s daily fossil fuel export revenues rose to roughly 726 million euros,” with crude alone generating “about 362 million euros daily.” Despite cuts, “the European Union…remains the largest buyer of Russian gas,” and “Turkey, a longtime NATO member and this year’s summit host, still counts as a major buyer of Russian oil products.” The costs of this hesitation, he says, have been “worse, with more than 15,000 civilians killed and nearly $600 billion expected to be required to rebuild Ukraine.”
  • He argues that “the moment is ripe for a pressure campaign that pushes the Russian economy toward exhaustion,” pointing out that Russian crude output of “roughly nine million barrels a day…represents less than 9 percent of global oil demand,” and that as Iranian supplies return, “the economic and political effects in NATO countries of cracking down on Russia will be softened.” Allies that still rely on Russian energy, he writes, “should use the Ankara meeting to commit to a rapid, orderly exit,” and NATO should then “set its sights on non-Western buyers like China,” using “secondary sanctions” on banks and trading houses so that “they can do business with the West or with Russia, but not both.” Hill notes that his PEACE Act would “punish financial institutions facilitating Russia’s energy deals” and “seize $5 billion of Moscow’s sovereign assets and allow the funds to be used for Ukraine’s defense and reconstruction,” arguing that “just freezing assets…is not enough; we must use them. It should be Russia, not taxpayers in NATO countries, that pays the costs of Russian hostilities.”

“As Ukraine War Escalates, Witkoff and Kushner Are Focused on Iran,” Anton Troianovski, New York Times, 07.02.26.

  • Troianovski writes that as Russia and Ukraine escalate to “one of the most dangerous moments” since the invasion began, Trump’s two main negotiators—Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner—“traveled to Qatar this week for another round of Iran talks,” even as “Ukraine was launching more drones toward Moscow and … Russia was readying its latest barrage targeting Kyiv.” The last known face‑to‑face Russia–Ukraine meeting was in Switzerland in February “with Mr. Witkoff and Mr. Kushner sitting between them,” after which “the Iran war consumed the Trump officials’ attention.” Zelensky voiced frustration, saying he was “still waiting for them to visit Ukraine” and adding, “I understand that there are challenges in the Middle East, but we need more, more than words.” A senior U.S. official said the envoys are “prepared to travel to Russia and Ukraine if there was something new to discuss, but that they would not travel ‘for a photo op’.”
  • In Moscow, Troianovski reports, officials are “desperately waiting for the return of Witkoff and Kushner,” and that “Mr. Putin said on Sunday that he expected the pair back in Moscow after the end ‘of the ‘hot phase’ on the Iranian track’.” Witkoff has met Putin seven times since Trump returned to office, but “has yet to visit Ukraine.” Russian officials, he writes, see Witkoff as “a critical channel for accomplishing Kremlin goals that only the United States can deliver, including an arrangement keeping Ukraine out of NATO,” yet are frustrated by the “uneven nature” of the visits and want “a more structured diplomatic process.” Meanwhile, analysts such as Andrew Weiss warn the war has entered an “escalatory spiral,” and Samuel Charap cautions that “this conflict is not one that waits for you to have time for it… The risks of escalation are always there.”

