Russia Analytical Report, May 11–18, 2026

5 Ideas to Explore

  1. Russia and China are “moving, slowly but unmistakably, toward a structural alliance that is reshaping the global balance of power,” but at “different speeds,” pro-Kremlin Russian expert Alexey Martynov argues in his commentary for RT, entitled “Beijing can no longer treat Moscow as a junior partner.”1 While “Moscow has largely accepted the logic of deep strategic interdependence, Beijing, by contrast, still behaves as though it can preserve a carefully managed partnership in which China remains the senior partner while minimizing its own obligations,” Martynov writes. In the concluding part of his commentary, Martynov—who is reportedly an associate professor at an academy affiliated with the Russian government—claims that “China still often behaves as though it can enjoy the benefits of strategic partnership without fully committing itself to the burdens that come with it.” He warns that “at some point, Beijing will have to decide whether it truly views Russia as an equal strategic partner or merely as a useful resource base,” and that this choice “will shape the architecture of Eurasia for decades to come.” Commenting on Xi Jinping’s meetings with Donald Trump2 and Vladimir Putin,3 leading pro-Kremlin Russian foreign policy expert Dmitry Trenin argues that “Acting separately toward the United States, let alone competing with one another, would mean acting to their own detriment, both for Russia and for China.” That an associate professor at a Russian government academy would launch “unprecedented attacks against the Chinese leadership” in a Russian government-funded outlet “cannot be viewed as a coincidence,” according to Russian-language Telegram channel “Kitaiskaya Ugroza.”*
  2. The authors of a recent NYT article4 claimed that “at its average monthly rate of advance so far this year, it would take Russia more than three decades to seize full control of the Donbas.” However, after crunching the numbers, this appears to be a dramatic miscalculation. At the current rate of advance in 2026 (27.5 square miles per month), it would take Russia around 74 months to capture the roughly 2,000 square miles of the Donbas that remain under Ukraine’s control. By contrast, if NYT’s estimate were correct, Russian forces would be advancing at a rate of just 5.5 square miles per month. While Russia’s battlefield progress has certainly slowed from 2025, when Russian forces were capturing around 169 square miles of territory each month, NYT has overstated the level of the slowdown.
  3. The past week has seen Putin flaunt what he has described as one of the latest additions to Russia’s strategic nuclear arsenal, the multi-warhead Sarmat ICBM. Putin described it as “the most powerful missile system in the world” and vowed that “at the end of this year, Sarmat will indeed be placed on combat duty.”5 Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has also weighed in on Russia’s nuclear arsenal, telling Russian TV this week that “a nuclear power must not be threatened, its existence must not be threatened.” “This,” he continued, “gives us the opportunity to be confident in this, and this is the basis of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear deterrence is an integral part and the cornerstone of our national security as a whole.” Meanwhile, the authors of “Russian nuclear weapons, 2026”— Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns and Mackenzie Knight‑Boyle—write that “Russia is in the late stages of a multi‑decade‑long modernization program to replace all of its Soviet‑era nuclear‑capable systems with newer versions,” but “elements of Russia’s nuclear modernization are proceeding much more slowly than planned,” with “upgrades to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers” facing “significant delays.” 
  4. Carnegie Endowment’s Alexander Gabuev sees three “positive elements for Russia” in Trump’s Iran conflict. The first is “a big shot of adrenaline in the arm for… Putin’s economy and his war machine” via oil, fertilizers, aluminum and other commodities. The second is the “drawdown of Patriot interceptor missiles.” The third is that “the United States is distracted, consumed by another war for which there is no clear outcome,” with the closed Strait of Hormuz dragging away U.S. attention that could have been used for “building leverage for Ukraine,” Gabuev said in an interview with FP. Economically and strategically, “the war in Tehran is the gift that keeps on giving” to Putin’s Russia, Gabuev summed in a separate interview with NYT.
  5. In his commentary for Carnegie Endowment, Ukrainian politics expert Konstantin Skorkin describes Ukraine as being shaken by a new wave of revelations from the so‑called Mindich tapes, with each new audio collected as part of the Ukrainian anti-corruption agencies’ Operation Midas undermining senior figures around Volodymyr Zelenskyy.6 Skorkin insists the key question is whether Zelenskyy himself appears on the tapes, and even if he doesn’t, the president bears “at least moral responsibility” for an entourage now riddled with kompromat. As part of Operation Midas, officials from the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and Special Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) have served former head of Zelenskyy’s presidential office Andriy Yermak with a formal notice that he was a suspect in the deepening corruption probe, anti-corruption officials told FT. Yermak was detained on May 14, but then released on bail on May 18. NABU and SAPO say more than 460 million hryvnias (≈$10–10.5 million) in illicit funds—partly from corrupt schemes at state nuclear company Energoatom—were funneled via a housing cooperative and cash payments to build four $2 million mansions and shared spa facilities in an elite construction project near Kyiv. Alongside Ermak, ex-deputy prime minister Oleksiy Chernyshov, ex‑energy and justice minister Herman Halushchenko and businessman Timur Mindich, have been named as suspects. Writing in Lawfare, Ukraine Fellow at Lawfare, Anastasia Lapatina describes the evolving events as “the biggest corruption scandal in modern Ukrainian history," which "is getting a whole lot worse.” 

NB: Due to the Memorial Day holiday in the U.S., the next issue of the Russia Analytical Report will be published on Tuesday, May 26, 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:

“The Moscow-Beijing-Pyongyang axis is here to stay,” Edward Howell, The Spectator, 05.17.26.

  • Howell notes that during Trump’s China trip “North Korea was hardly at the top of the agenda,” yet “history was made as North Korean soldiers participated in Moscow’s Victory Day parade for the first time.” The day before, he writes, “Kim Jong-un had pledged to Vladimir Putin that North Korea would ‘give top priority’ to its relations with Russia,” and “the striking sight of over 120 North Korean naval, ground, and infantry troops on parade… demonstrated that the Russia-North Korea relationship looks here to stay.” While Kim praised North Koreans fighting for Russia—“of whom over 2,000 have been killed and over 3,000 wounded”—as “living bombs,” Russia’s defense minister announced a security pact with Pyongyang “lasting until 2031,” the author notes.
  • At the same time, Howell argues, “North Korea will not want to alienate China, its decades-long anti-Western economic backer.” He points out that when the Iran war led the US to redeploy THAAD batteries from South Korea, “there were no clearer victors than Kim and Xi.” For Beijing, he writes, “maintaining the status quo on the Korean Peninsula is a far higher preference than urging North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons,” and “there is no clearer indication of China’s priorities than its assistance to North Korea in facilitating its sanctions evasion.”
  • Howell insists that “China’s unwillingness to stop the alliance between Russia and North Korea, its ramping up of economic coercion, and its disinterest in North Korean denuclearization” show that “China’s vision of a just world – working in tandem with Russia and North Korea – is anything but conducive to Western interests.” While Xi proclaims that “achieving the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation and making America great again can go hand in hand,” Howell argues that “what was left unspecified… is on whose terms such achievements will be sought,” and warns that “North Korea may still be a small elephant in the meeting rooms of Beijing, but it is an elephant that cannot be ignored.”

Iran and its nuclear program:

“Is Russia the Main Beneficiary of Trump’s Iran Mistake?”, Ravi Agrawal with Alexander Gabuev, Foreign Policy, 05.11.26.

  • Ravi Agrawal writes that “the ongoing standoff between the United States and Iran is hurting most of the global economy. But not Russia,” noting that data suggest Moscow has “already made billions of dollars of additional revenue from oil sales” thanks to higher prices and Washington’s temporary easing of sanctions on Russian crude. Alexander Gabuev cites colleague Sergey Vakulenko’s estimate that “every $10 increase per barrel gives ‘Russia Inc.’—the state and companies together—roughly $100 million a month,” and that in April “Russia earned $9 billion for its oil sales. That’s double the oil revenues that Russia had before the invasion.”
  • Gabuev identifies three “positive elements for Russia” in Trump’s Iran war. First is “a big shot of adrenaline in the arm for… Putin’s economy and his war machine” via oil, fertilizers, aluminum, and other commodities. Second is the “drawdown of Patriot interceptor missiles”: by his calculation, “the United States and its partners in the Gulf have used more Patriot interceptors than Ukraine has received from the United States and its allies since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022,” and since “Patriot interceptors are the only efficient antidote against Russian ballistic missiles,” any shortage is “the key vulnerability” for Ukraine if Russia rebuilds a missile stockpile. Third is that “the United States is distracted, consumed by another war for which there is no clear outcome,” with the closed Strait of Hormuz dragging U.S. attention that could have been used “building leverage for Ukraine.”
  • At the same time, Gabuev notes a “silver lining” for Kyiv: Zelensky’s team “jumped immediately on the opportunity to tap into this new demand for interceptors against Iranian drones,” sending Ukrainian operators to the Gulf to train local militaries and discuss joint ventures and investment in indigenous air‑defense tech. He says this could give Ukraine’s defense industry “a much-needed boost.” On direct Russia–Iran ties, Gabuev says Russia is “not Iran’s treaty ally” but “happy to help Iran with its limited means,” sharing targeting data on U.S. assets and “drone components,” since “Iran provided Russia with Shahed drone technology first, and then Russia went into deep modernization” and is now “happy to give this technology back to Iran.”
  • The discussion closes by connecting the Iran war back to Ukraine and Russia’s internal position. Gabuev argues the scaled‑down Victory Day parade “exposes that Russia is facing mounting problems in guaranteeing the security of its military and production assets,” with long‑range Ukrainian attacks forcing Moscow to redeploy air defenses and even shut down mobile internet. He notes that “Russia really needed Trump’s intervention at the very last moment to broker a cease-fire” around the parade, and that Kyiv “played it brilliantly” by demonstrating it can “hold Moscow at risk.” On the battlefield, he says Russia “maintains a huge manpower advantage” and is “gaining territory” at high cost but “is not anywhere closer to reaching” its strategic goals; the key unknown is whether Putin “gets the message” that “the war turns into negative returns for the Kremlin” or is lulled by generals who insist “give us another six months… we just need the decisive push and it will fall.”

“Putin’s Credibility Has Suffered in the Iran War. Or Has It?,” Steven Erlanger, New York Times, 05.12.26.

  • Steven Erlanger writes that Russia appears battered — “bogged down in Ukraine,” having lost allies in Syria, Venezuela and Hungary — yet the overall picture is “mixed at the very least,” as “Europe [is] divided over the American-Israeli war in Iran and over American policy in general.” He notes that President Trump’s “disdain for NATO and America’s European allies has been an enormous benefit to Russia.”
  • Economically and strategically, “the war in Tehran is the gift that keeps on giving,” Alexander Gabuev said, with higher energy prices, loosened U.S. oil sanctions and missile‑defense stockpiles diverted from Ukraine. Russia has also “been remarkably successful in securing economic lifelines” through China, India and “shadow fleet” oil exports, according to the author, while exploiting the “Eurasian roundabout trade” to import Western goods.
  • Diplomatically, Erlanger reports, Russia is “selling a story about the war that resonates with non‑Western audiences,” as Hanna Notte put it, casting both Ukraine and Iran as battles against “neocolonial” U.S. power. This narrative, the author notes, is attractive in post‑colonial societies, even as Russia faces “enormous economic problems” and Mr. Putin’s approval is at its lowest since the Ukraine war began.

“NATO, Please Help. Trump Has No Strategy for Iran,” Thomas L. Friedman, New York Times, 05.12.26.

  • Thomas L. Friedman urges European allies to “get over” their (justified) loathing of Trump and “get all your navies together and proceed to the Persian Gulf immediately,” insisting NATO must make clear that Iran “will never, ever be allowed to decide who shall pass and who shall not through the Strait of Hormuz.” He warns that allowing Tehran’s new “Persian Gulf Strait Authority” to set up a de facto tollbooth would keep a vital energy lifeline in “permanent instability” and could inspire others to impose similar tolls.
  • Friedman argues that Trump and Netanyahu “have now boxed themselves in,” saying “these two reckless egomaniacs, who are nowhere near as smart as they think they are, have now boxed themselves in. Unfortunately, we are all in the box with them,” and that it is “difficult to see how this war ends in a peace deal” that doesn’t revive Iran’s regime. Yet he fears “our NATO allies will almost surely reject this appeal” because Trump has “so regularly denigrated NATO,” launched war “without an iota of consultation,” and been “utterly indifferent” to the economic pain imposed on allies.
  • Framing the region’s future as a struggle between “the Dahiya or Dubai,” Friedman writes that the “Dubai model” of relatively open, modernizing Gulf states is “precisely the one Tehran wants to destroy.” He quotes Mina Al‑Oraibi that if the U.A.E.’s rule‑of‑law, opportunity‑driven model is damaged “without anyone batting an eye,” and the Global South instead sees Iran as the only actor that “stood up to Trump and Netanyahu,” it would be “a tragedy that will diminish the whole region,” leading him to conclude that “we will all reap the whirlwind if Iran comes out of this stronger.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Humanitarian impact of the Ukraine conflict:

“EU Takes Aim at Russia’s Abductions of Ukrainian Children,” Alexandra Sharp, Foreign Policy, 05.11.26.

  • Alexandra Sharp reports that the European Union has imposed sanctions on 16 additional individuals “accused of helping Russia kidnap tens of thousands of Ukrainian children and forcibly deport them to Russia or its occupied territories.” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said, “This is not collateral damage. This is a deliberate Russian policy aimed at destroying Ukrainian identity. Children are forced to forget who they are, where they come from, and even their language.” According to the EU Council, Russia has abducted “nearly 20,500 children from Ukraine” since February 2022, many of whom have been forced to change their identities, given Russian passports, put up for adoption, or sent to “schools for indoctrination or to military camps.” Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze warned that “Russia is trying to erase their identity,” and that when you look at the Genocide Convention, forcible transfer of children is “one of the features of the genocide crime.”
  • In total, Sharp writes, “more than 130 people and entities are now under EU travel bans and asset freezes in connection to Russia’s systematic, large-scale kidnappings,” including camp directors, military officers, and officials, as well as seven Russian centers “suspected of indoctrinating or training these children.” EU Enlargement Commissioner Marta Kos called child abductions “one of the most horrific” faces of war and said “Moscow must pay for its crimes,” noting that the International Criminal Court has already issued an arrest warrant for Vladimir Putin “accusing him of being personally responsible for the abductions.” Around 2,200 minors have been returned, but identification and reunification are hard because “children taken at a young age can be hard to recognize after years spent apart from their families,” and ongoing fighting—despite a U.S.-brokered May 9–11 ceasefire—complicates safe returns.
  • Sharp links the sanctions to Putin’s Victory Day rhetoric. She notes that although he “hinted… that the Russia-Ukraine war ‘was coming to an end,’ he later stressed that Moscow’s ‘special military operation’ must continue until all of Russia’s goals are met,” including “Ukraine’s demilitarization as well as Russian control of the entire Donbas region—two red lines for Kyiv.” Putin also suggested former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder serve as mediator for future talks with Europe, but “the EU dismissed that demand… citing Schröder’s close ties to Putin,” underlining that, even as Brussels targets specific abuses like child deportations, there is no political appetite to accept Moscow’s preferred terms or envoys while wartime policies of “destroying Ukrainian identity” continue.

“Ukraine's conscription crisis is getting increasingly bloody,” Branko Marcetic, Responsible Statecraft, 05.13.26.

  • Branko Marcetic writes that current “moments of euphoria” about Ukraine being “on top” and “in a much better place than it has been at any stage in this horrific war” sit uneasily beside “Ukraine’s growing recruitment crisis, most viscerally embodied by the growing violent resistance to its policy of forced conscription.” For years, he notes, videos have shown men “being snatched by sometimes masked men from the streets or their homes, and dragged into a minivan,” part of a mobilization “wracked with controversy,” including “bribery scandals,” “widespread allegations of abuse,” and “the drafting of mentally and physically disabled men.”
  • Forced conscription is “unpopular,” the author notes, citing a petition that quickly passed the signature threshold and a system Ukraine’s human rights ombudsman labeled “a ‘coercive system’” after complaints against enlistment officers exploded “more than 33,000%.” Marcetic details how “civil disobedience… has turned increasingly violent,” including killings and stabbings of draft officers and attacks on recruitment teams, so that by official count there have been “more than 600 attacks,” with assaults “nearly tripling from 2024 to 2025” and the first four months of 2026 alone seeing “at least 117 attacks.” He adds that Ukraine’s own defense minister has acknowledged “2 million draft dodgers and 200,000 cases of desertion,” with conscription now responsible for “70% of recruitment.”
  • Questioning polling that shows Ukrainians willing to “fight indefinitely,” Marcetic quotes Volodymyr Ishchenko that “up to one third of the total population… are not even polled,” including those in occupied territories and abroad. The author warns that war prolongation has “created and intensified a severe economic and demographic crisis… that threatens its future as a stable and functioning state,” noting estimates that “70% of those abroad may not return,” unsustainable debts to families of fallen soldiers, and casualties borne “disproportionately from small towns, where poverty rates tended to be higher.” He concludes that many Western supporters “unwittingly cheer policies that ensure its gradual destruction.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

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

“Is the Tide Turning in Ukraine Right Now?,” Franz‑Stefan Gady, Kleine Zeitung, 05.16.26. Machine-translated.

  • Gady argues that “in spring 2026, Ukraine is in a better military position than it was a year ago,” but says it is “still too early to speak of a military turning point.” Zelensky’s mocking decree “allowing” Russia to hold its May 9 parade reflects “a new self‑confidence in Kyiv,” based on “a series of highly successful Ukrainian drone and missile strikes against the Russian heartland” and a front where Russia “has so far failed to achieve any or only minimal territorial gains and has at times even been pushed onto the defensive.”
  • He identifies four reasons for Ukraine’s improved posture. First, Ukraine has “closed a capability gap”: Russian targets “30 to 300 kilometers behind the front lines can now be attacked with drones,” giving Kyiv a “general advantage in drone warfare.” Second, its air campaign has “increasingly carried the war into Russia itself,” with the Tuapse refinery hit “for the fourth time in two weeks” and the Lukoil refinery in Perm “completely shut down,” reducing refining capacity to “its lowest level since December 2009.” 
  • Third, “the Ukrainian armed forces are in some respects coordinating and cooperating more effectively,” especially via corps commands. Fourth, “funding for 2026 and at least parts of 2027 has been secured” through EU and G7 support.

“Societal resilience and a world at war,” Fiona Hill, Brookings, 05.14.26.

  • Hill writes that “Russia’s war in Ukraine is in its fifth year. It is the largest land war in Europe since World War II, with horrific casualty rates for both Russia and Ukraine.” The Ukraine war, she argues, “illustrates every day the threats to civilians, critical national infrastructure, and vital economic activity that the U.K. could face in a wartime scenario,” and, together with the Iran conflict, shows that “we are seeing and experiencing the consequences of a world at war.” The U.K. has already faced “sabotage and cyberattacks by Russia and a relentless barrage of propaganda and disinformation,” she notes, warning that similar attacks by Iran “cannot be ruled out.”
  • Hill emphasizes that “Ukraine is frequently singled out for epitomizing ‘resilience’,” calling its defense “war by crowdsourcing.” “From the first days of the war to the present day, Ukraine’s fight for survival has been a bottom-up, not just top-down, effort,” she writes: “Drones were developed and other equipment adapted in rapid time by soldiers facing the necessity of the battlefield, with the help of ordinary citizens… who launched fundraisers to buy weapons and equipment.” “Ukraine is battered and battle-hardened but not beaten,” she concludes.
  • Drawing lessons for Britain, Hill argues that “for the first time since the Cold War, the U.K. homeland is now ‘back on the pitch,’” facing long‑range missiles, drones, cyberattacks, sanctions, and disinformation. She contends that resilience—“avoiding single points of failure, reducing dependencies and vulnerabilities, and building up the ‘wherewithal’… to deal with difficulties”—must be treated as a core security objective, and that the U.K. should adopt a Ukrainian‑ and Finnish‑style “whole‑of‑society approach” to defense, because “we still have the capacities and capabilities to deal with a world at war.”

“After four bloody years, the war on Ukraine might be turning into Putin’s undoing,” Rajan Menon, The Guardian, 05.16.26.

  • Menon writes that when Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, “he didn’t anticipate a fight that would last longer than the Red Army’s epic struggle against the Wehrmacht. But his war drags on. Worse, it’s failing and threatening his grip on power.” Despite Kremlin boasts, “even pro-war military bloggers are criticizing military mismanagement,” some saying “the momentum favors Ukraine” and “at least one warns that Russia could lose.” With “the frontline stalled, an estimated 1.3 million Russian troops dead or wounded,” Menon argues, “the war Putin believed would produce his crowning achievement may prove to be his undoing.”
  • He stresses that “for Russians, the war was once something that happened over there. Now it’s happening inside Russia itself,” as Ukrainian drones and missiles “routinely hit targets deep inside the country – often more than 1,000 miles from the border,” including Moscow and multiple regional cities, and have “forced Putin to pare back Saturday’s military parade.” Last year, he notes, “Russia gained a mere 0.8% of Ukrainian territory at the cost of more than 400,000 casualties, including 200,000 dead,” while in April it “lost more territory than it captured.”
  • Menon highlights that Russian losses now “equal the number of monthly recruits – roughly 35,000 – with drones accounting for 70-80% of casualties,” and that “the signs of anxiety within the Kremlin are unmistakable”: tightened security for Putin, social‑media crackdowns, and even Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov warning parliament about 1917. “Though Putin’s fate isn’t necessarily sealed,” Menon concludes, “his war is floundering, and the signs of disquiet at the top are too numerous to dismiss.”

“Putin’s Forces Are Barely Inching Along on the Battlefield,” Paul Sonne, Cassandra Vinograd and Milana Mazaeva, The New York Times, 05.10.26. The authors of this NYT article reported that “At its average monthly rate of advance so far this year, it would take Russia more than three decades to seize full control of the Donbas.” However, after crunching the numbers, this appear to be a dramatic miscalculation. At the current rate of advance in 2026 (27.5 square miles per month), it would take Russia around 74 months to capture the roughly 2,000 square miles of the Donbas that remain under Ukraine’s control. By contrast, if the NYT’s estimate were correct, Russian forces would be advancing at a rate of just 5.5 square miles per month. While Russia’s battlefield progress has certainly slowed from 2025, when Russian forces were capturing around 169 square miles of territory each month, the NYT has overstated the level of the slowdown. 

  • The authors contrast Putin’s claims of “inevitable victory” and demands that Kyiv hand over all of Donbas with a battlefield reality in which “after making gains late last year, the Russian military has slowed to a crawl.” They claim that “at its average monthly rate of advance so far this year, it would take Russia more than three decades to seize full control of the Donbas,” and that in some sectors Russia has actually lost ground. According to data from three mapping projects, early‑2026 gains are Russia’s “worst battlefield performance… since 2023,” with some months of net territorial loss.
  • The article cites Russian independent outlets estimating 352,000 Russian dead by end‑2025—over six times U.S. Vietnam losses—while recruitment targets are being missed and mobile‑internet blackouts to thwart Ukrainian drones are angering the public. Ukraine, despite its own manpower problems, uses drones and deep strikes to blunt Russia’s advance and raise the Kremlin’s costs.
  • The authors also write that drones have made “big advances” nearly impossible: massed armor has given way to small‑team infiltration into a widening “gray zone.” One Russian soldier describes spending “the better part of a month” trying to secure a single town near Pokrovsk as assault troops were “wiped out by Ukrainian drones,” then ordered to creep in as “two-man teams.”

“Russia is starting to lose ground in Ukraine. Our tracker suggests it has suffered its first sustained net loss since October 2023,” Economist, 05.17.26.

  • “That even a short ceasefire could not hold is evidence the war in Ukraine is unlikely to end soon. Both sides accused the other of repeated violations between May 9th and 11th—and our war tracker,” The Economist writes. “ Yet the tide of the conflict looks to be turning... our analysis suggests that this year it has suffered small but sustained territorial losses for the first time since October 2023,” The Economist writes.
  • “We estimate that by May 12th between 280,000 and 518,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, with total casualties (including wounded) of between 1.1m and 1.5m—meaning that around 3% of Russia’s pre-war male population of fighting age has been killed or wounded,” The Economist writes.  
  • “This grim toll is coming with few gains on the front lines... Our tracker, which uses maps of the battlefield from ISW, a think-tank, suggests that Russian forces have captured around 220 square kilometers this year, or just 0.04% of Ukraine’s territory. But recently Ukraine has begun to claw back ground: a 30-day moving average shows it has recaptured around 189 square kilometers. Russia may be stalling before a summer push. This may also be a turning-point in the war,” according to the Economist.

“Corridor of Opportunity: Ukrainian mid-range strikes threaten the main achievement of Russian occupation – the land corridor to Crimea,” Re:Russia, 05.14.26.

  • Re:Russia argues that “the land corridor to Crimea remains the principal trophy of Russia’s occupation and is regarded as a critical logistical artery for sustaining the occupied Ukrainian territories.” Created after Mariupol’s resistance was “crushed through the total bombardment of the city,” it was meant to complete Putin’s “central political project” of Crimea’s “return,” resolving water, transport, and Sea of Azov control. Yet “the ‘water’ objective proved illusory” after the Kakhovka dam’s destruction, the authors note, even as Moscow poured resources into an “Azov transport ring” of roads and rail that now forms “an important component of Russia’s deep rear military infrastructure.” Because Russia has “stopped using the Crimean Bridge for military purposes,” they write, this corridor and the ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk “play a critical role in supplying Russian forces in Donbas and Zaporizhzhia.”
  • Re:Russia argues that Ukraine is now waging an “asymmetric counteroffensive” from the air: in 2026, “mid-range strikes… have become a central problem for Russia’s rear areas.” Citing ISW, they highlight drone attacks on the T‑0509 and M‑14 highways and quote pro‑Russian sources warning that “the land route to Crimea is becoming increasingly dangerous.” This expanding drone war, they conclude, is “reshaping the balance of forces” and acquiring “an additional strategic and symbolic dimension.”

“Enter the Killer Robots: The Ukrainian Forging the Future of Warfare,” Andrew E. Kramer, The New York Times, 05.15.26.