“Comment by Aide to the President of Russia Yury Ushakov Following the Telephone Conversation Between Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump,” Yury Ushakov, Kremlin.ru, 07.04.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • “Today’s telephone conversation between the two heads of state – the fourth this year – was not only ceremonial but also businesslike and highly constructive, allowing for a frank discussion of current bilateral and international issues.”
  • “The Presidents naturally touched on the topic of the Ukrainian settlement, including in light of Donald Trump’s upcoming participation in the NATO summit in Turkey on July 7–8.”
  • “The American President once again confirmed his readiness to help bring about a swift cessation of hostilities and to seek peaceful solutions for overcoming the crisis. His special representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, will continue their mediation efforts and are prepared to come to Moscow at a convenient time.”
  • “On the Russian side, the preference for a political‑diplomatic settlement of the conflict was once again stressed, with the indispensable condition that Russia’s well‑known principled positions be taken into account.”
  • “However, Kiev and its European sponsors are betting on prolonging and even escalating the conflict, on terrorism against the civilian population. At the same time, the European ‘party of war’ proceeds from a distorted perception of the overall situation and the state of affairs on the line of contact.”
  • “Our President outlined the real situation on the battlefield, where the Russian Armed Forces are confidently advancing, liberating one settlement after another.”
  • “An important stage in the liberation of the entire territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic was the establishment of control over such a key strongpoint of the Ukrainian Armed Forces as Konstantinovka, and no matter how the Kiev regime clings to the remaining fortified areas, our army will certainly take them.”
  • “Speaking about the situation around Iran, Vladimir Putin expressed the hope that the negotiating process based on the memorandum of understanding between the United States and Iran will make it possible to find mutually acceptable, long‑term solutions on key issues of the settlement. Our readiness to provide practical assistance to de‑escalation and stabilization efforts in the region was confirmed.”
  • “Donald Trump, for his part, thanked the Russian side for its balanced position and constructive proposals.”
  • “With regard to bilateral relations, the Presidents stressed the importance of continuing contacts, including on military‑political and, of course, economic issues. Colossal prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation between our countries can be seen in this area, and for this – as Donald Trump emphasized – it would be desirable to bring the Ukrainian conflict to an end as soon as possible.”

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

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

“Russia, the U.S., and China in a Changing Strategic Landscape,” Interview with Thomas Graham by Alina Pashina on the Margins of the XII Primakov readings, 06.29.26.

  • “The threat of escalation is not so great between the United States and Russia at this point, as it is between Europe and Russia as a consequence of the Ukraine conflict.”
  • “That is where I see the real risk at this point.”
  • “The United States could play a role of helping to lower the temperature, but it would have to be more actively engaged diplomatically than it is at this point.”
  • “I think the arms control regime will be rebuilt over time. There’s significant support within the American political establishment.”
  • “There is continuing recognition that strategic stability is critical to the interest of the United States. We presume it’s also true for Russia.”
  • “We need to think more broadly about what arms control is, who needs to be engaged, and we may need, at the end of the day, several different fora.”
  • “At some point China will have to be brought into the conversation. That is a matter for both Washington and Moscow.”
  • “Competition is almost inevitable. The question is whether that competition is managed responsibly or whether it’s allowed to get out of control.”
  • “If you look at the developments in the Ukrainian conflict over the past four years it’s clear that each side has dealt very carefully on issues that they thought might elicit an escalatory response.”
  • “First, I am an advocate of restarting Strategic Stability Talks… In addition, if we put together a more comprehensive negotiating process for the Russia‑Ukraine conflict, that would also tend to lower the risk of escalation.”

“NATO backs Ukraine’s push to hit Russia harder, says Finnish president,” Henry Foy, Financial Times, 07.06.26.

  • Finnish president Alexander Stubb says “Nato leaders support Ukraine’s intensified drone strikes deep within Russia.” He tells the FT that the campaign has “changed the strategic thinking also of those who are trying to mediate peace,” adding that “everyone, including our American friends, sees that Ukraine is right now on top on the battlefield.” Stubb links deep strikes to public pressure inside Russia: “When war becomes personal . . . the Russian population is going to turn against it. This gives us an opportunity to get back to the negotiating table, which I think we all desperately want.”
  • On escalation risks, Stubb says “the steps of escalation are always possible” but recounts that when he raised nuclear fears with China’s Wang Yi, “the answer was very firm from the Chinese side and involved plenty of red flags.” He warns Europe to expect “hybrid attacks on Europe” in the short term and to prepare “for a scenario where Russia . . . might want to attack Europe” after rebuilding forces. 
  • On NATO membership, he states, “If I had a choice, we would make Ukraine into a Nato member immediately. But I’m realistic that that’s not on the political cards,” arguing instead that “Nato needs Ukraine as much as Ukraine needs Nato,” since “their capabilities in drones and missiles are superior to those of most members in the alliance” and “in terms of modern warfare capabilities, Ukraine is number one.”

“The Russian Reckoning,” Walter Russell Mead, Wall Street Journal, 06.29.26.