  • Andrew Kramer profiles Mykhailo Fedorov, Ukraine’s 35‑year‑old defense minister, who “believes that warfare is ripe for disruption” and wants to “offload the fighting as much as possible onto machines — including, someday, those that can make lethal decisions on their own.” “The world needs security, and only autonomous weapons can ensure it,” Fedorov insisted, and “autonomous weapons are the new nuclear weapons. Countries that possess them will be protected.” He has devised a strategy, “Air, Land, Economy,” meant to intercept “at least 95 percent” of Russian drones and missiles, “kill or seriously injure more soldiers than Moscow can recruit,” and “weaken the Russian economy by blowing up oil export terminals.”
  • Kramer notes pushback from commanders who see “futuristic talk of robot warfare” as “disconnected from the grim reality of muddy trenches and broken bodies,” citing a public clash after an armored assault near Pokrovsk. Yet Fedorov, who “believes in the mathematics of war,” wants to raise Russian casualties to “more than 50,000” a month and foresees a future in which “robotic systems will do all of the fighting” and “the kill zone will empty of people entirely.” Through Avenger Labs, he is opening Ukraine’s “library of more than five million annotated videos” to companies so A.I. models can be trained on “how humans behave as killer drones close in,” a move he calls “a win‑win approach.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Military aid to Ukraine:

“Will Trump ever support Ukraine? I’m answering your questions,” David Ignatius, Washington Post, 05.18.26.

  • Q: Sanctions aren't enough. Why aren't the U.S. and Europe punishing elites so they split with Putin?
  • David Ignatius: “… [F]rom what I know, the squeeze on oligarchs (both in Russia and in Europe) has been pretty intense. The new reports of fragmentation within the Russian elite, from what I see, have more to do with national anger over a no-win war that's disrupting Russian life than hardship for the Gstaad and British boarding schools set. One problem with terminating exit visas is that the West wanted the drain of talent and money from Russia… as a way of hurting Putin.”
  • Q: Will Trump ever support Ukraine?
  • David Ignatius: “The answer ought to be yes on a pivot to Kyiv, but I see no sign yet. It's time for Trump to abandon his misguided Russophilia and get with a winning (or at least surviving) Ukraine. A chance to do that would be approving the new package of sanctions that Lindsey Graham has been talking about for more than a year—or the new assistance package that, thanks to Rep. Kevin Kiley, got a discharge petition and hopefully a vote in the House. Ukraine has always been inspiring for its courage—and now for its defense tech prowess, as well. Foolish for the U.S. not to be an ally and benefiting more from the lessons of this war.”
  • Q: Why are we still providing intelligence to Ukraine? Not why should we, which is obvious, but why are we given Trump's antipathy towards Ukraine and Zelenskyy?
  • David Ignatius: “I assume the answer is that sensible people in the IC understand that this intel cutoff would be a dagger in the heart of Kyiv and have successfully argued against it.”
  • Q: “Are nuclear arms still a real threat in the Ukraine war?”
  • David Ignatius: “As I and others have reported, the CIA estimated in Oct. 2022 that there was a 50/50 chance that Iran would use tactical nuclear weapons to prevent the pell-mell retreat of its forces in Kharkiv and Kherson. The Biden administration took the threat very seriously and secretly communicated its concern to China, which in turn secretly told Putin, "Don't." (The Chinese later publicly stated their opposition to the use of nukes.) I assume this Chinese view would still apply. But let's pay careful attention to the statements that emerge after Putin's visit soon to Beijing.”
  • Q: What is the end game in Iran? Is it some loose "agreement" with nothing to back it up?
  • David Ignatius: “The rock-bottom requirement for a "successful" endgame is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz so that the global economic squeeze is eased before it does more severe damage. There are two ways to do that--by military force or some diplomatic accommodation. The former (the "quagmire option") would be so costly with so little assurance of success that I doubt Trump will do it. Among the diplomatic options, I hear gossip that the administration may be considering some international arrangement that pays Iran (and perhaps other SOH neighbors) some form of toll or user fee. Maybe countries in the region might even propose it! That sort of outcome would reinforce that this war has been a net negative for the U.S.--but it would cut Trump's losses, and I am sure he could find a way to call it victory.”

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

  •  No significant developments.

“Is Russia Ready to Negotiate over Ukraine Again?,” Thomas Graham, The National Interest, 05.13.26.

  • In his remarks during the May 9 Victory Day celebrations—he was “grateful,” Putin said, that the Americans were sincerely striving to settle the conflict. The war, he added, was coming to an end because he apparently believes Europeans increasingly understand that support for Ukraine is futile. But Putin did not indicate that he was ready to compromise. Indeed, Putin’s foreign policy adviser insisted that Kyiv’s complete withdrawal from the Donetsk province was a condition for entering serious negotiations to settle the conflict. The implication for Washington was clear: the Kremlin wants Trump to make good on the understandings it believes were reached at Anchorage.”
  • Graham wrote, “Why the urgency? Almost certainly because the battlefield is turning against Russia. The relentless aerial assault on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure and major cities this winter did not break Ukrainian morale, as anticipated. This spring’s offensive has already stalled, with Russia actually losing territory by some estimates. Meanwhile, Ukraine is accelerating its deep strikes against energy infrastructure and military targets inside Russia with ever-greater effect. Russia’s boast that it will seize the rest of Donetsk by force if it cannot get it at the bargaining table appears ever more hollow. The Kremlin is thus making one last effort to persuade Washington to force Kyiv to hand them the territory at the negotiating table.”
  • Graham wrote, “What President Trump will decide is an open question. But he should resist the Kremlin’s entreaties to honor what it believes is the spirit of Anchorage. Conditions have changed radically since last August. Contrary to Trump’s repeated assertions, Kyiv has demonstrated since then that it not only has cards to play but also that it can play them to great effect. The Kremlin’s decision to scale back the May 9 celebrations speaks volumes about Ukraine’s capabilities and Russia’s vulnerabilities. Trump’s assumption last August that Russia would eventually seize all of the Donetsk province by force no longer holds.”
  • Graham wrote, “Instead of pressuring Ukraine to cede territory it still controls, Washington should start calling for a ceasefire along the current line of contact and use whatever leverage it has over both Moscow and Kyiv to achieve that result. It makes no sense to honor a pledge made at Anchorage, if indeed such a pledge was made, if the conditions that underpinned it no longer obtain. The terms of any settlement should, and will, reflect the current balance of forces. While Moscow may still have the upper hand, that balance is now definitely beginning to tilt away from it—and a revival of the spirit of Anchorage will not change that.”

"Moscow’s Latest Victory Day Parade Reveals Cracks in Putin’s Russia," Thomas Graham, CFR, 05.11.26.

  • “Since he rose to power a quarter-century ago, Russian President Vladimir Putin has turned the annual May 9 Victory Day celebrations into a demonstration of military might, pride, and patriotism,” Thomas Graham writes. “Their absence this year… only underscored Russia’s increasing vulnerability,” while a parade that “lasted about half the time of past ones” and cancelation of the Immortal Regiment march “only reinforced the image of weakness and anxiety,” the author argues.
  • “Russia’s economic growth stayed steady at 4 percent in 2022 and 2023 before plunging to about 1 percent in 2024 and 2025. That growth then turned negative in this year’s first quarter. Officially, inflation is running at about 6 percent; the actual rate is probably in double digits for most Russians. High interest rates have squeezed out business investment, especially in non-military sectors. Polls now show that the majority of Russians want peace,” according to Graham.
  • Graham also explains that, in his view, Putin’s May 9 remarks “indicated he thought the conflict would end because the Europeans would finally conclude that they could not use Ukraine to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia, and the Ukrainians themselves would crack.” “Just in case anyone thought Putin was ready to make significant concessions to reach a settlement, the Kremlin let it be known that Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Donbas—including territory Russia has not yet seized—was a condition not simply for ending the war, but for entering serious negotiations at all. That is an obvious non-starter for Kyiv,” Graham wrote.
  • “Putin also faces considerable challenges ahead. No matter how or when the war ends, Russia will almost certainly find itself in a worse geopolitical situation,” Graham wrote. “Russia has recovered from major strategic setbacks in the past—after the humiliating defeat in the Crimean War in the mid-nineteenth century or the collapse of the country during World War I, for example. But the recovery in each case took decades. The same is likely to hold today,” Graham concluded.

“Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy cool on US-led peace talks,” Max Seddon, Christopher Miller and Henry Foy, Financial Times, 05.13.26.

  • “Russia and Ukraine believe there is little prospect for reviving US-brokered peace talks even after the war in the Middle East ends, according to people briefed on both sides’ positions,” FT reported. “Vladimir Putin had shifted focus to capturing more Ukrainian territory by force and intended to expand his demands further still once Russia controlled the key Donbas region, the people said. Officials in Kyiv, meanwhile, believe they are less vulnerable to US pressure for a quick, unfavorable deal after halting Russia’s advance and inflicting more damage with drone strikes deep behind enemy lines,” FT reported.
  • Ukraine believed talks had already stalled by February after the latest round of negotiations with Russia, and had grown frustrated that Washington failed to pressure Vladimir Putin to moderate his demands, Ukrainian officials told FT.
  • “Russia, meanwhile, said last week there was little point in further talks unless Ukraine withdrew from the Donbas, the frontline region in eastern Ukraine largely controlled by Moscow. Russia’s growing vulnerability to Ukrainian drone strikes, which forced it to hold a stripped-down version of its annual Victory Day parade last weekend, and its incremental battlefield advances have done little to deter Putin’s confidence that Ukraine’s front will collapse, according to the people,” FT reported.
  • “Russia’s top commanders have convinced Putin their forces could seize the whole of the Donbas by autumn, according to two people in contact with the Kremlin leader, two others familiar with the matter, and a Ukrainian intelligence assessment shared with the FT,” FT reported. Putin then plans to raise the price of any ceasefire by escalating Russia’s territorial demands, three of the people interviewed by FT said.
  • Putin has grown increasingly fixated on capturing the Donbas despite privately expressing a willingness to freeze hostilities on the current front lines at various earlier points in the war, according to two people who speak to him. “I have been pushing him to end at the current front lines. But he keeps saying, ‘No, I can’t compromise on this’,” one of the people told FT. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia did not have the same “symbolic significance” for Putin as Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, and the Donbas, where it began a slow-burning proxy war the same year, the person added. But they remained a key focus of the war effort, according to FT.

“Why is Putin now talking about the war in Ukraine ‘coming to an end’?” Dan Sabbagh, The Guardian, 05.11.26.

  • Dan Sabbagh notes that Putin’s comment that the war may be “coming to an end” comes just as “a slow-motion victory for Moscow no longer looks certain.” He writes that after months of grinding gains, “that has changed”: Ukraine’s recapture of Kupiansk in December, its ability “to reverse territorial losses in Zaporizhzhia region of about 100 sq miles,” and April figures showing that “Russia lost control of 45 sq miles of Ukraine” mean that “it was the first time Russia had suffered a net loss of territory since August 2024,” so “a slow-motion victory for Moscow no longer looks certain.”
  • Sabbagh highlights Ukrainian claims that for five months “it has killed or wounded more Russian soldiers than are being recruited,” roughly “35,000 Russian soldiers a month in March and April, overwhelmingly from drone strikes,” while recruitment has dipped to “about 800 to 1,000 a day” (24,000–30,000 a month). He notes “no immediate sign that Putin has the appetite to launch a second public mobilization,” and points out that although Trump’s Iran war has doubled Russian monthly oil revenues to $19bn, Ukraine’s long‑range strikes on refineries and terminals have slashed exports from “5.2m barrels a day to 3.5m,” leaving Moscow exposed if “the US and Iran reach an agreement to reopen the strait of Hormuz and oil prices tumble.”
  • Perhaps most importantly, he writes, “Ukraine is becoming a missile and drone superpower,” with deep strikes such as “three drone attacks in the past fortnight on a refinery in Perm, 930 miles from the frontline,” and cheap interceptors that “shot down 33,000 drones during March, double the month before.” Sabbagh concludes that Putin’s “coming to an end” language likely aims to “reignite dormant White House interest,” since “Russia’s main effort has, for some time, been diplomatic,” and despite the new tone “there is no sign that Russia’s maximalist demands have eased,” with aide Yuri Ushakov insisting talks “could not start until Ukraine withdrew from all of Donetsk.”

“Putin Said the War ‘Is Coming to a Close,’ but That’s Not All He Said,” Paul Sonne, New York Times, 05.11.26.

  • Paul Sonne writes that after a “muted commemoration” of Victory Day, “one thing seemed apparent … President Vladimir V. Putin is feeling the pressure,” from both “strikes deep into Russian territory” and “rising discontent among Russians over internet restrictions and economic challenges.
  • “When Mr. Putin took the rostrum in front of a group of journalists after Saturday’s festivities ended, the Russian leader seemed to feel the need to send a message that he was not waging a forever war. “I believe the matter is coming to a close,” Mr. Putin said,” Sonne reports. “That comment was the one that generated headlines. But other remarks by Mr. Putin were far from a capitulation, and showed the needle he is trying to thread as he continues to pursue a war in which many of his major objectives remain unmet,” Sonne added.
    • “He wants to send a message: ‘I understand this war needs to end soon, but it needs to end on my conditions,’” said Stefan Meister, a Russia analyst at the German Council on Foreign Relations. “It’s not that this regime is now suddenly breaking down and there is no support anymore,” Mr. Meister said. “I think what we understand now is, he is under pressure. And pressure works. He has to react somehow to it.” 
  • Discontent has “taken a sharp turn for the worse since the beginning of this year,” opposition figure Boris Nadezhdin told Sonne, citing older Russians hit by low incomes, younger people angry over “internet outages and app throttling,” and a society “frustrated by a war in its fifth year,” even as “the prevailing view is ‘the tsar is good, the boyars are bad.’”

“Putin remark on war ‘coming to a close’ points to exhaustion, not peace, analysts say,” Mary Ilyushina, Washington Post, 05.14.26.

  • Mary Ilyushina describes “the most muted” Victory Day in decades: “No military hardware rolled across Red Square,” “few foreign guests attended,” and “across the Russian capital, the internet was blacked out,” a move driven by fear of Ukrainian long‑range drones. After “more than four years of war” that has now lasted “1,418 days” — longer than the Soviet Union’s entire World War II — Russians “do not feel stronger, safer or more prosperous,” but instead are “angry over the internet restrictions, inflation and rising taxes” and “exhausted by the psychological weight of the war,” she writes.
  • In this context, Putin’s claim that “the matter is coming to a close” signaled “public exhaustion rather than real peace,” analysts told the Post. A Russian academic said he “may have wanted to cheer them up and confirm that there is hope,” while political scientist Vladimir Pastukhov argued the phrase shows the Kremlin is “genuinely entertaining the prospect of ending the war,” yet must reconcile that “people want the war to end, but they still expect victory.” At the same time, top aide Yuri Ushakov reiterated that talks are “fruitless” without a total Ukrainian withdrawal from Donbas, underscoring unchanged “maximalist” terms.
  • Ilyushina notes that Russia occupies “roughly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory” but has “still fail[ed] to achieve” its stated Donbas goals, even as “Russia’s pro‑war, ultraconservative right is demanding escalation” and the “far bigger apolitical majority” reels from shutdowns and economic strain. Citing the Dossier Center, she reports the Kremlin is developing an “image of victory” to sell any eventual deal, while state pollster VCIOM records a steady slide in Putin’s approval and Russian “happiness” at a 15‑year low — trends Pastukhov warns could eventually turn a managed war into a “revolutionary situation.”

“Four Revelations From Putin at the Victory Day Parade,” Ted Snider, The American Conservative, 05.16.26.

  • Snider notes that media fixated on Putin’s line that “the matter is coming to an end,” often taking it to mean the Ukraine war, but he argues context suggests otherwise. Citing scholars Nicolai Petro, Geoffrey Roberts, and Richard Sakwa, he writes that Putin was responding to a question about Western support and said Europe had “promised assistance and promoted confrontation with Russia, which continues to this day,” then added, “I think that business is coming to an end, but it’s still serious.” Roberts interprets this as referring to “the confrontation with Europe, not the war as such,” while Sakwa says Putin was not saying the war is ending “but the framework in which the West supported Ukraine is ending.”
  • The second and third “revelations” concern diplomacy over Ukraine. Putin said his preferred mediator is “former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder,” who, according to Snider, claimed that “the Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to… Everything else was decided in Washington.” Putin also, for the first time, named Emmanuel Macron as the leader who asked him to pull troops back from Kyiv during the 2022 Istanbul talks: “It was Macron who did it… He said, ‘Can you withdraw troops from Kiev?’ We have done it,” after which, Putin claims, “the Kiev authorities rejected all previous agreements.”
  • The fourth revelation involves Iran: Putin called it “sensitive,” saying Russia had offered to take Iran’s highly enriched uranium and that “the United States, Iran and Israel” initially agreed, but then “the United States toughened its stance, insisting that the materials be transferred exclusively to its territory,” prompting Tehran to harden its own position. 

“Putin is under pressure to end his war – from surprisingly close allies,” Mark Galeotti, The i Paper, 05.13.26.

  • Mark Galeotti reports that a leaked February study for the Presidential Administration warned: “We must know when to stop,” cautioning that continuing the “special military operation” could become “a Pyrrhic victory” and require “a reconsideration of fundamental positions.” The report, he writes, suggested that even a frozen front line “possibly even without the remaining portion of the Donbas,” could be spun as proof that “Putin has bent the West” and “thwarted the West’s plans to expand and prolong the conflict.”
  • The author notes that Putin’s approval rating, at “65.6 per cent,” is now “its lowest level since the war began,” and that such polling “would not have been released without a green light” from his own apparatus. Guidance issued by United Russia on handling “difficult questions” ahead of elections is, according to Galeotti, another sign that “people in Russia are not happy” and that technocrats are mounting a “campaign to persuade Putin to think about a possible peace.”
  • Galeotti stresses these are “pragmatists, not doves,” split between cutting losses now and insisting, like Sergei Lavrov, on Kyiv’s withdrawal from the last part of Donbas. While nationalists lobby to “keep on fighting,” the author sees “the first time we are really seeing anything that even hints at a pragmatic end to the war from inside Putin’s own political machine,” noting one “tiny step”: Putin’s recent reference to “Mr. Zelensky.”

“Putin Might Finally Need to Find Peace,” Timothy Ash, Kyiv Post, 05.17.26. 

  • Ash notes that Putin recently hinted the war was “coming to an end,” and argues that “Moscow and Kyiv have cooled on a US led peace process,” creating a vacuum “Europe may become the default moderator” for. From Ukraine’s perspective, he writes, they “never really trusted Trump, and saw him just as a Russian asset trying to impose a Moscow plan on Ukraine,” so they were “just buying time… until… they could tell Trump to go and F**k himself. That time is now.” Even Moscow, Ash contends, has “run out of patience with Trump – and the half baked and half arsed negotiation process,” since “there is no point… if Trump is trying to impose a bad deal… if he cannot deliver it and… it just serves to rally Europe behind Ukraine.”
  • Ash argues Putin now has powerful incentives to seek peace. Economically, he writes, many assumed the Iran war “would play to the advantage of Russia,” but a fractured OPEC, looming “oil supplier free for all,” sanctions, and Ukrainian deep‑strike drones mean Russia “has not even been able to meet its existing OPEC production quota” and risks a “1998 style crash.” Militarily, he says, “Russia has lost offensive momentum, is struggling to defend the territory it holds,” and faces a Ukraine whose “defense industry is in SuperDrive” and, with Europe, can build “scale manufacturing in drones to overwhelm Russia.” Meanwhile, Europe is rearming on a scale that makes the 1980s arms race “feel very similar,” so that “Russia is losing the war in Ukraine and the war for military industrial supremacy in Europe.”
  • Politically and strategically, Ash argues, “the US brokered peace process is dead,” Trump’s envoys “are just not taken seriously,” and Putin now fears both “a defeat in Ukraine” and “a strategic defeat in Europe,” potentially leading to “domestic unrest and regime change in Russia itself.” He suggests Turkey or a more “rehabilitated” Istanbul process, with a stronger European role, as plausible mediators. The likely deal, in his view, would “freeze” current front lines; drop NATO membership in favor of “State of Israel type guarantees” and assured Western arms; “fast track Ukrainian EU membership… with financing assurances”; and give Moscow limited sanctions relief but force it to “pay reparations,” starting with the “$330 billion in immobilized CBR assets in Western jurisdictions.”

“Is Ukraine Turning the Russian Tide?,” Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal, 05.10.26.

  • The Editorial Board notes that Vladimir Putin “held a subdued Victory Day parade on Saturday in Moscow, with fewer missiles and other weapons,” arguing that if he “feared a long-range Ukrainian drone strike, it’s one more sign that the tide may be turning against Russia after four long years of death.” Citing the Institute for the Study of War, the board highlights that “Russian forces are performing worse on the battlefield in Spring 2026 than when the Kremlin emphasized its demand for Donetsk Oblast in 2025.”
  • According to the board, ISW “says Ukraine appears to have regained more territory from Russia’s occupiers than it lost in April” and that Ukraine is “increasingly able to hit targets deep in Russia with drones and missiles,” including “oil production facilities, arms caches and other military assets.” Ukraine’s military claims “Russia suffered more than 35,000 casualties in April, dead or wounded,” a “growing toll” that helps explain “Mr. Putin’s lack of confidence in exposing Russian assets in Red Square.”
  • “The killing continues,” the editors write, and while Mr. Putin said the war “is coming to an end,” they insist, “We’ll believe that when we see him end his terror bombing of Ukraine’s cities and stop demanding that Kyiv give up more territory.” The board argues that “this is a moment to increase support for Ukraine,” contending that “only the prospect of greater losses and potential defeat will cause Mr. Putin to abandon his imperial ambitions in Ukraine—and in Western Europe.”

“Russia-Ukraine War Shows Cease-Fires Have Lost Meaning Under Trump,” Marc Santora, New York Times, 05.13.26.

  • Marc Santora reports that as “the clock ran out on a three-day truce announced by President Trump, hundreds of Russian drones, guided bombs and missiles swarmed the skies over Ukraine,” with civilians killed and “the fighting on the front” never actually pausing. Analysts told him that in the Trump era, cease-fires “have become a tool of performative diplomacy, stand-alone commodities used to manage media cycles while the machinery of war grinds along,” rather than steps toward a settlement.
  • Madhav Joshi said what is happening is “the focus on subset viral moments that land media attention for political leaders,” contrasting his finding that successful peace processes average “1,570 days” with a Russia‑Ukraine truce that lacked basic “hooks” like independent oversight or a political foundation. Daniel Byman argued that in the Trump White House “a cease-fire equals ‘peace,’” with impatience for “the grinding, up-and-down nature of diplomacy” sidelining seasoned officials in favor of securing “a positive headline today.”
  • Santora notes that Washington has brokered five truces since Mr. Trump’s return, all marred by violations, and that Ukrainian skepticism goes back to Minsk and “humanitarian corridors” that failed. Volodymyr Yermolenko described the pattern as a calculated “masquerade,” in which announcements of pauses are about “signaling a false readiness for peace while preparing for renewed offensives,” creating a model where “the announcement of peace is the final product rather than the first step.”

“Asking Ukraine to Save Putin,” Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., Wall Street Journal, 05.13.26.

  • Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. argues that Ukraine now faces “new reason to be torn over whether to trade land for peace,” warning that if pressed again to concede territory, Kyiv “might be asked in essence to serve as the instrument of Vladimir Putin’s salvation.” He notes that some in NATO and European governments believe “a stiff price should be extorted from Russia before it’s allowed to exit its war,” and that with Russia hiding military hardware on Victory Day and Putin appealing to Trump for a cease-fire, “a turning point has announced itself in recent days,” the columnist writes.
  • The author contends that “out the window has gone” the idea of a general Russian mobilization, arguing that “this means the war is effectively over in the sense that one big push from the Russian side to win is no longer even imaginable.” Jenkins describes Russia’s forces as “paid ‘volunteers,’ the polite term for criminals, deadbeats and unfavored rural sons,” and says Putin “was never going to risk his regime by making his urban elite participate in his failing war,” believing the Kremlin is “burning through its current victim-recruits faster than it can replace them.”
  • Strategically, Jenkins writes that “talk about whether Ukraine should be allowed to join NATO has been supplanted by talk about whether NATO will be allowed to join Ukraine,” whose fighting experience could become “a pillar” of the alliance. He suggests it is “not unrealistic to ask whether Ukraine will be pressured to sign a deal to save his job for him,” and concludes that while Trump’s critics see only “devotion to the interests of Mr. Putin,” “the record may look better to posterity than it does to Mr. Trump’s contemporaries,” according to the author.

“Can this man end war in Ukraine? The peacemaker Putin wants dead,” Maxim Tucker, The Times (UK), 05.15.26.

  • Maxim Tucker reports that Kyrylo Budanov, now President Zelensky’s chief of staff and “Ukraine’s main negotiator with Russia,” says the Kremlin is trying to assassinate him even as he leads peace talks. A former military intelligence chief credited with “some of the Ukrainian armed forces’ most spectacular special operations,” Budanov said it was “absolutely normal” that Moscow still wants him dead. Nevertheless, he insisted: “I do not have to trust anyone, I have to achieve a result… I believe in the negotiation process … [its] completion and the result.”
  • Budanov argued that his background as a top spy, including building channels for prisoner exchanges, now helps him read Russian “strengths, weaknesses and ‘red lines’,” saying, “we dealt with them for many years, so believe me, I know how to talk to them.” He warned Russia “absolutely has the capability to carry out a nuclear strike at any moment,” but stressed this is “first and foremost, a question of a political will” and that he has seen “no indicators of preparation.” On the battlefield, he said Ukraine is moving toward “smart” autonomous drones and that Kyiv can “share this knowledge,” offering that “Ukraine will gladly extend a helping hand” to allies struggling with air defense, even as he insists mass mobilization “must continue” because “there is no other way.”

“I Was the Russian Commander in a War Game. This Is How I Defeated NATO,” Franz‑Stefan Gady, Foreign Policy, 05.15.26.

  • Franz‑Stefan Gady recounts playing Russia’s chief of the general staff in a December 2025 war game at a German military college and “attacked NATO and won.” “To beat and essentially break NATO,” he writes, he focused on “three simple points”: Russian “speed,” NATO’s lack of forward forces, and Russia’s ability to “hold that ground and threaten to escalate to the nuclear level, deterring NATO from counterattacking.” His plan was for elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army and 76th Air Assault Division to push from Belarus toward Marijampole while the 11th Army Corps advanced from Kaliningrad, linking up “within 24 hours” to cut the Baltics off from Poland, then “dig in and fortify the corridor.”
  • Gady stresses that the game’s purpose was political: to “destroy the credibility of NATO and the European Union through a limited incursion” while “keep[ing] the Americans out.” He argues that in reality Russia might not need to occupy terrain: it could “exercise fire control” over the Suwalki Gap with “long‑range precision strikes, rocket artillery, drones, and remote mining.” The core question for Germany, he concludes, is brutally simple: “whether Germany believes that it’s worth going to war with Russia over the Baltics, even without U.S. help.” If that isn’t answered in advance, he warns, “hesitat[ion]” will be “enough to win.”