  • Mead asks whether “Russia [could] be losing its hard-won post-Cold-War status as a great power,” arguing that “as the bad news for Vladimir Putin piles up, the question of Russian decline—and its implications for world geopolitics—is coming into focus.” He writes that recent weeks “have been nightmarish for the Russian leader,” with “Kyiv’s drone strikes deep into Russian territory” disrupting “the lives of millions of Russians who had been told they were winning a war against a weak and ineffectual Ukraine,” while “the unrelenting pace of military casualties continues to bleed Russia’s declining population without significant battlefield advances.” In occupied Crimea, “blackouts and fuel shortages hobble” the peninsula and “desperate tourists and residents are struggling to escape…via war-damaged routes,” so that “Mr. Putin faces his greatest political challenge since Boris Yeltsin handed him the keys to the Kremlin in 1999.”
  • Militarily, Mead highlights “the failure of Russian power in and around the Black Sea,” noting that Ukraine has “forced Russia’s Black Sea fleet out of Sevastopol in occupied Crimea and neutralized Russian sea power.” Energy troubles now “go well beyond the fuel shortages caused by recent Ukrainian drone attacks,” as Iranian oil’s return could mean “collapsing oil revenue” while strikes “curtailing Russia’s ability to export” leave “grim downshifts in government revenue—even as the war demands every ruble Mr. Putin can find.” Though “Russia won’t disappear,” he concludes, “Moscow’s descent into the ranks of middle powers looks ever more likely.”

“Putin May See an Opportunity to Destroy NATO,” Gerard Baker, Wall Street Journal, 07.06.26.

  • Gerard Baker asks whether “Vladimir Putin [is] about to attack a NATO member state,” arguing that despite Russia’s “disastrous war on Ukraine” and “1.4 million casualties, a third of them killed in action,” conversations with senior European officials suggest “the possibility is real and rising.” He warns that if the U.S. failed to respond to aggression against a member, “NATO would become a dead letter,” which “is why Mr. Putin might attack,” seeing an opening to stage “a sudden show of unexpected force just as he appears to be reeling,” in a narrow window while “European NATO members… are still nowhere near ready for a defensive war.”
  • Baker reports that “there is no guarantee” a post‑Trump administration would be so skeptical of NATO, so Putin might calculate that if he “chose the right targets” now, “European leaders suspect Mr. Trump’s administration wouldn’t come to a NATO country’s aid,” fatally undermining Article 5—a “dream outcome for Mr. Putin.” Intelligence chatter includes scenarios such as “a Russian seizure of islands in the Baltic” or an incursion to “assist” Russian minorities in Estonia: not “a full-scale invasion,” but enough that “if NATO failed to respond, its credibility would be in tatters.” Even for those who see a large U.S. European commitment as “an anachronism,” Baker argues that allowing Putin to “deal a timely and fatal blow to an already weakened trans-Atlantic alliance” would be “another hammer to the head of Western security and hegemony,” and he pointedly asks whether any U.S. president would want to “take that risk.”

“With America in Retreat, Europe Now Depends on Ukraine,” Liana Fix and Paul B. Stares, Foreign Policy, 06.29.26.

  • Fix and Stares argue that as U.S. commitment erodes, “Ukraine emerges as the linchpin of the continent’s defense,” writing that “the weaker Washington’s security guarantee becomes, the more Europe needs Kyiv.” In a 2029 crisis game they ran, with an isolationist U.S. “seeking normalization with Russia” and pulling commanders from NATO, Russia “senses an opening and progressively escalates against Europe,” first by demanding talks “on the basis of the Kremlin’s December 2021 treaty drafts” and then via “conventional attacks and nuclear threats.” European participants, they report, “were unified in rejecting Russian negotiation offers as lacking credibility and good faith,” and a key Kremlin demand—“stopping all support for Ukraine and leaving it to Russia’s control”—“was not even considered”: “It was clear to participants that if Ukraine fell, Europe would be next.”
  • As Europeans improvised coalitions of the willing, “they relied heavily on Ukraine as a launchpad for offensive counteractions in response to Russian attacks on NATO territory, potentially including a reopening of the front in Ukraine,” and the Ukrainian side suggested its forces “could also play a role in defending Europe’s eastern flank.” The authors conclude that “Ukraine plays a crucial role in Europe’s future security with less U.S. support”: in peacetime, it can “pin down Russian forces and buy time for Europe to rebuild its own capabilities,” and in war, “Ukraine fields the most powerful conventional land army in Europe, hardened by years of high-intensity combat,” with “drone, air defense, and artificial intelligence capabilities…battle-proven in a way no European arsenal can claim.” As U.S. forces are cut and “the credibility of NATO’s conventional deterrent erodes,” they warn that “Europe’s weak position increases Ukraine’s value,” and that “there is no imaginable future defense architecture for Europe without the United States in which Ukraine is not a key element.”