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

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

“In foreign policy, the best modern presidents have all been Republicans—present company excluded,” Stephen Kinzer, Boston Globe, 05.17.26.

  • Kinzer argues that the “real test is dealing with Russia and China,” and contends that Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush “are at the top” when presidents are ranked by “their success in dealing with Russia and China.” By contrast, he writes that later leaders have “led us toward confrontations with China and Russia that wiser leaders might have avoided,” and that instead of building on Reagan’s 1987 INF Treaty, “subsequent presidents have moved in the opposite direction, building new generations of nuclear weapons” and, in 2019, Trump withdrew from the treaty, “propelling the world closer to the nuclear conflict that Reagan sought to avoid.”
  • Kinzer argues that “James Baker was arguably the most capable secretary of state in modern history. He and his boss, George H.W. Bush, masterfully handled the shocks that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union.” “Among those who applauded Bush’s approach was the long-retired Nixon, who visited Kyiv in 1994. Afterward he sent a private letter to the new American president, Bill Clinton, that reflected his geopolitical prescience. “The situation in Ukraine is highly explosive,’’ Nixon wrote. “If it is allowed to get out of control, it will make Bosnia look like a PTA garden party.’’ Clinton ignored that warning.”
  • “Rather than embrace Bush’s vision of a “balance of interests’’ with Russia, he [Clinton] began pushing NATO eastward, toward Russia’s borders,” according to Kinzer.... “His secretary of defense, William Perry, warned him that this would provoke Russia, but as Perry wrote later, “The response I got was really, ‘Who cares what they think? They’re a third-rate power.’” “And of course that point of view got across to the Russians as well. That was when we started sliding down that path,” Kinzer writes.

“Seabed War: Russia’s Secretive Defense Units and Undersea Sabotage Architecture,” Oleksandr V. Danylyuk, RUSI, 05.18.26.

China-Russia: Allied or aligned?7,8

"The Trump-Xi Summit: Behind the Curtain," Graham Allison,9 The National Interest, 05.13.26. 

  • Graham Allison writes: “Early coverage of the summit reflects disappointment at the absence of the drama that many have become accustomed to in covering Trump. A number of reporters and commentators have already offered their verdict that the summit will be “insignificant.” I disagree. To explain why, it is necessary to review developments over the past 15 months that have shaped the performance we will see in Beijing. While this is a long article, let me offer highlights in brief answers to eight key questions.”
  • “1. Can a Conversation Between Trump and Xi Produce Meaningful Outcomes? A multi-hour face-to-face meeting between the leaders of the two most powerful nations on Earth where they talk privately and candidly about the most important issues on the international agenda including war and peace, trade, tariffs and supply chains, AI, and more cannot be insignificant.”
  • “2. Why Does Trump Consistently Treat Xi Differently? In my assessment, it is because President Trump recognizes, as he publicly acknowledges, that China is essentially America’s peer competitor. It is a country with which we are so entangled economically that each has so much capacity to cause damage to the other that an economic war cannot be won. He also sees a huge economy across the Pacific with a massive underconsumption problem, offering the prospect of huge markets and profits for American businesses if handled properly.”
  • “3. Why in Confrontations with Xi Does Trump Always Chicken Out?...President Trump has been nothing if not candid in explaining how he sees America’s predicament. As he responded to questions from Fox News: “If you don’t have a magnet, you don’t make a car, you don’t make a computer, you don’t make televisions and radios and all the other things. You don’t make anything. It’s a 30-year effort to monopolize a very important thing.” His Treasury Secretary agreed, insisting that the imperative now must be to “get out from under this sword the Chinese have over us—and they have it over the whole world.”
  • “4. Is Trump Being Too Soft on China?”… Trump “inherited a weak hand, especially in supply chain vulnerabilities; that Xi knows that Trump knows; that Trump knows that Xi knows that he knows. “
  • “5. Does Trump Have a Coherent Strategy for U.S. Relations with China?... there’s sufficient evidence to suggest that there is an alignment of activities to a desired objective to create a qualitatively different relationship with China.”?
  • 6. What is “Business Statecraft” or “Business Diplomacy?” Seeing U.S.-China relations through a business lens means analyzing relations between the two countries as one would assess relations between companies that are simultaneously fierce rivals and friendly partners. They are forced by circumstances to find ways to simultaneously compete and cooperate.”
  • “7. What Does This Summit Suggest for Future U.S. Policy Towards China?… “The U.S. and China working together can solve almost any problem.”
  • “8. To What End? “Taking seriously what each of the leaders has said, could we imagine the next half-century as a Grand Geostrategic Olympics in which each competitor does its best to win as many medals as it can, and each does whatever it can get away with to ensure the rules advantage its team wherever and whenever possible? As each tries to win wherever and however it can, they will both need to be conscious of the risks of missteps that could cause the competition to spiral downwards to an outcome that could be catastrophic for both. As the Olympic motto declares, “stronger, faster, higher—together.””

“Trump and Xi will not determine Taiwan’s fate,” Gideon Rachman, Financial Times, 05.18.26.

  • Rachman argues that while Trump’s equivocations in Beijing over arms sales and his claim that Taiwan “stole” its semiconductor industry are “alarming” in Taipei and “encouraging” in Beijing, focusing on Trump–Xi talks “is missing a crucial point.” “Taiwan is not a colony or an uninhabited island, whose future can be negotiated away by outsiders,” he writes; if Taiwanese “continue to resist the idea of coerced incorporation into mainland China, they have an excellent chance of success—with or without American support.”
  • He says the wars in Ukraine and Iran “underline how foolish it is to assume that a military superpower, like Russia or the U.S., will always win a war against a smaller country or economy.” “More than four years into the conflict, Ukraine is still holding off Russia,” with “drones that now account for the majority of the casualties in Putin’s armies” and missiles hitting Russian infrastructure “manufactured by Ukrainians.” Both Ukraine and Iran, he argues, show how drones and long‑range missiles can negate conventional advantages.
  • Rachman warns that China’s assumption that Taiwan is helpless without the U.S. echoes Putin’s pre‑invasion belief that Ukrainians would not “fight for their freedom.” “That failure of imagination led Russia to disaster in Ukraine. A similar failure in Beijing could lead China to disaster in Taiwan.”

“Profiting From Deadlock: Where U.S.-China Relations Are Headed After Trump’s Visit,” Aleksandr Gabuev, Carnegie Politika, May 2026. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Gabuev writes that Trump’s latest trip to China “fixes a new state of affairs” in which “parity” has emerged between Washington and Beijing. He recalls that nine years ago Xi flew to Mar‑a‑Lago “for a few hours of contact with the most powerful person on the planet,” smiling politely at both Trump’s granddaughter’s Chinese poem and Tomahawk strikes on Syria. Now, Gabuev notes, “Trump returns from China not only empty‑handed, but with almost empty pockets, into which the Chinese put only a few consolation deals and a little packet of rose seeds,” a symbol, he suggests, of how “time is currently working in China’s favor.”
  • Describing Beijing’s preparation for Trump’s comeback, Gabuev reports that in early 2024 Chinese officials and experts were told to game out his victory and to assume that “what he says is what he will do. And even worse.” One analyst told him, “We decided to take Trump’s rhetoric literally.” When Trump launched sweeping tariffs in 2025, “Beijing reacted coolly,” he writes, replying in kind while adding “asymmetric non‑tariff restrictions,” above all on rare earths, where China controls “about 90%” of global processing. The result, he argues, was that “after several rounds of escalation the White House went for a settlement,” restoring pre‑crisis tariffs. “Events in the trade war,” Gabuev concludes, “showed that China has forged a weapon of geoeconomic deterrence and learned how to use it.”
  • Turning to the 2026 visit itself, Gabuev says Xi “quite clearly knew what result he wanted,” whereas “the American side almost certainly did not.” Xi unveiled a new formula of “relations of constructive strategic stability,” which, in his telling, means fixing the status quo, avoiding negative steps, and seeking compromises while acknowledging rivalry. Xi publicly drew a red line on “support for Taiwan’s independence,” and on the flight home Trump reverted to “strategic ambiguity,” saying he would not say whether the U.S. would defend the island. Gabuev notes that Trump comes back with “some deals”—a promise to buy 200 Boeings and more U.S. commodities—but stresses that many exist only “in Trump’s words,” while Beijing has successfully staged the optics of equality.

“Trump's Push For Friendship Is Unrequited,” Anton Troianovski, The New York Times, 05.17.26.

  • Troianovski notes that in his second term, Trump “has failed to stop Russia's invasion of Ukraine despite a dozen phone calls with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and their summit in Alaska,” showing that “the power of his personality has limits in foreign policy.” The Beijing meeting, he writes, produced “almost nothing concrete” on “the Middle East, trade, Taiwan, nuclear proliferation, artificial intelligence or any of the other myriad issues that are sources of friction between the world's two superpowers.”
  • He contrasts Trump’s “personality-driven foreign policy” with Xi’s tightening partnership with Moscow. Xi’s relationship with the leader he “does call a friend: Mr. Putin” has featured “much warmer displays,” including “the time they made pancakes and drank vodka in 2018,” and their 2022 joint statement, issued “just before Russia's invasion of Ukraine,” declaring that their friendship had “no limits.”
  • Troianovski writes that “Mr. Putin will visit China next week,” and that Xi “still looks to Russia as a crucial geopolitical partner and helps enable Russia's war with trade and technology—a relationship that many in Washington see as a threat to American security.”

“Beijing can no longer treat Moscow as a junior partner: Why the West still misunderstands the Russia-China relationship,” Alexey Martynov, RT, 05.16.26. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.) 

  • Martynov argues that Russia and China are “moving, slowly but unmistakably, toward a structural alliance that is reshaping the global balance of power,” but at “different speeds”: “Moscow has largely accepted the logic of deep strategic interdependence. Beijing, by contrast, still behaves as though it can preserve a carefully managed partnership in which China remains the senior partner while minimizing its own obligations.” Western portrayals of Russia as a mere “junior partner,” he contends, miss that “external circumstances, rather than relative status, have always been the true engine of the partnership.”
  • He emphasizes that U.S. pressure on both has “did more to deepen their cooperation than any summit declaration ever could,” especially once instability around the Strait of Hormuz made Russian pipelines “a strategic necessity” for China. Geography and resources make the logic inexorable: “One side possesses enormous energy reserves, agricultural resources, metals, territory and pipeline infrastructure… The other possesses industrial scale, capital, technology and a market of 1.4 billion people. Neither can fully achieve its strategic ambitions alone.”
  • The core tension, Martynov concludes, is Beijing’s hesitancy: “China still often behaves as though it can enjoy the benefits of strategic partnership without fully committing itself to the burdens that come with it.” He warns that “at some point, Beijing will have to decide whether it truly views Russia as an equal strategic partner or merely as a useful resource base,” and that this choice “will shape the architecture of Eurasia for decades to come.”

“May Summits: Is There a Link Between the Russian and US Leaders’ Visits to Beijing?,” Ivan Zuenko, Profile.ru, 05.18.26.

  • Zuenko notes that in May “for the first time in history, the capital of China is receiving within one month the leaders of two of the most important countries for world politics: Russia and the USA,” with Trump visiting 13–15 May and Putin expected on 20 May. He immediately answers his own question about linkage: “two summits should not be tied to each other,” arguing that the fact they follow one another “is due to the circumstances of their preparation.” Trump’s visit “was planned long ago” but postponed by “the January US operation in Venezuela, then the war with Iran.”
  • Evaluating Trump’s trip, Zuenko writes that “if you look at the content of the negotiations, nothing historic or breakthrough is visible in them,” describing “an emphasis on ceremonies and lobbying the interests of business.” The main concrete result so far is “only the contract for the purchase of 200 Boeings,” he notes, adding that markets had expected 500, so “after Trump’s trip the company’s shares even fell.” On Taiwan, he says, “nothing new was said”: Beijing again warned the US against interfering in its “internal affair” and underlined that such interference is “fraught with the start of war” from China’s side.
  • By contrast, he calls the Russia–China summit “another meeting of the heads of two states… long planned, expected, one can even say ‘routine’,” stressing that “this is not a minus, but a plus” because it is “not for beautiful photos, but for business.” Zuenko insists that “the results of the Xi–Trump summit will not affect Russian‑Chinese cooperation,” that “American oil will not be able to compete for Chinese buyers with Russian,” and that trade will remain at least at current levels, with another record possible in 2026. He lists the agenda for Putin’s visit as “settlements between countries, the Power of Siberia‑2 gas pipeline, simplification of various cross‑border procedures, including extension of the visa‑free regime,” and concludes that if there was a truly historic May summit in Beijing, it was “Gorbachev’s visit in 1989,” whereas today’s meetings are better seen as “business trips – presidents have those too.”

"Geometry of Geopolitics," Dmitry Trenin, Russian International Affairs Council, 05.12.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.) 

  • Trenin argues that U.S.–China tensions “logically point to the possibility of a major conflict,” while “China and Russia enjoy close ties and are making steady progress in their relationship.” Washington’s “global geopolitical counteroffensive”—“regime change in Venezuela, an attack on Iran, regaining control of the Panama Canal, claims to Greenland, threats against Cuba”—is, he writes, “largely aimed at limiting China’s access to energy resources, disrupting its supply chains, and depriving it of potential geopolitical footholds,” and “many elements of this strategy echo U.S. actions toward Russia.”
  • He insists it is “unrealistic” to hope that Moscow or Beijing can “reach an agreement with Washington on strategic issues concerning the future world order—by bargaining for special privileges,” warning that “acting separately toward the United States, let alone competing with one another, would mean acting to their own detriment.” Instead of a classic alliance, he calls for “a political, financial, economic, and technological coalition for a new world order,” built “around a Russian‑Chinese core,” coordinating “from geopolitics and geoeconomics to artificial intelligence and space exploration,” and able to withstand “sanctions from the U.S. and Europe, the closure of straits (today the Strait of Hormuz, tomorrow the Strait of Malacca), or naval blockades.”
  • On Ukraine, Trenin argues that “Trump’s visit to Beijing is unlikely to go down in history for its outcomes,” since “Trump’s ability to help establish lasting peace in Ukraine is rapidly diminishing,” and that over the eight months since Anchorage, “Trump has, admittedly, failed to ‘pressure’ Europe into supporting his own proposals for a settlement in Ukraine.” The U.S., he writes, “continues to support Kyiv, acting both directly… and through Europe, which Washington has tasked with ‘containing’ Russia,” while “U.S. sanctions against Russia have generally intensified.” Putin’s subsequent trip to Beijing, by contrast, “could elevate the Russian‑Chinese strategic partnership to the level of a coalition striving to shape the world order.”

"Doctrines of Progress: Trump, Xi, Putin, Modi," Ivan Timofeev, Valdai Club/Russian International Affairs Council, 05.13.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Timofeev argues that “the idea of progress for a long time remained central for the most diverse political doctrines,” but that after the Cold War it “lost its mobilizing potential” and was replaced by “postmodern simulations.” Now, he writes, the idea of progress is “clearly manifesting itself again” in several major political projects. For Donald Trump, “progress is its basic component,” understood “exclusively in the national interests of the United States”: “Trump would like to keep for America the keys to progress… In short—America First!”
  • For Xi Jinping, Timofeev writes, “the Marxist idea of progress is mixed with the civilizational code of China,” and China has reached a level of development that “interferes with Trump’s doctrine,” since Beijing “increasingly can replace practically everything that is produced outside it.” Xi’s message, he argues, is: “you cannot develop at the expense of China—you can develop together with China. At the same time, China has its own keys to progress.”
  • Putin’s doctrine, Timofeev contends, emerges from the “enormous stress and trauma” of the collapse of the Soviet progress project: “if you did not keep up with progress, you lost.” Russia saw in the “old Europe” something like Calhoun’s “‘mouse paradise’” and reacted with “sharp and not always deft, but natural attempts to raise the question of traditional values” and to find itself as a “state‑civilization.” “In the dry residue,” he concludes, “Putin’s doctrine is ‘Fortress Russia’ without claims to global projects, but with its own keys to the future”—another national model of controlled progress that does not resolve, and may even deepen, the underlying problem of human “alienation.”

“The Other Border Problem: How Russia and China’s Lawfare Threaten the Arctic,” Jill Goldenziel, Kathy Paradis, and Kathryn Bryk Friedman, War on the Rocks, 05.12.26.

  • Goldenziel, Paradis, and Friedman write that the Arctic, once a cooperative space, is “quickly becoming a contested” region as Russia and China wage coordinated lawfare. Moscow is using “contested readings” of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea to draw straight baselines around its Arctic archipelagos, reclassifying key international straits as internal waters and treating the Northern Sea Route as a chain of sovereign choke points it “may defend with force if challenged.” It also applies a “non-standard interpretation” of Article 234 to impose tariffs, compulsory Russian pilots and icebreakers, and other restrictions on foreign shipping.
  • They argue that Russia’s “shadow fleet,” with flags of convenience and spoofed or disabled AIS, underpins both sanctions evasion and hybrid attacks on undersea cables and pipelines, while Moscow and Beijing also jointly challenge the legality of the U.S. extended continental shelf claim, portraying it as “illegal and invalid” and “hegemonic.” Together, these tactics erode the maritime legal order and risk normalizing excessive Russian claims.
  • The authors call for a U.S. Arctic counter‑lawfare strategy that both directly challenges Russian and Chinese claims and educates allies and partners. Such a strategy, they contend, is essential to defend freedom of navigation, protect critical infrastructure, and keep adversaries from rewriting the rules that govern the Arctic as the ice melts.
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Missile defense:

Nuclear arms:

“Russian nuclear weapons, 2026,” Hans M. Kristensen, Matt Korda, Eliana Johns, and Mackenzie Knight Boyle, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 05.14.26.

  • The authors write that “Russia is in the late stages of a multi‑decade‑long modernization program to replace all of its Soviet‑era nuclear‑capable systems with newer versions,” but “elements of Russia’s nuclear modernization are proceeding much more slowly than planned,” with “upgrades to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and bombers” facing “significant delays.” They estimate that as of March 2026, “Russia has a stockpile of approximately 4,400 nuclear warheads… a slight increase from the previous year,” plus “approximately 1,020… retired but still largely intact warheads,” for a total inventory of “approximately 5,420 warheads.”
  • Of the 4,400 stockpiled warheads, they assess that “approximately 1,796 strategic warheads are deployed: about 892 on land‑based ballistic missiles, about 704 on submarine‑launched ballistic missiles, and about 200 at heavy bomber bases,” with “about 1,794 nonstrategic warheads” in storage. They note that the “significant increase” in non‑strategic weapons predicted by STRATCOM “has so far not materialized.”
  • Looking ahead, they warn that with New START expired in February 2026, if Moscow decided to break the old limits it “could theoretically upload hundreds of warheads onto its deployed delivery systems, potentially increasing its deployed nuclear arsenal by up to 60%,” even though “for now, the Russian government has indicated it intends to adhere to the limits of the treaty.”

 “Statement on the Successful Test of the Sarmat Missile,” Vladimir Putin, Kremlin, 05.12.26. Clues from Russian Views

  • Commander of the Strategic Missile Forces Sergey Karakayev reported that “today at 11:15, the Strategic Missile Forces carried out a launch of the newest heavy liquid-fueled intercontinental ballistic missile Sarmat. The launch was successful. The launch objective was achieved.” He said the test “confirmed the correctness of the design and technological solutions” and that Sarmat “surpasses its predecessor, primarily in terms of range, throw weight, launch readiness, and the suite of countermeasures it employs, which ensures guaranteed penetration of existing and future missile defense systems.”
  • Karakayev told Putin that “by the end of this year” the first regiment equipped with Sarmat in the Uzhur formation “will significantly increase the combat capabilities of the land-based grouping of strategic nuclear forces in terms of guaranteed destruction of targets and fulfillment of strategic deterrence tasks.” Putin responded that after the U.S. left the ABM Treaty, Russia was “forced…to think about ensuring our strategic security” and therefore began work on “advanced systems with no analogues in the world.”
  • Putin stressed that Sarmat is “the most powerful missile system in the world,” with a total warhead yield “more than four times that of any existing most powerful Western analogue.” He highlighted that it can fly “along a suborbital trajectory,” giving “a range of use of more than 35,000 kilometers” and “ensuring the capability to overcome all existing and future missile defense systems,” before declaring that “at the end of this year, Sarmat will indeed be placed on combat duty.”

“Visit to the Moscow Institute of Thermal Technology,” Vladimir Putin, Kremlin.ru, 05.13.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated.

  • Putin praised the institute as the place where “a reliable nuclear shield of the Motherland was forged,” saying its work “made a powerful technological and industrial reserve for decades ahead.” He stressed that “today your institute is the leading domestic developer of solid‑fuel nuclear‑missile systems of ground and sea basing” and that its teams created strategic complexes “known all over the world: Topol‑M, Yars, Bulava‑30. They today form the basis of Russia’s nuclear triad.”
  • He underlined that Russia will “certainly continue to modernize and develop the strategic nuclear forces, creating missile systems with increased combat power, capable of overcoming all modern and future missile defense systems.” Putin also noted that some systems designed decades ago are still in service: “Every year applications come: we ask to extend, extend. It’s amazing, but it’s a fact.”

“The Kremlin answered a question about possible use of nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine,” Strana.ua, 05.17.26. 

  • Strana.ua reports that Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov was asked directly about nuclear use after major Ukrainian drone strikes on Russia’s rear. Journalist Pavel Zarubin said that, given these attacks, “people inevitably have a question: ‘We have these powerful bombs, so what? It turns out you can nibble and bite a nuclear power.’” Peskov replied that “a nuclear power must not be threatened, its existence must not be threatened.” “This,” he continued, “gives us the opportunity to be confident in this, and this is the basis of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear deterrence is an integral part and the cornerstone of our national security as a whole.”

 “World War: The Path to Victory,” Sergei Karaganov, Russia in Global Affairs, 05.12.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • “Our main mistake was underusing the most important weapon in our arsenal—nuclear deterrence,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “In 2023 and 2024 we intensified nuclear deterrence, sending several political and military‑technical signals and updating the doctrine for using nuclear weapons,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “Russia should quickly increase its operational and strategic nuclear capabilities so that if Paris or London use nuclear weapons against Russia … these countries will simply be wiped off the face of the earth,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “Given the rapid degradation of Europe’s elites, the nuclear weapons of the Old World must sooner or later be taken away from them,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “It is impossible to end the current struggle in Ukraine victoriously … without a qualitative strengthening of nuclear deterrence,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “Nuclear weapons, in optimal numbers and with the right doctrine, make non‑nuclear superiority unattainable and save resources on conventional forces,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “Building up and increasing the flexibility of nuclear capabilities should remind everyone that a great nuclear power cannot be defeated by a conventional, even drone, war,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “We must amend the nuclear doctrine to state that in the event of aggression by a coalition with superior potential, Russian command is obliged to use nuclear weapons,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “We should abandon the thesis that in a nuclear war there can be no winners and that any use of nuclear weapons inevitably leads to global thermonuclear escalation,” Karaganov wrote.
  • “The use of nuclear weapons is a great sin, but refusal to use them is no less sinful if it clears the way for a world war that will destroy humanity,” Karaganov wrote.

“The Age of Nuclear Coercion Is Just Beginning,” Hal Brands, Bloomberg Opinion, 05.15.26.

  • Hal Brands recalls that in autumn 2022, Biden officials were “seriously alarmed that Russian leader Vladimir Putin might use nuclear weapons to stave off defeat in Ukraine.” Intelligence analysts “reportedly put the odds as high as 50%,” and former CIA Director William Burns later said there had been a “genuine risk” Russia would “cross the nuclear threshold,” Brands notes. He highlights late‑October tensions, when Sergei Shoigu accused Ukraine of planning a radiological attack, prompting U.S. fears of a false flag and a response in which Jake Sullivan warned of “catastrophic consequences” and Washington rushed out radiation detectors and pressed allies, China, and India to oppose nuclear use.
  • Even now, Brands argues, “it’s still tough to resolve just how serious the nuclear risk was,” but “it would have been wildly irresponsible for Biden to simply dismiss the dangers of escalation.” Whether Putin was serious—“a terrifying preview” of how tyrants may escalate—or bluffing, in which case “expansionist powers will use nuclear threats to intimidate and constrain the United States,” Brands insists the episode presages “a future in which great-power rivalry is intense, and the nightmarish calculus of nuclear statecraft is inescapable,” especially as a weakened Russia and a nuclear‑expanding China lean more on coercive threats.

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

Counterterrorism:

  • No significant developments.

Conflict in Syria:

Cyber security/AI:

Energy exports from CIS:

“The Winners and Losers of Oil’s New World Order,” Jason Bordoff, Wall Street Journal, 05.15.26.

  • Jason Bordoff writes that the Iran war has “triggered the largest oil-supply disruption in modern history,” with “nearly 15% of global oil supply… removed from the market” and crude “elevated above $100 a barrel.” “The crisis in the Strait of Hormuz,” he argues, is forcing a redefinition of energy security “for an age of geopolitical fragmentation,” where it matters “where it flows, who can get it and which countries are able to absorb the shock.” Asia, which relied on the Middle East for “roughly 60%” of oil imports, has been “hit first and hardest,” with diesel and jet fuel prices doubling and poorer states facing shortages and rationing.
  • Bordoff contends that the deeper impact lies in “strategic policy shifts.” For the U.S., shale has left it “insulated but not immune”: higher pump prices hurt, but “increased consumer spending at the pump now flows to domestic producers,” and the episode “holds at least the promise” of consensus around both producing more and “us[ing] less oil.” He sketches winners and losers—Canada and Brazil as relative beneficiaries, India and Japan as strained importers, Gulf states seeking routes “that bypass Hormuz,” and Putin enjoying a short‑term “gift” that masks long‑term decline. “Perhaps the biggest lesson,” he concludes, is that “even the world’s largest producers cannot insulate themselves from shocks in a global market

“Russia’s Flagship Gas Pipeline to China Remains in Xi’s Hands,” Dan Murtaugh, Bloomberg, 05.18.26.