“Saving NATO in the era of Trump,” Editorial Board, Financial Times, 07.05.26.

  • “To salvage the alliance … Europeans need to take matters into their own hands,” the editorial board contends, urging them to cut dependence on US enablers, fix procurement, and “invest more quickly in priority equipment.” The Ankara summit is “shaping up to be another show designed to appeal to Trump’s vanity,” the authors believe; Europeans must prepare to defend themselves with “much less American help, and potentially without any at all.”

“The Europeanisation of NATO is ever more important,” Timothy Garton Ash, Financial Times, 07.05.26.

  • “For the actual military defense of Europe, the starting point must be the Europeanisation of NATO,” Garton Ash contends. He calls for a 10‑year effort to build European forces and “strategic enablers,” alongside “immediate contingency planning for a European-led and, in the worst case, Europe-alone defense.” Only if Europe shows “iron determination to defend itself will Putin be deterred,” the author concludes.

“Unconventional deterrence: How Europe can ward off a Russian attack,” Jean-Marie Guéhenno, ECFR, 07.02.26.

  • Guéhenno argues that “Ukraine’s strikes deep inside Russia are teaching Vladimir Putin the painful lesson that high-intensity war involving a nuclear-armed state can take place below the nuclear threshold,” and warns that “European leaders must not repeat his mistake and assume their territory is safe from hybrid or conventional attack by virtue of NATO’s nuclear guarantees.” He writes that Western powers were right to prove Russia wrong in thinking it could “launch an aggression against a neighbor while sanctuarizing its own territory by the mere fact of being a nuclear power,” but now “Vladimir Putin aims to prove Ukraine’s Western partners wrong in their belief that they remain safe behind the protection of NATO,” since “if the battlefield of Ukraine expands to Russia, [why] would the countries that support Ukraine remain untouched?”
  • Guéhenno notes that Russia has “plenty of options at its disposal” short of nuclear use or a land incursion, citing Latvia’s warning that Moscow is considering “hybrid attacks, such as missiles, drones or other actions designed to send a signal: stop supporting Ukraine, or you will have your own problems.” He urges Europe to adopt “a continuum of deterrence,” combining “conventional deterrence through long-range strike capabilities with the nuclear deterrence essential to prevent Russian nuclear blackmail and escalation dominance.” Recalling reports that in late 2022 Washington warned that crossing the nuclear threshold would bring “devastating conventional strikes against Russian strategic assets,” he argues that “this was a much more credible threat by the US than the threat of a nuclear strike” and that Europe should learn from it. The goal, he concludes, is “a more inclusive vision of deterrence” in which all major European military powers share responsibility and “accelerate and possibly consolidate the various European programs to develop European long-range strike capabilities.”

“Russia’s UAV Campaign Over Europe,” Charlie Edwards, Rex Fox O'Loughlin and Louis Bearn, IISS, 06.02.26.