  • Murtaugh writes that Putin heads to Beijing “with the realistic prospect of making progress” on Power of Siberia 2, but “the decision on when—and how—to proceed… still rests with Beijing.” The Iran war and “closure of the Strait of Hormuz” have cut off “nearly a fifth of global liquefied natural gas,” hammering Chinese imports and making “a direct, steel‑and‑concrete land link to Russia suddenly look more attractive.”
  • This gives Putin “more leverage than he’s had in a long time,” he argues, noting that China has now “folded progress on the pipeline into its latest five‑year plan,” yet “key issues” remain: “China wants to buy gas at low prices and only when needed—meaning the pipeline may actually be half‑empty at times. Russia wants guaranteed sales to help defray construction costs.”
  • China still “has the edge,” Murtaugh contends, because its gas need is “limited” by coal, clean energy growth, rising domestic supply, and “other potential sources of imports, such as Central Asia,” whereas Russia has “all but lost Europe as an export market and has no other buyers at this scale.”
  • See this link for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Climate change:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian economic ties:

  • No significant developments.

U.S.-Russian relations in general:

“The ‘Lame Duck’ in the White House: What Awaits Donald Trump After the Midterm Elections,” Alexandra Voitolovskaya, Russian International Affairs Council, 05.15.26. Clues from Russian Views. Machine-translated. (This organization is affiliated with the Russian authorities.)

  • Voitolovskaya argues that after the November 2026 midterms, Republicans are “very likely to lose control of one or both chambers,” and from that moment “Trump will turn into a so‑called ‘lame duck’—a president living out his term in the White House.” His “legislative phase of rule will be over,” she writes, and he will focus on “choosing and preparing a successor” for 2028.
  • A Democratic House would mean “new oversight hearings and, possibly, attempts to initiate impeachment,” she notes; even without removal, Democrats would “do everything to maximally occupy the sitting president and his inner circle with investigations and lawsuits, blocking the administration’s legislative initiatives where possible.” In that situation, Trump will “most likely concentrate his efforts on foreign policy,” where presidents have “a bit more freedom of action,” but “any initiative requiring Congress’s approval will not be realized.”
  • She links Trump’s vulnerability to “rising prices, the administration’s foreign policy and harshness on migration,” warning that tariffs “are very likely to hit the agricultural core of the Republican electorate,” and that protests like the revived “No Kings” movement show “high mobilization of the protest electorate and heightened enthusiasm of the Democratic base.”

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

II. Russia’s domestic policies 

Domestic politics, economy and energy:

“Don’t Fall for Rumors of Putin’s Weakness,” Sean Wiswesser, Foreign Policy, 05.12.26.

  • Sean Wiswesser argues that recurring talk of cracks in Putin’s regime misunderstands “the system that he created.” “Every few months,” he writes, “a new rumor emerges from Moscow suggesting that Russian President Vladimir Putin may finally be vulnerable,” but “after 25 years in power, Putin has built a system designed precisely to survive rumors, dissent, and internal intrigue.” Unlike other strongmen, “Putin entered office already steeped in the culture and operations of the Soviet and post-Soviet security services,” a “career KGB officer who came to power understanding mass surveillance, coercion, and elite control from the inside.” In a hypothetical course on dictators, Wiswesser says, “he would have gotten straight As for the past quarter century.”
  • He describes a vast, overlapping security architecture: “At its center sits the FSB,” with hundreds of thousands of personnel and “specialized operational groups” such as Alpha and Vympel associated with “wet work.” Beyond it stands Rosgvardia, “created by Putin in 2016 specifically to strengthen internal regime security,” with roughly 300,000 troops, and the Federal Protective Service (FSO), “Putin’s innermost security circle” of some 50,000 guarding both the president and state infrastructure. The Krasikov case, in which an FSO bodyguard convicted of a Berlin assassination was traded back and “Putin was there to give him a bear hug right on the tarmac,” shows, Wiswesser argues, that “Putin wanted his security operators to know that if they kill for him, then they will not be forgotten.”
  • Against this backdrop, he cautions that “recurring reports of internal dissent and the temporary arrest of critics and former supporters should all be viewed cautiously,” since “rumors, investigations, arrests, and selective purges can all serve political purposes.” Echoing Stalin’s use of alleged plots to justify purges, Wiswesser concludes that “the most likely outcome amid today’s rumors of dissent and upheaval in Russia is therefore not imminent regime collapse, but further repression,” because “Putin’s Russia was built to survive exactly these moments,” and his vision for a restored imperial Russia “has no room for dissent, let alone a revolution.”

“Non-Victory Day: Putin’s authoritarian regime has entered a period of instability,” Re:Russia, 05.08.26.

  •  The authors argue that the apparent mood shift is not about Putin’s “personal factor” but about “structural changes,” describing “military Putinism” as a regime now entering “a new and crisis-ridden phase of its evolution.” Phase one (2022–23) was an improvised response to “the humiliating failure of the dash towards Kyiv,” as the Kremlin rebuilt its war machine “from scratch,” expanded repression, and tried “a propaganda-driven patriotic mobilization” framing the invasion as a “new Great Patriotic War.” A second phase from autumn 2023 brought “stabilization and growing self-confidence:” “a war of attrition,” “a military-economic boom,” and elite punishments as “a state campaign designed to punish insufficient loyalty.”
  • By 2025, “the bubble of the war economy began to deflate”: more than 12 trillion rubles from the National Wealth Fund left reserves “virtually exhausted,” while falling oil prices exposed “distortions and inflation.” Spending jumped above 39% of GDP but “the rent used to finance the additional 4.5%… had disappeared,” forcing “a sharp rise in the tax burden” and tighter control over transactions “under the banner of ‘formalizing’ the economy.” Meanwhile, “a second year of offensives in the Donbas failed to deliver any significant battlefield success,” and hopes that Trump or European collapse would save the strategy “failed to materialize.”
  • Kyiv has “managed not merely to ‘bring the war onto Russian soil’, but to make it part of the daily information environment,” while attempts “effectively to isolate the Runet” triggered “vertical crystallization of ‘war resentment’” around celebrity Bonya’s viral appeal, as “disparate grievances merged into a single picture.” Re:Russia concludes that “the grail of military Putinism has unmistakably cracked,” and that 9 May 2026 marks “the point at which military Putinism entered a regime of instability,” with economic strains, “the increasingly fragile state of its communication with the population,” and “escalating incompetence” within the elite ensuring that “from now on the system’s stability is in question rather than assumed.”

“In Russia, Private Companies Have Been Left to Pick Up the Tab for Ukrainian Drone Attacks,” Alexandra Prokopenko, Carnegie Politika, 05.14.26.

  • Prokopenko argues that in wartime Russia “the regime has shown itself to be incapable of providing security,” as Ukrainian drones increasingly hit targets “deep into Russian territory.” She notes that strikes in 2025 “knocked out 17% to 38% of Russian oil refinery capacity for several days at a time,” and that after attacks on Tatarstan facilities in 2024, the regional leader told industrialists: “‘We have to deal with this using our own resources… Wake up, guys, no one will protect us but ourselves.’” She writes that Moscow has “started a war and then left businesses to pay for air defense out of their own pockets.”
  • Big firms sought tax relief, but she reports that the Finance Ministry rejected proposals to reimburse 50% of costs or allow deductions, arguing that spending on drone defense is of a “one-off and individual nature,” while officials even discuss “making it a legal requirement for energy and infrastructure companies to protect themselves from drones—at their own cost.” Companies spent “about 100 billion rubles on drone defense in 2024, and likely double that in 2025,” she writes, often on “makeshift” systems like “metal cables” and “mechanical nets.” This, she argues, means “business spending on air defense… has effectively become a new, unregistered tax on revenue,” even as traditional taxes and war‑related levies “go up practically every year.”
  • Insurance offers little relief: Prokopenko notes that after a Supreme Court ruling that force‑majeure war clauses don’t apply because “a state of war has not officially been declared,” insurers “are being asked to pay for a war that doesn’t officially exist,” and are excluding drone risks or pricing them out of reach. Russia, she writes, is “the only” major warring state where “the function of reinsurer of last resort is not officially assigned to any single institution,” leaving regions and companies to cover mounting losses. The result is “yet another blow to investment” in an economy already in “negative equilibrium,” and she concludes: “Russian entrepreneurs have long since learned to live with sanctions. Now they must learn to live without state protection.”

“Systemic Strain and the Logic of Escalation,” Maxim Trudolyubov, Kennan Institute, 05.11.26.

  • Trudolyubov writes that “Ukrainian drone strikes are reaching ever deeper into Russian territory,” recently hitting “Perm (more than 900 miles from the frontline) and Yekaterinburg (more than 1000 miles),” and that pro‑war commentators now say “Russia is falling behind technologically.” He notes that Tuapse “has come under repeated drone attack… with the Tuapse oil terminal among the targets,” and that these trends convince conservative voices “that Russia is losing ground to Ukraine and struggling to keep up with Ukrainian advances in drone warfare.”
  • He stresses that “data from Russia’s federal statistics agency, Rosstat, suggest that the economy is not merely slowing but contracting,” while business‑climate indicators have fallen back “to levels last seen in the second quarter of 2022, when Russia was absorbing the initial shock of the war and Western sanctions.” Against this backdrop, “both government‑run and independent surveys point to a steady decline in Putin’s approval and trust ratings,” even if he still polls around 70%.
  • The danger, Trudolyubov argues, is that in response to “a moment of turbulence for Putin’s system,” the Kremlin may again escalate abroad. He quotes Ekaterina Schulmann: “The usual trick is to go attack someone… the ‘little attacking thing’… has gotten a bit worn down over the years… That didn’t stop them from making that kind of decision, though.”

“What Victory Day means to Russia now,” Anastasia Stognei, Financial Times, 05.11.26.

  • Anastasia Stognei recalls performing as a twelve‑year‑old on Red Square in a Great Patriotic War musical while Putin, “surrounded by war veterans,” watched nearby. Those “colorful celebrations now seem surreal,” the author writes, contrasting them with a 2025 parade that involved “few guests,” lasted only 45 minutes, and took place under tight security and city‑wide internet shutdowns, as Putin insisted that “victory has always been and will be ours.”
  • Victory Day in the 1990s offered “structure, ritual and meaning” when post‑Soviet Russia was “in disarray,” according to Stognei. Because almost every family had a relative who fought, it provided “a rare sense of continuity” and an unquestioned story of “everything good prevailing over everything evil,” the author remembers, even as darker aspects of Soviet wartime conduct went undiscussed.
  • Over time, the author argues, memory turned into “martyrdom.” Stognei notes that new symbols such as the St George ribbon, the shift from “Never again” to “We can do it again,” and laws punishing those who “offend veterans” have turned remembrance into “pobedobesiye,” or victory mania, so that Victory Day now legitimizes the war in Ukraine and has become “one more point of division” among Russians.

“While the War Continues in Ukraine, the Kremlin’s Real Battlefield is at Home,” Anna Varfolomeeva, War on the Rocks, 05.14.26.

  • Anna Varfolomeeva notes that in year five of the invasion, Russia is announcing the “liberation” of Luhansk for “the third time,” and that in 2024 Russian forces seized only “approximately 3,600 square kilometers of Ukrainian territory—an area smaller than Delaware… at an average advance rate of between 15 and 70 meters per day.” She adds that “roughly 1.3 million Russian casualties since February 2022 constitute losses greater than any major power has sustained in any conflict since World War II,” while Moscow still demands Ukraine withdraw from cities “Russia does not control,” leading her to ask “is winning still Russia’s objective?”
  • From inside the pro‑war camp, she cites blogger Yuri Kotenok’s verdict that “the army of 2022‑23 was a different army” and that today “what remains are those who climbed the career ladder through ‘presentations, beautiful reports, and lying.’” Kotenok describes “krugovoe vran’e, circular lying, when everyone lies to each other and keeps lying,” and warns that along parts of the front “we don’t just have a manpower shortage—there are categorically, physically no people,” according to Varfolomeeva.
  • The author argues that the Kremlin is building a domestic “control architecture”—expanded FSB powers, new detention capacity, and a “Time of Heroes” program to create a veteran “new elite”—because “the day the war frame expires” will bring home “hundreds of thousands of men, combat‑experienced and network‑connected.” She concludes that Russia’s campaign in Ukraine now looks less like “a military campaign being executed poorly” and more like “a time‑buying mechanism being executed adequately,” designed to sustain the war long enough to complete a transformation of the Russian system itself.

“What Autocrats Have in Common With Abusers,” M. Gessen, Rachel Louise Snyder, Jillian Weinberger, New York Times, 05.14.26.

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:

“Beyond the Sahel: Russia’s Toolbox for Influence in Africa,” Kate Johnston, Valeria Allende, and Isabel Dlabach, CNAS, 05.12.26.

  • The authors write that Russia, under Putin, is “seeking to increase Russia’s access to resources (either natural or military, including port access), burnish its credentials as a global power, and gain support for Moscow’s vision of an alternative world order.” They argue that Russia “has been expanding its engagement in Africa” through “mercenary forces,” “support to military juntas,” “exploitative mining deals,” and a mix of hard and soft tools including “arms sales, nuclear power plant deals, disinformation campaigns, media outreach, and an extensive network of cultural ‘Russian Houses’ and outposts of the Russian Orthodox Church that spread Russian propaganda.”
  • Moscow’s outreach, they emphasize, is framed by “an overarching narrative that draws on Russia’s history and presents the country as a benevolent actor in Africa, unencumbered by a colonial past, and a long-standing supporter of African independence and sovereignty.” This story, they argue, “obscures Russia’s true intentions in Africa, which are focused on its own enrichment and the promotion of a world order that benefits Russia at the expense of Africa,” and “builds support for Russia’s harmful alternative world order.”
  • Examining four “swing states”—Egypt, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and South Africa—the report notes that “all four are multialigned,” maintaining ties with both the West and Moscow. Russia, they write, seeks to “deepen its engagement with these swing states in order to amplify its influence on the continent,” centering on “strong and growing economic relationship” in Egypt, security and sanctions‑busting ties with Ethiopia, disinformation in Nigeria, and in South Africa “the closest ideological alignment regarding an alternative world order with Russia.”