  • The paper judges “it is highly likely that the Kremlin conducted a UAV campaign over Europe,” and “likely that Russian-linked vessels and the ‘shadow fleet’ were used as launch/recovery platforms…as part of the Kremlin’s wider unconventional war on Europe.” Between August 2024 and February 2026, UAVs flew “in the airspace of a dozen NATO member states and Ireland, forcing repeated closures of major commercial aviation hubs, disrupting military operations and penetrating the perimeters of some of Europe’s most sensitive defense installations – among them nuclear-sharing sites… and France’s ballistic-missile submarine base at Île Longue.”
  • The authors say the campaign “operated with substantial impunity,” revealing that Europe’s air defenses “were not built for…relatively low-cost UAVs and deniable incursions” below the Article 5 threshold. They argue Moscow likely sought to “map vulnerabilities around critical infrastructure, including…military logistics nodes supporting Ukraine,” and that the pattern of incidents “cannot be adequately explained by misidentification, hobbyist activity or opportunistic harassment alone,” exposing that “the threshold for collective punishment was higher than European deterrence postures have previously assumed.”

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?

  • No significant developments.

Missile defense:

  • No significant developments.

Nuclear arms:

“When War Is at the Doorstep,” Nikolai Patrushev, Rossiyskaya Gazeta, 06.15.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Speaking about the Ukraine war, Nikolai Patrushev claims that “in the course of the special military operation we are also fighting for the future of the Ukrainian population,” which he says has been “literally brought to the brink of survival.” He argues that “today in Ukraine we are carrying out a mission to save our brothers who have fallen under neo‑Nazi occupation,” and insists that “Europe is again consciously participating in the destruction of the Slavic population, this time by the hands of Ukrainian neo‑Nazis,” according to the author.
  • Patrushev maintains that “Kyiv and its European sponsors” are “betting on prolonging and even escalating the conflict,” while Russia, he says, prefers a “political and diplomatic settlement” if its “fundamental” conditions are met. He frames the war as part of a broader Western strategy to “destroy not only the country but the entire Russian world,” and argues that many Ukrainians “do not want to fight and do not consider Russia an enemy,” but are controlled by “neo‑Nazi gangs sponsored by London and Brussels,” the author wrote.
  • On nuclear risks, Patrushev warns that some European states, especially in the Baltics, are provoking disaster. He says that when he watches Baltic leaders, he has the impression of “Baltic mice tugging at the whiskers of a cat with nuclear claws,” and calls such talk about attacking Kaliningrad the rhetoric of “pathologically abnormal people,” reflecting his view that escalation could have catastrophic consequences for Europe.

"A New World War: The Road to Victory," Sergei A. Karaganov, Russia in Global Affairs, 07.01.26. Clues from Russian Views. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Karaganov contends that the Ukraine conflict is a central front in an already‑ongoing “new world war” between the “collective West” and a Russia‑ and China‑led “World Majority.” He argues that Russia erred by treating it as a limited “Special Military Operation” against Kyiv rather than as a systemic clash with the West: “It is not about taking towns in Ukraine, but about who will win the historical battle: the West, or we and the World Majority?”
  • He criticizes Moscow’s early conduct of the war for underestimating both “the West’s desire to crush Russia” and “the Ukrainian regime’s readiness for war and the degree of Ukrainians’ brainwashing,” as well as for accepting a Western‑imposed “war of attrition with an economically and demographically superior enemy.” Instead, he calls for the “destruction of the Kiev regime” and the “liberation” of southern and eastern Ukrainian regions as a non‑negotiable security requirement.
  • Karaganov argues that Russia’s “key mistake was to only partially utilize our most important weapon: nuclear deterrence,” which he presents as the foundation of its sovereignty since the 1940s–50s. He urges a rapid buildup of “operational and strategic nuclear capabilities” and a doctrinal shift toward explicit readiness to strike “U.S. and European overseas assets” and, if necessary, conduct “grouped nuclear strikes… on military bases and key industrial facilities” should the West continue its current course.
  • He calls for revising Russia’s nuclear doctrine to specify that in any conflict with a coalition whose “economic, demographic, and technological potential exceeds ours, Russian command will have the right and obligation to use nuclear weapons,” including pre‑planned strikes on “communication, control, and logistics centers… and—crucially—the places (especially in Europe) where the elite is concentrated,” in order to “instill primal fear” in Western leaders and break their sense of impunity.
  • Rejecting the familiar axiom that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war,” Karaganov labels it an “idiotic view” and argues that, while use would be a “great sin,” a de facto refusal to use nuclear weapons is an “unforgivable, deadly, and criminal sin” because it invites Western escalation. He insists that “a nuclear war—God forbid—can be (easily) won, especially against a crowded and morally weak Europe,” and urges nuclear tests, enhanced delivery systems (including hypersonics), and deeper integration of nuclear threats into Russian regional war planning as the only realistic way to end the Ukraine conflict on acceptable terms and prevent a larger thermonuclear catastrophe.

Counterterrorism:

  • No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

  • No significant developments.

Cyber security/AI: 

  • No significant developments.

Energy exports from CIS:

  • No significant developments.

Climate change:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Disconnected From Reality: Why Vladimir Putin’s assessment of events is becoming increasingly inaccurate, and why he is insisting on it more forcefully,” Re:Russia, 07.01.26.

  • The authors argue that “one of the defining features of Russian political life” is now “the widening gap between Vladimir Putin’s assessments of the current situation… and the assessments of virtually everyone else,” noting that Putin “pointedly ignores or denies developments that dominate the information agenda,” such as “Ukraine's decisive advantage in tactical drone warfare, the stagnation of the front, the effective isolation of Crimea, and the fuel crisis caused by Ukraine's successful campaign of strikes against Russian oil refineries.” In Putin’s “alternative reality,” they write, “Russian forces are instead advancing confidently along the line of contact in every direction,” while Ukrainian strikes are “portrayed as causing only limited damage and serving primarily to distract attention from Russia's battlefield successes,” with Putin insisting that “‘everything is operating steadily and with a substantial margin of safety’” and that Russia will still secure “the whole of Donetsk region” and “‘Little Russia.’”
  • Survey data, they note, show the opposite: in a June FOM poll of “most memorable events,” “35% of all mentions related to Ukrainian drone attacks on Moscow and other Russian regions, together with the fuel crisis,” while only 16 percent cited the “special military operation” or Russian successes, so that “his version of events was outweighed… by roughly two to one.” On the front, they contrast Putin’s repeated claims that places like Lyman and Kupyansk are nearly or already “liberated” with OSINT showing Russian advances of “less than 100 square kilometers” in May–June 2026—“the worst result since late 2023”—and conclude that his interview “appears to be a pre-emptive verbal intervention designed to counter these disappointing results with an alternative version of reality.” At a June 12 meeting with assault troops, they add, seven of nine soldiers raised missing drone and EW capabilities, while Putin responded that Russia already had systems “no worse than Starlink” and only needed to “scale them up,” a description the authors call “a misleading characterization of the project.” This conceptual universe, they argue, clings to “meat assaults” and centralized armaments, but is “fundamentally at odds with the transformation of warfare driven by new technologies,” in which dominance in the “low sky” and bottom‑up innovation neutralize numerical superiority on the ground.

“Putin has lost touch with reality,” Owen Matthews, The Spectator, 07.04.26.

  • Owen Matthews contends that Putin “lives in a parallel reality, a sealed bubble of disinformation where all the data he receives confirms the wisdom of his choices,” and calls this “the most serious barrier to peace in Ukraine.” The author argues that Putin is “not the victim but rather the architect of his own isolation,” with an inner circle of generals and KGB veterans who have “a deep vested interest in continuing the war” and curate “stories that victory is at hand,” even as Ukraine devastates Russian troops, oil refineries and supply lines.
  • Comparing Putin to Stalin, Matthews writes that “Putin values loyalty above all else, trusts only men whom he has known for decades… and does not tolerate anyone who brings him news that contradicts his own world view,” creating “a catastrophic self‑reinforcing vicious circle of disinformation.” He notes that over the years Putin has “systematically sacked people, including personal friends, who dared to dissent,” while sycophants like Viktor Medvedchuk and security chiefs such as Sergei Beseda and Valery Gerasimov fed him fatally over‑optimistic assessments about Ukraine.
  • The author describes a hermetically sealed information environment in which Putin has a specially edited TV news bulletin showing “an ideal picture of the beautiful Russia of today,” staged “film set”–style public events with professional extras, and no smartphone or internet use. Meanwhile, senior officials admit “everyone is tired of the war,” but “the challenge for those in power… is how to communicate that to Putin,” who, in CIA director William Burns’s words, is a “combustible combination of grievance and ambition and insecurity” and remains convinced “that time is on his side in Ukraine.”