“Mali Plays Russian Roulette,” Christopher M. Faulkner and Raphael Parens, Foreign Policy, 05.13.26.

  • The authors argue that April’s coordinated JNIM–FLA attacks and the blockade of Bamako “highlight the failure of Russia’s mercenary security model to stabilize the country,” noting that its “coercive counterinsurgency operations have alienated civilians, undermined local intelligence collection efforts, and fueled jihadi recruitment.” Wagner and its successor Africa Corps, they write, were “designed for extraction and regime protection, not battlefield effectiveness, territorial stabilization, or civic trust.”
  • “Mali’s security situation deteriorated by virtually every available metric following Wagner’s deployment in 2021,” Faulkner and Parens contend, citing the Moura massacre in which Malian forces and Wagner personnel “killed at least 500 civilians,” an operation that “deepened civilian grievances,” “accelerated insurgent recruitment,” and “further eroded the state’s perceived legitimacy.” The recent JNIM‑FLA attacks “have completely reversed” earlier gains like the seizure of Kidal, “revealing Africa Corps’ lack of both the intelligence capacity and operational reach required for effective counterterrorism.”
  • Africa Corps’ abuses “continue to alienate local populations,” the authors warn, breaking a northern peace deal and driving “greater tactical cooperation” between Tuareg separatists and jihadists. They conclude that “Mali’s troubles reflect the tensions inherent in a flawed security assistance model,” since Wagner and Africa Corps “were intended to be instruments of regime survival, not a genuine counterterrorism solution,” and that “the gamble on Russian mercenaries looks increasingly like a bad bet.”
  • See this link/these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Ukraine:

“Ukraine’s Energy Corruption Scandal Just Got Much Worse,” Anastasiia Lapatina, Lawfare, 05.13.26.

  • Lapatina writes that “the biggest corruption scandal in modern Ukrainian history is getting a whole lot worse,” and that for the first time “there may be evidence that President Zelensky personally profited from corruption.” Newly leaked NABU wiretap transcripts from the apartment of tycoon Tymur Mindich, a “longtime business associate of Zelensky,” mention a “Vova” during discussions of four luxury mansions in a Kyiv suburb. Subsequent context—references to a fence between Mindich’s house and one belonging to “Vova,” and a visit by “Max Donets,” apparently the head of Zelensky’s personal security—strongly suggests, she argues, that “Vova here is Zelensky.”
  • The same tapes underpin fresh money‑laundering charges against former chief of staff Andriy Yermak, ex–deputy PM Oleksiy Chernyshov, and others over the “Dynasty” compound. NABU says the group laundered “more than 460 million hryvnia, or $10.5 million,” including kickbacks from Energoatom contractors, and pursued the project “even in the mere weeks before and after Russia’s full-scale invasion,” with Yermak discussing mansion plans on Feb. 16, 2022.
  • For years Zelensky enjoyed “plausible deniability,” Lapatina notes, but “the leaked transcripts… make believing in Zelensky’s naivete far more difficult.” Yet with martial law blocking elections, impeachment “politically impossible,” and Zelensky’s approval still around 58 percent, she concludes that “there is simply no appetite for the removal of Zelensky” and that “it looks like for now, Vova is going to get away with it.”

“Two Untouched: Who Will Rise on the New Wave of ‘Mindichgate’ Revelations,” Konstantin Skorkin, Carnegie Politika, 05.08.26. Machine-translated.

  • Skorkin writes that Ukrainian politics is being shaken by “a new wave of revelations” from the so-called “Mindich tapes,” with “each new recording” dealing a blow to Zelenskyy’s entourage so that “there remain fewer and fewer untainted figures.” He calls this the biggest leak since the so-called Melnychenko tapes, noting that new names—Prime Minister Yuliya Svyrydenko, Central Bank chief Andriy Pyshny, NSDC secretary and ex‑defense minister Rustem Umerov—keep surfacing, along with schemes such as the “hasty nationalization” of Sense Bank, which, he says, effectively “turned into a transfer of the bank under the control of Timur Mindich’s people.” The key question, he argues, is whether “the president himself appears on these tapes”; even if he does not, “a powerful new blow” has been dealt to his inner circle and Zelenskyy “bears at least moral responsibility.”
  • “The conversations captured on the tapes are not only deeply unsettling due to the cynicism of the schemes being discussed, but also shocking in the scant attention paid by those close to power to the war itself—outside the context of profiting from defense contracts,” Skorkin writes.Against this backdrop, Skorkin argues, “two” top figures remain untouched: presidential chief of staff Kyrylo Budanov and defense minister Mykhailo Fedorov. “
    “The main question remains whether the president himself appears on these recordings. But even if he does not, a powerful blow has been dealt to Zelensky’s inner circle, and the political fortunes of everyone who has not been touched by the revelations will begin to rise.

Summary of “Essential Ukraine #23” by Balázs Jarábik, in X (formerly Twitter), 05.14.26.

  • Balázs Jarábik argues that the war is increasingly defined by structural limits on both sides: “Ukraine cannot defeat Russia w/o NATO involvement, while Russia cannot impose victory w/o risking broader confrontation with Europe.” The front has “relatively stabilized” after Russia’s gains around Huliapolie; Moscow retains a clear edge in attrition warfare—manpower, strike capacity, industrial scale—yet still “lacks a credible pathway toward decisive victory,” while Ukraine has partially stabilized the battlefield through drones, better logistics, and reorganization, even as manpower shortages and a badly degraded energy grid narrow its long‑term options.
  • He contends that an “infrastructure war” is becoming central, with Russian strikes making the next winter a key strategic threshold and Ukrainian drones now reaching “70% of [the] Russian population,” chipping away at wartime consensus. Politically, he highlights growing volatility in Kyiv: the “Mindich Gate” scandal is becoming the biggest domestic story of the war, pulling in Yermak and exposing the hyper‑centralized system around Zelenskyy, potentially boosting anti‑corruption bodies and the political profile of Budanov.
  • Demographic and economic fundamentals are worsening—population under government control may be under 25 million, only ~2 million refugees are expected to return, Europe still cannot fully stabilize Ukraine financially, and “rapid accession is off the table,” depriving Zelenskyy of an institutional anchor for victory. 

“Odessa’s Antisemitic Lesson for Mamdani’s New York,” Howard Husock, Wall Street Journal, 05.18.26.

  • Husock warns that New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s “tax‑the‑rich mantra” and antisemitic rhetoric evoke the “early 20th century fate of a city once so much like New York: Odessa, Ukraine.” Around 1900, he writes, Odessa was “an economic and cultural powerhouse, a world city,” a cosmopolitan entrepôt whose population was “at least a third Jewish” and home to “the sages of Odessa,” including Shalom Aleichem, Chaim Nachman Bialik, and Isaac Babel.
  • Odessa’s greatness, Husock argues, “was undermined by two forces now unleashed in New York: aggressive redistribution and antisemitism.” First came pogroms that “drove Jews to Palestine and, yes, New York,” then Soviet rule with “the extreme of redistribution,” collectivization, and Stalin’s targeting of Odessans as “cosmopolitans—aka Jews.” Visiting 25 years ago with a Harvard delegation to newly independent Ukraine, he recalls “the wreckage of the Soviet era… synagogues converted to gymnasiums, mansions used as sanitariums,” and notes that although Odessa survived communism, it did so “in a vastly diminished role” as a naval and grain port, “no longer a world city.”
  • “This is how cities slowly die,” Husock concludes: when redistribution and intolerance become what Jane Jacobs called “transactions of decline.” He cautions that “cities are mortal. They can die.”
  • See these links for more commentary/analysis on this subject:

Russia's other post-Soviet neighbors:

“Putin loses old ally to Trump’s new trade corridor,” Adrian Blomfield, The Telegraph, 05.17.26.

  • Blomfield writes that as “Russia’s war in Ukraine drains Moscow’s power and prestige,” Western governments increasingly see the South Caucasus as “a strategic trade, energy and critical‑minerals corridor bypassing Russia and Iran,” and that Armenia—once “among its most loyal regional allies”—has become “an unlikely front line in a growing geopolitical struggle between Russia and the West.” Many Armenians concluded “the Kremlin had abandoned them” when it failed to stop Azerbaijan’s 2023 seizure of Nagorno‑Karabakh; now Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan is “determined to pull Armenia out of Moscow’s orbit and deepen ties with the West.”
  • To Moscow’s alarm, Blomfield reports, Donald Trump has backed a new “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (Tripp)” along Armenia’s southern border with Iran, a 27‑mile corridor that would remain Armenian sovereign land but whose development and security would be run by a U.S.‑backed company on a 99‑year lease. For the EU, which has pledged £1.8 billion, Tripp offers “a major step towards strategic autonomy by creating a southern branch of the Middle Corridor that bypasses both Russia and an increasingly unreliable Georgia”; for Armenia, “both an economic lifeline and an exit ramp from Russian domination.”
  • Russia, Blomfield notes, is responding with open threats and covert pressure: Putin has warned that EU membership would mean losing “tariff‑free trade and the preferential gas prices on which much of Armenia’s economy depends,” while Russian rhetoric suggests Yerevan risks “a Ukraine‑style fate.” European officials allege “dark money” and disinformation, but one analyst says “Russia is pursuing a disruptive strategy aimed at sowing as much confusion as possible” rather than fielding “a genuine horse in the race.”

“How the failure of Trump's Caucasus corridor helped spare Armenia,” Eldar Mamedov, Responsible Statecraft, 05.18.26.

  • Mamedov argues that Trump’s war on Iran has “delayed” the Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP), a Caucasus corridor “supposed to bring peace between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” and that this “may turn out to be a blessing in disguise.” The project, a U.S.‑backed transport link through southern Armenia to Nakhchivan and Turkey, was touted as a way to “entrench the U.S. presence on [Iran’s] northern border and cut off Iran’s border with Armenia, its only friendly northern neighbor,” he writes, but in practice “the company was never established, and the contract was never signed,” so “all the other building blocks… were never put in place.”
  • Once the Iran war began, Mamedov notes, “neighboring countries hosting American infrastructure… became such targets,” citing Iranian drone strikes on Nakhchivan and Tehran’s suspicion of Baku’s ties with Israel. “Had TRIPP infrastructure actually been built through Armenia's southern region, it would have been a tempting target for Iran’s formidable missile and drone arsenal,” he argues; Armenia would be “caught between Iranian retaliation and Azerbaijani ambitions.” In his view, “TRIPP’s failure may therefore be Armenia's greatest strategic stroke of luck,” rendering it “invisible” in a great‑power war—“and invisibility… is its own kind of salvation.”

 

Endnotes

  1. An earlier Russian-language version of this commentary was published in Russian magazine Profil on May 12, 2026, under the headline “The Five Stages of Accepting the Inevitable.”
  2. For Graham Allison’s eight key questions about the Xi-Trump summit, see "The Trump-Xi Summit: Behind the Curtain," Graham Allison, The National Interest, 05.13.26. 

  3. For previews of the Xi-Putin meeting in China, see: 
    “China Will Host Putin, Days After Trump’s Visit,” Ivan Nechepurenko, The New York Times, 05.17.26.

    “Expectations from Putin’s visit to China and Zelensky’s remarks: Kremlin's briefing,” TASS, 05.18.26.

  4. “Putin’s Forces Are Barely Inching Along on the Battlefield,” Paul Sonne, Cassandra Vinograd and Milana Mazaeva, The New York Times, 05.10.26.
  5. Putin has already vowed to put Sarmat on combat duty multiple times in the past, according to the Russian-language Astra media outlet.
  6. The "Mindich tapes" are a series of leaked audio recordings and transcripts central to a major, ongoing wartime corruption scandal in Ukraine. The recordings detail an alleged money-laundering and bribery scheme involving the state nuclear company Energoatom and backdoor defense deals. The tapes—which were gathered as part of the Ukrainian anti-corruption fighting agencies’ "Operation Midas" investigation—were primarily recorded in 2025 in an apartment of fugitive businessman Timur Mindich.
  7. Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov said Moscow and Beijing plan to sign about 40 agreements during Putin’s May 19–20 state visit to China, including 21 documents to be signed in the leaders’ presence and a joint “Declaration on the formation of a multipolar world and new types of international relations.” (Vechernyaya Moskva, 05.18.26)

  8. For previews of the Xi-Putin meeting in China, see: 
    “China Will Host Putin, Days After Trump’s Visit,” Ivan Nechepurenko, The New York Times, 05.17.26.

    “Expectations from Putin’s visit to China and Zelenskyy’s remarks: Kremlin's briefing,” TASS, 05.18.26.

  9. For more of Graham Allison’s take on the past Xi-Trump summit, see:

    “Expert who wrote about ‘Thucydides Trap’ on Xi Jinping warning to Trump about U.S. and China,” CNN News, 05.17.26.

    “Trump and Xi are seeking to escape Thucydides’ Trap, says Harvard’s Graham Allison,” Bhagyashree Garekar, Straits Times, 05.16.26.

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: Chinese President Xi jinping, right, shows the way to Russian President Vladimir Putin after a photo session of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit at the Meijiang Convention and Exhibition Centre in Tianjin, China, Monday, Sept. 1, 2025. (Suo Takekuma/Pool Photo via AP)

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