"Putin Is Slipping Into Delusion," Simon Shuster, The Atlantic, 07.01.26.

  •  Simon Shuster writes that when “things get dicey in Moscow, Vladimir Putin tends to drop out of sight for a while,” as the Kremlin fills TV “with pretaped footage of the president” while he hides for days. Since Ukraine ramped up drone and missile strikes, which “caused fuel shortages across Russia, destroyed infrastructure, and shattered the sense of stability that Putin offers his people in exchange for their loyalty,” Putin has taken several such breaks and “has mostly avoided talking about the Ukrainian strikes,” the author notes.
  • In a “carefully scripted interview on state TV,” Putin “looked bored with the details of governing Russia and managing the frustrations of his citizens, but he did not appear tired of his war in Ukraine,” Shuster observes. He spent most of the 19 minutes “dissecting the minutiae of the fighting,” even inventing an encirclement “on the left bank of the Stary Oskol river” near Rubtsi, though “there is no river called Stary Oskol in that region,” leading the author to conclude that “the Russian president’s obsession with the details of the fighting appears to have crossed the line into delusion.”
  • Meanwhile, “81 percent of Russians want the war to end ‘as early as tomorrow,’” and only 9 percent back fighting on, even as Russia loses “at least 30,000 troops a month” and may face “another wave of mobilization.” Yet Shuster writes that Putin “has convinced himself that the attritional math of the war favors Russia” and still repeats his aim to conquer “all of Novorossiya,” a goal that would require “several more years of fighting” and “hundreds of thousands of soldiers,” regardless of “how his people might feel about it.”

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Defense and aerospace:

  • No significant developments.
  • 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:

“ASEAN and Russia at 35: Symbolism, Strategy, and the Limits of Partnership,” Gurjit Singh, ORF, 07.06.26.

  • Gurjit Singh writes that the Kazan summit, marking 35 years of ties, was “an important strategic engagement at a juncture where the global order is increasingly broken, cleaved, and searching for multipolarity.” Bringing together all 11 ASEAN member states and Russia, it adopted four key documents, including the “ASEAN-Russia Strategic Partnership Plan of Action (POA) for 2026–2030,” which, according to the author, reveals “Moscow's broader strategic ambitions in the Asia-Pacific.”
  • For Russia, “this summit was strategically important, as it remains embroiled in the Ukraine crisis and faces Western sanctions,” Singh observes, arguing that participation by nine ASEAN leaders allowed Putin “to demonstrate that Russia remains relevant in Asia.” He notes that ASEAN “has no common position on the Ukraine crisis,” and their presence in Kazan “was certainly not an endorsement of Russia's intervention in Ukraine; it reflected, rather, an effort to keep dialogue open with all major powers.”
  • The author highlights Russia’s bid to build a “Eurasian institutional arc” linking ASEAN, the EAEU and the SCO, and points to energy and civilian nuclear cooperation as especially consequential. Yet he cautions that “compared with ASEAN's investment relationships with China, Japan, the European Union, and India, Russia’s economic imprint remains modest,” and concludes that “the political ambitions of the partnership continue to outpace its economic foundations.”

“The ‘Christian’ Putin’s Alliance With the Taliban,” Bernard-Henri Lévy, Wall Street Journal, 06.30.26.

  • Lévy writes that for 12 years, since “his barbaric war against Ukraine began,” Kremlin ideologues and Western fellow‑travelers have portrayed Vladimir Putin as “the savior of a decadent and declining West, the guardian of a threatened and besieged Christianity, a bulwark against radical Islamism advancing on all fronts.” Yet, he notes, they are “untroubled by the cries of ‘Allahu Akbar!’ on the battlefield from Ramzan Kadyrov’s Chechen praetorians,” and “undisturbed that on Oct. 26, 2023, Moscow was the first capital after the Oct. 7 atrocities to welcome a Hamas delegation,” or by Alexander Dugin’s Eurasian project based on a “new Islamic‑Orthodox axis.”
  • Against that backdrop, Lévy highlights that “on May 27, Russia and Afghanistan signed a military and security cooperation agreement aimed at strengthening ties between Moscow and the Taliban regime,” with Sergei Shoigu and Taliban defense minister Mohammad Yaqoub present. Moscow’s envoy Zamir Kabulov has said Russia will “refurbish the combat helicopters of this regime of assassins,” “train the mullahs” and an 8,000‑strong elite force, and provide intelligence to a regime defined by “obsessive hostility toward Jews and ‘crusaders’—that is, Christians.” In return, he writes, the Taliban will police “the southern borders of Greater Russia.” For Lévy, this “strategic and pragmatic partnership” exposes as “shame, cynicism and infamy” the claim that Putin’s Russia fights in Ukraine to defend Christian civilization, asking what remains of arguments for “de‑escalation” and “renew[ing] ties” with an “eternal Russia” that now openly backs “the worst forms of Islamism.”

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Ukraine:

See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“China in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan: From Economic Presence to a New Security Role,” Rollan Ismail, Ifri, 07.06.26.

  • Rollan Ismail writes that “over the past three decades, China’s influence in Central Asia has steadily expanded, but in the last three to five years this process has entered a markedly accelerated phase,” arguing that “following 2022, Beijing effectively revised both its strategy and its operational approach toward the region.” In his view, “China is evolving from a predominantly economic partner into an increasingly significant political actor and, in some cases, a provider of security,” extending its reach “into the spheres of regional security and military-technical cooperation.”
  • According to the author, Beijing is “building its own security architecture in Central Asia by increasing its influence over the domestic stability of regional states and gradually eroding the role of traditional external security guarantors.” He contends that “the securitization of Chinese influence is fostering growing yet largely concealed competition within the framework of the Sino-Russian partnership,” while Central Asian republics become “increasingly” dependent on “Chinese resources, technologies, and political support.”
  • Ismail argues that China is “moving beyond a model centered primarily on economic engagement toward a more comprehensive strategy aimed at safeguarding its position in the region,” using “closer engagement with ruling elites,” “stronger party-to-party ties,” and governance and surveillance tools. Yet he cautions that this does not mean “the automatic displacement of Russia,” but rather “a more complex reconfiguration of external power relations.”

See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Footnotes

  1. The co-authors estimate that Russia has suffered 1.4 million casualties between February 2022 and June 2026, while Ukrainian forces have suffered somewhere between 525,000 and 625,000 casualties in the same period, according to the CSIS report.

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 a RM editorial policy.

Slider photo: Servicemen with Ukraine’s K-2 brigade launch a midrange drone toward Russian positions on the front line in Ukraine’s Donetsk region on June 22, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Sections

Jump to Section

  1. 3 Ideas to Explore
  2. I. U.S. and Russian priorities for the bilateral agenda
    1. Nuclear security and safety:
    2. North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs:
    3. Iran and its nuclear program:
    4. Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:
    5. Military and security aspects of the Ukraine conflict and their impacts:
    6. Military aid to Ukraine:
    7. Punitive measures related to Russia’s war against Ukraine and their impact globally:
    8. Ukraine-related negotiations: 
    9. Great Power rivalry/new Cold War/NATO-Russia relations:
    10. China-Russia: Allied or aligned?
    11. Missile defense:
    12. Nuclear arms:
    13. Counterterrorism:
    14. Conflict in Syria:
    15. Cyber security/AI: 
    16. Energy exports from CIS:
    17. Climate change:
    18. U.S.-Russian economic ties:
    19. U.S.-Russian relations in general:
  3. II. Russia’s domestic policies 
    1. Domestic politics, economy and energy:
    2. Defense and aerospace:
    3. Security, law-enforcement, justice and emergencies:
  4. III. Russia’s relations with other countries
    1. Russia’s external policies, including  relations with “far abroad” countries:
    2. Ukraine:
    3. Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

Click to Subscribe

Russia Matters offers weekly news and analysis digests, event announcements and media advisories.
Choose and sign up here!